May 20th marks the birthday of Honoré de Balzac, the inventor of the modern realistic novel. With his keen eye for detail and his unflinching assessment of character, Balzac has been considered a literary forbearer of Flaubert, Proust, and James. On May 22nd we celebrate the birthday of the multitalented Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930).

Unnameable Books and NYRB Poets will celebrate the publication of Alexander Vvedensky’s An Invitation for Me to Think with translators Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich. The reading, which will be followed by a reception, will take place at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn on Friday, May 17, at 7pm.

On Monday, May 6th writers Lev Grossman, Nathaniel Adams, and Jen Vafidis will discuss Kingsley Amis’s newly reissued works of genre fiction, the science fiction/alternative world novel The Alteration and the ghost story The Green Man. Join us at 7pm at the Half King Bar & Restaurant at 505 W 23rd Street in New York City.

On April 20th, Poets House will host a colloquium to celebrate the publication of An Invitation for Me to Think. On April 22nd, the Poetry Project will host a reading.

On Tuesday April 16th at 7pm, Renata Adler will read from and talk about her two classic novels, Speedboat and Pitch Dark, at The Center for Fiction in New York City.

On April 11th at 6pm, an all-star line-up of Richard Sieburth, Michael Kunichika, Eugene Ostashevsky, and Matvei Yankelevich will convene at NYU Humanities Initiative to celebrate the publication of Alexander Vvedensky’s An Invitation For Me to Think (translated by Eugene Ostashevsky, with additional translations by Matvei Yankelevich).

On April 9th at 7pm, Poetry magazine senior editor Don Share will read from and discuss his translation of Miguel Hernández’s poems, published this month in the new NYRB Poets series, at Poets House.

In this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote, “Many adults have sought over the years to recall the strange, emotionally rich adventure told in The Abandoned. It is these readers—and bookish current children ages 10 and older—who will most appreciate the book’s handsome reissue.”

Tonight, April 5, at 7pm, Renata Adler, author of Speedboat and Pitch Dark (recently released by NYRB Classics) will join David Shields for a conversation with Daily Beast books editor Lucas Wittman at the Strand bookstore.

On March 27, Join NYRB Classics editor Edwin Frank and translators Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich as we celebrate the work of Alexander Vvedensky, one of the most influential poets and thinkers of twentieth-century Russia. An Invitation for Me to Think is the first book of Vvedensky’s poems to appear in English.

On Sunday, February 24, at 1:00 pm, New York Review of Books contributor Geoffrey O’Brien will introduce a Film Forum screening of Elio Petri’s The Tenth Victim, a movie based Robert Sheckley’s 1953 story “The Seventh Victim,” which is included in NYRB Classics’s collection of Sheckley’s fiction, Store of the Worlds.

It’s not only George Washington who was born on February 22nd. Famed writer and illustrator Edward Gorey, who passed away in 2000, would have been 88 today—an occasion Google has marked with a doodle on their homepage.

The finalists for the coveted Man Booker International Prize 2013 have been announced. We are delighted that two NYRB Classics authors are among them: Intizar Husain and Vladimir Sorokin.

“Duly recognized as a flawless literary achievement when it was published in 1984, this superb, long-out-of-print first novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic McPherson has finally been reissued,” begins The Atlantic’s review of NYRB Classics most recent release, Testing the Current.

Today the National Book Critics Circle announced its book award finalists for the publishing year of 2012. Among the nominees for the best book of Criticism is Waiting for the Barbarians by Daniel Mendelsohn.

NYRB Lit, the e-book series from New York Review Books, is pleased to announce the publication of Ravan and Eddie by Kiran Nagarkar and 1948 by Yoram Kaniuk. You may order 1948 and Ravan and Eddie from your favorite e-book retailer today.

We know many people do their online shopping on the weekend so we’ve extended our regular shipping rates deadline by 48 hours to midnight on Sunday, December 9. Have a look at the NYRB Holiday Sale page—up to 40% off—and place your order before Sunday.

‘Tis the season for gift guides and “best books of the year” lists. We won’t ask if you’ve been naughty or nice, but are confident that someone, if not yourself, deserves one of these books that have made the seasonal lists: Robert Walser’s Berlin Stories; William McCleery’s Wolf Story; Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio; and Daniel Mendelsohn’s Waiting for Barbarians.

We are pleased to announce the publication of four new NYRB Classics this month, all available at a limited-time 30% discount.

John Banville includes Act of Passion by Georges Simenon in his selection of “novels of young love and the perilous flush of infatuation” in the “Five Best” column in The Wall Street Journal.