Artisan: 415 books

  The legend of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie’s enduring creation, is at heart his greatest masterpiece, urging adults to reconnect with their lost childhood imaginations.   The classic exploits of Peter Pan, the boy who “would not grow up,” whose everlasting youth...

Moby Dick has become one of the most widely read and influential books ever written.    It reveals the astounding range, subtlety, artistry, and depth of thought of a true literary colossus, Herman Melville.   Published in hundreds of editions and translated...

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853) is among Herman Melville’s most important stories, and has been considered a precursor to Existentialist and Absurdist literature. Has there ever been a less desirable job title than scrivener?  They were employed by lawyers to transcribe...

“Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.” Ivan Turgenev gave his generation a literary legacy that dealt with the extraordinary moral complexities of his age. A novel...

“Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze...” Elinor Glyn began her literary career as a British fashion writer in 1898, and achieved notoriety in 1907 with Three Weeks - a steamy romance novel that was shocking for its time because it depicted an...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s brilliant short story, Wakefield, thrills the reader to the core, and forever established him as a master storyteller. The premise is strikingly brilliant and modern: a man who has lived for years with his wife suddenly walks out of his house, moves a short distance...

The Deerslayer is James Fenimore Cooper's masterpiece. A combination of romance, adventure, and morality, this classic novel of the frontier is an eloquent opening for Cooper's great wilderness tales, and an unforgettable introduction to the famous character who was said to embody the conscience of...

“When Catherine is about seventeen,” he said to himself, “Lavinia will try and persuade her that some young man with a moustache is in love with her. It will be quite untrue; no young man, with a moustache or without, will ever be in love with Catherine…” Washington Square is considered...

“When Catherine is about seventeen,” he said to himself, “Lavinia will try and persuade her that some young man with a moustache is in love with her. It will be quite untrue; no young man, with a moustache or without, will ever be in love with Catherine…” Washington Square is considered...

Turgenev’s novella King Lear of the Steppes published in 1870 is a creative adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear, set in the Russian countryside. Believing he has dreamed of his own impending death, a larger-than-life father makes a life-altering decision when he transfers...

One of the most fascinating and satisfying elements in Boccaccio’s art is his ability to tell a delightful story that is also an erudite and deeply human discussion of the value of communication. So it is with A Story of Ravenna. While the themes of chivalry and love in these works had long...

The Man of Property Indian Summer of a Forsyte In Chancery Awakening To Let Few writers have captured the living texture of life as well as John Galsworthy. The Forsyte Saga [Complete Series] is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and...

For lo! the Board with Cups and Spoons is crown’d, The Berries crackle, and the Mill turns round. On shining Altars of Japan They raise The silver Lamp; the fiery Spirits blaze. From silver Spouts the grateful Liquors...

The thrill of reading Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out is the feeling of looking into a whirlpool just as something utterly extraordinary and unexpected materializes for the first time.  It is so for all her novels. The language itself dazzles: vivid, evocative, poetic language,...