Hikaru Shindo is like any sixth-grader in Japan: a pretty normal schoolboy with a two-tone head of hair and a penchant for antics. One day, he finds an old bloodstained Go board in his grandfather's attic--and that's when things get really interesting. Trapped inside the Go board is Fujiwara-no-Sai, the ghost of an ancient Go master who taught the strategically complex board game to the emperor of Japan many centuries ago.

In one fateful moment, Sai becomes a part of Hikaru's consciousness and together, through thick and thin, they make an unstoppable Go-playing team. Will they be able to defeat Go players who have dedicated their lives to the game? Will Sai achieve the "Divine Move" so he'll finally be able to rest in peace? Begin your journey with Hikaru and Sai in this first volume of Hikaru no Go.

Like a surreal and highly caffeinated version of The Big Chill, Jonathan Coe's new novel follows four students who knew each other in college in the eighties. Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events. Robert has his life changed forever by the misunderstandings that arise from her condition. Terry spends his wakeful nights fueling his obsession with movies. And an increasingly unstable doctor, Gregory, sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which he must eradicate.

But after ten years of fretful slumber and dreams gone bad, the four reunite in their college town to confront their disorders. In a Gothic cliffside manor being used as a clinic for sleep disorders, they discover that neither love, nor lunacy, nor obsession ever rests.

Who is going to marry Eugénie Grandet? This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugénie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comédie Humaine.

The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugénie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugénie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel.

Eugénie's moving story is set against the backdrop of provincial oppression, the vicissitudes of the wine trade, and the workings of the financial system in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It is both a poignant portrayal of private life and a vigorous fictional document of its age.

Club Nautico is an exclusive Spanish resort for the rich, retired British. After five people die in an unexplained house fire, club manager Frank Prentice pleads guilty-but nobody believes him, least of all the police. When Frank's brother Charles arrives, intent on unravelling the mystery, gradually he uncovers the secret world behind the resort's civilized image.

Features a man who finds himself drawn into a network of drugs, pornography, and murder in a Spanish resort.

A few months after the first fighter jets landed in their own backyard, Ellie and her five terrified but defiant friends struggle to survive amid a baffling conflict. Their families are unreachable; the mountains are now their home. When two of them fall behind enemy lines, Ellie knows what must happen next: a rescue mission.

Homer, the strongest and most unpredictable among them, is the one to take charge. While others have their doubts about his abilities, Homer has no choice but to prove them wrong - or risk losing everything to the enemy.

Euripides' classic drama delves into the often mortifying consequences of the unbridled—and frequently hysterical—celebration of the feast of Dionysus, the God of wine.

This powerful narrative explores themes of divine retribution and the clash between order and chaos, as Dionysus exacts revenge on Pentheus, the King of Thebes, and his people.

Salman Rushdie's most ambitious and accomplished novel, sure to be hailed as his masterpiece. At the beginning of this stunning novel, Vina Apsara, a famous and much-loved singer, is caught up in a devastating earthquake and never seen again by human eyes. This is her story, and that of Ormus Cama, the lover who finds, loses, seeks, and again finds her, over and over, throughout his own extraordinary life in music. Their epic romance is narrated by Ormus's childhood friend and Vina's sometime lover, her "back-door man," the photographer Rai, whose astonishing voice, filled with stories, images, myths, anger, wisdom, humor, and love, is perhaps the book's true hero. Telling the story of Ormus and Vina, he finds that he is also revealing his own truths: his human failings, his immortal longings. He is a man caught up in the loves and quarrels of the age's goddesses and gods, but dares to have ambitions of his own. And lives to tell the tale.

Around these three, the uncertain world itself is beginning to tremble and break. Cracks and tears have begun to appear in the fabric of the real. There are glimpses of abysses below the surfaces of things. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is Salman Rushdie's most gripping novel and his boldest imaginative act, a vision of our shaken, mutating times, an engagement with the whole of what is and what might be, an account of the intimate, flawed encounter between the East and the West, a brilliant remaking of the myth of Orpheus, a novel of high (and low) comedy, high (and low) passions, high (and low) culture. It is a tale of love, death, and rock 'n' roll.

