One morning, a hedgehog wakes up to find a mysterious ball of wool caught in his prickles. Fascinated, all of the forest animals come to his house and the hedgehog happily knits something for each of his visitors, woolen garments that suddenly and magically turn into the very thing each animal loves most. But when a fellow animal is in trouble and the ball of wool has reached its end, the rest of the animals need to come to the hedgehog's aid. This...

"The acclaimed author of A Venetian Affair now gives us the remarkable story of Hemingway's love affair with both the city of Venice and the muse he found there--a vivacious 18-year-old who inspired the man thirty years her senior to complete his great final work. In the fall of 1948 Hemingway and his fourth wife traveled for the first time to Venice, which Hemingway called "absolutely god-damned wonderful." He was a year shy of his fiftieth birthday...

Describes how the trailblazing, post-war gay literary figures, including Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Allen Ginsberg, paved the way for newer generations, including Armistead Maupin, Edmund White, and Edward Albee.

"Including significant previously uncollected material, My Generation is the definitive gathering of the fruits of this beloved writer's five decades of public life. Here is the William Styron unafraid to peer into the darkest corners of the 20th century or to take on the complex racial legacy of the United States. But here too is Styron writing about his daily walk with his dog, musing on the Modern Library's "100 Greatest Books," and offering personal...

"Cross Words refers to cultural hybrids, trans-cultural alliances, and associations. This fascinating compendium documents--in essays, conversations, and Socratic raps--the vital work poets perform when they write across borders. Anne Waldman is the author of more than forty collections of poetry, the editor of numerous anthologies, and, for The Iovis Trilogy, the winner of the Shelley Memorial Award and the USA PEN Center Award for Poetry. She is...

Presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

"The idea of 'the great American novel' continues to thrive almost as vigorously as in its nineteenth-century heyday, defying 150 years of attempts to dismiss it as amateurish or obsolete. In this landmark book, the first in many years to take in the whole sweep of national fiction, Lawrence Buell reanimates this supposedly antiquated idea, demonstrating that its history is a key to the dynamics of national literature and national identity itself....

"Science fiction Grand Master Anne McCaffrey and her work, particularly her Dragonriders of Pern series, are beloved by generations of readers. She was one of the first science fiction writers to appear on the New York Times bestseller list, the first woman to win the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and an inductee to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Her death in November 2011 was met with an outpouring of grief and memories from those whose lives her stories...