Imajica is an epic beyond compare: vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie 'oh' pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension.

That dimension is one of five in the great system called Imajica. They are worlds that are utterly unlike our own, but are ruled, peopled, and haunted by species whose lives are intricately connected with ours. As Gentle, Judith, and Pie 'oh' pah travel the Imajica, they uncover a trail of crimes and intimate betrayals, leading them to a revelation so startling that it changes reality forever.

The first volume of the crime-comic megahit that introduced the now-infamous character Marv and spawned a blockbuster film returns in a newly redesigned edition, with a brand-new cover by Frank Miller - some of his first comics art in years!

It's a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town. But Marv doesn't care. There's an angel in the room. She says her name is Goldie. A few hours later, Goldie's dead without a mark on her perfect body, and the cops are coming before anyone but Marv could know she's been killed. Somebody paid good money for this frame...

With a new look generating more excitement than ever before, this third edition is the perfect way to attract a whole new generation of readers to Frank Miller's masterpiece!

Now in the final stages of their quest for his son, Garion and his companions travel to Kell to consult the only undamaged copy of the Malloreon Gospels.

For centuries, the Seers have guarded this book from the Grolims, and even had their wizards put a curse of blindness on any Grolim who tried to enter Kell. So, as proclaimed in Guardians of the West, Belgarion the Godslayer sets out with those who must join him: the Eternal Man, the Guide, the Man with Two Lives, the Bearer of the Orb, and the Silent Man, and the rest of his companions to The Place Which Is No More to make the final choice - darkness or light.

But Zandramas the Sorceress will not be outdone. Though she may not enter Kell, she still has young Geran, and should she reach the final meeting place with him, then Garion must slay his son or the world will be no more.

In this icy, knife’s-edge story of a life that progresses backward through time, unfolding into one of the darkest episodes of the 20th century, Amis (“at his intriguing, heedful, and powerful best” —Time Out), finds a chillingly original approach to the Holocaust in fiction.

Tod. T. Friendly is living his life in reverse. Doctor Friendly has just died, but he moves “out of blackest sleep” to find himself surrounded by doctors and on the deathbed of a man in whose body he is imprisoned. After weeks of improving in the hospital, he is sent home to his affable, melting-pot, primary-colors existence in suburban America. As Friendly breaks up with his lovers in a prelude to seducing them and mangles his patients before he sends them home, his life races backward toward the one appalling moment in modern history when such reversals make sense.

From the fresh-cut lawns of his retirement to the hustle of New York, and then back to the boat which reverses his course to the war-torn Europe Friendly came from, Amis brings the steeliest nerve to the job of realizing the novel’s inevitable logic. Trapped in his body from grave to cradle, Friendly’s consciousness can only watch as he struggles to make sense of the good doctor’s most ambitious project yet—the final solution.

In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces.

Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War. How these men persevered—sacrificed themselves for their comrades and never gave up—makes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating.

General Moore and Joseph Galloway, the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, have interviewed hundreds of men who fought there, including the North Vietnamese commanders. This devastating account rises above the specific ordeal it chronicles to present a picture of men facing the ultimate challenge, dealing with it in ways they would have found unimaginable only a few hours earlier.

It reveals to us, as rarely before, man's most heroic and horrendous endeavor.

The Dragon Reborn—the leader long prophesied who will save the world, but in the saving destroy it; the savior who will run mad and kill all those dearest to him—is on the run from his destiny.

Able to touch the One Power, but unable to control it, and with no one to teach him how—for no man has done it in three thousand years—Rand al'Thor knows only that he must face the Dark One. But how?

Winter has stopped the war—almost—yet men are dying, calling out for the Dragon. But where is he?

Perrin Aybara is in pursuit with Moiraine Sedai, her Warder Lan, and Loial the Ogier. Bedeviled by dreams, Perrin is grappling with another deadly problem—how is he to escape the loss of his own humanity?

Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve are approaching Tar Valon, where Mat will be healed—if he lives until they arrive. But who will tell the Amyrlin their news—that the Black Ajah, long thought only a hideous rumor, is all too real? They cannot know that in Tar Valon far worse awaits...

Ahead, for all of them, in the Heart of the Stone, lies the next great test of the Dragon reborn....

In The Other Side of Midnight, they played the ultimate game of love, lust, and death.
Now, in Memories of Midnight, the survivors meet to play one last time...

