Meet Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, Roald Dahl's most disgraceful and extraordinary character. Aside from being thoroughly debauched, strikingly attractive, and astonishingly wealthy, Uncle Oswald was the greatest bounder, bon vivant, and fornicator of all time.

In this installment of his scorchingly frank memoirs, he tells of his early career and erotic education at the hands of a number of enthusiastic teachers, of discovering the invigorating properties of the Sudanese Blister Beetle, and of the gorgeous Yasmin Howcomely, his electrifying partner in a most unusual series of thefts.

Join Uncle Oswald on his audacious adventures as he seduces the most famous men in Europe for his own wicked, irreverent reasons. It's a delightful and cheeky tale that combines historical figures with outrageous escapades.

Catch-22 is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944, and follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. The narrative primarily takes place while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy.

The book delves into Yossarian's experiences and those of his fellow airmen as they strive to maintain their sanity amidst the chaos of war, with the overarching goal of fulfilling their service requirements to return home.

Catch-22 is renowned for its unique blend of hilarity and horror, its originality, and its powerful vitality. It presents a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as perceived by someone dangerously sane, offering both outrageous humor and a poignant reflection on the human condition.

Who is Jason Bourne? Is he an assassin, a terrorist, a thief? Why has he got four million dollars in a Swiss bank account? Why has someone tried to murder him? Jason Bourne does not know the answer to any of these questions. Suffering from amnesia, he does not even know that he is Jason Bourne. What manner of man is he? What are his secrets? Who has he killed?

High School is Heaven! It's Betsy Ray's freshman year at Deep Valley High School, and she and her best childhood chum, Tacy Kelly, are loving every minute. Betsy and Tacy find themselves in the midst of a new crowd of friends, with studies aplenty (including Latin and—ugh—algebra), parties and picnics galore, Sunday night lunches at home—and boys!

There's Cab Edwards, the jolly boy next door; handsome Herbert Humphreys; and the mysteriously unfriendly, but maddeningly attractive, Joe Willard. Betsy likes them all, but no boy in particular catches her fancy until she meets the new boy in town, Tony Markham... the one she and Tacy call the Tall Dark Handsome Stranger. He's sophisticated, funny, and dashing—and treats Betsy just like a sister. Can Betsy turn him into a beau?

An entertaining picture of school clubs, fudge parties, sings around the piano, and Sunday-night suppers in Betsy's hospitable home.

When two immortals meet in the long-ago past, the destiny of mankind is changed forever.

For a thousand years, Doro has cultivated a small African village, carefully breeding its people in search of seemingly unattainable perfection. He survives through the centuries by stealing the bodies of others, a technique he has so thoroughly mastered that nothing on Earth can kill him. But when a gang of New World slavers destroys his village, ruining his grand experiment, Doro is forced to go west and begin anew.

He meets Anyanwu, a centuries-old woman whose means of immortality are as kind as his are cruel. She is a shapeshifter, capable of healing with a kiss, and she recognizes Doro as a tyrant. Though many humans have tried to kill them, these two demi-gods have never before met a rival. Now they begin a struggle that will last centuries and permanently alter the nature of humanity.

A celebration of an indomitable spirit, here is New York Times bestselling author Barbara Taylor Bradford's dazzling saga of a woman who dared to dream--and to triumph against all odds...

In the brooding moors above a humble Yorkshire village stood Fairley Hall. There, Emma Harte, its oppressed but resourceful servant girl, acquired a shrewd determination. There, she honed her skills, discovered the meaning of treachery, learned to survive, to become a woman, and vowed to make her mark on the world.

In the wake of tragedy she rose from poverty to magnificent wealth as the iron-willed force behind a thriving international enterprise. As one of the richest women in the world Emma Harte has almost everything she fought so hard to achieve--save for the dream of love, and for the passion of the one man she could never have. Through two marriages, two devastating wars, and generations of secrets, Emma's unparalleled success has come with a price. As greed, envy, and revenge consume those closest to her, the brilliant matriarch now finds herself poised to outwit her enemies, and to face the betrayals of the past with the same ingenious resolve that forged her empire.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration—when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded. Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading.

The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next.

