Stephen Dixon's stories and novels have an original, immediately recognizable sound and feel --a weird blend of Franz Kafka and Frank Capra. Readers of his previous work will find in 14 Stories that same wry, inventive, knife-edged humor that has come to characterize his distinctive style. With an adroit use of language and a keen eye for the quirky, offbeat side of human nature, Dixon creates a world as viewed through a fish-eye lens--slightly distorted and off-center, yet recognizable and often familiar.14 Stories is part comedy, part tragedy, part social comment and part spoof. But most of ... View More...
Told almost exclusively through dialogue, Konfidenz opens with a woman entering a hotel room and receiving a call from a mysterious stranger who seems to know everything about her and the reasons why she has fled her homeland. Over the next nine hours he tells her many disturbing things about her lover (who may be in great danger), the political situation in which they are enmeshed, and his fantasies of her. A terse political allegory that challenges our assumptions about character, the foundations of our knowledge, and the making of history, Konfidenz draws the reader into a postmodern myster... View More...
When the body of a young man going by the obviously false name of Carlo Nobodi is brought into the morgue, Spino, the attendant on duty at the time, becomes obsessed with determining his identity. View More...
A story about a nineteenth-century woman's search for a meaningful life through work outside the family sphere, Work is at once Alcott's exploration of her personal challenges and a social critique of America. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and... View More...
With more than 700,000 copies in print, Cat's Eye, first published in 1989, was a national bestseller. It is the stow of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to the city of her youth for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman -- but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories. Disturbing, hilario... View More...
Although Edith Wharton is best known for her novels The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, this extensive collection of her short fiction shows her to be a master of all its varieties. View More...
