"The Dead is one of the twentieth century's most beautiful pieces of short literature. Taking his inspiration from a family gathering held every year on the Feast of the Epiphany, Joyce pens a story about a married couple attending a Christmas-season party at the house of the husband's two elderly aunts. A shocking confession made by the husband's wife toward the end of the story showcases the power of Joyce's greatest innovation: the epiphany, that moment when everything, for character and reader alike, is suddenly clear.

EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY (1904) and EVE'S DIARY (1906) are essentially send-ups of the scripture, in which Twain parodied Genesis, the parables of creation and original sin, and Eve's role in the fall of humankind. In EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY, published with Fred Strothmann's humorous cartoons of supposedly ancient stone carvings on every left-hand page, Twain playfully established Niagara Falls Park as the setting of the Garden of Eden, "the honeymoon capital of the world." EVE'S DIARY, accompanied by the stunning line drawings of Lester Ralph, was Twain's moving eulogy to his wife,...