This novel achieved immediate notoriety through its questioning of marriage, sex and the role of women. Stephen Heath shows how this landmark text captures and articulates a fundamental experience of the postromantic, commerical-industrial, democratic period. He explains how Madame Bovary represents Flaubert's intense personal engagement with the tragedy of bourgeois culture, while at the same time exemplifying the author's commitment to the impersonality of art and the transcendence of style.

A coming-of-age novel loosely based upon true events during one of America's most colorful periods, the golden age of Vaudeville, Boss recalls the experiences of young Peter Converse, a musical prodigy from Duluth, Minnesota. When Peter, along with his best friend Glen Haley, is forced to run away from home for unexpected and shocking reasons, he must survive on his own with no money, no direction, and no promise he'll survive at all. Two boys- one with a second-hand banjo, the other a stolen trumpet -and a pair of dark, deeply disturbing secrets, Peter and Glen are determined to reach New York City and become professional musicians on the Vaudeville circuit. But the harsh realities of big city life, plus Peter's bloodline and the social prejudices against Glen, who is black, stack the odds against them.

Jellybeans, published here on paper for the first time, is the story of three very strange houses- the Murder Cabin, the House of the Full Moon, and the House of Flies -all three of which have one very disturbing thing in common: Kiana Mast. Kiana comes from a very odd east Tennessee family and she knows things. When she sends her high school boyfriend Adam on midnight ventures to each of three very mysterious houses out in the boonies, he has no idea what he's in for. Moreover, Adam has no idea that Kiana has an irresistible and sinister influence over him that is growing more powerful and frightening by the day . . . and night.