Airport is a gripping thriller that unfolds over the course of a single, chaotic evening at Lincoln International Airport outside Chicago. A ferocious blizzard wreaks havoc, pushing the airport and airline personnel to their limits as they try to cope with this unstoppable force of nature that endangers thousands of lives.

In the air, a lone plane struggles to reach its destination, battling the elements. Over the course of seven pulse-pounding hours, a tense human drama plays out as a brilliant airport manager, an arrogant pilot, a tough maintenance man, and a beautiful stewardess strive to avert disaster.

Featuring a diverse cast of vibrant characters, Airport is both a realistic depiction of the airline industry and a novel of nail-biting suspense.

New York Times bestselling author Maeve Binchy has captured the hearts of millions with her unforgettable novels. Binchy's graceful storytelling and wise compassion have earned her the devotion of fans worldwide--and made her one of the most beloved authors of our time. Now she dazzles us once again with a new novel filled with her signature warmth, humor, and tender insight.

A provocative tale of family heartbreak, friendship, and revelation, Tara Road explores every woman's fantasy: escape, into another place, another life. "What if . . ." Binchy asks, and answers in her most astonishing novel to date.

Praise for Tara Road

• "Her best work yet . . . Tara Road is like a total immersion in a colorful new world, where the last page comes too soon."—Seattle Times
• "An irresistible tale."—Elle
• "Engrossing."—Wall Street Journal
• "Difficult to put down!"—Denver Post
• "One of Binchy's best."—Kirkus Reviews

Alistair MacLeod musters all of the skill and grace that have won him an international following to give us No Great Mischief, the story of a fiercely loyal family and the tradition that drives it.

Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life. Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto's skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy. But, like all his clansmen, Alexander is sustained by a family history that seems to run through his veins.

And through these lovingly recounted stories—wildly comic or heartbreakingly tragic—we discover the hope against hope upon which every family must sometimes rely.

Scandale dans une pension de famille « comme il faut », sur la Côte d'Azur du début du siècle : Mme Henriette, la femme d'un des clients, s'est enfuie avec un jeune homme qui pourtant n'avait passé là qu'une journée...

Seul le narrateur tente de comprendre cette « créature sans moralité », avec l'aide inattendue d'une vieille dame anglaise très distinguée, qui lui expliquera quels feux mal éteints cette aventure a ranimés chez elle.

Ce récit d'une passion foudroyante, bref et aigu comme les affectionnait l'auteur d'Amok et du Joueur d'échecs, est une de ses plus incontestables réussites.

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is now about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, J. M. Coetzee’s searing novel tells the story of David Lurie, a twice divorced, 52-year-old professor of communications and Romantic Poetry at Cape Technical University. Lurie believes he has created a comfortable, if somewhat passionless, life for himself. He lives within his financial and emotional means. Though his position at the university has been reduced, he teaches his classes dutifully; and while age has diminished his attractiveness, weekly visits to a prostitute satisfy his sexual needs. He considers himself happy. However, when Lurie seduces one of his students, he sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter his complacency and leave him utterly disgraced.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes a celebrated short-story collection. Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in these tales of loneliness, quick violence, and the wrong kinds of love. Each portrait in Close Range reveals characters fiercely wrought with precision and grace.

These are stories of desperation and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both stark and magnificent.
The stories include:

• The half-skinned steer
• The mud below
• 55 miles to the gas pump
• The bunchgrass edge of the world
• A lonely coast
• Job history
• Pair a spurs
• People in Hell just want a drink of water
• The governors of Wyoming
• The blood bay
• Brokeback Mountain

This collection showcases an author writing at the peak of her craft.

Francis Joseph Cassavant is eighteen. He has just returned home from the Second World War, and he has no face. He does have a gun and a mission: to murder his childhood hero.

Francis lost most of his face when he fell on a grenade in France. He received the Silver Star for bravery, but was it really an act of heroism? Now, having survived, he is looking for a man he once admired and respected, a man adored by many people, a man who also received a Silver Star for bravery. A man who destroyed Francis's life.

Explore the nature of heroism through this gripping and tragic tale by Robert Cormier.

Message in a Bottle, shimmering with suspense and emotional intensity, takes readers on a hunt for the truth about a man and his memories, and about both the heartbreaking fragility and enormous strength of love. Nicholas Sparks, renowned as a chronicler of the human heart, presents a story that renews our faith in destiny and the ability of true lovers to find each other no matter where, no matter when.

