Acclaimed as a quiet triumph and a brutally moving work of art, Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began introduces readers to Vladek Spiegleman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive.

This second volume, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began, moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills. Genuinely tragic and comic by turns, it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium. Maus ties together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. At every level, this is the ultimate survivor's tale - and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.

One, No One and One Hundred Thousand is a thought-provoking novel by Luigi Pirandello. The story follows the protagonist, Vitangelo Moscarda, who undergoes a profound identity crisis after a casual remark from his wife. She informs him that his nose tilts to the right, leading Moscarda to a startling realization: "For others, I was not what till now, privately, I had imagined myself to be."

This revelation sets Moscarda on a journey of self-discovery, where he questions the nature of reality, identity, and the multifaceted perceptions others have of him. Through a series of philosophical musings and encounters with various characters, he grapples with the fragmented nature of the self and the illusions that shape our understanding of the world.

In this novel, Pirandello masterfully explores the fundamental human inability to communicate, our essential solitariness, and the inescapable restriction of our free will, all while evoking thoroughly sustained and earthy laughter.

This book is a remarkable synthesis of themes and personalities, illuminating such dramas as Six Characters in Search of an Author, and invites readers to ponder the essence of identity and the freedom found in embracing one's own madness.

This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written, A Thousand Acres takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride—and reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity.

In Richmond, Virginia, young lovers are dying. So far, four couples in the area have disappeared, only to be found months later as mutilated corpses. When the daughter of the president's newest drug czar vanishes along with her boyfriend, Dr. Kay Scarpetta knows time is short.

Following a macabre trail of evidence that ties the present homicides to a grisly crime in the past, Kay must draw upon her own personal resources to track down a murderer who is as skilled at eliminating clues as Kay is at finding them...

Philip Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.

Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud. In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers' final union in death seems almost inevitable.

And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.

Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.

More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”

Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul—and the ability to love his fellow man.

Leverkühn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and nihilism. It is also Mann's most profound meditation on the German genius—both national and individual—and the terrible responsibilities of the truly great artist.

The vast majority of Americans have, at one point or another, gotten drunk, smoked, dabbled with drugs, gambled, sworn, or engaged in adultery. During the 1800s, "respectable" people struggled to control these behaviors, labeling them "bad" and the people who indulged in them unrespectable. In the twentieth century, these minor vices were transformed into a societal complex of enormous and pervasive influence. Yet the general belief persists that these activities remain merely harmless "bad habits," individual transgressions more than social problems. Not so, argues distinguished historian John C. Burnham in this pioneering study.

In Bad Habits, Burnham traces the growth of a veritable minor vice-industrial complex. As it grew, activities that might have been harmless, natural, and sociable fun resulted in fundamental social change. When Burnham set out to explore the influence of these bad habits on American society, he sought to discover why so many "good" people engaged in activities that many, including themselves, considered "bad." What he found, however, was a coalition of economic and social interests in which the single-minded quest for profit allied with the values of the Victorian saloon underworld and bohemian rebelliousness. This combination radically inverted common American standards of personal conduct.

Bad Habits, then, describes, in words and pictures, how more and more Americans learned to value hedonism and self-gratification—to smoke and swear during World War I, to admire cabaret night life, and to reject schoolmarmish standards in the age of Prohibition. Tracing the evolution of each of the bad habits, Burnham tells how liquor control boards encouraged the consumption of alcohol; how alcoholic beverage producers got their workers deferred from the draft during World War II; how convenience stores and accounting firms pursued profits by pushing legalized gambling; how "swinging" Playboy bankrolled a drug advocacy group; how advertising and television made the Marlboro Man a national hero; how drug paraphernalia was promoted by national advertisers; how a practical joker/drug addict caused a shortage of kitty litter on Long Island; and how the evolution of an entire sex therapy industry helped turn sexual experience into a new kind of commodity. Altogether, a lot of people made a lot of money. But what, the author asks, did these changes cost American society?

This illustrated tour de force by one of the most distinctive and important voices in social history reveals John C. Burnham at his provocative and controversial best.

Big Sur is a poignant masterpiece of wrenching personal expression from the author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums. In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance.

In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion."

In the 1960s, political tension forces the García family away from Santo Domingo and towards the Bronx. The sisters all hit their strides in America, adapting and thriving despite cultural differences, language barriers, and prejudice.

But Mami and Papi are more traditional, and they have far more difficulty adjusting to their new country. Making matters worse, the girls—frequently embarrassed by their parents—find ways to rebel against them.

The García sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía—tell their stories about being at home—and not at home—in America. Uprooted from their family home in the Dominican Republic, they arrive in New York City in 1960 to find a life far different from the genteel existence of maids, manicures, and extended family they left behind.

What they have lost—and what they find—is revealed in the fifteen interconnected stories that make up this exquisite novel from one of the premier novelists of our time.

They're back: Calvin, the six-year-old dirty tricksmeister and master of indignation and his warm, cuddly philosopher sidekick, Hobbes. A tiger whose idea of adventure is to lie on his back by the fire and have his stomach rubbed. In six short years, this unlikely duo has captured the hearts, the minds, and, most of all, the funny bones of America.

