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The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons, Arthur Dent hurtles through space powered by pure improbability and is desperately in search of a place to eat. Among Arthur's shipmates are Ford Prefect, a long-time friend and contributor to the The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMilan, a fellow Earth refuge who's gone native (her new name is Trillian); and Marvin, who suffers nothing and no one gladly. This is the sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The Master and Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov

★★★★★

2004-07-26

A mysterious stranger appears in a Moscow park. Soon he and his retinue have astonished the locals with the magic show to end all magic shows. But why are they really here, and what has it got to do with the beautiful Margarita, or her lover, the Master, a silenced writer? A carnival for the senses and a diabolical extravaganza, this most exuberant of Russian novels was staged in this adaptation at Chichester Festival Theatre.

Esther Greenwood begins the summer with an internship at a popular women’s magazine, but her hopes for a career as a writer are dashed when she returns home to Massachusetts to discover she’s been rejected from a prestigious writing seminar. Listless and suffering from the onset of depression, Esther attempts suicide, and eventually finds herself in a variety of hospitals undergoing controversial electro-shock therapy.

American author Sylvia Plath’s only novel,

The Bell Jar

has been read and discussed widely for its dark humour, honest portrayal of mental illness, and feminist point of view, and is noted for its parallels to the author’s own life—Plath committed suicide only a month into the book’s UK publication. Ultimately,

The Bell Jar

’s exploration of the pressure on young women of Plath’s time to conform to societal expectations has influenced both literature and pop culture in the decades since its publication.

HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

Louisa May Alcott shares the innocence of girlhood in this classic coming of age story about four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.

In picturesque nineteenth-century New England, tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, fragile Beth, and romantic Amy are responsible for keeping a home while their father is off to war. At the same time, they must come to terms with their individual personalities—and make the transition from girlhood to womanhood. It can all be quite a challenge. But the March sisters, however different, are nurtured by their wise and beloved Marmee, bound by their love for each other and the feminine strength they share. Readers of all ages have fallen instantly in love with these Little Women. Their story transcends time—making this novel endure as a classic piece of American literature that has captivated generations of readers with their charm, innocence, and wistful insights.

This Signet Classics edition contains Little Women in its entirety, including Parts I and II.

With an Introduction by Regina Barecca
and an Afterword by Susan Straight

The Architecture of Happiness

Alain De Botton

★★★★★

2006

One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings and streets that surround us. And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent.The Architecture of Happinessstarts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and it argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential. Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, this book has at its center the large and naive question: What is a beautiful building? It is a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture that aims to change the way we think about our homes, our streets and ourselves. From the Hardcover edition.

Postcolonial Love Poem

Natalie Diaz

★★★★★

2020-03-03

WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY

FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY

Natalie Diaz’s highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award

Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.

Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: “I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope—in it, a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz

★★★★★

2008-09-04

#11 in the New York Times '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'

Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukú - the curse that has haunted his family for generations. With dazzling energy and insight Díaz immerses us in the tumultuous lives of Oscar; his runaway sister Lola; their beautiful mother Belicia; and in the family's uproarious journey from the Dominican Republic to the US and back. Rendered with uncommon warmth and humour, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a literary triumph, that confirms Junot Díaz as one of the most exciting writers of our time.