Caribbean Fiction

Elvira Carr believes in rules. She also strongly believes in crisp schedules, clear guidelines, and taking people at face value. Not that the 27-year-old sees many people. After several unfortunate incidents, her overbearing mother keeps her at home. But when her mother has a stroke, Elvira is suddenly on her own. To help her navigate a world that is often puzzling, she draws up seven ironclad rules. Armed with these, a notebook full of questions, and guidance from a helpful neighbor, she takes charge of herself.

Space-obsessed 12-year-old Paola Santiago and her two best friends, Emma and Dante, know the rule: Stay away from the river. It's all they've heard since a schoolmate of theirs drowned a year ago. Pao is embarrassed to admit that she has been told to stay away for even longer than that, because her mother is constantly warning her about La Llorona, the wailing ghost woman who wanders the banks of the Gila at night, looking for young people to drag into its murky depths.

Oficio de tinieblas, considerada una obra maestra de la narrativa latinoamericana, está basada en el levantamiento de los chamulas de 1867 a 1870 en San Cristóbal, Chiapas, que culminó con la crucifixión de uno de ellos al proclamarlo como el Cristo indígena. Rosario Castellanos se sumerge en la historia y sus protagonistas para buscar entender las circunstancias que llevaron a un pueblo a tan desgarrador acontecimiento y lo recrea en un México cercano: el de la reforma agraria durante el gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas.

Gwendolen Harleth gambles her happiness when she marries a sadistic aristocrat for his money. Beautiful, neurotic, and self-centered, Gwendolen is trapped in an increasingly destructive relationship, and only her chance encounter with the idealistic Deronda seems to offer the hope of a brighter future. Deronda is searching for a vocation, and in embracing the Jewish cause he finds one that is both visionary and life-changing.

Though universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself first and foremost a poet. This new bilingual selection brings together some two hundred poems, including scores of poems never previously translated. Edited by Alexander Coleman, it draws from a lifetime's work--from Borges's first published volume of verse, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), to his final work, Los conjurados, published just a year before his death in 1986.

"Le Portrait de Dorian Gray" a été rédigé en 1890, puis complété en 1891. Ce roman fantastique est à la fois un manifeste esthétique et un récit moral. Bien qu'Oscar Wilde y développe l'idée d'un art dégagé de toute éthique, le jeune Dorian Gray va faire face à sa conscience morale à travers son portrait qui porte à sa place les traces de sa perversité et la décadence que le temps inflige aux esprits les plus purs.

Byron's exuberant masterpiece tells of the adventures of Don Juan, a handsome and charming young man naturally gifted with the ladies. After his first illicit love affair at the age of 16 in his native Spain, he is exiled to Italy. Following a dramatic shipwreck, his exploits take him to Greece, where he is sold as a slave, and to Russia, where he becomes a favorite of the Empress Catherine, who sends him on to England.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Following the demise of bloodthirsty buccaneer Captain Flint, young Jim Hawkins finds himself with the key to a fortune. For he has discovered a map that will lead him to the fabled Treasure Island. But a host of villains, wild beasts and deadly savages stand between him and the stash of gold. Not to mention the most infamous pirate ever to sail the high seas....

With great originality and wit, Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, from a comic yet profound discussion of naughty seaside postcards to a spirited defense of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose, Orwell’s essays created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and continue to challenge, move, and entertain.

In the years leading up to 1606, since the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare's great productivity had ebbed, and it may have seemed to some that his prolific genius was a thing of the past. But that year, at age 42, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn - King Lear - then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

When two children happen across an ancient shrine, they unintentionally summon an impish sprite named Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow. To their wonderment, the fairy conjures up the past, taking them on ten magical adventures: They visit Roman Britain and the legion guarding Hadrian's Wall, the thirteenth-century court of King John, and Old England from the time of William the Conqueror.

In the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ambitions are bound by the confines of her life with her self-seeking French father. When her way of life and the delicate balance of power in the town are threatened, she is forced to flee her home and become a woman on the run along with a motley crew of refugees, including a mysterious young woman named Teresa.

Lord Dawlish is a well-liked and generous man. But he is poor, the poorest of his rank in the British Isles. His fiancée will not marry a man of modest means, so Dawlish decides to make his fortune any way possible. Romance, golf, the theater, and mad monkeys are all part of this merry mix-up that has more witty remarks and sharp retorts in one minute than most people could dream up in a lifetime.

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a poet, novelist, and literary critic. He created the enchanting world of fairyland inhabited by characters like the snow-queen, the mermaid's son, ogres, dwarfs, monsters, magicians, and giants. The Pink Fairy Book contains 41 tales from Africa, Japan, Scandinavia, and Europe. They range from familiar stories like "The Snow-Queen" and "The Fir-Tree" to the obscure tales of the Tanuki. This collection contains stories like "The Cats' Elopement", The "Princess in the Chest", "Snowflake", and more....

Lady Isabel Carlyle leaves her husband and children for the aristocratic Francis Levison, who, as it turns out, has no intention of marrying her. Having been disfigured in a train accident, the unrecognizable Isabel then takes up the position of governess to her own children in the Carlyle household, with tragic consequences.

When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth, irony and brilliant social observation which link the relationships and the inevitable conflicts as profound change comes to rural England.

Sayon Hughes longs to escape the volatile Bris­tol neighborhood known as Ends, the tight-knit but sometimes lawless world in which he was raised, and forge a better life with Shona, the girl he’s loved since grade school. With few paths out, he is drawn into dealing drugs along­side his cousin, the unpredictable but fiercely loyal Cuba.

Bereft of his beloved wife, Glencora, and his role as prime minister, Plantagenet Palliser enters the realm of family politics as he struggles to guide and connect with his three wayward children. Lord Silverbridge, the Duke's first born and natural inheritor, expelled from Oxford, a gambler at the racetrack and an elected Conservative, further troubles his father when he becomes engaged to Isabel Boncassen. Lady Mary, his daughter, falls in love with a penniless young gentleman named Frank Tregear, while his second son, Gerald, displays similar behavior to his brother.

After a terrible defeat in Key West, where the subject of Jesse McDermitt’s identity fraud investigation gets away, and which almost costs him dearly, Jesse returns home to his island in the Content Keys, determined to keep those he loves safe from harm. He makes plans to fly his family and friends to the Leeward Islands for a very special occasion, unaware of events taking place on one small uninhabited island located a short distance from his destination—events that will suck him right back into the fray, as a past nemesis rears their head.

In May 1987, Jackie Benton received a heartbreaking phone call from her boyfriend, Sean Hardy, bringing an end to their five-year relationship. He’d fallen for a fellow student at Exeter University. Sean and Jackie would never see each other again. Thirty-three years later, Sean returns to his home town. There, he inadvertently discovers what became of Jackie Benton.