Flesh and Blood takes readers on a masterful journey through four generations of the Stassos family, exploring the dynamics of a family striving to "come of age" in the 20th century.

In 1950, Constantine Stassos, a Greek immigrant laborer, marries Mary Cuccio, an Italian-American girl. Together, they have three children: Susan, an ambitious beauty; Billy, a brilliant homosexual; and Zoe, a wild child. Over the years, a web of tangled longings, love, inadequacies, and unfulfilled dreams unfolds as Mary and Constantine's marriage fails, and Susan, Billy, and Zoe leave to create families of their own.

Zoe raises a child with the help of a transvestite, Billy makes a life with another man, and Susan raises a son conceived in secret, each extending the meaning of family and love. With the power of a Greek tragedy, the story builds to a heartbreaking crescendo, offering a glimpse into contemporary life that will echo in one's heart for years to come.

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.

In the tradition of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, Russell Banks’s quintessential novel tells the story of a disaffected homeless youth living on the edge of society. Rule of the Bone introduces us to Chappie, a punked-out teenager navigating a harsh world.

Chappie lives with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. As he slips into drugs and petty crime, he becomes a permanent outsider, adopting a new identity as "Bone" and marking his transformation with a crossed-bones tattoo.

His journey takes him from dangerous biker-thieves to the refuge of an abandoned school bus, where he meets Rose, a child he rescues, and I-Man, an exiled Rastafarian. Together, they embark on a remarkable adventure from Middle America to the ganja-growing mountains of Jamaica—a journey of self-discovery through a world of magic, violence, betrayal, and redemption.

With a compelling and off-beat protagonist, evocative of Holden Caulfield and Quentin Coldwater, and a narrative voice that masterfully captures modern vernacular, Rule of the Bone is a haunting and powerful novel, an indisputable and unforgettable modern classic.

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.

My name is Avocet Abigail Jackson. But because Mama couldn't find anyone who thought Avocet was a fine name for a child, she called me Bird. Which is okay by me. She named both her children after birds, her logic being that if we were named for something with wings then maybe we'd be able to fly above the challenges in our lives.

So says Bird Jackson, the mesmerizing narrator of Connie May Fowler's vivid and brilliantly written, Before Women Had Wings. Starstruck by a dime-store picture of Jesus, Bird fancies herself "His girlfriend" and embarks upon a spiritual quest for salvation, even as the chaos of her home life plunges her into a stony silence.

In stark and honest language, she tells the tragic life of her father, a sweet-talking wanna-be country music star, tracks her older sister's perilous journey into womanhood, and witnesses her mother make a courageous and ultimately devastating decision.

Yet most profound is Bird's own story—her struggle to sift through the ashes of her parents' lives, her meeting with Miss Zora, a healer whose prayers over the bones of winged creatures are meant to guide their souls to heaven, and her will to make sense of a world where fear is more plentiful than hope, retribution more valued than love.

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.

The face on the milk carton looks like an ordinary little girl: hair in tight pigtails, a dress with a narrow white collar, a three-year-old who was kidnapped more than twelve years ago from a shopping mall in New Jersey.

As fifteen-year-old Janie Johnson stares at the milk carton, she feels overcome with shock. She knows that little girl is she. But how could it be true?

Janie can't believe that her loving parents kidnapped her, until she begins to piece together clues that don't make sense. Why are there no pictures of Janie before she was four? Her parents have always said they didn't have a camera. Now that explanation sounds feeble.

Something is terribly wrong, and Janie is afraid to find out what happened more than twelve years ago. In this gripping page-turner, the reader will unravel—as Janie does—the twisted events that changed the lives of two families forever.

Could the story of mankind be far older than we have previously believed? Using tools as varied as archaeo-astronomy, geology, and computer analysis of ancient myths, Graham Hancock presents a compelling case to suggest that it is.

In Fingerprints of the Gods, Hancock embarks on a worldwide quest to put together all the pieces of the vast and fascinating jigsaw of mankind’s hidden past. In ancient monuments as far apart as Egypt’s Great Sphinx, the strange Andean ruins of Tihuanaco, and Mexico’s awe-inspiring Temples of the Sun and Moon, he reveals not only the clear fingerprints of an as-yet-unidentified civilization of remote antiquity, but also startling evidence of its vast sophistication, technological advancement, and evolved scientific knowledge.

Fingerprints of the Gods contains the makings of an intellectual revolution, a dramatic and irreversible change in the way that we understand our past—and so our future. As we recover the truth about prehistory, and discover the real meaning of ancient myths and monuments, it becomes apparent that a warning has been handed down to us, a warning of terrible cataclysm that afflicts the Earth in great cycles at irregular intervals of time—a cataclysm that may be about to recur.