Shadowed by tragedy and burdened by amnesia, a beautiful woman desperately tries to return to reality. She is Catherine Douglas, destined to once again challenge the cruel, charismatic power of Constantin Demiris, the Greek shipping tycoon who murdered Catherine's husband.

Now, in the glittering capitals and carefree playgrounds of post-war Europe, Demiris sets his deadly sights on Catherine—and the single, treacherous secret whose shattering truth is known to her alone...

No Greater Love is a compelling and deeply moving novel that explores the themes of tragedy, loss, and the strength of the human spirit. In the wake of the disastrous sinking of the Titanic, twenty-year-old Edwina Winfield is thrust into a role of immense responsibility. With her parents and beloved fiancé lost to the sea, Edwina becomes both mother and father to her five younger siblings.

Determined never to marry, Edwina takes the helm of the family newspaper, guiding her family through the trials of life. Her journey is filled with challenges, from her brother Phillip's tragic fate during World War I to her siblings' adventures in Hollywood and beyond.

As Edwina tends to the youngest, Fannie and Teddy, she must also navigate the turbulent waters of her own heart, coming to terms with her loss and learning to let love in once more.

This novel, with its unforgettable climax, questions a woman's choices and the price she must pay for making them, ultimately offering hope and inspiration.

Collected Poems, 1909-1962 is an authoritative collection of the poetry that T.S. Eliot himself wished to preserve. Published two years before his death in 1965, it showcases Eliot as a poet, dramatist, critic, and editor, marking him as one of the defining figures of twentieth-century poetry. This edition includes his verse from Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) to Four Quartets (1943), and features literary landmarks such as The Waste Land and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

The third volume of the Sandman collection is a series of four short comic book stories. In each of these otherwise unrelated stories, Morpheus serves only as a minor character. Here we meet the mother of Morpheus's son, find out what cats dream about, and discover the true origin behind Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream.

Stories included:

• Calliope
• A Dream of a Thousand Cats
• Facade
• A Midsummer Night's Dream

This volume collects The Sandman #17–20.

The dazzling and exuberant moral stories of Rabelais (c.1471-1553) expose human follies with their mischievous and often obscene humour, while intertwining the realistic with carnivalesque fantasy to make us look afresh at the world.

Gargantua depicts a young giant, reduced to laughable insanity by an education at the hands of paternal ignorance, old crones, and syphilitic professors, who is rescued and turned into a cultured Christian knight.

In Pantagruel and its three sequels, Rabelais parodied tall tales of chivalry and satirized the law, theology, and academia to portray the bookish son of Gargantua who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided in his wisdom, and his idiotic, self-loving companion Panurge.

Widely considered one of the great dramatic creations of the modern stage, Mother Courage and Her Children is Bertolt Brecht's most passionate and profound statement against war.

Set in the seventeenth century, the play follows Anna Fierling — "Mother Courage" — an itinerant trader, as she pulls her wagon of wares and her children through the blood and carnage of Europe's religious wars. Battered by hardships, brutality, and the degradation and death of her children, she ultimately finds herself alone with the one thing in which she truly believes — her ramshackle wagon with its tattered flag and freight of boots and brandy.

Fitting herself in its harness, the old woman manages, with the last of her strength, to drag it onward to the next battle. In the enduring figure of Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht has created one of the most extraordinary characters in the literature of drama.

A Natural History of the Senses is a vibrant celebration of our ability to smell, taste, hear, touch, and see. Poet, pilot, naturalist, journalist, essayist, and explorer, Diane Ackerman weaves together scientific fact with lore, history, and voluptuous description. The resulting work is a startling and enchanting account of how human beings experience and savor the world.

This book is at once an ingenious exploration of the physical processes underlying our perceptions and an eloquent ode to life—a rare combination of science and poetry. Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine, and the music played by the planet Earth.

Join Ackerman in this delightful journey that gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.

Ralph Moody was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes, the pleasures and perils of ranching in the early twentieth century are experienced.

Join them in auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes, and wind storms that give authentic color to Little Britches. These wonderfully told adventures equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary.

This book is newly republished in a hardcover edition with a 1950s cover, jacket, and pictorial endpages. Interior illustrations by Edward Shenton.

