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Classics

Notes of a Native Son

Notes of a Native Son

Baldwin, James
$24.00
A deluxe hardcover edition of one of James Baldwin's most admired works, exploring what it means to be Black in America and his own search for identity

Part of the Beacon Classics series

Originally published in 1955, James Baldwin's timeless and moving essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad inaugurated him as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the 20th century. Through a mix of autobiographical and analytical essays, Baldwin delivers honest and raw revelations about what it means to be Black in America, specifically pre-Civil Rights Movement, and how, he himself, came to understand the nation.

Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many Black expatriates of the time, from his home in "The Harlem Ghetto" to a sobering "Journey to Atlanta." He was one of the few writing on race at the time who addressed the issue with a powerful mixture of outrage at the gross physical and political violence against Black citizens and measured understanding of their oppressors, which helped awaken a white audience to the injustices under their noses.

For fans of Baldwin's well-known works or those new to Baldwin altogether, this celebrated essay collection showcases his extraordinary writing, revolutionary analyses, and prophetic insight into American culture and politics.

Lily of the Valley

Lily of the Valley

Balzac, Honore de
$17.95
A new translation of one of Balzac's finest novels, this tale of misguided passion centers on a young aristocrat who falls into a cloaked, coded entanglement with an older countess--a relationship that is upended when he becomes involved with a new lover.

A story of impossible and unsatisfied desire, Balzac's The Lily in the Valley opens with a scene of desire unleashed. Félix de Vandenesse, the shy teenage scion of an aristocratic family, is at a ball, when his eyes are drawn to a beautiful woman in fashionable undress: before he knows what he is doing, he throws himself upon her, covering her bare back with kisses. In shock, she pushes him away. He leaves the party in shame.

The woman at the party is Henriette de Mortsauf, married to a much older count. Time passes, and Félix is reintroduced to her. Nothing is said of what transpired, though nothing is forgotten, and a courtship begins whose premise is that Félix will worship Henriette without displaying the least sign of desire. He waits on her. He plays endless board games with her impossible husband. He develops a language of flowers and presents her with elaborately coded bouquets. Félix and Henriette are in a swoon, until he departs for Paris to pursue a career in politics and takes up with the uninhibited Arabella Dudley. Meanwhile Henriette is on her deathbed. She writes him, "Do you remember your kisses? They have dominated my life and furrowed my soul. . . . They are my death!"

The Lily in the Valley is a terrible fairy tale of two people lost in a game of love--or is it? Peter Bush's new translation brings out the psychological dynamics of one of Balzac's masterpieces.

I Am Alien to Life

I Am Alien to Life

Barnes, Djuna
$18.00
The best of Djuna Barnes's dark, droll, incisive short fiction, spanning her all-too-brief career, edited and introduced by Merve Emre.

Djuna Barnes is rightly remembered for Nightwood, her breakthrough and final novel: a hallmark of modernist literature, championed by T. S. Eliot, and one of the first, strangest, and most brilliant novels of love between women to be published in the twentieth century. Barnes's career began long before Nightwood, however, with journalism, essays, drama, and satire of extraordinary wit and courage. Long into her later life, after World War II, when she published nothing more, it was her short fiction above all that she prized and would continue to revise.

Here are all the stories Barnes sought to preserve, in the versions she preferred, as well as a smattering of rarities as selected by critic and New Yorker contributor Merve Emre. These are tales of women "'tragique' and 'triste' and 'tremendous' all at once," of sons and daughters being initiated into the ugly comedy of life, monuments all to a worldview singular and scathing. As Emre writes in her foreword, "[Barnes's] themes are love and death, especially in Paris and New York; the corruption of nature by culture; the tainted innocence of children; and the mute misery of beasts . . . her characters may be alien to life, but they are alive--spectacularly, grotesquely alive."

Henderson the Rain King Nobel 1976

Henderson the Rain King Nobel 1976

Bellow, Saul
$11.00
$16.00
$11.00 - $16.00
Henderson has come to Africa on a spiritual safari, a quest for the truth. His feats of strength, his passion for life, and, most importantly, his inadvertant success in bringing rain have made him a god-like figure among the tribes.
Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre

Bronte, Charlotte
$20.00
Following the death of her uncle, the orphan Jane Eyre is sent to the Lowood School, where she grows into a confident and well-educated young woman. When Jane leaves Lowood to become a governess at Thornfield, she falls in love with Mr. Rochester, her pupil's guardian. But a series of eerie and terrifying events threaten to destroy her happy future. Featuring gripping plot twists and surprises, Jane Eyre offers rich insight into the life of a woman who, despite oppression and precarious circumstances, refuses to yield her sense of self to societal expectations.

In Cold Blood

Capote, Truman
$18.00
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Carroll, Lewis
$20.00
Original, experimental, and charmingly nonsensical, Lewis Carroll's Alice'​s Adventures in Wonderland follows seven-year-old Alice down a rabbit hole and into the topsy-turvy dream world of Wonderland. In this fantastical place, food can shrink you to the size of a mouse, or turn you into a giant, babies turn into pigs, and time stands still at the Mad Hatter's tea party. Filled with sparkling wordplay and unbridled imagination, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has enchanted readers for generations.

This edition also includes Through the Looking-Glass.

Silent Spring 60th

Carson, Rachel; Lear, Linda (I
$18.99

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Cather, Willa
$16.00
My Antonia

My Antonia

Cather, Willa
$7.99

The spirited daughter of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia must adapt to a hard existence on the desolate prairies of the Midwest. Enduring childhood poverty, teenage seduction, and family tragedy, she eventually becomes a wife and mother on a Nebraska farm. A fictional record of how women helped forge the communities that formed a nation, My Ántonia is also a hauntingly eloquent celebration of the strength, courage, and spirit of America's early pioneers.