Bringing to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era, this book tells the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players—some say the originator of jazz—who was, in any case, the genius, the guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place.

In this fictionalized meditation, Bolden, an unrecorded father of Jazz, remains throughout a tantalizingly ungraspable phantom, the central mysteries of his life, his art, and his madness remaining felt but never quite pinned down. Ondaatje's prose is at times startlingly lyrical, and as he chases Bolden through documents and scenes, the novel partakes of the very best sort of modern detective novel—one where the enigma is never resolved, but allowed to manifest in its fullness.

Though more 'experimental' in form than either The English Patient or In the Skin of a Lion, it is a fitting addition to the renowned Ondaatje oeuvre.

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.

As a Driven Leaf brings the age of the Talmud to life in a breathtaking saga. This masterpiece of modern fiction tells the gripping tale of the renegade Talmudic sage, Elisha ben Abuyah, as he struggles to reconcile his faith with the allure of Hellenistic culture.

Set in Roman Palestine, As a Driven Leaf draws readers into the dramatic era of Rabbinic Judaism. Watch the great Talmudic sages at work in the Sanhedrin, eavesdrop on their arguments about theology and Torah, and agonize with them as they contemplate rebellion against an oppressive Roman rule.

Steinberg's classic novel transcends its historical setting with its depiction of a timeless, perennial feature of the Jewish experience: the inevitable conflict between the call of tradition and the glamour of the surrounding culture.

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.

You thought you knew the story of the The Three Little Pigs… You thought wrong.

In this hysterical and clever fractured fairy tale picture book that twists point of view and perspective, young readers will finally hear the other side of the story of The Three Little Pigs.

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.

Widely regarded as D. H. Lawrence's greatest novel, Women in Love is both a lucid account of English society before the First World War and a brilliant evocation of the inexorable power of human desire.

Women in Love continues where The Rainbow left off, with the third generation of Brangwens: Ursula Brangwen, now a teacher at Beldover, a mining town in the Midlands, and her sister Gudrun, who has returned from art school in London. The focus of the novel is primarily on their relationships: Ursula's with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector, and Gudrun's with industrialist Gerald Crich, and later with a sculptor, Loerke.

Quintessentially modernist, Women in Love is one of Lawrence's most extraordinary, innovative, and unsettling works.

In Our Time is a remarkable collection of short stories and vignettes by Ernest Hemingway, marking his American debut and earning him instant fame. First published in 1925, it was lauded by literary giants like Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The collection is celebrated for its simple and precise language, conveying a wide range of complex emotions.

Within its pages, readers will find several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories "Indian Camp," "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," "The Three Day Blow," and "The Battler." These stories introduce the hallmarks of Hemingway's style: a lean, tough prose enlivened by an ear for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic, suggesting, through the simplest of statements, a sense of moral value and clarity of heart.

Recognized as one of the most original short story collections in twentieth-century literature, In Our Time provides a key to understanding Hemingway's later works. Its themes of alienation, loss, and grief are conveyed through a style known as Hemingway's "theory of omission" or iceberg theory, making it an essential read for any literature enthusiast.

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.

This book was first published in 1898 in a highly edited version and quickly became a modern spiritual classic, read by millions and translated into over fifty-five languages. John Clarke's acclaimed translation, first published in 1975, is now accepted as the standard throughout the English-speaking world.

Two and a half years before her death in 1897 at the age of 24, Thérèse Martin began writing down her childhood memories at the request of her blood sisters in the Lisieux Carmel. Few could have guessed the eventual outcome. Yet, this "story of my soul" became a beacon of confidence and love, the "little way," and abandonment to God's merciful love. Discover her "mission" in the church and world today.

Absolute Power plunges readers into a world of political intrigue and suspense. When professional burglar Luther Whitney breaks into a Virginia mansion, he becomes an unwitting witness to a crime of unimaginable proportions.

Trapped behind a two-way mirror, Luther witnesses a brutal crime involving the President of the United States — a man who believes he can get away with anything. The shocking events he observes shatter his faith in justice and everything he holds dear.

The story unfolds into an unthinkable abuse of power and a criminal conspiracy, as a breathtaking cover-up is set in motion by those appointed to protect the nation's highest office. As Luther Whitney becomes the target of a relentless manhunt, he must navigate a dangerous world of deceit and corruption to bring the truth to light.

This novel is a high-octane thriller that explores the dark side of power and the lengths to which some will go to protect it. With its intricate plot and compelling characters, Absolute Power is a gripping tale of suspense and moral dilemmas.

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.

The Rapture of Canaan takes you on a journey into the lives of the members of the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God's Almighty Baptizing Wind. Here, the community spends their days and nights in the service of the Lord, eagerly awaiting the Rapture—the moment before the Second Coming of Christ when the saved will ascend to heaven, leaving the damned to face a thousand years of tribulation on earth.

