An Anchor Books Original

Seventy-four distinguished writers tell personal tales of books loved and lost–great books overlooked, under-read, out of print, stolen, scorned, extinct, or otherwise out of commission.

Compiled by the editors of Brick: A Literary Magazine, Lost Classics is a reader’s delight: an intriguing and entertaining collection of eulogies for lost books. As the editors have written in a joint introduction to the book, “being lovers of books, we’ve pulled a scent of these absences behind us our whole reading lives, telling people about books that exist only on our own shelves, or even just in our own memory.” Anyone who has ever been changed by a book will find kindred spirits in the pages of Lost Classics.

Each of the editors has contributed a lost book essay to this collection, including Michael Ondaatje on Sri Lankan filmmaker Tissa Abeysekara’s Bringing Tony Home, a novella about a mutual era of childhood. Also included are Margaret Atwood on sex and death in the scandalous Doctor Glas, first published in Sweden in 1905; Russell Banks on the off-beat travelogue Too Late to Turn Back by Barbara Greene–the “slightly ditzy” cousin of Graham; Bill Richardson on a children’s book for adults by Russell Hoban; Ronald Wright on William Golding’s Pincher Martin; Caryl Phillips on Michael Mac Liammoir’s account of his experiences on the set of Orson Welles’s Othello, and much, much more.

The Fitzgerald-Trouts have a bit of luck at a summer carnival and it looks like they may at last have a place to call home. But as the siblings know, grown-ups ruin everything, and sure enough, Johnny Trout is back on the scene with a plot so sinister, the whole island is at risk. The siblings will have to use their wits, and rely on each other to save their home. Award-winning poet and screenwriter Esta Spalding's debut middle grade series transports readers to a marvelous place where children fend for themselves, and adults only get in the way. This extraordinary world is brought to vibrant life by Sydney Smith, the award-winning artist behind Sidewalk Flowers.