To the Stars and Other Stories

To the Stars and Other Stories
Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0231553404

A boy who feels persecuted by the banality of everyday life yearns to ascend to the cold and majestic plane of the stars. A seamstress finds liberation of a sort in “becoming” a dog and howling at the moon. A club of young girls masquerade as the grieving fiancées of strange men. This book brings together these and other remarkable short stories by the Russian Symbolist Fyodor Sologub that explore the lengths to which people will go to transcend the mundane. Renowned as one of late imperial Russia’s finest stylists, Sologub bridges the great nineteenth-century novel and the fin-de-siècle avant-garde. He stands out for his masterful command of both realist and fantastic storytelling; his play with language evinces a belief in its capacity to access other worlds and other levels of meaning. Many of Sologub’s stories are set among children whose alienation from the adult world has lent them imagination and curiosity, enabling them to create an alternative reality. At the same time, he bluntly examines the sordid realities of late imperial Russian society and frankly presents sometimes unconventional sexuality. The book also features a selection of Sologub’s “little fairy tales,” ambiguous parables couched in childlike language whose ingenuity anticipates the miniatures and “incidents” of Daniil Kharms. Susanne Fusso’s elegant translation offers these artful tales to an English-speaking audience.

End of the Innocence

End of the Innocence
Author: Alessandra Torre
Publisher: Diversion Books
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2014-03-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1940941415

He thought I owned him. He thought he loved me, that I was enough. But this animal, this sex god who could drive me crazy and steal my heart in the same breath, he would never fully be mine. It was impossible. No one ever owned a God... One year. I have one year to find out more about this man I am marrying. More about his family. More about our sex, and all of the dirty, delicious places it will take me. I thought I'd spend this year making a decision. I never thought the decision would be taken from me, snatched right from my naive little hands. The final book in the Innocence Trilogy. PRAISE: "Julia Campbell, a college intern in a law office, becomes sexually involved with Brad, one of the senior partners, while working for another. Evidently nonorgasmic before she met Brad, Julia is enjoying her sexual awakening with him in threesomes, sex parties, and anything and everything (except S and M)—until her boss is murdered, and she finds out that she’s on a hit list for having overheard a conversation involving his representation of Mob families. Brad, the son of one of those mobsters, though not involved in the family “business,” has to figure out how to protect her. Torre gives readers erotica with a plot, despite the bromide of the alpha male introducing the naïve young woman to sex and a variant of the marriage of convenience. Julia is a classic “spunky Suzy,” and unlike Fifty Shades of Grey, the story is plausible." —Mary K. Chelton, Booklist, on Masked Innocence (Book 2 in The Innocence Trilogy) "Torre’s erotic sequel to the indie digital hit Blindfolded Innocence returns to the dangerous, decadent world of divorce lawyer Brad De Luca and law student Julia Campbell. In the bedroom, Brad is slowly pushing Julia to the very edges of her sexual limits, including threesomes and sex parties. At the office, Julia accidentally overhears her boss, Brad’s business partner, engaging in a shady Mafia-related deal, and her new knowledge could get her killed. When she tells Brad about the conversation, it becomes clear that he’s hiding a big secret that could drive him and Julia apart forever. Will losing her inhibitions also mean losing her life? Despite a dead end or two and a cliffhanger conclusion, Torre keeps readers engaged with this fast-moving tale of deceit, treachery, and love." —Publishers Weekly on Masked Innocence (Book 2 in The Innocence Trilogy)

African American Literature in Transition, 1900–1910: Volume 7

African American Literature in Transition, 1900–1910: Volume 7
Author: Shirley Moody-Turner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 653
Release: 2021-05-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108386571

African American Literature in Transition, 1900–1910 offers a wide ranging, multi-disciplinary approach to early twentieth century African American literature and culture. It showcases the literary and cultural productions that took shape in the critical years after Reconstruction, but before the Harlem Renaissance, the period known as the nadir of African American history. It undercovers the dynamic work being done by Black authors, painters, photographers, poets, editors, boxers, and entertainers to shape 'New Negro' identities and to chart a new path for a new century. The book is structured into four key areas: Black publishing and print culture; innovations in genre and form; the race, class and gender politics of literary and cultural production; and new geographies of Black literary history. These overarching themes, along with the introduction of established figures and movement, alongside lesser known texts and original research, offer a radical re-conceptualization of this critical, but understudied period in African American literary history.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to American Literature

The Complete Idiot's Guide to American Literature
Author: Laurie Rozakis
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 500
Release: 1999-08-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1101198818

You're no idiot, of course. You know that Samuel Clemens had a better-known pen name, Moby Dick is a famous whale, and the Raven only said,"Nevermore." But when it comes to understanding the great works of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, you'd rather rent the videos than head to your local library. Don't tear up your library card yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide® to American Literature teaches you all about the rich tradition of American prose and poetry, so you can fully appreciate its magnificent diversity.

The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 4, 1900-1950

The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 4, 1900-1950
Author: George Watson
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 746
Release: 1972-12-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 4 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.

Free and other stories

Free and other stories
Author: Theodore Dreiser
Publisher: BEYOND BOOKS HUB
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2023-09-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Doctor Storm looked at Mr. Haymaker as though he were very sorry for him—an old man long accustomed to his wife’s ways and likely to be made very unhappy by her untimely end; whereas Mr. Haymaker, though staring in an almost sculptural way, was really thinking what a farce it all was, what a dull mixture of error and illusion on the part of all. Here he was, sixty years of age, weary of all this, of life really—a man who had never been really happy in all the time that he had been married; and yet here was his wife, who from conventional reasons believed that he was or should be, and who on account of this was serenely happy herself, or nearly so. And this doctor, who imagined that he was old and weak and therefore in need of this loving woman’s care and sympathy and understanding! Unconsciously he raised a deprecating hand....FROM THE BOOKS.

A Countess Below Stairs

A Countess Below Stairs
Author: Eva Ibbotson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Countesses
ISBN: 9781435213180

After the Russian Revolution turns her world upside down, Anna, a young Russian countess, has no choice but to flee to England. Penniless, Anna hides her aristocratic background and takes a job as a servant in the household of the esteemed Westerholme family. Anna is overwhelmed by her new duties, and her instant attraction to Rupert, the handsome Earl of Westerholme. To make matters worse, Rupert appears to be falling for her, too. Anna finds it increasingly difficult to keep her secrets from unraveling; and then there's the small matter of Rupert's fiancée.