Grandpa Herman, the founder of Fire and Brimstone, paints a terrifying picture of the tribulation: "We'd run out of food. Big bugs would chase us, stinging us with their tails. We'd turn on the faucet to find blood instead of water. Evil multitudes would come, severing our limbs, and we wouldn't die." Yet, he offers hope: "You can go straight to Heaven with all of God's special children if you'll only open your hearts to Jesus."

Ninah Huff, a 15-year-old girl, bears the weight of this damnation on her mind. To distract herself from sinful thoughts about her prayer partner, James, Ninah places pecan shells in her shoes and nettles in her bed. Despite her efforts, Ninah and James are drawn to each other, leading to tragic and transformative consequences for their community.

The Rapture of Canaan is a tale of miracles and transformations, where even the most stringent beliefs are challenged by the complexities of human emotions and the mysterious ways of the divine.

Annie Trimble lives in a solitary world that no one enters or understands. As delicate and beautiful as the tender blossoms of the Oregon spring, she is shunned by a town that misinterprets her affliction. But cruelty cannot destroy the love Annie holds in her heart.

Alex Montgomery is horrified to learn his wild younger brother forced himself on a helpless girl. Tormented by guilt, Alex agrees to marry her and raise the baby she carries as his own. But he never dreams he will grow to cherish his lovely, mute, and misjudged Annie; her childlike innocence, her womanly charms, and the wondrous way she views her world.

He becomes determined to break through the wall of silence surrounding her; to heal... and to be healed by Annie's sweet song of love.

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.

It is a Thursday evening. After work, Martin Blom drives to the supermarket to buy some groceries. As he walks back to his car, a shot rings out...

When he wakes up, he is blind. His neurosurgeon, Bruno Visser, tells him that his loss of sight is permanent and that he must expect to experience shock, depression, self-pity, even suicidal thoughts before his rehabilitation is complete.

But it doesn't work out quite like that. And one spring evening, while Martin is practicing in the clinic gardens with his new white cane, something miraculous happens.

The Golden Bough is a monumental study in comparative folklore, magic, and religion. It offers a detailed examination of the rites and beliefs, superstitions, and taboos of early cultures, drawing intriguing parallels to those of Christianity. Sir James George Frazer's work is a seminal piece in the fields of anthropology, comparative religion, and mythology.

This classic study explores our ancestors' primitive methods of worship, sex practices, and strange rituals and festivals. Frazer disproves the popular notion that primitive life was simple, revealing instead a complex web of magic, taboos, and superstitions. Witness the evolution of humanity from savagery to civilization, from the modification of bizarre and often bloodthirsty customs to the inception of lasting moral, ethical, and spiritual values.

Discover how this work has profoundly impacted psychology, literature, and modern anthropology, influencing many twentieth-century writers including D H Lawrence, T S Eliot, and Wyndham Lewis. The Golden Bough remains an early classic anthropological resource, offering fresh pertinence in its exploration of magical types, the sacrificial killing of kings, the dying god, and the scapegoat.

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.

The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death. With the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka’s narrative work is included in this volume.

“[Kafka] spoke for millions in their new unease; a century after his birth, he seems the last holy writer, and the supreme fabulist of modern man’s cosmic predicament.” —from the Foreword by John Updike

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life is a partial autobiography by C.S. Lewis that describes his conversion to Christianity. Unlike typical autobiographies, this book contains less detail about specific events because Lewis's primary aim was not historical documentation. Instead, he sought to identify and describe the events surrounding his accidental discovery of, and consequent search for, the phenomenon he labeled "Joy." This word was the best translation he could make of the German idea of Sehnsucht, or longing.

Although the book is not devoid of information about Lewis's life, the principal theme is Joy as he defined it. This Joy was a longing so intense for something so good and so high up that it couldn't be explained with words. Throughout his life, he was struck with "stabs of joy" and finally finds what it's for at the end.

Lewis recounts his early years with a mix of amusement and pain, including his experiences at Malvern College in 1913, aged 15. He described the school as "a very furnace of impure loves" but defended the practice as "the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in."

The book's last two chapters cover the end of his search as he moves from atheism to theism and then from theism to Christianity, ultimately discovering the true nature and purpose of Joy and its place in his life.

It is important to note that the book is not connected with his unexpected marriage later in life to Joy Gresham. The marriage occurred long after the period described, though not long after the book was published. His friends were quick to notice the coincidence, remarking that he'd really been "Surprised by Joy."

The title also alludes to Wordsworth's poem, "Surprised by Joy - Impatient As The Wind," which relates an incident when Wordsworth forgot the death of his beloved daughter.

Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago, and when it fails he turns his back on humanity once more. But his life alters when he rescues a young English girl, Lena, from Zangiacomo's Ladies' Orchestra and the evil innkeeper Schomberg, taking her to his island retreat. The affair between Heyst and Lena begins with her release, but the relationship shifts as Lena struggles to save Heyst from the detachment and isolation that have inhibited and influenced his life.

Marked by a violent and tragic conclusion, Victory is both a tale of rescue and adventure and a perceptive study of a complex relationship and of the power of love.

Worry, doubt, confusion, depression, anger and feelings of condemnation: all these are attacks on the mind. If readers suffer from negative thoughts, they can take heart! Joyce Meyer has helped millions win these all-important battles. In her most popular bestseller ever, the beloved author and minister shows readers how to change their lives by changing their minds. She teaches how to deal with thousands of thoughts that people think every day and how to focus the mind the way God thinks. And she shares the trials, tragedies, and ultimate victories from her own marriage, family, and ministry that led her to wondrous, life-transforming truth--and reveals her thoughts and feelings every step of the way. This special updated edition includes an additional introduction and updated content throughout the book.

Dave Pelzer's remarkable journey from a child who lived in terror of his unstable, violently unpredictable mother's every move, to his emergence as an inspiration the world over is a remarkable tale of survival and the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.

Dave Pelzer's three volumes of memoirs - A Child Called 'It', The Lost Boy and A Man Named Dave - brought this story of courage and triumph against all odds to the world, becoming global bestsellers.

My Story brings these volumes together, following Dave from a childhood spent in fear, his tempestuous teenage years haunted by the spectre of his mother, through to his adulthood, and his great achievement of not only understanding and reconciling the story of his own life, but his dedication to helping others overcome similar adversity.

It is a remarkable story of courage and survival, already embraced by millions and destined to inspire millions more.

Red Earth and Pouring Rain combines Indian myths, epic history, and the story of three college kids in search of America. This captivating narrative includes the monkey's story of an Indian poet and warrior and an American road novel of college students driving cross-country.

An Indian student, home from college in the U.S., shoots a monkey who turns out to be the reincarnation of a poet. Subsequently, the two take turns telling their stories. The poet recalls epic deeds of glory in fighting the British Raj, while the student narrates tales of materialism and boredom in America.

In this astonishing tale, the gods Hanuman, Ganesha, and Yama descend on a house in an Indian city to vie for the soul of a wounded monkey. A bargain is struck: the monkey must tell a story, and if he can keep his audience entertained, he shall live. The result is a tale of nineteenth-century India: of Sanjay, a poet, and Sikander, a warrior; of hoofbeats thundering through the streets of Calcutta and the birth of a luminous child; of great wars and love affairs and a city gone 'mad with poetry'.

Woven into this tapestry of stories is a second, totally modern narrative, the adventures of a young Indian criss-crossing America in a car with his friends and his eventual return to his homeland.

The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes."

Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose.

Are there other dimensions beyond our own? Is time travel possible? Can we change the past? Are there gateways to parallel universes? All of us have pondered such questions, but there was a time when scientists dismissed these notions as outlandish speculations. Not any more. Today, they are the focus of the most intense scientific activity in recent memory.

In Hyperspace, Michio Kaku, author of the widely acclaimed Beyond Einstein and a leading theoretical physicist, offers the first book-length tour of the most exciting (and perhaps most bizarre) work in modern physics, work which includes research on the tenth dimension, time warps, black holes, and multiple universes.

The theory of hyperspace (or higher dimensional space)—and its newest wrinkle, superstring theory—stand at the center of this revolution, with adherents in every major research laboratory in the world, including several Nobel laureates. Beginning where Hawking's Brief History of Time left off, Kaku paints a vivid portrayal of the breakthroughs now rocking the physics establishment.

Why all the excitement? As the author points out, for over half a century, scientists have puzzled over why the basic forces of the cosmos—gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces—require markedly different mathematical descriptions. But if we see these forces as vibrations in a higher dimensional space, their field equations suddenly fit together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, perfectly snug, in an elegant, astonishingly simple form.

This may thus be our leading candidate for the Theory of Everything. If so, it would be the crowning achievement of 2,000 years of scientific investigation into matter and its forces. Already, the theory has inspired several thousand research papers, and has been the focus of over 200 international conferences.

Michio Kaku is one of the leading pioneers in superstring theory and has been at the forefront of this revolution in modern physics. With Hyperspace, he has produced a book for general readers which conveys the vitality of the field and the excitement as scientists grapple with the meaning of space and time. It is an exhilarating look at physics today and an eye-opening glimpse into the ultimate nature of the universe.

Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric—a masterpiece of suspense San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's guilt. For on San Pedro, memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.