In the last gasp of youth, Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson is back in Edinburgh. He taps into one last great scam: directing and producing a porn film. To make it work, he needs bedfellows: the lovely Nikki Fuller-Smith, a student with ambition, ego, and troubles to rival his own; old pal Mark Renton; and a motley crew that includes the neighborhood's favorite ex-beverage salesman, "Juice" Terry.

In the world of Porno, however, even the cons are conned. Sick Boy and Renton jockey for top dog. The out-of-jail and in-for-revenge Begbie is on the loose. But it's the hapless, drug-addled Spud who may be spreading the most trouble.

Porno is a novel about the Trainspotting crew ten years further down the line: still scheming, still scamming, still fighting for the first-class seats as the train careens at high velocity with derailment looming around the next corner.

The Lords of Discipline is a mesmerizing novel that sweeps us into the turbulent world of four young men—friends, cadets, and blood brothers. Their days are filled with hazing, heartbreak, pride, betrayal, and ultimately, humanity. We delve deep into the heart of the novel’s hero, Will McLean, a rebellious outsider with his own personal code of honor who is battling into manhood the hard way.

Immersed in a poignant love affair with a haunting beauty, Will must boldly confront the terrifying injustice of a corrupt institution as he struggles to expose a mysterious group known as “The Ten.”

Praise for The Lords of Discipline:

“If you are reading another book when you begin The Lords of Discipline, prepare to set it aside.”—The Denver Post

“A work of enormous power, passion, humor, and wisdom [that] sweeps the reader along on a great tide of honest, throbbing emotion.”—The Washington Star

“Few novelists write as well, and none as beautifully.”—Lexington Herald-Leader

Pat Conroy has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born.

Filled with the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina low country as well as the dusty glitter of New York City, The Prince of Tides is Pat Conroy at his very best.

Jack St. Bride arrives by chance in the sleepy New England town of Salem Falls, determined to reinvent himself. Once a beloved teacher and soccer coach, Jack's life was turned upside down by a student's crush, leading to accusations that shattered his reputation.

Now working at the Do-Or-Diner, Jack attempts to bury his past. He becomes the mysterious stranger, trying to fit into the town's routine. Addie Peabody, haunted by her own ghosts, finds herself drawn to Jack, and a gentle, healing love begins to blossom between them.

However, a group of bored, privileged teenage girls form a coven, crossing the line between amusement and malice. They notice Jack and make a shattering allegation, causing history to repeat itself. Jack must again proclaim his innocence, turning Salem Falls from a safe haven into a dangerous place.

As Jack's hidden past catches up with him, the town's seams begin to tear, and the truth becomes a slippery concept. Addie must look into her heart and Jack's secrets to find evidence that will either condemn or redeem the man she has come to love.

The Piano Teacher, the most famous novel of Elfriede Jelinek, is a shocking, searing, aching portrait of a woman bound between a repressive society and her darkest desires.

Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, who still lives with her domineering and possessive mother. Her life appears to be a seamless tissue of boredom, but Erika, a quiet thirty-eight-year-old, secretly visits Turkish peep shows at night to watch live sex shows and sadomasochistic films.

Meanwhile, a handsome, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old student has become enamored with Erika and sets out to seduce her. She resists him at first, but then the dark passions roiling under the piano teacher's subdued exterior explode in a release of sexual perversity, suppressed violence, and human degradation.

Javier Marías's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know.

Secrecy—its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility—hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into the shadows and on to the costs of ambivalence.

"My hands are of your colour; but I shame/To wear a heart so white"—Shakespeare's Macbeth.

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history.

Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night is regarded as his finest work. First published by Yale University Press in 1956, it has since sold more than one million copies. This edition includes a new foreword by Harold Bloom.

The action covers a fateful, heart-rending day from around 8:30 am to midnight, in August 1912 at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones - the semi-autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents at their home, Monte Cristo Cottage.

One theme of the play is addiction and the resulting dysfunction of the family. All three males are alcoholics and Mary is addicted to morphine. They all constantly conceal, blame, resent, regret, accuse and deny in an escalating cycle of conflict with occasional desperate and half-sincere attempts at affection, encouragement and consolation.

