Solennels parmi les couples sans amour, ils dansaient, d'eux seuls préoccupés, goûtaient l'un à l'autre, soigneux, profonds, perdus. Béate d'être tenue et guidée, elle ignorait le monde, écoutait le bonheur dans ses veines, parfois s'admirant dans les hautes glaces des murs, élégante, émouvante, exceptionnelle, femme aimée, parfois reculant la tête pour mieux le voir qui lui murmurait des merveilles point toujours comprises, car elle le regardait trop, mais toujours de toute son âme approuvées, qui lui murmurait qu'ils étaient amoureux, et elle avait alors un impalpable rire tremblé, voilà, oui, c'était cela, amoureux, et il lui murmurait qu'il se mourait de baiser et bénir les longs cils recourbés, mais non pas ici, plus tard, lorsqu'ils seraient seuls, et alors elle murmurait qu'ils avaient toute la vie, et soudain elle avait peur de lui avoir déplu, trop sûre d'elle, mais non, ô bonheur, il lui souriait et contre lui la gardait et murmurait que tous les soirs ils se verraient.

Ariane devant son seigneur, son maître, son aimé Solal, tous deux entourés d'une foule de comparses : ce roman n'est rien de moins que le chef-d'œuvre de la littérature amoureuse de notre époque.

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.

In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend an alien culture--and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence--perhaps even the limits of human life --when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.

Stylish, suburban Katherine is eighteen when she is propelled into the heart of Professor Jacob Goldman's rambling home and his large eccentric family. As his enchanting yet sharp-tongued wife Jane gives birth to her sixth child, Katherine meets the beautiful, sulky Roger and his volatile younger brother, Jonathan.

Inevitable heartbreak sends her fleeing to Rome, but ten years later, older and wiser, she returns to find the Goldmans again. A little wiser and a lot more grown-up, Katherine faces her future.

Mary Doria Russell's debut novel, The Sparrow, took us on a journey to a distant planet and into the center of the human soul. Children of God, further establishes Russell as one of the most innovative, entertaining, and philosophically provocative novelists writing today.

The only member of the original mission to the planet Rakhat to return to Earth, Father Emilio Sandoz has barely begun to recover from his ordeal when the Society of Jesus calls upon him for help in preparing for another mission to Alpha Centauri. Despite his objections and fear, he cannot escape his past or the future. Old friends, new discoveries, and difficult questions await Emilio as he struggles for inner peace and understanding in a moral universe whose boundaries now extend beyond the solar system and whose future lies with children born in a faraway place.

Strikingly original, richly plotted, replete with memorable characters and filled with humanity and humor, Children of God is an unforgettable and uplifting novel that is a potent successor to The Sparrow and a startlingly imaginative adventure for newcomers to Mary Doria Russell’s special literary magic.

Wizardwood, a sentient wood. The most precious commodity in the world. Like many other legendary wares, it comes only from the Rain River Wilds. But how can one trade with the Rain Wilders, when only a liveship fashioned from wizardwood can negotiate the perilous waters of the Rain River? Rare and valuable, a liveship will quicken only when three members, from successive generations, have died on board. The liveship Vivacia is about to undergo her quickening as Althea Vestrit’s father is carried on deck in his death-throes. Althea waits for the ship that she loves more than anything else in the world to awaken. Only to discover that the Vivacia has been signed away in her father’s will to her brutal brother-in-law, Kyle Haven.

Others plot to win or steal a liveship. The Paragon, known by many as the Pariah, went mad, turned turtle, and drowned his crew. Now he lies blind, lonely, and broken on a deserted beach. But greedy men have designs to restore him, to sail the waters of the Rain Wild River once more.

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe.

I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages.

Thus wrote Leo Africanus, in his fortieth year, in this imaginary autobiography of the famous geographer, adventurer, and scholar Hasan al-Wazzan, who was born in Granada in 1488. His family fled the Inquisition and took him to the city of Fez, in North Africa. Hasan became an itinerant merchant, and made many journeys to the East, journeys rich in adventure and observation.

He was captured by a Sicilian pirate and taken back to Rome as a gift to Pope Leo X, who baptized him Johannes Leo. While in Rome, he wrote the first trilingual dictionary (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew), as well as his celebrated Description of Africa, for which he is still remembered as Leo Africanus.

Marian is determined to be ordinary. She lays her head gently on the shoulder of her serious fiancé and quietly awaits marriage. But she didn't count on an inner rebellion that would rock her stable routine, and her digestion. Marriage à la mode, Marian discovers, is something she literally can't stomach...

The Edible Woman is a funny, engaging novel about emotional cannibalism, men and women, and the desire to be consumed. This groundbreaking work of fiction is marked by blazingly surreal humor and a colorful cast of eccentric characters.

Through six turbulent months of 1934, 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain keeps a journal, filling three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries about her home, a ruined Suffolk castle, and her eccentric and penniless family. By the time the last diary shuts, there have been great changes in the Mortmain household, not the least of which is that Cassandra is deeply, hopelessly, in love.

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial Brides for Indians program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime.

Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain-which is to say, all of it." After nearly two decades spent on British soil, Bill Bryson - bestselling author of The Mother Tongue and Made in America-decided to return to the United States. ("I had recently read," Bryson writes, "that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, so it was clear that my people needed me.") But before departing, he set out on a grand farewell tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home.

Veering from the ludicrous to the endearing and back again, Notes from a Small Island is a delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation that has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey. The result is an uproarious social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain, from the satiric pen of an unapologetic Anglophile.

On a snowy Saturday night in 1979, after making love for the first time, high school senior Karen Ann McNeil confides the dark visions she's been suffering to her boyfriend, Richard. Only a few hours later she descends into a coma. Nine months after that, she gives birth to a daughter, Megan, her child by Richard. Karen remains comatose for the next 18 years. Richard and her circle of friends reside in an emotional purgatory throughout the next two decades, passing through careers as models, film special-effects technicians, doctors, and demolition experts before finally being reunited while working on a conspiracy-driven supernatural series. Upon Karen's reawakening, life grows as surreal as the television show. Strange, apocalyptic events begin to occur. Later, amid the world's rubble, Karen, Richard, and their friends attempt to restore their own humanity.

Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead. The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, where David meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life.

Pandora begins, reluctantly at first and then with increasing passion, to recount her mesmerizing tale, which takes us through the ages, from Imperial Rome to eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Paris and New Orleans. She carries us back to her mortal girlhood in the world of Caesar Augustus, a world chronicled by Ovid and Petronius. This is where Pandora meets and falls in love with the handsome, charismatic, lighthearted, still-mortal Marius. This is the Rome she is forced to flee in fear of assassination by conspirators plotting to take over the city. And we follow her to the exotic port of Antioch, where she is destined to be reunited with Marius, now immortal and haunted by his vampire nature, who will bestow on her the Dark Gift as they set out on the fraught and fantastic adventure of their two turbulent centuries together.

What we have here is a bad case of stripes. One of the worst I've ever seen!

Camilla Cream loves lima beans, but she never eats them. Why? Because the other kids in her school don't like them. And Camilla Cream is very, very worried about what other people think of her. In fact, she's so worried that she's about to break out in...a bad case of stripes!

American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.

The Dark Kingdom is preparing itself for the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy—the arrival of a new Queen, a Witch who will wield more power than even the High Lord of Hell himself. But this new ruler is young, and very susceptible to influence and corruption; whoever controls her controls the Darkness. And now, three sworn enemies begin a ruthless game of politics and intrigue, magic and betrayal, and the destiny of an entire world is at stake.

Utterly engaging... a page-turner that is certain to win the author legions of new readers and fans.

It's spring on Nantucket, and everything is perfectly normal, until a sudden storm blankets the entire island. When the weather clears, the island's inhabitants find that they are no longer in the late twentieth century... but have been transported instead to the Bronze Age!

Now they must learn to survive with suspicious, warlike peoples they can barely understand and deal with impending disaster, in the shape of a would-be conqueror from their own time.

