Earthquake damage leaves Winding Circle vulnerable to pirate attack, so everyone - including the young mages-in-training Tris, Briar, Daja, and Sandry - is working to strengthen the community's defenses. When Tris's cousin Aymery comes to visit, he advises the "weather witch" to return to the family that exiled her, but she doesn't wish to leave her friends to face the threat without her.

As the onslaught begins, two things become terribly clear: The pirates have a powerful new weapon, and they have an accomplice within Winding Circle. But the attackers have failed to reckon with the fury of a young mage betrayed once too often and her very stubborn, very loyal friends.

When Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was first published in 1979, it hit the New York Times bestseller list within two weeks and stayed there for more than a year. In 1989, when Dr. Betty Edwards revised the book, it went straight to the Times list again. Now Dr. Edwards celebrates the twentieth anniversary of her classic book with a second revised edition.

Over the last decade, Dr. Edwards has refined her material through teaching hundreds of workshops and seminars. Truly The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, this edition includes:

• the very latest developments in brain research
• new material on using drawing techniques in the corporate world and in education
• instruction on self-expression through drawing
• an updated section on using color
• and detailed information on using the five basic skills of drawing for problem solving

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is Salman Rushdie's classic fantasy novel set in an exotic Eastern landscape populated by magicians and fantastic talking animals. This captivating work of fantasy shares the imaginative space with The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, and The Wizard of Oz. In this adventure, Haroun sets out to restore the poisoned source of the sea of stories. Along his journey, he encounters numerous foes, all intent on draining the sea of all its storytelling powers.

The Satyricon is the most celebrated work of fiction to have survived from the ancient world. It is often described as the first realistic novel and the father of the picaresque genre.

The narrative follows a pair of literature scholars as they wander through the cities of the southern Mediterranean. Along their journey, they encounter a series of vivid characters: a teacher in higher education, a libidinous priest, a vulgar freedman turned millionaire, a manic poet, a superstitious sea-captain, and a femme fatale. Each character is wickedly satirized, offering a vibrant depiction of Roman society's underbelly.

Petronius masterfully blends humor and critique, crafting a story that is both entertaining and insightful. This new translation by P.G. Walsh captures the original's gaiety, accompanied by an introduction and notes that illuminate the text's rich literary in-jokes and allusions.

"She was a brazen hussy.""She wasn't. And she was pretty, wasn't she?""I didn't look ... And tell your girls, my son, that when they're running after you, they're not to come and ask your mother for you - tell them that - brazen baggages you meet at dancing classes"

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.

Miles Vorkosigan has a problem: unrequited love for the beautiful widow Ekaterin Vorsoisson, who is violently allergic to marriage after her first exposure. If a frontal assault won't do, Miles thinks, try subterfuge. He has a cunning plan...

Lord Mark Vorkosigan, Miles' brother, also has a problem: his love has just become unrequited again. But he has a cunning plan...

Lord Ivan Vorpatril, Miles' cousin, has a problem: unrequited love in general. But he too has a cunning plan...

A complex story unfolds as the various members of Miles' family attempt to find their one true love and a measure of destiny. This all happens against a backdrop of domestic political squabbles and an earnest attempt at capitalist enterprise.

She had read about stalkers, but they belonged in a different, faraway world. She had no idea who it could be, who would want to harm her. She was trying desperately not to panic, but lately her sleep had been filled with nightmares, and she had awakened each morning with a feeling of impending doom.

Thus begins Sidney Sheldon's chilling new novel, Tell Me Your Dreams. Three beautiful young women are suspected of committing a series of brutal murders. The police make an arrest that leads to one of the most bizarre murder trials of the century. Based on actual events, Sheldon's novel races from London to Rome to the city of Quebec to San Francisco, with a climax that will leave the reader stunned.

The great Irish humorist and writer Flann O'Brien, aka Brian O'Nolan, aka Myles na Gopaleen, also wrote a newspaper column called "Cruiskeen Lawn". The Best of Myles collects the best and funniest, covering such subjects as plumbers, the justice system, and improbable inventions.

A Small Death in Lisbon is a complex literary thriller that intertwines two gripping narratives set in different eras. The story masterfully shifts between 1941 Germany and 1999 Lisbon, offering a rich tapestry of historical intrigue and modern-day mystery.

In 1941, Klaus Felsen, an industrialist, is coerced by the SS high command to travel to Lisbon to oversee the smuggling of wolfram, a critical element for Hitler's blitzkrieg. Neutral Portugal becomes a battleground of clandestine operations, where business trumps alliances.

Fast forward to 1999, where the brutal murder of a young woman, Catarina Oliveira, on a Lisbon beach draws in Inspector Ze Coelho, a widower with a daughter. As Coelho delves into the case, he uncovers layers of personal and historical secrets, connecting past sins with present-day consequences.

This novel paints a vivid portrait of Lisbon's transformation post-1974 revolution and the lingering scars from World War II, seen through the eyes of both Germans and Portuguese. The narrative is leisurely yet compelling, leading to an extraordinary climax as the two timelines converge.

Something has gone wrong. A group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons is streaking past the fail-safe point, beyond recall, and no one knows why. Their destination—Moscow.

In a bomb shelter beneath the White House, the calm young president turns to his Russian translator and says, "I think we are ready to talk to Premier Kruschchev." Not far away, in the War Room at the Pentagon, the secretary of defense and his aides watch with growing anxiety as the luminous blips crawl across a huge screen map. High over the Bering Strait in a large Vindicator bomber, a colonel stares in disbelief at the attack code number on his fail-safe box and wonders if it could possibly be a mistake.

First published in 1962, when America was still reeling from the Cuban missile crisis, Fail-Safe reflects the apocalyptic attitude that pervaded society during the height of the Cold War, when disaster could have struck at any moment. As more countries develop nuclear capabilities and the potential for new enemies lurks on the horizon, Fail-Safe and its powerful issues continue to respond.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban finds Harry, along with his best friends, Ron and Hermione, embarking on his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. After a summer with the Dursleys, Harry is eager to return to school. However, the mood at Hogwarts is grim. An escaped mass murderer is on the run, and the foreboding prison guards of Azkaban have been summoned to ensure the safety of the school.

The atmosphere is tense, and danger lurks around every corner, but Harry is determined to uncover the truth and confront the very wizard responsible for his parents' demise.

To Have and Have Not is the dramatic, brutal story of Harry Morgan, an honest boat owner who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who swarm the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair.

In this harshly realistic, yet oddly tender and wise novel, Hemingway perceptively delineates the personal struggles of both the "haves" and the "have nots" and creates one of the most subtle and moving portraits of a love affair in his oeuvre. In turn funny and tragic, lively and poetic, remarkable in its emotional impact, To Have and Have Not takes literary high adventure to a new level. As the Times Literary Supplement observed, "Hemingway's gift for dialogue, for effective understatement, and for communicating such emotions the tough allow themselves, has never been more conspicuous."

Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, brilliantly translated by Andrew Hurley. From his 1935 debut with The Universal History of Iniquity, through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, these enigmatic, elaborate, imaginative inventions display Borges' talent for turning fiction on its head by playing with form and genre and toying with language. Together these incomparable works comprise the perfect one-volume compendium for all those who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master's work for those who have yet to discover this singular genius.

On a busy Washington morning, amid the shuffle of tourists and the brisk rush of government officials, the stately calm of the White House is shattered in a hail of gunfire. A group of terrorists has descended on the Executive Mansion, gaining access by means of a violent massacre that has left dozens of innocent bystanders murdered.

Through the quick actions of the Secret Service, the president is evacuated to his underground bunker, but not before almost one hundred hostages are taken. While the politicians and the military leaders argue over how to negotiate with the terrorists, one man is sent in to break through the barrage of panicked responses and political agendas surrounding the chaotic crisis.

Mitch Rapp, the CIA's top counterterrorism operative, makes his way into the White House and soon discovers that the president is not as safe as Washington's power elite had thought. Moving stealthily among the corridors and secret passageways of the White House, stepping terrifyingly close to the enemy, Rapp scrambles to save the hostages before the terrorists can extract the president from the safety of his bunker.

In a race against time, Rapp makes a chilling discovery that could rock Washington to its core: someone within his own government is maneuvering in hopes that his rescue attempt will fail.

When Pushkin first read some of the stories in this collection, he declared himself amazed. "Here is real gaiety," he wrote, "honest, unconstrained, without mincing, without primness. And in places what poetry! . . . I still haven't recovered."

More than a century and a half later, Nikolai Gogol's stories continue to delight readers the world over. Now a stunning new translation presents these stories in all their inventive, exuberant glory to English-speaking readers.

For the first time, the best of Gogol's short fiction is brought together in a single volume: from the colorful Ukrainian tales that led some critics to call him "the Russian Dickens" to the Petersburg stories, with their black humor and wonderfully demented attitude toward the powers that be.

All of Gogol's most memorable creations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, the downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of a splendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know.

These fantastic, comic, utterly Russian characters have dazzled generations of readers and had a profound influence on writers such as Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Now they are brilliantly rendered in the first new translation in twenty-five years—one that is destined to become the definitive edition of Gogol's most important stories.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city has become a modern classic.

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.

It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the 'soul of pampered self-absorption'; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.

No play in the modern theatre has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. As Williams's first popular success, it launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, Menagerie has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by the editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, Robert Bray, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, The Catastrophe of Success, as well as a short section of Williams's own Production Notes.

Vita Nuova (1292-94) is regarded as one of Dante's most profound creations. The thirty-one poems in the first of his major writings are linked by a lyrical prose narrative celebrating and debating the subject of love.

Composed upon Dante's meeting with Beatrice and the "Lord of Love," it is a love story set to the task of confirming the "new life" inspired by this meeting.

With a critical introduction and explanatory notes, this is a new translation of a supreme work which has been read variously as biography, religious allegory, and a meditation on poetry itself.

Years after his escape, posing as scholarly Dr. Fell, curator of a grand family's palazzo, Hannibal lives the good life in Florence, playing lovely tunes by serial killer/composer Henry VIII and killing hardly anyone himself. Clarice is unluckier: in the novel's action-film-like opening scene, she survives an FBI shootout gone wrong, and her nemesis, Paul Krendler, makes her the fall guy. Clarice is suspended, so, unfortunately, the first cop who stumbles on Hannibal is an Italian named Pazzi, who takes after his ancestors, greedy betrayers depicted in Dante's Inferno. Pazzi is on the take from a character as scary as Hannibal: Mason Verger. When Verger was a young man busted for raping children, his vast wealth saved him from jail. All he needed was psychotherapy--with Dr. Lecter. Thanks to the treatment, Verger is now on a respirator, paralyzed except for one crablike hand, watching his enormous, brutal moray eel swim figure eights and devour fish. His obsession is to feed Lecter to some other brutal pets.

Capturing all the rueful irony and racial ambivalence of small-town Mississippi in the late 1950s, Melinda Haynes' celebrated novel is a wholly unforgettable exploration of family, identity, and redemption.

Mother of Pearl revolves around twenty-eight-year-old Even Grade, a black man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Korner, the fifteen-year-old white daughter of the town whore and an unknown father. Both are passionately determined to discover the precious things neither experienced as children: human connection, enduring commitment, and, above all, unconditional love.

A startlingly accomplished mixture of beauty, mystery, and tragedy, Mother of Pearl marks the debut of an extraordinary literary talent.

Meet Bridget Jones—a 30-something Singleton who is certain she would have all the answers if she could:

• lose 7 pounds
• stop smoking
• develop Inner Poise

123 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds in the middle of the night? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent), cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)...

Bridget Jones' Diary is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget's permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement — a year in which she resolves to:

• reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches
• visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich
• form a functional relationship with a responsible adult
• learn to program the VCR

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you helpless with laughter, and — like millions of readers the world round — you'll find yourself shouting, "Bridget Jones is me!"

From the Newbery Medal–winning author of the beloved classic From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler comes four jewel-like short stories—one for each of the team members of an Academic Bowl team—that ask questions and demonstrate surprising answers.

How had Mrs. Olinski chosen her sixth-grade Academic Bowl team? She had a number of answers. But were any of them true? How had she really chosen Noah and Nadia and Ethan and Julian? And why did they make such a good team? It was a surprise to a lot of people when Mrs. Olinski’s team won the sixth-grade Academic Bowl contest at Epiphany Middle School. It was an even bigger surprise when they beat the seventh grade and the eighth grade, too. And when they went on to even greater victories, everyone began to ask: How did it happen?

