Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood: a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by a taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel "Swann in Love," an incomparable study of sexual jealousy that becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure in In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the work that established Proust as one of the finest voices...

The classic novel of freedom and the search for authenticity that defined a generation

September 5th, 2017 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of On the Road
Inspired by Jack Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naiveté and...

After a scandal breaks out involving a famous Irish Nationalist politician, Stephen Dedalus finds his family being torn apart over their differing opinions of the matter. Shaken by all the fighting and animosity, Stephen begins to wonder where he can place his faith. Questioning the Irish and Catholic ideology that he was raised on, Stephen begins to rebel against expectations as he departs for college. While he excels in his studies, Stephen struggles...

"What do you do when your mother can’t remember who you are? You catch the first flight from your adopted home of London to your original hometown of Cedar Rapids, lowa, where she’s hospitalized, injured, and struggling with the swirling disorientation of dementia. You take responsibility for finding her new (and, perhaps, final) home—although insurance is running out and you might have to finally patch up your bitter relationship with your...

In the spring of 1943, during a stint in the merchant marine, twenty-one-year-old Jack Kerouac set out to write his first novel. Working diligently day and night to complete it by hand, he titled it The Sea Is My Brother. Nearly seventy years later, its long-awaited publication provides fascinating details and insight into the early life and development of an American literary icon. Written seven years before The Town and the City officially launched...

"[A] mythopoetic portrait of the artist as a young man in Chile in the tumultuous 1930s."--Amazon.com.

Autobiographical in character, this novel describes the childhood and youth of Eugene Gant as he grows up, becomes aware of the relations among his family, meets the eccentric people of the town, goes to college,discovers literature and ideas, has his first love affairs,and at the last sets out alone on mystic and romantic pilgrimage.