This treasury collection contains a never-before-published full-color section, as well as the cartoons appearing in The Revenge of the Baby-Sat and Scientific Progress Goes "Boink." All Sunday cartoons are presented full-page and full-color.

Miecz przeznaczenia is a collection of short stories that serves as a continuation of the adventures of Geralt from Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish), and at the same time precedes the story described in Saga o wiedźminie (The Witcher Saga). Generally, the stories included in this collection are no different from those written earlier. Geralt, with his strength, courage, and intelligence, fights monsters or in other ways tries to help people. The world in which the action takes place is depicted in a highly vivid manner, allowing readers to easily imagine it. The book is imbued with emotions, dreams, and values. On the pages of the stories, we see love, sacrifice, honor, determination driven by the intention to help a loved one, and attachment to one's own land.

Fatherland is set in a universe where Nazi Germany won World War II. In this alternate history, the story's lead protagonist, an SS officer, embarks on an investigation into the murder of a Nazi government official who was one of the participants at the Wannsee Conference. Through his investigation, he uncovers a plot to eliminate all attendees of the conference in order to help Germany gain better political accommodations with the United States.

When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness, and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside favela. Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, Nancy Scheper-Hughes follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage.

It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing – and controversial – is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live.

The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, is an American classic—and Pulitzer Prize–winning story that epitomizes the love between a child and a pet. Young Jody adopts an orphaned fawn he calls Flag and makes it a part of his family and his best friend. But life in the Florida backwoods is harsh, and so, as his family fights off wolves, bears, and even alligators, and faces failure in their tenuous subsistence farming, Jody must finally part with his dear animal friend.

This compelling novel has as its protagonist Cornelius Suttree, living alone and in exile in a disintegrating houseboat on the wrong side of the Tennessee River close by Knoxville. He stays at the edge of an outcast community inhabited by eccentrics, criminals, and the poverty-stricken. Rising above the physical and human squalor around him, his detachment and wry humor enable him to survive dereliction and destitution with dignity.

A rousing call to arms whose influence is still felt today Originally published on the eve of the 1848 European revolutions, The Communist Manifesto is a condensed and incisive account of the worldview Marx and Engels developed during their hectic intellectual and political collaboration. Formulating the principles of dialectical materialism, they believed that labor creates wealth, hence capitalism is exploitive and antithetical to freedom.

This new edition includes an extensive introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones, Britain's leading expert on Marx and Marxism, providing a complete course for students of The Communist Manifesto, and demonstrating not only the historical importance of the text, but also its place in the world today.

Too Loud a Solitude is a tender and funny story of Haňťa - a man who has lived in a Czech police state - for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process of compacting, he has acquired an education so unwitting he can't quite tell which of his thoughts are his own and which come from his books. He has rescued many from the jaws of the hydraulic press and now his house is filled to the rooftops. Destroyer of the written word, he is also its perpetrator.

But when a new automatic press makes his job redundant, there's only one thing he can do - go down with his ship. This is an eccentric romp celebrating the indestructibility - against censorship, political oppression, etc - of the written word.

A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight.

Matsu is a samurai of the soul, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel and arbitrary world, and Stephen is a noble student, learning to appreciate Matsu's generous and nurturing way of life and to love Matsu's soul-mate, gentle Sachi, a woman afflicted with leprosy.

Sophie's Choice is a poignant and deeply moving novel that intertwines the narratives of three distinct individuals. At the heart of the story is the aspiration of a young man from the South, who holds an unwavering dream of becoming a writer. This ambition is set against the backdrop of a tumultuous love affair, marked by both passion and strife, between a brilliant Jewish man and a captivating Polish woman.

The novel delves into the harrowing past of the woman, Sophie, revealing a traumatic wound that haunts her—the very wound that propels both her and Nathan, her lover, on a path towards destruction. Sophie's Choice explores themes of love, guilt, and the lasting impact of the past on the present, making it a timeless exploration of the human condition.

Call It Sleep is a magnificent novel by Henry Roth, first published in 1934. It tells the poignant story of David Schearl, a "dangerously imaginative" child navigating the complexities of life in the slums of New York.

Initially greeted with critical acclaim, the novel struggled to find its audience in the dark days of the Depression. However, upon its paperback release in 1964, Call It Sleep finally received the recognition it deserved, becoming the first paperback ever to be reviewed on the front page of The New York Times Book Review.

With its richly drawn characters and vivid portrayal of immigrant life, this novel has sold millions of copies worldwide, captivating readers with its timeless exploration of identity, belonging, and the human spirit.

Here are the gods, goddesses, and legendary figures of ancient Greece--mighty Zeus, with his fistful of thunderbolts; gray-eyed Athena, goddess of wisdom; Helios, the sun; greedy King Midas--lavishly depicted by Caldecott winners Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire. In a relaxed and humorous tone, these splendid artists bring to life the myths that have inspired great European literature and art through the ages, creating a book readers of all ages will cherish.

