It will scarcely be supposed that, with the passion of covetousness gnawing at my heart, I had space or convenience for any other feeling. But Abram Skinner had loved his children; and to this passion I was introduced, as well as to the other. At first I was surprised that I should bestow the least regard upon them, seeing that they were no children of mine. I endeavoured to shake off the feeling of attachment, as an absurdity, but could not; in spite of myself, I found my spirit yearning towards them; and by-and-by, having lost my identity entirely, I could scarcely, even when I made the effort, recall the consciousness that I was not their parent in reality. Indeed, the transformation that had now occurred to my spirit was more thorough than it had been in either previous instance; I could scarce convince myself I had not been born the being I represented; my past existence began to appear to my reflections only as some idle dream, that the fever of sickness had brought upon my mind; and I forgot that I was, or had been, Sheppard Lee.

"Sheppard Lee, Written By Himself" is a satirical work from the early years of the American Republic. It was written in the form as an autobiography and acquired wide acclaim after publishing. The story tells about a young man wishing to find a buried treasure. Instead, he finds the power to transfer his soul into other men's bodies. This results in a picaresque journey through early American pursuits of happiness. But every new form disappoints him. Lee comes to the conclusion that everything in America, even virtue and vice, are interchangeable; everything is an object and has its price.

A Summer/Fall 2018 Indies Introduce Debut Fiction Selection When Samuel Johnson dies, he finds himself in the body of the man who killed him, unable to depart this world but determined, at least, to return to the son he left behind. Moving from body to body as each one expires, Samuel’s soul journeys on a comic quest through an American half-century, inhabiting lives as stymied, in their ways, as his own. A ghost story of the most unexpected sort, Martin Riker’s extraordinary debut is about the ways experience is mediated, the unstoppable drive for human connection, and the struggle to be more fully alive in the world. Martin Riker grew up in central Pennsylvania. He worked as a musician for most of his twenties, in nonprofit literary publishing for most of his thirties, and has spent the first half of his forties teaching in the English department at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2010, he and his wife Danielle Dutton co-founded the feminist press Dorothy, a Publishing Project. His fiction and criticism have appeared in publications including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, London Review of Books, the Baffler, and Conjunctions. This is his first novel.

It is the most celebrated escape in the history of American slavery. Henry Brown had himself sealed in a three-foot-by-two-foot box and shipped from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia, a twenty-seven-hour journey to freedom. In Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, Brown not only tells the story of his famed escape, but also recounts his later life as a black man making his way through white American and British culture. Most important, he paints a revealing portrait of the reality of slavery, of the wife and children sold away from him, the home to which he could not return, and his rejection of the slaveholders' religion--painful episodes that fueled his desire for freedom. This edition comprises the most complete and faithful representation of Brown's life, fully annotated for the first time. John Ernest also provides an insightful introduction that places Brown's life in its historical setting and illuminates the challenges Brown faced in an often threatening world, both before and after his legendary escape.

"Sheppard Lee, Written By Himself" is a satirical work from the early years of the American Republic. It was written in the form as an autobiography and acquired wide acclaim after publishing. The story tells about a young man wishing to find a buried treasure. Instead, he finds the power to transfer his soul into other men's bodies. This results in a picaresque journey through early American pursuits of happiness. But every new form disappoints him. Lee comes to the conclusion that everything in America, even virtue and vice, are interchangeable; everything is an object and has its price.

"Sheppard Lee, Written By Himself" is a satirical work from the early years of the American Republic. It was written in the form as an autobiography and acquired wide acclaim after publishing. The story tells about a young man wishing to find a buried treasure. Instead, he finds the power to transfer his soul into other men's bodies. This results in a picaresque journey through early American pursuits of happiness. But every new form disappoints him. Lee comes to the conclusion that everything in America, even virtue and vice, are interchangeable; everything is an object and has its price.