Thrown to the waves, and to fate, the bottle could have ended up anywhere. Instead, it is found just three weeks after it begins its journey. Theresa Osborne, divorced and the mother of a twelve-year-old son, picks it up during a seaside vacation from her job as a Boston newspaper columnist. Inside is a letter that opens with: My Dearest Catherine, I miss you my darling, as I always do, but today is particularly hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together... For "Garrett," the man who signs the letter, the message is the only way he knows to express his undying love for a woman he has lost. For Theresa, wary of romance since her husband shattered her trust, the message raises questions that intrigue her. Who are Garrett and Catherine? Where is he now? What is his story? Challenged by the mystery, and pulled to find Garrett by emotions she does not fully understand, Theresa begins a search that takes her to a sunlit coastal town and an unexpected confrontation. Brought together by chance—or something more powerful—Theresa and Garrett are people whose lives are about to touch for a purpose, in a tale that resonates with our deepest hopes for finding that special someone and everlasting love.

A meditation on the erotic life of women, an exploration of class prejudices, and most of all a portrayal of the thoughts and actions of an unforgettable young woman, Fortune's Rocks is a profound and moving story about unwise love and the choices that transform a life. On a beach in New Hampshire at the turn of the last century, a young woman is drawn into a rocky, disastrous passage to adulthood. Olympia Biddeford is the only child of a prominent Boston couple--a precocious and well-educated daughter, alive with ideas and flush with the first stirrings of maturity. Her summer at the family's vacation home in Fortune's Rocks is transformed by the arrival of a doctor, a friend of her father's, whose new book about mill-town laborers has caused a sensation. Olympia is captivated by his thinking, his stature, and his drive to do right--even as she is overwhelmed for the first time by irresistible sexual desire. She and the doctor--a married man, a father, and nearly three times her age--come together in an unthinkable, torturous, hopelessly passionate affair. Throwing aside propriety and self-preservation, Olympia plunges forward with cataclysmic results that are the price of straying in an unforgiving era. Olympia is cast out of the world she knows, and Fortune's Rocks is the story of her determination to reinvent her broken life--and claim the one thing she finds she cannot live without.

Shanghai Baby is a story of love, sex, and self-discovery that was banned in China for its sensual nature and irreverent style. This novel is the semi-autobiographical tale of Coco, a cafe waitress filled with enthusiasm and impatience for life.

She meets Tian Tian, a young man for whom she feels tenderness and love, but he is reclusive, impotent, and increasingly using drugs. Despite parental objections, Coco moves in with him, leaves her job, and throws herself into her writing.

Shortly afterwards, she meets Mark, a married Westerner. The two are uncontrollably attracted and begin a highly charged, physical affair. Torn between her two lovers, and tormented by her deceit, her unfinished novel, and the conflicting feelings involved in love and betrayal, Coco begins to find out who she really is.

This beautifully written novel with a distinct voice describes China on the brink of its own social and sexual revolution.

In Coney Island, Brooklyn, Sarah Goldfarb, a lonely widow, wants nothing more than to lose weight and appear on a television game show. She becomes addicted to diet pills in her obsessive quest, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and his best friend, Tyrone, have devised an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by scoring a pound of uncut heroin. Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in the spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares.

After selling nearly two million copies since its release in August 1999, "Assassins" is now available in trade paper! The seven-year Tribulation reaches its halfway mark in the sixth book of the blockbuster Left Behind series, "Assassins." Nicolae Carpathia is assassinated, setting the stage for the Great Tribulation.

The Tribulation Force, a group of people who came to believe in God after being left behind on Earth after God's Rapture, ready themselves to fulfill Holy Scripture by setting up the assassination of the Antichrist.

The members of the Tribulation Force face their most dangerous challenges. As international fugitives, they struggle to find supplies for safe houses around the world. In despair over so many lost lives, Rayford Steele and Buck Williams make plans to dethrone Nicolae Carpathia and expose him as the Antichrist. Meanwhile, Carpathia has been busy rebuilding roads, airports, and a cellular/solar satellite phone system—all designed to help him become the supreme ruler of the world. Many believers want him stopped, but who will fulfill Scripture and help bring about the Antichrist's death?

After nearly twenty years of living in California, March Murray, along with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Gwen, returns to the sleepy Massachusetts town where she grew up to attend the funeral of Judith Dale, the beloved housekeeper who raised her. Yet returning to her hometown also brings her back to Hollis, March’s former soul mate and lover.

