Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic and one of the world's great antiwar books, centers on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. describes the novel as a result of a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. The novel combines elements of historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in the life story of Billy Pilgrim.

Billy, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee, experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he also experiences time travel, or coming "unstuck in time." An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five established Kurt Vonnegut Jr. as a cult hero in American literature, a status that has only strengthened over time despite censorship challenges. The novel's political edginess, genre-bending inventiveness, frank violence, and transgressive wit have inspired generations of readers to see the world differently and speak out.

More than fifty years after its initial publication during the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety remains darkly humorous and profoundly affecting, serving as an enduring beacon through our own era's uncertainties.

Inner Harbor is the third book in the sweeping Chesapeake Bay Saga, a tale about three brothers who unite in a time of need. They honor their father's wish to raise young Seth as their own, and with all the brothers home again, the Quinn family has never been so strong. But, in the months to come, their strength is tested once again.

Phillip Quinn has done everything to make his life seem perfect. With his career on the fast track and a condo overlooking the Harbor, his life on the street is firmly in the past. But one look at Seth, and he's reminded of the boy he once was.

Phillip intends to fulfill his father's dying request and considers Seth to be a duty. However, he never expected he would grow to love Seth, and soon his promise to his father becomes more than just an obligation. Seth's future as a Quinn seems assured—until a stranger arrives in town. She claims to be researching St. Christopher's for her new book, but the true objects of study are the Quinns. Her cool reserve intrigues Phillip, and he is determined to uncover her motives. But she holds a secret that has the power to threaten the life the brothers have made for Seth—a secret that could tear the family apart forever.

In her new trilogy, New York Times #1 Best Selling author, Nora Roberts returns to the lush, green hills of Ireland, where love is forever touched by magic. Here, the Gallagher siblings explore the depth of their fiery hearts.

Determined to reevaluate her life, Jude Murray flees America to take refuge in Faerie Hill Cottage, immersing herself in the study of Irish folklore and discovering hope for the future in the magic of the past.

Finally back home in Ireland after years of traveling, Aidan Gallagher possesses an uncommon understanding of his country's haunting myths. Although he's devoted to managing the family pub, a hint of wildness still glints in his stormy eyes—and in Jude, he sees a woman who can both soothe his heart and stir his blood. Together, they begin to share the legends of the land, while creating a passionate history of their own.

Una invasión sin nombre avanza sobre las Tierras Fértiles. Jamás una catástrofe llega sin anunciarse, pero ¿quiénes serán aquellos capaces de percibir las innumerables pero intangibles señales que la preceden? ¿Y qué harán con ese conocimiento? Lo podrían transformar en amor o en poder. Los hombres de guerra y de conocimiento, los artistas y los Brujos deberán enfrentarla o aceptar el exterminio de su tiempo.

Será la guerra entre el Bien y el Mal y en medio de ambos, estarán las traiciones, los celos, las valentías, la plena lealtad de un amigo, la inocencia de una niña. Una guerra frente a la que ningún ser vivo podrá permanecer indiferente, ni los hombres en la tierra, ni los pájaros en el cielo, ni los árboles que unen ambos mundos.

Con LA SAGA DE LOS CONFINES Liliana Bodoc irrumpió en el panorama literario cosechando una enorme cantidad de lectores apasionados y el favor de la crítica

The exciting tales of Harry Potter, the young wizard-in-training, have taken the world by storm, and fans just can't get enough of the magical world of Hogwarts and beyond. If you buy one of the Harry Potter books, we guarantee you'll want the next...and the next...and the next -- so why not have them all, right at your fingertips? With the Harry Potter Hardcover Box Set (Books 1-4), you can get all four Harry Potter books delivered to your doorstep at once.

The Harry Potter Hardcover Box Set (Books 1-4) includes hardcover editions of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The books come snugly packed in a sturdy cardboard slipcase, beautifully decorated with memorable scenes from the books.

So buy the set, and not even a pesky Locomotor Mortis spell cast by the evil Lord Voldemort (oooops, sorry -- He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named) can get in the way of your enjoying all of the mystery, adventure, intrigue, and, of course, magic that Muggles around the world can't seem to get enough of. Hold on tight -- it's going to be a wild ride!

