Pines and Plains Libraries

These writings create an unforgettable portrait of life in wartime that continues to resonate with truth and humanity.

"A venerable tiger, old and toothless now, looks back over his life from cubhood and early days roaming wild in the Indian jungle. Trapped into a miserable circus career as 'Raja the magnificent', he is then sold into films (co-starring with a beefy Tarzan in a leopard skin) until, finding the human world too brutish and bewildering, he makes a dramatic bid for freedom. R. K. Narayan's story combines Hindu mysticism with ripe Malgudi comedy, viewing...

Presents a selection of critical writings, short fiction, and poetry by American author Edgar Allan Poe, including the title story in which a visitor to a gloomy mansion finds a childhood friend dying under the spell of a family curse.

First published in 1873, The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America-an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation's peacetime optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naivete of their own time in a work which endures...

For the bicentennial of its first publication, Mary Shelley's original 1818 text, introduced by National Book Critics Circle award-winner Charlotte Gordon. 2018 marks the bicentennial of Mary Shelley's seminal novel. For the first time, Penguin Classics will publish the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically-charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition...