Displaying books 10705-10752 of 12650 in total

Desolation Angels

1995

by Jack Kerouac

Desolation Angels is a vivid, semi-autobiographical novel by the renowned Beat Generation author, Jack Kerouac. This book is part of his celebrated Duluoz Legend series.

Kerouac takes us on a journey through a key year of his life, starting from his time as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade mountains of Washington state. The story follows his fictional self, Jack Duluoz, as he transitions from the isolation of the mountains to the vibrant life of bars, jazz clubs, and parties in San Francisco.

The novel captures Kerouac's travels across the world, from Mexico City to New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London, in the company of his thinly disguised Beat cohorts like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and William Burroughs. Through their poetry, parties, mountain vigils, and spiritual contemplation, Kerouac presents a tale filled with energy and humanity.

Desolation Angels reflects Kerouac's own psychological struggles and his disillusionment with the Buddhist philosophy he once embraced. It’s a story about living, traveling, adventuring, and embracing life without regrets.

Love You Forever

1995

by Robert Munsch

Love You Forever by Robert Munsch is a touching narrative that delves into the enduring love that a parent has for their child. The story is beautifully illustrated by Sheila McGraw with soft and colorful pastels that harmonize with the book's heartfelt sentiment.

This beloved book promises to be a staple that parents and children will read together repeatedly over the years, cherishing the message and the moments shared together.

Nothing Lasts Forever

1995

by Sidney Sheldon

Three young doctors—their hopes, their dreams, their unexpected desires...


Dr. Paige Taylor: She swore it was euthanasia, but when Paige inherited a million dollars from a patient, the D.A. called it murder.


Dr. Kat Hunter: She vowed never to let another man too close again—until she accepted the challenge of a deadly bet.


Dr. Honey Taft: To make it in medicine, she knew she'd need something more than the brains God gave her.


Racing from the life-and-death decisions of a big major hospital to the tension-packed fireworks of a murder trial, Nothing Lasts Forever lays bare the ambitions and fears of healers and killers, lovers and betrayers.

Schoolgirls

1995

by Peggy Orenstein

Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap is a groundbreaking book by Peggy Orenstein that explores the decline in confidence among young girls as they reach adolescence.


Inspired by an American Association of University Women survey, Orenstein investigates the obstacles girls face in school, at home, and within our culture. Through months of observation and interviews with eighth-graders from diverse communities, she uncovers the causes behind traditional patterns of self-censorship and self-doubt.


Orenstein brings to life the struggles of real young women dealing with eating disorders, sexual harassment, and declining academic achievement. She skillfully highlights the adolescent roots of issues that remain significant throughout the lives of American women.


This book challenges us to rethink how we raise and educate girls, making it a must-read for anyone interested in empowerment and social change.

The Bridges of Madison County

The Bridges of Madison County tells the story of Robert Kincaid, the photographer and free spirit searching for the covered bridges of Madison County, and Francesca Johnson, the farm wife waiting for the fulfillment of a girlhood dream. This novel gives voice to the longings of men and women everywhere-and shows us what it is to love and be loved so intensely that life is never the same again.

The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book

1995

by Bill Watterson

Many moons ago, the magic of Calvin and Hobbes first appeared on the funny pages and the world was introduced to a wondrous pair of friends -- a boy and his tiger, who brought new life to the comics page. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of this distinguished partnership, Bill Watterson prepared this special book, sharing his thoughts on cartooning and creating Calvin and Hobbes, illustrated throughout with favorite black-and-white and color cartoons.

The Cost of Discipleship

One of the most important theologians of the twentieth century illuminates the relationship between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus in this classic text on ethics, humanism, and civic duty. What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between "cheap grace" and "costly grace." "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer wrote, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves...grace without discipleship....Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know....It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."

The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty.

Troubling a Star

For her birthday, Vicky receives the gift of a trip to the Antarctic, where her friend Adam Eddington is working as a marine biologist. But as Vicky meets her fellow travelers, it quickly becomes clear that some of them are not what they seem. Vicki's trip into adventure becomes a journey into icy danger.

