Washoe County Library System

A British stockbroker abandons his wife and career to pursue a simple life as an artist in Tahiti. Charles Strickland rebels against his life as a London stockbroker and decides to abandon civilization and his family to pursue a career as a painter in the South Pacific. Inspired by the life of the French painter, Paul Gauguin, Maugham portrays a 19th century gentleman who abandons his profession and family to pursue his art in Paris. Through this...

From the mid-1650s through the 1660s, Henry Morgan, a pirate and outlaw of legendary viciousness, ruled the Spanish Main. He ravaged the coasts of Cuba and America, striking terror wherever he went. Morgan was obsessive. He had two driving ambitions: to possess the beautiful woman called La Santa Roja and to conquer Panama, the “cup of gold.” Cup of Gold is a lush, lyrical swashbuckling pirate fantasy, and sure to add new dimensions to readers’...

Colored by poverty and horrifying brutality, Gorky's childhood equipped him to understand - in a way denied to a Tolstoy or a Turgenev - the life of the ordinary Russian. This volume of an autobiographical trilogy, was in part an act of exorcism. It describes a life begun in the raw, remembered with charm and poignancy and without bitterness.

First published in 1924, Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Cancion Desesperada remains among Neruda's most popular work. Daringly metaphorical, these poems are based upon his own private associations. Their sensuous use of nature symbolism to celebrate love and to express grief has not been surpassed in the literature of our century. This edition offers the original Spanish text, with masterly translations by W.S. Merwin of facing pages.

Collects all of the stories the author wanted to preserve, providing a rich view of his prolific talent, wide-ranging views, and engaging style

"These thirty short stories show an acknowledged master of the genre at the peak of his power. Most are set in the colonies at a time when the Empire was still assured, in a world in which men and women were caught between their unfamiliar surroundings. In this languid life, Maugham shows how a tiny spark of stray emotion acts as the catalyst to human tragedy. In subtle contrast, the stories set in an English landscape provide more familiar territory...