Neddy Merrill decides to swim home from a friend's pool party, traveling from fashionable swimming pool to swimming pool on a perfect mid-summer's day. But as night falls and the season begins to chan…
A Good Man Is Hard to Find is Flannery O'Connor's most famous and most discussed story. O'Connor herself singled it out by making it the title piece of her first collection and the story she most ofte…
In these four stories, Kate Chopin subtly captures the intricate interior lives of a generation of women. From the famous proto-feminist tale "The Story of an Hour" to the subtly sexy "A Respectable W…
Alice Walker's early story, "Everyday Use," has remained a cornerstone of her work. Her use of quilting as a metaphor for the creative legacy that African Americans inherited from their maternal ances…
A beautiful, arresting short story by Toni Morrison—the only one she ever wrote—about race and the relationships that shape us through life, with an introduction by Zadie Smith.
Elisa Allen is tending her chrysanthemums. Strong, with a handsome face she skilfully and proudly cultivates the best in the valley. Tonight, her husband is taking her to town. While she works, a sque…
Part of the Penguin 60s series, issued to celebrate 60 years of Penguin books. This collects "Sonny's Blues", "The Rockpile" and "Previous Condition", all taken from Going to Meet the Man (Penguin, 19…
Nella Larsen's fascinating exploration of race and identity--the inspiration for the upcoming Netflix film directed by Rebecca Hall, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.
In this lively comedy of love and money in sixteenth-century Venice, Bassanio wants to impress the wealthy heiress Portia but lacks the necessary funds. He turns to his merchant friend, Antonio, who i…
Frances Burney's first and most enduringly popular novel is a vivid, satirical, and seductive account of the pleasures and dangers of fashionable life in late eighteenth-century London.
The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams’ essay “The World I Live In.”
In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, nat…