Magical, tantalizing, and sensual, The Mistress of Spices is the story of Tilo, a young woman born in another time, in a faraway place, who is trained in the ancient art of spices and ordained as a mistress charged with special powers. Once fully initiated in a rite of fire, the now immortal Tilo—in the gnarled and arthritic body of an old woman—travels through time to Oakland, California, where she opens a shop from which she administers spices as curatives to her customers.

An unexpected romance with a handsome stranger eventually forces her to choose between the supernatural life of an immortal and the vicissitudes of modern life. Spellbinding and hypnotizing, The Mistress of Spices is a tale of joy and sorrow and one special woman's magical powers.

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.

Excession by Iain M. Banks is a deeply imaginative and wittily satirical tale. In this installment of the Culture series, Diplomat Byr Gen-Hofoen is ordered by Special Circumstances, the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section, to steal the soul of a long-dead starship captain.

By accepting the mission, Byr plunges himself into a conspiracy that could lead the universe into an age of peace or to the brink of annihilation. The story unfolds in a universe filled with complex characters and intricate plots, showcasing Banks's unique ability to blend humor and intrigue.

This novel is a thrilling exploration of themes such as power, loyalty, and the very nature of existence, set against the backdrop of a richly detailed science fiction universe.

A Season in Hell was written by Arthur Rimbaud at the tender age of 18, following a passionate and tumultuous affair with fellow poet, Paul Verlaine. This piece has been a beacon for anguished poets, artists, and lovers for over a century.

This volume beautifully presents the text in both French and English, accompanied by evocative photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. It serves as a powerful testament to the passion and suffering experienced by Rimbaud and continues to influence artists and poets worldwide.

Digital Fortress is a techno-thriller novel written by American author Dan Brown. The book explores the theme of government surveillance of electronically stored information on the private lives of citizens, and the possible civil liberties and ethical implications of using such technology.

When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant, beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage—not by guns or bombs—but by a code so complex that if released would cripple U.S. intelligence.

Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

A Desperate Young Mother

Rachel Stone's bad luck has taken a turn for the worse. With an empty wallet, a car that's spilling smoke, and a five-year-old son to support, she's come home to a town that hates her. But this determined young widow with a scandalous past has learned how to be a fighter. And she'll do anything to keep her child safe—even take on...

A Man With No Heart

Gabe Bonner wants to be left alone, especially by the beautiful outcast who's invaded his property. She has a ton of attitude, a talent for trouble, and a child who brings back bad memories. Yet Rachel's feisty spirit might just be heaven-sent to save a tough, stubborn man.

Dare To Dream

Welcome to Salvation, North Carolina—where a man who's forgotten what tenderness means meets a woman with nothing to lose. Here two endearing lovers will set off on a funny, touching journey of the heart...to a place where dreams just might come true.

From bestselling and award-winning author Andrew Clements, comes a quirky, imaginative tale about creative thought and the power of words that will have readers inventing their own words.

Is Nick Allen a troublemaker? He really just likes to liven things up at school — and he's always had plenty of great ideas. When Nick learns some interesting information about how words are created, suddenly he's got the inspiration for his best plan ever... the frindle.

Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle? Things begin innocently enough as Nick gets his friends to use the new word. Then other people in town start saying frindle. Soon the school is in an uproar, and Nick has become a local hero.

His teacher wants Nick to put an end to all this nonsense, but the funny thing is frindle doesn't belong to Nick anymore. The new word is spreading across the country, and there's nothing Nick can do to stop it.

The Kingdom of Wendar is in turmoil. King Henry still holds the crown, but his reign has long been contested by his sister Sabella, and there are many eager to flock to her banner. Internal conflict weakens Wendar's defenses, drawing raiders, human and inhuman, across its borders. Terrifying portents abound and dark spirits walk the land in broad daylight.

Suddenly, two innocents are thrust into the midst of the conflict. Alain, a young man granted a vision by the Lady of Battles, and Liath, a young woman with the power to change the course of history. Both must discover the truth about themselves before they can accept their fates. For in a war where sorcery, not swords, may determine the final outcome, the price of failure may be more than their own lives.

