Aldous Huxley's lifelong concern with the dichotomy between passion and reason finds its fullest expression both thematically and formally in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. By presenting a vision of life in which diverse aspects of experience are observed simultaneously, Huxley characterizes the symptoms of the disease of the modern man in the manner of a composer—themes and characters are repeated, altered slightly, and played off one another in a tone that is at once critical and sympathetic.

First published in 1928, Huxley's satiric view of intellectual life in the '20s is populated with characters based on such celebrities as D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murry, as well as Huxley himself.

The Bachman Books is an omnibus collection that includes four early novels—Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man—written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. This collection showcases Stephen King's remarkable talent for storytelling and his ability to explore the darker aspects of human nature. Each novel in this collection offers a unique and compelling narrative that keeps readers on the edge of their seats.

In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps—a community devoted exclusively to sickness—as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.

The revolutionary literary vision that sowed the seeds of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's groundbreaking philosophy, and brought her immediate worldwide acclaim. The Fountainhead is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite...of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy...and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. As fresh today as it was then, Rand’s provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction—that man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.

The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats includes all of the poems authorized by Yeats for inclusion in his standard canon. Breathtaking in range, it encompasses the entire arc of his career: from luminous reworkings of ancient Irish myths and legends, to passionate meditations on the demands and rewards of youth and old age, from exquisite, occasionally whimsical songs of love, nature, and art to somber and angry poems of life in a nation torn by war and uprising.

In observing the development of rich and recurring images and themes over the course of his body of work, we can trace the quest of this century's greatest poet to unite intellect and artistry in a single magnificent vision. Revised and corrected, this edition includes Yeats's own notes on his poetry, complemented by explanatory notes from esteemed Yeats scholar Richard J. Finneran. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats is the most comprehensive edition of one of the world's most beloved poets available in paperback.

Angela's Ashes begins with a stark reflection: "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

Thus starts the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, struggles to provide for her children as Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and his wages usually end up at the pub.

Despite Malachy's flaws—his exasperating nature and irresponsibility—he instills in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can offer: a story. Frank becomes enthralled with his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Enduring poverty, near-starvation, and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors, Frank's narrative is one of resilience and survival, told with eloquence, exuberance, and a remarkable capacity for forgiveness. His story is one that touches on the universal truths of the human spirit, underscored by a persistent sense of humor and compassion.

Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher lead an ordered sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: he a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Mexican immigrants Candido and America Rincon desperately cling to their vision of the American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine. And from the moment a freak accident brings Candido and Delaney into intimate contact, these four and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a tragicomedy of error and misunderstanding.

"It is stripped off - the paper - in great patches . . . The colour is repellent . . . In the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so - I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about . . ."

Based on the author’s own experiences, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is the chilling tale of a woman driven to the brink of insanity by the ‘rest cure’ prescribed after the birth of her child. Isolated in a crumbling colonial mansion, in a room with bars on the windows, the tortuous pattern of the yellow wallpaper winds its way into the recesses of her mind.

This is the original 1937 version of Napoleon Hill's Classic Book: Think and Grow Rich. To the greatest extent possible, the text and formatting have been kept exactly the same as in the original release with the exception of some minor formatting changes.

It's Midsummer Night. No time for dreaming...

With a full supporting cast of dwarfs, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers, and one orang-utan, Lords and Ladies sees Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven up against real elves.

And they're spectacularly nasty creatures. Even in a world of dwarves, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers – and the odd orang-utan – this is going to cause trouble...

Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home.

Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be found.

The sisters consume the resources left in the house, waiting for the power to return. Their arrival into adulthood, however, forces them to reexamine their place in the world and their relationship to the land and each other.

Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, Into the Forest is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel of hope and despair set in a frighteningly plausible near-future America.

Fight Club follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.

In this novel, Chuck Palahniuk offers a dark and provocative look into the depths of the human psyche, delivering a tale that is as unsettling as it is compelling. With biting satire and a unique voice, Fight Club has become a modern classic, exploring themes of identity, consumerism, and the search for meaning in a contemporary world.

Love, death, coming of age, and Native American spiritual beliefs flow together with the forces of nature in this engrossing novel. It is a story of loss and redemption, family and community, the western panorama, and the landscape of the heart.