In 1975, Annie Dillard took up residence on an island in Puget Sound in a wooded room furnished with "one enormous window, one cat, one spider, and one person." For the next two years, she asked herself questions about time, reality, sacrifice, death, and the will of God.

In Holy the Firm, she writes about a moth consumed in a candle flame, about a seven-year-old girl burned in an airplane accident, and about a baptism on a cold beach. But behind the moving curtain of what she calls "the hard things—rock mountain and salt sea," she sees, sometimes far off and sometimes as close by as a veil or air, the power play of holy fire.

This is a profound book about the natural world—both its beauty and its cruelty—that Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, knows so well.

There's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man blow his brains out just by looking at him. There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. There's Baby, who invented an antigravity engine while still in the cradle, and Gerry, who has everything it takes to run the world except for a conscience.

Separately, they are talented freaks. Together, they compose a single organism that may represent the next step in evolution, and the final chapter in the history of the human race.

In this genre-bending novel, one of the great imaginers of the twentieth century tells a story as mind-blowing as any controlled substance and as affecting as a glimpse into a stranger's soul. For as the protagonists of More Than Human struggle to find who they are and whether they are meant to help humanity or destroy it, Theodore Sturgeon explores questions of power and morality, individuality and belonging, with suspense, pathos, and a lyricism rarely seen in science fiction.

From the author of the beloved classic Where the Red Fern Grows comes a timeless adventure about a boy who discovers a tree full of monkeys. The last thing fourteen-year-old Jay Berry Lee expects to find while trekking through the Ozark Mountains of Oklahoma is a tree full of monkeys. But then Jay learns from his grandpa that the monkeys have escaped from a traveling circus, and there’s a big reward for the person who finds and returns them. His family could really use the money, so Jay sets off, determined to catch them.

But by the end of the summer, Jay will have learned a lot more than he bargained for—and not just about monkeys. From the beloved author of Where the Red Fern Grows comes another memorable adventure novel filled with heart, humor, and excitement.

Polgara the Sorceress soars above a world of warriors, kings, and priests. As the daughter of Belgarath and the shape-shifter Poledra, she has fought wars, plotted palace coups, and wielded her powerful magic for three thousand years.

Now, Polgara looks back at her magnificent life, in this fitting crown jewel to the saga that is the Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean cycles.

Her hair, streaked white by her father's first touch, and her mind, guided by a mother she will not see again for centuries, Polgara begins life in her Uncle Beldin's tower. In the prehistorical, magical Tree that stands in the middle of the Vale, she first learns the reaches of her powers. There she assumes the bird shapes that will serve her on her adventures.

Polgara starts on the path toward her destiny as Duchess of Erat, shepherdess of the cause of good, adversary of Torak the One-Eyed Dragon God, and guardian of the world's last, best hope: the heir to the Rivan throne.

Here is the legendary life story of a woman of wit, passion, and complex emotions, a woman born of two majestic parents who could not have been more unlike one another. Ordained to make peace and make war, to gain love and lose love, Polgara lives out her family's rich prophecy in the ceaseless struggle between the Light and the Dark.

Polgara is the epic culmination of a magnificent saga, and a fitting farewell to a world which, once experienced, will never be forgotten.

Fat? Chunky? Less than svelte? So what! In this hilarious and eye-opening book, fat and proud activist/zinester Marilyn Wann takes on America's biggest fear—worse than the fear of public speaking or nuclear weapons—our fear of fat.

Statistics tell us that about a third of Americans are fat, and common sense adds that just about everyone, fat or thin, male or female, has worried about their appearance. FAT!SO? weighs in with a more attractive alternative: feeling good about yourself at any weight—and having the style and attitude to back it up.

Internationally recognized as a fat-positive spokesperson, Wann has learned that you can be absolutely happy, healthy, and successful...and fat. With its hilarious and insightful blend of essays, quizzes, facts, and reporting, FAT!SO? proves that you can be out-and-out fabulous at any size.

MasterSinger Merelan and Harper Petiron were a brilliant and devoted couple. Merelan was the most outstanding soprano ever heard on Pern, and was often the only one who could master Petiron's technically accomplished compositions. When, after a long and difficult birth, Robinton was born to them, it should have been the culmination of a unique partnership.

