Four generations of black life in America.

A collection of essays exploring various aspects of Sandra Cisneros' novel "The House on Mango Street."

From the ambitious and mad titular character to his devilish wife Lady Macbeth to the moral and noble Banquo to the mysterious Three Witches, Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read, performed in innovative productions set in a vast array of times and locations, from Nazi Germany to Revolutionary Cuba. Macbeth is a distinguished warrior hero, who over the course of the play, transforms...

In The Beggar, Mahfouz expresses his disdain with the current political situation in Egypt by using his characters as symbols of the past, present, and political views of his country. Omar al-Hamzawi's daughter Buthayna is one of the female protagonists in this story who symbolizes Egypt post the 1952 revolution. She is like Egypt, youthful and optimistic but naive and ill-experienced. She is at a point in her life where the decision of poetry vs....

In Bird Box, brilliantly imaginative debut author Josh Malerman captures an apocalyptic near-future world, where a mother and her two small children must make their way down a river, blindfolded. One wrong choice and they will die. And something is following them -- but is it man, animal, or monster? Within these tracks, Malerman, a professional musician, discusses his love of horror and invokes an ethereal and atmospheric experience in an homage...