The guides are arranged alphabetically by author's last name
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My Dog Tulip
J. R. Ackerley, introduction by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Ackerley has written a book that is a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness abiding at the heart of all relationships.
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“This is one of the greatest masterpieces of animal literature.” —Christopher Isherwood -
The Enchanted April
Elizabeth von Arnim, introduction by Cathleen Schine
Four women who share only their unhappiness and a love of wisteria flee 1920s London and converge on a magical villa in Portofino Italy in this charming comedy of manners that has been called “a feast of flowers”—Times Literary Supplement.
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Cassandra at the Wedding
Dorothy Baker, afterword by Deborah Eisenberg
Dorothy Baker’s fascinating tragicomic novel follows an unpredictable course of events in which Cassandra appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and surprisingly sympathetic.
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Wish Her Safe At Home
Stephen Benatar, introduction by John Carey
An unexpected inheritance frees Rachel Waring from her dreary life. But will her newfound joie de vivre free her from her grasp on reality as well? Benatar’s brilliantly subjective storytelling keeps the reader guessing till the very end.
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The Outward Room
Millen Brand, afterword by Peter Cameron
The Outward Room was a sensation when first published in 1937. It is the story of a young woman’s path from suffering to deep fulfillment, set in Depression-era New York City. “One of those firmly painted, exquisite miniatures of life…that contrive to be unsparing and honest, and at the same time refreshing and lovely.” —Theodore Dreiser
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The Invention of Morel
Adolfo Bioy Casares, introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine, prologue by Jorge Luis Borges, translated from the Spanish by Ruth L.C. Simms
Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.
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Love in a Fallen City
Eileen Chang, translated from the Chinese by Karen S. Kingsbury and Karen S. Kingsbury and Eileen Chang
Love in a Fallen City is the first English-language publication to present a full selection of this haunting writer’s novellas, the heart of her achievement.
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A Meaningful Life
L. J. Davis, introduction by Jonathan Lethem
A black comedy about real estate and redemption and the pitfalls of using the one to get the other. Lowell Lake (from Idaho) thinks that he has found the cure for the quarter-life doldrums in the form of a fixer-upper in Brooklyn, but soon discovers that he has lost his livelihood, his wife, and possibly his sanity.
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The Dud Avocado
Elaine Dundy, introduction by Terry Teachout
Elaine Dundy’s hilarious novel follows the misadventures of an American girl who impulsively quits college and heads off to conquer Paris in the 1950s. “A delightful few hours of sparkling reading entertainment. Summing up: Froth and frolic.” —Newsweek
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The Old Man and Me
In Elaine Dundy’s follow-up to her best-selling The Dud Avocado, a young American named Honey Flood arrives in London with the goal of seducing its brightest literary star. “A witty black comedy of errors.”—Gore Vidal
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The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
G.B. Edwards, introduction by John Fowles
Curmudgeonly and wise, Ebenezer le Page recounts his eighty years on the small island of Guernsey. “A true epic, as sexy as it is hilarious.” — Allan Gurganus, O, The Oprah Magazine
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The Siege of Krishnapur
J.G. Farrell, introduction by Pankaj Mishra
The Siege of Krishnapur— thought by many to be Farrell’s finest novel—chronicles the year of the Great Mutiny in India, when the sepoys turned in bloody rebellion against their complacent British overlords.
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A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople:From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube
Patrick Leigh Fermor, introduction by Jan Morris
At once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey, and a dazzling exposition of the English language, A Time of Gifts is also a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come.
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The Mirador: Dreamed Memories of Irène Némirovsky by Her Daughter
Élisabeth Gille, translated from the French by Marina Harss
Élisabeth Gille was five years old when her mother, Irène Némirovsky, (whose Suite Française would be a surprise best-seller six decades later) died in Auschwitz. The Mirador is a lookout from which Gille reconstructs the story of her mother’s life, from child of privilege in Kiev, to renowned novelist, to fugitive in rural France. “[Gille] sets out to live in her mother’s head.” —The Nation
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Nightmare Alley
William Lindsay Gresham, introduction by Nick Tosches
Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek— the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way that anything like that will ever happen to him.
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The Go-Between
L.P. Hartley, introduction by Colm Tóibín
The Go-Between is a masterpiece—a richly layered, spellbinding story about past and present, naïveté and knowledge, and the mysteries of the human heart.
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A High Wind in Jamaica
Richard Hughes, introduction by Francine Prose
A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and manipulation, of weird humor and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.
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The True Deceiver
Tove Jansson, introduction by Ali Smith, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal
A story of manipulation and deceit set in the depths of the Swedish winter, The True Deceiver is unlike anything else Tove Jansson wrote. “I loved this book. It’s cool in both senses of the word, understated yet exciting, and with a tension that keeps you reading.” —Ruth Rendell
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The Summer Book
Tove Jansson, introduction by Kathryn Davis, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal
A grandmother and her granddaughter live out a summer of play, talk, love, and exploration on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland (also the setting for some of the author’s Moomintroll tales). “A marvelous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny.” —Philip Pullman
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Skylark
Dezso Kosztolányi, introduction by Péter Esterházy, translated from the Hungarian by Richard Aczel
“This short, perfect novel seems to encapsulate all the world’s pain in a soap bubble. Its surface is as smooth as a fable, its setting and characters are unremarkable, its tone is blithe, and its effect is shattering.” —Deborah Eisenberg, The New York Review of Books
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Fatale
Jean-Patrick Manchette, afterword by Jean Echenoz, translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith
J.P. Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale, we watch with alternating horror and fascination as the deadly Aimée drifts into a sleepy provincial town, poised to make a killing.