Connor Fitzgerald is a professional's professional. Holder of the Medal of Honor. Devoted family man. Servant of his country. But for the past twenty-eight years, Fitzgerald has been leading a double life as the CIA's most deadly assassin.

Only days before his retirement from the CIA, he comes across an enemy who, for the first time, even he cannot handle. The enemy is his own boss - Helen Dexter - the Director of the CIA. Dexter's stranglehold on the agency is threatened by one decision, and her only hope of survival is to destroy Fitzgerald.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a formidable new foe is threatening the United States: a ruthless hard-line Russian president, determined to force a new military confrontation between the two superpowers.

From emergency meetings in the Oval Office to a Russian mafya boss's luxurious hideaway outside St. Petersburg, The Eleventh Commandment sweeps readers off their feet from the first paragraph.

In his latest novel, Jeffrey Archer is at the peak of his page-turning powers, offering enough plot-twisting ingenuity, exotic characterization, and narrative surprise to take the art of thriller writing to a new level.

A Roman soldier, Marcellus, wins Christ's robe as a gambling prize. He then sets forth on a quest to find the truth about the Nazarene's robe—a quest that reaches to the very roots and heart of Christianity and is set against the vividly limned background of ancient Rome. Here is a timeless story of adventure, faith, and romance, a tale of spiritual longing and ultimate redemption.

Wisdom to Create a Life of Passion, Purpose, and Peace. This inspiring tale provides a step-by-step approach to living with greater courage, balance, abundance, and joy.

A wonderfully crafted fable, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari tells the extraordinary story of Julian Mantle, a lawyer forced to confront the spiritual crisis of his out-of-balance life. On a life-changing odyssey to an ancient culture, he discovers powerful, wise, and practical lessons that teach us to:

• Develop Joyful Thoughts
• Follow Our Life's Mission and Calling
• Cultivate Self-Discipline and Act Courageously
• Value Time as Our Most Important Commodity
• Nourish Our Relationships
• Live Fully, One Day at a Time

Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima enters his life. She is a curandera, one who heals with herbs and magic. "We cannot let her live her last days in loneliness," says Antonio's mother. "It is not the way of our people," agrees his father. And so Ultima comes to live with Antonio's family in New Mexico.

Soon, Tony will journey to the threshold of manhood. Always, Ultima watches over him. She graces him with the courage to face childhood bigotry, diabolical possession, the moral collapse of his brother, and too many violent deaths. Under her wise guidance, Tony will probe the family ties that bind him, and he will find in himself the magical secrets of the pagan past—a mythic legacy equally as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America in which he has been schooled. At each turn in his life, there is Ultima who will nurture the birth of his soul.

The Instruction Manual, the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format.

Unusual Occupations, the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger—just one tiger—for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity.

Finally, the Cronopios and Famas section delightfully characterizes, in the words of Carlos Fuentes, "those enemies of pomposity, academic rigor mortis and cardboard celebrity—a band of literary Marx Brothers."

Elena rises from the dead to recreate the powerful vampire trio. Summoned by Elena, Stefan keeps a promise to her and fights the most terrifying evil he's ever faced. Joining the brother he once called enemy, Damon battles this new horror with strength, cunning, and deadly charm.

Born to the shape-shifting dragon king of Ippa, twin brothers Karadur and Tenjiro share an ancestry, but not a bloodline. Only Karadur carries dragon blood, destined to one day become a dragon and rule the kingdom. In an act of jealous betrayal, Tenjiro steals the talisman that would allow Karadur to take his true dragon form and flees to a distant, icy realm.

Now, years later, Tenjiro has reappeared as the evil sorcerer Ankoku. His frozen stronghold threatens to destroy Dragon Keep, and Karadur must lead his shape-shifting warriors on a journey to defeat his brother and reclaim his destiny. With Dragon's Winter, World Fantasy Award-winning author Elizabeth A. Lynn returns with the kind of richly drawn characters and intricate worlds her fans, both old and new, will love.

