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Amsterdam Stories
Nescio, introduction by Joseph O’Neill, translated from the Dutch by Damion Searls
The first English-language translation of a writer whose growing reputation and cult readership have marked him as a figure in world literature. Nescio’s stories are inhabited by wastrels and charmers, the young and the no-longer-young, the bourgeois and the bohemian. He is a great stylist, capturing the mercantile city of Amsterdam and its bucolic surrounding countryside with equal vitality.
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Taka-Chan and I: A Dog's Journey to Japan by Runcible
Betty Jean Lifton, photographs by Eikoh Hosoe
Runcible the Weimeraner digs a hole from Cape Cod to Japan, where he discovers Taka-chan, a little girl imprisoned by a sea dragon. Runcible will do anything to free his new friend the two head to Toyko, there to answer the dragon’s challenge to find the most loyal creature in all the land.
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The Silver Nutmeg
written and illustrated by Palmer Brown
The Silver Nutmeg continues the adventures begun in Beyond the Pawpaw Trees, and features loads of sense, a little nonsense, and more delightful verses from Anna Lavinia’s beloved Songs from Nowhere. Best of all, fans of Palmer Brown’s intricate drawings will find every page a delight for the eyes.
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Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley, edited by Jonathan Lethem and Alex Abramovich
An original collection of stories from an overlooked master. “One of the few acknowledged humorists in SF, and by far the funniest, Sheckley plays with myths the way Mel Brooks plays with classic movies.” —The New York Times Book Review
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Memoirs of a Revolutionary
Victor Serge, introduction by Adam Hochschild, translated from the French by Peter Sedgwick
Perpetually fighting injustice, and seemingly always at odds with those in power, Victor Serge lived a life dedicated to revolution. Here the novelist tells his own story. Born to Russian exiles in Belgium, Serge took an active role in the Russian Revolution, though he was soon disenchanted with it and was expelled to France. From there Serge narrowly escaped the Nazis, ending up in the country that was to be his final refuge, Mexico.
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The Sun King
Nancy Mitford, introduction by Philip Mansel
Nancy Mitford crafts a dazzling double portrait of Louis XIV and Versailles, recreating the daily life of the King, his court, and his ministers during France’s golden age. “Nancy Mitford gives vivid, indeed searching, portraits of the Grand Monarch, and of his awe-struck relations and courtiers…. Readers will wish that her book were twice as long. —Sunday Times
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Confusion
Stefan Zweig, introduction by George Prochnik, translated from the German by Anthea Bell
“Confusion is one of [Zweig’s] finest and most exemplary works…a perfect reminder of, or introduction to, Zweig’s economy and subtlety as a writer.” —Robert Macfarlane, The Times Literary Supplement
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Religio Medici and Urne-Burial
Sir Thomas Browne, edited and with an introduction by Stephen Greenblatt and Ramie Targoff
This new edition of Browne’s two most enduring and beloved works, in which he ponders life, death, religion, and healing, has been assembled by the bestselling author of Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt, and renaissance scholar Ramie Targoff. It includes an extensive introduction and helpful annotations.
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He Was There From the Day We Moved In
Rhoda Levine, illustrated by Edward Gorey
Does the dog want dinner? a lollipop? a stray cat? conversation? No, what the dog wants is—a name! But you can’t just choose any name for a grown-up dog. No, it has to be the right name.
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The Expendable Man
Dorothy B. Hughes, introduction by Walter Mosley
Young doctor Hugh Denismore would seem to have everything going for him, why then is he the first suspect when a hitchhiking teen goes missing? Dorothy B. Hughes was one of the great novelists of the golden age of noir. Here she not only takes up the subject American social injustice, she delivers a supremely suspenseful story.
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Tyrant Banderas
Ramón del Valle-Inclán, introduction by Alberto Manguel, translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush
“The first great twentieth-century novel of dictatorship, and an inspiration to García and Roa Bastos, Tyrant Banderas is a dark and dazzling portrayal of a mythical Latin American Republic at last revolting against the ruthless monster that has ruled it for so long.
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Selected Essays
Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Ronald Aronson and Adrian van den Hoven
This new selection, the first in English to draw on his entire Collected Essays as well as unpublished work, includes appreciations of Faulkner, Bataille, and Giacometti; sketches of the US from his visit in the 1940s; reflections on politics; portraits of Camus and Merleau-Ponty; and a candid reckoning with his own career.
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Ride a Cockhorse
Who knows why meek middle-aged Frances suddenly gets a libido, a new hairstyle, the desire to take over the bank that employs her—and a serious case of grandiosity. But it’s a hell of a ride. Raymond Kennedy has created in Ride a Cockhorse a rollicking cautionary tale of small-town demagoguery that prefigures both America’s current financial woes and the rise of the likes of Sarah Palin.
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Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol, translated from the Russian and with an introduction by Donald Rayfield
This tale of an affably cunning con who establishes a thriving trade in “dead souls”—serfs who though no longer alive can still, he finds, be profitably sold—is also a brilliant spoof of a corrupt society, full of the living dead. This new translation captures Gogol’s linguistic invention and the anarchic fun of his writing.
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Growing Up Absurd
“Growing Up Absurd, originally commissioned as a study of juvenile delinquency and later a bible of the 1960s student rebellion, remains essential and troubling reading for anyone who cares about the problems of the young.”
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—A.O. Scott, The New York Times