This is a moving family portrait etched in the rugged terrain of a small town in Oregon. The lives of young Culver, his twice-married mother, and his charismatic uncle Jake have always been overshadowed by the death of Culver's father in a fishing accident. When a suspicious fire destroys the town mill and three murders occur, Culver is engulfed by the dangers he finds lurking in the place he'd come to call home.

Death and the Dervish is an acclaimed novel by Bosnian writer Meša Selimović. It recounts the story of Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish residing in an Islamic monastery in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century during the Ottoman Turk hegemony over the Balkans. When his brother is arrested, he must descend into the Kafkaesque world of the Ottoman authorities in his search to discover what happened to him.

He narrates his story in the form of an elaborate suicide note, regularly misquoting the Koran. In time, he begins to question his relations with society as a whole and, eventually, his life choices in general. Hugely successful when published in the 1960s, Death and the Dervish is an enduring classic that was made into a feature length film in 1974.

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom's protective Wall. To the south, the king's powers are failing—his most trusted adviser dead under mysterious circumstances and his enemies emerging from the shadows of the throne.

At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king's new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but the kingdom itself. Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.

Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

Mickey Sabbath is a comic creation of epic proportions, and at sixty-four, he is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. Sex is both an obsession and a principle, serving as an instrument of perpetual misrule in his daily existence.

Following the death of his long-time mistress—a free-spirited woman with a taste for the impermissible that matches his own—Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, tormented by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him, he contrives a series of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.

Sabbath's Theater is Philip Roth at the peak of his powers, delivering a narrative that is both hilarious and profoundly moving.

Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a bad record collection? Rob seeks refuge in the company of the offbeat clerks at his store, who endlessly review their top five films; top five Elvis Costello songs; top five episodes of Cheers.

Rob tries dating a singer, but maybe it's just that he's always wanted to sleep with someone who has a record contract. Then he sees Laura again. And Rob begins to think that life with kids, marriage, barbecues, and soft rock CDs might not be so bad.

When young Alec of Kerry is taken prisoner for a crime he didn’t commit, he is certain that his life is at an end. But one thing he never expected was his cellmate. Spy, rogue, thief, and noble, Seregil of Rhiminee is many things–none of them predictable. And when he offers to take on Alec as his apprentice, things may never be the same for either of them.

Soon Alec is traveling roads he never knew existed, toward a war he never suspected was brewing. Before long he and Seregil are embroiled in a sinister plot that runs deeper than either can imagine, and that may cost them far more than their lives if they fail. But fortune is as unpredictable as Alec’s new mentor, and this time there just might be…Luck in the Shadows.

Fred Scully is eagerly waiting at the airport to reunite with his wife and daughter after two years of traveling through Europe. He envisions a new life for them, filled with stability and hope, in a cottage that he has lovingly renovated in the Irish countryside.

However, as the flight lands and the airport doors hiss open, only his seven-year-old daughter, Billie, steps out. Scully's world shatters as he discovers his wife is missing, leaving behind no note or explanation. This unexpected turn of events thrusts him into a desperate search across Europe, trying to unravel the mystery of her disappearance.

The Riders is a haunting and beautifully written tale that delves into the complexities of love, marriage, and the bonds between a father and his daughter. It explores the deep-rooted fears and challenges in relationships, and the resilience needed to move forward despite life's uncertainties.

Join Scully on this gripping odyssey, as he navigates through emotional turmoil and the shadows of his past, in a poignant story that captures the essence of human resilience and the enduring power of family ties.

Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible: invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem's casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and highly radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as Precious learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it her own for the first time.

The Old Man and the Sea is a modern classic that tells the tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses. Told with superb simplicity, it is a tale of an old fisherman's endurance against the elements and the high seas.

Ernest Hemingway's last novel published in his lifetime, this novella confirmed Hemingway's power and presence in the literary world and was a significant factor in his award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.

That Hideous Strength, the final installment of the Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis, unfolds a dark narrative set against the looming threats of World War II. This novel serves as a timeless parable, cherished across generations not only for its captivating storytelling but also for its profound moral insights. At the heart of this tale is Dr. Elwin Ransom, a character of remarkable brilliance, clarity, and courage, inspired by Lewis's close friend J.R.R. Tolkien.

In this narrative, the forces of darkness, previously thwarted in Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, gather for an all-out assault on Earth itself. Rumors abound that the legendary wizard Merlin has returned, offering ultimate power to those who can control him. Amidst this turmoil, a nefarious technocratic organization, N.I.C.E. (the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments), emerges, aiming to 'recondition' society with Merlin's aid. Dr. Ransom assembles a counterforce, Logres, setting the stage for a climactic showdown that concludes the trilogy in a spectacular fashion.

Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawford's arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation.

Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.

Duncan took almost 10 years to follow up the publication of his much-praised first novel, The River Why, but this massive second effort is well worth the wait. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad. Highly inventive formally, the novel is mainly narrated by Kincaid Chance, the youngest son in a family of four boys and identical twin girls, the children of Hugh Chance, a discouraged minor-league ballplayer whose once-promising career was curtained by an industrial accident, and his wife Laura, an increasingly fanatical Seventh-Day Adventist. The plot traces the working-out of the family's fate from the beginning of the Eisenhower years through the traumas of Vietnam.

By turns uproariously funny and deeply moving, and beautifully written throughout, The Brothers K is one of the finest chronicles of our lives in many years.

Passion divides and unites a spirited pair of lovers in a 16th-century battle of the sexes. Witty dialogue and slapstick humor abound in this ever-popular comedy. Inexpensive, unabridged edition perfect for students.

Lost Horizon by James Hilton is an international bestseller that tells the story of Hugh Conway, a British diplomat. Conway, having seen humanity at its worst during the First World War, finds himself once again amidst conflict while serving in Afghanistan. Forced to flee due to a civil conflict, Conway's escape plan takes an unexpected turn when his plane crashes high in the Himalayas.

Conway and the other survivors are then led by a mysterious guide to a breathtaking discovery: the hidden valley of Shangri-La. This secret paradise, kept hidden from the world for over two hundred years, is a place of peace and harmony where its inhabitants live for centuries in a fertile valley. But when the leader of the Shangri-La monastery falls ill, Conway and his companions are faced with the daunting prospect of returning to a world on the brink of war.

Thrilling and timeless, Lost Horizon is a masterpiece of modern fiction and stands as one of the most enduring classics of the twentieth century.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and go. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.

Child of All Nations sweeps the reader into a profoundly feminist and devastatingly anticolonialist narrative, rich with heartbreak, suspense, love, and fury. Pramoedya Ananta Toer immerses you in the astonishingly vivid world of the Dutch East Indies during the 1890s.

This story of awakening follows Minke, the main character from This Earth of Mankind, as he navigates the injustices surrounding him. Pramoedya's literary genius is evident through the brilliant characters that populate this world, including Minke's fragile Mixed-Race wife, a young Chinese revolutionary, an embattled Javanese peasant and his impoverished family, and the French painter Jean Marais.

In Gustave Doré, one of the most prolific and successful book illustrators of the late 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe's renowned poem The Raven found perhaps its most perfect artistic interpreter. Doré's dreamlike, otherworldly style, tinged with melancholy, seems ideally matched to the bleak despair of Poe's celebrated work, among the most popular American poems ever written.

This volume reprints all 26 of Doré's detailed, masterly engravings from a rare 19th-century edition of the poem. Relevant lines from the poem are printed on facing pages and the complete text is also included. Admirers of Doré will find ample evidence here of his characteristic ability to capture the mood and meaning of a work of literature in striking imagery; lovers of The Raven will delight in seeing its mournful musing on love and loss given dramatic pictorial form.

Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal—including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world.

Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want—but what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other.

A masterwork of storytelling and suspense, Philip Pullman's award-winning The Golden Compass is the first in the His Dark Materials series, which continues with The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

For 4,000 years, the lavish crypt of the Pharaoh Mamose has never been found... until the Seventh Scroll, a cryptic message written by the slave Taita, gives the beautiful Egyptologist Royan Al Simma a tantalizing clue to its location.

But this is a treasure cache others would kill to possess. Only one step ahead of assassins, Royan runs for her life and into the arms of the only man she can trust, Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper—a daring man who will stake his fortune and his life to join her hunt for the king's tomb.

Together, they will embark on a breathtaking journey to the most exotic locale on earth, where the greatest mystery of ancient Egypt, a chilling danger, and an explosive passion are waiting.

Steeped in ancient mystery, drama, and action, The Seventh Scroll is a masterpiece from a storyteller at the height of his powers.

Fame, envy, lust, violence, intrigues literary and criminal--they're all here in The Information. How does one writer hurt another writer? This is the question novelist Richard Tull mills over, for his friend Gwyn Barry has become a darling of book buyers, award committees, and TV interviewers, even as Tull himself sinks deeper into the sub-basement of literary failure. The only way out of this predicament, Tull believes, is the plot the demise of Barry.

