Back in print for the first time in nearly thirty years, here is Yoko Ono's whimsical, delightful, subversive, startling book of instructions for art and for life.

Burn this book after you've read it. -- Yoko

A dream you dream alone may be a dream, but a dream two people dream together is a reality.
This is the greatest book I've ever burned. -- John

In The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Joyce Carol Oates offers a sweeping survey of American short fiction, in a collection of nearly sixty tales that combines classic works with many different, unexpected gems, and that invites readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers.

Some selections simply can't be improved on, Oates admits, and she happily includes such time-honored works as Irving's Rip Van Winkle and Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. But alongside these often-anthologized tales, Oates introduces such little-known stories as Mark Twain's Cannibalism in the Cars, a work that reveals a darker side to his humor. From Melville come the juxtaposed tales The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, of which Oates says, only Melville could have fashioned out of 'real' events...such harrowing and dreamlike allegorical fiction. The reader will also delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, to William Carlos Williams, Kate Chopin, and Langston Hughes, to Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King.

For the second edition, Oates has introduced a wide range of new stories from writers who represent the state of American literature today. These new works include Lorrie Moore's How to Become a Writer, Richard Ford's Under the Radar, Junot Diaz's Edison, New Jersey, David Foster Wallace's Good People, Philip Roth's Defender of the Faith, and Amy Hempel's Today Will Be a Quiet Day. As in the original volume, Oates provides fascinating introductions to each writer, blending biographical information with her own trenchant observations about their work. In addition, she has written a new preface that contemplates our shifting literary culture, and has revised her introductory essay to the first edition, in which she offers the fruit of years of reflection on a genre in which she herself is a master.

A selection of the best and most representative contemporary American short fiction from 1970 to 2020, including such authors as Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Ted Chiang, hand-selected by celebrated editor and anthologist John Freeman

In the past fifty years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of styles have brought this unique genre a thrilling burst of energy. The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story celebrates this avalanche of talent.

This rich anthology begins in 1970 and brings together a half century of powerful American short stories from all genres, including--for the first time in a collection of this scale--science fiction, horror, and fantasy, placing writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken Liu, and Stephen King next to some beloved greats of the literary form: Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Denis Johnson. Culling widely, John Freeman, the former editor of Granta and now editor of his own literary annual, brings forward some astonishing work to be regarded in a new light. Often overlooked tales by Dorothy Allison, Percival Everett, and Charles Johnson will recast the shape and texture of today's enlarging atmosphere of literary dialogue. Stories by Lauren Groff and Ted Chiang raise the specter of engagement in ecocidal times. Short tales by Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, and Lydia Davis rub shoulders with near novellas by Susan Sontag and Andrew Holleran. This book will be a treasure trove for readers, writers, and teachers alike.

A must-have classic that every Lovecraft fan and collector will love. From the sumptuously designed Timeless Classics series, The Complete Tales of H.P. Lovecraft collects the author's novel, four novellas, and fifty-three short stories.

Written between the years 1917 and 1935, this collection features Lovecraft's trademark fantastical creatures and supernatural thrills, as well as many horrific and cautionary science-fiction themes that have influenced some of today's writers and filmmakers, including Stephen King, Alan Moore, F. Paul Wilson, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman.

Included in this volume are The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Call of Cthulhu, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, and many more hair-raising tales.

The Timeless Classics series from Rock Point brings together the works of classic authors from around the world. Complete and unabridged, these elegantly designed gift editions feature luxe, patterned endpapers, ribbon markers, and foil and deboss details on vibrantly colored cases. Celebrate these beloved works of literature as true standouts in your personal library collection.

Other titles in the series include: The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Complete Novels of Jane Austen, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, The Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

One of the most original American writers, Edgar Allan Poe shaped the development of both the detectvie story and the science-fiction story. Some of his poems--The Raven, The Bells, Annabel Lee--remain among the most popular in American literature. Poe's tales of the macabre still thrill readers of all ages. Here are familiar favorites like The Purloined Letter, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, together with less-known masterpieces like The Imp of the Perverse, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, and Ligeia, which is now recognized as one of the first science-fiction stories, a total of seventy-three tales in all, plus fifty-three poems and a generous sampling of Poe's essays, criticism and journalistic writings.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager--and one of the most gifted reporters and storytellers of his generation--comes a horrifying, hilarious, and outlandish (Entertainment Weekly) collection of gripping true crime mysteries about people whose obsessions propel them into unfathomable and often deadly circumstances.

