This poem first appeared in a newspaper in Troy, New York, USA, on December 23, 1823, as A Visit From St. Nicholas. No one claimed authorship until 13 years later. Clement Clarke Moore, a professor and poet, said that he wrote the piece for his children. Unbeknownst to him, his housekeeper had sent it to the newspaper to be published. However, the family of Henry Livingston Jr. contended that their father had been reciting A Visit from St. Nicholas for 15 years prior to publication. Regardless of the true author, the poem is now a Christmas classic.

"Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red." For those who only know Clive Barker through his long multigenre novels, this one-volume edition of the Books of Blood is a welcome chance to acquire the 16 remarkable horror short stories with which he kicked off his career. For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind.

Reflecting back after 14 years, Barker writes: "I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present. Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago."

These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: "The Midnight Meat Train," a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; "The Yattering and Jack," about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; "In the Hills, the Cities," an unusual example of an original horror premise; "Dread," a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," about a woman who kills men with her mind.

Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction. No horror library is complete without them.

Outcast Trader Daja, along with her fellow mages-in-training, embarks on a journey from Winding Circle to the Gold Ridge Mountains, where a severe drought threatens to cause widespread famine.

In this challenging environment, Daja creates an astonishing object: a living metal vine. Her dealings with her former people, the Traders, reawaken a longing for her familiar ways.

Now, Daja faces a pivotal choice—should she return to the Traders, or remain with the Winding Circle folk who have become her family?

A powerful tale of grief, love’s enduring bonds, and secrets of the past from #1 New York Times bestselling author and master storyteller Stephen King. Four years after the sudden death of his wife, bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls “Sara Laughs,” Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway.

There, he finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, whose vindictive purpose is to take his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie’s and Kyra’s struggle—and as he falls in love with both of them—he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs…now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What are the forces that have been unleashed here—and just what do they want of Mike Noonan?

In the far distant future, the country is laid waste by a nuclear holocaust. Twelve-year-old Riddley Walker tells his story in a language as fractured as the world in which he lives. As Riddley steps outside the confines of his small world, he finds himself caught up in intrigue and a frantic quest for power, desperately trying to make sense of things.

Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state—and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture—rebel, change agent, and artist.

This is a brilliant, unique, completely realized work of fiction. One reads it again and again, discovering new wonders every time through. Join Riddley Walker on his journey of discovery and survival in a world that echoes both the past and a possible future.

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.

In this volume, which reaffirms the uncompromising brilliance of his mind, Cioran strips the human condition down to its most basic components: birth and death. He suggests that disaster lies not in the prospect of death but in the fact of birth, "that laughable accident."

In the lucid, aphoristic style that characterizes his work, Cioran writes of time and death, God and religion, suicide and suffering, and the temptation to silence. In all his writing, Cioran cuts to the heart of the human experience.

The world-renowned classic that has enthralled and delighted millions of readers with its timeless tales of gods and heroes. Edith Hamilton's Mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture--the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present. We meet the Greek gods on Olympus and Norse gods in Valhalla. We follow the drama of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus. We hear the tales of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Cupid and Psyche, and mighty King Midas. We discover the origins of the names of the constellations. And we recognize reference points for countless works of art, literature, and cultural inquiry--from Freud's Oedipus complex to Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas to Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra.

Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.

The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.

The extraordinary gifts for evocation and insight and the stunning talent for storytelling that earned Rick Bragg a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 are here brought to bear on the wrenching story of his own family's life. It is the story of a violent, war-haunted, alcoholic father and a strong-willed, loving mother who struggled to protect her three sons from the effects of poverty and ignorance that had tainted her own life. It is the story of the life Bragg was able to carve out for himself on the strength of his mother's encouragement and belief.

This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. At the center of this soaring memoir is Bragg's mother, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes and picked other people's cotton so that her children wouldn't have to live on welfare alone. Evoking these lives—and the country that shaped and nourished them—with artistry, honesty, and compassion, Rick Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The result is unforgettable.

