Bücher veröffentlicht von Warbler Classics

Mary Austin's love of the desert is everywhere evident in The Land of Little Rain, a collection of fourteen vignettes about the land and people of the region that today includes Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. Part nature essay, personal essay, folk legend, and local history of the California Sierras, this enduring American classic resists classification. Her lyrical observations are infused with a deep understanding of the flora and fauna of the area and an appreciation of the people she encountered and befriended there-Shoshones and Paiutes, Mexican and Chinese immigrants, shepherds, stagecoach drivers, and miners among them. Austin's writings have been compared to the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, but her poetic sensibility is purely original, winsome, and entirely her own. This Warbler Classics paperback includes the illustrations that appeared in the original edition and a detailed biographical note."Mary Austin is a 'future' person-one who will a century from now appear as a writer of major stature in the complex matrix of American culture."-Ansel Adams"She made the land a permanent part of herself and, in this small, tender, old-fashioned, and engaging book, a part of the basic literature of American nature writing."-Edward Abbey

The King in Yellow is a collection of ten short stories, four them tales of supernatural horror that are connected by the theme of a fictitious drama of the same title. The play within the stories drives those who read it to illness and possible insanity and leaves them in a dazed state, speaking about unexplained mythological terms. The first season of True Detective frequently alluded to The King in Yellow, spurring renewed interest in this touchstone paragon of the genre. This Warbler Classics edition includes an excerpt from H. P. Lovecraft's critical study Supernatural Horror in Literature in which he comments on this enduring work of imagination, as well as a detailed biographical note.

In The Mysterious Stranger, which was unfinished at the time of his death, Twain unleashes his sardonic, freewheeling wit to present deeply nihilistic philosophical and religious views in an audacious narrative that concludes with one of his most haunting lines. In 1590, three boys in a remote Austrian village are befriended by an attractive, charismatic stranger. Before he vanishes, the stranger devises supernatural ways to expose the boys to the puniness of existence, the violence that religious belief provokes, and sham that is human morality. This Warbler Classics edition includes a close examination by Ryan Simmons of the history, philosophical insights, and literary merits of the original 1916 text of The Mysterious Stranger, as well as an extensive biographical timeline.

Edwin Lefèvre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a fictionalized autobiography based on the life of Jesse Livermore (1877-1940) who was a pioneer of day trading and one of the greatest investors of all time. At his peak in 1929, Livermore was worth $100 million, which in today's dollars roughly equates to $1.5 billion, making him one of the richest people in the world at that time. The book, which began as a series of articles published during 1922 and 1923 in The Saturday Evening Post, tells the story of Livermore's progression from day trading in the then so-called "bucket shops" to market speculator, market maker, and market manipulator to Wall Street "Boy Plunger" where he won and lost tens of millions of dollars. This classic of American business writing continues to offer sharp insights into the art and psychology of trading and speculation. It is one of the most widely read, highly recommended investment books of all time.This Warbler Classics edition includes an illustrated life of Jesse Livermore.

When Charlotte Mullen, a fortyish flinty Irish spinster, takes in her orphaned cousin, the beautiful nineteen-year-old Francie Fitzgerald who had been living in Dublin with poor relatives, life in a small Irish village is dramatically upended. As Charlotte plots to marry Francie to a local squire's son, events build to a shocking crescendo with dire effects.Original published in three volumes, this Warbler Classics edition is based on the combined 1895 publication and includes an afterword by Malcolm Jones and a biographical note.

Candide, Voltaire's magnum opus, is a matchless satirical take-down of religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers. The novella unfolds as the sheltered and privileged Candide, a young man enraptured of his facile mentor Pangloss, experiences the hardships and injustices of life, forcing him to abandon the naïve notion that "all is for the best" in favor of a practical determination that life is best lived "cultivating one's garden." Considered by many to be one of the greatest achievements of Western literature, Candide has influenced modern writers of black humor such as Céline, Joseph Heller, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Terry Southern. This Warbler Classics edition includes notes, a glossary, and a detailed biographical timeline of Voltaire's life and work.

The Hollow Needle is one of Maurice Leblanc's best-known novels. In it the famous gentleman-burglar and master of disguises Arsène Lupin finds himself playing an intense game of cat and mouse with the young, surprisingly apt amateur-detective Isidore Beautrelet. Old foes Detective Ganimard and the famous English detective Holmlock Shears (so renamed to avoid copyright infringement) also make appearances. Lupin is chasing the most valuable object he has ever had the opportunity to steal: the Hollow Needle, which hides unfathomable treasure and a secret that the kings of France have been handing down since the time of Julius Caesar. Lupin has been depicted in countless film and stage adaptions, most recently as the inspiration of the Netflix series, Lupin, starring Omar Sy. This Warbler Classics edition includes a detailed chronology of Leblanc's life and work, as well as the eulogy he wrote for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Notes from Underground is widely considered the forerunner of modernist literature and one of Dostoevsky''s greatest literary achievements. The novel recounts the thoughts and encounters of a civil servant known only as The Underground Man who has quit his job and lives in a basement flat on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, surviving on a small inheritance. His humiliation turns to an inward-turning aggression that further reinforces his alienation from mainstream society.Includes a contribution by Patrick Maxwell, the letter that Dostoevsky wrote to his brother on the day he was to be executed, a biographical timeline, and suggested reading.

The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson''s short novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) is a classic of Victorian gothic fiction. The story of an upstanding, educated gentleman who seeks to access his own dark sides and gets caught in a maelstrom of evil captivated late nineteenth-century London readers and then the world. Today Jekyll and Hyde has become the universal reference for "man''s double being," but the story''s revelatory ending shows that Stevenson did far more than create an archetype in this compelling eerie tale. Frequently adapted for stage and screen, the story continues to mesmerize readers and belongs among the great works of world literature, alongside Mary Shelley''s Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde''s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Joseph Conrad''s Heart of Darkness.

First published in 1688, Oroonoko follows the tragic love story of a charismatic African prince and his beloved Imoinda. The eponymous hero is tricked into slavery and sold to European colonists in Surinam. Behn''s moving and deeply empathetic tale is structured as a first-person account of Oroonoko''s life, love, rebellion, and execution. This Warbler Classics edition includes an historically illuminating article by George Jay Smith from 1925 and an essay that provides context for Oroonoko, Behn''s most famous story, by Janet Todd, whose biography Aphra Behn: A Secret Life was published in 2017.

Kate Chopin''s absorbing 1899 novel The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a married woman in New Orleans who, during a summer holiday, begins to question her conventional life. In this path-breaking novel, Chopin speculates more daringly than any before her about the consequences for middle-class women of late-nineteenth-century society''s unleashing of female desire. Celebrated today as a key text in American literature, it scandalized early critics and, precisely because of its boldness, jeopardized Chopin''s career. In this annotated, modernized edition-specially tailored for twenty-first-century readers-Rafael Walker highlights Chopin''s awareness of the privileged class''s exploitation of the the less-privileged, and includes a number of neglected stories that foreground Chopin''s feminist proclivities.

First published in 1923, Cane is a significant work of Modernist fiction and a literary Goliath of the Harlem Renaissance. In this wholly original novel Jean Toomer highlights issues of class and caste in a three-part pastiche of poems, vignettes, and play-like stories. The audacious, non-traditional structure of the book reflects the prismatic nature of the material itself. Toomer's close observations during a stint as school principal in Sparta, Georgia, primarily informed what Houston A. Baker, Jr. calls a "mysterious brand of Southern psychological realism that has been matched only in the best work of William Faulkner." This edition includes Jean Toomer's essay, "The Crock of Problems," in which the author discusses race in America and his own diverse ethnic heritage, and an extensive biographical note.

The Essential Poe gathers the most thrilling and enthralling of Poe's poems and short stories, including "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Black Cat," and "The Raven" as well as two illuminating essays on the nature of poetry and the art of storytelling. Sweeping yet concise, this new edition offers an engaging introduction written specifically for contemporary readers, pivotal excerpts from French poet Charles Baudelaire's path-breaking essays on Poe, and a detailed biographical timeline of Poe's brief, turbulent life.

From the dawn of storytelling we have been mesmerized, entertained, and fascinated by stories of other-worldly visitations. Our earliest folklore and oral tales suggest that even before recorded time, on every continent and in every language, we created narratives to animate our fear of the unknown. The classic stories in this anthology have been selected for their literary style, psychological complexity, and enduring power to electrify both the imagination and the senses. As varied, rooted in, and intriguingly expressive of their time and place, these stories give expression to a universal hunch that we live among ghosts-whether of the past or in the form of portending presences. From Edgar Allan Poe's timeless "The Tell-Tale Heart" to M. R. James's "Count Magnus" to Algernon Blackwood's subtly unnerving "The Willows" each of these tales rise to-and in many ways define-the high water mark of the genre. Includes the full text of H. P. Lovecraft's superb essay, On the Supernatural in Poetry, an illuminating history and exploration of the art of the weird story-along with brief author biographies.

When a dead body, carefully arranged and naked except for a pince-nez, is discovered in a bathtub, amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, deducing the man is not who he appears to be, takes it upon himself to solve the mystery, leading to an array of twists and turns that make Whose Body a masterful, intricate, immersive, and supremely intelligent whodunit-the novel that established Dorothy L. Sayers as a master of the mystery novel, while introducing the inimitable, brilliant, aristocrat Wimsey, one of the most unforgettable and popular heroes of the genre. This unique edition contains the full text of Whose Body, handsomely designed, plus commentary by P. D. James and a wonderful short treatise on the importance of reading by Sayers herself.

Recalling the great confessional narratives from St. Augustine to Jean Jacques Rousseau, from Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass to Henry Adams, James Weldon Johnson relates the emotionally gripping tale of a mixed-race piano prodigy who can pass for white in turn-of-the-century America. Forced into impossible choices created by an unjust society, the narrator describes his experiences as he travels from Jacksonville to New York City, the rural South to Paris, London, and beyond. The earliest first-person novel published by an African American author, Johnson''s powerfully unsentimental story examines the significance of chance and choice, the particularly American investment in self-invention, and the role of identity in shaping our lives. Its influence extends to Richard Wright, Ralph Waldo Ellison''s Invisible Man and even Barack Obama''s Dreams from my Father. Includes several of Johnson''s influential and still timely New York Age editorials and a detailed biographical timeline.