DescriptionGulliver's Travels tells of the fantastic voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, an Englishman and ship's surgeon, who travels to the "several remote nations of the world". In the beginning, he becomes shipwrecked in the land of Lilliput, where the distressed inhabitants are only six inches tall. His second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, where lives a race of giants. At Glubdubdrib, the Island of Sorcerers, he speaks with great men of the past and learns from them the lies of history. Further adventures find Gulliver in a land ruled by intelligent horses. For children, it is an enchanting fantasy; for adults, it is a satirical masterpiece, a parody of political life in Swift's time, and a scathing send-up of manners and morals in 18th-century England.
DescriptionJonathan Coe's new novel is set in the 1970s against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks, and growing racial tension. A group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin onto events in the wider world. A zestful comedy of personal and social upheaval, The Rotters' Club captures a fateful moment in British politics, the collapse of 'Old Labour', and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world of the bemused teenager: a world in which a lost pair of swimming trunks can be just as devastating as an IRA bomb.
DescriptionAt the end of his life, William Blake (1757-1827) gave up hope of being widely understood, but the twentieth century brought to his work a new and intense interest and acclaim. Included in this collection are well-known poems such as "Tyger! Tyger! Burning Bright" and "A Poison Tree"; longer poems such as "The Everlasting Gospel", "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"; Blake's principal prose work; and an assortment of epigrams and short satire. Poet, artist, and mystic, Blake wrote, "I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's." Create he did.
DescriptionCatch-22 is like no other novel we have ever read. It has its own style, its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original. It is set in the closing months of World War II, in an American bomber squadron on a small island off Italy. Its hero is a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him. (He has decided to live forever, even if he has to die in the attempt.) Catch-22 is a microcosm of the 20th-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane. It is a novel that lives and moves and grows with astonishing power and vitality. It is, we believe, one of the strongest creations of the mid-century.
DescriptionThe House of Mirth was Edith Wharton's first great novel. Set among the elegant brownstones of New York City and opulent country houses like gracious Bellomont on the Hudson, the novel creates a satiric portrayal of what Wharton herself called "a society of irresponsible pleasure-seekers" with a precision comparable to that of Proust. And her brilliant and complex characterization of the doomed Lily Bart, whose stunning beauty and dependence on marriage for economic survival reduce her to a decorative object, becomes an incisive commentary on the nature and status of women in that society.
DescriptionOne of this country's leading political satirists dangles before us a tantalizing novel whose protagonist has a great deal in common with a recent First Lady. Beth MacIntyre, First Lady of the United States, has been charged with the murder of her husband, a Presidential Lothario of the first water. She is accused of throwing a historic Paul Revere spittoon during a bedroom spat, putting an unfortunately fatal dent in the President's lust-filled head. The Attorney General has no choice but to put her on trial for assassination. However, Beth has a secret weapon at her disposal: the flashiest lawyer in the country, an unabashed high-priced shyster, whom she loved while they were in law school together. She chose power then; now will she choose him?