In the second novel set in the "darkly fascinating world" (SF Site) of Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels Trilogy, ambitions unfurl as the realm’s dreams of a liberator have finally been made flesh. The Blood have waited centuries for the coming of Witch, the living embodiment of magic. But Jaenelle, the young girl singled out by prophecy, is haunted by the cruel battles fought over her—for not all the Blood await her as their Savior. Some dismiss her as a myth. Some refuse to believe. And still others look forward to using her, making her a pawn to their shadowy devices.

Only time and the devotion of her loyal guardians have healed Jaenelle’s physical wounds. But her mind is fragile, barely able to protect her from the horrifying memories of her childhood. Nothing, however, can deflect her from her destiny—and the day of reckoning looms near. When her memories return. When her magic matures. When she is forced to accept her fate. On that day, the dark Realms will know what it means to be ruled by Witch.

Nelson Algren's most powerful and enduring work, The Man with the Golden Arm, offers a devastating portrait of the savage, subterranean world of gamblers, junkies, alcoholics, prostitutes, thieves, and degenerates. It remains unsurpassed as an authentic depiction of human depravity.

Only a master like Algren could create such a passionate and dramatic novel on the daring theme of a man's struggle against dope addiction. The novel tells the story of Frankie Machine, a card-dealing WWII veteran, who is caught in the act of slowly cutting his own heart into wafer-thin slices. For Frankie, a murder committed may be the least of his problems.

The literary critic Malcolm Cowley called it "Algren's defense of the individual," while Carl Sandburg wrote of its "strange midnight dignity." This literary tour de force suggests a defense of human dignity and a reason for hope, despite the challenges of drug addiction, poverty, and human failure.

Set amid the splendor of London drawing rooms and gilded Venetian palazzos, The Wings of the Dove is the story of Milly Theale, a naïve, doomed American heiress, and a pair of lovers, Kate Croy and Merton Densher, who conspire to obtain her fortune. In this witty tragedy of treachery, self-deception, and betrayal, Henry James weaves together three ill-fated and wholly human destinies unexpectedly linked by desire, greed, and salvation.

As Amy Bloom writes in her Introduction, “The Wings of the Dove is a novel of intimacy. . . . [James] gives us passion, he gives us love in its terrible and enchanting forms.”

Four children wish on a Half Magic coin that gets their mother Alison half-way home, rescued by Mr Smith. Mark's wish zaps them to a desert without island, where half-talking cat Carrie gabbles to a camel. Romantic Katherine battles Launcelot. Eldest Jane rejects siblings for another family. Stubborn youngest, Martha, causes a riot downtown.

With the bravura storytelling and pungent authenticity of detail she brought to her acclaimed Lymond Chronicles, Dorothy Dunnett, grande dame of the historical novel, presents The House of Niccolò series. The time is the 15th century, when intrepid merchants became the new knighthood of Europe. Among them, none is bolder or more cunning than Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, the good-natured dyer's apprentice who schemes and swashbuckles his way to the helm of a mercantile empire.

Niccolò Rising, Book One of the series, finds us in Bruges, 1460. Jousting is the genteel pastime, and successful merchants are, of necessity, polyglot. Street smart, brilliant at figures, adept at the subtleties of diplomacy and the well-timed untruth, Dunnett's hero rises from wastrel to prodigy in a breathless adventure that wins him the hand of the strongest woman in Bruges and the hatred of two powerful enemies. From a riotous and potentially murderous carnival in Flanders, to an avalanche in the Alps and a pitched battle on the outskirts of Naples, Niccolò Rising combines history, adventure, and high romance in the tradition stretching from Alexandre Dumas to Mary Renault.

