""Vampires. Why do we care? In these pages you will find what is very simply, the most literate, imaginative, and just plain fascinating answer to that question ever written." Whitley StrieberIn a culture that does not do death particularly well, we are obsessed with mortality. Margot Adler writes, "Vampires let us play with death and the issue of mortality. They let us ponder what it would mean to be truly long lived. Would the long view allow us to see the world differently, imagine social structures differently? Would it increase or decrease our reverence for the planet? Vampires allow us to ask questions we usually bury."As Adler, a longtime NPR correspondent and question asker, sat vigil at her dying husband's bedside, she found herself newly drawn to vampire novels and their explorations of mortality. Over the next four years--by now she has read more than 270 vampire novels, from teen to adult, from gothic to modern, from detective to comic--she began to see just how each era creates the vampires it needs. Dracula, an Eastern European monster, was the perfect vehicle for 19th-century England's fear of outsiders and of disease seeping in through its large ports. In 1960s America, Dark Shadows gave us the morally conflicted vampire struggling against his own predatory nature, who still enthralls us today. Think Spike and Angel, Stefan and Damon, Bill and Eric, the Cullens. Vampires Are Us explores the issues of power, politics, morality, identity, and even the fate of the planet that show up in vampire novels today. Perhaps, Adler suggests, our blood is oil, perhaps our prey is the planet. Perhaps vampires are us"--

Endore's classic werewolf novel--now back in print for the first time in over forty years--helped define a genre and set a new standard in horror fiction. The werewolf is one of the great iconic figures of horror in folklore, legend, film, and literature. And connoisseurs of horror fiction know that The Werewolf of Paris is a cornerstone work, a masterpiece of the genre that deservedly ranks with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Endore's classic novel has not only withstood the test of time since it was first published in 1933, but it boldly used and portrayed elements of sexual compulsion in ways that had never been seen before, at least not in horror literature. In this gripping work of historical fiction, Endore's werewolf, an outcast named Bertrand Caillet, travels across revolutionary Paris in the 1870s seeking to calm the beast within. Stunning in its sexual frankness and eerie, fog-enshrouded visions, this novel was decidedly influential for the generations of horror and science fiction authors who came afterward.

"Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the tangled history that binds the two sides of his family"--Amazon.com.

In the past hundred years, since the publication of Bram Stoker's infamous book, no literary figure has enjoyed a more horrific resiliency than Count Dracula. In film, television, novels, and short stories, he keeps coming back to life, fed by the vital imaginative energies of a world-wide audience that cannot seem to resist his abominable charms. Aristocratic and urbane, deeply erotic and profoundly evil, Dracula's bloodsucking savagery has cast a mesmerizing fascination not only over his victims but over his readers as well. And, as Leonard Wolf suggests, "Vampire fiction...exerts an amazing pull on readers for a reason that we may find disturbing. The blood exchange—the taking of blood by the vampire from his or her victim is, all by itself, felt to be a singularly symbolic event. Symbolic and attractive!" Now, in Blood Thirst: One Hundred Years of Vampire Fiction, Leonard Wolf brings together thirty tales in which vampires of all varieties make their ghastly presence felt—male and female, human and non-human, humorous and heroic—all of them kin to the dreadful bat. From Lafcadio Hearn, Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, Edith Wharton, August Derleth, and Ray Bradbury to such contemporary masters as Anne Rice, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, John Cheever, and Woody Allen, and in settings as diverse as rural New England and outer space, this collection offers readers a dazzling compendium of vampire stories. Wolf organizes the collection into six categories—The Classic Adventure Tale, The Psychic Vampire, The Science Fiction Vampire, The Non-Human Vampire, The Comic Vampire, and The Heroic Vampire—which allows readers to see the many guises Dracula's descendants have assumed and the many ways they can be interpreted. In his penetrating introduction, Wolf argues that such an arrangement enables us to see the evolution of the vampire from an unmitigated evil to a creature we are more likely to identify with. "In a century in which God and Satan have become increasingly irrelevant in the popular arts, there has been an accompanying secularization of the vampire idea. And, as the stories in Blood Thirst will show, sympathy for the vampire has grown as we have become increasingly interested in the workings of the mind." Indeed, the vampire's ability to change over time, to draw into itself such a richness of symbolic meanings, to conjure itself into so many diabolical shapes, may account for the enduring appeal of the literature written about it. Here, then, is a definitive collection for aficionados and novices alike, and whether readers find the vampires who inhabit these pages sympathetic or horrific, psychologically intriguing or spiritually repellent, morbidly seductive or comically absurd, Blood Thirst gives us all something to sink our teeth into.

