Poet, lexicographer, critic, moralist and Great Cham, Dr. Johnson had in his friend Boswell the ideal biographer. Notoriously and self-confessedly intemperate, Boswell shared with Johnson a huge appetite for life and threw equal energy into recording its every aspect in minute but telling detail.

This irrepressible Scotsman was 'always studying human nature and making experiments', and the marvelously vivacious Journals he wrote daily furnished him with first-rate material when he came to write his biography. The result is a masterpiece that brims over with wit, anecdote and originality.

The Life of Samuel Johnson today continues to enjoy its status as a classic of the language. This shortened version is based on the 1799 edition, the last in which the author had a hand.

What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?

Either/Or is the earliest of the major works of Søren Kierkegaard, one of the most startlingly original thinkers and writers of the nineteenth century, and the first which he wrote under a pseudonym, as he would for his greatest philosophical writings.

Adopting the viewpoints of two distinct figures with radically different beliefs—the aesthetic young man of Part One, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section—Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence. He contemplates subjects as diverse as Mozart, drama, boredom, and, in the famous Seducer's Diary, the cynical seduction and ultimate rejection of a young, beautiful woman.

A masterpiece of duality, Either/Or is an exploration of the conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical—both meditating ironically and seductively upon Epicurean pleasures, and eloquently expounding the noble virtues of a morally upstanding life.

The Fire Next Time is a powerful and provocative document that galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement when it first appeared in 1963. Written by James Baldwin, this national bestseller provides a searing examination of racial injustice and its consequences.

The book consists of two "letters" written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. In these letters, Baldwin exhorts Americans, both black and white, to confront and attack the terrible legacy of racism. The work is at once a personal reflection on Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a broader commentary on the state of race relations in America.

Described by the The New York Times Book Review as "sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle… all presented in searing, brilliant prose," The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of American literature, urging us to confront the oppressive institutions of race, religion, and nationhood itself, while insisting on shared resilience and love as a way forward.

This now classic book revealed Flannery O'Connor as one of the most original and provocative writers to emerge from the South. Her apocalyptic vision of life is expressed through grotesque, often comic situations in which the principal character faces a problem of salvation: the grandmother, in the title story, confronting the murderous Misfit; a neglected four-year-old boy looking for the Kingdom of Christ in the fast-flowing waters of the river; General Sash, about to meet the final enemy.

Stories include:
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The River
The Life You Save May Be Your Own
A Stroke of Good Fortune
A Temple of the Holy Ghost
The Artificial Nigger
A Circle in the Fire
A Late Encounter with the Enemy
Good Country People
The Displaced Person

The fables of Aesop have become one of the most enduring traditions of European culture, ever since they were first written down nearly two millennia ago. Aesop was reputedly a tongue-tied slave who miraculously received the power of speech; from his legendary storytelling came the collections of prose and verse fables scattered throughout Greek and Roman literature.

First published in English by Caxton in 1484, the fables and their morals continue to charm modern readers: who does not know the story of the tortoise and the hare, or the boy who cried wolf?

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality, they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.

One, No One and One Hundred Thousand is a thought-provoking novel by Luigi Pirandello. The story follows the protagonist, Vitangelo Moscarda, who undergoes a profound identity crisis after a casual remark from his wife. She informs him that his nose tilts to the right, leading Moscarda to a startling realization: "For others, I was not what till now, privately, I had imagined myself to be."

This revelation sets Moscarda on a journey of self-discovery, where he questions the nature of reality, identity, and the multifaceted perceptions others have of him. Through a series of philosophical musings and encounters with various characters, he grapples with the fragmented nature of the self and the illusions that shape our understanding of the world.

In this novel, Pirandello masterfully explores the fundamental human inability to communicate, our essential solitariness, and the inescapable restriction of our free will, all while evoking thoroughly sustained and earthy laughter.

This book is a remarkable synthesis of themes and personalities, illuminating such dramas as Six Characters in Search of an Author, and invites readers to ponder the essence of identity and the freedom found in embracing one's own madness.

One of Faulkner's comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi.