With The Information, Amis delivers a portrait of middle-age realignment with more verbal felicity and unbridled reach than anyone since Tom Wolfe forged Bonfire of the Vanities.--Houston Chronicle

Paula es el libro más conmovedor, más personal y más íntimo de Isabel Allende. Junto al lecho en que agonizaba su hija Paula, la gran narradora chilena escribió la historia de su familia y de sí misma con el propósito de regalársela a Paula cuando ésta superara el dramático trance. El resultado se convirtió en un autorretrato de insólita emotividad y en una exquisita recreación de la sensibilidad de las mujeres de nuestra época.

Youth in Revolt is the journals of Nick Twisp, California's most precocious diarist. Over the course of six months, Nick faces the trials and tribulations of teenage life, including high school struggles, divorced parents, and the quest to lose his virginity.

Nick's transformation from an unassuming fourteen-year-old to a modern youth in open revolt is both hilarious and poignant. As his family splinters and worlds collide, Nick must navigate economic deprivation, homelessness, and the challenges of public school. With a competitive Type-A father and murderous canines (in triplicate), his life is anything but ordinary.

All the while, Nick ardently vies for the affections of the beautiful Sheeni Saunders, a teenage goddess and ultimate intellectual goad. This rollercoaster of teenage angst is a satirical take on adolescence, filled with witty humor and unexpected adventures.

In a faraway land where members of the royal family are named for the virtues they embody, one young boy will become a walking enigma. Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard, cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals - the old art known as the Wit - gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if used too often, is a perilous magic, and one abhorred by the nobility.

So when Fitz is finally adopted into the royal household, he must give up his old ways and embrace a new life of weaponry, scribing, courtly manners; and how to kill a man secretly, as he trains to become a royal assassin.

Salvation on Sand Mountain offers a haunting exploration of faith, delving into the mysterious and captivating world of holiness snake handling in Southern Appalachia. The book begins with a journalistic assignment that quickly transforms into a profound journey.

Dennis Covington, a New York Times reporter, initially covers the trial of an Alabama pastor convicted of attempting to murder his wife with poisonous snakes. However, this assignment leads him deep into the heart of a world characterized by unshakable faith, where participants handle deadly snakes, drink strychnine, and perform acts of healing and resurrection.

Set against the backdrop of Appalachia, this narrative is not only a chilling account of religious extremity but also an introspective journey, as Covington finds himself drawn into the practices he set out to observe.

Undaunted Courage is a riveting tale of adventure and exploration, chronicling the epic journey of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his expedition across the uncharted American frontier.

In 1803, under the directive of President Thomas Jefferson, Lewis embarked on a pioneering voyage across the Great Plains and into the Rockies. This was not just any expedition; it was a military mission into hostile territory, a land vast and wild, ruled by Native American tribes.

Charismatic and brave, Lewis was the perfect choice for this daring journey. He experienced the savage North American continent in its pristine beauty, encountering vast herds of buffalo and indigenous tribes who had never seen a white man before.

The book vividly portrays colorful characters such as William Clark, the rugged frontiersman; Sacagawea, the young Indian girl who accompanied the expedition; and Drouillard, the skilled French-Indian hunter.

This story is not only about heroism but also tragedy. Despite receiving a hero's welcome in Washington in 1806, Lewis felt his expedition was a failure, as it did not fulfill the president's dreams of fertile lands and easy passageways. This disappointment led to his tragic downfall, marked by debts and depression.

Undaunted Courage combines drama, suspense, danger, and diplomacy, making it an outstanding work of scholarship and a thrilling adventure that captures the spirit of exploration and the complexities of the human spirit.

A.D. 1135. As church bells tolled for the death of England's King Henry I, his barons faced the unwelcome prospect of being ruled by a woman: Henry's beautiful daughter Maude, Countess of Anjou. But before Maude could claim her throne, her cousin Stephen seized it. In their long and bitter struggle, all of England bled and burned.

Sharon Kay Penman's magnificent fifth novel summons to life a spectacular medieval tragedy whose unfolding breaks the heart even as it prepares the way for splendors to come—the glorious age of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Plantagenets that would soon illumine the world.

Enter the world of Mitford, and you won't want to leave. It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable.

Yet, Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's sixty years old.

Suddenly, Father Tim gets more than he bargained for. And readers get a rich comedy about ordinary people and their ordinary lives.