March’s father had taken the teenaged Hollis, an abandoned child, and the product of a series of detention homes, into his house as a boarder, and treated him like a son. Yet March and Hollis’s passionate love was hardly a normal sibling relationship. When Hollis left her after a petty fight, March waited for him three long years, wondering what she had done wrong.

Encountering Hollis again makes March acutely aware of the choices that she has made, and the choices everyone around her has made—including Mrs. Dale, who knew more of love than March could ever have suspected, and her brother Alan, whose tragic history has left him grief-struck, with alcohol as his only solace. Her attraction to Hollis is overwhelming—and March jeopardizes her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, and her own happiness in an attempt to reclaim the past.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nelson Algren's most powerful and enduring work, The Man with the Golden Arm, offers a devastating portrait of the savage, subterranean world of gamblers, junkies, alcoholics, prostitutes, thieves, and degenerates. It remains unsurpassed as an authentic depiction of human depravity.

Only a master like Algren could create such a passionate and dramatic novel on the daring theme of a man's struggle against dope addiction. The novel tells the story of Frankie Machine, a card-dealing WWII veteran, who is caught in the act of slowly cutting his own heart into wafer-thin slices. For Frankie, a murder committed may be the least of his problems.

The literary critic Malcolm Cowley called it "Algren's defense of the individual," while Carl Sandburg wrote of its "strange midnight dignity." This literary tour de force suggests a defense of human dignity and a reason for hope, despite the challenges of drug addiction, poverty, and human failure.

Set amid the splendor of London drawing rooms and gilded Venetian palazzos, The Wings of the Dove is the story of Milly Theale, a naïve, doomed American heiress, and a pair of lovers, Kate Croy and Merton Densher, who conspire to obtain her fortune. In this witty tragedy of treachery, self-deception, and betrayal, Henry James weaves together three ill-fated and wholly human destinies unexpectedly linked by desire, greed, and salvation.

As Amy Bloom writes in her Introduction, “The Wings of the Dove is a novel of intimacy. . . . [James] gives us passion, he gives us love in its terrible and enchanting forms.”

Wit is a powerfully imagined play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Margaret Edson. This sophisticated, multilayered drama explores one of existence's unifying experiences—mortality—and probes the vital importance of human relationships.

As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English, finds herself diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control, she approaches her illness with the same intensely rational and methodical approach that has guided her academic career. However, as her disease progresses, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her.

The play asks timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live and interact with others more important than our material or professional achievements? How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it?

With clarity and elegance, Edson's writing makes this play accessible to any reader. It offers a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish—a lesson both uplifting and redemptive.

Elective Affinities was written when Goethe was sixty and long established as Germany's literary giant. This is a new edition of his penetrating study of marriage and passion, bringing together four people in an inexorable manner.

The novel asks whether we have free will or not and confronts its characters with the monstrous consequences of repressing what little "real life" they have in themselves, a life so far removed from their natural states that it appears to them as something terrible and destructive.

The Struggle is the terrifying story of two vampire brothers and the beautiful girl torn between them:

Damon: determined to make Elena his queen of darkness, he'd kill his own brother to possess her.

Stefan: desperate for the power to destroy Damon, he succumbs to his thirst for human blood.

Elena: irresistibly drawn to both brothers, her choice will decide their fate.

Il Virginian era un piroscafo. Negli anni tra le due guerre faceva la spola tra Europa e America, con il suo carico di miliardari, di emigranti e di gente qualsiasi. Dicono che sul Virginian si esibisse ogni sera un pianista straordinario, dalla tecnica strabiliante, capace di suonare una musica mai sentita prima, meravigliosa. Dicono che la sua storia fosse pazzesca, che fosse nato su quella nave e che da lì non fosse mai sceso. Dicono che nessuno sapesse il perché.

How can you have a ghost story without a ghost? What if the ghost is only in your head? How would you know that you aren't losing your mind?

By medical standards, sixteen-year-old Janine Palmer dies on the day of her automobile accident. When her spirit travels to the "other side," however, she is told that it isn't her time to die, and is sent back to live out her life. When she awakens from her coma, though, she discovers that she hasn't come back alone.

There is someone else inside her mind. The voice in Janine's head claims to be the ghost of Lenore, Janine's twin sister, who drowned twelve years earlier. Lenore blames her own death on Janine and is determined to live again in her sister's body. Now the two girls must vie for one body.

