In Irving's great work, The Sketch Book, fictional historian Diedrich Knickerbocker introduces us to Rip van Winkle, the Dutch colonist who slept through the Revolutionary War; Ichabod Crane, the superstitious, social-climbing schoolmaster; and the pumpkin-topped Headless Horseman, ancestor to countless horror film antiheroes. In addition to 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and 'Rip Van Winkle', The Sketch Book touches on cultural and historical concerns that remain compelling, thanks to Irving's modern outlook and impressive foresight.
This new edition, with an introduction from Elizabeth L. Bradley, demonstrates how inextricably Irving's writings are woven into the fabric of American culture - high and low.
Jackie's goal is perfection―perfect grades, the perfect look, getting into the perfect school. If she can achieve that, then maybe her too-busy mom and dad will take notice. But when her parents die in a tragic accident, Jackie is shipped off across the country to live with the Walters, her new guardians…who just happen to have eleven sons (plus a daughter who is basically one of the boys).
The Walter boys are loud, dirty, annoying―and, okay, some of the older boys might be Greek god level hot, but they don't think a city girl belongs on their horse ranch. How is Jackie supposed to fit into their chaotic world when she needs to keep her parents' memory alive by living up to the promise of perfect?
But as Jackie spends more time with the Walter boys, she begins to wonder if the perfection she's always strived for isn't the only way to find love after all.
The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar, or a parking lot, or at the grocery store. Their identity is unknown. Their motives are unclear. Their information is undeniable. Then they whisper a few words in your ear and disappear, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world...
Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American Dream: a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life.
Then he runs into the Stranger. When he learns a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne, he confronts her, and the mirage of perfection disappears as if it never existed at all. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne's deception, and realizes that if he doesn't make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he’s stumbled into will not only ruin lives—it will end them.
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left the family when he was nine years old without a trace. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, his family's life has been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic.
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she’s quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; her grandmother Dr. Pincer keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what’s possible when all else fails.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's enduringly popular story of a beautiful and corrupt man and the portrait that reveals all his secrets. Entranced by the perfection of his recently painted portrait, the youthful Dorian Gray expresses a wish that the figure on the canvas could age and change in his place. When his wish comes true, the portrait becomes his hideous secret as he follows a downward trajectory of decadence and cruelty that leaves its traces only in the portrait's degraded image. Wilde's unforgettable portrayal of a Faustian bargain and its consequences is narrated with his characteristic incisive wit and diamond-sharp prose. The result is a novel that is as flamboyant and controversial as its incomparable author.