In book five of the Austin Family Chronicles, Vicky Austin experiences the difficulties and joys of growing up. After a year in New York City and a summer with her grandfather, Vicky Austin returns to the rural Connecticut village she grew up in—and feels totally out of place. Then, she meets Adam Eddington's Great Aunt Serena, who reminds her of her beloved grandfather, and she begins to find a comfortable, if not exciting, routine to her days.

At Christmas, Serena gives Vicky a trip to Antarctica, to visit Adam. Vicky can't believe her luck. But the trip is not what Vicky imagined it would be. First of all, she doesn't know where she stands with Adam. He's pulled back, saying they are just friends. But weren't they more than that, Vicky thinks. And Vicky's fellow passengers are not what they seem or they are more than she knows. Finally, even Aunt Serena's motives are suspect, as Vicky discovers a journal that belonged to Adam's famous uncle who disappeared many years earlier.

As Vicky becomes more and more caught up in a mystery involving drugs, nuclear waste, and international espionage, she discovers that her assumptions about the world are hopelessly naive and that life, hers included, is as fragile as the ecosystem of Antarctica, the world's most remote continent.

A Long Fatal Love Chase

"I'd gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom," cries impetuous Rosamond Vivian to her callous grandfather. Then, one stormy night, a brooding stranger appears in her remote island home, ready to take Rosamond at her word.

Spellbound by the mysterious Philip Tempest, Rosamond is seduced with promises of love and freedom, then spirited away on Tempest's sumptuous yacht. But she soon finds herself trapped in a web of intrigue, cruelty, and deceit.

Desperate to escape, she flees to Italy, France, and Germany, from Parisian garret to mental asylum, from convent to chateau, as Tempest stalks every step of the fiery beauty who has become his obsession.

A story of dark love and passionate obsession that was considered too sensational to be published in the author's lifetime, A Long Fatal Love Chase was written for magazine serialization in 1866, two years before the publication of Little Women. Buried among Louisa May Alcott's papers for more than a century, its publication is a literary landmark—a novel that is bold, timeless, and mesmerizing.

The Painted Bird

1995

by Jerzy Kosiński

Originally published in 1965, The Painted Bird established Jerzy Kosinski as a major literary figure. A harrowing story that follows the wanderings of a boy abandoned by his parents during World War II, The Painted Bird is a dark novel that examines the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence and love. It is the first, and the most famous, novel by a writer who is now discredited.

Raptor Red

A pair of fierce but beautiful eyes look out from the undergrowth of conifers. She is an intelligent killer...

So begins one of the most extraordinary novels you will ever read. The time is 120 million years ago, the place is the plains of prehistoric Utah, and the eyes belong to an unforgettable heroine. Her name is Raptor Red, and she is a female raptor dinosaur.

Painting a rich and colorful picture of a lush prehistoric world, leading paleontologist Robert T. Bakker tells his story from within Raptor Red's extraordinary mind, dramatizing his revolutionary theories in this exciting tale. From a tragic loss to the fierce struggle for survival to a daring migration to the Pacific Ocean to escape a deadly new predator, Raptor Red combines fact and fiction to capture for the first time the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of the most magnificent, enigmatic creatures ever to walk the face of the earth.

The Ghost Writer

1995

by Philip Roth

When talented young writer Nathan Zuckerman makes his pilgrimage to sit at the feet of his hero, the reclusive master of American Literature, E. I. Lonoff, he soon finds himself enmeshed in the great Jewish writer's domestic life, with all its complexity, artifice, and drive for artistic truth.

As Nathan sits in breathlessly awkward conversation with his idol, a glimpse of a dark-haired beauty through a closing doorway leaves him reeling. He soon learns that the entrancing vision is Amy Bellette, but her position in the Lonoff household - student? mistress? - remains tantalizingly unclear.

Over a disturbed and confusing dinner, Nathan gleans snippets of Amy's haunting Jewish background and begins to draw his own fantastical conclusions...

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

1995

by Richard Rhodes

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.

Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly — or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers — Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann — stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.

Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention.

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

1995

by Barack Obama

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American.

It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

Musashi

1995

by Eiji Yoshikawa

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Musashi is a novel in the best tradition of Japanese story telling. It is a living story, subtle and imaginative, teeming with memorable characters, many of them historical. Interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety and absolute dedication to the Way of the Samurai, it depicts vividly a world Westerners know only vaguely.

