Originally published pseudonymously in 1893, "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" follows the tragic tale of Maggie and her life in the harsh streets and tenements of the New York City Bowery district. Initially rejected by publishers for being viewed as too brutal and accurate in its descriptions of poverty and female sexuality, Stephen Crane published the work at his own expense. Following the success of Crane's novel "The Red Badge of Courage," this...

Notes from the Underground is Fyodor Dostoevsky's ninth novel, and considered to be one of the first examples of the existential novel. In this radically inventive work, an alienated former minor administrator in nineteenth-century Russia has broken away from society and withdrawn into an underground identity. With its piercing insight into political, social, and moral issues, this classic is one of the most provocative work of literature ever written. In...

The first installment in this exciting series followed Promise, Squeeze, and Show as they robbed, whored, and fought their way to adulthood on the mean streets of Brooklyn. Now, it's a year later. Promise is trying to get out of the gangsta life, but the streets have a powerful call. Squeeze and Show are making out like bandits with their hot new nightclub, the Brooklyn Café. Grindin' in the streets is no longer an option, but trouble still follows...

Tilo Adams thought she had finished with the Mendoza family when she left most of its members twitching on their living room floor. As an FBI agent, violence is nothing new to her, but this time it's murder, and the intended victim is her former lover, Victoria Mendoza. Now she's running from the memories that threaten to destroy her sanity. She has no idea of the danger surrounding her. Left for dead, Victoria is looking for her wayward lover,...

In the last year of the twentieth century, Odile is a lovely twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal, and a hopeless dreamer. Jack is a twenty-five-year-old shirker who's most happy capturing the endless noises of the city on his out-of-date tape recorder. Together they decide to start their own art movement, in defiance of a contemporary culture made dull by both the tedious and the obvious. Set just before the end of one world and...

Gabriella Guerrero has been independent ever since she was a little kid doing her best to care for her drug-addicted single mom. Her world changes when her mother dies, and her aunt takes her in. She has to learn everything all over again, especially how to trust her Aunt Isabel. She has to learn how to live with her aunt and her three cousins in the little house in East Los Angeles. They don't have much except for each other. Gabi does more than...

"An immensely gifted writer and magical prose stylist." -Michiko Kakutani, New York Times New York Times bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon has transported readers to wonderful places: to New York City during the Golden Age of comic books (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay); to an imaginary Jewish homeland in Sitka, Alaska (The Yiddish Policemen's Union); to discover The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Now he takes us...

In the Greenwich Village of 1964, eleven-year-old Fin moves in with his glamorous, careless older sister, and it's hard to tell who's raising whom.

The Monster and Other Stories (1899) is a collection of short fiction by American writer Stephen Crane. "The Monster," a novella, was originally published in 1898 in Harper's Magazine and has since been recognized as one of Crane's most important works, a story which critiques the racism prevalent in American society. In 1899, it was published alongside "The Blue Hotel" and "His New Mittens" in The Monster and Other Stories, which was the last work...

Midst of My Confusion tells the story of a violent, defiant, and survivalist Chicano whose reality in the barrio is intensely brutal. The main character is Joaquin, a young vato who has lived his entire life in the barrio of his small town. But the peace of a small town is short-lived. Fights occuring everywhere, so Joaquin and friends he's grown up with all bond together for protection, a gang. His destiny changes during a business trip to Mexico...