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 year is 1928. On the outskirts of a large German city, three young men are earning a thin and precarious living. Fully armed young storm troopers swagger in the streets. Restlessness, poverty, and violence are everywhere. For these three, friendship is the only refuge from the chaos around them. Then the youngest of them falls in love, and brings into the group a young woman who will become a comrade as well, as they are all tested in ways they can never have imagined.

Written with the same overwhelming simplicity and directness that made All Quiet on the Western Front a classic, Three Comrades portrays the greatness of the human spirit, manifested through characters who must find the inner resources to live in a world they did not make, but must endure.

Cat's Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman—but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories.

Disturbing, humorous, and compassionate, Cat's Eye is a breathtaking novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knots of her life.

Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride is inspired by The Robber Bridegroom, a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends, Tony, Charis, and Roz.

All three have lost men, spirit, money, and time to their old college acquaintance, Zenia. At various times, and in various emotional disguises, Zenia has insinuated her way into their lives and practically demolished them. To Tony, who almost lost her husband and jeopardized her academic career, Zenia is 'a lurking enemy commando.' To Roz, who did lose her husband and almost her magazine, Zenia is 'a cold and treacherous bitch.' To Charis, who lost a boyfriend, quarts of vegetable juice and some pet chickens, Zenia is a kind of zombie, maybe 'soulless'. In love and war, illusion and deceit, Zenia's subterranean malevolence takes us deep into her enemies' pasts.

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments—one of Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the center of this intricate novel like a spider in a web. The glamorous, irresistible, unscrupulous Zenia is nothing less than a fairy-tale villain in the memories of her former friends. Roz, Charis, and Tony—university classmates decades ago—were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and have met monthly for lunch ever since, obsessively retracing the destructive swath she once cut through their lives. A brilliantly inventive fabulist, Zenia had a talent for exploiting her friends’ weaknesses, wielding intimacy as a weapon and cheating them of money, time, sympathy, and men. But one day, five years after her funeral, they are shocked to catch sight of Zenia: even her death appears to have been yet another fiction. As the three women plot to confront their larger-than-life nemesis, Atwood proves herself a gleefully acute observer of the treacherous shoals of friendship, trust, desire, and power.

An enchanting and lyrical look at the life, the traditions, and the cuisine of Tuscany, in the spirit of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people. In Under the Tuscan Sun, she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and to feast at her table.

Christopher Snow is different from all the other residents of Moonlight Bay, different from anyone you've ever met. For Christopher Snow has made his peace with a very rare genetic disorder shared by only one thousand other Americans, a disorder that leaves him dangerously vulnerable to light. His life is filled with the fascinating rituals of one who must embrace the dark.

He knows the night as no one else ever will, ever can - the mystery, the beauty, the many terrors, and the eerie, silken rhythms of the night - for it is only at night that he is free.

Until the night he witnesses a series of disturbing incidents that sweep him into a violent mystery only he can solve, a mystery that will force him to rise above all fears and confront the many-layered strangeness of Moonlight Bay and its residents.

When she was about to turn five, a little girl named Rae Hansen invited Richard Bach to her birthday party. Though deserts, storms, mountains, and a thousand miles separated them, Rae was confident that her friend would appear.

There's No Such Place As Far Away chronicles the exhilarating spiritual journey that delivered Rae's anxiously awaited guest to her side on that special day—and tells of the powerful and enduring gift that would keep him forever close to her heart.

Written with the same elegant simplicity that made Jonathan Livingston Seagull a bestselling phenomenon, There's No Such Place As Far Away has touched the hearts of thousands of readers since its first publication. Richard Bach's inspiring, now-classic tale is a profound reminder that miles cannot truly separate us from friends...that those we love are always with us—every moment of the infinite celebration we call life.

An entrancing, otherworldly collection of short stories from one of Europe's most accomplished 20th century writers.

A counter-prophet attempts the impossible to prove his power; a girl sees the hideous fate of her sisters and father in a mirror bought from a gypsy; the death of a prostitute causes an unanticipated uprising; and the lives of every ordinary person since 1789 are recreated in the almighty Encyclopedia of the Dead.

