Collection: Shop All

Thoroughly revised and expanded for a new generation of readers, this classic guide to enjoying literature to its fullest--a lively, enlightening, and entertaining introduction to a diverse range of writing and literary devices that enrich these works, including symbols, themes, and contexts--teaches you how to make your everyday reading experience richer and more rewarding.

While books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings beneath the surface. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the practiced analytical eye--and the literary codes--of a college professor.

What does it mean when a protagonist is traveling along a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he's drenched in a sudden rain shower? Thomas C. Foster provides answers to these questions as he explores every aspect of fiction, from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form. Offering a broad overview of literature--a world where a road leads to a quest, a shared meal may signify a communion, and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower--he shows us how to make our reading experience more intellectually satisfying and fun.

The world, and curricula, have changed. This third edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect those changes, and features new chapters, a new preface and epilogue, as well as fresh teaching points Foster has developed over the past decade. Foster updates the books he discusses to include more diverse, inclusive, and modern works, such as Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give; Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven; Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere; Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X; Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox and Boy, Snow, Bird; Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street; Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God; Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet; Madeline Miller's Circe; Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls; and Tahereh Mafi's A Very Large Expanse of Sea.

Based on the hit animated series and best-selling Hasbro toy, each of the 10 stories in this collection is perfect for reading aloud in just 5 minutes!

In this collection of ten adorable stories, join Pinkie Pie as she remembers the adventures she had with her best friends in Equestria in this scrapbook she made for the royal baby Princess Flurry Heart! With each story timed to be a five-minute read-aloud, this storybook makes anytime the perfect time for pony fun!

This collection has over 192 pages of beautiful illustrations and a padded cover.

Emily Henry meets Fleabag...and The Bachelor! An irresistibly sharp and sexy dramedy about a cynical romance novelist who goes on a reality show to revive her career, only to discover that while she may have just met the love of her life, the producers have turned her into the show's villain.

"The perfect beach read...a real page-turner. Don't be surprised if you finish it in one day!"--In Touch Magazine

"Fun and frothy... endlessly entertaining."--Glamour

Good villains make good TV.

Romance novelist Jacqueline Matthis's big career has gone bust and she's ditched the bright lights of New York City for her more affordable South Carolina hometown. Desperate, Jac dreams up a comeback plan--she is going to be a contestant on the 1, the most obsessively watched reality dating show in the world.

After all Jac is a romance writer--she knows how to pull off a meet-cute and create a spicy plotline.

On set, Jac quickly establishes herself as a front-runner for bachelor Marcus's heart, but she's shocked to discover who's actually pulling the strings. How was she to know that Henry Foster, her last one-night stand before the show, was actually a longtime producer on the 1? Henry is just as horrified...but they can't seem to keep their hands off each other.

As Jac plays the game and the show unfurls, she slowly discovers that she's getting the villain edit. They say there's no such thing as bad publicity, but as Jac's secret plan begins crumbling around her, she's not so sure. What happens if Marcus chooses her? Worse, what happens if her affair with Henry comes to light? What if, in trying to save her career, Jac has ruined her life?

Heartbreaking, smart, and sexy, this novel is for anyone who has ever secretly rooted for--or felt like--the villain.

"THE VILLAIN EDIT is perfect for people who, like me, love mess. I devoured it in one sitting and was left with a total book hangover--it's the ideal combination of propulsive psychological thrill and delicious romantic tension."--Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six

What if you got to do everything in your life --twice? The heart of Mitch Albom's newest novel is a stunning love story that dares to explore how our unchecked desires might mean losing what we've had all along.

When he is eight years old, Alfie Logan discovers the magical ability to get a second chance at everything. He can undo any moment and live it again. The one catch: he must accept the consequences of his second try--for better or worse.

He grows up correcting his mistakes and saving himself from adolescent embarrassments. He even takes foolishly dangerous risks, just to see what it's like to come close to death, before tapping back to safety.

Eventually, Alfie turns his gift to his love life, studying his crushes and going back to make himself more appealing. In time, he falls deeply in love with Gianna, the woman he believes is the one. He seems to find contentment.

But as the years pass, Alfie's eye begins to wander. Which is when he learns a lone caveat to his power: once he undoes a love, that person can never fall in love with him again. Knowing if he gives into to temptation, he will risk losing what he has with Gianna, Alfie makes a choice that changes his life forever.

The book begins many years later, after an ailing Alfie is arrested for allegedly cheating and winning millions at a casino roulette wheel. As a curious detective interrogates him, he slowly uncovers Alfie's incredible story, and its most unlikely conclusion.

In Twice, America's favorite storyteller, Mitch Albom, is at the top of his powers. A love story that is enchanting, probing, and clairvoyant in matters of the heart, Twice will make you think, weep, and overflow with love from beginning to end.

