Gordon Lish's first novel tells the story of a serial killer who wants Truman Capote to write his biography. In the letter the killer writes to Capote, the details of his life and his modus operandi are revealed.

"The author explores this tradition in depth and defines it with a breadth of vision, a dynamic vigor and freedom rarely paralleled today....His method, flexible, generous, humane in the best sense of the word, eschews pedantry, dogma, useless theorizing and scholastic argumentation."--The New York Times Book Review. "I wish to make it clear that The Gates of Horn represents an outstanding critical accomplishment."--Saturday Review. In the Odyssey, Homer describes two gates of the one of ivory through which fictitious dreams pass, and the other of horn, through which nothing but the truth may pass. Realism is the type of literature that passes through the horn, and in this significant study of the genre Levin examines a major form of Realism--the French novel--and focuses on five of its masters--Stendahl, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Proust. Now available in paperback, Levin's study is a veritable reconstruction of the artistic and intellectual life of a nation.

Thomas Penman is the acclaimed autobiographical debut novel by Oscar-winning screenwriter Bruce Robinson, the author of "Withnail and I". This is the story of a dysfunctional family. It is about a boy and his grandpa, life and death, sex and hate, dog's meat and cancer. It is also about pornography, enemas, Morse codes, puberty, secrets, God and loathing. It is also about love.

More than most novelists, Virginia Woolf benefits by an introducer. She is never, either by intention or equipment, the expected novelist. She chose the novel to adapt it deliberately and progressively to be the vehicle of her own subtle perception. Behind this study of the novels is an intense interest in the person revealed in the novelist. The criticism is warm as well as acute and the whole study is felt to be a tribute reasoned and justified - to a woman sensitive, compassionate, passionately honest and eager only for truth; to an artist quite unsparing of her own labour, finely gifted, self-effacing, serious and humourous. Mrs Bennett added two chapters on A Writer's Diary and on Virginia Woolf's critical essays for the second edition. Both can help our understanding of Virginia Woolf the novelist; the Diary by the insight it gives into her creative process and the fuller understanding we can gain of technical problems, the essays because they are about novels and novelists.

"A blistering, brilliant novel from the Booker-shortlisted author, elegantly reflecting his Geoffrey Faber Memorial award-winning story collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity. In The Quantity Theory of Morality, Will Self 's unconventional new novel, his pen remains dipped in vitriol and elegance as ever. In this dark yet hilariously satirical "state-of-an-era novel," Self 's target is a collective morality that is nothing more or less than pure sociability. His middle-class, middle-English characters appear trapped in a timeless go-round of polite chitchat in dinner parties that refract like a hall of mirrors as the novel progresses, until one day someone says something to the effect of, "This way to the gas chamber, please, ladies and gentlemen." The Quantity Theory of Morality finally solves the equation of time and money that dominates our lives, in a way that is simultaneously deranging, destabilizing, and hilarious. With recurring-if defeated-appearances from now-canonical characters like Zack Busner, the repetition of each chapter, or "Proposition," shows Will Self to be both a master of satire and slapstick humor and a sublime and thoughtful critic of the alienation of modern life. With The Quantity Theory of Morality, Self provides the sequel to his award-winning debut of thirty-four years ago: The Quantity Theory of Insanity. That literary psycho-surgery proved there wasn't enough sanity to go around-now he's established what many of us fear to be the absolute truth: there isn't enough good to go around, either"-- Provided by publisher.

The Captain's Doll is a novella written by Lawrence in 1921. The story chronicles the journey of fallen German aristocrat, Countess Johanna 'Hannele' zu Rassentlow, as she dates a Scottish officer of unusual philosophy. The intimate relationship between Captain Alexander Hepburn and Hannele is intruded upon when the captain's wife, Evangeline, suspicious of foul play, travels to Germany . This stage adaptation captures Lawrence's classic obsessions with relationships, and the roles of men and women.

Recounts the main events and relationships of Maugham's long life and analyzes most of the important plays, stories, novels, and essay collections, with a glance at film scripts and miscellanea