Publisher: Charles River Editors
Herman Melville was one of the greatest writers during the American Renaissance. Melville’s unique style helped produce classics in many different genres. This edition of The Happy Failure includes a table of contents.
A “compelling” work of fiction that follows a woman’s relationships through the years and asks why intelligent girls make terrible choices (Edan Lepucki, New York Times–bestselling author of California). Daring yet aimless, smart but slightly strange, Cake Time’s young female protagonist keeps making slippery choices, sliding into the dangerous space where curiosity melds with fear and desires turn into dirty messes. In “How Not to Have an Abortion,” the teenaged narrator looks for a ride from the clinic between her AP exams. In “Easy Target,” the now-college-grad agrees to go to a swingers’ party with a handsome stranger. A decade later, in “Glow,” she is suddenly confronted by the disturbing and thrilling fact of her lover’s secret daughter. Ultimately, this unflinching novel-in-stories grapples with urgent, timeless questions: why intelligent girls make terrible choices, where to negotiate a private self in an increasingly public world, and how to love madly without losing a sense of self. “A young woman explores the dangerous, voyeuristic, and violent undertones of her sexual encounters . . . a strong, nimble voice . . . a brave and unapologetically bold new writer.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A delicious indulgence . . . Treat yourself to its dark, seductive intimacies and savor the gritty sugar of its unsentimental humor.” —Jillian Lauren, New York Times–bestselling author of Some Girls “These complex, flawed, and real characters live in our current world, with all its confusions and opportunity to connect—or disconnect.”—Edan Lepucki, New York Times-bestselling author of CaliforniaWinner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Fiction AwardShow book
THE HEPTAMERON (here Volume 3 of 5), first published posthumously in 1558, is divided into seven complete days containing 10 stories each, and an eighth day containing only 2 stories. The stories, many of which deal with love and infidelity, resulted in "accusations of looseness" by critics of the day. The author, Margaret of Navarre (also known as Margaret of Angoulême) became an influential woman in the intellectual and cultural circles of the French Renaissance.From an 1892 essay by the translator George Saintsbury: "In so large a number of stories with so great a variety of subjects, it naturally cannot but be the case that there is a considerable diversity of tone. But that peculiarity at which we have glanced more than once, the combination of voluptuous passion with passionate regret and a mystical devotion, is seldom absent for long together...The question, What is the special virtue of the Heptameron? I have myself little hesitation in answering. There is no book, in prose and of so early a date, which shows to me the characteristic of the time as it influenced the two great literary nations of Europe so distinctly as this book of Margaret of Angoulême…" - Summary by Summary adapted from Wikipedia and excerpted from the text by lubee930)Show book
In the stories of Mad Hope, Journey Prize winner Heather Birrell finds the heart of her characters and lets them lead us into worlds both recognizable and alarming. A science teacher and former doctor is forced to re-examine the role he played in CeauÅ?escu’s Romania after a student makes a shocking request; a tragic plane crash becomes the basis for a meditation on motherhood and its discontents; women in an online chat group share (and overshare) their anxieties and personal histories; and a chance encounter in a waiting room tests the ties that bind us. Using precise, inventive language, Birrell creates astute and empathetic portraits of people we thought we knew – and deftly captures the lovely, maddening mess of being human.Show book
Edith Wharton's early novella focuses on Kate Orme, who begins the story happily in love with her fiance, only to discover that he hides a terrible secret.Show book
Jane Austen's first novel—published posthumously in 1818—tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen's fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about love, life, and the heady power of literature. The satirical novel pokes fun at the gothic novel while earnestly emphasizing caution to the female sex.Show book
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.'How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped' is the romantic story of a very small child who is abducted by two female travelers and taken away to the sea.A Red Door Consulting production.Show book