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

1995

by Luis Sepúlveda

In a remote river town deep in the Ecuadoran jungle, Antonio José Bolívar seeks refuge in amorous novels. But as tourists and opportunists begin to make inroads into the area, the delicate balance of nature is disrupted, leading to a dangerous shift.

Translated by Peter Bush, this captivating tale explores the intersection of humanity and nature, where an elderly widower finds solace in the pages of romance novels while confronting the challenges posed by the encroaching modern world.

Taltos

1995

by Anne Rice

Taltos continues the epic occult saga that began with The Witching Hour and Lasher. Taltos takes readers back through the centuries to a civilization part human and part of wholly mysterious origins, at odds with mortality and immortality, justice and guilt.

Memnoch the Devil

1995

by Anne Rice

In the fifth Vampire Chronicle, Lestat is searching for Dora, the beautiful and charismatic mortal daughter of a drug lord. Dora has moved Lestat like no other mortal ever has, and he cannot get her out of his visions. At the same time, he is increasingly aware that the Devil knows who he is and wants something from him. While torn between his vampire world and his passion for Dora, Lestat is sucked in by Memnoch, who claims to be the Devil himself. Memnoch presents Lestat with unimagined opportunities: to witness creation, to visit purgatory, to be treated like a prophet. Lestat faces a choice between the Devil or God. Whom does he believe in? Who does he serve? What are the elements of religious belief? Lestat finds himself caught in a whirlpool of the ultimate choice.

Don't Die, My Love

Julie Ellis and Luke Muldenhower have always been school sweethearts. Now both are in high school and deeply in love. Luke, a talented football player, is almost certain to receive an athletic scholarship to a top college. And no matter what her parents say, wherever Luke goes, Julie intends to follow.

When Luke can't shake what he thinks is a virus, Julie persuades him to see a doctor. Luke's test results are alarming, but Julie believes their love is stronger than anything. Can love survive, now and forever?

Follow Your Heart

1995

by Susanna Tamaro

Follow Your Heart is an international bestseller with tremendous word-of-mouth appeal. This bittersweet, heartwarming novel spans generations and teaches the universal truths about life, love, and what lies within each of us.

Originally published in Italy, it begins in late autumn 1992 as an elderly Italian woman, prompted by the knowledge of her encroaching death, sits down to write a letter to her granddaughter, now grown and living in far-off America. Through these moving reflections, one life is laid bare—joys, sorrows, regrets, and all.

Through the eyes of a woman nearing the end of her days, we come to understand what life experience has taught her: that no matter what the stakes, we must look within ourselves and gather the courage to follow our hearts.

Lord Valentine's Castle

Valentine, a wanderer who knows nothing except his name, finds himself on the fringes of a great city and joins a troupe of jugglers and acrobats. Gradually, he remembers that he is the Coronal Valentine, executive ruler of the vast world of Majipoor, and all its peoples, human and otherwise.

Valentine's journey is a long one, a tour through a series of magnificent environments. Fields of predatory plants give way to impossibly wide rivers, chalk-cliffed islands, and unforgiving deserts. The prose is unrelentingly dreamlike—no accident given that on Majipoor, dreams rule the minds of great and humble alike.

This epic tale is an imaginative fusion of action, sorcery, and science fiction, set in a wildly imaginative universe.

Northern Lights

1995

by Philip Pullman

In a landmark epic of fantasy and storytelling, Philip Pullman invites readers into a world as convincing and thoroughly realized as Narnia, Earthsea, or Redwall. Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors.

First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her.

In this multilayered narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title. All around her children are disappearing—victims of so-called "Gobblers"—and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.

Rose Madder

1995

by Stephen King

Rosie Daniels flees from her husband, Norman after fourteen years in an abusive marriage. During one bout of violence, Norman caused Rosie to miscarry their only child. Escaping to a distant city, Rosie establishes a new life and forges new relationships. Norman Daniels, a police officer with a reputation for cruelty, uses his law-enforcement connections to track his wayward wife.