The Rowan is the first installment in a wonderful trilogy told in the timeless style of Anne McCaffrey. This book represents sci-fi at its best: a contemporary love story intertwined with an engrossing view of our world in the future.

The kinetically gifted, trained in mind/machine gestalt, are the most valued citizens of the Nine Star League. Using mental powers alone, these few Prime Talents transport ships, cargo, and people between Earth's Moon, Mars' Demos, and Jupiter's Callisto.

An orphaned young girl, known simply as The Rowan, is discovered to have superior telepathic potential and is trained to become Prime Talent on Callisto. After years of self-sacrificing dedication to her position, The Rowan intercepts an urgent mental call from Jeff Raven, a young Prime Talent on distant Deneb.

She convinces the other Primes to merge their powers with hers to help fight off an attack by invading aliens. Her growing relationship with Jeff gives her the courage to break her status-imposed isolation and choose the more rewarding world of love and family.

Diet for a Small Planet is the extraordinary book that taught America the social and personal significance of a new way of eating. It remains a complete guide for eating well in the twenty-first century.

Sharing her personal evolution and how this groundbreaking book changed her own life, world-renowned food expert Frances Moore Lappé offers an all-new, even more fascinating philosophy on changing yourself—and the world—by changing the way you eat.

The Diet for a Small Planet features:

• Simple rules for a healthy diet
• Streamlined, easy-to-use format
• Food combinations that make delicious, protein-rich meals without meat
• Indispensable kitchen hints—a comprehensive reference guide for planning and preparing meals and snacks
• Hundreds of wonderful recipes

In 1965, the happy Bedloe family is living an ideal, apple-pie existence in Baltimore. Then, in the blink of an eye, a single tragic event occurs that will transform their lives forever—particularly that of seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe, the youngest son, who blames himself for the sudden "accidental" death of his older brother.

Depressed and depleted, Ian is almost crushed under the weight of an unbearable, secret guilt. Then one crisp January evening, he catches sight of a window with glowing yellow neon, the CHURCH OF THE SECOND CHANCE. He enters and soon discovers that forgiveness must be earned, through a bit of sacrifice and a lot of love.

How do you save the United States President from himself? What if the President is incompetent to deal with the greatest crisis of all? Jack Ryan never thought he would have to ask those questions as he prepares the ground for a Middle Eastern peace plan that, at last, might be the one to work.

But too many groups have invested too much blood. Shunned by their erstwhile Soviet sponsors and increasingly isolated by the realignment of the Mideast, these terrorists have one more desperate card to play, requiring a degree of ruthlessness never before seen. With one terrible act, the world is plunged into an instant nuclear crisis, and the floundering President is plunged into the ultimate nightmare.

Forces collide. Shots are exchanged. What had seemed to be an isolated and horrible incident appears to each side as the incendiary mischief of the other. With the world poised on the brink of nuclear war, Ryan and his FBI counterpart, Dan Murray, frantically seek a solution before the chiefs of state lose control of themselves—and the world.

Written on the front lines in Vietnam, Dispatches became an immediate classic of war reportage when it was published in 1977. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone.

Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

From the bestselling author of The Thorn Birds comes a masterpiece of historical fiction that is fascinating, moving, and gloriously heroic. The reader is swept into the whirlpool of pageantry, passion, splendor, chaos and earth-shattering upheaval that was ancient Rome. Here is the story of Marius, wealthy but lowborn, and Sulla, aristocratic but penniless and debauched -- extraordinary men of vision whose ruthless ambition will lay the foundations of the most awesome and enduring empire known to humankind.

A towering saga of great events and mortal frailties, it is peopled with a vast, and vivid cast of unforgettable men and women -- soldiers and senators, mistresses and wives, kings and commoners -- combined in a richly embroidered human tapestry to bring a remarkable era to bold and breathtaking life.

In the resplendence of William the Conqueror's London court, the lovely Saxon captive, Lady Nicholaa, was forced to choose a husband from the assembled Norman nobles. She chose Royce, a baron warrior whose fierce demeanor could not conceal his chivalrous and tender heart.

Resourceful, rebellious, and utterly naive, Nicholaa vowed to bend Royce to her will despite the whirlwind of feelings he aroused in her.

Ferocious in battle, seasoned in passion, Royce was surprised by the depth of his emotion whenever he caressed his charming bride.