These stories about love and death, truth and lies, myth and reality range across many epochs and settings. Brilliantly combining fact and fiction, epic and miniature, horror and comedy, this was Danilo Kiš's final work, published in Serbo-Croatian in 1983.

Danilo Kiš was born in the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1935. After an unsettled childhood during the Second World War, in which several of his family members were killed, Kiš studied literature at the University of Belgrade where he lived for most of his adult life. He wrote novels, short stories, and poetry.

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.

Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher in the South Africa of tomorrow, realizes something is wrong on the network. Kids, including her brother Stephen, have logged into the net, and cannot escape. Clues point to a mysterious golden city called Otherland, but investigators all end up dead.

Nach einer Blinddarmoperation ist Kims kleine Schwester nicht mehr aus der Narkose aufgewacht, sie liegt im Koma. Die Stimmung in der Familie ist gedrückt, als Kim an diesem Abend ins Bett geht. Da sieht er in einer Ecke seines Zimmers plötzlich einen alten Mann.

Der Alte erklärt Kim, seine Schwester werde im Land Märchenmond vom bösen Boraas gefangengehalten. Mit einem Raumgleiter aus einem SF-Roman macht sich Kim sofort auf, um seine Schwester zu retten. Doch er hat Pech und landet mitten im Reich von Boraas, auf der besetzten Seite des friedlichen Märchenlandes. Unter großen Gefahren gelingt es Kim, vor Boraas zu fliehen, und in der Verkleidung eines feindlichen schwarzen Ritters gelangt er mit Boraas Armeee über das Schneegebirge nach Märchenmond.

Dort erfährt er, daß er zunächst den König des Regenbogens suchen muß, der noch weit hinter dem Ende der Welt lebt. Zusammen mit seinen neuen Freunden macht sich Kim auf seinen abenteuerlichen Weg.

Welcome to Redwall Abbey. Inside its enormous doors, mice live in peace, helping those in need and throwing epic feasts for the great and the good of Mossflower Woods. But outside a grave threat is gathering. An army of evil rats led by a vicious, one-eyed warlord, is on its way. Matthias is just one little mouse but he knows it'll take more than stones and mouse-sized arrows to keep the rats at bay.

Enlisting the help of a military hare, wild sparrows and argumentative stoats, Matthias sets out to defend his freedom, his friends, and the abbey he calls home. Includes exclusive material: In the Backstory you can learn to make a Redwall Abbey pudding!

The Knight in the Panther's Skin is the first English verse translation of the Georgian epic of adventure and romance, written in the 12th or 13th century. This epic, penned by the renowned poet Shota Rustaveli, is a masterpiece of Georgian literature that explores themes of chivalry, love, and heroism.

Translator Marjory Scott Wardrop has skillfully rendered the complex metrical structure of the original work, which often requires rhyming words to the fourth syllable. Her translation captures the essence of the original text while making it accessible to modern readers.

The book includes an introduction by David M Lang from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, which places Rustaveli and his poem in historical context, offering insights into the cultural and literary significance of the work.

This edition also provides a brief list of Georgian words retained in the translation, enriching the reader's experience and understanding of the cultural nuances embedded within the epic.

"Anything you do in the past changes the future. The tiniest little actions have huge consequences. You might tread on an ant now and it might entirely prevent someone from being born in the future."

There's nothing like the issue of evolution to get under the skin of academics. Especially when those same academics are by chance or bad judgement deposited at a critical evolutionary turning point when one wrong move could have catastrophic results for the future. Unfortunately, in the hands of such an inept and cussed group of individuals, the sensitive issue of causality is sadly only likely to receive the same scant respect that they show to one another...

Before his brain began to shrink, Barney Panofsky clung to two cherished beliefs: Life was absurd, and nobody truly understood anybody else. Even his friends tend to agree that Barney is a wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a penchant for violence and probably a murderer. But when his sworn enemy threatens to publish this calumny, Barney is driven to write his own memoirs, rewinding the spool of his life, editing, selecting, and plagiarising, as his memory plays tricks on him—and on the reader.

