At the novel's center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais – child murderer, sadist, necrophile and practitioner of all the black arts. The book's authentic, extraordinarily detailed...
Therese Raquin is the story of a young woman mired in a loveless marriage to a sickly, self-centered man. Trapped in a house owned by her pitiless mother-in-law, she yearns for love and escape. She finds it in the arms of her husband's best friend...
The Dwarf is the acrid journal of a court freak, a twenty-six-inch-tall misanthrope whose name, Piccoline, is mentioned only once, in passing, by another character. Thereafter called the Dwarf, he offers a distorted perspective on the fortunes of...
From the return of Jimi Hendrix, as witnessed by a hero-worshipping spaced-out roadie, to the death of Christ as witnessed by a time-traveling tourist, from the end of the universe to the creation of a new one, these are stories about martyrdom,...