-Alexander's translation is marked by a conviction that it is possible to be both ambitious and faithful and] ...communicates the poem with a care which goes beyond fidelity-to-meaning and reaches fidelity of implication. May it go on ... to another half-million copies.- - Tom Shippey, Bulletin of the International Association of University Professors of English
Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope. It tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid...

Families, Friends, & Outcasts is an engrossing account--funny as well as sad--of life, love, and race relations in a small North Carolina town in the early twentieth century. As the townspeople navigate their way through the Great War, the Roaring Twenties, and the first years of the Great Depression, what remains at the center of their lives is their relationships with each other. Follow the adventures of vigorous little spinster Lucy Summerlin and her family, friends, and yes, even the town's black and white outcasts, and experience the way of life of a bygone era.