The writer whom Fran Lebowitz compared to the author of "The Great Gatsby, "calling him "the real F. Scott Fitzgerald," makes his Penguin Classics debut with this beautiful deluxe edition of his best-loved book.
One of the great novels of small-town American life, "Appointment in Samarra "is John O'Hara's crowning achievement. In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.
Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O'Hara's iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream--and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence if a major American writer.

'Superb... These thirty-two stories inhabit the Technicolor vernaculars of taxi drivers, barbers, paper pushers and society matrons... O'Hara was American fiction's greatest eavesdropper, recording the everyday speech and tone of all strata of mid-century society' Wall Street Journal John O'Hara remains the great chronicler of American society, and nowhere are his powers more evident than in his portraits of New York's so-called Golden Age. Unsparingly observed, brilliantly cutting and always on the tragic edge of epiphany, the stories collected here are among O'Hara's finest work, and show why he still stands as the most-published short story writer in the history of the New Yorker.

The National Book Award-winning novel by the writer whom Fran Lebowitz called "the real F. Scott Fitzgerald"
Joe Chapin led a storybook life. A successful small-town lawyer with a beautiful wife, two over-achieving children, and aspirations to be president, he seemed to have it all. But as his daughter looks back on his life, a different man emerges: one in conflict with his ambitious and shrewish wife, terrified that the misdeeds of his children will dash his political dreams, and in love with a model half his age. With black wit and penetrating insight, "Ten North Frederick" stands with Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road," Evan S. Connell's "Mr. Bridge" and "Mrs. Bridge," the stories of John Cheever, and "Mad Men" as a brilliant portrait of the personal and political hypocrisy of mid-century America.

'The Academy for Souls' is essential for anyone who wants to keep his or her intellectual or spiritual bearings in a world overwrought by the conflicting theories of Einstein, Eddington, Jeans, Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. The argument leans neither on revelation nor theology, but attempts to demolish the dogmatism of current science, and to laugh behaviourism out of court.

'For all its excellence as a social panorama and a sketch of a marriage, it is as a picture of a man destroyed by drink and pride that Appointment in Samarra lives frighteningly in the mind' John Updike Julian English prides himself a member of his hometown's social elite, but from the moment he throws a cocktail in the face of a powerful business associate his life spirals out of control, taking his loving but troubled marriage with it. Following English's rapid decline and fall, Appointment in Samarra is a fast-paced and blackly comic portrait of 1930s America. O'Hara's debut novel introduced a prolific new voice to a generation and still stands as one of the great works of American fiction.

The best-loved poems from one of American literature's most towering figures

No poet is more emblematically American than Robert Frost. From "The Road Not Taken" to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," he refined and even defined our sense of what poetry is and what it can do. T. S. Eliot judged him "the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet now living," and he is the only writer in history to have been awarded four Pulitzer Prizes.

Henry Holt is proud to announce the republication of four editions of Frost's most beloved work for a new generation of poets and readers.

In this brilliant selection of Frost's classic poems, students and scholars alike will encounter a body of work central to American culture.

'This is fiction, but it has, for me, the clang of truth' John Updike WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY E. L. DOCTOROW John O'Hara is widely credited with inventing the New Yorker short story, and remains the most-published short story writer in the history of the magazine. Selected from his vast collection of short fiction written over forty years, these refreshingly frank, sparely written stories show him at his best. Exposing a world of bartenders and 'b-girls', car washers and criminals, O'Hara dissects the subtleties that bind humans together and the pressures that separate them.

A momentous bestseller when it was first published in 1949, John O'Hara's sprawling novel A Rage to Live offers up a gorgeous pageant of idealists and libertines, tradesmen and crusaders, men of violence and goodwill, and women of fierce strength and tenderness. These memorable characters and their vital stories add up to a large-scale social chronicle of America, in what is perhaps the most ambitious work of O'Hara's career.
"The range of O'Hara's knowledge of how Americans live was incomparably greater than that of any other ?ction writer of his time," judged "The New Yorker." "One would have to go back to Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser to ?nd a novelist who had even the intention of acquiring knowledge on the scale that O'Hara acquired it."

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

'More than any other American novelist, O'Hara has both reflected his times and captured the unique individual for generations to come' LA Times 'On this Sunday morning in May, this girl who was later to be the cause of a sensation in New York awoke much too early for her night before' This particular morning Gloria finds herself alone in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress and her stockings and underwear. When she takes a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she sets in train a series of events that will lead to tragedy. A bestseller on its first publication, BUtterfield 8 is the glittering story of a 1930s glamour girl whose ill-starred entanglement with a respectable married man is set against a backdrop of Manhattan bars and bedrooms.

The bestselling novel that became an Oscar-winning film starring Elizabeth Taylor about New York's speakeasy generation
A masterpiece of American fiction and a bestseller upon its publication in 1935, "BUtterfield 8 "lays bare with brash honesty the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. One Sunday morning, Gloria wakes up in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress, stockings, and panties. When she steals a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she unleashes a series of events that can only end in tragedy. Inspired by true events, this novel caused a sensation on its publication for its frank depiction of the relationship between a wild and beautiful young woman and a respectable, married man.

Collected for the first time, the New York stories of John O'Hara, "among the greatest short story writers in English, or in any other language" (Brendan Gill, "Here at The New Yorker")
Collected for the first time, here are the New York stories of one of the twentieth century's definitive chroniclers of the city--the speakeasies and highballs, social climbers and cinema stars, mistresses and powerbrokers, unsparingly observed by a popular American master of realism. Spanning his four-decade career, these more than thirty refreshingly frank, sparely written stories are among John O'Hara's finest work, exploring the materialist aspirations and sexual exploits of flawed, prodigally human characters and showcasing the snappy dialogue, telling details and ironic narrative twists that made him the most-published short story writer in the history of the "New Yorker."