The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches—stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition—with explorations of how and why we choose to read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile, the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space."

الشيطان يعظ هي مجموعة قصصية رائعة من تأليف الكاتب الكبير نجيب محفوظ, الذي حصل على جائزة نوبل في الأدب. هذه المجموعة تقدم لنا قصصًا مثيرة ومشوقة، تبحر في أعماق النفس البشرية وتتناول موضوعات الخير والشر، الفضيلة والرذيلة.

يستخدم محفوظ أسلوبه الفريد في السرد ليقدم لنا صورًا حية وواقعية من المجتمع المصري، ويطرح أسئلة فلسفية عميقة حول الحياة والمصير. هذه القصص ليست مجرد حكايات، بل هي دعوة للتفكير والتأمل في جوهر الوجود الإنساني.

Despite the enormous success of her novel Ship of Fools, Katherine Anne Porter's reputation as one of America's most distinguished writers rests chiefly on her superb short stories.

This volume brings together the collections Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning Tower as well as four stories not available elsewhere in book form.

Johnny, the small boy who skated at breakneck speed into an accident that for one horrifying moment plunged him into The Dead Zone. Johnny Smith, the small-town schoolteacher who spun the wheel of fortune and won a four-and-a-half-year trip into The Dead Zone. John Smith, who awakened from an interminable coma with an accursed power—the power to see the future and the terrible fate awaiting mankind in The Dead Zone.

On the first day of May, 100 teenage boys meet for a race known as The Long Walk. If you break the rules, you get three warnings. If you exceed your limit, what happens is absolutely terrifying.

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul is a captivating narrative set in post-colonial Africa during the time of Independence. This novel offers a vivid exploration of a continent in transition.

The story follows Salim, a young Indian man, who embarks on a journey to establish a small business in Central Africa. As he navigates the complexities of a newly-dependent state, he becomes intricately involved with the fluid and dangerous political landscape.

Set against a backdrop of chaos, violent change, and social breakdown, Salim's journey is one of personal growth and survival amidst historical upheaval. This novel serves as a microcosm of a changing world, characterized by warring tribes, ignorance, isolation, and poverty.

Naipaul's work emerges as a truly moving story that reflects on the cultural and political transformations of the time.

The Great Dune Trilogy by Frank Herbert is a monumental science fiction epic, set on the desert planet Arrakis. This harsh world is the focal point of a complex political and military struggle with galaxy-wide repercussions.

This volume includes the captivating tales: 'Dune', 'Dune Messiah', and 'Children of Dune'. The story revolves around the valuable spice, a mind-enhancing drug that makes interstellar travel possible, and is the most sought-after substance in the galaxy.

When Duke Atreides and his family arrive on Arrakis, they become ensnared in a deadly trap set by the Duke's rival, Baron Harkonnen. After the Duke's poisoning, his wife and son, Paul, escape to the vast deserts, joining the native Fremen to survive. Paul's journey is one of destiny and prophecy, intertwined with the ecosystem and culture of Arrakis.

This trilogy is renowned for its intricate blend of ecology, religion, consciousness, feudalism, and space travel. It challenges readers to reflect on the impact of their choices and the world around them. An enduring classic, it continues to inspire and provoke thought in its readers.

In life, not every sin goes unpunished.

GHOST STORY

For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder.

The Poetry of Robert Frost represents the only comprehensive gathering of Frost's published poetry. This affordable volume offers the entire contents of his eleven books of verse, ranging from A Boy's Will (1913) to In the Clearing (1962). As a close friend and a Frost scholar, Lathem has scrupulously annotated the 350-plus poems in this collection. Since its first appearance in 1969, this edition has been the standard edition of Frost's work, cherished by readers and scholars alike.

Harriet the Spy has a secret notebook that she fills with utterly honest jottings about her parents, her classmates, and her neighbors. Every day on her spy route she "observes" and notes down anything of interest to her:

I BET THAT LADY WITH THE CROSS-EYE LOOKS IN THE MIRROR AND JUST FEELS TERRIBLE.

PINKY WHITEHEAD WILL NEVER CHANGE. DOES HIS MOTHER HATE HIM? IF I HAD HIM I'D HATE HIM.

