Captivity
Poems
Written by Laurie Sheck

Format: Trade Paperback, 96 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: June 2, 2009
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-71144-2 (0-375-71144-9)

The “exquisite and haunting” (Booklist) collection of poems built around the language and mystique of American captivity narratives in which Sheck enters the vivid life we live inside our own minds and selves, and takes us into the mysterious underside of consciousness and selfhood.

“Sheck [is] one of the most accomplished lyric... Read more >

A Jury of Her Peers
Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx
Written by Elaine Showalter

Format: Trade Paperback, 608 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 12, 2010
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3442-0 (1-4000-3442-6)

A Jury of Her Peers is an unprecedented literary landmark: the first comprehensive history of American women writers from 1650 to 2000.

In a narrative of immense scope and fascination—brimming with Elaine Showalter’s characteristic wit and incisive opinions—we are introduced to more than 250 female writers. These include not only famous and... Read more >

The Vintage Book of American Women Writers

Written by Elaine Showalter

Format: Trade Paperback, 848 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 11, 2011
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3445-1 (1-4000-3445-0)

This monumental anthology of 350 years of American women writers is an important corrective to the literary canon and a showcase of great poetry and fiction in one readable and provocative volume.

For centuries, Elaine Showalter argues, women writers have been trivialized, marginalized, overlooked, and even forgotten in American literary history... Read more >

Prep
A Novel
Written by Curtis Sittenfeld

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: November 22, 2005
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7235-1 (0-8129-7235-X)

NOW IN PAPERBACK

Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at... Read more >

Selected Poems

Written by Wallace Stevens
Edited by John N. Serio

Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: August 25, 2009
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-28047-3 (0-307-28047-0)

A beautiful new edition—the first in nearly twenty years—of the work of Wallace Stevens, a founding father of contemporary American poetry, with a dazzling range of work that is at once emotional and intellectual. As John N. Serio reminds us in his elegant introduction, Stevens has written more persuasively than any... Read more >

Names on the Land
A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States
Written by George R. Stewart
Introduction by Matt Weiland

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: NYRB Classics
On Sale: July 1, 2008
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-273-5 (1-59017-273-6)

This beloved classic about place-naming in the United States was written during World War II in a conscious effort to pay tribute to the heritage of the nation’s peoples. George R. Stewart’s love of the surprising story, and his focus not just on language but on how people interact with their... Read more >

Alice James
A Biography
Written by Jean Strouse
Preface by Colm Toibin

Format: Trade Paperback, 392 pages
Publisher: NYRB Classics
On Sale: November 1, 2011
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-453-1 (1-59017-453-4)

The Jameses are perhaps the most extraordinary and distinguished family in American intellectual life. Henry’s novels, celebrated as among the finest in the language, and William’s groundbreaking philosophical and psychological works, have won these brothers a permanent place at the center of the nation’s cultural firmament. Less well known is their... Read more >

The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain

Written by Mark Twain
Edited by Lawrence Berkove
Introduction by Pete Hamill

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: April 13, 2004
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7118-7 (0-8129-7118-3)

This unique collection of Twain’s essential short stories and semiautobiographical narratives is a testament to the author’s vast imagination. Featuring popular tales such as “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” as well as some delightful excerpts from The Diaries of Adam and Eve, this compilation... Read more >

My Father's Tears and Other Stories

Written by John Updike

Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: June 2, 2009
Price: $25.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27156-3 (0-307-27156-0)

John Updike’s first collection of new short fiction since 2000 finds the author in a valedictory mood as he mingles narratives of his native Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel.

“Personal Archaeology” considers life as a sequence of half-buried layers, and “The Full Glass” distills a lifetime’s... Read more >

A Man Without a Country

Written by Kurt Vonnegut
Edited by Daniel Simon

Format: Hardcover, 160 pages
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
On Sale: September 6, 2005
Price: $28.95
ISBN: 978-1-58322-713-8 (1-58322-713-X)

A Man Without a Country is Kurt Vonnegut’s hilariously funny and razor-sharp look at life (“If I die–God forbid–I would like to go to heaven to ask somebody in charge up there, ‘Hey, what was the good news and what was the bad news?’”), art (“To practice any art, no matter... Read more >

John Henry Days

Written by Colson Whitehead

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: May 14, 2002
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-49820-3 (0-385-49820-9)

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction

Colson Whitehead’s eagerly awaited and triumphantly acclaimed new novel is on one level a multifaceted retelling of the story of John Henry, the black steel-driver who died outracing a machine designed to replace him. On another level it’s the story of a disaffected, middle-aged... Read more >

Hawthorne
A Life
Written by Brenda Wineapple

Format: Trade Paperback, 528 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: June 29, 2004
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7291-7 (0-8129-7291-0)

“Brenda Wineapple illuminates Hawthorne’s complexities without demystifying the man. He remains one of the most intriguing American writers: dark, guilty, erotic, and psychologically acute–qualities that Wineapple deftly explores.” –Margot Peters

Handsome, reserved, almost frighteningly aloof until he was approached, then playful, cordial, Nathaniel Hawthorne was as mercurial and double-edged as his writing... Read more >

Mrs. Somebody Somebody
Fiction
Written by Tracy Winn

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: June 8, 2010
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8145-2 (0-8129-8145-6)

In this astonishing debut, Tracy Winn poignantly chronicles the souls who inhabit the troubled mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, playing out their struggles and hopes over the course of the twentieth century. Through a stunning variety of voices, Winn paints a deep and permeating portrait of the town and its people... Read more >

Earlier Poems

Written by Franz Wright

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: July 14, 2009
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-71146-6 (0-375-71146-5)

The haunting collection of poems that gathers the first four books of Pulitzer winner Franz Wright under one cover, where “fans old and new will find a feast amid famine” (Publishers Weekly), and discover how large this poet’s gift was from the start.

“[Wright’s] hard-won revelations seem subtle but are potently rousing... Read more >