But Petiron, almost from the first day, had no time for his son, refusing to see the incredible talent the boy possessed, ignoring his achievements and maintaining a strict and disapproving vigilance over him at all times. Carefully, secretly, the Harper Hall took over, training the greatest talent Pern had ever seen - a talent that was more than just musical, for Robinton was able to talk to the dragons of Pern.

As constant sadness beset his personal life, so a startling career sent him like a meteor through the Holds and Weyrs of Pern until, as MasterHarper, he became part of the great plan to rescue Lessa from the brutal rule of Holder Fax - Lessa, who was to be the saviour of the dragons of Pern.

Il Virginian era un piroscafo. Negli anni tra le due guerre faceva la spola tra Europa e America, con il suo carico di miliardari, di emigranti e di gente qualsiasi. Dicono che sul Virginian si esibisse ogni sera un pianista straordinario, dalla tecnica strabiliante, capace di suonare una musica mai sentita prima, meravigliosa. Dicono che la sua storia fosse pazzesca, che fosse nato su quella nave e che da lì non fosse mai sceso. Dicono che nessuno sapesse il perché.

A Guerra pelos Sete Reinos continua sem tréguas ou misericórdia. Com um golpe negro mágico, Stannis afastou do seu caminho o irmão rival Renly, e agora nada o impede de conquistar Porto Real, pela força, com a sua frota. Mas Tyrion, eleito a Mão do Rei, tem outros planos e, embora todos o subestimem pela aparência, prepara com sangue frio a defesa da cidade e a confrontação com Stannis numa batalha que se adivinha sanguinária.

No Norte, Winterfell encontra-se à beira do perigo e é alvo da cobiça dos Greyjoy, mas Bran nada consegue ver para além dos estranhos sonhos que o atormentam de noite e dia. Para lá da muralha, Jon oferece-se para acompanhar um grupo de batedores enviado para encontrar os selvagens, enquanto a principal força da Patrulha da Noite se fortifica junto às montanhas. Se quer sobreviver, Jon terá que aprender a ser tão cruel como a terra assombrada habitada pelos selvagens.

Mais uma vez, George R. R. Martin consegue manter-nos agarrados até à última página. Personagens que amamos são mortas sem dó nem piedade, personagens que odiamos conseguem conquistar o nosso coração. De Arya a Sansa, de Robb a Daenerys, todos terão um papel fulcral neste fabuloso quarto volume de As Crónicas de Gelo e Fogo.

The Sword of Truth, Boxed Set I, Books 1-3 includes Wizard's First Rule, Stone of Tears, and Blood of the Fold.

Book 1: Wizard's First Rule
In the aftermath of the brutal murder of his father, a mysterious woman, Kahlan Amnell, appears in Richard Cypher's forest sanctuary seeking help... and more. His world, his very beliefs, are shattered when ancient debts come due with thundering violence. In a dark age, it takes courage to live, and more than mere courage to challenge those who hold dominion. Richard and Kahlan must take up that challenge or become the next victims. Beyond awaits a bewitching land where even the best of their hearts could betray them. Yet, Richard fears nothing so much as what secrets his sword might reveal about his own soul.

Book 2: Stone of Tears
Kahlan has at last gained the one goal she had always thought was beyond her grasp... love. Against all odds, the ancient bonds of secret oaths, and the dark talents of men long dead, Richard has won her heart. Amid sudden and disastrous events, Richard's life is called due to satisfy those treacherous oaths. To save his life, Kahlan must forsake Richard's love and cast him into the chains of slavery, knowing there could be no sin worse than such a betrayal.

Book 3: Blood of the Fold
In a world as rich and real as our own, Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell stand against the ancient forces which besiege the New World—forces so terrible that when last they threatened, they could only be withstood by sealing off the Old World from whence they came. Now the barrier has been breached, and the New World is again beset by their evil power. War and treachery plague the world, and only Richard and Kahlan can save it from an armageddon of unimaginable savagery and destruction.

Entre la narrativa detectivesca, la novela «de carretera», el relato biográfico y la crónica, Los detectives salvajes está considerada por la crítica y el público de todo el mundo como una de las mejores y más originales ficciones escritas en las últimas décadas.

Dos jóvenes poetas latinoamericanos, Arturo Belano y Ulises Lima, emprenden una aventura que transcurrirá durante varias décadas y cruzará distintos países. Símbolo de la rebeldía y la necesidad de ruptura con la realidad establecida, sus vidas representan los anhelos de toda una generación. La búsqueda en 1975 de la misteriosa escritora mexicana Cesárea Tinajero, desaparecida y olvidada en los años posteriores a la revolución, sirve de inicio a un viaje sin descanso marcado por el amor, la muerte, el deseo de libertad, el humor y la literatura.

En esta novela está esbozado, como si de un juego de cajas chinas se tratara, todo el deslumbrante universo literario y personal de Roberto Bolaño.

The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist, Charles Croker, once a college football star, is now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality.

Charlie has a 29,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt.

Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, an idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system.

Back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high.

Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates — Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker’s deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to this hilarious and telling novel — Tom Wolfe’s most outstanding achievement to date.

The dying Empire's most cunning and ruthless warlord—Grand Admiral Thrawn—has taken command of the remnants of the Imperial fleet and launched a massive campaign aimed at the New Republic's destruction.

Meanwhile, Han and Lando Calrissian race against time to find proof of treason inside the highest Republic Council—only to discover instead a ghostly fleet of warships that could bring doom to their friends and victory to their enemies.

Yet most dangerous of all is a new Dark Jedi, risen from the ashes of a shrouded past, consumed by bitterness… and scheming to corrupt Luke Skywalker to the Dark Side.

It is a time of renewal, five years after the destruction of the Death Star and the defeat of Darth Vader and the Empire. But with the war seemingly won, strains are beginning to show in the Rebel Alliance. New challenges to galactic peace have arisen. And Luke Skywalker hears a voice from his past. A voice with a warning. Beware the dark side…

The Rebel Alliance has destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor, and driven the remnants of the old Imperial Starfleet back into barely a quarter of the territory that they once controlled. Leia and Han are married, are expecting Jedi twins, and have shouldered heavy burdens in the government of the new Republic. And Luke Skywalker is the first in a hoped-for new line of Jedi Knights.

But thousands of light years away, where a few skirmishes are still taking place, the last of the Emperor's warlords has taken command of the remains of the Imperial fleet. He has made two vital discoveries that could destroy the fragile new Republic—built with such cost to the Rebel Alliance. The tale that emerges is a towering epic of action, invention, mystery, and spectacle on a galactic scale—in short, a story that is worthy of the name Star Wars.

The thrilling prequel to Redwall. The clever and greedy wildcat Tsarmina becomes ruler of all Mossflower Woods and is determined to govern the peaceful woodlanders with an iron paw. The brave mouse Martin and quick-talking mouse thief Gonff meet in the depths of Kotir Castle's dungeon. The two escape and resolve to end Tsarmina's tyrannical rule. Joined by Kinny the mole, Martin and Gonff set off on a dangerous quest for Salamandastron, where they are convinced that their only hope, Boar the Fighter, still lives.

Under the streets of London there's a world most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. Neverwhere is the London of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Strange destinies lie in wait in London Below - a world that seems eerily familiar. But a world that is utterly bizarre, peopled by unearthly characters such as the Angel called Islington, the girl named Door, and the Earl who holds Court on a tube train.

Now a single act of kindness has catapulted young businessman Richard Mayhew out of his safe and predictable life - and into the realms of Neverwhere. Richard is about to find out more than he ever wanted to know about this other London. Which is a pity. Because Richard just wants to go home...

Nearly two years before his powerful Communist Manifesto, Marx (1818—1883) co-wrote The German Ideology in 1845 with friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels, expounding a new political worldview, including positions on materialism, labor, production, alienation, the expansion of capitalism, class conflict, revolution, and eventually communism.

They chart the course of "true" socialism based on G. W.F. Hegel's dialectic, while criticizing the ideas of Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx expanded his criticism of the latter in his now famous Theses on Feuerbach, found after Marx's death and published by Engels in 1888.

Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, also found among the posthumous papers of Marx, is a fragment of an introduction to his main works. Combining these three works, this volume is essential for an understanding of Marxism.

In 1920s London, Virginia Woolf is fighting against her rebellious spirit as she attempts to make a start on her new novel. A young wife and mother, broiling in a suburb of 1940s Los Angeles, yearns to escape and read her precious copy of Mrs Dalloway. And Clarissa Vaughan steps out of her smart Greenwich village apartment in 1990s New York to buy flowers for a party she is hosting for a dying friend.

The Hours recasts the classic story of Woolf's Mrs Dalloway in a startling new light. Moving effortlessly across the decades and between England and America, this exquisite novel intertwines the worlds of three unforgettable women.

Jessica is based on the inspiring true story of a young girl's fight for justice against tremendous odds. A tomboy, Jessica is the pride of her father, as they work together on the struggling family farm. One quiet day, the peace of the bush is devastated by a terrible murder. Only Jessica is able to save the killer from the lynch mob – but will justice prevail in the courts?

Nine months later, a baby is born... with Jessica determined to guard the secret of the father's identity. The rivalry of Jessica and her beautiful sister for the love of the same man will echo throughout their lives – until finally the truth must be told.

Set in the harsh Australian bush against the outbreak of World War I, this novel is heartbreaking in its innocence, and shattering in its brutality.

Nos quedamos un rato en silencio, envueltos en el perfume de las hierbas. Hasta que le pregunté:

-¿Por qué nunca hablamos de Ezequiel?

Apoyó las cosas en el piso con mucha calma. Estiró su mano como para acariciarme. Me miró. Bajó la mano. Luego la vista y dijo en un susurro:

- Hay cosas de las que es mejor no hablar.

The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.

When it was first published, Lyrical Ballads enraged the critics of the day: Wordsworth and Coleridge had given poetry a voice, one decidedly different to what had been voiced before. For Wordsworth, the important thing was the emotion aroused by the poem, and not the poem itself.

This edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridge's and Wordsworth's contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridge's Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.

The Persian poet Hafez (1320-1389) is best known as a Sufi mystic who incorporated elements of Sufism into his verses. The state of God-Realisation is symbolised through union with a Beloved, and drinking the wine of spiritual love.

This compact version of the Divan of Hafez is a facsimile illuminated manuscript, complete with beautiful Persian calligraphy and miniature illustrations. There are 43 ghazals, translated into English by classical scholar Gertrude Bell. It is a truly beautiful introduction not only to the works of this beloved Sufi mystic, but also to the artistry of Mahmoud Farshchian. It is like getting two books in one: poetry and art.

Poetry is the greatest literary form of ancient Persia and modern Iran, and the fourteenth-century poet known as Hafez is its preeminent master. Little is known about the poet's life, and there are more legends than facts relating to the particulars of his existence. This mythic quality is entirely appropriate for the man known as "The Interpreter of Mysteries" and "The Tongue of the Hidden", whose verse is regarded as oracular by those seeking guidance and attempting to realize wishes.

A mere fraction of what is presumed to have been an extensive body of work survives. This collection is derived from Hafez's Divan (collected poems), a classic of Sufism. The short poems, called ghazals, are sonnet-like arrangements of varied numbers of couplets. In the tradition of Persian poetry and Sufi philosophy, each poem corresponds to two interpretations, sensual and mystic.

This outstanding translation of Hafez's poetry was created by historian and Arabic scholar Gertrude Bell, who observed, "These are the utterances of a great poet, the imaginative interpreter of the heart of man; they are not of one age, or of another, but for all time."

Born Jalal ad-Din Mohammed Balkhi in Persia early in the thirteenth century, the poet known as Rumi expressed the deepest feelings of the heart through his poetry. This volume consists of new translations edited by Deepak Chopra to evoke the rich mood and music of Rumi's love poems.

Exalted yearning, ravishing ecstasy, and consuming desire emerge from these poems as powerfully today as they did on their creation more than 700 years ago. These poems reflect the deepest longings of the human heart as it searches for the divine. They celebrate love. Each poetic whisper is urgent, expressing the desire that penetrates human relationships and inspires intimacy with the self, silently nurturing an affinity for the Beloved.

In this volume, the translator and editor have sought to capture in English the dreams, wishes, hopes, desires, and feelings of a Persian poet who continues to amaze, bewilder, confound, and teach, one thousand years after he walked on this earth.

Little Altars Everywhere is a national best-seller and a companion to Rebecca Wells' celebrated novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Originally published in 1992, this novel introduces Sidda, Vivi, the rest of the spirited Walker clan, and the indomitable Ya-Yas.

Told in alternating voices of Vivi and her husband, Big Shep, along with Sidda, her siblings Little Shep, Lulu, Baylor, and Cheney, and Willetta — the black couple who impact the Walkers' lives in ways they never fully comprehend — Little Altars embraces nearly thirty years of life on the plantation in Thorton, Louisiana. The cloying air of the bayou and a web of family secrets at once shelter, trap, and define an utterly original community of souls.

Who can resist the cadences of Sidda Walker and her flamboyant, secretive mother, Vivi? Here, the young Sidda — a precocious reader and an eloquent observer of the fault lines that divide her family — leads us on mischievous adventures at Our Lady of Divine Compassion parochial school and beyond. A Catholic girl of pristine manners, devotion, and provocative ideas, Sidda embodies the very essence of childhood joy and sorrow.

In a series of luminous reminiscences, we also hear Little Shep's stories of his eccentric grandmother, Lulu's account of her shoplifting skills, and Baylor's memories of Vivi and her friends, the Ya-Yas. Beneath the humor and tight-knit bonds of family and friendship lie the undercurrents of alcoholism, abuse, and violence. The overlapping recollections of how the Walkers' charming life uncoils convey their heart-breaking confusion, which is at once unsettling and familiar.

Wells creates an unforgettable portrait of the eccentric cast of characters and exposes their poignant and funny attempts to keep reality at arm's length. Through our laughter, we feel their inevitable pain, with a glimmer of hope for forgiveness and healing.

An arresting combination of colloquialism, poetry, and grace, Little Altars Everywhere is an insightful, piercing, and unflinching evocation of childhood, a loving tribute to the transformative power of faith, and a thoroughly fresh chronicle of a family that is as haunted as it is blessed.

Bigamy, child abandonment, deception, theft, murder, and insanity all take part in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's novel. Her over-the-top drama was one of the most popular novels of the mid-1800s and provides an interesting portrayal of both class and gender issues as they intersect within the domestic sphere.

Lady Audley's Secret was one of the first and most successful sensation novels of the late 19th century. A young gentleman of leisure, Robert Audley, is spurred into action when his friend George Talboys goes missing from Audley Court. As an amateur detective, Robert travels the length and breadth of the country, only to discover that the answer to the mystery lies in the true identity of his uncle's wife, Lady Audley. True to its genre, the novel brings danger home to the private sphere of the country house and questions the unassailable boundaries of class. It is also a strident feminine criticism of the times, though debate still rages as to whether Braddon tidies her questions away too neatly at the end of the novel.

When beautiful young Lucy Graham accepts the hand of Sir Michael Audley, her fortune and her future look secure. But Lady Audley's past is shrouded in mystery, and Sir Michael's nephew Robert has vague forebodings. When Robert's good friend George Talboys suddenly disappears, he is determined to find him, and to unearth the truth. His quest reveals a tangled story of lies and deception, crime and intrigue, whose sensational twists turn the conventional picture of Victorian womanhood on its head. Can Robert's darkest suspicions really be true?

Twenty Years After (1845) is the thrilling sequel to The Three Musketeers, offering a supreme creation of suspense and heroic adventure. Two decades have passed since the musketeers triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Time has weakened their resolve and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and stratagems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England, Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold.

Alexandre Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. Their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil.

Steven Pressfield brings the battle of Thermopylae to brilliant life. At Thermopylae, a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece, the feared and admired Spartan soldiers stood three hundred strong. Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army. Day after bloody day they withstood the terrible onslaught, buying time for the Greeks to rally their forces.

Born into a cult of spiritual courage, physical endurance, and unmatched battle skill, the Spartans would be remembered for the greatest military stand in history—one that would not end until the rocks were awash with blood, leaving only one gravely injured Spartan squire to tell the tale...

His father and uncles are enchanters, his mother a powerful sorceress, yet nothing seems magical about Christopher Chant except his dreams. Night after night, he climbs through the formless Place Between and visits marvelous lands he calls the Almost Anywheres.

Then Christopher discovers that he can bring real, solid things back from his dreams. Others begin to recognize the extent of his powers, and they issue an order that turns Christopher's life upside down: Go to Chrestomanci Castle to train to be the controller of all the world's magic.

From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a “brilliant...enchanting novel” (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in eighteenth-century Portugal at the height of the Inquisition. When King and Church exercise absolute power, what happens to the dreams of ordinary people? In early eighteenth century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost a hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with strange visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fe where her mother is condemned and sent into exile, the two are bound body and soul by a love of unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Padre Bartolemeu Lourenço, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the inquisition rages and royalty and religion clash, they pursue his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.

Weaving together multiple storylines to present both breathtaking fiction and incisive commentary, renowned Portuguese writer and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, José Saramago spins an epic and captivating yarn, equal parts historical fiction, political satire, religious criticism, and whimsical romance. Hailed by USA Today as “an unexpected gem,” Baltasar and Blimunda is a captivating literary tour de force, full of magic and adventure, exquisite historical detail, and the power of both human folly and human will.

In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand - eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. Armand, who first appeared in all his dark glory more than twenty years ago in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire, the first of The Vampire Chronicles, the novel that established its author worldwide as a magnificent storyteller and creator of magical realms.

Now, we go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood - a ruined city under Mongol dominion - and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius, who masquerades among humankind as a mysterious, reclusive painter and who will bestow upon Armand the gift of vampiric blood. As the novel races to its climax, moving through scenes of luxury and elegance, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and today's New Orleans, we see its eternally vulnerable and romantic hero forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.

This poem first appeared in a newspaper in Troy, New York, USA, on December 23, 1823, as A Visit From St. Nicholas. No one claimed authorship until 13 years later. Clement Clarke Moore, a professor and poet, said that he wrote the piece for his children. Unbeknownst to him, his housekeeper had sent it to the newspaper to be published. However, the family of Henry Livingston Jr. contended that their father had been reciting A Visit from St. Nicholas for 15 years prior to publication. Regardless of the true author, the poem is now a Christmas classic.

"Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red." For those who only know Clive Barker through his long multigenre novels, this one-volume edition of the Books of Blood is a welcome chance to acquire the 16 remarkable horror short stories with which he kicked off his career. For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind.

Reflecting back after 14 years, Barker writes: "I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present. Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago."

These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: "The Midnight Meat Train," a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; "The Yattering and Jack," about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; "In the Hills, the Cities," an unusual example of an original horror premise; "Dread," a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," about a woman who kills men with her mind.

Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction. No horror library is complete without them.

Outcast Trader Daja, along with her fellow mages-in-training, embarks on a journey from Winding Circle to the Gold Ridge Mountains, where a severe drought threatens to cause widespread famine.

In this challenging environment, Daja creates an astonishing object: a living metal vine. Her dealings with her former people, the Traders, reawaken a longing for her familiar ways.

Now, Daja faces a pivotal choice—should she return to the Traders, or remain with the Winding Circle folk who have become her family?

A powerful tale of grief, love’s enduring bonds, and secrets of the past from #1 New York Times bestselling author and master storyteller Stephen King. Four years after the sudden death of his wife, bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls “Sara Laughs,” Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway.

There, he finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, whose vindictive purpose is to take his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie’s and Kyra’s struggle—and as he falls in love with both of them—he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs…now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What are the forces that have been unleashed here—and just what do they want of Mike Noonan?

In the far distant future, the country is laid waste by a nuclear holocaust. Twelve-year-old Riddley Walker tells his story in a language as fractured as the world in which he lives. As Riddley steps outside the confines of his small world, he finds himself caught up in intrigue and a frantic quest for power, desperately trying to make sense of things.

Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state—and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture—rebel, change agent, and artist.

This is a brilliant, unique, completely realized work of fiction. One reads it again and again, discovering new wonders every time through. Join Riddley Walker on his journey of discovery and survival in a world that echoes both the past and a possible future.

This is the story of England's most famous, and notorious, king. Henry was a charismatic, ardent - and brash - young lover who married six times; a scholar with a deep love of poetry and music; an energetic hunter who loved the outdoors; a monarch whose lack of a male heir haunted him incessantly; and a ruthless leader who would stop at nothing to achieve his desires.

His monumental decision to split from Rome and the Catholic Church was one that would forever shape the religious and political landscape of Britain.

Combining magnificent storytelling with an extraordinary grasp of the pleasures and perils of power, Margaret George delivers a vivid portrait of Henry VIII and Tudor England and the powerhouse of players on its stage: Thomas Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More, and Anne Boleyn.

It is also a narrative told from an original perspective: Margaret George writes from the King's point of view, injecting irreverent comments from Will Somers - Henry's jester and confidant.

In this volume, which reaffirms the uncompromising brilliance of his mind, Cioran strips the human condition down to its most basic components: birth and death. He suggests that disaster lies not in the prospect of death but in the fact of birth, "that laughable accident."

In the lucid, aphoristic style that characterizes his work, Cioran writes of time and death, God and religion, suicide and suffering, and the temptation to silence. In all his writing, Cioran cuts to the heart of the human experience.

The world-renowned classic that has enthralled and delighted millions of readers with its timeless tales of gods and heroes. Edith Hamilton's Mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture--the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present. We meet the Greek gods on Olympus and Norse gods in Valhalla. We follow the drama of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus. We hear the tales of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Cupid and Psyche, and mighty King Midas. We discover the origins of the names of the constellations. And we recognize reference points for countless works of art, literature, and cultural inquiry--from Freud's Oedipus complex to Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas to Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra.

Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.

The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.

The extraordinary gifts for evocation and insight and the stunning talent for storytelling that earned Rick Bragg a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 are here brought to bear on the wrenching story of his own family's life. It is the story of a violent, war-haunted, alcoholic father and a strong-willed, loving mother who struggled to protect her three sons from the effects of poverty and ignorance that had tainted her own life. It is the story of the life Bragg was able to carve out for himself on the strength of his mother's encouragement and belief.

This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. At the center of this soaring memoir is Bragg's mother, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes and picked other people's cotton so that her children wouldn't have to live on welfare alone. Evoking these lives—and the country that shaped and nourished them—with artistry, honesty, and compassion, Rick Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The result is unforgettable.

Fermat's Enigma is an astonishingly entertaining story of the pursuit of a mathematical grail that intrigued and baffled the world's greatest minds for more than 350 years. The challenge was to prove the equation: xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ... and no solution exists.

In the seventeenth century, the brilliant French mathematician Pierre de Fermat scribbled a note in the margin of a book, claiming he had discovered a 'truly marvelous demonstration' of this proposition, which the margin was too narrow to contain. This cryptic message threw down a gauntlet to future generations, sparking a quest that became known as Fermat's Last Theorem.

Based on the author's acclaimed documentary film, Fermat's Enigma tells the captivating tale of heartbreak and mastery in the world of mathematics. It is a mesmerizing journey that will forever change your perception of mathematics.

Who Moved My Cheese? is a timeless business classic that uses a simple parable to reveal profound truths about dealing with change so that you can enjoy less stress and more success in your work and in your life. It would be all so easy if you had a map to the Maze. If the same old routines worked. If they'd just stop moving "The Cheese." But things keep changing...

Most people are fearful of change, both personal and professional, because they don't have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson, the coauthor of the multimillion bestseller The One Minute Manager, uses a deceptively simple story to show that when it comes to living in a rapidly changing world, what matters most is your attitude.

Exploring a simple way to take the fear and anxiety out of managing the future, Who Moved My Cheese? can help you discover how to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept change in order to have a positive impact on your job, your relationships, and every aspect of your life.

Crispin is a master mosaicist, creating beautiful art with colored stones and glass. Summoned to Sarantium by imperial request, he bears a Queen's secret mission, and a talisman from an alchemist. Once in the fabled city, with its taverns and gilded sanctuaries, chariot races and palaces, intrigues and violence, Crispin must find his own source of power in order to survive—and unexpectedly discovers it high on the scaffolding of his own greatest creation.

Sarantium is the golden city: holy to the faithful, exalted by the poets, jewel of the world and heart of an empire. Artisan Caius Crispus receives a summons from the emperor and sets off on a journey toward the Imperial city. But before Crispin can reach Sarantium, with its taverns and gilded sanctuaries, chariot races and palaces, he must pass through a land of pagan ritual and mysterious danger. In Sailing to Sarantium, the first volume of the brilliant Sarantine Mosaic, Guy Gavriel Kay weaves an utterly compelling story of the allure and intrigue of a magnificent city and the people drawn into its spell.

A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?

Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.