IF MARION HAWTHORNE DOESN'T WATCH OUT SHE'S GOING TO GROW UP INTO A LADY HITLER.

But when Harriet's notebook is found by her schoolmates, their anger and retaliation and Harriet's unexpected responses explode in a hilarious way.

Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.

Amber is the one real world, casting infinite reflections of itself — shadow worlds, which can be manipulated by those of royal Amberite blood. But the royal family is torn apart by jealousies and suspicion; the disappearance of the patriarch Oberon has intensified the internal conflict by leaving the throne apparently up for grabs.

In a hospital on the Shadow Earth, a young man is recovering from a freak car accident; amnesia has robbed him of all his memory, even the fact that he is Corwin, Crown Prince of Amber, rightful heir to the throne — and he is in deadly peril...

The five books, Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon, and The Courts of Chaos, together make up The Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny's finest work of fantasy and an undisputed classic of the genre.

When the future began...The men had it. Yeager. Conrad. Grissom. Glenn. Heroes ... the first Americans in space ... battling the Russians for control of the heavens ... putting their lives on the line.

The women had it. While Mr. Wonderful was aloft, it tore your heart out that the Hero's Wife, down on the ground, had to perform with the whole world watching ... the TV Press Conference: "What's in your heart? Do you feel with him while he's in orbit?"

The Right Stuff. It's the quality beyond bravery, beyond courage. It's men like Chuck Yeager, the greatest test pilot of all and the fastest man on earth. Pete Conrad, who almost laughed himself out of the running. Gus Grissom, who almost lost it when his capsule sank. John Glenn, the only space traveler whose apple-pie image wasn't a lie.

The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft brings together the weird fiction short stories written by H.P. Lovecraft from 1917 to 1935. This collection excludes collaborations and focuses solely on Lovecraft's unique storytelling style.

This comprehensive anthology includes such notable tales as The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, among many others. Each story is a journey into the unknown, filled with cosmic horrors and eerie atmospheres.

Immerse yourself in Lovecraft's world, where the boundaries of reality are blurred and the unimaginable lurks just beyond the veil. This collection is a must-read for fans of horror and speculative fiction.

San Francisco, 1976. A naïve young secretary, fresh out of Cleveland, tumbles headlong into a brave new world of laundromat Lotharios, pot-growing landladies, cutthroat debutantes, and Jockey Shorts dance contests. The saga that ensues is manic, romantic, tawdry, touching, and outrageous—unmistakably the handiwork of Armistead Maupin.

They were the mri - tall, secretive, bound by honor and the rigid dictates of their society. For aeons, this golden-skinned, golden-eyed race had provided the universe with mercenary soldiers of almost unimaginable ability. But now, the mri have faced an enemy unlike any other - an enemy whose only way of war is widespread destruction. These humans are mass fighters, creatures of the herd, and the mri have been slaughtered like animals.

Now, in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save whatever remains of this devastated race: a warrior - one of the last survivors of his kind; a priestess of this honorable people; and a lone human - a man sworn to aid the enemy of his own kind. Can they retrace the galaxy-wide path of this nomadic race back through millennia to reclaim the ancient world which first gave them life?

A strange imprisonment... Beauty has never liked her nickname. She is thin and awkward; it is her two sisters who are the beautiful ones. But what she lacks in looks, she can perhaps make up for in courage.

When her father comes home with the tale of an enchanted castle in the forest and the terrible promise he had to make to the Beast who lives there, Beauty knows she must go to the castle, a prisoner of her own free will. Her father protests that he will not let her go, but she answers, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?"

Robin McKinley's beloved telling illuminates the unusual love story of a most unlikely couple: Beauty and the Beast.

In A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle, a companion to the Newbery Award winner A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door, the Murry and O'Keefe Families enlist the help of the unicorn, Gaudior, to save the world from imminent nuclear war. Fifteen-year-old Charles Wallace and the unicorn Gaudior undertake a perilous journey through time in a desperate attempt to stop the destruction of the world by the mad dictator Madog Branzillo. They are not alone in their quest. Charles Wallace's sister, Meg--grown and expecting her first child, but still able to enter her brother's thoughts and emotions by "kything"--goes with him in spirit.