Fermat's Enigma is an astonishingly entertaining story of the pursuit of a mathematical grail that intrigued and baffled the world's greatest minds for more than 350 years. The challenge was to prove the equation: xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ... and no solution exists.

In the seventeenth century, the brilliant French mathematician Pierre de Fermat scribbled a note in the margin of a book, claiming he had discovered a 'truly marvelous demonstration' of this proposition, which the margin was too narrow to contain. This cryptic message threw down a gauntlet to future generations, sparking a quest that became known as Fermat's Last Theorem.

Based on the author's acclaimed documentary film, Fermat's Enigma tells the captivating tale of heartbreak and mastery in the world of mathematics. It is a mesmerizing journey that will forever change your perception of mathematics.

Who Moved My Cheese? is a timeless business classic that uses a simple parable to reveal profound truths about dealing with change so that you can enjoy less stress and more success in your work and in your life. It would be all so easy if you had a map to the Maze. If the same old routines worked. If they'd just stop moving "The Cheese." But things keep changing...

Most people are fearful of change, both personal and professional, because they don't have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson, the coauthor of the multimillion bestseller The One Minute Manager, uses a deceptively simple story to show that when it comes to living in a rapidly changing world, what matters most is your attitude.

Exploring a simple way to take the fear and anxiety out of managing the future, Who Moved My Cheese? can help you discover how to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept change in order to have a positive impact on your job, your relationships, and every aspect of your life.

Crispin is a master mosaicist, creating beautiful art with colored stones and glass. Summoned to Sarantium by imperial request, he bears a Queen's secret mission, and a talisman from an alchemist. Once in the fabled city, with its taverns and gilded sanctuaries, chariot races and palaces, intrigues and violence, Crispin must find his own source of power in order to survive—and unexpectedly discovers it high on the scaffolding of his own greatest creation.

Sarantium is the golden city: holy to the faithful, exalted by the poets, jewel of the world and heart of an empire. Artisan Caius Crispus receives a summons from the emperor and sets off on a journey toward the Imperial city. But before Crispin can reach Sarantium, with its taverns and gilded sanctuaries, chariot races and palaces, he must pass through a land of pagan ritual and mysterious danger. In Sailing to Sarantium, the first volume of the brilliant Sarantine Mosaic, Guy Gavriel Kay weaves an utterly compelling story of the allure and intrigue of a magnificent city and the people drawn into its spell.

A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?

Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.

Aeriel's love has broken the curse on the darkangel Irrylath, making him human again and freeing him from the control of his mother, the dreaded White Witch. But the Witch is far from defeated. Her wicked plans require all seven of her vampyre sons, and she will not give one up so easily.

There is but a single hope for the Witch's defeat—solving an ancient, mysterious riddle. So Aeriel sets off to solve the riddle, sailing across a sea of dust and straight into the worst of the Witch's terrors. But if Aeriel is to save Irrylath and her world, she will have to overcome his bloodthirsty darkangel brothers—and ultimately confront his terrifying mother face-to-face.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century. This poignant and moving tale is filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache. It's crowded with life, people, and vivid incidents.

The story follows the young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg. The daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are portrayed with raw honesty and are tenderly threaded with family connectedness. Betty Smith's work is a brilliant literary piece that captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.

This best-selling trilogy chronicles a tale of persecution and perseverance of 1st-century Christians in hedonistic Rome.

#1 A Voice in the Wind: Torn by her love for a handsome aristocrat, a young slave girl clings to her faith in the living God for deliverance from the forces of decadent Rome.

#2 An Echo in the Darkness: Turning away from the opulence of Rome, Marcus is led by a whispering voice from the past into a journey that could set him free from the darkness of his soul.

#3 As Sure As the Dawn: Atretes. German warrior. Revered gladiator. He won his freedom through his fierceness... but his life is about to change forever.

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.

When Adela Quested and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced 'Anglo-Indian' community. Determined to escape the parochial English enclave and explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves with Aziz, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the centre of a scandal that rouses violent passions among both the British and their Indian subjects.