It happened at least partly because Noah had been the best man (quite by accident) at the wedding of Ethan’s grandmother and Nadia’s grandfather. It happened because Nadia discovered that she could not let a lot of baby turtles die. It happened when Ethan could not let Julian face disaster alone. And it happened because Julian valued something important in himself and saw in the other three something he also valued.

Mrs. Olinski, returning to teaching after having been injured in an automobile accident, found that her Academic Bowl team became her answer to finding confidence and success. What she did not know, at least at first, was that her team knew more than she did the answer to why they had been chosen.

Renowned throughout the land of Ankhana as the Blade of Tyshalle, Caine has killed his share of monarchs and commoners, villains and heroes. He is relentless, unstoppable, simply the best there is at what he does.

At home on Earth, Caine is Hari Michaelson, a superstar whose adventures in Ankhana command an audience of billions. Yet he is shackled by a rigid caste society, bound to ignore the grim fact that he kills men on a far-off world for the entertainment of his own planet—and bound to keep his rage in check.

But now Michaelson has crossed the line. His estranged wife, Pallas Rill, has mysteriously disappeared in the slums of Ankhana. To save her, he must confront the greatest challenge of his life: a lethal game of cat and mouse with the most treacherous rulers of two worlds...

Cities of the Plain is the concluding volume of The Border Trilogy, crafted by the National Book Award-winning author Cormac McCarthy. This magnificent novel serves as a darkly beautiful elegy for the American frontier.

Set in 1952, the story follows John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, who work as ranch hands in New Mexico, near the proving grounds of Alamogordo and the cities of El Paso and Juarez. Their lives are filled with trail drives, horse auctions, and stories told by campfire light. They cherish this life, knowing it is about to change forever.

The change is triggered when John Grady falls in love with a beautiful, ill-starred Mexican prostitute, setting in motion a chain of violent and unstoppable events. The novel is haunting in its beauty, filled with sorrow, humor, and awe. Cities of the Plain is a genuine American epic, capturing the essence of a world on the brink of transformation.

Assaulted by the bitter cold of a Montreal winter, the American-born Dr. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist for the Province of Quebec, digs for a corpse where Sister Elisabeth Nicolet, dead over a century and now a candidate for sainthood, should lie in her grave. A strange, small coffin, buried in the recesses of a decaying church, holds the first clue to the cloistered nun's fate.

The puzzle surrounding Sister Elisabeth's life and death provides a welcome contrast to discoveries at a burning chalet, where scorched and twisted bodies await Tempe's professional expertise. Who were these people? What brought them to this gruesome fate? Homicide Detective Andrew Ryan, with whom Tempe has a combustive history, joins her in the arson investigation.

From the fire scene, they are drawn into the worlds of an enigmatic and controversial professor, a mysterious commune, and a primate colony on a Carolina island.

Breakfast of Champions is a story featuring one of Kurt Vonnegut's most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout. Trout discovers, much to his dismay, that a Midwest car dealer has taken his fiction for reality. What ensues is a satirical romp that deftly critiques American society.

Vonnegut takes aim at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and environmental pollution, challenging the reader to see past the absurdity and recognize the underlying truths.

Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut’s funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors—a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb—Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness.

Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe and who we say we are. It's a darkly comedic narrative that challenges our perceptions and invites us to explore the chaotic dance of fate and consequence.

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

On her twelfth birthday, Sierva Maria, the only child of a decaying noble family in an eighteenth-century South American seaport, is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura, who has already dreamed about a girl with hair trailing after her like a bridal train. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels something shocking begin to occur. He has fallen in love, and it isn't long until Sierva Maria joins him in his fevered misery. Unsettling and indelible, Of Love and Other Demons is an evocative, majestic tale of the most universal experiences known to woman and man.

Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision as seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States). It's a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today’s follies.

But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Kurt Vonnegut’s pen into hilarious farce—a final slapstick that may be the Almighty’s joke on us all.

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth is a powerful and deeply romantic tale of two gifted musicians. Michael Holme is a violinist, a member of the successful Maggiore Quartet. He has long been haunted by memories of the pianist he loved and left ten years earlier, Julia McNicholl. Now, Julia, married and the mother of a small child, unexpectedly reenters his life and the romance flares up once more.

Against the magical backdrop of Venice and Vienna, the two lovers confront the truth about themselves and their love, about the music that both unites and divides them, and about a devastating secret that Julia must finally reveal.

