Popular Literature

A notorious white supremacist named Richard Barrett was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 2010 by a young Black man named Vincent McGee. At first the murder seemed a twist on old Deep South race crimes. But then new revelations and complications came to light. Maybe it was a dispute over money rather than race - or, maybe and intriguingly, over sex.

Sixty-five short stories by the master storyteller, Saki.

Chuck Palahniuk's world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. These pieces from Stranger Than Fiction, his first nonfiction collection, prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling.

Tumbling from one love entanglement to another, 30-something teacher Izzy Comyn has a predilection for inappropriate men. Over the three hilarious series of Up the Garden Path, Izzy, played by Imelda Staunton, deals with the complicated ups and downs of her attempts to find true love.

Tacky is about the power of pop culture - like any art - to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one's commitment to "good" taste. These 14 essays are a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation's obsession with irony, putting the aesthetics we hate to love - snakeskin pants, Sex and the City, Cheesecake Factory's gargantuan menu - into kinder and sharper perspective.

Alyssa and Aaron have been best friends since they were in diapers, but at school, they pretend not to know each other. If they did, Aaron’s popular reputation might suffer, and Alyssa would be subjected to the thing she hates most: attention. What Aaron doesn't realize is that the reason why Alyssa hates attention might be more serious than he thought—serious enough that it might even be enough to force her to throw her future dreams away.

A former English teacher at Seattle University, Lyons enhanced his love for poetry by studying the great classical poets in the original Greek and Latin. This anthology is not just for connoisseurs. It is for everyone who enjoys poetry.....

One of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists, Joshua Cohen arrives with his first collection of nonfiction, the culmination of two decades of writing and thought about life in the digital age. In essays, memoir, criticism, diary entries, and letters—many appearing here for the first time—Cohen covers the full depth and breadth of modern life.

Dustin Kiskaddon draws on his own apprenticeship with Matt, the owner of Oakland's Premium Tattoo, and takes us behind the scenes into the complex world of professional tattooers. We join people who must routinely manage a messy and carnal type of work. Blood and Lightning brings us through the tattoo shop, where the smell of sterilizing agents, the hum of machines, and the sound of music spill out onto the back patio.

Ya instalada en su nueva escuela, la vida parece sonreírle a Nikki Maxwell, especialmente desde que su flechazo, Brandon, le pidió ser su compañero de laboratorio. No obstante, cuando Nikki oye a Mackenzie alardear de que Brandon la lleva a un baile de Halloween, se compromete a pasar esa noche en una fiesta infantil junto a su hermana pequeña Brianna. Después de descubrir que Mackenzie mentía y que su sueño de ir a la fiesta con Brandon podría hacerse realidad, Nikki tendrá que hacer malabarismos para asistir a las dos fiestas.

Bobbi’s searching for inspiration at the local chocolate milk shop, heading out to cook up a few new short story ideas with a friend. Unfortunately, this typically productive location has become quite distracting thanks to the seasonal arrival of pumpkin spice lattes, which Bobbi despises. Hoping to seem cool and counteract the extreme basicness of this situation, Bobbi orders a cup of rock milk, but when she spots author Chuck Tingle at one of the café tables, Bobbi starts to wonder if rock milk was the way to go.

The ever-suspicious students at Bailey School lose control of their imaginations again when they meet new school nurse Mrs. Redding, who they come to believe is a Martian spying on Earth kids.

Grab your family, friends, or even your dog and gather around for a fun game of trivia! This book is great for kids and has the ultimate list of fun categories from food all the way to children's movies!

In this groundbreaking work of cultural history, Alice Fahs explores a little-known and fascinating side of the Civil War--the outpouring of popular literature inspired by the conflict. From 1861 to 1865, authors and publishers in both the North and the South produced a remarkable variety of war-related compositions, including poems, songs, children's stories, romances, novels, histories, and even humorous pieces.

Mother Goose's melodies belong to the children, and no addition or change should be made except by those who are in such close sympathy with the child-heart that they may act with the child's authority. This edition of Mother Goose preserves the best of the verses which became so popular in England and America as to first demand their publication. It is the only truly classic edition that has been published in modern times. Not all the favorites among the nursery rhymes are here, only those that first helped to make the fame of the fictitious but no less worthy patron of childhood.

Amy Tan takes us deep into the illicit world of 1912 Shanghai, where beautiful courtesans mercilessly compete for the patronage of wealthy gentlemen. For the women, the contest is deadly serious, a perilous game of economic survival that, if played well, can set them up for life as mistresses of the rich and prominent. There is no room for error, however: Erotic power is hard to achieve and harder to maintain, especially in the loftiest social circles. Enter veteran seducer, Magic Gourd, formerly one of Shanghai’s “Top Ten Beauties” and now the advisor and attendant of Violet, an aspiring but inexperienced courtesan.

Between 1994 and 1997, James Brown's loaded magazine became the the must-buy and must-be-in publication of the decade. It won every award going, year after year, and came to define not only its audience but also a generation. Bright, loud, funny, provocative, ambitious and careless, loaded was read from the barracks of Afghanistan to the England dressing room at Euro '96. It captured a hedonistic lifestyle of alcohol, cocaine and more. The last great hurrah before the end of the century.

Best-selling novelist, memoirist, and biographer Edmund White displays his sharp wit and boundless erudition in 37 portraits of the writers, artists, and cultural icons who have captured his curiosity and imagination for the last 20 years. White is as compelling as he is unpretentious in these stories of his encounters with some of the most provocative writers, artists, and personalities of our time.

Alone among the creatures of the world, man suffers a pang both bitter and sweet. It is an ache for the homecoming. The Greeks called it nostalgia. Post-modern man, homeless almost by definition, cannot understand nostalgia. If he is a progressive, dreaming of a utopia to come, he dismisses it contemptuously, eager to bury a past he despises. If he is a reactionary, he sentimentalizes it, dreaming of a lost golden age. In this profound reflection, Anthony Esolen explores the true meaning of nostalgia and its place in the human heart.

Everyone loves senior Carson Toliver, the captain and quarterback of the football team, heartthrob of South Burlington County Regional High - especially the girls. Even Jack's best friend, Weezy, has a crush on him. But Jack is surprised when Weezy tells him that Carson took her on a date and attacked her. Jack tries to convince her to report Carson, but Weezy would rather just forget it ever happened. But then Carson starts telling his own version of what happened that night, and suddenly everyone is calling her "Easy Weezy". Jack's concern turns to rage.