Series: FSG Classics

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but...

A brand-new 30th anniversary edition of the wildly popular (over fifty million copies in print!), page-turning novel about a young girl's exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought. Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World is an exciting coming-of-age novel that thrives on its contradictions. It is a page-turning science fiction adventure as well as a history of Western philosophy—from the...

Now celebrating its 75th anniversary, a trove of iconic horror stories from the legendary Shirley Jackson, "the master of the haunted tale" (The New York Times Book Review). Featuring an introduction by A. M. Homes. One of the darkest, most nightmarish stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" created a sensation when it was first published in 1948....

Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion's first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a watershed moment in American writing. First published in 1968, the collection was critically praised as one of the "best prose written in this country." More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures...

Winner of the National Book Award Flannery O'Connor's The Complete Stories is the essential volume for admirers of this master of the short form—now with a foreword by Hilton Als. In these sly, laconic, and fiercely observed works, O'Connor does nothing less than elaborate a unique and new way of seeing the world. Contorting her sharply drawn characters through her...

Beautifully repackaged as part of the Picador Modern Classics series, this special edition is small enough to fit in your pocket and bold enough to stand out on your bookshelf. One of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson's The Lottery created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. "Power and...

Winner of the 1962 National Book Award and one of Time magazine's 100 Best English-Language Novels, Walker Percy's debut The Moviegoer is an American masterpiece and a classic of Southern literature. Insightful, romantic, and humorous, it is the story of a young man's search for meaning amid a shallow consumerist landscape. Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker, fills his...