American Literature Anthology

Some of us are more equal than others.... Meet Stanley Huang: father, husband, ex-husband, man of unpredictable tastes and temper, aficionado of all-inclusive vacations and bargain luxury goods, newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. For years, Stanley has claimed that he’s worth a small...

The Red Tent meets The Scarlett Letter in this haunting historical novel set in a colonial New England whaling village. “When was it that the sense of trouble grew to fear, the fear to certainty? When she sat down to another solitary supper of bread and beer and picked cucumber? When she heard...

In this exhilarating memoir, three-time World Champion and Olympic gold-medalist Nathan Chen tells the story of his remarkable journey to success, reflecting on his life as a Chinese American figure skater and the joys and challenges he has experienced—including the tremendous sacrifices he...

In eight unflinching and stunningly crafted stories, Kanza Javed unspools the lives of characters desperately trying to forge a path for themselves on the margins of society.

ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2019 From the New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, the first collection of short fiction from Jess Walter—a suite of diverse and searching stories about personal struggle and diminished dreams, all of them marked by the...

“Remarkable. . . . A deftly woven narrative saturated with violence, hardship, and triumph. Readers will be richly rewarded, for by the end of this deeply felt novel it is hard to let the frontier town and its people go.” — San Francisco Chronicle This New York Times bestselling novel...

“Allende is one of the most important novelists to emerge from Latin America in the past decade.”—Boston Globe An enthralling tale of one man's search for love and his struggle to contend with the pain and deprivation that shaped him. Born in the Hispanic barrio of Los Angeles, Gregory...

A man walks into a trendy Los Angeles restaurant -- a disgruntled ex-employee with an automatic weapon -- and seconds later, thirteen people are dead and thirty-two more have been wounded. It is a heinous act of mass slaughter that haunts Homicide Detective Peter Decker. But, though eyewitnesses...

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford return in Agatha Christie’s classic Postern of Fate, to investigate a deadly poisoning sixty years after the fact. Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have just become the proud owners of an old house in an English village. Along with the property, they have inherited...

Narrated by Kate Mulgrew New York Times Bestseller “Wonderful. . . . As compulsively readable and endearing as all the previous novels have been.” — Booklist (starred review) Suspenseful, comic, and profoundly moving, The Days of Anna Madrigal, the ninth installment in Armistead...

One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America delivers his first novel—a sweeping chronicle of contemporary Los Angeles that is bold, exhilarating, and utterly original. Dozens of characters pass across the reader's sight lines—some never to be seen again—but James Frey...

A landmark new collection of stories from Richard Ford that showcases his brilliance, sensitivity, and trademark wit and candor! In Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love and loss...

In Mules and Men, some of the rich cultural heritage of black America is revealed and preserved. In the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her home town of Eatonville, Florida, to collect and record the oral histories, songs, and sermons, many dating back to slavery times, that she remembered hearing as a child. These highly metaphorical folktales, "big old lies", and powerful songs helped her to recover her history, and preserve an important part of American culture.

African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives.

In his powerful fourth novel, Charles Frazier returns to the time and place of Cold Mountain, vividly bringing to life the chaos and devastation of the Civil War. With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she...

A Distant Episode contains the best of Paul Bowles's short stories, as selected by the author. An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay McInerney...

“Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.” —Flannery O’Connor Flannery O’Connor’s work has been...

With her debut novel, Thien-Kim Lam serves up a sexy second-chance romance about exes with unfinished business. When working together reignites their passion, will these former flames sizzle or get burned all over again? Trixie Nguyen is determined to make her sex toy business a success...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD ""What is the cost of a mother’s desire?...Emily Itami explores this question with wit and poignancy."" -- New York Times Book Review ""The perfect marriage of Sally Rooney and early Murakami."" -- Kathy Wang, author of Impostor Syndrome Mizuki is a...

A Best Book of the Year: Barack Obama · NPR · The Washington Post · The Philadelphia Inquirer · Esquire · Kirkus Reviews · Chicago Public Library · Electric Literature Malala Yousafzai’s Fearless Book Club Pick for Literati ""Dazzling...Riveting."" —New York Times Book Review...