With poetic, evocative writing and a brilliant portrait of the international music scene, An Equal Music confirms Vikram Seth as one of the world's finest and most enticing writers.

Ages ago, sorcerers of unmatched power sundered a world into four realms—sky, stone, fire, and water—then vanished. Over time, magicians learned to work spells only in their own realms and forgot the others. Now only the few who have survived the Labyrinth and crossed the Death Gate know of the presence of all four realms—and even they have yet to unravel the mysteries of their severed world.

In Arianus, Realm of Sky, humans, elves, and dwarves battle for control of precious water—traversing a world of airborne islands on currents of elven magic and the backs of mammoth dragons. But soon great magical forces will begin to rend the fabric of this delicate land.

An assassin will be hired to kill a royal prince—by the king himself. A dwarf will challenge the beliefs of his people—and lead them in rebellion. And a sinister wizard will enact his plan to rule Arianus—a plan that may be felt far beyond the Realm of Sky and into the Death Gate itself.

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens—as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

Featuring his world-famous masterpiece, Death in Venice, this collection of Nobel laureate Thomas Mann's stories and novellas reveals his artistic evolution. In a widely acclaimed translation that restores the controversial passages that were censored from the original English version, Death in Venice tells about a ruinous quest for love and beauty amid degenerating splendor. Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but lonely author, travels to the Queen of the Adriatic in search of an elusive spiritual fulfillment that turns into his erotic doom. Spellbound by a beautiful Polish boy, he finds himself fettered to this hypnotic city of sun-drenched sensuality and eerie physical decay as it gradually succumbs to a secret epidemic.

Also included in this volume are eleven other stories by Mann: Tonio Kroger, Gladius Dei, The Blood of the Walsungs, The Will for Happiness, Little Herr Friedmann, Tobias Mindernickel, Little Lizzy, Tristan, The Starvelings, The Wunderkind, and Harsh Hour. All of the stories collected here display Mann's inimitable use of irony, his subtle characterizations, and superb, complex plots.

Two teens fall in love with each other and heroin. Tar has reasons for running away from home that run deep and sour, whereas Gemma, with her middle-class roots firmly on show, has a deep-rooted lust for adventure. Their first hit brings bliss, the next despair.

After running away from their troubled homes, two English teenagers move in with a group of squatters in the port city of Bristol and try to find ways to support their growing addiction to heroin. Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opens a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space.

The Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II; it also changed the face of modern warfare. Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle.

In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing reversal, encircled and trapped their Nazi enemy. This battle for the ruins of a city cost more than a million lives.

Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides, fighting in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield. Antony Beevor has interviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including prisoner interrogations and reports of desertions and executions.

As a story of cruelty, courage, and human suffering, Stalingrad is unprecedented and unforgettable.

Boethius was an eminent public figure under the Gothic emperor Theodoric, and an exceptional Greek scholar. When he became involved in a conspiracy and was imprisoned in Pavia, it was to the Greek philosophers that he turned. The Consolation of Philosophy was written in the period leading up to his brutal execution. It is a dialogue of alternating prose and verse between the ailing prisoner and his 'nurse' Philosophy.

Her instruction on the nature of fortune and happiness, good and evil, fate and free will, restore his health and bring him to enlightenment. The Consolation of Philosophy was extremely popular throughout medieval Europe and his ideas were influential on the thought of Chaucer and Dante.

The Raging Quiet is a compelling and romantic story set in the tiny village of Tocurra. The plot revolves around a newcomer, Marnie, who befriends a young man named Raver, whose deafness has left him isolated from his fellow villagers. Marnie and Raver learn to communicate through a series of hand gestures, forming a special, silent bond.

However, when a death shakes the village, their unique connection causes suspicion of witchcraft. The story unfolds in a medieval setting, where God is cherished and witches are feared. Marnie's journey from a widow to a friend and protector of Raver is both heartwarming and revealing.

This novel is perfect for young readers, offering a mix of romance, drama, and adventure. It highlights the power of friendship and communication beyond words, making it an ideal feature for a month of romance.

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud is an innovative comic book that provides a detailed look at the history, meaning, and art of comics and cartooning. It traces the 3,000-year history of storytelling through pictures and discusses the language and images used in the unique medium of comics.

