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.
Anton Myrer's beloved, bestselling novel of America's World War II generation is as powerful now as it was upon its publication. An immediate classic, it tells the story of five Harvard men, the women they loved, and the elegant car that came to symbolize their romantic youth.
It is also the story of their coming-of-age in the dark days of World War II, and of their unshakable loyalty to a lost dream of Camelot, of grace and style, in the decades that followed.
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.
The Faerie Queene was the first epic in English and one of the most influential poems in the language for later poets from Milton to Tennyson. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united medieval romance and renaissance epic to expound the glory of the Virgin Queen.
The poem recounts the quests of knights including Sir Guyon, Knight of Constance, who resists temptation, and Artegall, Knight of Justice, whose story alludes to the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Composed as an overt moral and political allegory, The Faerie Queene, with its dramatic episodes of chivalry, pageantry and courtly love, is also a supreme work of atmosphere, colour and sensuous description.
Petersburg takes place over a short, turbulent period in 1905, offering a colorful evocation of Russia's capital. This novel is a kaleidoscope of images and impressions, an eastern window on the west, symbolizing the ambiguities and paradoxes of the Russian character.
History, culture, and politics are blended and juxtaposed; weather reports, current news, fashions, and psychology jostle together with people from Petersburg society in an exhilarating search for the identity of a city and, ultimately, Russia itself.
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.
In this final part of the trilogy, we follow Titus, now almost twenty, as he escapes from the Castle, fleeing its oppressive Ritual, and becomes lost in a sandstorm. Helped by the owner of a travelling zoo, Muzzlehatch, and his ex-lover Juno, Titus ends up stranded in a big, bustling city. No one there has heard of Gormenghast, and the general consensus is that the boy is deranged. With no papers, he's soon arrested for vagrancy.
But there are a few people who believe in his story, or at least are intrigued by it, and they try to help him. Now Titus, the deserter, the traitor, longs for his home and looks for it all the time to prove, if only to himself, that Gormenghast is truly real.
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.
Rich Man, Poor Man is a captivating saga that explores the lives of two brothers in post-war America. This engrossing novel, so well written and fascinating, is the first of its series and one of Irwin Shaw's best works.
The story follows Rudolph, Gretchen, and Thomas Jordache, the children of an embittered German immigrant, as they navigate the quarter-century following World War II. Nurtured on traditional views of the American dream, each sibling pursues their own path to happiness and success.
Set in a small town on the Hudson River, this sprawling saga captures the essence of American life during a period of significant change. The family's journey is a gripping ride through a world devastated by conflict and transformed by commerce and culture.
Rich Man, Poor Man was the inspiration for one of the first primetime TV mini-series, further cementing its place in American cultural history.
A whisperjewel has summoned Dirk t’Larien to Worlorn, and a love he thinks he lost. But Worlorn isn’t the world Dirk imagined, and Gwen Delvano is no longer the woman he once knew. She is bound to another man, and to a dying planet that is trapped in twilight. Gwen needs Dirk’s protection, and he will do anything to keep her safe, even if it means challenging the barbaric man who has claimed her. But an impenetrable veil of secrecy surrounds them all, and it’s becoming impossible for Dirk to distinguish between his allies and his enemies. In this dangerous triangle, one is hurtling toward escape, another toward revenge, and the last toward a brutal, untimely demise.
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.
Of Mice and Men is a poignant story of two displaced migrant ranch workers who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States. The novel explores themes of friendship, dreams, and the harsh realities of life.
Cannery Row is set in Monterey, California, during the Great Depression and revolves around the people living there, highlighting their quirky personalities and the sense of community that binds them. The book beautifully captures the essence of a bygone era with humor and heart.
The Rainbow Goblins is a captivating tale that has enchanted children for decades. Since its original publication, the fantastic colors, amazing detail, and sweeping scope of this story have invited tens of thousands of children to dive into its vivid world.
In this charming allegorical tale, seven goblins attempt to steal the rainbow, leading to an adventure that ensures the Rainbow is careful never again to touch the earth. This story is brought to life with 18 color illustrations that make the narrative even more engaging.
Join the goblins on their whimsical journey and let your imagination soar!
Born in a Mission in China, Lucy Waring finds herself with fifteen small children to feed and care for. The way she tackles this task leads to her being thrown into the grim prison of Chengfu, where she meets Nicholas Sabine - a man about to die. He asks her a cryptic riddle, the mystery of which echoes through all that befalls her in the months that follow...
She is brought to England and tries to make a new life with the Gresham family, but she is constantly in disgrace and is soon involved in the bitter feud between the Greshams and a neighbouring family.
There is danger, romance, and heartache for Lucy as strange events build to a point where she begins to doubt her own senses. How could she see a man, long dead, walking in the misty darkness of the valley? And who carried her, unconscious, into the labyrinth of Chiselhurst Caves and left her to die?
It is not until she returns to China that Lucy finds, amid high adventure, the answer to all that has baffled her.
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.
During the Nazi occupation of France, twenty ordinary French kids in a boarding school agree to hide ten Jewish children. Then German soldiers arrive. Will the children be able to withstand the interrogation and harassment?
A powerful look at an unforgettable era in history, this story is based on true events. Sister Gabriel warns, “The Nazis are looking for those children. If we take them, we must never let on they are here. Do you understand?” Of course, the children understood—but how would they hide them if the Nazis came?
This tale of courage and friendship in the face of danger is a testament to the bravery of young hearts standing against evil.
Long ago, the wizards had vanished from the world, and all knowledge was left hidden in riddles. Morgon, prince of the simple farmers of Hed, proved himself a master of such riddles when he staked his life to win a crown from the dead Lord of Aum. But now ancient, evil forces were threatening him. Shape-changers began replacing friends until no man could be trusted. So Morgon was forced to flee to hostile kingdoms, seeking the High One who ruled from the mysterious Erlenstar Mountain. Beside him went Deth, the High One's Harper. Ahead lay strange encounters and terrifying adventures. And with him always was the greatest of unsolved riddles: the nature of the three stars on his forehead that seemed to drive him toward his ultimate destiny.
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.
Ping was an adventurous duck who lived on a beautiful wise-eyed boat on the Yangtze River. He liked his life on the riverboat and enjoyed the company of his large family and kind master. However, he didn't like being the last in line to board the boat at night, as that unlucky duck got a loud spank.
Faced with the possibility of being last, Ping set out on his own to explore the fascinating world of life on the Yangtze River. The Story About Ping is a beloved children's book, celebrated for its spirited and irrepressible hero and its beautiful evocation of a distant land and way of life.
Every child can sympathize with a dawdling duck who wants to avoid a spanking and share his excitement and wonder as he sails down the river.
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 GarcĂa 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.
Lummox had been the Stuart family pet for years. Though far from cuddly and rather large, it had always been obedient and docile. Except, that is, for the time it had eaten the secondhand Buick...
But now, all of a sudden and without explanation, Lummox had begun chomping down on a variety of things — not least, a very mean dog and a cage of virtually indestructible steel. Incredible!
John Thomas and Lummox were soon in awfully hot water, and they didn't know how to get out. And neither one really understood just how bad things were — or how bad the situation could get — until some space voyagers appeared and turned a far-from-ordinary family problem into an extraordinary confrontation.
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.
Jack Torrance's new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he'll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote...and more sinister.
And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.