Can Janine be sure that her twin is really inside her, or is she simply going crazy?

This is the story of England's most famous, and notorious, king. Henry was a charismatic, ardent - and brash - young lover who married six times; a scholar with a deep love of poetry and music; an energetic hunter who loved the outdoors; a monarch whose lack of a male heir haunted him incessantly; and a ruthless leader who would stop at nothing to achieve his desires.

His monumental decision to split from Rome and the Catholic Church was one that would forever shape the religious and political landscape of Britain.

Combining magnificent storytelling with an extraordinary grasp of the pleasures and perils of power, Margaret George delivers a vivid portrait of Henry VIII and Tudor England and the powerhouse of players on its stage: Thomas Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More, and Anne Boleyn.

It is also a narrative told from an original perspective: Margaret George writes from the King's point of view, injecting irreverent comments from Will Somers - Henry's jester and confidant.

Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, a hunter and ex-military man, lives alone in a hut in the forest with his faithful dog, Aesop. Upon meeting Edvarda, the daughter of a merchant in a nearby town, they are both strongly attracted to each other, but neither understands the other's love.

Written in the form of a diary, Pan explores the wild beauty of the Norwegian landscape and delves into the shadowy alcoves of the human mind. It is a lyrical and disturbing portrait of love and the dark recesses of the human psyche.

Five Plays is a collection of Anton Chekhov's most celebrated works, bringing together the quintessence of Russian drama. The plays included are:

• Ivanov
• The Seagull
• Uncle Vanya
• The Three Sisters
• The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov's work is renowned for its lyricism, humor, and pathos, redefining dramatic conventions and paving the way for modern theater. Through these plays, Chekhov explores the vulnerabilities, needs, and neuroses of his characters, capturing the essence of the human condition with poignant realism.

Each play in this collection invites the reader to immerse themselves in the intricacies of Russian society, offering a unique perspective on the complexities of life, love, and loss.

Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age, in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money—a place devoid of feeling or hope.

Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.

From the moment that Gjorg's brother is killed by a neighbour, his own life is forfeit: for the code of Kanun requires Gjorg to kill his brother's murderer and then in turn be hunted down. After shooting his brother's killer, young Gjorg is entitled to thirty days' grace - not enough to see out the month of April.

Then a visiting honeymoon couple cross the path of the fugitive. The bride's heart goes out to Gjorg, and even these 'civilised' strangers from the city risk becoming embroiled in the fatal mechanism of vendetta.

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother, Thomas, entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut, public library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable. . . .One of the most acclaimed novels of our time, Wally Lamb's I Know This Much Is True is a story of alienation and connection, devastation and renewal, at once joyous, heartbreaking, poignant, mystical, and powerfully, profoundly human.

Bestselling novelist Margaret George brings to life the glittering kingdom of Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, in this lush, sweeping, and richly detailed saga. Told in Cleopatra's own voice, this is a mesmerizing tale of ambition, passion, and betrayal, which begins when the twenty-year-old queen seeks out the most powerful man in the world, Julius Caesar, and does not end until, having survived the assassination of Caesar and the defeat of the second man she loves, Marc Antony, she plots her own death rather than be paraded in triumph through the streets of Rome.

Most of all, in its richness and authenticity, it is an irresistible story that reveals why Margaret George's work has been widely acclaimed.

The Pilot's Wife is a gripping tale of love, loss, and discovery. As a pilot's wife, Kathryn Lyons is prepared for the unexpected. But when she receives the devastating news that her husband, Jack, has died in a plane crash off the coast of Ireland, her world is turned upside down.

Kathryn embarks on a journey filled with startling revelations, each more shocking than the last. She delves into the depths of her husband's life, uncovering secrets that challenge everything she thought she knew about him. As rumors swirl and the media frenzy grows, Kathryn is determined to learn the truth, no matter the cost.

Anita Shreve weaves a taut and impassioned narrative that explores the intricacies of trust and the complexities of marriage. How well can we truly know another person? This question propels the novel forward, captivating readers with its emotional depth and suspense.

In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway made his first extended visit to Italy in thirty years. His reacquaintance with Venice, a city he loved, provided the inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees, the story of Richard Cantwell, a war-ravaged American colonel stationed in Italy at the close of the Second World War, and his love for a young Italian countess.

