The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Never growing beyond two feet and eight inches, Mercy Lavinia "Vinnie" Bump spent much of her life in seclusion. However, when she impressed legendary showman P.T. Barnum, she suddenly became the world's most unlikely celebrity. In this fictional autobiography, Vinnie recounts her life, her travels with Barnum, and her wedding to co-worker and fellow tiny superstar, General Tom Thumb.

Tappan gazed down upon the newly-born little burro with something of pity and consternation. It was not a vigorous offspring of the redoubtable Jennie, champion of all the numberless burros he had driven in his desert prospecting years. He could not leave it there to die. Surely it was not strong enough to follow its mother. And to kill it was beyond him.

Skilled assassin Will Robie is asked by the U.S. government to track down fellow assassin Jessica Reel, who has gone rogue, but during his pursuit of Reel, Robie realizes that her betrayal may be concealing a larger threat that could impact the whole world.

In the days of the frontier West, it was not unusual for desperadoes and fugitives from justice to seemingly disappear from the face of the earth. Shadow on the Trail by Zane Grey, one of the bestselling authors of all-time, is the story of one such man who returned to reestablish himself in a law-abiding society. In Texas, young bank robber Wade Holden, once the toughest, fastest triggerman in the notorious Simm Bell gang, makes a promise to his...

Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness. Like the protagonists of most of Bellow's novels—Dangling Man, The Victim, Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King,...

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long...

In the not-too-distant future during the depths of America's second Great Depression, a highly-addictive designer drug offers its users eternal youth. But few realize the drug's true danger, and fewer still know the dirty secret of its crucial ingredient.

Two decades after the Civil War, first-generation Irish-American Zachary O'Hara, son of a legendary Marine and a force of a man in his own right, finds himself playing a critical role as the very existence of the Marine Corps is being decided. If he can help persuade the Secretary of the Navy that the Marines will be crucial to America's security in years to come -- all the while hefting a heavy, secret weight in his heart -- he'll save the Corps...

Sam Capra must commit an impossible assassination--or he will lose the only person in the world who matters to him . . . Sam Capra has one reason to live: to rescue his baby son from the people who abducted him. An ex-CIA agent, Sam now owns bars around the world as cover for his real mission working undercover for a secret network as mysterious as it is powerful, while using his skills to find his child. Now the kidnappers have offered a deadly...