Ebullient and perverse, he has seen off three wives: the enigmatic Clara, whom he drove to suicide in Paris in 1952; the garrulous Second Mrs. Panofsky; and finally Miriam, who stayed married to him for decades before running off with a sober academic. Houdini-like, Barney slides from crisis to success, from lowlife to highlife in Montreal, Paris, and London, his outrageous exploits culminating in the scandal he carries around like a humpback—the murder charge that he goes on denying to the end.

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.

A mage's soul is forged in the crucible of magic.

Raistlin Majere is six years old when he is introduced to an archmage who enrolls him in a school for the study of magic. There, the gifted but tormented boy comes to secretly understand the shadows darkening over him and all of Ansalon.

As Raistlin draws near his goal of becoming a wizard, he must first take the Dread Test in the Tower of High Sorcery. It will change his life forever.

In Making History, Stephen Fry tackles a rather meaty chunk by exploring an at first deceptively simple premise: What if Hitler had never been born?

An unquestionable improvement, one would reason—and so an earnest history grad student and an aging German physicist idealistically undertake to bring this about by preventing Adolf's conception.

And with their success is launched a brave new world that is in some ways better than ours—but in most ways even worse. Fry's experiment in history makes for his most ambitious novel yet, and his most affecting.

Set mostly in America, it is a thriller with a funny streak, a futuristic fantasy based on one of mankind's darkest realities. It is, in every sense, a story of our times.

First published in 1970, nine years after Ernest Hemingway's death, Islands in the Stream is the story of an artist and adventurer—a man much like Hemingway himself. Rich with the uncanny sense of life and action characteristic of his writing—from his earliest stories (In Our Time) to his last novella (The Old Man and the Sea)—this compelling novel contains both the warmth of recollection that inspired A Moveable Feast and a rare glimpse of Hemingway's rich and relaxed sense of humor, which enlivens scene after scene.

Beginning in the 1930s, Islands in the Stream follows the fortunes of Thomas Hudson from his experiences as a painter on the Gulf Stream island of Bimini, where his loneliness is broken by the vacation visit of his three young sons, to his antisubmarine activities off the coast of Cuba during World War II. The greater part of the story takes place in a Havana bar, where a wildly diverse cast of characters—including an aging prostitute who stands out as one of Hemingway's most vivid creations—engages in incomparably rich dialogue.

A brilliant portrait of the inner life of a complex and endlessly intriguing man, Islands in the Stream is Hemingway at his mature best.

Fool on the Hill is a full-blown epic of life and death, good and evil, magic and love. Imagine the imaginative daring of Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale and the zany popism of Tom Robbins’s Another Roadside Attraction. Enter a world where dogs and cats can talk, and a subculture of sprites lives in the shadows. If you're the sensitive type, or perhaps drunk enough, you might see them cavorting across the lawn.

Meet Stephen Titus George, the novel’s youthful hero, a mild-mannered flier of kites, a sometimes writer of bestselling fiction, and a would-be knight looking for a maiden. His journey will reveal a century-old story and the proverbial dragon whose slaying will sanctify their love. But it will not be a sword that fells the foe but the transforming power of the imagination.

This is a tale where the Bohemians, a group of Harley- and horseback-riding students dedicated to all things unconventional, hold all-night revels for the glory of their cause. And then there's the unseen Mr. Sunshine, an eternal, semi-retired deity, orchestrating his own story with dragons, sprites, gnomes, and villains. Can Stephen decide his own fate if it’s already being plotted by a god?

An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. "You are the teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?

An extraordinary and startlingly original sequel to Ishmael.

When Ishmael places an advertisement for pupils with “an earnest desire to save the world,” he does not expect a child to answer him. But twelve-year-old Julie Gerchak is undaunted by Ishmael’s reluctance to teach someone so young, and convinces him to take her on as his next student.

Ishmael knows he can't apply the same strategies with Julie that he used with his first pupil, Alan Lomax—nor can he hope for the same outcome. But young Julie proves that she is ready to forge her own spiritual path and arrive at her own destination.

And when the time comes to choose a pupil to carry out his greatest mission yet, Ishmael makes a daring decision—a choice that just might change the world.