Melville House: 350 books

"What has cast such a shadow upon you?" "The Negro." With its intense mix of mystery, adventure, and a surprise ending, Benito Cereno at first seems merely a provocative example from the genre Herman Melville created with his early best-selling novels of the sea. However,...

"I prefer not to," he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared. Academics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around the world—even those daunted by Moby-Dick—*Bartleby the Scrivener *is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever....

A stunning new translation of a neglected masterpiece by one of history’s most celebrated writers.   Ten years before Baudelaire published his masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil, the great poet penned the only prose fiction of his career: La Fanfarlo. The novella describes the torrid real-life affair...

This is the book that led to Hans Fallada’s downfall with the Nazis. The story of a young couple struggling to survive the German economic collapse was a worldwide sensation and was made into an acclaimed Hollywood movie produced by Jews, leading Hitler to ban Fallada’s work from being translated. Nonetheless,...

The characteristic themes of Cather’s mature work are already present in her debut novella, an evocation of a tragic love triangle.   Bartley Alexander, renowned engineer of bridges, is a man with a past who “looked as a tamer of rivers ought to look.” Discovered by his mentor “sowing wild...

From the master of Victorian tragedy, the surprisingly comic adventures of a man caught between romance and religion.   When young Mr. Stockdale arrives in a small village to fill in for the Methodist minister, he finds himself pining for his comely new landlady. But she leads a mysterious life,...

Written in an encrypted notebook while incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum and discovered after his death, The Drinker may be Hans Fallada’s most breathtaking piece of craftsmanship. It is an intense yet absorbing study of the descent into drunkenness by an intelligent man who fears he’s lost...

A classic work of literature by “the greatest author ever produced in Latin America.” (Susan Sontag)   Brilliant physician Simão Bacamarte sacrifices a prestigious career to return home and dedicate himself to the budding field of psychology. Bacamarte opens the first asylum in Brazil hoping...

Overlooked by critics on its initial release in 2006, this erotically charged mystery has nonetheless continued to develop such a following among booksellers that Melville House has decided to re-release it in a stunning new package. As for the story that's earning such loyalty: it's a whip-smart...

“The best autobiography ever written by an actor. An astonishing work.” —Chicago Tribune Chaplin’s heartfelt and hilarious autobiography tells the story of his childhood, the challenge of identifying and perfecting his talent, his subsequent film career and worldwide celebrity. In this,...

Ivan Petrovich Belkin left behind a great number of manuscripts.... Most of them, as Ivan Petrovich told me, were true stories heard from various people. First published anonymously in 1830, Alexander Pushkin’s Tales of Belkin contains his first prose works. It is comprised of an introductory...

"I am acting badly," thought Yevgeny, "But what's one to do? Anyhow it is not for long." Leo Tolstoy is known for epic novels that brilliantly dissect society, but the novella The Devil may be the most personally revealing—and startling—fiction he ever wrote. He thought...

Perhaps the most anticipated publication in American history, this is the full text, Volumes 1 and 2, of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. It is THE REPORT AND NOTHING BUT THE REPORT, in a beautifully typeset edition, with full searchability in ebook formats. It is, word for word, presented...

Their friend Marcel Proust had killed himself after the fall in diamond shares, a collapse that annihilated a part of his fortune. This is the first-ever translation into English of this startling tour-de-force by one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. The Lemoine Affair...