A poignant, bittersweet homage to love that overpowers reason, to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the world-weary beauty and majesty of Venice, Across the River and into the Trees stands as Hemingway's statement of defiance in response to the great dehumanizing atrocities of the Second World War.

Does growing up have to mean growing apart? Since childhood, Bryon and Mark have been as close as brothers. Now things are changing. Bryon's growing up, spending a lot of time with girls, and thinking seriously about who he wants to be. Mark still just lives for the thrill of the moment. The two are growing apart - until Bryon makes a shocking discovery about Mark. Then Bryon faces a terrible decision - one that will change both of their lives forever.

Another classic from the author of the internationally bestselling The Outsiders Continue celebrating 50 years of The Outsiders by reading this companion novel. That Was Then, This is Now is S. E. Hinton's moving portrait of the bond between best friends Bryon and Mark and the tensions that develop between them as they begin to grow up and grow apart. "A mature, disciplined novel which excites a response in the reader . . . Hard to forget."—The New York Times

"I’ve not always been what I am now"

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled ‘A Story of a Man of Character’, Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.

Michael was in a hurry. He was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with eight hundred lawyers. The money was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star with no time to waste, no time to stop, no time to toss a few coins into the cups of panhandlers. No time for a conscience.But a violent encounter with a homeless man stopped him cold. Michael survived; his assailant did not. Who was this man? Michael did some digging, and learned that he was a mentally ill veteran who'd been in and out of shelters for many years. Then Michael dug a little deeper, and found a dirty secret, and the secret involved Drake & Sweeney.The fast track derailed; the ladder collapsed. Michael bolted the firm and took a top-secret file with him. He landed in the streets, an advocate for the homeless, a street lawyer.And a thief.

American Star is a gripping tale of love, ambition, and revenge set against the dazzling backdrop of Hollywood and New York. At its heart are two extraordinary lovers, Nick and Lauren, whose teenage romance was the talk of their small town—forbidden, sizzling, and unforgettable.

Separated by a tragedy that sent them into different worlds, Nick and Lauren rise to fame in the most glamorous industries. Nick becomes one of Hollywood's biggest stars, while Lauren surprises everyone with a modeling career that takes off beyond her wildest dreams.

As they navigate through a whirlwind of parties, drugs, and sex, they are haunted by a secret they share, trying to live without each other—only to find they can't. Their fates collide at the plush Los Angeles estate of a powerful music industry magnate, where a secret vendetta unfolds in a sudden, murderous heat.

American Star is a compelling story of power, sex, money, and fame, where the ambitious and lethal Hollywood wives push their way to the forefront, achieving everything their famous husbands have and more.

For eighteen years, Fran Benedetto kept her secret and hid her bruises. She stayed with Bobby because she wanted her son to have a father, and because, in spite of everything, she loved him. Then one night, when she saw the look on her ten-year-old son's face, Fran finally made a choice—and ran for both their lives.

Now she is starting over in a city far from home, far from Bobby. In this place, she uses a name that isn't hers, cradles her son in her arms, and tries to forget. For the woman who now calls herself Beth, every day is a chance to heal, to put together the pieces of her shattered self. And every day she waits for Bobby to catch up to her. Because Bobby always said he would never let her go. Despite the flawlessness of her escape, Fran Benedetto is certain of one thing: It is only a matter of time...

The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams’ essay “The World I Live In.”

It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the ’40s and ’50s.

Père Goriot is the tragic story of a father whose obsessive love for his two daughters leads to his financial and personal ruin. Interwoven with this theme is that of the impoverished young aristocrat, Rastignac, who came to Paris from the provinces to hopefully make his fortune. He befriends Goriot and becomes involved with the daughters. The story is set against the background of a whole society driven by social ambition and lust for wealth.

The Sweet Hereafter is a compelling novel by Russell Banks that begins with a tragic school bus accident. The story unfolds through the perspectives of four different narrators, each shedding light on the small-town dynamics and the profound impact of the tragedy.

The novel explores a small town's response to the inexplicable loss of its children. When the worst happens, whom do you blame, and how do you cope? This large-hearted novel brings to life a cast of unforgettable small-town characters and illuminates the mysteries and realities of love as well as grief.

Rich in imagery and the details of small-town life, The Sweet Hereafter is haunting in its portrayal of ordinary men and women struggling to understand loss. Under Banks's restrained craftsmanship, what begins as a story of senseless tragedy is transformed into an aspiring testament to hope and human resilience.