Tender Is the Night

Tender Is the Night is a modern classic, restored by Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III and featuring a personal foreword by Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter Blake Hazard and a new introduction by bestselling Amor Towles. Set in the south of France in the late 1920s, it is the tragic tale of a young actress, Rosemary Hoyt, and her complicated relationship with the alluring American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth pushed him into a glamorous lifestyle, and whose growing strength highlights Dick’s decline. Lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked-about books of the year when it was originally published in 1934, and is even more beloved by readers today.

Green Mars

Green Mars continues the epic saga of the colonization of Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Nearly a generation has passed since the first pioneers landed, and the transformation of Mars into an Earthlike planet is underway. However, the project faces opposition from those who wish to preserve the planet's hostile, barren beauty.

At the forefront of this conflict are rebels like Peter Clayborne, part of the first generation of children born on Mars. They are joined by original settlers Maya Toitovna, Simon Frasier, and Sax Russell. In the backdrop of this cosmic setting, the human elements of passions, rivalries, and friendships intensify, creating a story as breathtaking as the planet itself.

Independence Day

1995

by Richard Ford

Independence Day is a visionary account of American life and the long-awaited sequel to one of the most celebrated novels of the past decade. This novel reveals a man and our country with unflinching comedy and the specter of hope and permanence. Richard Ford evokes these themes with keen intelligence, perfect emotional pitch, and a voice invested with absolute authority.

Frank Bascombe is no longer a sportswriter, yet he's still living in Haddam, New Jersey, selling real estate. He's still divorced, though his ex-wife has remarried and moved to Connecticut with their children. Frank is happy enough in his work and is pursuing various civic and entrepreneurial sidelines. He has high hopes for this Fourth of July weekend: a search for a house for clients relocating to Vermont, a rendezvous on the Jersey shore with his girlfriend, and a trip to Connecticut to pick up his troubled teenage son for a tour of sports halls of fame.

Frank's Independence Day turns out not as planned, and this decent, bewildered, and profoundly observant man is wrenched out of his private refuge. Independence Day captures the mystery of life in all its conflicted glory with grand humor, intense compassion, and transfixing power.

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

1995

by Selma Lagerlöf

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is a captivating tale that combines fantasy and adventure in a magical journey across Sweden. Written by the gifted storyteller Selma Lagerlöf, it tells the story of Nils Holgersson, a mischievous 14-year-old boy who is transformed by an elf into a tiny being, gaining the ability to understand the speech of birds and animals.

Through a breathtaking and beautiful fable, Nils embarks on an extraordinary adventure as he is carried over the countryside on the back of a goose. From this unique vantage point, Nils witnesses a host of events, providing readers with a rich tapestry of nature, geography, folklore, and animal life.

This timeless classic, reset in easy-to-read type and enhanced with new illustrations, invites readers into the enchanting world of Nils, where fact and fiction are brilliantly woven into a tale that captivates generations.

Beach Music

1995

by Pat Conroy

An American expatriate in Rome unearths his family legacy in this sweeping novel by the acclaimed author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini. A Southerner living abroad, Jack McCall is scarred by tragedy and betrayal. His desperate desire to find peace after his wife’s suicide draws him into a painful, intimate search for the one haunting secret in his family’s past that can heal his anguished heart.

Spanning three generations and two continents, from the contemporary ruins of the American South to the ancient ruins of Rome, from the unutterable horrors of the Holocaust to the lingering trauma of Vietnam, Beach Music sings with life’s pain and glory. It is a novel of lyric intensity and searing truth, another masterpiece among Pat Conroy’s legendary and beloved novels.

The Last Coyote

Harry Bosch has hit rock bottom. His once stable life is now in shambles. His earthquake-damaged home has been condemned, his girlfriend has left him, and he's drinking far too much. After attacking his commanding officer, Harry is suspended indefinitely, pending a psychiatric evaluation.

With his badge turned in, Harry finds himself with time to dwell on the past. He decides to investigate an unsolved crime from 1961: the brutal murder of a prostitute, who was none other than his own mother. As he delves deeper, Harry realizes that the case was mishandled, and the stench of a cover-up is undeniable. Someone powerful was able to divert justice, and Harry is determined to uncover the truth.

As he relentlessly follows the fragmented pieces of the case, new murders occur, drawing Harry deeper into a dangerous web of deceit. The more he uncovers, the more evident it becomes that someone wants the past to remain buried—someone very powerful, cunning, and deadly.

