American Literature Collection

Here is the preface to 12 magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.

A blind obsession. A driving ambition. A relentless, unrestrained, single-minded pursuit of a shiny metal. These are the symptoms of a condition known as gold fever, and, like Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, American mining engineer Captain Humbert Reynolds has got it bad. Possible side effects include: temporary insanity, a propensity for violence, and death.

A BWWM romance collection full of your favorite authors from the Scribble XO Book Club! Hunky billionaires, bad boys, models, military men and more!

The Chinese city of Shunkien is under siege, the Japanese military laying it to waste. In the middle of the city sits the American consulate, a fragile sanctuary packed with refugees, threatened not only by artillery, but by the ravages of starvation and cholera. 200 miles away, on the USS Miami, stands their only hope - Marine Gunnery Sergeant James Mitchell. As tough as Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan - and just as stubborn - if anybody can negotiate a crucial supply of gold and medicine through 200 miles of bullets, bombs and butchery, it’s Sergeant Mitchell.

Plant Your Feet Firmly is an intimate glimpse of Asian America. Through the pages of seven short stories, the listener is treated to a delicate taste of ordinary people living extraordinary lives - from a cool grandpa to a grieving mother to a disillusioned husband.

The follow up to best-selling audio Three Men in a Boat, Three Men on the Bummel features delightful, gentle, comic writing. First published in 1900, the story revives the three companions from Three Men in a Boat, this time taking them on a bicycle tour through the German Black Forest. Written during the Victorian era bicycle-craze, it is a light-hearted commentary on German culture at the time, told through the eyes of the hapless British tourist.

Kids are fascinated by dinosaurs! Written and recorded especially for kids, here is the absolute best collection of dinosaur stories and songs ever! Entertainment guaranteed to make you smile!

Natalie Spencer was giving a dinner. She was not an easy hostess. Like most women of futile lives, she lacked a sense of proportion, and the small and unimportant details of the service absorbed her. Such conversation as she threw at random, to right and left, was trivial and distracted. Yet, the dinner was an unimportant one. It had been given with an eye more to the menu than to the guest list, which was characteristic of Natalie's mental processes.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and if that woman is Nikki Bell, then that means everyone better jump outta the way. After giving up dancing at The Pink Palace and settling down with her family, Nikki believes she could have a normal life. She soon finds out she is wrong, and now, her past is back to haunt her. When things start to go downhill fast, she learns that Malachi Turner, a notorious drug dealer and the new owner of The Pink Palace, is the man responsible for destroying her new life. Nikki has no choice but to confront him.

Lossyn Tyler was an all-star cheerleader with a promising future, until she is involved in accident that claims the life of her best friend. Suffering from physical and mental anguish, Lossyn is prescribed narcotics to ease the pain. Her life changes drastically causing issues within her once close knit family. Unable to cope with her home life, she turns to her new "friends", who she meets during her time on the West Side of Wilmington, also known as "Down Bottom".

A blockbuster illustrated book that captures what Americans love to read, The Great American Read: The Book of Books is the gorgeously-produced companion book to PBS's ambitious summer 2018 series.

What are America's best-loved novels? PBS will launch The Great American Read series with a two-hour special in May 2018 revealing America's 100 best-loved novels, determined by a rigorous national survey. Subsequent episodes will air in September and October. Celebrities and everyday Americans will champion their favorite novel and in the finale in late October, America's number one best-loved novel will be revealed.

The Great American Read: The Book of Books will present all 100 novels with fascinating information about each book, author profiles, a snapshot of the novel's social relevance, film or television adaptations, other books and writings by the author, and little-known facts. Also included are themed articles about banned books, the most influential book illustrators, reading recommendations, the best first-lines in literature, and more.

Beautifully designed with rare images of the original manuscripts, first-edition covers, rejection letters, and other ephemera, The Great American Read: The Book of Books is a must-have book for all book lovers.

Gayl Jones, who was first edited by Toni Morrison, has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century and was recently a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. This new collection of short fiction is only the second in her rich career, and one that displays her strengths in the genre in many facets. Opening with two novella-length works, “Butter” and “Sophia,” this collection features Jones’s legendary talents in a range of settings and styles.

From “Portrait of the artist, gaslit” to “Portrait of the artist’s ancestors” to “Portrait of the artist reading a newspaper,” the poems in Harbinger reflect the many facets of the artistic self as well as the myriad influences and experiences that contribute to that identity.

Even as our world has suffered through successive upheavals, Jesse McCarthy contends, "something was happening in the world of culture: a surging and unprecedented visibility at every level of Black art making". Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? reckons with this resurgence, arguing for the central role of art and intellectual culture in an age of widening inequality and moral crisis. McCarthy reinvigorates the essay form as a space not only for argument but for experimental writing that mixes and chops the old ways into new ones.

Seven great new erotic stories from Dante x: "The Navigator", "Thai Wife Shared with her Friend", "Black Man Fans Theme at the Swingers Club", "Thai Wife and Friends", "Dogging and Wife-Sharing with a Friend", "A Threesome with my Ex-Wife", "The Wife and the Driving Instructor".

Afice is the last of nine generations of women who have survived enslavement, sickness, and hunger. Alone at age seventeen, she sets out through the Louisiana swamps to follow the trail of her ancestors and hear their songs anew. On this journey, Afice must decide how to honor her ancestors while embracing her own future.

On Ash Wednesday in 1908, Swiss German immigrant Fritz Hirter arrives at his children’s school, where he is the lone custodian. But soon after lessons start, a fast-moving fire breaks out—its cause is unknown, but its effects are horrifying. Although Fritz is soon cleared of any responsibility for the catastrophe, the community continues to suspect him, supremely testing Fritz and his family.

All a parent wants in life is to ensure that their child knows how beautiful and powerful they are, despite how some may treat them. Written by an author focused on writing empowering self-love stories and uplifting affirmations for Black girls, My Skin Is Lovely will help your child understand that they are beautiful and powerful and can achieve anything they set their minds to by using positive affirmations with the ABCs.

Canonized, overlooked, and forgotten African American poets star in Terrance Hayes's brilliant contemplations of personal, canonical, and allegorical literary development. Proceeding from Toni Morrison's aim to expand the landscape of literary imagination in Playing in the Dark ("I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography"), Watch Your Language charts a lyrical geography of reading and influence in poetry.