Picador Books Series

Sound and the Fury

by William Faulkner

Published 12 February 1966

Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant.

A powerful novel examining the nature of evil, informed by the works of T. S. Eliot and Freud, mythology, local lore, and hardboiled detective fiction. Sanctuary is the dark, at times brutal, story of the kidnapping of Mississippi debutante Temple Drake, who introduces her own form of venality into the Memphis underworld where she is being held.

Mosquitoes

by William Faulkner

Published 17 January 1955

A delightful surprise, Faulkner's second novel introduces us to a colorful band of passengers on a boating excursion from New Orleans. This engaging, high-spirited novel-which Faulkner wrote "for the sake of writing because it was fun"-offers a fascinating glimpse of Faulkner as a young artist.

The Wild Palms

by William Faulkner

Published 12 August 1964

'Between grief and nothing I will take grief'

In New Orleans in 1937, a man and woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion, fleeing her husband and the temptations of respectability. In Mississippi ten years earlier, a convict sets forth across a flooded river, risking his one chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman. From these separate stories Faulkner composes a symphony of deliverance and damnation, survival and self-sacrifice, a novel in which elemental danger is juxtaposed with fatal injuries of the spirit.