Eleven-year-old Lucius Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family's retainers, to steal his grandfather's car and make a trip to Memphis. The Priests' black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey, for which they are all ill-equipped, that ends at Miss Reba's bordello in Memphis.

From there, a series of wild misadventures ensues—involving horse smuggling, trainmen, sheriffs' deputies, and jail.

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud. In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers' final union in death seems almost inevitable.

And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.

Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul—and the ability to love his fellow man.

Leverkühn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and nihilism. It is also Mann's most profound meditation on the German genius—both national and individual—and the terrible responsibilities of the truly great artist.

Omeros is a poem in five books, crafted with a circular narrative design and titled with the Greek name for Homer. This masterpiece simultaneously charts two currents of history: the visible history captured in events such as the tribal losses of the American Indian and the tragedy of African enslavement. Alongside, it unveils the interior, unwritten epic fashioned from the suffering of the individual in exile.

Walcott's work is a profound reflection on cultural heritage and the impact of colonialism on individual and collective identities. Through its lyrical beauty and narrative depth, the poem invites readers to explore the complexities of history and memory.

It's every parrothead's dream: to leave behind the rat race of the workaday world and start life all over again amidst the cool breezes, sun-drenched colors, and rum-laced drinks of a tropical paradise.

It's the story of Norman Paperman, a New York City press agent who, facing the onset of middle age, runs away to a Caribbean island to reinvent himself as a hotel keeper. (Hilarity and disaster — of a sort peculiar to the tropics — ensue.)

It's the novel in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such acclaimed and bestselling novels as The Caine Mutiny and War and Remembrance draws on his own experience (Wouk and his family lived for seven years on an island in the sun) to tell a story at once brilliantly comic and deeply moving.

The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, is an American classic—and Pulitzer Prize–winning story that epitomizes the love between a child and a pet. Young Jody adopts an orphaned fawn he calls Flag and makes it a part of his family and his best friend. But life in the Florida backwoods is harsh, and so, as his family fights off wolves, bears, and even alligators, and faces failure in their tenuous subsistence farming, Jody must finally part with his dear animal friend.

A rousing call to arms whose influence is still felt today Originally published on the eve of the 1848 European revolutions, The Communist Manifesto is a condensed and incisive account of the worldview Marx and Engels developed during their hectic intellectual and political collaboration. Formulating the principles of dialectical materialism, they believed that labor creates wealth, hence capitalism is exploitive and antithetical to freedom.

This new edition includes an extensive introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones, Britain's leading expert on Marx and Marxism, providing a complete course for students of The Communist Manifesto, and demonstrating not only the historical importance of the text, but also its place in the world today.

Too Loud a Solitude is a tender and funny story of Haňťa - a man who has lived in a Czech police state - for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process of compacting, he has acquired an education so unwitting he can't quite tell which of his thoughts are his own and which come from his books. He has rescued many from the jaws of the hydraulic press and now his house is filled to the rooftops. Destroyer of the written word, he is also its perpetrator.

But when a new automatic press makes his job redundant, there's only one thing he can do - go down with his ship. This is an eccentric romp celebrating the indestructibility - against censorship, political oppression, etc - of the written word.

Sophie's Choice is a poignant and deeply moving novel that intertwines the narratives of three distinct individuals. At the heart of the story is the aspiration of a young man from the South, who holds an unwavering dream of becoming a writer. This ambition is set against the backdrop of a tumultuous love affair, marked by both passion and strife, between a brilliant Jewish man and a captivating Polish woman.

The novel delves into the harrowing past of the woman, Sophie, revealing a traumatic wound that haunts her—the very wound that propels both her and Nathan, her lover, on a path towards destruction. Sophie's Choice explores themes of love, guilt, and the lasting impact of the past on the present, making it a timeless exploration of the human condition.

Call It Sleep is a magnificent novel by Henry Roth, first published in 1934. It tells the poignant story of David Schearl, a "dangerously imaginative" child navigating the complexities of life in the slums of New York.

Initially greeted with critical acclaim, the novel struggled to find its audience in the dark days of the Depression. However, upon its paperback release in 1964, Call It Sleep finally received the recognition it deserved, becoming the first paperback ever to be reviewed on the front page of The New York Times Book Review.

