Melville House: 350 books

A darkly comic, satirical reference book about writers who never made it into the literary canon A signal event of literary scholarship, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure compiles the biographies of history’s most notable cases of a complete lack of literary success. As such,...

'The skin was smooth and bright as porcelain, but looked as if it would give to the touch. What manner of wood had he used? What tools to exact such detail? What paints, tints or stains to flush her with life?' So wonders the window dresser Colton Kemp when he sees the first mannequin of his new rival,...

About This Book It was his intention to trade a few sword-thrusts in some place or another, and get the business over with. A sparkling new translation tells the tale of a young libertine who finds his rapier wit matched by actual rapiers. In this autobiographical tale, a young...

ONE OF THE MOST BELOVED WORKS OF SCIENCE FICTION H.G. Wells' classic The Invisible Man is an artful combination of a psychological thriller and science fiction novel. A young scientist who discovers the secret of invisibility feels initial joy at his newfound freedoms and abilities, but quickly...

Winner of the 2013 Jan Michalski Prize Longlististed for the Man Asian Literary Prize A new novel by the master of Iranian letters that directly engages politics in Iran today   Ten years in the writing, this fearless novel—so powerful it’s banned in Iran—tells the stirring story of...

About This Book "Hate you!" Laevsky said quietly, breathing heavily. "I've hated you a long time!" This new translation of the literary masterpiece— which combines a beautiful romance with high suspense— is here presented for the first time as a stand-alone volume. One...

The bestselling story by a legendary female writer--a tale of love, slavery, and rebellion. When Prince Oroonoko's passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko's noble...

The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll’s classic masterpiece of nonsense verse, takes the reader on a wonderfully witty and inventive hunt for the ever-elusive Snark. The tantalizing mysteries of the poem are here perfectly matched in these brilliant new illustrations by artist Mahendra Singh,...

Volumes disappear and reappear on the shelves, but the ghosts of literature aren’t the only mysterious visitors in Roger Mifflin’s haunted bookshop.   Mifflin, who hawked books out of the back of his van in Christopher Morley’s beloved Parnassus on Wheels, has finally settled down with his...

Hailed by his famous contemporaries including Edith Wharton, H.G. Wells, Katherine Mansfield, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh, who called him a "genius," William Gerhardi is one of the twentieth century's forgotten masters, and his lovely comedy Futility one of the century's neglected masterpieces. It...

If you're up $16,000 at the casino and missing dinner with the woman you love, how do you find the strength to drive away? If you give up your career and your beautiful wife and find yourself drinking vodka and fixing cars for a living, is that necessarily a step down? In Hush Hush, Steven Barthelme...

A vicious and brilliant satire of human vanity from the author of the classic bestseller The Group Long out of print, Mary McCarthy's second novel is a bitingly funny satire set in the early years of the Cold War about a group of writers, editors, and intellectuals who retreat to rural New...

In a startling change of direction, cult favorite Tao Lin presents a dark and brooding tale of illicit love that is his most sophisticated and mesmerizing writing yet. Richard Yates is named after real-life writer Richard Yates, but it has nothing to do with him. Instead, it tracks the rise...

**“A moving story . . . powerful, celebratory, and loving.” —Laura Cardona, La Nación Set in the midst of Argentina's military dictatorship, a poignant and evocative debut novel about family, political violence, and the consequences of dissidence** As political violence escalates...