Back on Earth with nothing more to show for his long, strange trip through time and space than a ratty towel and a plastic shopping bag, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription, the mysterious disappearance of Earth's dolphins, and the discovery of his battered copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy all conspire to give Arthur the sneaking suspicion that something otherworldly is indeed going on.

God only knows what it all means. And fortunately, He left behind a Final Message of explanation. But since it's light-years away from Earth, on a star surrounded by souvenir booths, finding out what it is will mean hitching a ride to the far reaches of space aboard a UFO with a giant robot. But what else is new?

Wit is a powerfully imagined play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Margaret Edson. This sophisticated, multilayered drama explores one of existence's unifying experiences—mortality—and probes the vital importance of human relationships.

As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English, finds herself diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control, she approaches her illness with the same intensely rational and methodical approach that has guided her academic career. However, as her disease progresses, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her.

The play asks timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live and interact with others more important than our material or professional achievements? How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it?

With clarity and elegance, Edson's writing makes this play accessible to any reader. It offers a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish—a lesson both uplifting and redemptive.

The Farseer trilogy continues the dramatic tale of piracy, serpents, love and magic. The Vestrit family's liveship, Vivacia, has been taken by the pirate king, Kennit. Held captive on board, Wintrow Vestrit finds himself competing with Kennit for Vivacia's love as the ship slowly acquires her own bloodlust. Leagues away, Althea Vestrit has found a new home aboard the liveship Ophelia, but she lives only to reclaim the Vivacia and with her friend, Brashen, she plans a dangerous rescue. Meanwhile in Bingtown, the fading fortunes of the Vestrit family lead Malta deeper into the magical secrets of the Rain Wild Traders. And just outside Bingtown, Amber dreams of relaunching Paragon, the mad liveship.

Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen, illegitimate, and in her final year at a wealthy Catholic school. This is the year her father comes back into her life, the year she falls in love, the year she discovers the secrets of her family's past and the year she sets herself free.

'I'll run one day. Run from my life. To be free and think for myself. Not as an Australia and not as an Italian and not as an in between. I'll run to be emancipated.'

Elective Affinities was written when Goethe was sixty and long established as Germany's literary giant. This is a new edition of his penetrating study of marriage and passion, bringing together four people in an inexorable manner.

The novel asks whether we have free will or not and confronts its characters with the monstrous consequences of repressing what little "real life" they have in themselves, a life so far removed from their natural states that it appears to them as something terrible and destructive.

Lázaro es un muchacho desarrapado a quien la miseria obliga a emplearse como sirviente. Las inocentes y a veces justificadas burlas con las que Lázaro se defiende de sus amos son castigadas con una crueldad brutal. Así, garrotazo a garrotazo, la simpleza y credulidad del Lázaro de las primeras páginas ceden paso a la sagacidad y a la astucia propias del más clásico y típico de los pícaros.

Poema épico, se trata del texto más representativo del arte de los juglares españoles de la Edad Media. El poema fue probablemente compuesto entre 1110-1140, no mucho después de los hechos a los que se refiere.

El poema, dividido en tres partes o cantares, narra el destierro y las aventuras del Cid, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar. El tema del deshonor y la recuperación de la honra constituyen el eje central de la obra, que describe la mentalidad y los valores éticos de la época.

Muchos de los personajes y hechos que muestra están atestiguados, lo cual le confiere un gran valor histórico.

Take an apartment house, mix in a drag queen, a lesbian couple, some talking animals, a talking severed head, a confused heroine, and the deadly Cuckoo. Stir vigorously with a hurricane and Morpheus himself, and you get this fifth installment of the Sandman series.

This story stars Barbie, who first makes an appearance in The Doll's House, who here finds herself a princess in a vivid dreamworld.

Collecting The Sandman #32–37.

Ten thousand years ago, Morpheus condemned a woman who loved him to Hell. Now the other members of his immortal family, The Endless, have convinced the Dream King that this was an injustice. To make it right, Morpheus must return to Hell to rescue his banished love — and Hell's ruler, the fallen angel Lucifer, has already sworn to destroy him.