With its richly drawn characters and vivid portrayal of immigrant life, this novel has sold millions of copies worldwide, captivating readers with its timeless exploration of identity, belonging, and the human spirit.

Here are the gods, goddesses, and legendary figures of ancient Greece--mighty Zeus, with his fistful of thunderbolts; gray-eyed Athena, goddess of wisdom; Helios, the sun; greedy King Midas--lavishly depicted by Caldecott winners Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire. In a relaxed and humorous tone, these splendid artists bring to life the myths that have inspired great European literature and art through the ages, creating a book readers of all ages will cherish.

"For any child fortunate enough to have this generous book...the kings and heroes of ancient legend will remain forever matter-of-fact; the pictures interpret the text literally and are full of detail and witty observation." --The Horn  Book

"The drawings, particularly the full-page ones in this oversized volume, are excellent  and excitingly evocative." --The New  York Times

"Parents, uncles, and aunts who have been searching for a big picture book that has good reading-aloud value for the younger ones and fine read-it-yourself value on up, have it in this volume...a children's classic." --Christian Science Monitor

The Shepherd of the Hills is a captivating tale set in the enchanting Ozark hills. Originally published in 1907, this novel by Harold Bell Wright explores themes of strength, weakness, success, and failure.

The story unfolds around a mysterious, learned man who retreats from the bustling city life to find solace in the serene backwoods of Mutton Hollow. Here, he encounters intriguing characters like Jim Lane, Grant Matthews, and Sammy, each adding depth and richness to his journey.

Wright's masterful storytelling captures the essence of human struggles and triumphs, painting a vivid picture of life that is both enchanting and challenging. This is not a mere pastoral fantasy; it is a powerful commentary on the human condition, set against the backdrop of the beautiful yet demanding Ozark landscape.

The Shepherd of the Hills continues to inspire readers with its timeless truths and universal appeal. It's a story that resonates across generations, offering insights into grace, dignity, and the enduring spirit of humanity.

'There is no harm in a man's cub.' Best known for the 'Mowgli' stories, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book expertly interweaves myth, morals, adventure, and powerful storytelling. Set in Central India, Mowgli is raised by a pack of wolves. Along the way, he encounters memorable characters such as the foreboding tiger Shere Kahn, Bagheera the panther, and Baloo the bear.

Including other stories such as that of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a heroic mongoose, and Toomai, a young elephant handler, Kipling's fables remain as popular today as they ever were.

Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel that explores the intricacies of friendship and the depths of human dreams. Set against the backdrop of World War II, it tells the story of two friends with contrasting personalities.

Al is a bold, hot-tempered boy whose goals in life are to lift weights and pick up girls. In contrast, his strange friend Birdy is a skinny, tongue-tied, perhaps genius who dreams of raising canaries and flying. Their friendship is tested in the brutal reality of war, where dreams become all too real, and their lives are changed forever.

In Birdy, William Wharton crafts an unforgettable tale that suggests another notion of sanity in a world that is manifestly insane. It's a story about love and war, madness and beauty, and above all, the essence of "birdness."

Calvin and Hobbes are back! The energetic six-year-old and his sidekick tiger endure all the trials of youth and continue to endear themselves to millions of loyal readers in this latest collection of their shenanigans.

With the help of his faithful stuffed tiger companion and his alter egos—Spaceman Spiff, Stupendous Man, and Tracer Bullet—Calvin continues to navigate the tricky waters of youth.

This latest assembly of Calvin and Hobbes' adventures has never been collected in book form before.

Meet the World's Funniest Kindergartner—Junie B. Jones!

Remember when it was scary to go to school? In the first Junie B. Jones book, it's Junie B.'s first day and she doesn't know anything. She's so scared of the school bus and the meanies on it that when it's time to go home, she doesn't.

Join Junie B. as she navigates the ups and downs of her first day at school with humor and honesty. Her adventures are sure to bring laughter and joy to young readers, making this a delightful read for anyone who remembers the jitters of a new school year.

Seven Gothic Tales, originally published in 1934, is the first book by Isak Dinesen, a modern classic that has captivated readers with its exquisite storytelling. These tales are a blend of keen psychological insight and the haunting mystery characteristic of the nineteenth-century Gothic tradition, reminiscent of renowned writers such as Goethe, Hoffmann, and Poe.