"A rollicking tale." --Stacy Schiff, New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice Johnny One-Eye is bringing about the rediscovery of one of the most "singular and remarkable [careers] in American literature" (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World). In this picaresque tour de force that reanimates Revolutionary Manhattan through the story of double agent John Stocking, the bastard son of a whorehouse madam and possibly George Washington, Jerome Charyn has given us one of the most memorable historical novels in years. As Johnny seeks to unlock the mystery of his birth and grapples with his allegiances, he falls in love with Clara, a gorgeous, green-eyed octoroon, the most coveted harlot of Gertrude's house. The wild parade of characters he encounters includes Benedict Arnold, the Howe brothers, "Sir Billy" and "Black Dick," and a manipulative Alexander Hamilton. Not since John Barth's The Sotweed Factor and Gore Vidal's Burr has a novel so dramatically re-created America's historical beginnings. Reading group guide included.

With the publication of The Periodic Table in 1984, Primo Levi became one of America's most beloved writers. This new collection of his stories and essays reveals the full imaginative range of this great Italian writer. Most of the stories are science fiction and fantasy, combining Levi's love for science with his keen perceptions of human nature. The essays, originally written for the Italian newspaper La Stampa, cover a broad range of his interests, from art and literature to politics and current affairs. Levi's quick wit and humanity shine through in these gemlike pieces.

A classical work of the 1960s Czechoslovak literature and film in a new publication of Iris Urwin Lewit’s translation. An original and relevant contribution to the question: "are all people brothers.” Illustrated by Jiří Grus, epilogue by Benjamin Frommer.

A charming and undeniably powerful debut novel set in Berlin, "This Must Be the Place" chronicles the friendship between a fading actor and a young married American woman who are both learning to live with the past.

Product Description Majipoor, an immense planet populated by a wide variety of exotic races, first appeared in Robert Silverberg's 1980 novel, Lord Valentine's Castle, a book that has since acquired the status of a modern classic. In subsequent decades, Silverberg has revisited Majipoor on numerous occasions, and it has become one of this gifted and prolific author's signature creations.The latest offering in the cycle, Tales of Majipoor, is both a superb literary accomplishment and a gift to Silverberg's legion of devoted fans. This generous volume contains seven long stories, each of which explores a different aspect of life on Majipoor. Together, they encompass several thousand years of colorful, dramatic history. The opening tale, 'The End of the Line,' tells the story of Lord Stiamot and his rise to the role of Coranol, a position second only to Pontifex in Majipoor's complex hierarchy. The final entry, 'The Seventh Shrine,' circles back to the very beginning of the series, giving us a murder mystery set during the reign of Lord Valentine. In between are stories that involve magic ('The Sorcerer s Apprentice'), religion ('The Way They Wove the Spells in Sippulgar'), and even poetry ('The Book of Changes'). Supplementing all this is a brief but crucial historical prologue and a series of detailed maps that add richness and depth to these singular--and endlessly absorbing--narratives. Beautifully written and thoroughly imagined on every level, Tales of Majipoor combines irresistible storytelling with the sort of meticulously detailed world building that only the finest imaginative literature can provide. It is a book that only Robert Silverberg, a true Grand Master, could have written. From the Inside Flap Majipoor, an immense planet populated by a wide variety of exotic races, first appeared in Robert Silverberg's 1980 novel, Lord Valentine's Castle, a book that has since acquired the status of a modern classic. In subsequent decades, Silverberg has revisited Majipoor on numerous occasions, and it has become one of this gifted and prolific author's signature creations.The latest offering in the cycle, Tales of Majipoor, is both a superb literary accomplishment and a gift to Silverberg's legion of devoted fans. This generous volume contains seven long stories, each of which explores a different aspect of life on Majipoor. Together, they encompass several thousand years of colorful, dramatic history. The opening tale, “The End of the Line,” tells the story of Lord Stiamot and his rise to the role of Coranol, a position second only to Pontifex in Majipoor's complex hierarchy. The final entry, “The Seventh Shrine,” circles back to the very beginning of the series, giving us a murder mystery set during the reign of Lord Valentine. In between are stories that involve magic (“The Sorcerer's Apprentice”), religion (“The Way They Wove the Spells in Sippulgar”), and even poetry (“The Book of Changes”). Supplementing all this is a brief but crucial historical prologue and a series of detailed maps that add richness and depth to these singular—and endlessly absorbing—narratives. Beautifully written and thoroughly imagined on every level, Tales of Majipoor combines irresistible storytelling with the sort of meticulously detailed world building that only the finest imaginative literature can provide. It is a book that only Robert Silverberg, a true Grand Master, could have written.