Charles Wallace must face the ultimate test of his faith and his will as he is sent within four people from another time, there to search for a way to avert the tragedy threatening them all.

In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.

The World According to Garp is a novel that chronicles the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times. This story delves into the world of sexual extremes and even sexual assassinations. Despite the dark and violent events that unfold, the tale maintains a comedic tone that is both ribald and robust.

Translated into more than thirty languages and available in over forty countries, this novel has sold more than ten million copies worldwide. It offers almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: "In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases."

Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution.

Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremony that defeats the most virulent of afflictions—despair.

Giorgio Bassani’s acclaimed novel of unrequited love and the plight of the Italian Jews on the brink of World War II has become a classic of modern Italian literature. The narrator, a young middle-class Jew in the Italian city of Ferrara, has long been fascinated from afar by the Finzi-Continis, a wealthy and aristocratic Jewish family, and especially by their enchanting daughter Micol.

But it is not until 1938 that he is invited behind the walls of their lavish estate. As local Jews begin to gather there to avoid the racial laws of the Fascists, the garden of the Finzi-Continis becomes an idyllic sanctuary in an increasingly brutal world.

Years after the war, the narrator returns in memory to his doomed relationship with the lovely Micol and to the predicament that faced all the Ferrarese Jews, in this unforgettable portrait of a community about to be destroyed by the world outside the garden walls.

Substance D is not known as Death for nothing. It is the most toxic drug ever to find its way on to the streets of LA. It destroys the links between the brain's two hemispheres, causing, first, disorientation and then complete and irreversible brain damage.

The undercover narcotics agent who calls himself Bob Arctor is desperate to discover the ultimate source of supply. But to find any kind of lead he has to pose as a user and, inevitably, without realising what is happening, Arctor is soon as addicted as the junkies he works among...

Black Beauty spends his youth in a loving home, surrounded by friends and cared for by his owners. But when circumstances change, he learns that not all humans are so kind. Passed from hand to hand, Black Beauty witnesses love and cruelty, wealth and poverty, friendship and hardship. Will the handsome horse ever find a happy and lasting home?

Carefully retold in clear contemporary language, and presented with delightful illustrations, these favorite classic stories capture the heart and imagination of young readers. By retelling the story in a shorter, simpler form, these books become highly engaging for children, and the color illustrations help with both comprehension and interest level. Black Beauty is part of a collectible series that has strong gift appeal.

"Tous maudits, jusqu'à la septième génération !" : telle est la funeste malédiction que le chef des templiers, depuis les flammes du bûcher, lance au visage de Philippe le Bel, roi de France.

Nous sommes en 1314 et la prophétie va se réaliser : pendant plus d'un demi-siècle, les rois se succèdent sur le trône de France, mais n'y restent jamais bien longtemps. D'intrigues de palais en morts subites, de révolutions dynastiques en guerres meurtrières, c'est la valse des rois maudits...

L'avenir de la France se joue pendant ces quelques années noires, période trouble de l'Histoire. Une époque extraordinaire, jamais ennuyeuse, comme romanesque...

L'auteur l'a bien compris, lui qui conte les histoires secrètes du royaume et des hommes, de leurs passions comme de leurs faiblesses qui bien souvent bouleversèrent le sort de la France.

After years of great sacrifice and deep personal tragedy, Florentyna Kane has finally become the first woman president in America. But on the very day that she is sworn into office, powerful forces are already in motion to take her life.

The FBI investigates thousands of false threats every year. This time, a reliable source has tipped them off about an assassination attempt. One hour later, the informant and all but one of the investigating agents are dead. The lone survivor: FBI Special Agent Mark Andrews. Now, only he knows when the killers will strike.

But how can he alone unravel a ruthless conspiracy in less than one week? The race to save the first woman president begins now…

When suburban Claudia Kincaid decides to run away, she knows she doesn’t just want to run from somewhere, she wants to run to somewhere — to a place that is comfortable, beautiful, and, preferably, elegant. She chooses the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Knowing her younger brother Jamie has money and thus can help her with a serious cash-flow problem, she invites him along.

