Meet New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende’s most enchanting creation, Eva Luna: a lover, a writer, a revolutionary, and above all a storyteller—available for the first time in ebook.

Eva Luna is the daughter of a professor’s assistant and a snake-bitten gardener—born poor, orphaned at an early age, and working as a servant. Eva is a naturally gifted and imaginative storyteller who meets people from all stations and walks of life. Though she has no wealth, she trades her stories like currency with people who are kind to her. In this novel, she shares the story of her own life and introduces readers to a diverse and eccentric cast of characters including the Lebanese émigré who befriends her and takes her in; her unfortunate godmother, whose brain is addled by rum and who believes in all the Catholic saints and a few of her own invention; a street urchin who grows into a petty criminal and, later, a leader in the guerrilla struggle; a celebrated transsexual entertainer who instructs her in the ways of the adult world; and a young refugee whose flight from postwar Europe will prove crucial to Eva's fate.

As Eva tells her story, Isabel Allende conjures up a whole complex South American nation—the rich, the poor, the simple, and the sophisticated—in a novel replete with character and incident, with drama and comedy and history, with battles and passions, rebellions and reunions, a novel that celebrates the power of imagination to create a better world.

Here is the unbelievable yet true story of Sybil Dorsett, a survivor of terrible childhood abuse who as an adult was a victim of sudden and mysterious blackouts. What happened during those blackouts has made Sybil's experience one of the most famous psychological cases in the world.

Grendel, the first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic.

An extraordinary achievement, said the New York Times. This is the novel William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."

On holiday in Cornwall, the three Drew children discover an ancient map in the attic of the house they are staying in. They know immediately that it is special. It is even more than that — the key to finding a grail, a source of power to fight the forces of evil known as the Dark.

In searching for it themselves, the Drews put their very lives in peril. This is the first volume of Susan Cooper's brilliant and absorbing fantasy sequence known as The Dark Is Rising.

In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, as well as chapters written in his own hand, and other materials. Jung continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961, making this a uniquely comprehensive reflection on a remarkable life.

Fully corrected, this edition also includes Jung's VII Sermones ad Mortuos.

A Course in Miracles is a landmark guide to modern spirituality, as relevant now as when it was first published in 1975. This thought-provoking and informative book is divided into three volumes: Text, Workbook for Students, and Manual for Teachers. It explores universal spiritual themes aimed at helping you achieve dramatic, lasting results in every aspect of your life.

By following the self-study program, you will learn to develop a constant state of happiness and peace through the application of its principles. The book provides a pathway to transform your perception and experience of the world, fostering an inner journey towards greater understanding and meaning.

This is Simon de Montfort's story—and the story of King Henry III, as weak and changeable as Montfort was brash and unbending. It is a saga of two opposing wills that would later clash in a storm of violence and betrayal. A story straight from the pages of history that brings the world of the thirteenth century completely, provocatively, and magnificently alive.

Above all, this is a story of conflict and treachery, of human frailty and broken legends, a tale of pageantry and grandeur that is as unforgettable as it is real.

Andrei Tarkovsky, the genius of modern Russian cinema, hailed by Ingmar Bergman as the most important director of our time, died an exile in Paris in December 1986. In Sculpting in Time, he has left his artistic testament, a remarkable revelation of both his life and work.

Since Ivan's Childhood won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, the visionary quality and totally original and haunting imagery of Tarkovsky's films have captivated serious movie audiences all over the world, who see in his work a continuation of the great literary traditions of nineteenth-century Russia. Many critics have tried to interpret his intensely personal vision, but he himself always remained inaccessible.

In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films—Ivan's Childhood, Andrey Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. He discusses their history and his methods of work, explores the many problems of visual creativity, and sets forth the deeply autobiographical content of part of his oeuvre—most fascinatingly in The Mirror and Nostalgia. The closing chapter on The Sacrifice, dictated in the last weeks of Tarkovsky's life, makes the book essential reading for those who already know or who are just discovering his magnificent work.

An unforgettable story of courage and romance. Will Valancy Stirling ever escape her strict family and find true love?

Valancy Stirling is 29, unmarried, and has never been in love. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she finds her only consolation in the "forbidden" books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle--a place where all her dreams come true and she can be who she truly wants to be. After getting shocking news from the doctor, she rebels against her family and discovers a surprising new world, full of love and adventures far beyond her most secret dreams.

