**“A manifesto of sorts for anyone who makes art [and] cares for it.” —Zadie Smith“The best book I know of for talented but unacknowledged creators. . . . A masterpiece.” —Margaret Atwood“No one who is invested in any kind of art . . . can read The Gift and remain unchanged.” —David Foster Wallace**By now a modern classic, The Gift is a brilliantly orchestrated defense of the value of creativity and of its importance in a culture increasingly gover...

In Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde brings to life the playful and disruptive side of human imagination as it is embodied in trickster mythology. He first visits the old stories—Hermes in Greece, Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in North America, among others—and then holds them up against the lives and work of more recent creators: Picasso, Duchamp, Ginsberg, John Cage, and Frederick Douglass. Twelve years after its first publication, Trickster Makes This W...

A definitive collection of Henry David Thoreau’s major essays, annotated and introduced by Lewis Hyde.Diverging from the long-standing custom of separating Thoreau’s politics from his interest in nature, renowned author Lewis Hyde brings together essays that highlight the ways in which these two strands of thought were intertwined. Here, natural history begins not with fish and birds, but with a dismissal of the political world, and condemnation of slavery conclude...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, read by Max Deacon and Dan Stevens.At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for writers and artists of all kinds. This book also contains the 'Letter f...

A heart-stirring novel about the joy that comes from finding love in unexpected places by the New York Times and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author.Thirteen-year-old Abby Hubble lives in an unhappy home in the Sierra Nevada foothills where her father makes life miserable for her and her mother, Mary. One day Abby witnesses a man dump a litter of puppies into the nearby river. Diving in to rescue all seven, she knows she won’t be able to bring them home. A...

A FOREWORD REVIEWS EDITOR'S PICKAt the far edge of town stands a dwelling the villagers call Haggard House—a place as decayed and strange as the family inside.1859, the village of Nomaton, Michigan. After a reclusive childhood within the dank walls of Haggard House, Adam Bolton, at the age of eleven, is finally allowed to attend the village school, providing he obeys his mother, Sarai's, injunction. Against all outward influence, h...

Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin is one of the great characters in Russian literature. Is he a saint or just naïve? Is he an idealist or, as many in General Epanchin’s society feel, an ‘idiot’? Certainly his return to St Petersburg after years in a Swiss clinic has a dramatic effect on the beautiful Aglaia, youngest of the Epanchin daughters, and on the charismatic but wilful Nastasya Filippovna. As he paints a vivid picture of Russian society, Dostoyevsky shows how principles conflict wi...

“One of the greats….Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon.” – Stephen KingFrom the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust — and the man who risks everything to reunite them.A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—a civilization of warring nations, great po...

Hailed as one of “Oprah’s Ultimate Favorite Things,” Mark Nepo’s bestselling “thinking person’s devotional” of inspirational stories and essays is now available from S&S Audio.In this work, Mark Nepo invites listeners to explore their own inner core through the stories of ordinary people, political activists, artists, and spiritual teachers from a variety of traditions. These are people who have faced themselves, their warts and weaknesses. They have stood by the courage of their c...

A new novel from Zadie Smith, set in Northwest LondonSomewhere in Northwest London stands Caldwell housing estate, relic of 70s urban planning. Five identical blocks, deliberately named: Hobbes, Smith, Bentham, Locke, and Russell. If you grew up here, the plan was to get out and get on, to something bigger, better. Thirty years later ex-Caldwell kids Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan have all made it out, with varying degrees of succes—whatever that means. Living only stree...

Winner of the National Book Award • Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable BookFrom one of the most revered novelists of our time, an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. Th...

Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick.Now all three are recently widowed, in their own way, and spend sweetly painful evenings together reminiscing. Until an unexpected violent attack brings everything they thought they knew into question.