Each tale delves into the vanishing world of European aristocracy, exploring themes of legitimacy and the corrupting influence of illegitimacy. For instance, in "The Deluge at Norderney," the revelation of Jonathan Maersk's true lineage as a baron's son sets the stage for a dramatic marriage arrangement during a life-threatening flood.

Dinesen's tales are infused with an aura of romantic style and mystery, offering readers a rich tapestry of aristocratic life intertwined with supernatural elements. These stories continue to enchant readers with their unique blend of Gothic intrigue and psychological depth.

In a poor, remote section of Southern Mexico, the paramilitary group, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on the run. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the nameless little worldly “whiskey priest” is nevertheless impelled toward his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.

In his introduction, John Updike calls The Power and the Glory, “Graham Greene’s masterpiece…. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist.”

And Then There Were None begins with ten individuals, a curious assortment of strangers, summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate, as each has been marked for murder.

A famous nursery rhyme is framed and hung in every room of the mansion, gradually becoming a chilling prophecy as one by one, the guests fall prey to a diabolical scheme. As the number of survivors diminishes, terror mounts. Who has choreographed this dastardly plot? And who will be left to tell the tale?

With a backdrop of an isolated island and the stormy weather trapping them, the characters must face the reality that the killer is among them, and nowhere is safe. This masterful tale of suspense leaves readers questioning, until the very end, who the murderer is.

The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, offers an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction.

It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation. Flem Snopes—wily, energetic, a man of shady origins—quickly comes to dominate the town and its people with his cunning and guile.

Collected Poems, 1909-1962 is an authoritative collection of the poetry that T.S. Eliot himself wished to preserve. Published two years before his death in 1965, it showcases Eliot as a poet, dramatist, critic, and editor, marking him as one of the defining figures of twentieth-century poetry. This edition includes his verse from Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) to Four Quartets (1943), and features literary landmarks such as The Waste Land and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

The dazzling and exuberant moral stories of Rabelais (c.1471-1553) expose human follies with their mischievous and often obscene humour, while intertwining the realistic with carnivalesque fantasy to make us look afresh at the world.

Gargantua depicts a young giant, reduced to laughable insanity by an education at the hands of paternal ignorance, old crones, and syphilitic professors, who is rescued and turned into a cultured Christian knight.

In Pantagruel and its three sequels, Rabelais parodied tall tales of chivalry and satirized the law, theology, and academia to portray the bookish son of Gargantua who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided in his wisdom, and his idiotic, self-loving companion Panurge.

Widely considered one of the great dramatic creations of the modern stage, Mother Courage and Her Children is Bertolt Brecht's most passionate and profound statement against war.

Set in the seventeenth century, the play follows Anna Fierling — "Mother Courage" — an itinerant trader, as she pulls her wagon of wares and her children through the blood and carnage of Europe's religious wars. Battered by hardships, brutality, and the degradation and death of her children, she ultimately finds herself alone with the one thing in which she truly believes — her ramshackle wagon with its tattered flag and freight of boots and brandy.

Fitting herself in its harness, the old woman manages, with the last of her strength, to drag it onward to the next battle. In the enduring figure of Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht has created one of the most extraordinary characters in the literature of drama.

Written on the front lines in Vietnam, Dispatches became an immediate classic of war reportage when it was published in 1977. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone.

Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

The classic, blockbuster thriller of man-eating terror that inspired the Steven Spielberg movie and made millions of beachgoers afraid to go into the water. Experience the thrill of helpless horror again—or for the first time!

Killing Mister Watson is a gripping novel by Peter Matthiessen, the acclaimed author of The Snow Leopard and The Tree Where Man Was Born. This fascinating story unfolds around the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of a man in Florida in 1910.

This man, who had long terrorized his community, is rumored to have a criminal past. Set in the lawless Florida Everglades, the novel brilliantly depicts both the fortunes and misfortunes of Edgar J. Watson, a real-life entrepreneur and outlaw of the early 20th century.

