From Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic Michael Dirda comes a collection of his most personal and engaging essays on the literary life—the perfect companion for any lover of books.Michael Dirda has been hailed as “the best-read person in America” by the Paris Review and “the best book critic in America” by the New York Observer. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, he was awarded for his reviews in the Washington Post, and he picked up an Edgar Award from t...

From Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Michael Dirda, a delightful introduction to the creator of Sherlock HolmesA passionate lifelong fan of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Michael Dirda is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars—the most famous and romantic of all Sherlockian groups. Combining memoir and appreciation, On Conan Doyle is a highly engaging personal introduction to Holmes's creator, as well as a rare insider's accoun...

Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda has been hailed as "the best-read person in America" (The Paris Review) and "the best book critic in America" (The New York Observer). His latest volume collects fifty of his witty and wide-ranging reflections on a life in literature. Reaching from the classics to the post-moderns, his allusions dance from Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and M. F. K. Fisher to Marilynne Robinson, Hunter S. Thompson, and David Foster Wallace. Dirda's topics ar...

With infectious enthusiasm, "the best read person in America"—as Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Dirda has been called—aims to rekindle our passion for classic works of adventure, mystery, fantasy and romance.Kidnapped, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Kim, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Trent’s Last Case, Captain Blood, The Enchanted Castle, The Man Who Was Thursday—these are just a few of the many wonderful works recl...

Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda shares his love for all literature-novels, comic books, poetry, even erotica-in this humorous memoir of his childhood. Growing up in a bluecollar, Midwestern household of the 50s and 60s, Dirda appalled his father with his insatiable thirst for reading. His humorous remembrances of the works he loved will spark the interest of anyone who savors a good story.

Hailed by critic E. F. Bleiler as a "landmark book in the history of fantasy," Mervyn Wall's classic The Unfortunate Fursey (1946) is set in 11th century Ireland, where the forces of evil have launched an assault on the monastery of Clonmacnoise. Their task is made easier by the fact that one hapless monk, the simple-minded Brother Fursey, cannot manage to pronounce the necessary words of exorcism. When the other monks discover this, the unfortunate Fursey is expelled and sets fo...

"So remarkable in truth is this novel that I cannot understand why it is not universally known and admired." - Hugh Walpole"I Am Jonathan Scrivener remains a tantalizing, highly diverting philosophical novel of rare elegance and wit." - Michael DirdaJames Wrexham is thirty-nine, lonely, and stuck in a dead-end job when he comes upon an advertisement for a position as secretary to Mr. Jonathan Scrivener. Much to his surprise, he is hired at a lavish salary despite never even...

Having escaped being burnt at the stake, the reluctant sorcerer Fursey is back in this sequel, trying to make a quiet life for himself as a grocer in the realm of King Ethelwulf. But when his old enemies seize his wife, Fursey resolves to embrace evil and return to Ireland to reclaim her. Along the way, he’ll have to contend with bloodthirsty Vikings, a melancholy vampire, an alcoholic wizard, a lovesick cow, and Satan himself, who is more determined than ever to get his hands on Fursey’s ...

Ezra Pound’s classic book about the meaning of literature, with a new introduction by Michael Dirda.This important work, first published in 1934, is a concise statement of Pound’s aesthetic theory. It is a primer for the reader who wants to maintain an active, critical mind and become increasingly sensitive to the beauty and inspiration of the world’s best literature. With characteristic vigor and iconoclasm, Pound illustrates his precepts with exhibits meticulousl...

The first book in Robertson Davies's acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly LinkRamsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, in...

The second book in Robertson Davies's acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly LinkHailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven. The Manticore—the second book in the series after Fifth Business—foll...

The third book in Robertson Davies's acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly LinkHailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven. World of Wonders—the third book in the series after The Manticore—foll...