"Sex at Dawn challenges conventional wisdom about sex in a big way. By examining the prehistoric origins of human sexual behavior the authors are able to expose the fallacies and weaknesses of standard theories proposed by most experts. This is a provocative, entertaining, and pioneering book. I learned a lot from it and recommend it highly." -- Andrew Weil, M.D.

"Sex at Dawn irrefutably shows that what is obvious--that human beings, both male and female, are lustful--is true, and has always been so.... The more dubious its evidentiary basis and lack of connection with current reality, the more ardently the scientific inevitability of monogamy is maintained--even as it falls away around us." -- Stanton Peele, Ph.D.

A controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you (think you) know about sex, monogamy, marriage, and family. In the words of Steve Taylor (The Fall, Waking From Sleep), Sex at Dawn is "a wonderfully provocative and well-written book which completely re-evaluates human sexual behavior and gets to the root of many of our social and psychological ills."

'Tender and gallant...Beautiful and romantic.' Ashley Herring Blake

To win her heart, she'll have to fight...

Oxfordshire 1362

When Lily Barden discovers her best friend Johanna's hand in marriage is being awarded as the main prize at a tournament, she is determined to stop it. Disguised as a knight, she infiltrates the contest, preparing to fight for Jo's hand. But her conduct ruffles feathers, and when a dangerous incident escalates out of Lily's control, Jo must help her escape.

Finding safety with a local brewster, Lily and Jo soon settle into their new freedom, and amongst blackberry bushes and lakeside walks an unexpected relationship blossoms. But when Jo's past catches up with her and Lily's reckless behaviour threatens their newfound happiness, both women realise that choices must always come at a cost. The question they need to ask is if the cost is worth the price of love...

Perfect for fans of Freya Marske, Alexis Hall and Casey McQuiston

'Heartbreakingly tender' Cat Sebastian

'A delightful friends-to-lovers slow burn romance' M.N. Bennet

Readers are LOVING All the Painted Stars

'Amazing' NetGalley reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'I swooned' NetGalley reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'I'd really recommend this book' NetGalley reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Contented Little Baby Book, based on Gina Ford's personal experience of caring for over 300 babies, was first published in 1999. It quickly established Gina as an influential new authority on baby and childcare issues and has remained one of the bestselling parenting books in the UK for almost 20 years.

This completely revised edition of The New Contented Little Baby Book contains the most up-to-date advice available to parents. Using the feedback from numerous readers and website members, Gina has been able to develop and elaborate on the information in her first book, while clearly setting out her philosophy on simple feeding and sleeping routines.

By creating routines that match a growing baby's innate natural rhythms, Gina prevents the hunger, overtiredness and colic that can lead to excessive crying. Babies who are settled into Gina's gentle routines are happy and contented because their needs for food and sleep are appropriately met and they should sleep for their longest spell at night from an early age.

With detailed, prescriptive information on everything parents need to know, this book includes chapters on:

- Preparation for the birth
- How the routines evolved and the benefits of following a routine
- Milk feeding in the first year
- Understanding your baby's sleep
- Establishing a routine
- Introducing solid food in line with government and World Health Authority guidelines
- Common problems in the first year.

Whether you are expecting your first child, or are experiencing difficulties with an older baby, this comprehensive guide contains all the expert guidance you need to help your baby feed and sleep well.

THE INSTANT #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

From award-winning writer Nigel Slater, comes a new and exquisitely written collection of notes, memoir, stories and small moments of joy.

'Nigel Slater's prose is the rarest delicacy of all: exquisite yet effortless, filled with heart, tenderness, yearning and humour' ELIZABETH DAY

For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman's hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei.

These are the small moments, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. Miso soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight. He gives short stories of feasts such as a mango eaten in monsoon rain or a dish of restorative macaroni cheese and homes in on the scent of freshly picked sweet peas and the sound of water breathing at night in Japan.

This funny and sharply observed collection of the good bits of life, often things that pass many of us by, is utter joy from beginning to end.

'I loved this. It is a secular book of hours - thoughts and pleasures beautifully cadenced and generously placed' Edmund de Waal

'Nigel Slater has a magical capacity to find beauty in the smallest moments. A nourishing, sustaining book' Olivia Laing

'His evocative, uplifting observations are a balm for life: a prose-poem for eaters and a spiritual companion for thoughtful cooks. A true and enduring joy' Nigella Lawson

'You can't always feel buoyant and grateful but noticing - and getting pleasure from - the seemingly insignificant is a good way to live. As he says, feel the "small moments of joy"' Diana Henry

In this work, Peggy Klaus, a renowned communication expert, introduces a subtle and effective way of selling your best asset - yourself - without turning off those you're trying to impress.

Have pride in history. A rich and sweeping photographic history of the Queer Liberation Movement, from the creators and curators of the massively popular Instagram account LGBT History.

"If you think the fight for justice and equality only began in the streets outside Stonewall, with brave patrons of a bar fighting back, you need to read We Are Everywhere right now."--Anderson Cooper

Through the lenses of protest, power, and pride, We Are Everywhere is an essential and empowering introduction to the history of the fight for queer liberation. Combining exhaustively researched narrative with meticulously curated photographs, the book traces queer activism from its roots in late-nineteenth-century Europe--long before the pivotal Stonewall Riots of 1969--to the gender warriors leading the charge today.

Featuring more than 300 images from more than seventy photographers and twenty archives, this inclusive and intersectional book enables us to truly see queer history unlike anything before, with glimpses of activism in the decades preceding and following Stonewall, family life, marches, protests, celebrations, mourning, and Pride. By challenging many of the assumptions that dominate mainstream LGBTQ+ history, We Are Everywhere shows readers how they can--and must--honor the queer past in order to shape our liberated future.

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy's southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers--slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers--who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia.

Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Innocents, a dark, enthralling novel about love and its limitations, the corruption of power and the power of corruption.

In an isolated outport on Newfoundland's northern coastline, Abe Strapp is about to marry the daughter of a rival merchant to cement his hold on the shore when the Widow Caines arrives to throw the wedding and Abe's plans into chaos.

That ruthless act of sabotage is the opening salvo in a battle between the man and woman who own Mockbeggar's largest mercantile firms, each fighting for the scarce resources of the north Atlantic fishery, each seeking a measure of revenge on the person they despise most in the world. As their unshakeable animosity spirals further each year into vendettas and violence, the community is increasingly divided and even the innocents in Mockbeggar find themselves forced to take sides, with devastating consequences.

Through merciless seasons of uncertainty and want, through predatory storms and pandemics and marauding privateers, it is the human heart that reveals itself to be the most formidable and unpredictable adversary for each person drawn, inevitably and helplessly, into that endless feud.

Compulsively readable and uncompromising, The Adversary is a pitch-perfect evocation of a lost time, and a shadowed mirror to our modern politics of grievance and retribution. It is Michael Crummey's finest novel to date.

One of Electric Literature's Best Nonfiction Books of 2024. One of them.'s Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2024. A finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction.

"This book is brutal and brutally honest, but still perversely addictive because Brontez Purnell is a performer in the truest sense. Reading Ten Bridges I've Burnt, I felt tucked-in with him, along for the intimate ride, and paused only once to write down a part I'd been looking for my whole life." --Miranda July, author of All Fours

From the beloved author of 100 Boyfriends, a wrenching, sexy, and exhilaratingly energetic memoir in verse.

In Ten Bridges I've Burnt, Brontez Purnell--the bard of the underloved and overlooked--turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within the stormiest of crises. Here, in his first collection of genre-defying verse, Purnell reflects on his peripatetic life, whose ups and downs have nothing on the turmoil within. "The most high-risk homosexual behavior I engage in," Purnell writes, "is simply existing."

The thirty-eight autobiographical pieces pulsing in Ten Bridges I've Burnt find Purnell at his no-holds-barred best. He remembers a vicious brawl he participated in at a poetry conference and reckons with packaging his trauma for TV writers' rooms; wrestles with the curses, and gifts, passed down from generations of family members; and chronicles, with breathless verve, a list of hell-raising misadventures and sexcapades. Through it all, he muses on everything from love and loneliness to capitalism and Blackness to jogging and the ethics of art, always with unpredictable clarity and movement.

With the same balance of wit and wisdom that made 100 Boyfriends a sensation, Purnell unleashes another collection of boundary-pushing writing with Ten Bridges I've Burnt, a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.

"[A] thorough success . . . A dazzling romp." --Steven Poole, The Guardian

"Historical fiction doesn't get much better than this." --George Cochrane, The Telegraph (5/5 stars)

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2025

A pulse-quickening murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence by the renowned author of HHhH.

As dawn breaks over the city of Florence on New Year's Day 1557, Jacopo da Pontormo is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him are the frescoes he labored over for more than a decade--masterpieces all, rivaling the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. When guards search his quarters, they find an obscene painting of Venus and Cupid--with the face of Venus replaced by that of Maria de' Medici, the Duke of Florence's oldest daughter. The city erupts in chaos.

Who could have committed these crimes: murder and lèse-majesté? Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation. Letters start to fly back and forth--between Maria and her aunt Catherine de' Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and the scheming Piero Strozzi; and between Vasari and Michelangelo--carrying news of political plots and speculations about the identity of Pontormo's killer. The truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot center of European art and intrigue.

Bursting with characters and historical color, Laurent Binet's Perspective(s) is a whodunit like no other--a labyrinthine murder mystery that shows us Renaissance Florence as we've never seen it before. This is a dark, dazzling, unforgettable read.