Once settled into the museum, Claudia and Jamie find themselves caught up in the mystery of an angel statue that the museum purchased at auction for a bargain price of $225. The statue is possibly an early work of the Renaissance master, Michelangelo, and therefore worth millions. Is it? Or isn’t it? Claudia is determined to find out. Her quest leads her to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the remarkable old woman who sold the statue, and to some equally remarkable discoveries about herself.

Why is Rachel the only one to sense the evil that surrounds Julia?

From the moment Rachel's cousin Julia arrives that summer, she seems to seep into Rachel's life like a poison. Everyone else is enchanted by her - including Rachel's boyfriend. But what does Julia really want?

Rachel must uncover the truth about Julia before it's too late. Is Julia really who she claims to be, or is there something more sinister at play?

Into the 'autobiography' of Clau-Clau-Claudius, the pitiful stammerer who was destined to become Emperor in spite of himself, Robert Graves packs the everlasting intrigues, the depravity, the bloody purges, and mounting cruelty of the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, soon to culminate in the deified insanity of Caligula. I, Claudius and its sequel, Claudius the God, are among the most celebrated, as well as the most gripping historical novels ever written.

Cover illustration: Brian Pike

Rage tells the story of a disturbed high-school student, Charlie Decker, who has severe authority problems. In a moment of extreme tension, he kills one of his teachers and takes the rest of his class hostage.

Over the course of one long, unbearably hot afternoon, Charlie explains what led him to this drastic sequence of events. He deconstructs the personalities of his classmates, forcing each one to justify his or her existence in a gripping narrative.

A vivid depiction of the suffering history has imposed upon the people of Bosnia from the late sixteenth century to the beginning of World War I, The Bridge on the Drina earned Ivo Andric the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. A great stone bridge built three centuries ago in the heart of the Balkans by a Grand Vezir of the Ottoman Empire dominates the setting of Andric's stunning novel. Spanning generations, nationalities, and creeds, the bridge stands witness to the countless lives played out upon it:

Radisav, the workman, who tries to hinder its construction and is impaled on its highest point; to the lovely Fata, who throws herself from its parapet to escape a loveless marriage; to Milan, the gambler, who risks everything in one last game on the bridge with the devil his opponent; to Fedun, the young soldier, who pays for a moment of spring forgetfulness with his life. War finally destroys the span, and with it the last descendant of that family to which the Grand Vezir confided the care of his pious bequest - the bridge.

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.

The third volume in the multimillion copy bestselling series, All Things Wise and Wonderful continues the delightful memoirs of Yorkshire veterinarian James Herriot. In this volume, readers are treated to another dose of Herriot's humor, insight, and wisdom.

In the midst of World War II, James is training for the Royal Air Force, while going home to Yorkshire whenever possible to see his very pregnant wife, Helen. Musing on past adventures through the dales, visiting with old friends, and introducing scores of new and amusing characters--animal and human alike--Herriot enthralls with his uncanny ability to spin a most engaging and heartfelt yarn.

Millions of readers have delighted in the wonderful storytelling and everyday miracles of James Herriot in the over thirty years since his delightful animal stories were first introduced to the world.

A true classic with a timeless message! All the other bulls run, jump, and butt their heads together in fights. Ferdinand, on the other hand, would rather sit and smell the flowers. So what will happen when Ferdinand is picked for the bullfights in Madrid?

The Story of Ferdinand has inspired, enchanted, and provoked readers ever since it was first published in 1936 for its message of nonviolence and pacifism. In WWII times, Adolf Hitler ordered the book burned in Nazi Germany, while Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, granted it privileged status as the only non-communist children's book allowed in Poland. The preeminent leader of Indian nationalism and civil rights, Mahatma Gandhi—whose nonviolent and pacifistic practices went on to inspire Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.—even called it his favorite book.

The story was adapted by Walt Disney into a short animated film entitled Ferdinand the Bull in 1938. Ferdinand the Bull won the 1938 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).

The Women's Room is the bestselling feminist novel that awakened both women and men. It follows the transformation of Mira Ward and her circle as the women's movement begins to have an impact on their lives. A biting social commentary on an emotional world gone silently haywire, this book is a modern classic offering piercing insight into the social norms accepted so blindly and revered so completely.

Marilyn French questions those accepted norms and poignantly portrays the hopeful believers looking for new truths.

