"Paradise Now **is both inspiring and inspired! Jay Parini leads us gently through the essential prayer of Christianity, writing with a keen ear for nuance and a lovely eye for details. Grace and truth live in these pages.” —**Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation, author of New York Times bestseller The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom For an Age of Outrage**“Drawing on his own meditative...

An intimate journey across and in search of America, as told by one of its most beloved writers, in a deluxe centennial editionIn September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a dist...

In this evocative work of what the author in his afterword calls “a kindof novelistic memoir,” Jay Parini takes us back fifty years, when he fled the United States for Scotland—in flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.Borges—visiting his translator in Scotland—is in his seventies, blind and frail. When Borges hears that Parini owns a 1957 Morris Minor, h...

When Alex Massolini's brother is killed in Vietnam, he drops out of Columbia University and leaves his conservative family behind for Capri to become secretary to Rupert Grant, a famous British novelist and poet who dominates the island like a latter -- day Prospero. Alex soon finds himself ensnared in a web of love affairs, friendships, and rivalries within the eccentric community that inhabits the idyllic beauty of the isolated Italian island.The Apprentice Lover traces ...

“Nothing less than spellbinding . . . It’s an eye-opener. Anecdotal without being tawdry, analytical without being academic, it captures the essence of Faulkner’s life with the narrative drive of a novel.” — Houston Chronicle“A splendid life of William Faulkner . . . Not only readable but downright enthralling.” — Seattle TimesWilliam Faulkner was a literary genius, and one of America's most important and influential writers. Drawing on previously unavailable sources--inclu...

“Nothing less than spellbinding . . . It’s an eye-opener. Anecdotal without being tawdry, analytical without being academic, it captures the essence of Faulkner’s life with the narrative drive of a novel.” — Houston Chronicle“A splendid life of William Faulkner . . . Not only readable but downright enthralling.” — Seattle TimesWilliam Faulkner was a literary genius, and one of America's most important and influential write...

Gore Vidal—novelist, playwright, critic, screenwriter, memoirist, indefatigable political commentator, and controversialist—is America's premier man of letters. No other living writer brings more sparkling wit, vast learning, indelible personality, and provocative mirth to the job of writing an essay.This long-needed volume comprises some twenty-four of his best-loved pieces of criticism, political commentary, memoir, portraiture, and, occasionally, unfettered score settling. It will stand...

A shocking act of murder and arson in Prohibition-era Mississippi entangles an assortment of memorable misfits in this novel from Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner. With a new introduction by Jay Parini.Sweet, hopeful Lena Grove has trekked miles on foot in search of the runaway bootlegger who fathered her unborn child. In the town of Jefferson, she finds instead shy and honorable Byron Bunch, who assists Lena in her quest while quietly adoring her. The town’s hi...

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREStarring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, & James McAvoyIn 1910, Count Leo Tolstoy, the most famous writer in the world, is caught in the struggle between his devoted wife and an equally devoted acolyte over the master's legacy. Sofya Andreyevna fears that she and the children she has borne Tolstoy will lose all to Vladimir Chertkov and the Tolstoyan movement, which preaches the ideals of poverty, chastity, and pacifism.As...

Upon its first appearance in 1895, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure shocked Victorian critics and readers with a frank depiction of sexuality and an unbridled indictment of the institutions of marriage, education, and religion, reportedly causing one Angli-can bishop to order the book publicly burned. The experience so exhausted Hardy that he never wrote a work of fiction again.Rich in symbolism, Jude the Obscure is the story of Jude Fawley and his ...

Explore the transcendent world of unity and ultimate beauty in Edgar Allan Poe’s verse in this complete poetry collection.Although best known for his short stories, Edgar Allan Poe was by nature and choice a poet. From his exquisite lyric “To Helen,” to his immortal masterpieces, “Annabel Lee,” “The Bells,” and “The Raven,” Poe stands beside the celebrated English romantic poets Shelley, Byron, and Keats, and his haunting, sensuous poetic vision profoundly influenc...

From the author of the international bestseller The Last Station, a superb historical novel of the Apostle Paul, whose tireless and epic preaching of the message of Jesus brought Christianity into existence and changed human history forever.In the years after Christ's crucifixion, Paul of Tarsus, a prosperous tentmaker and Jewish scholar, took it upon himself to persecute the small groups of his followers that sprung up. But on the road to Damascus, he had...