"The first of this Italian novelist's works to appear here is a comic, cosmic diversion in which another Orpheus succeeds in crossing the barriers of death, time-travelling in reverse. When first met, Orfeo is mourning the death of his mother, Eva, and intercepted in his leap from the parapets of a church by an amiable Mephistopheles, Monsieur des Oiseaux. In the pact which they make Orfeo is able to regain paradise, returning to live in the time...

"Lincoln es un buen niño. Con cuatro años es curioso, inteligente y bien educado. Hace lo que su madre le dice y sigue las normas. ±Hoy las reglas son distintas. Y las reglas dicen que nos escondamos y no permitamos que el hombre del arma nos encuentre. Cuando un día feliz en el zoo se convierte en una pesadilla y Joan se ve atrapada con su hijo, deberá hacer acopio de todas sus fuerzas y encontrar el coraje para protegerlo a cualquier precio;...

"Here are three indispensable works from the Pulitzer Prize-winning laureate of the American heartland, including the novels that inspired a classic film by Orson Welles and an Oscar-nominated performance by Katharine Hepburn. The Magnificent Ambersons depicts the fall from grace of George Minafer, scion of the once-unassailable Amberson family whose wealth and grandeur are in precipitous decline. Alice Adams, perhaps Booth Tarkington's greatest work,...

"John Weir, author of The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, a defining novel of 1980s New York in its response to the global AIDS crisis, has written a story collection that chronicles the long aftermath of epidemic death, as recorded in the tragicomic voice of a gay man who survived high school in the 1970s, the AIDS death of his best friend in the 1990s, and his complicated relationship with his mother, "a movie star without a movie to star...

"When her village in Albion is sacked by the Roman general Vespasian, young Aislin is left without home and family. Determined to exact revenge, she travels to Rome, a sprawling city of wealth, decadence, and power. A barbarian in a civilized world, Aislin struggles to comprehend Roman ways. From a precarious hand-to-mouth existence on the streets, she becomes the mistress of a wealthy senator, but their child Faolan is born with a disability that...

Rita wants to pop her six-year-old son Max in a baggie with a Ziploc top - so she can preserve his innocence and trust, so she won't have to watch him lose faith in the world. Everywhere she looks, she sees chaos. She fears she can never provide Max with the security he craves. His absentee father, a surgeon, seems to have disappeared somewhere into a war zone. All she can offer is love and loyalty, but will it be enough? Rita, who does battle with...

Three novels by Mary McCarthy, the witty and provocative writer who defined a generation, including her landmark classic The Group, as well as McCarthy's final two novels Birds of America, and Cannibals and Missionaries, plus McCarthy's 1979 essay "The Novels that Got Away," on her unfinished fiction. The group: The lives and experiences of eight Vassar graduates during the thirty years following their graduation as they grapple with sex, sexism,...

"Hannah Webber fears she will never be a mother, but her prayers are finally answered when she gives birth to a son. In an era of high-stakes parenting, nurturing Sam's intellect becomes Hannah's life purpose. She invests body and soul into his development, much to the detriment of her marriage. She convinces herself, however, that Sam's acceptance at age fourteen to the most prestigious of New England boarding schools overseen by an illustrious headmaster,...