Drawing from fragments of historical fact, Matthiessen's masterpiece offers a vivid portrayal of a bygone era, filled with suspense and intrigue. Killing Mister Watson is a must-read for those who enjoy historical adventures and crime tales.

Amid sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, explore ships of the East India Company. Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy enjoying overwhelming local superiority.

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could make him rich - ships sent by Napoleon to attack the China Fleet.

Harpagon est un vieillard odieux et avare. Avare jusqu'au ridicule, puisqu'il fait comparaître en justice le chat d'un de ses voisins pour lui avoir mangé le reste d'un gigot! Avare jusqu'au sordide aussi. Ne cherche-t-il pas à prêter à un taux usuraire l'argent qu'il refuse à son fils? N'est-il pas prêt à vendre sa fille à qui offre de la prendre sans dot? Quant à sa prétendue attirance pour Mariane, elle ne résiste pas à sa fascination pour l'or.

Peut-être la plus célèbre des comédies de Molière, L'Avare s'inspire largement de l'Aulularia, une pièce de théâtre écrite au IIIe siècle avant J-C par le poète latin Plaute.

Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a successful Parisian barrister, has come to recognize the deep-seated hypocrisy of his existence. His epigrammatic and, above all, discomforting monologue gradually saps, then undermines, the reader's own complacency.

This Perfect Day is set in a seemingly perfect global society where uniformity is the defining feature. There is only one language, and all ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into one race called "The Family." The world is ruled by a central computer called UniComp, programmed to keep every human in check.

People are continually drugged through regular injections to ensure they remain satisfied and cooperative. They are told where to live, when to eat, whom to marry, and when to reproduce. Even the basic facts of nature are subject to UniComp’s will—men do not grow facial hair, women do not develop breasts, and it only rains at night.

Follow Chip as he embarks on a perilous journey to reclaim his true self and challenge Uni’s rule in this thrilling tale of free will versus control.

Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein presents a deep dive into the philosophies of mind, language, and meaning. This work is a distillation of two decades of intensive philosophical exploration.

Wittgenstein's approach in this book challenges traditional views and provides a new perspective on how we understand and interact with the world through language. His unique insights make this book a cornerstone in the field of philosophy.

Explore the intricacies of language and its role in shaping our thoughts and perceptions. Philosophical Investigations invites you to question and ponder the very nature of understanding and communication.

She was magical, beautiful beyond belief—and completely alone...The unicorn had lived since before memory in a forest where death could touch nothing. Maidens who caught a glimpse of her glory were blessed by enchantment they would never forget. But outside her wondrous realm, dark whispers and rumours carried a message she could not ignore: "Unicorns are gone from the world."

Aided by a bumbling magician and an indomitable spinster, she set out to learn the truth. But she feared even her immortal wisdom meant nothing in a world where a mad king's curse and terror incarnate lived only to stalk the last unicorn to her doom...

Palace Walk is the first volume of the masterful Cairo Trilogy by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz. This engrossing saga unfolds in the early 20th century, during Egypt's occupation by British forces.

The story intricately portrays a traditional Muslim family in Cairo, led by a domineering patriarch who demands strict adherence to Islamic principles from his wife and children. Yet, he indulges in the pleasures of music, wine, and courtesans, unbeknownst to him, his eldest son shares similar tastes.

Set against the backdrop of a turn-of-the-century Cairo, the novel vividly recreates an era of both discipline and sensuality, offering readers a captivating glimpse into the life and culture of a bygone time.

In a comic masterpiece following the misadventures of a simple but hugely ambitious waiter in pre-World War II Prague, who rises to wealth only to lose everything with the onset of Communism, Bohumil Hrabal takes us on a tremendously funny and satirical trip through 20th-century Czechoslovakia.

First published in 1971 in a typewritten edition, then finally printed in book form in 1989, I Served the King of England is an extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel, telling the tale of Ditie, a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel in the years before World War II. Ditie is called upon to serve not the King of England, but Haile Selassie. It is one of the great moments in his life. Eventually, he falls in love with a Nazi woman athlete as the Germans are invading Czechoslovakia. After the war, through the sale of valuable stamps confiscated from the Jews, he reaches the heights of his ambition, building a hotel. He becomes a millionaire, but with the institution of communism, he loses everything and is sent to inspect mountain roads. Living in dreary circumstances, Ditie comes to terms with the inevitability of his death, and with his place in history.

