Chesterton has been called the Prince of Paradox. His works include journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, fantasy and detective stories. Chesterton has great fun satirizing the Victorian sleuths such as Sherlock Holmes . These 39 tales will delight the reader. Chesterton said that these stories just came to him like sitting still and letting them light on him like flies. Some of these tales are just for fun while other are filled with good common...

First delivered as a lecture in 1851, "Walking" is the seminal work on Transcendental philosophy by American author and essayist Henry David Thoreau. Sometimes referred to as "The Wild", it was Thoreau's favorite speech and he gave the lecture several more times over the next decade as he refined and expanded his ideas. The final version of this influential essay was published in the "Atlantic Monthly" in 1862 after his death. In "Walking", Thoreau...

"One of the most acclaimed artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was a gifted novelist, playwright, and essayist. Drawn from three decades of her work, this anthology showcases her development as a writer, from her early pieces expounding on the beauty and precision of African American art to some of her final published works, covering the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing a white...

From the New York Times-bestselling author of H Is for Hawk comes a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. Vesper Flights brings together Helen Macdonald's most beloved essays with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Macdonald writes with heart-tugging clarity...

The Titan is a novel by Theodore Dreiser, completed in 1914 as a sequel to his 1912 novel The Financier. Both books were originally a single manuscript, but the narrative's length required splitting it into two separate novels. Dreiser's manuscript of The Titan was rejected by Harper & Brothers, publisher of The Financier, due to its uncompromising realism; John Lane published the book in 1914. After his release from prison, Frank Cowperwood invests...

"Sonya used to perform on stage. She used to attend glamorous parties, date handsome men, ride in fast cars. But somewhere along the way, the stage lights Sonya lived for dimmed for good. And then, in their absence, came darkness--blackouts, empty cupboards, hazy nights she can't remember. Haunted by her failed career and unresolved childhood trauma, Sonya has fallen deep into an alcoholic abyss. What keeps Sonya from losing herself completely is...

Sunshine State offers a unique look at Florida, a state whose economically and environmentally imperiled culture serves as a lens through which we can examine some of the most pressing issues haunting our nation.

"In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston--the sole black student at the college--was living in New York, "desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world." During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American...

Nobody wrote like G.K. Chesterton, who (as the book title indicates) took great joy in penning intelligent, thoughtful, and witty essays on all sorts of themes and things. Chesterton's tendency to cover a vast, irregular range of essay topics began with his first book of prose, "The Defendant," which delightfully addressed a diversity of normally ho-hum subjects ranging from skeletons and Chinese shepherdesses to baby worship, ugliness, and humility....

"New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as 'wildly undisciplined, ' Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she casts an insightful...