A masterful portrait of a society in the grip of imperialism, A Passage to India compellingly depicts the fate of individuals caught between the great political and cultural conflicts of the modern world. In his introduction, Pankaj Mishra outlines Forster's complex engagement with Indian society and culture. This edition reproduces the Abinger text and notes, and also includes four of Forster's essays on India, a chronology and further reading.

Le Comte de Monte-Cristo I is a gripping adventure that takes readers through the tumultuous journey of Edmond Dantès. In this first volume, Dantès experiences a dramatic fall, both literally and figuratively, as he is unjustly imprisoned and later makes his daring escape.

"On fit encore quatre ou cinq pas en montant toujours, puis Dantès sentit qu'on le prenait par la tête et par les pieds et qu'on le balançait." These words mark the beginning of Dantès' descent into despair, as he is cast into the sea, bound to a heavy weight.

With a heart-stopping narrative, Dumas weaves a tale of revenge, hope, and the relentless pursuit of justice. This classic piece of French literature is a testament to the enduring power of determination and resilience.

Modoc is a captivating true story of loyalty, friendship, and high adventure that spans several decades and three continents.

Raised together in a small German circus town, a boy and an elephant formed a bond that would last their entire lives, tested time and again through a near-fatal shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, an apprenticeship with the legendary Mahout elephant trainers in the Indian teak forests, and their eventual rise to circus stardom in 1940s New York City.

As the African Sun-Times put it, Modoc is "heartwarming...probably the greatest love story ever told."

Set in the 1860s, Silk weaves a tale of Hervé Joncour, a French silkworm merchant, as he travels to Japan—a country closed to foreigners—to acquire silkworm eggs amidst an epidemic threatening France's silk trade. The journey is not only a commercial venture but also a personal odyssey, leading to an illicit and silent affair with a concubine who has "eyes that are not Oriental."

As Joncour makes his clandestine deals with a local baron, the passion between him and the concubine unfolds through subtle, clandestine messages across his visits. Alessandro Baricco's narrative, as smooth and lustrous as the silk in question, spins a story of love that is both enigmatic and intense, highlighting the complexities of connection and desire.

Stanley Yelnats is under a curse—a curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnats. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes.

It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption.

Of all Jack London's fictions none has been as popular as his dog stories. In addition to The Call of the Wild, the epic tale of a Californian dog's adventures during the Klondike gold rush, this edition includes White Fang, and five famous short stories - Bâtard, Moon-Face, Brown Wolf, That Spot, and To Build a Fire.

The Fool's Progress, the "fat masterpiece" as Edward Abbey labeled it, is his most important piece of writing: it reveals the complete Ed Abbey, from the green grass of his memory as a child in Appalachia to his approaching death in Tucson at age sixty two.

When his third wife abandons him in Tucson, boozing, misanthropic anarchist Henry Holyoak Lightcap shoots his refrigerator and sets off in a battered pick-up truck for his ancestral home in West Virginia. Accompanied only by his dying dog and his memories, the irascible warhorse (a stand-in for the "real" Abbey) begins a bizarre cross-country odyssey--determined to make peace with his past--and to wage one last war against the ravages of "progress."

A profane, wildly funny, brash, overbearing, exquisite tour de force. -- The Chicago Tribune

With the Christmas season upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Edinburgh's finest is gearing up socially—kicking things off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse...

Weaving a tapestry of fact and fiction, Sara Donati's epic novel sweeps us into another time and place...and into the heart of a forbidden affair between an unconventional Englishwoman and an American frontiersman.

It is December of 1792. Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English estate to join her family in a remote New York mountain village. It is a place unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man unlike any she has ever encountered - a white man dressed like a Native American, Nathanial Booner, known to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives. Determined to provide schooling for all the children of the village, she soons finds herself locked in conflict with the local slave owners as well as her own family.

Interweaving the fate of the Mohawk Nation with the destiny of two lovers, Sara Donati's compelling novel creates a complex, profound, passionate portrait of an emerging America.

Over the course of nine novels, Tom Clancy’s “genius for big, compelling plots” and his “natural narrative gift” (The New York Times Magazine) have mesmerized hundreds of millions of readers and established him as one of the preeminent storytellers of our time. Rainbow Six, however, goes beyond anything he has done before.

At its heart is John Clark, the ex-Navy SEAL of Without Remorse, well known from several of Clancy's novels as a master of secret operational missions. Whether hunting warlords in Japan, druglords in Colombia, or nuclear terrorists in the United States, Clark is efficient and deadly, but even he has ghosts in his past, demons that must be exorcised. And nothing is more demonic than the peril he must face in Rainbow Six.

Newly named the head of an international task force dedicated to combating terrorism, Clark is looking forward to getting his teeth into a new mission, but the opportunities start coming thicker and faster than anyone could have expected: an incident at a Swiss bank, the kidnapping of an international trader in Germany, a terrible raid on an amusement park in Spain.

Each episode seems separate, discrete, yet the timing disturbs Clark. Is there a connection? Is he being tested? With the help of his close associates, executive officer Alistair Stanley and strike team leaders Domingo Chavez and Peter Covington, Clark tries to figure out where all this activity is heading, but there is no way to predict the real threat: a group of terrorists like none the world has ever encountered, a band of men and women so extreme that their success could literally mean the end of life on this earth as we know it.

In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection. For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.

This collection demonstrates Hemingway’s ability to write beautiful prose for each distinct story, with plots that range from experiences of World War II to beautifully touching moments between a father and son.

The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present. Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent.

By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.

Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates introduces an angelic romantic suspense trilogy in a single volume, weaving a tale of love that transcends the mortal coil.

Kissed by an Angel: Ivy and Tristan share a love of a lifetime, which is tragically cut short when Tristan dies in a car accident. However, Tristan returns as an angel, but Ivy struggles to feel his presence.

The Power of Love: Tristan discovers that the person responsible for the car crash is after Ivy. Facing the boundaries of life and death, he must find a way to warn Ivy of the danger she is in.

Soulmates: Tristan is faced with a heart-wrenching decision. To rescue Ivy would mean completing his mission and leaving his true love forever.

He wanted power. Oliver Russell is fated to rise to the pinnacle of power, the office of President of the United States.

She wanted revenge. Leslie Stewart is his betrayed fiancée, a woman dedicated to a single purpose—the downfall of Oliver Russell. Amassing her own media empire, marshaling all her forces against him, she stands poised to destroy Russell on the eve of his most dazzling triumph.

From Sidney Sheldon, the unchallenged master of bestselling fiction, comes a story of blazing ambitions and thwarted love that enthralls and surprises with every page...

All that matters for Cadi Forbes is finding the one man who can set her free from the sin that plagues her, the sin that has stolen her mother's love from her and made her wish she could flee life and its terrible injustice. But Cadi doesn't know that the “sin eater” is seeking as well.

Before their journeys are over, Cadi and the sin eater must face themselves, each other, and the One who will demand everything from them in exchange for the answers they seek. A captivating tale of suffering, seeking, and redemption.

In a Chicago suburb, a dentist is met in his office parking lot by three men and ordered into the trunk of his Lexus. On a downtown sidewalk, Jack Reacher and an unknown woman are abducted in broad daylight by two men - practiced and confident - who stop them at gunpoint and hustle them into the same sedan.

Then Reacher and the woman are switched into a second vehicle and hauled away, leaving the dentist bound and gagged inside his car with the woman's abandoned possessions, two gallons of gasoline... and a burning match.

The FBI is desperate to rescue the woman, a Special Agent from the Chicago office, because the FBI always - always - takes care of its own, and because this woman is not just another agent.

Reacher and the woman join forces, against seemingly hopeless odds, to outwit their captors and escape. But the FBI thinks Jack is one of the kidnappers - and when they close in, the Bureau snipers will be shooting to kill.

Darkfall marks the beginning of a stunning trilogy from one of Australia's leading writers of fantasy. This powerful, compelling saga, Book One of The Legendsong, is set in a mysterious, uncertain world that only Carmody could create.

After the death of her parents and her beloved instructor, Wind, Glynn devotes herself to the care of her sick twin sister, feeling her own life to be unimportant. One night, during a midnight swim, she is swept across the Void to the troubled watery world of Keltor, through a portal created to summon the mythical Unraveller.

What is the mysterious connection between Glynn's world and Keltor? And why does the man who rescued her from the waves bear an eerie resemblance to Wind?

While it stands on its own as an absorbing, seductive, and powerful novel, the sequels to Darkfall will be eagerly awaited.

First published pseudonymously in 1764, The Castle of Otranto purported to be a translation of an Italian story from the time of the crusades. In it, Walpole attempted, as he declared in the Preface to the second edition, "to blend the two kinds of romance: the ancient and the modern."

He presents a series of catastrophes, ghostly interventions, revelations of identity, and exciting contests. Crammed with invention, entertainment, terror, and pathos, the novel was an immediate success and Walpole's own favorite among his numerous works.

His friend, the poet Thomas Gray, wrote that he and his family, having read Otranto, were now "afraid to go to bed o'nights." This novel is reprinted from a text of 1798, the last that Walpole himself prepared for the press.

Stephanie Plum, the brassy babe in the powder blue Buick, is back and she's having a bad hair day—for the whole month of January. She's been given the unpopular task of finding Mo Bedemier, Trenton's most beloved citizen, who was arrested for carrying concealed and has now gone no-show for his court appearance.

To make matters worse, she's got Lula, a former hooker turned file clerk—now a wannabe bounty hunter—at her side, sticking like glue. Lula's big, blonde, black, and itching to get the chance to lock up a crook in the trunk of her car.

Morelli, the New Jersey vice cop with the slow-burning smile that undermines a girl's strongest resolve, is being polite. So what does this mean? Has he found a new love? Or is he manipulating Steph, using her in his police investigation, counting on her unmanageable curiosity and competitive Jersey attitude?

Once again, the entire One for the Money crew is in action, including Ranger and Grandma Mazur, searching for Mo, tripping down a trail littered with dead drug dealers, leading Stephanie to suspect Mo has traded his ice-cream scoop for a vigilante gun.

Cursed with a disastrous new hair color and an increasing sense that it's really time to get a new job, Stephanie spirals and tumbles through Three to Get Deadly with all the wisecracks and pace her fans have come to expect.

Harry Potter's summer has included the worst birthday ever, doomy warnings from a house-elf called Dobby, and rescue from the Dursleys by his friend Ron Weasley in a magical flying car! Back at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his second year, Harry hears strange whispers echo through empty corridors - and then the attacks start. Students are found as though turned to stone... Dobby's sinister predictions seem to be coming true.

With a plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts this year, Harry's adventures include an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls' bathroom. More torments and horrors arise, leading to the question: Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects... Harry Potter himself?

As part of a series that has become a classic of our time, the story of the Boy Who Lived continues to bring comfort and escapism. With their message of hope, belonging, and the enduring power of truth and love, the adventures of Harry Potter delight generations of new readers.

Stephanie Plum is back in action, this time on the trail of Maxine Nowicki, a thief and extortionist who seems to have vanished into thin air. Nabbing Maxine would solve Stephanie's financial problems, but there's a catch: Maxine's friends are mysteriously turning up dead.

To complicate matters, Stephanie's arch nemesis since grade school is also hunting for Maxine, hoping to cash in before Stephanie does. Meanwhile, her mentor and tormentor, Ranger, needs her help, and vice cop Joe Morelli has invited her to move in... temporarily.

Adding to the chaos, Stephanie's Grandma Mazur, her sidekick Lula, and a six-foot-tall transvestite rock musician want to take her to Atlantic City. One thing is for sure: no good can come from any of it.

The Declaration of Independence was the promise of a representative government; the Constitution was the fulfillment of that promise.

