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Books published by publisher HarperPerennial Classics

  • The Confidence-Man

    Herman Melville

    eBook (HarperPerennial Classics, Sept. 16, 2014)
    In Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a group of steamboat passengers paddle to New Orleans on April Fool’s Day. As the Mississippi carries them down river, everyone is selling something: quack remedies; stock in a mining company about to fail; a fraudulent charity for widows and orphans. Set on the eve of the Civil War, as the frontier rapidly expands and Native Americans are driven to near-extinction, Melville’s narrative poses the question: “In which institution does one place one’s faith?”A satire on the works of Manifest Destiny, The Confidence-Man was Herman Melville’s last novel before he retired from writing.HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
  • Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie

    Ole Edvart Rolvaag

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Aug. 4, 1999)
    "The fullest, finest, and most powerful novel that has been written about pioneer life in America." — The NationOle Edvart Rølvaag's classic Norweigian-American immigration novel. Giants in the Earth follows a Norwegian pioneer family's struggles with the land and the elements of the Dakota Territory as they try to make a new life in America. The book is based partly on Rølvaag's personal experiences as a settler, and on the experiences of his wife’s family who had been immigrant homesteaders. The novel depicts snow storms, locusts, poverty, hunger, loneliness, homesickness, the difficulty of fitting into a new culture, and the estrangement of immigrant children who grow up in a new land.Giants in the Earth was turned into an opera by Douglas Moore and Arnold Sundgaard; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951.
  • The Monkey Wrench Gang

    Edward Abbey

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Dec. 12, 2006)
    Ex-Green Beret George Hayduke has returned from war to find his beloved southwestern desert threatened by industrial development. Joining with Bronx exile and feminist saboteur Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., Hayduke is ready to fight the power—taking on the strip miners, clear-cutters, and the highway, dam, and bridge builders who are threatening the natural habitat. The Monkey Wrench Gang is on the move—and peaceful coexistence be damned!
  • The Cartoon Guide to Physics

    Larry Gonick

    Paperback (HarperPerennial, Dec. 18, 1991)
    If you think a negative charge is something that shows up on your credit card bill -- if you imagine that Ohm's Law dictates how long to meditate -- if you believe that Newtonian mechanics will fix your car -- you need The Cartoon Guide to Physics to set you straight.You don't have to be a scientist to grasp these and many other complex ideas, because The Cartoon Guide to Physics explains them all: velocity, acceleration, explosions, electricity and magnetism, circuits -- even a taste of relativity theory -- and much more, in simple, clear, and, yes, funny illustrations. Physics will never be the same!
  • Bel Canto

    Ann Patchett

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, June 10, 2008)
    Now a major motion picture starring Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe.“Blissfully Romantic….A strange, terrific, spellcasting story.” — San Francisco Chronicle“Bel Canto…should be on the list of every literate music lover. The story is riveting, the participants breathe and feel and are alive, and throughout this elegantly-told novel, music pours forth so splendidly that the reader hears it and is overwhelmed by its beauty.” —Lloyd Moss, WXQR“Glorious.” —The New YorkerAnn Patchett’s award winning, New York Times bestselling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Patchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
  • Cheaper by the Dozen

    Frank B. Gilbreth, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, May 28, 2002)
    One of the best-loved American memoirs of an oversized family and the parents who held them together. What do you get when you put twelve lively kids together with a father—a famous efficiency expert—who believes families can run like factories, and a mother who is his partner in everything except discipline? You get a hilarious tale of growing up that has made generations of kids and adults alike laugh along with the Gilbreths in Cheaper by the Dozen. Translated into more than fifty-three languages and made into a classic film starring Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy, this memoir is a delightfully enduring story of family life at the turn of the 20th century.
  • The Yellow Wallpaper

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    language (HarperPerennial Classics, July 16, 2013)
    Through a series of journal entries, a woman records her thoughts and feelings over the course of a summer, shortly after giving birth to her child. Confined to her bedroom on the advice of her husband, a physician, “The Yellow Wallpaper” chronicles the woman’s increasing instability, as she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper covering the walls of her room.“The Yellow Wallpaper” is considered one of the earliest American feminist works of fiction and is unique for author Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s deft handling of the delicate subject of contemporary attitudes about women’s bodies, emotions, and mental health. The story is considered to be semi-autobiographical, and is based on Gilman’s own experiences with postpartum depression and rest cures.HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.
  • You Learn By Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

    Eleanor Roosevelt

    eBook (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, April 26, 2011)
    From one of the world’s most celebrated and admired public figures, a wise and intimate book on how to get the most of out life.Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each new thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the world’s best loved and most admired public figures, offers a wise and intimate guide on how to overcome fears, embrace challenges as opportunities, and cultivate civic pride: You Learn by Living. A crucial precursor to better-living guides like Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening or Robert Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, as well as political memoirs such as John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, the First Lady’s illuminating manual of personal exploration resonates with the timeless power to change lives.
  • Eveline: Short Story

    James Joyce

    eBook (HarperPerennial Classics, July 15, 2014)
    Eveline sits in her room thinking about the people she has lost—her mother and her brother. Her other brother is traveling for work and she is afraid that her alcoholic father will beat her with no one else to turn on. She plans to run away with a sailor with whom she has fallen in love, but will a promise made to her mother keep her at home?Critically acclaimed author James Joyce’s Dubliners is a collection of short stories depicting middle-class life in Dublin in the early twentieth century. First published in 1914, the stories draw on themes relevant to the time such as nationalism and Ireland’s national identity, and cement Joyce’s reputation for brutally honest and revealing depictions of everyday Irish life.HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
  • The Dead: Short Story

    James Joyce

    eBook (HarperPerennial Classics, Jan. 29, 2013)
    A shocking confession from his wife prompts Gabriel to reconsider what he knows and understands of his wife and their shared past, whether it is better to die young, and what will be remembered of him when he is gone.Critically acclaimed author James Joyce’s Dubliners is a collection of short stories depicting middle class life in Dublin in the early twentieth century. First published in 1914, the stories draw on themes relevant to the time such as nationalism and Ireland’s national identity, and cement Joyce’s reputation for brutally honest and revealing depictions of everyday Irish life. At the heart of each story is a character’s moment of self-realization which serve to further heighten our understanding of life in James Joyce’s Dublin.HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.
  • Anna Karenina

    Leo Tolstoy

    eBook (HarperPerennial Classics, July 24, 2012)
    Widely considered one of the best novels ever written, Anna Karenina is the tragic story of the aristocratic Anna’s doomed affair with the wealthy Count Vronsky. Reflecting Russian morals of the time, as well as Tolstoy’s personal feelings on infidelity, Anna Karenina explores themes of passion and fidelity, the impact that social norms have on personal choice, and the ramifications of choosing a life outside of that deemed acceptable by society.HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
  • Gulliver's Travels

    Jonathan Swift

    eBook (HarperPerennial Classics, April 10, 2012)
    Gulliver’s Travels, first published in 1726, is Jonathan Swift’s best known full-length work, and is both a parody of the “travellers’ tales” popular at the time and a satire on human nature. Throughout the four stories, ship’s surgeon Gulliver travels to distant lands, meets strange new peoples like the diminutive Lilliputians and the gigantic Brobdingnags, defends his ship from a pirate attack, and is marooned on a deserted island.HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.