Miles Ryan's life seemed to end the day his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident two years ago. As deputy sheriff of New Bern, North Carolina, he not only grieves for her and worries about their young son Jonah but longs to bring the unknown driver to justice. Then Miles meets Sarah Andrews, Jonah's second-grade teacher. A young woman recovering from a difficult divorce, Sarah moved to New Bern hoping to start over. Tentatively, Miles and Sarah reach out to each other...soon they are falling in love. But what neither realizes is that they are also bound together by a shocking secret, one that will force them to reexamine everything they believe in—including their love.

Jonathan Franzen's third novel, The Corrections, is a great work of art and a grandly entertaining overture to our new century: a bold, comic, tragic, deeply moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of greed and globalism. Franzen brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty, of Cub Scouts and Christmas cookies and sexual inhibitions, into brilliant collision with the modern absurdities of brain science, home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and the anti-gravity New Economy. With The Corrections, Franzen emerges as one of our premier interpreters of American society and the American soul.

Enid Lambert is terribly, terribly anxious. Although she would never admit it to her neighbors or her three grown children, her husband, Alfred, is losing his grip on reality. Maybe it's the medication that Alfred takes for his Parkinson's disease, or maybe it's his negative attitude, but he spends his days brooding in the basement and committing shadowy, unspeakable acts. More and more often, he doesn't seem to understand a word Enid says.

Trouble is also brewing in the lives of Enid's children. Her older son, Gary, a banker in Philadelphia, has turned cruel and materialistic and is trying to force his parents out of their old house and into a tiny apartment. The middle child, Chip, has suddenly and for no good reason quit his exciting job as a professor at D------ College and moved to New York City, where he seems to be pursuing a "transgressive" lifestyle and writing some sort of screenplay. Meanwhile the baby of the family, Denise, has escaped her disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man--or so Gary hints.

Enid, who loves to have fun, can still look forward to a final family Christmas and to the ten-day Nordic Pleasurelines Luxury Fall Color Cruise that she and Alfred are about to embark on. But even these few remaining joys are threatened by her husband's growing confusion and unsteadiness. As Alfred enters his final decline, the Lamberts must face the failures, secrets, and long-buried hurts that haunt them as a family if they are to make the corrections that each desperately needs.

In a searing novel of love and loyalty, guilt and honor, the acclaimed author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Horse Whisperer gives his millions of readers another hero...

His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have. For Julia Bishop is the partner of his best friend and fellow “smoke jumper,” Ed Tully. Julia loves them both–until a fiery tragedy on Montana’s Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them, and burns a brand on all their hearts.

In the wake of the fire, Connor embarks on a harrowing journey to the edge of human experience, traveling the world’s worst wars and disasters to take photographs that find him fame but never happiness. Reckless of a life he no longer wants, again and again he dares death to take him, until another fateful day on another continent, he must walk through fire once more…

R.U.R.—written in 1920—garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word "Robot."

Mass-produced, efficient, and servile labor, Čapek's Robots remember everything, but lack creative thought, and the Utopian life they provide ultimately lacks meaning. When the Robots revolt, killing all but one of their masters, they must attempt to learn the secret of self-duplication. But their attempts at replication leave them with nothing but bloody chunks of meat.

It's not until two robots fall in love and are christened "Adam" and "Eve" by the last surviving human that Nature emerges triumphant.

Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor both professionally and personally, and to amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years.

None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors—some real, some spectral—that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.

In exposing the jumble of motivations that drive Arrowby and the other characters, Iris Murdoch lays bare the truth of untruth—the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world.

Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Charles's confrontation with the tidal rips of love and forgiveness is one of Murdoch's most moving and powerful novels.

One of Thomas Hardy's most powerful works, The Return of the Native centers famously on Egdon Heath, the wild, haunted Wessex moor that D. H. Lawrence called "the real stuff of tragedy." The heath's changing face mirrors the fortunes of the farmers, inn-keepers, sons, mothers, and lovers who populate the novel. The "native" is Clym Yeobright, who comes home from a cosmopolitan life in Paris. He; his cousin Thomasin; her fiancé, Damon Wildeve; and the willful Eustacia Vye are the protagonists in a tale of doomed love, passion, alienation, and melancholy as Hardy brilliantly explores that theme so familiar throughout his fiction: the diabolical role of chance in determining the course of a life. As Alexander Theroux asserts in his Introduction, Hardy was committed to the deep expression of [nature's] ironic chaos and strange apathy, even hostility, toward man.