In a climate of utmost treachery, where Saxons still intrigued against their Norman invaders, Royce and Nicholaa reveled in their precious new love... a fervent bond soon to be disrupted by the call of blood, kin, and country!

The classic, blockbuster thriller of man-eating terror that inspired the Steven Spielberg movie and made millions of beachgoers afraid to go into the water. Experience the thrill of helpless horror again—or for the first time!

Killing Mister Watson is a gripping novel by Peter Matthiessen, the acclaimed author of The Snow Leopard and The Tree Where Man Was Born. This fascinating story unfolds around the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of a man in Florida in 1910.

This man, who had long terrorized his community, is rumored to have a criminal past. Set in the lawless Florida Everglades, the novel brilliantly depicts both the fortunes and misfortunes of Edgar J. Watson, a real-life entrepreneur and outlaw of the early 20th century.

Drawing from fragments of historical fact, Matthiessen's masterpiece offers a vivid portrayal of a bygone era, filled with suspense and intrigue. Killing Mister Watson is a must-read for those who enjoy historical adventures and crime tales.

The Mad Titan Thanos has seized control of the Infinity Gauntlet, and with it, near-omnipotent power! Who can stop this deadly new overlord? All of Marvel's top heroes star in this epic of cosmic proportions.

Earth's superheroes, including Spider-Man, the Avengers, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and the X-Men, join forces in a desperate attempt to thwart Thanos's insane plunge into galactic self-destruction. With the fate of existence itself hanging in the balance, they face a battle that will challenge them to their very core.

The Infinity Gauntlet is a true epic, a narrative on a cosmic scale that is packed with Marvel's most recognizable characters and unforgettable moments of heroism, sacrifice, and ultimate confrontation.

After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone, are separated and lost in a vast uncharted desert. One by one, they find their way into a deep, forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures...

Humor, mystery, and adventure are spun together in this action-packed, side-splitting saga. Everyone who has ever left home for the first time only to find that the world outside is strange and overwhelming will love Bone.

VALIS is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). This disorienting and bleakly funny work is about a schizophrenic hero named Horselover Fat; the hidden mysteries of Gnostic Christianity; and reality as revealed through a pink laser. VALIS is a theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime.

Paradise, the first book in the Second Opportunities series, is a tale of love, betrayal, and redemption. It follows the story of corporate raider Matthew Farrell, who has transformed from a poor, scruffy kid from Indiana's steel mills into a powerful figure courted by world leaders and closely watched by the media. Matthew is prepared to move in on the Bancroft empire, a legendary department store chain.

Meredith Bancroft, a cool and composed executive in her family's business, once defied her father to marry the intensely magnetic Matt Farrell, leading to a short-lived and disastrous marriage. Now, with the Bancroft firm facing a hostile takeover, Meredith must face Matt once again. As the tension between them escalates, they are haunted by memories that are both sweet and painful. Suspicion and restlessness grow, and they are left wondering if they can trust each other and seize the chance at a tender miracle that lies before them.

Animals dream about the things they do in the day time just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life. So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life. Blending flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments. With this work, the acclaimed author of The Bean Trees and Homeland and Other Stories sustains her familiar voice while giving readers her most remarkable book yet.

Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past—including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events that led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949.

The Kitchen God's Wife is a beautiful book from the author of bestselling novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement, and the memoir, Where the Past Begins.

Amid sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, explore ships of the East India Company. Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy enjoying overwhelming local superiority.

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could make him rich - ships sent by Napoleon to attack the China Fleet.

Rupert didn't especially want to be a prince. And he certainly never asked to be the second son of a royal line that really didn't need a spare. So he was sent out to slay a dragon and prove himself—a quest straight out of legend. But he also discovered the kinds of things legends tend to leave out, as well as the usual demons, goblins, the dreaded Night Witch—and even worse terrors hidden in the shadows of Darkwood.

Rupert did find a fiery dragon—and a beautiful princess to rescue. But the dragon turned out to be a better friend than anyone back at the castle, and with the evil of Darkwood spreading, Rupert was going to need all the friends he could get.

Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a successful Parisian barrister, has come to recognize the deep-seated hypocrisy of his existence. His epigrammatic and, above all, discomforting monologue gradually saps, then undermines, the reader's own complacency.

Libra is a powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Authored by Don DeLillo, this novel chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from a troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history.