After years of soul-searching, Jeanne Safer made the conscious decision not to have children. In this book, Safer and women across the country share insights that dispel the myth of childless women as emotionally barren or incomplete, and encourage all women to honestly confront their needs—whether they choose motherhood or not.

Nobel Prize recipient Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer's masterpiece, a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan.

At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages, a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.

When left to take care of himself, a young boy becomes involved with a community of intelligent lizards who tell him of a little-known invasion from outer space.

Things Victor loves: pizza with anchovies, grape soda, B movies aired at midnight, the evening news. With his parents off at a resort and his older sister shirking her babysitting duties, Victor has plenty of time to indulge himself and to try a few things he’s been curious about.

Exploring the nearby city of Hogboro, he runs into a curious character known as the Chicken Man (a reference to his companion, an intelligent hen named Claudia who lives under his hat). The Chicken Man speaks brilliant nonsense, but he seems to be hip to the lizard musicians (real lizards, not men in lizard suits) who’ve begun appearing on Victor’s television after the broadcast of the late-late movie.

Are the lizards from outer space? From “other space”? Together Victor and the Chicken Man, guided by the able Claudia, journey to the lizards’ floating island, a strange and fantastic place that operates with an inspired logic of its own.

In AD 2600, the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems. And throughout inhabited space, the Confederation Navy keeps the peace. A true golden age is within our grasp.

But now something has gone catastrophically wrong. On a primitive colony planet, a renegade criminal's chance encounter with an utterly alien entity unleashes the most primal of all our fears. An extinct race which inhabited the galaxy aeons ago called it "The Reality Dysfunction." It is the nightmare which has prowled beside us since the beginning of history.

Past midnight, Chyna Shepard, twenty-six, gazes out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend’s family. Instinct proves reliable. A murderous sociopath, Edgler Foreman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside. A self-proclaimed “homicidal adventurer,” Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse, or limits, to live with intensity. Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit.

Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At first her sole aim is to get out alive—until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess’s next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl... as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.

Double the fun! Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is still learning the ropes at her cousin Vinnie's bail bond office. When she sets out on the trail of Kenny Mancuso—a suspiciously wealthy, working-class Trenton boy who has just shot his best friend—the stakes are higher than ever. That Mancuso is distantly related to vice cop Joe Morelli—who is trying to beat Stephanie to the punch—only makes the hunt more thrilling...

Taking pointers from her bounty hunter pal, Ranger, and using her pistol-packing Grandma Mazur as a decoy, Stephanie is soon closing in on her mark. But Morelli and his libido are worthy foes. And a more sinister kind of enemy has made his first move... and his next move might be Stephanie's last.

On an Illinois farm in the 1920s, a man is murdered, and in the same moment, the tenuous friendship between two lonely boys comes to an end. In telling their interconnected stories, American Book Award winner William Maxwell delivers a masterfully restrained and magically evocative meditation on the past.

Pongo and Missis had a lovely life. With their human owners, the Dearlys, to look after them, they lived in a comfortable home in London with their 15 adorable Dalmatian puppies, loved and admired by all.

Especially the Dearlys' neighbor, Cruella de Vil, a fur-fancying fashion plate with designs on the Dalmatians' spotted coats! So, when the puppies are stolen from the Dearly home, and even Scotland Yard is unable to find them, Pongo and Missis know they must take matters into their own paws!

This delightful children's classic has been adapted twice for popular Disney productions.

A doomed lord, an emergent hero, an array of bizarre creatures, and an ancient royal family plagued by madness and intrigue--these are the denizens of ancient, sprawling, tumbledown Gormenghast Castle. Within its vast halls and serpentine corridors, the members of the Groan dynasty and their master Lord Sepulchrave grow increasingly out of touch with a changing world as they pass their days in unending devotion to meaningless rituals and arcane traditions. Meanwhile, an ambitious kitchen boy named Steerpike rises by devious means to the post of Master of the Ritual while he maneuvers to bring down the Groans.

In these extraordinary novels, Peake has created a world where all is like a dream: lush, fantastical, vivid; a symbol of dark struggle. Accompanying the text are Peake's own drawings, illustrating the whole assembly of strange creatures that inhibit Gormenghast.

Breathtaking in its power and drenched in dark atmosphere, humor and intrigue, The Gormenghast Trilogy is a classic, one of the great works of 20th century British literature.