[Grann is] one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today.--New York Magazine

Whether David Grann is investigating a mysterious murder, tracking a chameleon-like con artist, or hunting an elusive giant squid, he has proven to be a superb storyteller. In The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, Grann takes the reader around the world, revealing a gallery of rogues and heroes with their own particular fixations who show that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Look for David Grann's latest bestselling book, The Wager!

One of the most influential and compelling books in American literature, Walden is a vivid account of the years that Henry D. Thoreau spent alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. This edition--introduced by noted American writer John Updike--celebrates the perennial importance of a classic work, originally published in 1854. Much of Walden's material is derived from Thoreau's journals and contains such engaging pieces from the lively Where I Lived, and What I Lived For and Brute Neighbors to the serene Reading and The Pond in the Winter. Other famous sections involve Thoreau's visits with a Canadian woodcutter and with an Irish family, a trip to Concord, and a description of his bean field. This is the complete and authoritative text of Walden--as close to Thoreau's original intention as all available evidence allows.

This is the authoritative text of Walden and the ideal presentation of Thoreau's great document of social criticism and dissent.

Ranging from America's insatiable consumerism and household economies to literary subjects and America's attitude toward waste, here Berry gracefully navigates from one topic to the next. He speaks candidly about the ills plaguing America and the growing gap between people and the land. Despite the somber nature of these essays, Berry's voice and prose provide an underlying sense of faith and hope. He frames his reflections with poetic responsibility, standing up as a firm believer in the power of the human race not only to fix its past mistakes but to build a future that will provide a better life for all.

One of the best books I've read in many, many years, if not in my life.--Anderson Cooper

Featured on MSNBC's Morning Joe

What does a mother say to the person responsible for kidnapping, torturing, and murdering her son? National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann channels Diane Foley's voice as she tells her story, as the mother of American journalist Jim Foley - in search of answers, beyond justice, found through dogged, empathetic, spiritual enquiry.

In late 2021, Diane Foley sat at a table across from her son's killer, Alexanda Kotey, a member of the ISIS group known as The Beatles who plead guilty to the kidnapping, torture, and murder of her son seven years before. Kotey was about to go serve life imprisonment and this was Diane's chance to talk to the man who had been involved with brutally taking her son's last breath. What would she say to his killer? What would he reveal to her? Might she even be able to summon forgiveness for him?

So begins American Mother-- which reads alternately like a thriller, a biography, a mystery, a memoir, and a literary examination of grace.

Diane looks back on the early days when Jim was a child and his journey to journalism, and the killing fields of the world where he reports with indefatigable determination and insight on the plight of those caught up in the agonies of war. She guides us through her family history and the difficulties they faced when Jim was captured. And she also charts the tenacity it takes to turn her grief into grace as she seeks to give voice to those who are still being kidnapped and wrongfully detained around the world.

Few journeys are more worthy than this and, in this astonishing book, we are all invited to celebrate the lives of those who are never, in the end, gone.

The second revision in sixty years, this sublime collection ranges over the verse, stories, essays, and journalism of one of the twentieth century's most quotable authors.

In this new twenty-first-century edition, devoted admirers will be sure to find their favorite verse and stories. But a variety of fresh material has also been added to create a fuller, more authentic picture of her life's work. At the heart of her serious work lie her political writings dealing with race, labor, and international politics. A Dorothy Parker Sampler blends the sublime and the silly with the terrifying, a sort of tasting menu of verse, stories, essays, political journalism, a speech on writing, plus a catchy off-the-cuff rhyme she never thought to write down.

The introduction of two new sections is intended to provide the richest possible sense of Parker herself. Self-Portrait reprints an interview she did in 1956 with The Paris Review, part of a famed ongoing series of conversations (Writers at Work) conducted with the best of twentieth-century writers.

Letters: 1905-1962, which might be subtitled Mrs. Parker Completely Uncensored, presents correspondence written over the period of a half century, beginning in 1905 when twelve-year-old Dottie wrote her father during a summer vacation on Long Island, and concluding with a 1962 missive from Hollywood describing her fondness for Marilyn Monroe.

Features an introduction by Marion Meade and cover illustrations by renowned graphic artist Seth, creator of the comic series Palooka-ville

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Introduction by Mary Oliver
Commentary by Henry James, Robert Frost, Matthew Arnold, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry David Thoreau

The definitive collection of Emerson's major speeches, essays, and poetry, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson chronicles the life's work of a true American Scholar. As one of the architects of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embraced a philosophy that championed the individual, emphasized independent thought, and prized the splendid labyrinth of one's own perceptions. More than any writer of his time, he forged a style distinct from his European predecessors and embodied and defined what it meant to be an American. Matthew Arnold called Emerson's essays the most important work done in prose.