In this gripping installment of the Harry Bosch series, Michael Connelly delivers a suspenseful thriller filled with psychological depth and a relentless pursuit of justice.

A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement

1995

by Anthony Powell

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

Four very different young men on the threshold of manhood dominate this opening volume: Jenkins, a budding writer; Templer, a passionate womanizer; Stringham, aristocratic and reckless; and Widermerpool, hopelessly awkward yet intensely ambitious, lurking on the periphery of their world.

Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, these four gain their initiations into sex, society, business, and art. Considered a masterpiece of modern fiction, Powell's epic creates a rich panorama of life in England between the wars.

Includes these novels: A Question of Upbringing, A Buyer's Market, The Acceptance World.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

1995

by L. Frank Baum

Caught in a tornado, Dorothy and her little dog Toto are transported to the fantastical land of Oz. Here, Munchkins live, monkeys fly, and Wicked Witches rule. Desperate to return home and pursued by the Wicked Witch of the West, Dorothy and Toto, along with their new friends the Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow, and cowardly Lion, journey along the Yellow Brick Road to seek the Emerald City. Their hope is to meet the legendary, all-powerful Wizard of Oz, who may have the power to grant their every wish.

This tale of whimsy and adventure has captured the hearts of readers for over a century, becoming a beloved story for all ages.

A Home at the End of the World

Michael Cunningham’s celebrated novel is the story of two boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely, introspective, and unsure of himself; and Bobby, hip, dark, and inarticulate. In New York after college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his roommate, Clare, a veteran of the city's erotic wars.

Bobby and Clare fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father Clare's child. Then, when Clare and Bobby have a baby, the three move to a small house upstate to raise "their" child together and, with an odd friend, Alice, create a new kind of family.

A Home at the End of the World masterfully depicts the charged, fragile relationships of urban life today.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Why is the land so important to Cassie's family? It takes the events of one turbulent year—the year of the night riders and the burnings, the year a white girl humiliates Cassie in public simply because she's black—to show Cassie that having a place of their own is the Logan family's lifeblood. It is the land that gives the Logans their courage and pride—no matter how others may degrade them, the Logans possess something no one can take away.

Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories

1995

by Philip Roth

Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin - he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills - meet one summer and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love.

The novella, the first book published by Philip Roth, explores issues of both class and Jewish assimilation into American culture.

Pavilion of Women

1995

by Pearl S. Buck

On her fortieth birthday, Madame Wu carries out a decision she has been planning for a long time: she tells her husband that after twenty-four years their physical life together is now over and she wishes him to take a second wife. The House of Wu, one of the oldest and most revered in China, is thrown into an uproar by her decision, but Madame Wu will not be dissuaded and arranges for a young country girl to come take her place in bed.

Elegant and detached, Madame Wu orchestrates this change as she manages everything in the extended household of more than sixty relatives and servants. Alone in her own quarters, she relishes her freedom and reads books she has never been allowed to touch. When her son begins English lessons, she listens, and is soon learning from the foreigner, a free-thinking priest named Brother Andre, who will change her life.

Few books raise so many questions about the nature and roles of men and women, about self-discipline and happiness.

The Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin

1995

by Cornelius Ryan

The classic account of the final offensive against Hitler's Third Reich. The Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater, the last offensive against Hitler's Third Reich, which devastated one of Europe's historic capitals and marked the final defeat of Nazi Germany. It was also one of the war's bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades to come.

Cornelius Ryan's compelling account of this final battle is a story of brutal extremes, of stunning military triumph alongside the stark conditions that the civilians of Berlin experienced in the face of the Allied assault. As always, Ryan delves beneath the military and political forces that were dictating events to explore the more immediate imperatives of survival, where, as the author describes it, "to eat had become more important than to love, to burrow more dignified than to fight, to exist more militarily correct than to win."

It is the story of ordinary people, both soldiers and civilians, caught up in the despair, frustration, and terror of defeat. It is history at its best, a masterful illumination of the effects of war on the lives of individuals, and one of the enduring works on World War II.

