Literary Essays

Lakshmi is the goddess of all that is good wealth (dhana), beauty (saundarya) and happiness (sukha). As Vishnu s consort and in her incarnations as Sita and Rukmini, she represents the ideal of femininity in Hinduism. She is also Shri, the goddess of fertility and grain, and Mahalakshmi, the...

“Vivid . . . These stories, in which class divisions form impassable rifts and submission to the status quo comes at great psychic cost, have much to say about our contemporary reality." —The New York Times Book Review “What a gift to have these stories translated, finally, into English...

A collection of short stories from The Big Garage on Clear Shot chronicles the offbeat lives of the colorful inhabitants of The End of the Road, a small town in Alaska...

The early fiction of one of the nation’s most celebrated writers, Truman Capote, as he takes his first bold steps into the canon of American literature Recently rediscovered in the archives of the New York Public Library, these short stories provide an unparalleled look at Truman Capote...

Entre los intelectuales de izquierda, Noam Chomsky se distingue por su especial relación con el activismo, y por ser él mismo un activista político de larguísimo recorrido, además de un crítico implacable y clarividente. En este libro, que puede leerse como el legado de Chomsky a los...

With Virginia Woolf as a guide, the stories of eight radical 20th century women--wanderers, rebels, explorers, mentors--who made a life for themselves in spite of everything. Everything that changed in the 20th century changed more dramatically for women. Her Own Voice tells the stories of eight...

Dr. Dino Martins, an awarding-winning entomologist of Kenya's Turkana Basin, where life was born, unspools the hidden, squirming world of parasites—some of the most misunderstood, and important, creatures with whom we share the Earth (and our bodies!). “May this tusk root out the lice of the...

From the literary agent behind some of today’s most successful authors comes a narrative guide geared specifically to the needs of aspiring and working nonfiction writers, demystifying the world of publishing and offering a practical roadmap to getting your book published. “An invaluable...

He spent his earliest years in post WWII–refugee camps. He came to America and grew up in Cleveland—stealing cars, rolling drunks, battling priests, nearly going to jail. He became the screenwriter of the worldwide hits Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Flashdance. He also wrote the legendary...

A collection of short stories from the National Book Award-winning author of Mating "Powerful and original...always convincingly authentic. The ironies keep cutting in new directions." —The New York Times Whether they are Americans, Brits, or a stubborn and suicidally moral Dutchman...

In this part-memoir, part-manifesto, an acclaimed poet interprets Black radical literary traditions to reimagine freedom through refusal. “In these fierce yet tender pages, Camonghne Felix reveals how imagination can become a form of governance—an instrument for creating a world rooted in...

ONE OF PEOPLE'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 A stunning, fierce collection from a master of the short story and one of the most important writers of our time Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff’s electric collection is an individual triumph, bold, agile, and packed with power. Read...

An intense, atmospheric novel about the devastating power of friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic events. After Marissa loses her mother at six, the most intimate relationship of her life begins. Her marine biologist father, determined to channel his grief into completing his...

“Ahmad’s compassion, her deep care for the psychological and emotional nuances of her characters, never wavers.” – The New York Times Book Review In a searing collection by the award-winning author of The Return of Faraz Ali, characters seek to make their futures their own in a Pakistan...

A gripping collection of propulsive, psychologically suspenseful stories by the legendary Joyce Carol Oates “who is surely on any shortlist of America’s greatest living writers” (The New York Times Magazine) “A genius in the truest sense of the word.”—Rebecca Makkai “One of the...

A spellbinding story collection from Booker Prize finalist Ruth Ozeki, about the lives we almost lived, the people we can’t quite forget, and the stories that shape us long after the last page is turned In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki...

By his longtime friend and a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, the definitive biography of Larry McMurtry, the legendary author and screenwriter of Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and Brokeback Mountain, who transformed our vision of the West. Before Larry McMurtry became one of the...

Let's get one thing straight: Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty: Affirmations for the Real World is not a book of advice. You're not going to find a step-by-step guide to meditation here, or even reminders to drink lots of water and get enough sleep. Those things are all good for you, but that's not what Hana Shafi wants to talk about. Instead, Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty focuses on our common and never-ending journey of self-discovery. It explores the ways in which the world can all too often wear us down, and reminds us to remember our worth, even when it's hard to do so.

If you eat while lying down, you will turn into a snake. If you don’t polish off all the rice on your plate you will marry a man full of pimples and pockmarks.Looking After the Ashes is a semi-biographical fiction of Kopi Soh’s childhood stories. Growing up in a large extended Taoist...

This collection opens with an essay about how writing has helped Andrea Levy to explore and understand her heritage. She explains the context of each piece within the chronology of her career and finishes with a new story, written to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. As with her novels, these stories are at once moving and honest, deft and humane, filled with insight, anger at injustice, and her trademark lightness of touch.