INCLUDES A MODERN LIBRARY READING GROUP GUIDE

An all-access ticket to the celebrated and wholly original mind of Mark Leyner, one of the smartest and funniest humans since Aristophanes (Jay McInerney)

Praised as chaotic and vibrant (Charles Yu), visionary (Sam Lipsyte), and supremely original (John Cusack), the work of Mark Leyner has inspired a generation of contemporary novelists and has long deserved its place of recognition among the literary superstars of the seismic postmodernism-influenced movement of the early 21st century. A Shimmering, Serrated Monster!: The Mark Leyner Reader samples the staggering highlights from Leyner's extraordinary career in all of its bizarre and infatuating glory, with excerpts spanning from his groundbreaking early novels My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (1990) and Et Tu, Babe (1992) to his modern masterpieces The Sugar-Frosted Nutsack (2012) and The Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit (2021). Appreciations from modern masters introduce each novel and the book includes original pieces in Leyner's irrepressible voice, including a timeline (The Story So Far) and a new Afterword (The Highlighted Passages). This comprehensive volume is the perfect entry point for readers attracted to mind-expanding prose, and a bouquet of delights for those who have loved any of his past works.

The extraordinary writings of Phillis Wheatley, a formerly enslaved woman turned published poet

In 1761, a young girl arrived in Boston on a ship of enslaved people, was sold to the Wheatley family, and given the name Phillis Wheatley. After studying English and classical literature, geography, the Bible, and Latin, Phillis published her first poem in 1767 at the age of 14, winning much public attention and considerable fame. When Boston publishers who doubted its authenticity rejected an initial collection of her poetry, Wheatley sailed to London in 1773 and found a publisher there for Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.

This volume collects both Wheatley's letters and her poetry: hymns, elegies, translations, philosophical poems, tales, and epyllions--including a poignant plea to the Earl of Dartmouth urging freedom for America and comparing the country's condition to her own. With her contemplative elegies and her use of the poetic imagination to escape an unsatisfactory world, Wheatley anticipated the Romantic Movement of the following century. The appendices to this edition include poems of Wheatley's contemporary African-American poets: Lucy Terry, Jupiter Harmon, and Francis Williams.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A land of austerity and bounty, the Sonoran Desert is a place that captures imaginations and hearts. It is a place where barbs snag, thorns prick, and claws scratch. A place where lizards scramble and pause, hawks hunt like wolves, and bobcats skulk in creosote.

Both literary anthology and hands-on field guide, The Sonoran Desert is a groundbreaking book that melds art and science. It captures the stunning biodiversity of the world's most verdant desert through words and images. More than fifty poets and writers--including Christopher Cokinos, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Ken Lamberton, Eric Magrane, Jane Miller, Gary Paul Nabhan, Alberto R os, Ofelia Zepeda, and many others--have composed responses to key species of this striking desert. Each creative contribution is joined by an illustration by award-winning artist Paul Mirocha and scientific information about the creature or plant authored by the book's editors.

From the saguaro to the mountain lion, from the black-tailed jackrabbit to the mesquite, the species represented here have evoked compelling and creative responses from each contributor. Just as writers such as Edward Abbey and Ellen Meloy have memorialized the desert, this collection is sure to become a new classic, offering up the next generation of voices of this special and beautiful place, the Sonoran Desert.

Florida is more than just fodder for hard-boiled crime novels and zany farces. This anthology of new stories and essays challenges a star-studded line up of current and former Floridians to write about the state through a literary lens, though not without the requisite weirdness. The Florida within this book contains: lightning, oil spills, road rage, a lizard tied to a balloon, swimmers, sleepwalkers, characters that love Florida, characters that hate Florida, and at least three sinkholes.