This volume collects The Sandman issues #21-28, continuing the epic saga crafted by the imagination of Neil Gaiman.

The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal antidepressants to placebos, so naturally—well, to be accurate, artificially—business is booming at the local blues bar.

Trouble is, those lonely slide-guitar notes have also attracted a colossal sea beast named Steve with, shall we say, a thing for explosive oil tanker trucks.

Suddenly, morose Pine Cove turns libidinous and is hit by a mysterious crime wave, and a beleaguered constable has to fight off his own gonzo appetites to find out what's wrong and what, if anything, to do about it.

First published in 1956, Peyton Place uncovers the passions, lies, and cruelties that simmer beneath the surface of a postcard-perfect town. At the center of the novel are three women, each with a secret to hide:

Constance MacKenzie, the original desperate housewife; her daughter Allison, whose dreams are stifled by small-town small-mindedness; and Selena Cross, her gypsy-eyed friend from the wrong side of the tracks.

This novel is a deep dive into the hidden truths and societal norms of 1950s America, capturing the essence of a seemingly idyllic community fraught with underlying tension and drama.

Main Street, the story of an idealistic young woman's attempts to reform her small town, brought Sinclair Lewis immediate acclaim when it was published in 1920. It remains one of the essential texts of the American scene.

Carol Milford dreams of living in a small, rural town. But Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, isn't the paradise she'd imagined. As a work of social satire, this complex and compelling look at small-town America in the early 20th century has earned its place among the classics.

Satirizing small-town life, Main Street is perhaps Sinclair Lewis's most famous book, contributing to his eventual Nobel Prize for Literature. It relates the life and struggles of Carol Milford Kennicott as she comes into conflict with the small-town mentality of the residents of Gopher Prairie.

Quick-witted and cocksure, young upstart Capac Raimi arrives in the City determined to make his mark. As he learns the tricks of his new trade from his Uncle Theo, he's soon on his way to becoming a promising new gangster. Then he crosses paths with The Cardinal, and his life changes forever.

For over twenty years, Patricia A. McKillip has captured the hearts and imaginations of thousands of readers. Her renowned Riddle-Master trilogy—The Riddle-Master of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire, and Harpist in the Wind—has been long out of print, yet it remains her most enduring and beloved work.

Now, for the first time, it is collected in one volume. Embark on the epic journeys of a young prince in a strange land, where wizards have long since vanished... but where magic is waiting to be reborn.

From Mordecai Richler, one of our greatest satirists, comes one of literature's most delightful characters, Duddy Kravitz — in a novel that belongs in the pantheon of seminal twentieth-century books.

Duddy — the third generation of a Jewish immigrant family in Montreal — is combative, amoral, scheming, a liar, and totally hilarious. From his street days tormenting teachers at the Jewish academy to his time hustling four jobs at once in a grand plan to "be somebody," Duddy learns about living — and the lesson is an outrageous roller-coaster ride through the human comedy.

As Richler turns his blistering commentary on love, money, and politics, The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz becomes a lesson for us all... in laughter and in life.

In the grand storytelling style of Watership Down and Tailchaser's Song comes an epic tale of adventure and danger, of heroism against insurmountable odds, and of love and comradeship among extraordinary animals who must brave The Wild Road.

Secure in a world of privilege and comfort, the kitten Tag is happy as a pampered house pet—until the dreams come. Dreams that pour into his safe, snug world from the wise old cat Majicou: hazy images of travel along the magical highways of the animals, of a mission, and of a terrible responsibility that will fall on young Tag.

Armed with the cryptic message that he must bring the King and Queen of cats to Tintagel before the spring equinox, Tag ventures outside. Meanwhile, an evil human known only as the Alchemist doggedly hunts the Queen for his own ghastly ends. And if the Alchemist captures her, the world will never be safe again...

A timeless novel of a straitlaced village's awakening to joy and sensuality - every page offers a description of chocolate to melt in the mouths of chocoholics, francophiles, armchair gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere.