This work is celebrated throughout the cartoon industry and is essential reading for anyone interested in the intricate and fascinating world of comics.

White Oleander is a novel that has been everywhere hailed as a work of rare beauty and power. It tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid. Astrid's odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery. Each home is its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, and its own hard lessons to be learned.

Hikaru Shindo is like any sixth-grader in Japan: a pretty normal schoolboy with a two-tone head of hair and a penchant for antics. One day, he finds an old bloodstained Go board in his grandfather's attic--and that's when things get really interesting. Trapped inside the Go board is Fujiwara-no-Sai, the ghost of an ancient Go master who taught the strategically complex board game to the emperor of Japan many centuries ago.

In one fateful moment, Sai becomes a part of Hikaru's consciousness and together, through thick and thin, they make an unstoppable Go-playing team. Will they be able to defeat Go players who have dedicated their lives to the game? Will Sai achieve the "Divine Move" so he'll finally be able to rest in peace? Begin your journey with Hikaru and Sai in this first volume of Hikaru no Go.

Like a surreal and highly caffeinated version of The Big Chill, Jonathan Coe's new novel follows four students who knew each other in college in the eighties. Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events. Robert has his life changed forever by the misunderstandings that arise from her condition. Terry spends his wakeful nights fueling his obsession with movies. And an increasingly unstable doctor, Gregory, sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which he must eradicate.

But after ten years of fretful slumber and dreams gone bad, the four reunite in their college town to confront their disorders. In a Gothic cliffside manor being used as a clinic for sleep disorders, they discover that neither love, nor lunacy, nor obsession ever rests.

Who is going to marry Eugénie Grandet? This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugénie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comédie Humaine.

The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugénie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugénie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel.

Eugénie's moving story is set against the backdrop of provincial oppression, the vicissitudes of the wine trade, and the workings of the financial system in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It is both a poignant portrayal of private life and a vigorous fictional document of its age.

Club Nautico is an exclusive Spanish resort for the rich, retired British. After five people die in an unexplained house fire, club manager Frank Prentice pleads guilty-but nobody believes him, least of all the police. When Frank's brother Charles arrives, intent on unravelling the mystery, gradually he uncovers the secret world behind the resort's civilized image.

Features a man who finds himself drawn into a network of drugs, pornography, and murder in a Spanish resort.

Euripides' classic drama delves into the often mortifying consequences of the unbridled—and frequently hysterical—celebration of the feast of Dionysus, the God of wine.

This powerful narrative explores themes of divine retribution and the clash between order and chaos, as Dionysus exacts revenge on Pentheus, the King of Thebes, and his people.

Salman Rushdie's most ambitious and accomplished novel, sure to be hailed as his masterpiece. At the beginning of this stunning novel, Vina Apsara, a famous and much-loved singer, is caught up in a devastating earthquake and never seen again by human eyes. This is her story, and that of Ormus Cama, the lover who finds, loses, seeks, and again finds her, over and over, throughout his own extraordinary life in music. Their epic romance is narrated by Ormus's childhood friend and Vina's sometime lover, her "back-door man," the photographer Rai, whose astonishing voice, filled with stories, images, myths, anger, wisdom, humor, and love, is perhaps the book's true hero. Telling the story of Ormus and Vina, he finds that he is also revealing his own truths: his human failings, his immortal longings. He is a man caught up in the loves and quarrels of the age's goddesses and gods, but dares to have ambitions of his own. And lives to tell the tale.

Around these three, the uncertain world itself is beginning to tremble and break. Cracks and tears have begun to appear in the fabric of the real. There are glimpses of abysses below the surfaces of things. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is Salman Rushdie's most gripping novel and his boldest imaginative act, a vision of our shaken, mutating times, an engagement with the whole of what is and what might be, an account of the intimate, flawed encounter between the East and the West, a brilliant remaking of the myth of Orpheus, a novel of high (and low) comedy, high (and low) passions, high (and low) culture. It is a tale of love, death, and rock 'n' roll.

A Roman soldier, Marcellus, wins Christ's robe as a gambling prize. He then sets forth on a quest to find the truth about the Nazarene's robe—a quest that reaches to the very roots and heart of Christianity and is set against the vividly limned background of ancient Rome. Here is a timeless story of adventure, faith, and romance, a tale of spiritual longing and ultimate redemption.