Featuring new work by: Lidia Yuknavitch, Sarah Gerard, Kevin Moffett, Laura van den Berg, Lindsay Hunter, John Brandon, Jaquira D az, Alissa Nutting & so many more

The first and only collection of the Nobel Prize-winning author's writings on America's great passion--fishing--introduced and edited by Nick Lyons with a foreword by Jack Hemingway.From childhood on, Ernest Hemingway was a passionate fisherman. He fished the lakes and creeks near the family's summer home at Walloon Lake, Michigan, and his first stories and pieces of journalism were often about his favorite sport. Here, collected for the first time in one volume, are all of his great writings about the many kinds of fishing he did--from angling for trout in the rivers of northern Michigan to fishing for marlin in the Gulf Stream. In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway speaks of sitting in a café in Paris and writing about what he knew best--and when it came time to stop, he did not want to leave the river. The story was the unforgettable classic, Big Two-Hearted River, and from its first words we do not want to leave the river either. He also wrote articles for the Toronto Star on fishing in Canada and Europe and, later, articles for Esquire about his growing passion for big-game fishing. His last books, The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream, celebrate his vast knowledge of the ocean and his affection for its great denizens. Hemingway on Fishing is an encompassing, diverse, and fascinating collection. From the early Nick Adams stories and the memorable chapters on fishing the Irati River in The Sun Also Rises to such late novels as Islands in the Stream, this collection traces the evolution of a great writer's passion; the range of his interests; the sure use he made of fishing, transforming it into the stuff of great literature. Anglers and lovers of great writing alike will welcome this important collection.

From the bestselling author of The Rum Diary and king of Gonzo journalism Hunter S. Thompson, comes the definitive collection of the journalist's finest work from Rolling Stone. Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone showcases the roller-coaster of a career at the magazine that was his literary home.Buy the ticket, take the ride, was a favorite slogan of Hunter S. Thompson, and it pretty much defined both his work and his life. Jann S. Wenner, the outlaw journalist's friend and editor for nearly thirty-five years, has assembled articles--and a wealth of never- before-seen correspondence and internal memos from Hunter's storied tenure at Rolling Stone--that begin with Thompson's infamous run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Party ticket in 1970 and end with his final piece on the Bush-Kerry showdown of 2004. In between is Thompson's remarkable coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign and plenty of attention paid to Richard Nixon; encounters with Muhammad Ali, Bill Clinton, and the Super Bowl; and a lengthy excerpt from his acknowledged masterpiece, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The definitive volume of Hunter S. Thompson's work published in the magazine, Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone traces the evolution of a personal and professional relationship that helped redefine modern American journalism, presenting Thompson through a new prism as he pursued his lifelong obsession: The life and death of the American Dream.

Introducing a dramatic new chapter to American Indian literary history, this book brings to the public for the first time the complete writings of the first known American Indian literary writer, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (her English name) or Bamewawagezhikaquay (her Ojibwe name), Woman of the Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky (1800-1842). Beginning as early as 1815, Schoolcraft wrote poems and traditional stories while also translating songs and other Ojibwe texts into English. Her stories were published in adapted, unattributed versions by her husband, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a founding figure in American anthropology and folklore, and they became a key source for Longfellow's sensationally popular The Song of Hiawatha. As this volume shows, what little has been known about Schoolcraft's writing and life only scratches the surface of her legacy. Most of the works have been edited from manuscripts and appear in print here for the first time. The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky presents a collection of all Schoolcraft's extant writings along with a cultural and biographical history. Robert Dale Parker's deeply researched account places her writings in relation to American Indian and American literary history and the history of anthropology, offering the story of Schoolcraft, her world, and her fascinating family as reinterpreted through her newly uncovered writing. This book makes available a startling new episode in the history of American culture and literature.

One of America's most versatile writers, author of bestselling biographies such as Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, has assembled a gallery of portraits of (mostly) Americans that celebreate genius, talent, and versatility, and traces his own education as a writer and biographer.

In this collection of essays, the brilliant, acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson reflects on lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and other interesting characters he has chronicled both as biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, but that is not the secret to their success. They had qualities that were even more rare, such as imagination and true curiousity.

Isaacson also reflects on how he became a writer, the lessons he learned from various people he met, and the challenges for journalism in the digital age.

He also offers loving tributes to his hometown of New Orleans, which offers many of the ingredients for a creative culture, and to the Louisiana novelist Walker Percy, who was an early mentor. In an anecdotal and personal way, Isaacson describes the joys of writing and the way that tales about the lives of fascinating people can enlighten our own lives.

As Kurt Vonnegut, Indiana's most famous writer, once remarked, Wherever you go, there is always a Hoosier doing something important there.

A Flame Called Indiana features 65 writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry who have all had the pleasure of being Hoosiers at one time or another. Curated by the Indiana University Bloomington creative writing department, this diverse anthology features everything from the immigrant experience to the Indianapolis 500 to science fiction. Altogether, the work stands testament to the vibrancy and creativity of this Midwest state.

An excellent gift for your favorite reader and an important resource for creative writers, A Flame Called Indiana serves as both a chronicle of where Indiana's writing is today and a beacon to those who'll take it where it's going next.