Simon Vance

This work marks the author's movement from the pursuit of aesthetic ideals toward matters of religious and philosophical consequence. The poignant text describes Tolstoy's heartfelt reexamination of Christian orthodoxy and subsequent spiritual awakening. Generations of readers have been inspired by this timeless account of one man's struggle for faith and meaning in life.

A haunting tale of apparitions, a cursed manor house and two generations of women determined to discover the truth, by the author of The Ghost Writer. Sell the Hall unseen burn it to the ground and plow the earth with salt, if you will but never live there…Constance Langton grows up in a household marked by death her father distant, her mother in perpetual mourning for Constance's sister, the child she lost. Desperate to coax her mother back to...

Originally written to be an "introduction to the study of Shakespeare," Shakespeare for Children is much more entertaining than that-some of Shakespeare's best-loved plays, comic and tragic, are retold in a clear and robust style. Charles and Mary Lamb introduce children to the magic of Shakespeare with these ten favorite tales. Although simplified, these stories don't underestimate young readers; they keep the complexity, twists of plot, and turns...

No writer has rendered our boundaryless, post-colonial world more acutely or prophetically than V. S. Naipaul, or given its upheavals such a hauntingly human face. A perfect case in point is this riveting novel, a masterful and stylishly rendered narrative of emigration, dislocation, and dread, accompanied by four supporting narratives.On a road trip through Africa, two English people-Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys;...

Have you ever read a suspense novel so good you had to stop and think to yourself, "How did the author come up with this idea? Their characters? Is some of this story real?" For over five years, Mark Rubinstein, physician, psychiatrist, and mystery and thriller writer, had the chance to ask the most well-known authors in the field just these kinds of questions in interviews for the Huffington Post. Collected here are interviews with forty-seven accomplished...

Twenty curses, old and new, from bestselling fantasy authors such as Neil Gaiman, Karen Joy Fowler, Christina Henry, M.R. Carey, and Charlie Jane Anders. ALL THE BETTER TO READ YOU WITH It's a prick of blood, the bite of an apple, the evil eye, a wedding ring, or a pair of red shoes. Curses come in all shapes and sizes, and they can happen to anyone, not just those of us with unpopular stepparents ... Here you'll find unique twists on curses, from...