The Sixteen Pleasures

1995

by Robert Hellenga

When book conservator Margo Harrington travels to Florence to aid in restoring the treasures damaged in the flooding of the Arno in 1966, she is entrusted with a rare book that its owner, the abbess of a convent, hopes to sell without the bishop's knowledge. This exquisite novel unfolds a tale of spiritual longing and earthly desire.

The Italians called them "Mud Angels," the young foreigners who came to Florence in 1966 to save the city's treasured art from the Arno's flooded banks. American volunteer Margot Harrington was one of them, finding her niche in the waterlogged library of a Carmelite convent. Within its walls, she discovered a priceless Renaissance masterwork: a sensuous volume of sixteen erotic poems and drawings.

Inspired to sample each of the ineffable sixteen pleasures, Margot embarks on the intrigue of a lifetime with a forbidden lover and the contraband volume—a sensual, life-altering journey of loss and rebirth in this daring story of spiritual longing and earthly desire.

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

1995

by Michel Foucault

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a brilliant work by Michel Foucault, one of the most influential philosophers since Sartre. This provocative study explores the evolution of the justice system, focusing primarily on France.

Foucault challenges existing ideas surrounding prison reforms from the late 1700s and early 1800s, even into the twentieth century. He suggests that the shift away from public executions towards incarceration was a means of reframing the power dynamics between society and the individual.

The book delves into how the focus of punishment has shifted from the prisoner's body to the soul. It provides a highly provocative account of how penal institutions have become integral to societal control.

Through this work, Foucault offers an in-depth analysis of how modern penitentiaries emerged and how they reflect broader social structures and power relations.

The Shadow Man

1995

by John Katzenbach

In Berlin in 1943, he was known and dreaded as Der Schattenmann--a merciless "catcher" of Jews for the Nazis. Few saw his face and lived. In present-day Miami Beach, he has resurfaced--to silence forever the survivors who remember. Unless retired homicide detective Simon Winter can find him first.

When it comes to intricate, fast-paced excitement and edge-of-your-seat suspense, John Katzenbach is a master of the game. Katzenbach has created another shocking page-turner, and a villain as monstrous as evil itself: The Shadow Man.

Miami Beach, present day. Retired homicide detective Simon Winter is living out his golden years in dejected solitude. But his life takes an urgent turn when his neighbor, Sophie Millstein, appears at his door trembling in fear. She has seen a ghost...a demon from her past, Der Schattenmann. But he isn't just a nightmare--he's real--and his icy stare cuts through her like a razor. The next morning, Sophie is found strangled, her eyes locked open in terror.

The police think it's just another homicide. But Winter knows the horrifying truth: an elusive, anonymous killer is stalking Holocaust survivors in Miami, silently creeping through the hot city. Now, after years of retirement, Winter once again hits the streets. And together with Walter Robinson, a committed black detective, and Espy Martinez, a sharp, driven Latino prosecutor, he will match wits with a sadistically smooth expert on death who lives for the thrill of the hunt, tortures for the rush of power, and murders to keep himself, and his history, hidden forever.

The Night of Wishes

1995

by Michael Ende

This thrilling New Year’s Eve tale of sorcery and suspense is like a “goofy Paradise Lost for middle schoolers” (New York Times Book Review). Comic fantasy, clever wordplay, and slapstick shenanigans from the bestselling children’s author of The Neverending Story and Momo!

It's New Year’s Eve at the Villa Nightmare but Beelzebub Preposteror is in no mood for celebration. As the Shadow Sorcery Minister, Preposteror has a duty to perform a certain number of evil deeds in service to the Minister of Pitch Darkness. But this year, to his horror, he’s nowhere near meeting that quota.

Preposteror has all but given up when who should make an unexpected visit but his aunt, the witch Tyrannia Vampirella. She has come with a diabolical proposal that just might be the solution to Preposterer’s dilemma: together they will brew the fabled Notion Potion, “one of the most ancient and powerful evil spells in the universe,” and their every evil wish will be granted.

The only thing that stands in their way is a most unlikely team—a cat named Mauricio di Mauro and a raven known as Jacob Scribble, who have just hours to thwart the plans of their sorcerer masters and save the world from destruction.