"For any child fortunate enough to have this generous book...the kings and heroes of ancient legend will remain forever matter-of-fact; the pictures interpret the text literally and are full of detail and witty observation." --The Horn  Book

"The drawings, particularly the full-page ones in this oversized volume, are excellent  and excitingly evocative." --The New  York Times

"Parents, uncles, and aunts who have been searching for a big picture book that has good reading-aloud value for the younger ones and fine read-it-yourself value on up, have it in this volume...a children's classic." --Christian Science Monitor

The Shepherd of the Hills is a captivating tale set in the enchanting Ozark hills. Originally published in 1907, this novel by Harold Bell Wright explores themes of strength, weakness, success, and failure.

The story unfolds around a mysterious, learned man who retreats from the bustling city life to find solace in the serene backwoods of Mutton Hollow. Here, he encounters intriguing characters like Jim Lane, Grant Matthews, and Sammy, each adding depth and richness to his journey.

Wright's masterful storytelling captures the essence of human struggles and triumphs, painting a vivid picture of life that is both enchanting and challenging. This is not a mere pastoral fantasy; it is a powerful commentary on the human condition, set against the backdrop of the beautiful yet demanding Ozark landscape.

The Shepherd of the Hills continues to inspire readers with its timeless truths and universal appeal. It's a story that resonates across generations, offering insights into grace, dignity, and the enduring spirit of humanity.

'There is no harm in a man's cub.' Best known for the 'Mowgli' stories, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book expertly interweaves myth, morals, adventure, and powerful storytelling. Set in Central India, Mowgli is raised by a pack of wolves. Along the way, he encounters memorable characters such as the foreboding tiger Shere Kahn, Bagheera the panther, and Baloo the bear.

Including other stories such as that of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a heroic mongoose, and Toomai, a young elephant handler, Kipling's fables remain as popular today as they ever were.

The Firm is a 1991 legal thriller by American writer John Grisham. It was his second book and the first which gained wide popularity. In this riveting novel, Mitch McDeere, a Harvard Law graduate, becomes suspicious of his Memphis tax firm when mysterious deaths, obsessive office security, and the Chicago mob figure into its operations.

Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel that explores the intricacies of friendship and the depths of human dreams. Set against the backdrop of World War II, it tells the story of two friends with contrasting personalities.

Al is a bold, hot-tempered boy whose goals in life are to lift weights and pick up girls. In contrast, his strange friend Birdy is a skinny, tongue-tied, perhaps genius who dreams of raising canaries and flying. Their friendship is tested in the brutal reality of war, where dreams become all too real, and their lives are changed forever.

In Birdy, William Wharton crafts an unforgettable tale that suggests another notion of sanity in a world that is manifestly insane. It's a story about love and war, madness and beauty, and above all, the essence of "birdness."

Darkness Visible tells the story of William Styron's recovery, laying bare the harrowing realities of clinical depression and chronicling his triumph over the disease that had claimed so many great writers before him. In the summer of 1985, Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him.

His final words are a call for hope to all who suffer from mental illness that it is possible to emerge from even the deepest abyss of despair and “once again behold the stars.”

Now available in mass market, the revised, definitive edition of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic. In this second book in the saga set 3,000 years after the terrible war, Ender Wiggin is reviled by history as the Xenocide--the destroyer of the alien Buggers. Now, Ender tells the true story of the war and seeks to stop history from repeating itself.

...In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening...again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery...and the truth.

Speaker for the Dead, the second novel in Orson Scott Card's Ender Quintet, is the winner of the 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1987 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village.

Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Dick at his wildest and strangest - a mystifying but brilliant book - SF: 100 Best Novels

In the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late 21st century, tedium can be endured through the drug Can-D, which enables users to inhabit a shared illusory world. When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z. It is far more potent than Can-D, but threatens to plunge the world into a permanent state of drugged illusion controlled by the mysterious Eldritch.

Cover illustration: Chris Moore

"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..." This is a record of hate far more than of love, writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles. Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet as he delves deeper into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to recognize.

In a poor, remote section of Southern Mexico, the paramilitary group, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on the run. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the nameless little worldly “whiskey priest” is nevertheless impelled toward his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.

In his introduction, John Updike calls The Power and the Glory, “Graham Greene’s masterpiece…. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist.”

And Then There Were None begins with ten individuals, a curious assortment of strangers, summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate, as each has been marked for murder.

A famous nursery rhyme is framed and hung in every room of the mansion, gradually becoming a chilling prophecy as one by one, the guests fall prey to a diabolical scheme. As the number of survivors diminishes, terror mounts. Who has choreographed this dastardly plot? And who will be left to tell the tale?

With a backdrop of an isolated island and the stormy weather trapping them, the characters must face the reality that the killer is among them, and nowhere is safe. This masterful tale of suspense leaves readers questioning, until the very end, who the murderer is.

Cancer Ward examines the relationship of a group of people in the cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death. We see them under normal circumstances, and also reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. Together they represent a remarkable cross-section of contemporary Russian characters and attitudes.

The experiences of the central character, Oleg Kostoglotov, closely reflect the author's own: Solzhenitsyn himself became a patient in a cancer ward in the mid-1950s, on his release from a labor camp, and later recovered. Translated by Nicholas Bethell and David Burg.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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

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.

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!