Mark Twain’s classic satirical tale of time travel and Arthurian legend Hank Morgan is a supervisor at a firearms factory in Hartford, Connecticut. Following a violent argument with a man named Hercules, Hank is surprised to find himself under an oak tree, staring up at a man on horseback in full armor. The year is 528, and Hank has somehow landed in King Arthur’s Court in Camelot. Worse still, Hank is ridiculed by the boorish knights, brought in front of the Round Table, and sentenced to burn at the stake. Will Hank die at the hands of the Knights of the Round Table, or can his Yankee ingenuity save his hide?   Mark Twain’s seminal satire sends up the South’s ridiculous preoccupation with chivalry, the Catholic Church, fear of science and progress, and dozens of other behaviors and beliefs. Credited as a foundational work of the time travel subgenre of science fiction, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is also a timeless comic classic.   This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

A collection of Christmas stories written by African-American journalists, activists, and writers from the late 19th century to the modern civil rights movement.Back in print for the first time in over a decade, this landmark collection features writings from well-known black writers, activists, and visionaries such as Pauline Hopkins, Langston Hughes, and John Henrik Clarke along with literary gems from rediscovered writers. Originally published in African American newspapers, periodicals, and journals between 1880 and 1953, these enchanting Christmas tales are part of the black literary tradition that flourished after the Civil War. Edited and assembled by esteemed historian Dr. Bettye Collier-Thomas, the short stories and poems in this collection reflect the Christmas experiences of everyday African Americans and explore familial and romantic love, faith, and more serious topics such as racism, violence, poverty, and racial identity. Featuring the best stories and poems from previous editions along with new material including “The Sermon in the Cradle” by W. E. B. Du Bois, A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories celebrates a rich storytelling tradition and will be cherished by readers for years to come.

Strangers in Port-au-Prince are united in the corruption, fear, and revolt of Duvalier-era Haiti in “the most interesting novel of [Greene’s] career” (The Nation).   Haiti, under the rule of Papa Doc and his menacing paramilitary, the Tontons Macoute, has long been abandoned by tourists. Now it is home to corrupt capitalists, foreign ambassadors and their lonely wives—and a small group of enterprising strangers rocking into port on the Dutch cargo ship, Medea: a well-meaning pair of Americans claiming to bring vegetarianism to the natives; a former jungle fighter in World War II Burma and current confidence man; and an English hotelier returning home to the Trianon, an unsalable shell of an establishment on the hills above the capital. Each is embroiled in a charade. But when they’re unsuspectingly bound together in this nightmare republic of squalid poverty, torrid love affairs, and impending violence, their masks will be stripped away.   “While Mr. Greene . . . specialized in chronicling the moral and political murkiness he encountered in the third world . . . nowhere did he produce a more topical or damning work of fiction than [in The Comedians]” (The New York Times). Banned in Haiti, and condemned by Papa Doc Duvalier, it was adapted by Greene into a 1967 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

The debut novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author that is both a tragic love story and a searing group portrait of hapless American expatriates drinking, dancing, and chasing their dreams in postwar Europe.“An absorbingly beautiful and tenderly absurd, heart-breaking narrative ... It is a truly gripping story.” —The New York Times Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, exerted a lasting influence on fiction in English through his economical prose style that conceals more than it reveals. His first novel, published in 1926, is narrated by world-weary journalist Jake Barnes, who is burdened by a wound acquired in World War I and by his utterly hopeless love for the flamboyantly decadent Lady Brett Ashley. The Sun Also Rises tracks the Lost Generation of the 1920s from the nightclubs of Paris to the bullfighting arenas of Spain.

A wealthy painter falls in love with an illiterate Pennsylvania farm girl in this novel from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Good Earth.  At the turn of the century, an upper-class painter from Philadelphia goes searching for inspiration. He finds his muse on a farm—the farmer’s beautiful and humble daughter. His portrait of her becomes one of his most inspired works, but his passion for the illiterate girl doesn’t stop at the easel: He returns to marry her and settle down to country life—a journey that means bridging enormous gaps between their cultures, breaking from his parents, and creating tension between their friends. Pearl S. Buck compassionately imagines both sides of the complex marriage, and in addition, creates a wonderfully vivid picture of America leading up to the Second World War. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.

This award-winning satire shares a day in the life of a nineteen-year-old U.S. soldier home on leave from the Iraq War to take part in an NFL halftime show.A ferocious firefight with Iraqi insurgents at “the battle of Al-Ansakar Canal”—three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. For the past two weeks, the Bush administration has sent them on a media-intensive nationwide Victory Tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. Now, on this chilly and rainy Thanksgiving, the Bravos are guests of America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, slated to be part of the halftime show alongside the superstar pop group Destiny’s Child.Among the Bravos is the Silver Star–winning hero of Al-Ansakar Canal, Specialist William Lynn, a nineteen-year-old Texas native. Amid clamoring patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and Support Our Troops bumper stickers on their cars, the Bravos are thrust into the company of the Cowboys’ hard-nosed businessman/owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a luscious born-again Cowboys cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized pro players eager for a vicarious taste of war. Among these faces Billy sees those of his family—his worried sisters and broken father—and Shroom, the philosophical sergeant who opened Billy’s mind and died in his arms at Al-Ansakar.Over the course of this day, Billy will begin to understand difficult truths about himself, his country, his struggling family, and his brothers-in-arms—soldiers both dead and alive. In the final few hours before returning to Iraq, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision, and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years . . . Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a devastating portrait of our time, a searing and powerful novel that cements Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation.Now a major motion picture directed by Ang LeePraise for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime WalkFinalist for the National Book AwardWinner, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction Winner, Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction“Brilliantly done . . . grand, intimate, and joyous.” —New York Times Book Review“The Catch-22 of the Iraq War.” —Karl Marlantes