"Just two years after completing Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky produced a second novel with a very different man at its center. In The Idiot, the saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power, and sexual conquest. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorious kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya. Extortion and scandal escalate...

The Iron Heel (1907) is a novel by American writer Jack London. A groundbreaking work of dystopian science fiction, The Iron Heel was, inspired by London's socialist views and belief in an eventual global upheaval. Although his predictions proved wrong for the United States of the early-twentieth century, London was, recognized by such figures as George Orwell for his foresight regarding the rise of fascism in Europe. The novel is, told from the perspective...

Two ebullient young men search for Truth the Zen way: from marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, and "yabyum" in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude in the high Sierras and a vigil atop Desolation Peak in Washington State.

"A deluxe hardcover edition of the world's greatest fantasy classic--part of Penguin Galaxy, a collectible series of six sci-fi/fantasy classics, featuring a series introduction by Neil Gaiman T. H. White's masterful retelling of the saga of King Arthur is a fantasy classic as legendary as the sword Excalibur and city of Camelot that are found within its pages. This magical epic takes Arthur from the glorious lyrical phase of his youth, through the...

Odysseus--soldier, sailor, trickster, and everyman--is one of the most recognizable characters in world literature. His arduous, ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, the subject of Homer's Odyssey, is the most accessible tale to survive from ancient Greece, and its impact is still felt today across many different cultures. This lively free verse translation, from one of today's leading Homeric scholars, preserves the clarity and simplicity...

One of the middle or transitional dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, "Gorgias" depicts a dinner gathering attended by Socrates and a group of sophists. Gorgias, a foreigner, has been drawn to Athens by its cultural and intellectual sophistication. In this dialogue Plato contrasts Gorgias, the rhetorician, with Socrates, the philosopher, whose differing specialties are persuasion and refutation, respectively. As Plato delves into arguments...

Renzo and Lucia are separated as they escape from the evil Don Rodrigo and face the dangers of plague, famine, and the Thirty Years War