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement is a powerful and persuasive discussion about economics, freedom, and the relationship between the two. Authored by Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman, this book explains how our freedom has been eroded and our prosperity undermined through the explosion of laws, regulations, agencies, and spending in Washington. The Friedmans argue that good intentions often produce deplorable results when the government acts as the middleman.

The book also provides remedies for these ills and offers insights on what can be done to expand our freedom and promote prosperity. This important analysis reveals what has gone wrong in America in the past and outlines necessary steps for our economic health to flourish.

Absalom, Absalom! is considered by many to be William Faulkner's masterpiece. Although the novel's complex and fragmented structure poses considerable difficulty to readers, the book's literary merits place it squarely in the ranks of America's finest novels.

The story concerns Thomas Sutpen, a poor man who finds wealth and then marries into a respectable family. His ambition and extreme need for control bring about his ruin and the ruin of his family. Sutpen's story is told by several narrators, allowing the reader to observe variations in the saga as it is recounted by different speakers. This unusual technique spotlights one of the novel's central questions: To what extent can people know the truth about the past?

Jurassic Park is a science fiction novel that delves into the dangers of genetic engineering. It depicts the disastrous events that unfold in a theme park where dinosaurs, brought back to life through advanced cloning techniques, are put on display.

The novel explores the concept of chaos theory and its real-world implications, serving as a cautionary tale about the unforeseen consequences of tampering with nature. Jurassic Park became a significant cultural phenomenon, especially after its adaptation into a blockbuster film directed by Steven Spielberg, which sparked the widespread 'dinomania' of the 1990s.

No other writer captures like Anne Tyler, with acerbic affection and compassionate clarity, the shifts and defences of the average family struggling to keep life under control.

This first omnibus edition of three full-length novels, all set in the respectable Baltimore streets she has made so particularly her own, encompasses the range of eccentricities and compromises to which they are driven.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant follows the disintegration and eventual reaffirmation of the Tull family - fierce, embittered Pearl, left by Beck to raise handsome, thrusting Cody, Jenny, the pediatrician losing herself in devotion to others, and docile Ezra, whose attempts to unite them all around a table at his eccentric Homesick Restaurant are the focus of their differences and their bond.

In The Accidental Tourist, Macon - a man of habit and routine, who writes guide books for businessmen who hate to leave home - is confronted by chaos in his own family life. Between aching sadness and glorious absurdity, Macon hesitantly emerges from his sage cocoon into the vibrant, unpredictable world of the outrageous Muriel...

And Breathing Lessons, which lays bare the anatomy of a marriage. On the round trip to a friend's funeral, Maggie and Ira Moran make detours literal and metaphorical - into the lives of grown children, old friends, total strangers, and their own past - and, despite Ira's disappointments and Maggie's optimistic determination to rearrange life as she would like it to be, an old married couple fall in love all over again.

Philip Pullman is fast becoming a modern-day Dickens for young adults. The setting is the same, the strong eye for characters is there, as are the brooding atmosphere, the social conscience, and the ability to spin plot within plot.

Sally Lockhart is now a young woman, left alone with a toddler. Nothing prepares her for the shock of receiving a summons from a man she has never even heard of, suing for divorce and the custody of her beloved Harriet. Sally struggles against the net closing around her, seeking to find out who is persecuting her and why.

The writing style is lively and direct, and there's lots of action.
This is a suspense novel with a conscience, and a most enjoyable one.

The Complete Stories, Vol 1 is the first book of the definitive three-volume collection of short stories by the prolific Isaac Asimov, whose tales have delighted countless fans for over half a century.

This enthralling collection includes some of Asimov’s self-described personal favorite short stories, such as “Franchise” and “The Last Question.” It also features “Nightfall,” a story about a planet that only experiences night once every 2,049 years, which the Science Fiction Writers of America has voted as the best science fiction story ever written.

The many fans of Isaac Asimov’s work won’t want to miss this wonderful collection of short fiction from the sci-fi master. It's a must for every science fiction bookshelf!