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Walkabout
James Vance Marshall, introduction by Lee Siegel
“A haunting little idyll in the same vein as A High Wind in Jamaica…tells of two children, a boy and a girl, sole survivors of a plane crash in the Australian bush. Their fragile veneer of modern culture clashes with the primitive soul of a boy who is making his tribal ‘walkabout.’” —Time
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Hons and Rebels
Jessica Mitford, introduction by Christopher Hitchens
In Hons and Rebels Jessica Mitford tells about her upbringing, which, she drily remarks, “even for England, in those far-off days of the middle twenties…was not exactly conventional….”
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The Mangan Inheritance
Brian Moore, introduction by Christopher Ricks
After his movie-star wife dispenses with him, Jamey Mangan decamps to Ireland in search of his roots. After all, he bears an uncanny resemblance to the only known photograph of the famous Irish poète maudit James Clarence Mangan. Filled with pathos and humor, The Mangan Inheritance is a cautionary tale for those seeking their presents in their pasts.
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The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
Brian Moore, afterword by Mary Gordon
A deeply sympathetic portrait of a Belfast woman, come down in the world and denied the comforts once granted to her sort (from the Catholic Church, from her genteel friends), who has a shameful secret. This is the book that launched Brian Moore’s career.
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Contempt
Alberto Moravia, introduction by Tim Parks, translated from the Italian by Angus Davidson
All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous—his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage.
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The Pumpkin Eater
Penelope Mortimer, introduction by Daphne Merkin
An exquisitely surreal black comedy about marriage, motherhood, and the madness of modern life. “(Mortimer) is the family historian of the smart, go ahead, two-car household which has a double load of private misery packed in each boot.” —Robert Pitman, Sunday Express
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The Family Mashber
Der Nister, introduction by David Malouf, translated by Leonard Wolf
The story of three brothers—a businessman, a mystic, and a savant—that is a brilliantly innovative fusion of modernist art and traditional storytelling. “The restitution of this Yiddish masterwork—as life-saturated as the other great Russian novels—is an augmentation of world literature.” —Cynthia Ozick
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After Claude
Iris Owens, introduction by Emily Prager
Funny and foulmouthed, Harriet tears around Greenwich Village insulting friend and foe alike. But when “the French rat” Claude leaves her (or did she leave Claude?), Harriet is adrift. That is, until she discovers an unlikely savior in a dark room at the Chelsea Hotel. “Spikey with mockery, carbon steel wit and mature observation.” —The Village Voice
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Season of Migration to the North
Tayeb Salih, introduction by Laila Lalami, translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies
One of the pinnacles of modern Arabic literature, Season of Migration to the North is a work of scorching honesty and incandescent lyricism.
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The Engagement
Georges Simenon, afterword by John Gray, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis
One of the most chilling and compassionate of Simenon’s extraordinary psychological novels, The Engagement explores the mystery of a blameless heart in a compromised soul.
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The Judges of the Secret Court
David Stacton, introduction by John Crowley
Stacton’s historical recreation of John Wilkes Booth’s plot to assassinate Lincoln, its execution, and its aftermath (including the trials of the conspirators, Mary Surratt among them) is among the finest books ever written about the Civil War. “David Stacton is an original, finely pitched voice in American fiction.” —Larry McMurtry
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The Mountain Lion
Jean Stafford, afterword by Kathryn Davis
“The Mountain Lion remains a brilliant achievement, an exploration of adolescence to set beside Carson McCullers’s masterwork The Member of the Wedding.” —Joyce Carol Oates
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A Game of Hide and Seek
Elizabeth Taylor, introduction by Caleb Crain
Harriet comes of age between the wars. She’s not especially charming or attractive, but she has one passion in her life: Vesey. Nothing, not marriage to another man, or motherhood, will change that. “Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth.”—Sarah Waters
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Angel
Elizabeth Taylor, introduction by Hilary Mantel
Liar, fantasist, monster, writer: Taylor’s title character, who rises from working-class girl to wildly famous sentimental novelist, is all of these things. She is also Taylor’s greatest creation, a character who is terrible, poignantly sympathetic, and unforgettable.
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The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story
Glenway Wescott, introduction by Michael Cunningham
A work of classical elegance and concision, The Pilgrim Hawk stands with Faulkner’s The Bear as one of the finest American short novels: a beautifully crafted story that is also a poignant evocation of the implacable power of love.
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The Fountain Overflows
Rebecca West, introduction by Andrea Barrett
Seen through the merciless, loving eyes of young Rose, one of four musically gifted siblings, Wests 1957 novel is a vital, witty, and devastating family portrait.
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Stoner
John Williams, introduction by John McGahern
John Williams’s Stoner is something rarer than a great novel — it is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, that it takes your breath away. — MThe New York Times Book Review
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The Chrysalids
John Wyndham, introduction by Christopher Priest
Like everyone else in the nuclear-wasted world he lives in, David is loyal to his kind and on the watch for anyone who deviates from the ideological or genetic norm. But what would happen if it were revealed that David himself was a mutant? Wyndham’s novel is a thrilling science fiction classic for teens and adults alike.
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The Post-Office Girl
Stefan Zweig, translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg
Zweig’s posthumously discovered novel, about the rise and fall of a provincial Austrian girl invited to the Swiss Alps by her wealthy American aunt, is available in English for the first time.
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