WINNER OF THE 2005 HOLOCAUST LITERATURE AWARD. SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERS' PRIZE

"For many serious readers," Robert Alter writes in his preface, "the novel still matters, and I have tried here to suggest some reasons why that should be so." In his wide-ranging discussion, Alter examines the imitation of reality in fiction to find out why mimesis has become problematic yet continues to engage us deeply as readers. Alter explores very different sorts of novels, from the self-conscious artifices of Sterne and Nabokov to what seem to be more realistic texts, such as those of Dickens, Flaubert, John Fowles, and the early Norman Mailer. Attention is also given to such individual critics as Edmund Wilson and Alfred Kazin and to current critical schools. In Alter's essays, a particular book or movement or juxtaposition of writers provides the occasion for the exploration of a general intellectual issue. The scrutiny of well-chosen passages, the joining of images or themes or ideas, the associative and intuitive processes that lead to the right phrase and the right loop of syntax for the matter at hand-all these come together unexpectedly to illuminate both the text in question and the general issue. Recent discussions of mimesis in fiction generally proceed from a single thesis. By contrast, Motives for Fiction offers an empirical approach, attempting to define mimesis in its various guises by careful critical readings of a heterogeneous sampling of literary texts. Intelligent and good-humored, the book is also old-fashioned enough to wonder whether mimesis might not be a task or responsibility to which much contemporary fiction has not proved entirely adequate.

"This powerful, meticulously researched novel is a moving tale of one girl's struggle against a world in turmoil. In 1930s Berlin, choked by the tightening of Hitler's fist, the Klein family are gradually losing everything that is precious to them. Their fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosa, slips out of Germany on a Kindertransport train to begin a new life in England. Charged with the task of securing a safe passage for her family, she vows that she will not rest until they are safe. But as war breaks out and she loses contact with her parents, Rosa finds herself wondering if there are some vows that can't be kept ...A sweeping tale of love and loss, with the poignant story of the Kindertransport at its heart, this is an exceptional accomplishment from one of Britain's bravest and most vibrant young writers."

The book is a glimpse into the life of Holocaust survivor Gerda Klein, and into the thoughts that have always vindicated her belief that the most treasured place on earth is home, and that the most beautiful and desirable aim for people is to spend a boring evening there with family.