Illuminating Peter Mayle's South of France with a touch of Laura Esquivel's magic realism, Chocolat is a timeless novel of a straitlaced village's awakening to joy and sensuality. In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows. Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch? Soon the parish no longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation, happiness, and a dramatic face-off between Easter solemnity and the pagan gaiety of a chocolate festival. Chocolat's every page offers a description of chocolate to melt in the mouths of chocoholics, francophiles, armchair gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere. It's a must for anyone who craves an escapist read, and is a bewitching gift for any holiday.

The purpose of this critique of pure speculative reason consists in the attempt to change the old procedure of metaphysics and to bring about a complete revolution. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is the central text of modern philosophy. It presents a profound and challenging investigation into the nature of human reason, its knowledge and its illusions. Reason, Kant argues, is the seat of certain concepts that precede experience and make it possible, but we are not therefore entitled to draw conclusions about the natural world from these concepts. The Critique brings together the two opposing schools of philosophy: rationalism, which grounds all our knowledge in reason, and empiricism, which traces all our knowledge to experience. Kant's transcendental idealism indicates a third way that goes far beyond these alternatives.

Thirteen tales are unspun from the deeply familiar and woven anew into a collection of fairy tales that wind back through time. Acclaimed Irish author Emma Donoghue reveals heroines young and old in unexpected alliances—sometimes treacherous, sometimes erotic, but always courageous.

Told with luminous voices that shimmer with sensuality and truth, these age-old characters shed their antiquated cloaks to travel a seductive new landscape, radiantly transformed.

Cinderella forsakes the handsome prince and runs off with the fairy godmother; Beauty discovers the Beast behind the mask is not so very different from the face she sees in the mirror; Snow White is awakened from slumber by the bittersweet fruit of an unnamed desire.

Acclaimed writer Emma Donoghue spins new tales out of old in a magical web of thirteen interconnected stories about power and transformation and choosing one's own path in the world. In these fairy tales, women young and old tell their own stories of love and hate, honor and revenge, passion and deception.

Using the intricate patterns and oral rhythms of traditional fairy tales, Emma Donoghue wraps age-old characters in a dazzling new skin.

In a city blasted by years of force and fury, but momentarily stilled by a cease-fire, two unlikely friends search for that most human of needs: love. But of course, a night of lust will do.

Jake Jackson and Chuckie Lurgan—one Catholic, one Protestant—navigate their sectarian city and their nonsectarian friendship with wit and style. Chuckie, an unemployed dreamer, stumbles into bliss with a beautiful American who lives in Belfast. Jake, a repo man with the soul of a poet, can only manage a hilarious war of insults with a spitfire Republican whose Irish name, properly pronounced, sounds like someone choking.

Brilliant, exuberant, and bitingly funny, Eureka Street introduces us to one of the finest young writers to emerge from Ireland in years.

A moving, exciting, and heartfelt American saga inspired by the author's own family memoirs, "These Is My Words" belongs to Sarah Prine, a woman of spirit and fire who forges a full and remarkable existence in a harsh, unfamiliar frontier. Scrupulously recording her steps down the path Providence has set her upon--from child to determined young adult to loving mother--she shares the turbulent events, both joyous and tragic, that molded her and recalls the enduring love with cavalry officer Captain Jack Elliot that gave her strength and purpose.

Rich in authentic everyday details and alive with truly unforgettable characters, "These Is My Words" brilliantly brings a vanished world to breathtaking life again.

The Modern Library’s fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time contains both The Captive (1923) and The Fugitive (1925). In The Captive, Proust’s narrator describes living in his mother’s Paris apartment with his lover, Albertine, and subsequently falling out of love with her. In The Fugitive, the narrator loses Albertine forever.

Rich with irony, The Captive and The Fugitive inspire meditations on desire, sexual love, music, and the art of introspection.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu.

