Literary History & Criticism

On the eve of his marriage to the beautiful Mercedes, having that very day been made captain of his ship, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on a charge of treason....

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother....

An intellectual detective story, this history audiobook directs probing questions at orthodox history, presenting disturbing new evidence that historians have tried - but failed - to explain....

A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian-American consciousness and the struggle to be human....

For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us....

Paul Bäumer is just 19 years old when he and his classmates enlist....

Author Benjamin Hoff shows that the philosophy of Winnie-the-Pooh is amazingly consistent with the principles of Taoism....

Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men, and all people will find themselves in this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people....

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay....

Comedian, activist, and hugely popular culture blogger at AwesomelyLuvvie.com Luvvie Ajayi serves up necessary advice for the masses in this hilarious book of essays....

A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour....

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works....

First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t Panic is in an in-depth exploration of Douglas Adams’s cultural phenomenon The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy....

James Baldwin’s critique of American society at the height of the civil rights movement brings his prescient thoughts on social isolation, race, and police brutality to a new generation of readers....

Batman is one of the most compelling characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest in his story has only increased since his first appearance in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? 

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition....

All Souls fans have been captivated from the start by the many sources of inspiration Harkness draws on in her novels. Here, with her signature historian's touch, she offers an encyclopedic look at the series, complete with synopses, character bios, maps, recipes, and more....

Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time....

Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture....

In this series companion book, the listener will learn about the exotic beasts used by the Seanchan and hear of the rise and fall of Artur Hawking, and peruse the deeper story of the War of the Shadow. Here is the tale of the founding of the White Tower, and the creation of the Ajahs....

The defining, behind-the-scenes chronicle of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and dominant pop cultural entities in America’s history: Marvel Comics.... 

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene is the ultimate guide to putting yourself in a place of power. It is about knowing your weakness, playing on your strengths, and manipulating your enemies....

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history....

Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the 20th century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic....

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town....

In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them....

From the acclaimed biographer of Jane Jacobs and Srinivasa Ramanujan comes the first full life and work of arguably the most influential classical scholar of the 20th century, who overturned long-entrenched notions of ancient epic poetry and enlarged the very idea of literature....

Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's Iliad by more than a millennium....

Blow Your House Down is a powerful testimony about the ways our culture seeks to cage women in traditional narratives of self-sacrifice and erasure. Frangello uses her personal story to examine the place of women in contemporary society....

The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing - including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability - and aspects of workshop - including the silenced writer and the imagined reader - Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. 

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.

Throughout history, humans have been driven by the quest for two cherished ideals: community and freedom. The two don’t coexist easily: we value individuality and self-reliance, yet are utterly dependent on community for our most basic needs. In this intricately crafted and thought-provoking book, Sebastian Junger examines this tension that lies at the heart of what it means to be human. 

Why do we read literature and how do we judge it? C. S. Lewis' classic An Experiment in Criticism springs from the conviction that literature exists for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite. He argues that "good reading", like moral action or religious experience, involves surrender to the work in hand and a process of entering fully into the opinions of others: "in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself."

Have you ever encountered a noblewoman who was so beautiful that every time she walked by a body of water, the divine being who lived there kidnapped her? Or a mole who wanted to marry his beloved daughter to the wind? You will get to meet both of them in this audiobook. Changes in religious belief across the centuries came to have an important impact on Korean mythology. The earliest religion was a form of shamanism, and the belief in gods and spirits who inhabit animals and mountains come to the fore in several of these tales.

In a galaxy not so far, far away, Seeker is teaching you about the facts and fiction of science fiction! From light sabers to X-ray vision, elements of everyone’s favorite sci-fi fandoms might not be just works of fiction in the near future. Dive into the world of all things superhero technology, teleportation and more in this best of collection from Seeker, available for the first time in audio. 

Mark Twain, American Humorist examines the ways that Mark Twain’s reputation developed at home and abroad in the period between 1865 and 1882, years in which he went from a regional humorist to national and international fame. In the late 1860s, Mark Twain became the exemplar of a school of humor that was thought to be uniquely American.

In this moving and lyrical collection of essays, the award-winning poet and novelist Kei Miller explores the silence in which so many important things are kept. He examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it: to risk words, to risk truths. And he considers the histories our bodies inherit - the crimes that haunt them and how meaning can shift as we move throughout the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood.

And Yet... gathers the previously uncollected essays of the late Christopher Hitchens into a final volume of peerless prose from one of the great thinkers of our times. Christopher Hitchens was an unparalleled, prolific writer who raised the polemical essay to a new art form over a lifetime of thinking and debating the defining issues of our times. 

Shortlisted for the 2012 Orwell Prize. 'As soon as we abandon our own reason', wrote Bertrand Russell, 'and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.' For over 40 years, Christopher Hitchens has proclaimed truth where others have spun falsehood and written, with passionate commitment, on matters that others fear to broach. This volume of essays encompasses Hitchens's writing over the past decade on politics, literature and religion.