Literary Collections

Featuring North America's foremost thriller authors, THRILLER is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are thirty-two of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous, to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify. Lock the doors, draw the shades, pull up the covers and be prepared for THRILLER to keep you up all night. more...

Price: $8.95

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of autobiography ever written. Franklin's Autobiography has received widespread praise, both for its historical value as a record of an important early American and for its literary style. It is often considered the first American book to be taken seriously by Europeans as literature. William Dean Howells in 1905 asserted that "Franklin's is one of the greatest autobiographies in literature, and towers over other autobiographies as Franklin towered over other men." However, Mark Twain's essay "The Late Benjamin Franklin" (1870) provides a less exalted reaction, albeit somewhat tongue-in-cheek (for example, claiming that his example had "brought affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin's pernicious biography"). D. H. Lawrence wrote a notable invective against "Middle-sized, sturdy, snuff-coloured Doctor Franklin" in 1924, finding considerable fault with Franklin's attempt at crafting precepts of virtue and at perfecting himself... more...

Price: $4.95

A storyteller of immeasurable diversity and talent" (Publishers Weekly) who "just keeps getting better and better" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Nora Roberts is a master at depicting both the legends and lore of Ireland and the tender, enchanting passions of its people. Now, three of her favorite Irish stories-"Spellbound," "Ever After," and "In Dreams"-are available for the first time in one volume. more...

Price: $4.99

A Room of One´s Own is a curious essay. Presented originally as two speeches to the Arts Society at Newham in 1928, the work is remarkable for its distinctive tone, for Woolf´s witty and deceptively casual style, and for her decision to largely eschew abstract arguments in favor of narrative, anecdote and the guidance of a strong, abiding first person narrator. She also, refreshingly, avoids doctrine and bombast, instead infusing her arguments with subtlety, curiosity and open-minded speculation. more...

Price: $6.99

This selection brings together thirty of Woolf's best essays across a wide range of subjects including writing and reading, the role and reputation of women writers, the art of biography, and the London scene. They are enchanting in their own right, and indispensable to an understanding of this great writer. - ;'A good essay must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.'. According to Virginia Woolf, the goal of the essay 'is simply that it should give pleasure...It should lay us under a spell with its first word, and we should only wake, refreshed, with its last.' One of the best practitioners of the art she analysed so rewardingly, Woolf displayed her essay-writing skills across a wide range of subjects, with all the craftsmanship, substance, and rich allure of her novels. This selection brings together thirty of her best essays, including the famous 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs Brown', a clarion call for modern fiction. She discusses the arts of writing and of reading, and the particular role and reputation of women writers. She writes movingly about her father and the art of biography, and of the London scene in the early decades of the twentieth century. Overall, these pieces are as indispensable to an understanding of this great writer as they are enchanting in their own right. - ;Brilliant and subtle essays. - Independent on Sunday. more...

Price: $17.53