-Make your] characters want something right away--even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.- --Kurt Vonnegut
-'The cat sat on the mat' is not the beginning of a story, but 'the cat sat on the dog's mat' is.- --John Le Carre
Nothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if you can't get Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez together at the Algonquin, The Modern Library...

Capturing the grandeur of a gracious, splendid Europe of wealth and Old World sensibilities, this glorious, complex novel has become a touchstone for a great writer's entire literary achievement. From the opening pages, when the high-spirited American girl Isabel Archer arrives at the English manor Gardencourt, James's luminous, superbly crafted prose creates an atmosphere of intensity, expectation, and incomparable beauty.

Isabel, who has been taken abroad by an eccentric aunt to fulfill her potential, attracts the passions of a British aristocrat and a brash American, as well as the...

With his sublime parting words, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done..." Sidney Carton joins that exhalted group of Dickensian characters who have earned a permanent place in the popular literary imagination. His dramatic story, set against the volcanic fury of the French Revolution and pervaded by the ominous rumble of the death carts trundling toward the guillotine, is the heart-stirring tale of a heroic soul in an age gone mad. A masterful pageant of idealism, love, and adventure -- in a Paris bursting with revolutionary frenzy, and a London alive with anxious...

This entertaining, informative collection covers the best of American satire from Ben Franklin's cutting satiric attacks to Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Celestial Railroad, " Calvin Trillin's "Old Marrieds, "Mark Twain's "American Abroad" to P.J. O'Rourke's "The Innocents Abroad Updated, " a late 20th-century take on Twain's classic piece. "Entertaining and satisfying...An excellent introduction." "Amazon.com.""

Though you may not know the man, you probably know his music. Arkansas-born Louis Jordan's songs like Baby, It's Cold Outside," "Caldonia" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" can still be heard today, decades since Jordan ruled the charts. In his five-decade career, Jordan influenced American popular music, film and more and inspired the likes of James Brown, B.B. King, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. Known as the "King of the Jukeboxes," he and his combo played a hybrid of jazz, swing, blues and comedy music during the big band era that became the start of R&B. In a stunning narrative...