How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Formatted for e-reader Illustrated About The Autobiography of St. Teresa Of Avila by St. Teresa Of Avila In this landmark of Christian mysticism, the revered Carmelite nun presents moving accounts of her profound religious experiences and ultimate union with God. St. Teresa wrote this memoir at the behest of her confessor. It offers a warm, accessible account of her transformation into an impassioned leader and reformer of church doctrine.St. Teresa recounts her childhood and education in sixteenth-century Spain, her physical afflictions and spiritual crises, her many visions and mystical encounters, and her determination to embrace the contemplative life. In describing the ascent of the soul, she explains the core of her theology as a four-stage process that progresses from mental prayer to divine rapture. Next to Don Quixote, this timeless work constitutes Spain's most popular prose classic. It forms an excellent introduction to the saint's other writings and to the Christian tradition of mystical literature.

The five short novellas which comprise this anthology were written between 1890 and World War I. All share a common setting-the Eastern European Jewish town or shtetl, and all deal in different ways with a single topic-the Jewish confrontation with modernity. The authors of these novellas are among the greatest masters of Yiddish prose. In their work, today's reader will discover a literary tradition of considerable scope, energy, and variety and will come face to face with an exceptionally memorable cast of characters and with a human community now irrevocably lost.In her general introduction, Professor Wisse traces the development of modern Yiddish literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and describes the many shifts that took place between the Yiddish writers and the world about which they wrote. She also furnishes a brief introduction for each novella, giving the historical and biographical background and offering a critical interpretation of the work.

Moonstone Books is proud to present Tales of Zorro , a brand-new anthology featuring 18 tales of the fox -- the first collection of original Zorro short fiction ever published! This landmark compilation, edited by Richard Dean Starr ( Hellboy, Kolchak: The Night Stalker ), includes all-new stories and essays by some of today's top writers in film and literature.

Never before has Gordimer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, published such a comprehensive collection of her nonfiction. Telling Tales represents the full span of her works in that field-from the twilight of white rule in South Africa to the fight to overthrow the apartheid regime, and most recently, her role over the past seven years in confronting the contemporary phenomena of violence and the dangers of HIV. The range of this book is staggering, and the work in totality celebrates the lively perseverance of the life-loving individual in the face of political tumult, then the onslaught of a globalized world. The abiding passionate spirit that informs "A South African Childhood," a youthful autobiographical piece published in The New Yorker in 1954, can be found in each of the book's ninety-one pieces that span a period of fifty-five years. Returning to a lifetime of nonfiction work has become an extraordinary experience for Gordimer. She takes from one of her revered great writers, Albert Camus, the conviction that the writer is a "responsible human being" attuned not alone to dedication to the creation of fiction but to the political vortex that inevitably encompasses twentieth- and twenty-first-century life. Born in 1923, Gordimer, who as a child was ambitious to become a ballet dancer, was recognized at fifteen as a writing prodigy. Her sensibility was as much shaped by wide reading as it was to eye-opening sight, passing on her way to school the grim labor compounds where black gold miners lived. These twin decisives-literature and politics-infuse the book, which includes historic accounts of the political atmosphere, firsthand, after the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and the Soweto uprising of 1976, as well as incisive close-up portraits of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, among others. Gordimer revisits the eternally relevant legacies of Tolstoy, Proust, and Flaubert, and engages vigorously with contemporaries like Susan Sontag, Octavio Paz, and Edward Said. But some of her most sensuous writing comes in her travelogues, where the politics of Africa blend seamlessly with its awe-inspiring nature-including spectacular recollections of childhood holidays beside South Africa's coast of the Indian Ocean and a riveting account of her journey the length of the Congo River in the wake of Conrad. Gordimer's body of work is an extraordinary vision of the world that harks back to the sensibilities-political, moral, and social-of Dickens and Tolstoy, but with a decidedly vivid contemporary consciousness. Telling Times becomes both a literary exploration and extraordinary document of social and political history in our times.