When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives, they decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism. The scales are irrevocably tipped, leading to a gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction.

The novel is alive with meticulously portrayed characters, both real and created. Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.

Far above the merciless Underdark, Drizzt Do'Urden fights to survive the elements of Toril's harsh surface. The drow begins a sojourn through a world entirely unlike his own—even as he evades the dark elves of his past.

Drizzt Do’Urden emerges from the Underdark into the blinding light of day in this epic final chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Dark Elf Trilogy. After years spent in the ruthless confines of the Underdark, Drizzt has emerged to start a new life. Accompanied by his loyal panther, he begins exploring the surface of Faerûn, a world unlike any he has ever known. From skunks to humanoids to shapeshifters, Faerûn is full of unfamiliar races and fresh dangers, which Drizzt must better understand if he is to survive.

But while Drizzt acts with the best intentions, many of the surface dwellers regard him with fear and distrust. Can he manage to find faithful allies in this foreign land—or is he doomed to be a lonely outsider, just as he was in the Underdark?

Karim Amir lives with his English mother and Indian father in the routine comfort of suburban London, enduring his teenage years with good humor, always on the lookout for adventure and sexual possibilities.

Life gets more interesting, however, when his father becomes the Buddha of Suburbia, beguiling a circle of would-be mystics. And when the Buddha falls in love with one of his disciples, the beautiful and brazen Eva, Karim is introduced to a world of renegade theater directors, punk rock stars, fancy parties, and all the sex a young man could desire.

A love story for at least two generations, a high-spirited comedy of sexual manners and social turmoil, The Buddha of Suburbia is one of the most enchanting, provocative, and original books to appear in years.

An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations.... It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it's the axis around which spins the long-awaited new Tom Robbins novel, a gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative book in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine--while the illusions that obscure humanity's view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome's veils. Or like the walls of the repeatedly bombed restaurant--for Isaac & Ishmael's, an experiment in international brotherhood, is assaulted by Arabs, Jews, and Christians alike (and not because of its lousy menu). Its greatest crisis, however, comes when it engenders a showdown between the Dance of the Seven Veils and the Super Bowl. Skinny Legs and All, Robbins's most political novel, is also his most controversial, dealing as it does--in Robins's audacious manner--with the most sensitive issues of the day: race, politics marriage, art, religion, money and lust. This time, the bestselling author of Jitterbug Perfume, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, et al., is writing about the upcoming millennium as seen through the violently scratched lens of the Middle East. But though Jerusalem, ancient an new, is the book's spiritual and psychological setting, every scene but the last takes place in a contemporary America. Leave it to a daredevil like Tom Robbins to pull that one off. Skinny Legs and All lyrically weaves through what some call the "End Days" of our planet. Refusing to avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let the alleged end of the world spoil its mood. And its mood is defiantly upbeat. In Skinny Legs and All, the reader will encounter some of the most unusual characters in all fiction, some of the most juicy phrases, some of the most intriguing stories, some of the most challenging ideas. Characters, phrases, stories, and ideas dance together on the page, wild and sexy, like Salome herself. Or was it Jezebel?

The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel. After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman. Together their fates become intertwined as they work side by side at this Sisyphean task.

If the Marquis de Sade were to crash one of P.G. Wodehouse's house parties, the chaos might resemble the nightmarishly funny goings-on in this novel by the author of London Fields.

The residents of Appleseed Rectory have primed themselves both for a visit from a triad of Americans and a weekend of copious drug taking and sexual gymnastics. There's even a heifer to be slugged and a pair of doddering tenants to be ingeniously harassed.

But none of these variously bright and dull young things has counted on the intrusion of "dead babies" — dreary spasms of reality. Or on the uninvited presence of a mysterious prankster named Johnny, whose sinister idea of fun makes theirs look like a game of backgammon.

Sometimes they talk all night long. In the still darkness of their cell, Molina re-weaves the glittering and fragile stories of the film he loves, and the cynical Valentin listens. Valentin believes in the just cause which makes all suffering bearable; Molina believes in the magic of love which makes all else endurable. Each has always been alone, and always - especially now - in danger of betrayal. But in cell 7, each surrenders to the other something of himself that he has never surrendered before.

