Melville House: 350 books

A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "Audaciously well written...the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it." Publishers Weekly raved that "with near-universal appeal . . . Seay’s...

The novel that stunned—and scandalized—Europe comes to America Wolf, a low-rent private detective, roams London’s gloomy, grimy streets, haunted by dark visions of a future that could have been—and a dangerous present populated by British Fascists and Nazis escaping Germany. Shomer,...

Acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves) is back with a mesmerizing and hilarious tale of cats and murder ** ** For people who both love and hate cats comes the tale of Alec Charlesworth, a librarian who finds himself suddenly alone: he’s lost his job,...

**"Plainly the work of a forceful and ambitious writer... (Class) is like little else I’ve read in recent years.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times The breakout novel by Francesco Pacifico, one of Italy’s most acclaimed writers, hailed by Dana Spiotta as “brilliantly funny and...

The celebrated classic by a groundbreaking figure in African literature addresses a critical contemporary issue—the collision of Islamic African values and Western culture. Hailed by Chinua Achebe as one of the greatest African novels ever written, this long-unavailable classic tells the...

A masterful tale set in post-Soviet Kiev that's both darkly-funny and ominous... In the widely hailed prequel to Penguin Lost , aspiring writer Viktor Zolotaryov leads a down-and-out life in poverty-and-violence-wracked Kiev-he"s out of work and his only friend is a penguin, Misha, that he rescued...

Mary MacLane’s I Await the Devil’s Coming is a shocking, brave and intellectually challenging diary of a 19-year-old girl living in Butte, Montana in 1902. Written in potent, raw prose that propelled the author to celebrity upon publication, the book has become almost completely forgotten. In...

Part autobiography, part fiction, this early work by the author of The Master and Margarita shows a master at the dawn of his craft, and a nation divided by centuries of unequal progress. In 1916 a 25-year-old, newly qualified doctor named Mikhail Bulgakov was posted to the remote Russian...

**A riveting investigation of a beloved library caught in the crosshairs of real estate, power, and the people’s interests—by the reporter who broke the story  ** In a series of cover stories for The Nation magazine, journalist Scott Sherman uncovered the ways in which Wall Street logic almost...

*"No one writes like Segal — her glittering intelligence, her piercing wit, and her dazzling insights into manners and mores, are a profound pleasure. From first to last I loved this wise and irreverent novel." **—***Margot Livesey *"I always feel in her work such a sense...

Böll’s well-known opposition to fascism and war informs this moving story of a single day in the life of traumatized soldier Robert Faehmel, scion of a family of successful Cologne architects, as he struggles to return to ordinary life after the Second World War. An encounter with a war-time nemesis,...

Against all expectations Marcel Féron has made a “normal” life in a bucolic French suburb in the Ardennes. But on May 10, 1940, as Nazi tanks approach, this timid, happy man must abandon his home and confront the “Fate” that he has secretly awaited. Separated from his pregnant wife and young...

In Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy a 23–year–old person attempts to explain to himself the possible origins, ends, and cures of anger, worry, despair, obsession, and confusion, while concurrently experiencing those things in various contexts including a romantic relationship, a book of poetry, and the arbitrary nature of the universe.

The definitive short story collection by the Nobel Laureate and master of the form These diverse, psychologically rich, and morally profound stories explore the consequences of war on individuals and on an entire culture. The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll provides readers with the only...