Books in Star Classics series

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor: these are just some of the strange and amazing stories that clever Scheherazade tells to captivate her husband, King Shahryar…and to save her own life. Each one is more fantastic than the last, filled with demons and dervishes, caliphs and genies, men transformed into dogs and monsters with eyes that glow. Like the king, children will find themselves enchanted by every tale.

His is the voice of a generation. During his own time, however, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, author of THE GREAT GATSBY and other now-revered works, was known primarily through the voice of Amory Blaine. Narrator and protagonist of Fitzgerald’s semi-autobiographical THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, Amory Blaine is the privileged son of a fading era. Handsome and intellectually ambitious—he struggles to find meaning and value during a period when those qualities are increasingly difficult to define. After the first horrific world war, Gertrude Stein labeled Fitzgerald’s contemporaries “the Lost Generation.” The post-war young found themselves unable and unwilling to revive the goals and mores of their parents. F. Scott Fitzgerald spoke for that generation as a young author and established his claim as one of the leading—if not THE leading—American writer of the first half of the twentieth century.

Nine Greek biographies illustrate the rise and fall of Athens, from the legendary days of Theseus, the city's founder, through Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, and Alcibiades, to the razing of its walls by Lysander.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Considered by many to mark the advent of the English novel, Daniel Defoe’s ROBINSON CRUSOE is almost certainly the most enduring long fiction in the language. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success. Its realistic, narrative style (a major innovation in its time) makes the novel as readable today as when first introduced. The story has become familiar to all. A sailor finds himself a castaway on a deserted island of the Americas. He must create a place of shelter and every article of clothing, every tool he needs in order to survive. He must endure his loneliness and prepare to face uncertain challenges. Daniel Defoe began his career as a novelist late in life, having endured a tumultuous past, including imprisonment for his political writings. Among the novels that followed ROBINSON CRUSOE are A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR and MOLL FLANDERS.

The high-spirited work of a young Dickens, The Pickwick Papers is the remarkable first novel that made its author famous and that has remained one of the best-known books in the world. In it the inimitable Samuel Pickwick, his well-fed body and unsinkable good spirits clad in tights and gaiters, sallies forth through the noisy streets of London and into the colorful country inns of rural England for a series of sparkling encounters with love and misadventure. From the wit of cockney bootblack Sam Weller to the unforgettable Fat Boy and rascals like the amorous Mr. Jingle and the unscrupulous lawyers Dodson and Fogg, The Pickwick Papers reels with joyous fantasy, infectious good humor, and a touch of the macabre—a classic work that G. K. Chesterton called “the great example of everything that made Dickens great…[a] supreme masterpiece.”

Written when Engels was only twenty-four, and inspired in particular by his time living among the poor in Manchester, this forceful polemic explores the staggering human cost of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England. Engels paints an unforgettable picture of daily life in the new industrial towns, and for miners and agricultural workers—depicting overcrowded housing, abject poverty, child labour, sexual exploitation, dirt and drunkenness—in a savage indictment of the greed of the bourgeoisie. His fascinating later preface, written for the first English edition of 1892 and included here, brought the story up to date in the light of forty years’ further reflection. A masterpiece of committed reporting and an impassioned call to arms, this is one of the great pioneering works of social history. Based on the original translation by Florence Wischnewetzky, this volume is edited by Victor Kiernan, whose foreword considers Engels’s friendship with Marx, and the book’s position as a seminal work of socialism. Also included are notes, a detailed index, new chronology and further reading and a revised forward.

This early work by Susan Coolidge was originally published in 1885 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. In 'A Little Country Girl', orphaned Candace makes the first long trip of her life alone and gets to know her three second cousins, girls of similar ages. A virtuous story about living a good and true life. Sarah Chauncey Woolsey was born on 29 January 1835, into a wealthy and influential New England Dwight family, in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Her time as a medical worker provided Woolsey with the experience and self-determination in order to embark on her writing career. She has subsequently become famous as a children's author, writing numerous books under the pseudonym of 'Susan Coolidge'. Woolsey is best known for her classic children's novel What Katy Did (published in 1872)

In The Sketch-Book (1820-21), Irving explores the uneasy relationship of an American writer to English literary traditions. In two sketches, he experiments with tales transplanted from Europe, thereby creating the first classic American short stories, Rip Van Winkle, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Based on Irving's final revision of his most popular work, this new edition includes comprehensive explanatory notes of The Sketch-Book's sources for the modern reader.

Even with less than twenty minutes of "screen time" to his credit, the most popular character from the Star Wars trilogy is Boba Fett. Dark Horse offers a number of comics featuring the merciless bounty hunter, but it all starts here, in this trade paperback collecting Russ Manning's Star Wars newspaper strips. It was in these strips, which originally ran in 1979 and 1980, that Boba Fett made his very first appearance in print, making this a true must-have item for anyone looking to become a Jedi Master! The artwork has been colored, reformatted, and expertly retouched by Rick Hoberg, who worked with Manning on the original strips. Relive the adventures that thrilled readers seventeen years ago! Experience the very first comics appearance of the infamous Boba Fett (dated prior to his motion-picture debut)! And delight in Star Wars legend Al Williamson's new color cover, dedicated to Manning!