Fifth Volume in the Series: Proust Complete Bilingual - English / French - Vol. 1 to 7.Each English Volume is annotated and illustrated by P. Segal: PROUST SAID THAT, with different numbers and topics, followed by the original French version.In this volume: Issue N°5 from "Proustsaidthat Americana Collection." (27 pages).Topics: In This Issue; Holiday Madness, The Café Lifestyle, The 1995 Proust Wake, Paris, Our Lady of the Typists, Proust Sightings, Chocolate Madeleines and much more Remembrance of Things Past / À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Previously also translated as In Search of Lost Time is a novel in seven volumes, written by Marcel Proust (1871-1922). It is considered to be his most prominent work, known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the Madeleine" which occurs early in the first volume.The novel had great influence on twentieth-century literature; some writers have sought to emulate it, others to parody it. In the centenary year of the novel's first volume, Edmund White pronounced À la Recherche du Temps Perdu "the most respected novel of the twentieth century." "Within a Budding Grove" was awarded the "Prix Goncourt" in 1919.Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff, MC (The Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and used to be awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries.) was a Scottish writer, most famous for his English translation of most of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, which he published under the Shakespearean title Remembrance of Things Past.About the SeriesSeries: Proust Complete Bilingual - English / French- Vol. 1 to 7. Translated from French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff: -Volume I: Swann's Way [1922] / Du Côté de chez Swann (1913), sometimes translated as The Way by Swann's. -Volume II: Within a Budding Grove [1924] / À L'ombre Des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs (1919), also translated as In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Goncourt Prize in 1919.-Volume III: The Guermantes Way [1925] / Le Côté de Guermantes (1920/1921)-Volume IV: Cities of the Plain [1927] / Sodome et Gomorrhe (1921/1922) sometimes translated as Sodom and Gomorrah.-Volume V: The Captive [1929] / La Prisonnière (1923), also translated as The Prisoner. Volume VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone [1930] / Albertine Disparue (1925) La Fugitive) sometimes translated as The Fugitive [last line of Walter de la Mare's poem "The Ghost"] or Albertine Gone. Translated by Stephen Hudson: Volume VII: Time Regained [1931] / Le Temps Retrouvé (1927), also translated as Finding Time Again and The Past Recaptured.Topics in the "Proustsaidthat Americana Collection": Issue N°1: Proust Support Group, nocturnal liestyle, drugs, Pink Floyd, Stephen Hawking, Dreyfus Affair, madeleines Issue N°2: Marcel Purroust, neurosis, Fortuny, Bonny DoonV ineyard, French postcards, nesselrode puddingIssue N°3: Untortured Love, Cacophony Society, Paris and Venice, The Little Phrase, Raymond Chandler, fried sole.Issue N° 4: Proust's Life and Mine, Rejection, Proust Questionnaire, Florence, Coffee, S. Richter, bouillabaisse.Issue N°5: Holiday Madness, The Café Lifestyle, The 1995 Proust Wake, Paris, Our Lady of the Typists, Proust Sightings, Chocolate Madeleines and much more Front Cover: Hélène Standish, born Hélène de Pérusse des Cars.Marcel Proust is inspired by several models for the character Oriane de Guermantes in his novel, In Search of Lost Time.

"One of the four best Hollywood novels ever written." —Elizabeth Frank, New York Times Book Review "Epstein is a master storyteller at the height of his powers." —Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Mr. Epstein effortlessly captures the magic of a Hollywood childhood . . . San Remo Drive is a haunting and deeply affecting book." —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Leslie Epstein's bestselling new novel is composed of five interrelated episodes, in each of which a germ of childhood experience is elaborated by the mature imagination of one of this country's most distinguished writers of fiction. Richard Jacobi, the narrator of these reflections, invites us to revisit the crucial experiences of his youth: driving to Malibu to meet the man determined to marry his mother; on vacation in the Mohave, while his father, the famed Hollywood figure Norman Jacobi and Lotte, his mother, must deal with the terrible consequences of Norman's testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities; exploring how a night in a bar and brothel in Tijuana becomes linked to the spiritual growth of his brother, Bartie, who is surely destined to be one of the most memorable and endearing characters in modern literature; viewing a precarious initiation into sexuality that will mark forever the way an artist sees the world and does his work. This is, then, a novel written from memory, in the same sense that the Schubert sonatas that attract Lotte to her baby grand are played from memory—that is, by heart.