Of all the literary forms, the novel is arguably the most discussed . . . and fretted over. From Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote to the works of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and today's masters, the novel has grown with and adapted to changing societies and technologies, mixing tradition and innovation in every age throughout history. Thomas C. Foster-the sage and scholar who ingeniously led readers through the fascinating...

After the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Ayn Rand turned to nonfiction writing and occasional lecturing. Her aim was to bring her philosophy to a wider audience and to apply it to current cultural and political issues. The taped lectures and the question-and-answer sessions that followed added not only an eloquent new dimension to Ayn Rand's ideas and beliefs but also a fresh and spontaneous insight into Ayn Rand herself. Ayn Rand Answers

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Call Me Zebra follows a feisty heroine's idiosyncratic quest to reclaim her past by mining the wisdom of her literary icons - even as she navigates the murkier mysteries of love. Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists, and autodidacts. Alone and in exile, she leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father made from Iran to the United States years ago. Books are her only companions-until she meets Ludo. Their...

Good things happen when your life is freed from the restrictions of gravity and time. Jake Spinner is a modern-day Don Quixote mixed in with a large dose of Winnie the Pooh. Jake Spinner's life is filled with coffee, movies, buffalo, donuts, tuxedoes, trucks, cedar chests, polar bears, the fiery hooch of the steppes, cold-weather horses, kittens, Parisian circuses, urban rodeo, pizza, Hell's Angels, Buddhists, gunslingers, Scrabble, ZiegfieldnFollies...

Full Tilt is the inspiring true story of Dervla Murphy's 1963 journey from Ireland to India on an Armstrong Cadet bicycle and the trials, landscapes and cultures she encountered along the way. The route takes her through the valleys and snowy mountain passes of Europe and India to the scorching deserts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the metal of her bicycle, Rozinante (named after Don Quixote's steed), becomes too hot to touch. She travels alone,...

"Ernest Hemingway first visited Cuba in 1928, and the experience would change the course of his entire life. He settled in Cojimar--a tiny fishing village east of Havana--in 1940, and came to think of himself as Cuban. What he discovered there, a new world counterpart to his beloved Spain, provided him the material for the novel that would rescue his uncertain career. The Old Man and the Sea won him a Pulitzer Prize and, one year later, earned literature's...

Washington Irving's "Tales of the Alhambra" is really two books in one. The first section chronicles Irving’s 1829 visit to the crumbling Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. Irving was permitted to reside within the palace grounds. His beautifully detailed descriptions of the deteriorating palace and its inhabitants fit well within the romantic vision that was beginning to sweep Europe. One can only imagine Irving's influence in shaping the popularity...

Edith Grossman, celebrated for her brilliant translation of Don Quixote, offers a dazzling new version of another Cervantes classic, on the 400th anniversary of his death The twelve novellas gathered together in Exemplary Novels reveal the extraordinary breadth of Cervantes's imagination: his nearly limitless ability to create characters, invent plots, and entertain readers across continents and centuries. Edith Grossman's eagerly awaited translation...

A certain eighteenth-century German noble ventured abroad for military service and returned with a series of amusingly outrageous stories. Baron Munchausen's astounding feats included riding cannonballs, traveling to the Moon, and pulling himself out of a bog by his own hair. Listeners delighted in hearing about these unlikely adventures, and in 1785, the stories were collected and published as Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels...