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Featuring 19 of the finest works from the most distinguished writers in the American short-story tradition, this new compilation begins with Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1835 tale «Young Goodman Brown» and ranges across an entire century, concluding with Ernest Hemingway's 1927 classic, «The Killers.» Other selections include Poe's «The Tell-Tale Heart,» Melville's «Bartleby,» Harte's «The Luck of Roaring Camp,» «To Build a Fire,» by Jack London, «The Real Thing» by Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald's «Bernice Bobs Her Hair,» plus stories by Mark Twain, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles Chesnutt, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Ambrose Bierce, Theodore Dreiser, and others. Perfect for classroom use, this outstanding collection of tales will also prove popular with fiction readers everywhere.

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A compulsive gambler himself at a certain period of his life, Dostoyevsky wrote this novel with real authority. Set in the appropriately named Roulettenburg, a German spa with a casino and an international clientele, it concerns the gambling episodes, tangled love affairs, and complicated lives of Alexey Ivanovitch, a young gambler; Polina Alexandrovna, the woman he loves; a pair of French adventurers, and other characters.Although not as dark as some of Dostoyevsky's other works, The Gambler nevertheless offers a grim and psychologically probing picture of the fatal attractions of gambling. Among its strengths are its well-drawn characters — Aunt Antonida, although lightly sketched in, is especially delightful — and its faithful depiction of life among the gambling set in fashionable German watering holes. This edition reprints Constance Garnett's authoritative translation.

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Leonora and Edward Ashburnham were «good people» from England, as John Dowell, the narrator of this tale, explains: and Dowell and his wife, Florence — leisured Americans of solid stock — were, like their English friends, a «model couple.»For a dozen years, the foursome cultivated and maintained a friendship reinforced with yearly meetings at a fashionable German health resort, which Dowell visited with his «ailing» wife and the Asburnhams traveled to because of Edward's «heart problems.» Their marriages seemed exemplary studies of permanence, stability, and tranquility. That is, until the day Dowell learned that for the previous nine years his wife had been the mistress of his friend Captain Ashburnham, the apparently honorable «good soldier.»A provocative study of deception and betrayal and of convention and desire, The Good Soldier was also formally innovative. Along with Ford's Parade's End tetralogy, this powerful novel — first published in 1915 — has earned him a reputation as one of the major writers of the 20th century.

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Early in the nineteenth century, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm compiled a collection of stories to preserve the folklore of their native Germany. Forty-three of them—fairy tales, some deliciously dark, that have bewitched readers for generations—are gathered here. Translated into more than 150 languages, these well-loved narratives brim with fearless heroes, humble and hardworking heroines, and treacherous villains, exploring themes of innocence, curiosity, and revenge. Rich in detail, lyrical in phrase, these masterful translations by Margaret Hunt capture the flavor of the original Grimm tales. Here are classics such as “Rapunzel,” “Hansel and Grethel,” “Thumbling,” “Cinderella,” “The Bremen Town-Musicians,” “The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids,” “The Fisherman and His Wife,” and “Little Snow-White.” These cherished fables, created from centuries’-old oral tradition, await rediscovery by children and adults alike.

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This masterpiece of science (and mathematical) fiction is a delightfully unique and highly entertaining satire that has charmed readers for more than 100 years. The work of English clergyman, educator and Shakespearean scholar Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926), it describes the journeys of A. Square, a mathematician and resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, where women-thin, straight lines-are the lowliest of shapes, and where men may have any number of sides, depending on their social status.Through strange occurrences that bring him into contact with a host of geometric forms, Square has adventures in Spaceland (three dimensions), Lineland (one dimension) and Pointland (no dimensions) and ultimately entertains thoughts of visiting a land of four dimensions—a revolutionary idea for which he is returned to his two-dimensional world. Charmingly illustrated by the author, Flatland is not only fascinating reading, it is still a first-rate fictional introduction to the concept of the multiple dimensions of space. «Instructive, entertaining, and stimulating to the imagination.» — Mathematics Teacher.

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"My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else," proclaimed Charles Dickens in explaining the theme of this classic novel. Published in 1854, the story concerns one Thomas Gradgrind, a «fanatic of the demonstrable fact,» who raises his children, Tom and Louisa, in a stifling and arid atmosphere of grim practicality.Without a moral compass to guide them, the children sink into lives of desperation and despair, played out against the grim background of Coketown, a wretched community shadowed by an industrial behemoth. Louisa falls into a loveless marriage with Josiah Bouderby, a vulgar banker, while the unscrupulous Tom, totally lacking in principle, becomes a thief who frames an innocent man for his crime. Witnessing the degradation and downfall of his children, Gradgrind realizes that his own misguided principles have ruined their lives.Considered Dickens' harshest indictment of mid-19th-century industrial practices and their dehumanizing effects, this novel offers a fascinating tapestry of Victorian life, filled with the richness of detail, brilliant characterization, and passionate social concern that typify the novelist's finest creations.Of Dickens' work, the eminent Victorian critic John Ruskin had this to say: «He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially Hard Times, should be studied with close and earnest care by persons interested in social questions.»