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued a unanimous declaration: the thirteen North American colonies would be the thirteen United States of America, free and independent of Great Britain. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration set forth the terms of a new form of government with the following words:

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Framed in 1787 and in effect since March 1789, the Constitution of the United States of America fulfilled the promise of the Declaration by establishing a republican form of government with separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, became part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791. Among the rights guaranteed by these amendments are freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to trial by jury.

Written so that it could be adapted to endure for years to come, the Constitution has been amended only seventeen times since 1791 and has lasted longer than any other written form of government.

In the Celtic land of Eileanan, witches and magic have been outlawed, and those caught for practicing witchcraft are put to death! It is a land ruled by an evil Queen, where sea-dwelling Fairgean stir, and children vanish in the night.

But in a valley deep in the mountains, young Isabeau grows to womanhood under the guidance of an elderly witch, and must set out on a quest, carrying the last hopes of the persecuted witches.

Named Best First Novel by Locus, 'Twas a time when dragons left their lair and evil shadowed the land... On the Day of Reckoning, the witches of Eileanan were outlawed—and violations of the new order were punishable by death. Eileanan's Great Towers, once meccas of magic and learning, were left in ruins. And now, the entire land trembles in fear...

Yet deep in the mountains, in the shadow of Dragonclaw, a young girl is being tutored in the old ways. Ignorant of her past, uncertain of her future, the foundling Isabeau will soon be forced down a dangerous path of prophecy, conspiracy, and magic. It is a world where dragons possess the key to ancient mysteries...where a lost prince will discover a strange and wondrous destiny...and where the ultimate battle between good and evil will be waged. A new Day of Reckoning is at hand...

Little Critter is trying his best to be a help to his mother in this classic, funny, and heartwarming book. Whether he's trying to make breakfast, mow the lawn, or carry the groceries, both parents and children alike will relate to this beloved story.

This silly and sweet picture book about the mayhem that results from trying to help mom is a perfect gift any time of year!

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.

Set at a small affluent liberal-arts college in New England eighties, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future—or even the present—who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives. The Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance.

Talk about unlucky sevens. An hour ago, seventeen-year-old, seven months pregnant Novalee Nation was heading for California with her boyfriend. Now she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, with just $7.77 in change.

But Novalee is about to discover hidden treasures in this small Southwest town--a group of down-to-earth, deeply caring people willing to help a homeless, jobless girl living secretly in a Wal-Mart. From Bible-thumping blue-haired Sister Thelma Husband to eccentric librarian Forney Hull who loves Novalee more than she loves herself, they are about to take her--and you, too--on a moving, funny, and unforgettable journey to... Where the Heart Is.

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861.

The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death – and has a colorful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. Great Expectations, which is popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages and adapted numerous times into various media.

‘Locked-in syndrome: paralysed from head to toe, the patient, his mind intact, is imprisoned inside his own body, unable to speak or move. In my case, blinking my left eyelid is my only means of communication.’

In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French ‘Elle’ and the father of two young children, suffered a massive stroke and found himself paralysed and speechless, but entirely conscious, trapped by what doctors call ‘locked-in syndrome’. Using his only functioning muscle – his left eyelid – he began dictating this remarkable story, painstakingly spelling it out letter by letter.

His book offers a haunting, harrowing look inside the cruel prison of locked-in syndrome, but it is also a triumph of the human spirit.

From one of the twentieth century’s master novelists, the author of the classic All Quiet on the Western Front, comes Heaven Has No Favorites, a bittersweet story of unconventional love that sweeps across Europe.

Lillian is charming, beautiful... and slowly dying of consumption. But she doesn’t wish to end her days in a hospital in the Alps. She wants to see Paris again, then Venice—to live frivolously for as long as possible. She might die on the road, she might not, but before she goes, she wants a chance at life.

Clerfayt, a race-car driver, tempts fate every time he’s behind the wheel. A man with no illusions about chance, he is powerfully drawn to a woman who can look death in the eye and laugh. Together, he and Lillian make an unusual pair, living only for the moment, without regard for the future. It’s a perfect arrangement—until one of them begins to fall in love.