After thousands of years searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Two human groups: the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds. The group that opens trade with the aliens will reap unimaginable riches. But first, both groups must wait at the aliens' very doorstep for their strange star to relight and for their planet to reawaken, as it does every two hundred and fifty years....

Then, following terrible treachery, the Qeng Ho must fight for their freedom and for the lives of the unsuspecting innocents on the planet below, while the aliens themselves play a role unsuspected by the Qeng Ho and Emergents alike. More than just a great science fiction adventure, A Deepness in the Sky is a universal drama of courage, self-discovery, and the redemptive power of love.

André Gide later deemed it the greatest of all French novels, and Henry James judged it to be a masterpiece. Now, in a major literary event, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and distinguished translator Richard Howard presents a new rendition of Stendhal's epic tale of romance, adventure, and court intrigue set in early nineteenth-century Italy.

The Charterhouse of Parma chronicles the exploits of Fabrizio del Dongo, an ardent young aristocrat who joins Napoleon's army just before the Battle of Waterloo. Yet perhaps the novel's most unforgettable characters are the hero's beautiful aunt, the alluring Duchess of Sanseverina, and her lover, Count Mosca, who plot to further Fabrizio's political career at the treacherous court of Parma in a sweeping story that illuminates an entire epoch of European history.

"Stendhal has written The Prince up to date, the novel that Machiavelli would write if he were living banished from Italy in the nineteenth century," noted Balzac in his famous review of The Charterhouse of Parma. "One sees perfection in every detail. . . . It is a masterpiece." This edition includes original illustrations by Robert Andrew Parker and Notes and a Translator's Afterword by Richard Howard.

Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence.

Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

The Struggle is the terrifying story of two vampire brothers and the beautiful girl torn between them:

Damon: determined to make Elena his queen of darkness, he'd kill his own brother to possess her.

Stefan: desperate for the power to destroy Damon, he succumbs to his thirst for human blood.

Elena: irresistibly drawn to both brothers, her choice will decide their fate.

A Child's Garden of Verses is a delightful collection of poetry by the renowned poet and storyteller Robert Louis Stevenson. This charming anthology offers a nostalgic glimpse into the joys and wonders of childhood. With its playful verses and vivid imagery, it captures the essence of youthful imagination and adventure.

Stevenson's poems transport readers to a world where sailing boats glide down rivers, lamplighters illuminate the night, and foreign lands beckon in the daydreams of children. Each poem is a window into the whimsical world of a child's mind, where every experience is an exploration and every moment is filled with wonder.

Tasha Tudor's exquisite watercolor illustrations accompany these timeless verses, evoking a simpler time in the past. Her artwork beautifully complements the themes of the poems, celebrating the innocence of childhood and the beauty of nature.

This handsome gift edition of A Child's Garden of Verses is a treasure that will be cherished by families for generations, offering a timeless journey into the heart of childhood.

The third addition to the beloved Redwall series takes place during the summer of the Golden Plain. Preparation for a great feast are underway at Redwall Abbey, and the young mouse Mattimeo is contributing his share of the labors.

But Mattimeo is the son of Matthias, the guardian of Redwall Abbey, and it is this fact that makes him the target of a fiendish kidnapping plot contrived by the vicious fox, Slagar the Cruel.

When Matthias and his brave followers abandon their homes and face enslavement for the return of their children, the captive Mattimeo stands to prove his worth—and an unexpected hero is born.

Jim Hawkins has a bad attitude. What's more, he enjoys having a bad attitude about everything—especially about church. Garth Plimpton is a fanatic. He's spent so much time studying the scriptures and thick books on archaeology that he can't carry on a normal conversation with other kids. That's why they consider him a nerd.

Through an unusual chain of events, these two opposites become fast friends. It all began when Garth told Jim a simple truth: "They really existed once, you know." "Who?" Jim asked. "Nephites," Garth replied. "Every character in the Book of Mormon ate, slept, died, was buried . . ."

That statement, taken for granted before, would soon echo deeply in the two boys' minds—because they were on the trail of a chilling secret.