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In this unflaggingly suspenseful story of aspirations and moral redemption, humble, orphaned Pip, a ward of his short-tempered older sister and her husband, Joe, is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman. And, indeed, it seems as though that dream is destined to come to pass — because one day, under sudden and enigmatic circumstances, he finds himself in possession of «great expectations.» In telling Pip's story, Dickens traces a boy's path from a hardscrabble rural life to the teeming streets of 19th-century London, unfolding a gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward, and love and loss. Its compelling characters include Magwitch, the fearful and fearsome convict; Estella, whose beauty is excelled only by her haughtiness; and the embittered Miss Havisham, an eccentric jilted bride.Written in the last decade of Dickens' life, Great Expectations was praised widely and universally admired. It was his last great novel, and many critics believe it to be his finest. Readers and critics alike praised it for its masterful plot, which rises above the melodrama of some of his earlier works, and for its three-dimensional, psychologically realistic characters — characters much deeper and more interesting than the one-note caricatures of earlier novels. «In none of his other works,» wrote the reviewer in the 1861 Atlantic, «does he evince a shrewder insight into real life, and a cheaper perception and knowledge of what is called the world.» To Swinburne, the novel was unparalleled in all of English fiction, with defects «as nearly imperceptible as spots on the sun or shadows on a sunlit sea.» Shaw found it Dickens' «most completely perfect book.» Now this inexpensive edition invites modern readers to savor this timeless masterpiece, teeming with colorful characters, unexpected plot twists, and Dickens' vivid rendering of the vast tapestry of mid-Victorian England.

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Twelve of the finest short stories by great French writers comprise this excellent collection, with themes that range from desire and psychological intrigue to the mysteries of failure and success.Includes: «The Horla» and «The Necklace» by Guy de Maupassant; «The Attack on the Mill» by Emile Zola; «Mocromegas» by Voltaire; «The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaler» by Gustave Flaubert; «Mateo Falcone» by Prosper Mérimée; «The Return of the Prodigal Son» by André Gide; «The Dark Lantern» by Jules Renard; «Emilie» by Gérard de Nerval; «The Unknown Masterpieces» by Honoré de Balzac; «The Pope's Mule» by Alphonse Daudet; and «Salomé» by Jules Laforgue.Classic explorations of passion, terror, and fate, these enduring literary gems will be invaluable to students and teachers of French literature and a joy for anyone who delights in fine writing.

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Of the enormous body of work produced by H. G. Wells — more than a book a year over the course of half a century — the early science fiction novels that first made him famous have proved to be the most enduring and have earned him the sobriquet «the father of modern science fiction.»In the 1901 classic The First Men in the Moon, Wells reveals not only a fertile imagination at ease with biological and astronomical phenomena, but also a passionate concern for man and society. His «first men in the moon» prove to be the eccentric Mr. Cavor and his traveling companion, Mr. Bedford, who navigate a gravity-defying sphere through space before executing a rough landing on the moon. As castaways from earth, they practice lunar locomotion, get lost in the wilds of a moon jungle, and confront intelligent life forms living in lunar caverns. Through the adventures of these two earthlings, the author is able to look at mankind from a distance and, in his words, «burlesque the effects of specialization.» The result is a delightful tale filled with adventure, romance, and fantasy that is still capable of stirring the imagination of readers in the 21st century."[Wells's science-fiction novels] achieve a near poetry which makes them part of the popular mythology of their age … the best of his work has a vitality, a verve, an imaginative compulsion unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries." — N. C. Nicholson, author of H. G. Wells.

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Aficionados of supernatural fiction will take perverse pleasure in the hair-raising horrors recounted in these outstanding examples of the genre. Featuring a gallery of ghostly characters, forbidding landscapes, gloomy country manors, and occult occurrences, this spine-tingling collection features works by such masters of the macabre as Bram Stoker (the creator of Dracula), J. S. LeFanu, Ambrose Bierce, and M. R. James.The ten classics included in this volume are: «The Monkey's Paw» by W. W. Jacobs, E. G. Swain's «Bone to His Bone,» «The Rose Garden» by M. R. James, Dickens's «To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt,» LeFanu's «Dickon the Devil,» Stoker's «The Judge's Salt,» «The Moonlit Road» by Ambrose Bierce, Amelia B. Edwards's «The Phantom Coach,» «A Ghost Story» by Jerome K. Jerome, and E. F. Benson's «The Confession of Charles Linkworth.»

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