This graceful, intensely compelling novel about love and victimization takes place in an Argentine prison. Molina, a gay window dresser who is self-centered, self-denigrating, yet charming, and Valentin, an articulate, fiercely dogmatic revolutionary, are gradually transformed by their guarded but growing friendship and by Molina’s obsession with the fantasy and romance of the movies.

Coming Into the Country is the story of Alaska and the Alaskans. Written with a vividness and clarity that shifts scenes frequently, it manages to tie the work into a rewarding whole. McPhee segues from the wilderness to life in urban Alaska to the remote bush country.

Explore the wild climate of unknown Alaska in this riveting travel account. This book offers a literary account of Alaska and its people, drawing you into the heart of its untouched landscapes and unique culture.

The battle against the evil Shadowen continues as Walker Boh embarks on a perilous journey to recover the black Elfstone and restore the lost Druid keep of Paranor.

In the three hundred years since the death of the Druid Allanon, the evil Shadowen have seized control of the Four Lands. If they are to be saved, the black Elfstone must be retrieved, at whatever cost to life or love.

Walker Boh has been commanded by the shade of Allanon to find the lost city of Paranor and recreate the Order of Druids, disbanded for three hundred years. To achieve this, he must find the Black Elfstone, but the gem is in the hands of an ancient being of timeless evil - the Stone King.

Beset on all sides by enemies, and from within by his own self-doubt, Walker Boh sets out on his part of the perilous quest. A quest that will end in success - or the complete destruction of all he holds dear.

The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks and military action.

The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought.

The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a lost cause. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past.

Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, Use of Weapons is a masterpiece of science fiction.

Everyone in the small town of Central City, Texas loves Lou Ford. A deputy sheriff, Lou's known to the small-time criminals, the real-estate entrepreneurs, and all of his coworkers--the low-lifes, the big-timers, and everyone in-between--as the nicest guy around. He may not be the brightest or the most interesting man in town, but nevertheless, he's the kind of officer you're happy to have keeping your streets safe. The sort of man you might even wish your daughter would end up with someday.

But behind the platitudes and glad-handing lurks a monster the likes of which few have seen. An urge that has already claimed multiple lives, and cost Lou his brother Mike, a self-sacrificing construction worker who fell to his death on the job in what was anything but an accident. A murder that Lou is determined to avenge--and if innocent people have to die in the process, well, that's perfectly all right with him.

In The Killer Inside Me, Thompson goes where few novelists have dared to go, giving us a pitch-black glimpse into the mind of the American Serial Killer years before Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, in the novel that will forever be known as the master performance of one of the greatest crime novelists of all time.

City at the Point provides an insightful overview of scholarly research on the history of Pittsburgh, a city often used as a case study for measuring social change. This book synthesizes both published and previously unpublished literature, offering a comprehensive look at how this knowledge relates to broader understandings of urbanization and urbanism.

This work is especially useful for undergraduate and graduate courses on environmental politics and policy making. It can also serve as a valuable supplement for courses on public policy making in general.

Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and he works on Wall Street. He is handsome, sophisticated, charming, and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. American Psycho takes us on a head-on collision with America's greatest dream—and its worst nightmare. It is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.

Through the eyes of Bateman, the novel explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. As Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan, his outward success conceals a soul preoccupied with torture and murder, prefiguring an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

In the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing--nothing anywhere in the universe--will ever be the same.

Orphaned after her parents were killed by Comanches, Loretta Simpson still lives in terror that the warriors will return, her fear so powerful, she is no longer able to speak a word.

Hunter of the Wolf believes that Loretta is a woman of ancient prophecy whom he must honor. But Loretta can only see him as the enemy who has kidnapped her, and she refuses to succumb to his control—or his touch.

Despite the hatred between their peoples, Loretta and Hunter gradually find their enmity changing to respect and care. In the midst of such conflict, it will take all the force of their love to find a safe haven.

In August 1984, Michigan housewife Betty Mahmoody accompanied her husband to his native Iran for a two-week vacation. To her horror, she found herself and her four-year-old daughter, Mahtob, virtual prisoners of a man rededicated to his Shiite Moslem faith, in a land where women are near-slaves and Americans are despised. Their only hope for escape lay in a dangerous underground that would not take her child.

Now the true story of this courageous woman and her breathtaking odyssey bursts upon the screen in the Pathe Entertainment production starring Academy Award-winner Sally Field Not Without My Daughter is a Literary Guild Alternate Selection.