The Oxford School Shakespeare has become the preferred introduction to the literary legacy of the greatest playwright in the English language. This exclusive collection of the Bard's best works has been designed specifically for readers new to Shakespeare's rich literary legacy. Each play is presented complete and unabridged, in large print. Every book is well illustrated, and starts with a commentary and character summary. Scene synopses and character summaries clarify confusing plots, while incisive essays explore the historical context and Shakespeare's sources. Each book ends with a complete list of Shakespeare's plays and a brief chronology of the Bard's life. The detailed explanatory notes are written clearly and positioned right next to the text--no more squinting at microscopic footnotes or flipping pages back and forth in search of endnotes! The new edition of the series features new covers and new illustrations, including both new drawings and photos from recent productions of Shakespeare's plays around the globe. In addition, the notes and the introductory material have been completely revised in line with new research and in order to make them clearer and more accessible. Finally, the entire text has been redesigned and reset to enhance readability. The new edition achieves the feat of unprecedented clarity of presentation without any cuts to the original text or the detailed explanations.

The Insulted & Injured, published soon after Dostoevsky's political imprisonment, clearly foreshadows his later preoccupation with unconscious psychological drives and their external effects on the lives of his characters. Where his later works carry these drives to inevitably dramatic conclusions, The Insulted & Injured confines them within the smaller boundaries of everyday event.

In this story, the impulse toward self-abnegation in love, which appears so markedly in both Vanya and Natasha, isn't itself enough to direct their lives; instead, it combines with their social world and the mundane ambitions of Prince Valkovsky to defeat their hope of happiness. Of all the characters in the novel, only Natasha's lover, the Prince's son Alyosha—the person least driven to mold life to his own terms—emerges untouched.

Here are, to a greater extent than in Dostoevsky's more familiar works, flesh-and-blood people as we see them around every day. They are made up of both good and evil, of will and acceptance. Unfailingly, they command interest and illuminate understanding.

When confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteer fireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take terrifying risks to save lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor can't bring himself to make: He can't fall in love. For all his adult years, Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leaves as soon as their crisis is over, as soon as the relationship starts to become truly intimate.

Then, one day, a raging, record-breaking storm hits his small Southern town. Denise Holton, a young single mother, is driving through it when her car skids off the road. With her is her four-year-old son, Kyle, a boy with severe learning disabilities and for whom she has sacrificed everything. Unconscious and bleeding, she—but not Kyle—will be found by Taylor McAden. And when she wakes, the chilling truth becomes clear to both of them: Kyle is gone.

During the search for Kyle, the connection, the lifeline, between Taylor and Denise takes root. Taylor doesn't know that this rescue will be different from all the others, demanding far more than raw physical courage. That it will lead him to the possibility of his own rescue from a life lived without love. That it will require him to open doors to his past that were slammed shut by pain. That it will dare him to live life to the fullest by daring to love.

In The Rescue, Nicholas Sparks weaves his inimitable spell, immersing us in the passions and the surprising complexities of modern relationships—and in doing so, teaching us something about our own.

This edition of Richard III features seven scenes, opening with the Duke of Gloucester’s villainous “Winter of our discontent” speech and followed by his audacious wooing of Lady Anne. Queen Margaret’s chilling curses, Richard’s string of murders, and the haunting chants of his victims’ ghosts are stage drama at its best. The climax is a gripping battle in which the Earl of Richmond slays Richard and becomes King of England.

There is also an essay by editor Nick Newlin on how to produce a Shakespeare play with novice actors, and notes about the original production of this abridgement at the Folger Shakespeare Library’s annual Student Shakespeare Festival.

The edition includes a preface by Nick Newlin, containing helpful advice on presenting Shakespeare in a high school setting with novice actors, as well as an appendix with play-specific suggestions and recommendations for further resources.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pawn in Frankincense is the fourth in the legendary Lymond Chronicles.

Somewhere within the bejeweled labyrinth of the Ottoman empire, a child is hidden. Now his father, Francis Crawford of Lymond, soldier of fortune and the exiled heir of Scottish nobility, is searching for him while ostensibly engaged on a mission to the Turkish Sultan.

At stake is a pawn in a cutthroat game whose gambits include treason, enslavement, and murder.