"On the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I: a hardcover edition of the classic tale of a young German soldier's harrowing experiences in the trenches, widely acclaimed as the greatest war novel of all time. When twenty-year-old Paul Baumer and his classmates enlist in the German army during World War I, they are full of youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught to believe in shatters under...

Young Werther bares his soul to readers in the form of alternately joyful and despairing letters about his unrequited love. His story marks the initial great achievement of what has since been termed "confessional" literature; Goethe, who based the story in part on his own unhappy love affair, acknowledged a sense of freedom upon completing the work. A sensitive exploration of the mind of a young artist, the tale addresses age-old questions -- the...

"'That night Stasia took an oath, swearing to learn the recipe by heart and destroy the paper. And when she was lying in her bed again, recalling the taste with all her senses, she was sure that this secret recipe could heal wounds, avert catastrophes, and bring people happiness. But she was wrong.' At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed...

Martha is the chef who fusses and obsesses over each dish before it leaves the kitchen. The demands of her job and her natural shyness keep her from meeting new people. When her sister suddenly dies, Martha adopts Lina, her eight-year-old niece, completely changing both lives. Martha gets unexpected help from Mario, Martha's hunky new sous chef, who is not only a whiz on the chopping block but knows sundry magic tricks and jokes to keep Lina's spirits...

Narrates the experiences and reactions of a respectable bank functionary after his abrupt arrest on an undisclosed charge. Kafka's final work was left unfinished at the time of his 1924 death, and the original 1925 and subsequent editions were edited according to the standards of the day. This edition endeavors to restore the text as closely as possible to the original manuscript. In addition to the text, this volume includes a bibliography and a...

An anthology of seven suspenseful stories in nineteenth-century settings.

An escape story and a love story told by one refugee to another, in a Portuguese interlude in the World War II flight of refugees from Europe. The narrator is a German who returned to see his wife and bring her out of Germany, but tragedy strikes the two.

"Cross of Iron" follows a platoon of retreating German soldiers on the post-Stalingrad Eastern Front in 1943, as they are overrun in a Soviet armored assault and trapped behind enemy lines. Sgt. Steiner is a bitter but resourceful vet whose only concern is for his men. Captain Stransky is a smug wealthy Prussian aristocrat who yearns to win the Iron Cross and will stop at nothing--short of actually exposing himself to combat--to get it. During an...

This first major novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Hermann Hesse incorporates a theme he returned to again and again in most of his works: the fundamental duality of existence. The youthful protagonist, Emil Sinclair, however, his older friend, Max Demian, manages to both clarify and complicate Sinclair's confusion about life's conflicting values. Recounted in engaging prose, rich in sympathy and imagination, this brilliant exploration of the polarities...