It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared. They never returned.

Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, the reader must decide for themselves. This mysterious and subtly erotic tale inspired the iconic 1975 film of the same name by Peter Weir. A beguiling landmark of Australian literature, it stands with Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, and Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides as a masterpiece of intrigue.

Behind the foreboding walls of Newgate Prison, a pact is sealed in secret as a dashing and doomed criminal consents to wed a beautiful heiress in return for one night of unparalleled pleasure. In the fading echoes of hollow wedding vows, a promise is broken as a sensuous free-spirit flees to a lush Caribbean paradise, abandoning the handsome stranger she married to the gallows.

Ruark Beauchamp's destiny is now eternally intertwined with his exquisite, tempestuous Shanna's. No iron ever forged can imprison his magnificent passion, and no hangman's noose will deny him the ecstasy that is rightfully his.

Steinbeck is an artist; and he tells the stories of these lovable thieves and adulterers with a gentle and poetic purity of heart and of prose. Adopting the structure and themes of the Arthurian legend, Steinbeck created a "Camelot" on a shabby hillside above the town of Monterey, California and peopled it with a colorful band of knights. At the center of the tale is Danny, whose house, like Arthur's castle, becomes a gathering place for men looking for adventure, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging. These "knights" are paisanos, men of mixed heritage, whose ancestors settled California hundreds of years before. Free of ties to jobs and other complications of the American way of life, they fiercely resist the corrupting tide of honest toil in the surrounding ocean of civil rectitude.

As Steinbeck chronicles their deeds--their multiple loves, their wonderful brawls, their Rabelaisian wine-drinking--he spins a tale as compelling and ultimately as touched by sorrow as the famous legends of the Round Table, which inspired him.

Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky, his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an unvarnished field report from the American post-war underground. Unafraid to portray himself in 1953 as a confirmed member of two socially-despised under classes (a narcotics addict and a homosexual), Burroughs was writing as a trained anthropologist when he unapologetically described a way of life - in New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City - that by the 1940s was already demonized by the artificial anti-drug hysteria of an opportunistic bureaucracy and a cynical, prostrate media.

For this fiftieth-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly recreated the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts and places the book's contents against a lively historical background in a comprehensive introduction. Here as well, for the first time, are Burroughs' own unpublished introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages, as well as auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others.

Living in peaceful Shady Vale, Shea Ohmsford knew little of the troubles that plagued the rest of the world. Then the giant, forbidding Allanon revealed that the supposedly dead Warlock Lord was plotting to destroy the world. The sole weapon against this Power of Darkness was the Sword of Shannara, which could only be used by a true heir of Shannara--Shea being the last of the bloodline, upon whom all hope rested. Soon a Skull Bearer, dread minion of Evil, flew into the Vale, seeking to destroy Shea. To save the Vale, Shea fled, drawing the Skull Bearer after him....

Amber, the one real world, wherein all others, including our own Earth, are but Shadows. Amber burns in Corwin's blood. Exiled on Shadow Earth for centuries, the prince is about to return to Amber to make a mad and desperate rush upon the throne. From Arden to the blood-slippery Stairway into the Sea, the air is electrified with the powers of Eric, Random, Bleys, Caine, and all the princes of Amber whom Corwin must overcome.

Yet, his savage path is blocked and guarded by eerie structures beyond imagining; impossible realities forged by demonic assassins and staggering horrors to challenge the might of Corwin's superhuman fury. Awakening in an Earth hospital unable to remember who he is or where he came from, Corwin is amazed to learn that he is one of the sons of Oberon, King of Amber, and is the rightful successor to the crown in a parallel world.

Alive and hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project—the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project and informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed.

Thus Ira Levin opens one of the strangest and most masterful novels of his career. Why has Mengele marked a number of harmless aging men for murder? What is the hidden link that binds them? What interest can they possibly hold for their killers: six former SS men dispatched from South America by the most wanted Nazi still alive, the notorious "Angel of Death"?

One man alone must answer these questions and stop the killings—Lieberman, himself aging and thought by some to be losing his grip on reality. At the heart of The Boys from Brazil lies a frightening contemporary nightmare, chilling and all too possible.