Harvesting the Heart

1995

by Jodi Picoult

Harvesting the Heart is a deeply moving novel by Jodi Picoult, exploring the intricate dynamics of motherhood and self-discovery. Paige has only a few vivid memories of her mother, who abandoned her at the tender age of five. Now, having left her father behind in Chicago to pursue dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own.

Her mother's absence and the shameful memories of her past force Paige to doubt her own abilities to bring joy and meaning into her child's life, gifts her own mother never gave. Harvesting the Heart is crafted with astonishing clarity and evocative detail, convincingly depicting emotional pain, love, and vulnerability.

This absorbing novel is peopled by richly drawn characters and explores the profound theme of motherhood with power and depth. Jodi Picoult masterfully delves into the fragile ground of ambivalent motherhood, creating a story that belongs to the lucky reader.

In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing

1995

by Walter Murch

In the Blink of an Eye is celebrated film editor Walter Murch's vivid, multifaceted, thought-provoking essay on film editing. Starting with what might be the most basic editing question - Why do cuts work? - Murch treats the reader to a wonderful ride through the aesthetics and practical concerns of cutting film.

Along the way, he offers his unique insights on such subjects as continuity and discontinuity in editing, dreaming, and reality; criteria for a good cut; the blink of the eye as an emotional cue; digital editing; and much more.

In this second edition, Murch reconsiders and completely revises his popular first edition's lengthy meditation on digital editing in light of the technological changes that have taken place in the six years since its publication.

Montana 1948

1995

by Larry Watson

Montana 1948 is an evocative tale set in a small-town summer that forever alters young David Hayden's view of his family. His father is a self-effacing sheriff who never wears his badge. His mother is clear-sighted and strong. His uncle is a charming war hero and respected doctor.

At the heart of the story is the Hayden's lively, statuesque Sioux housekeeper, Marie Little Soldier, whose revelations challenge the family dynamics. It is a tale of love and courage, of power abused, and of the terrible choice between family loyalty and justice.

This novel delves into themes of truth and morality, exploring how power can be misused and how sometimes one must choose between family loyalty and justice.

The Rainmaker

1995

by John Grisham

The Rainmaker, by John Grisham, unfolds the gripping story of a young man, barely out of law school, who finds himself challenging one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America, thereby uncovering a complex, multibillion-dollar insurance scam. In his final semester of law school, Rudy Baylor is tasked with providing free legal advice to a group of senior citizens. It is here that he meets his first clients, Dot and Buddy Black. Their son, Donny Ray, is dying of leukemia, and their insurance company has flatly refused to pay for his medical treatments.

At first skeptical, Rudy soon realizes that the Blacks have been shockingly mistreated by the colossal company, and he may have stumbled upon one of the largest insurance frauds anyone has ever seen - marking one of the most lucrative and important cases in the history of civil litigation. The catch? Rudy is flat broke, has no job, hasn't even passed the bar, and is about to go head-to-head with one of the best defense attorneys and powerful industries in America.

The Return of Philip Latinowicz

Philip Latinowicz is a successful but disillusioned painter who returns to his hometown on Croatia's Danubian plain after an absence of twenty-three years. He hopes that revisiting his cultural roots will inspire him to create the perfect work of art and thereby restore his faith in both art and life.

Haunted by his troubled childhood, he falls in with shady characters and discovers the emotional, intellectual, and imaginative poverty of his background.

Tomorrow, When the War Began

1995

by John Marsden

When Ellie and six of her friends return home from a camping trip deep in the bush, they find things hideously wrong — their families gone, houses empty and abandoned, pets and stock dead. Gradually they begin to comprehend that their country has been invaded and everyone in the town has been taken prisoner. As the horrible reality of the situation becomes evident, they have to make a life-and-death decision: to run back into the bush and hide, to give themselves up to be with their families, or to stay and try to fight. This riveting, tautly-drawn novel seems at times to be only a step away from today's headlines.

Gaudy Night

The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction’s most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers’s work, praising her “great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail.”

The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.

Wonder Boys

1995

by Michael Chabon

In his first novel since The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon presents a hilarious and heartbreaking work—the story of the friendship between the "wonder boys"—Grady, an aging writer who has lost his way, and Crabtree, whose relentless debauchery is capsizing his career.

This novel is a deft parody of the American fame factory and a piercing portrait of young and old desire, making it a modern classic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

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