Faith Devlin: A poor, outcast child in Prescott, Louisiana, she'd always adored the town's golden boy from afar. But he called her white trash that sultry Southern night when his rich, respected father disappeared, along with her pretty Mom. Now Faith wanted to hate Gray Rouillard...not to feel a powerful surge of desire. But she couldn't quench her passion, any more than she could hide the truth about the past she had waited so long to unravel.

Gray Rouillard: Even when he raised hell, he did it with style. Reckless, charming, and backed by Rouillard money, Gray controlled the town of Prescott—and Devlin was a name he never wanted to hear again. But when he gazed at Faith Devlin, all he saw was a swirl of tangled sheets and her silken flesh beneath him. To care for her was impossible, unthinkable...because Gray Rouillard planned to use all his power to ruin her.

Swallowing Stones begins with a free and joyful act, but from then on, Michael finds it impossible even to remember what it felt like to be free and joyful. When he fires his new rifle into the air on his seventeenth birthday, he never imagines that the bullet will end up killing someone.

But a mile away, a man is killed by that bullet as he innocently repairs his roof. And Michael keeps desperately silent while he watches his world crumble.

Meanwhile, Jenna, the dead man's daughter, copes with desperation of her own. Through her grief, she tries to understand why she no longer feels comfortable with her boyfriend and why a near stranger named Michael keeps appearing in her dreams.

Suspenseful and powerfully moving, this is the unforgettable story of an accidental crime and its haunting web of repercussions.

Violin by Anne Rice tells the story of two charismatic figures bound to each other by a passionate commitment to music as a means of rapture, seduction, and liberation.

At the novel's center: a uniquely fascinating woman, Triana, and the demonic fiddler Stefan, a tormented ghost who begins to prey upon her, using his magic violin to draw her into a state of madness. But Triana sets out to resist Stefan, and the struggle thrusts them both into a terrifying supernatural realm.

Violin flows abundant with the history, the drama, and the romantic intensity that have become synonymous with Anne Rice at her incomparable best.

Memoirs of a Geisha transports readers to a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. Through the eyes of one of Japan's most celebrated geishas, we experience the struggle for dignity and identity in a time of war and transformation. Arthur Golden crafts a tale that is at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful—and utterly unforgettable.

The Angel of Darkness, by Caleb Carr, immerses readers in the vivid world of The Alienist with an intriguing twist: the story is narrated by former street urchin Stevie Taggert, whose rough life has endowed him with wisdom beyond his years. Thus, New York City, and the groundbreaking alienist Dr. Kreizler himself, are seen anew.

Set in June 1897, a year has passed since Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a pioneer in forensic psychiatry, tracked down the brutal serial killer John Beecham with his trusted companions. Kreizler and his friends—high-living crime reporter John Schuyler Moore; indomitable, derringer-toting Sara Howard; the brilliant detective brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson; powerful and compassionate Cyrus Montrose; and Stevie Taggert, the boy Kreizler saved from a life of street crime—have returned to their former pursuits, trying to forget the horror of the Beecham case.

But when the distraught wife of a Spanish diplomat begs Sara's aid, the team reunites to help find her kidnapped infant daughter. This case is fraught with danger, as Spain and the United States are on the verge of war. Caleb Carr once again demonstrates his brilliant ability to re-create the past, both high life and low.

As the horror unfolds, Delmonico's still serves up wondrous meals, and a summer trip to the elegant gambling parlors of Saratoga provides precious keys to the murderer's past. At the same time, readers embark on revealing journeys into Stevie's New York, a place where poor and neglected children—then as now—turn to crime and drugs at shockingly early ages.

Peppered throughout are characters taken from real life and rendered with historical vigor, including suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton; painter Albert Pinkham Ryder; and Clarence Darrow, who thunders for the defense in a tense courtroom drama during which the sanctity of American motherhood itself is put on trial.

Fast-paced and chilling, The Angel of Darkness is a tour de force, a novel of modern evil in old New York.

This revolutionary play by lauded playwright and poet Ntozake Shange is a fearless portrayal of the experiences of women of color. Since its inception in California in 1974, and its highly acclaimed success at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and on Broadway, it has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences nationwide.

Passionate and fearless, Shange's words reveal what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century. This groundbreaking dramatic prose poem is written in vivid and powerful language that resonates with unusual beauty and delivers a fierce message to the world.