Banana Yoshimoto's novels of young life in Japan have made her an international sensation. Goodbye Tsugumi is an offbeat story of a deep and complicated friendship between two female cousins that ranks among her best work.

Maria is the only daughter of an unmarried woman. She has grown up at the seaside alongside her cousin Tsugumi, a lifelong invalid, charismatic, spoiled, and occasionally cruel. Now Maria's father is finally able to bring Maria and her mother to Tokyo, ushering Maria into a world of university, impending adulthood, and a "normal" family.

When Tsugumi invites Maria to spend a last summer by the sea, a restful idyll becomes a time of dramatic growth as Tsugumi finds love and Maria learns the true meaning of home and family. She also has to confront both Tsugumi's inner strength and the real possibility of losing her.

Goodbye Tsugumi is a beguiling, resonant novel from one of the world's finest young writers.

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out—with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes—to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan... Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins... albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

Exploring the world of plants and its relation to mankind, as revealed by the latest discoveries of scientists, The Secret Life of Plants includes remarkable information about plants as lie detectors and ecological sentinels. It describes their ability to adapt to human wishes, respond to music, possess curative powers, and communicate with humans.

Authors Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird suggest that the most far-reaching revolution of the 20th century — one that could save or destroy the planet — may come from the bottom of your garden.

According to The Secret Life of Plants, plants and humans inter-relate, with plants exhibiting empathetic and spiritual relationships and showing reactions interpreted as demonstrating physical-force connections with humans. As my students say, ‘Hey, wow!’

Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed.

Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered about them is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

La beauté de George Miles et son étrange passivité en font l’objet des désirs de son entourage. L’un après l’autre, ces garçons vont le soumettre à leurs fantasmes. Dans une suite d’expériences de plus en plus extrêmes, ils vont essayer, chacun à leur manière, de découvrir ce qui se cache derrière son apparence, ce qui se dissimule à l’intérieur même de cette image, quitte à le chercher littéralement sous la peau...

Ce premier roman de Dennis Cooper est une descente terrifiante dans les obsessions de l’Amérique contemporaine, un train fantôme dévalant les pentes du désir et plongeant vers la mort sur fond de rock’n’roll. Tous repères effondrés, toute morale abolie, ses personnages semblent évoluer dans une dimension parallèle dont le sexe, la drogue et les films d’horreur de série Z seraient les dernières balises.

Parmi eux, la figure « angélique » de George apparaît comme le déclencheur qui leur permet de découvrir et de repousser leurs limites.

Winnie-the-Pooh, the Best Bear in All the World, has long been adored by readers young and old. In this beautiful full-color gift edition of The House at Pooh Corner, Ernest H. Shepard's classic illustrations have been painstakingly hand-colored. An exquisite volume and the perfect gift for any occasion, this book is as vivid and charming as the beloved characters from the Hundred Acre Wood.

Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar is an omnibus edition of three counterculture classics by Richard Brautigan that embody the spirit of the 1960s.

Trout Fishing in America is by turns a hilarious, playful, and melancholy novel that wanders from San Francisco through America's rural waterways.

In Watermelon Sugar expresses the mood of a new generation, revealing death as a place where people travel the length of their dreams, rejecting violence and hate.

The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster is a collection of nearly 100 poems, first published in 1968.

In this second book of The Malloreon, Garion and Ce'nedra continue the quest begun in Guardians of the West. In their party travel the immortal Belgarath the Sorcerer, his daughter Polgara the Sorceress, and the little Drasnian, Silk.

Garion knows that it is the mysterious figure Zandramas who is responsible for the abduction of his infant son, and he and his companions journey many miles and encounter many strange beings in their search for him.

Their way leads through the foul swamps of Nyissa, ruled over by the Snake-Queen, and on into the dark kingdom of the Murgos, where human sacrifices are still made to the dead god Torak. Further on, however, even beyond those forbidding lands, they must face the ultimate danger - not only to themselves but to all mankind...

Thus continues Book Two of The Malloreon

Set in the slums of eighteenth-century France, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer explores the extraordinary sense of smell of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille from his birth. Despite his great olfactory gift, Grenouille's lack of personal scent makes him different from other people. His life's journey leads him to apprentice himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him to harness his remarkable talent in mixing precious oils and herbs.

Grenouille's talent turns into an obsession, as he desires to capture the scents of various objects and ultimately, the elusive aroma of a beautiful young virgin. This fixation sets him on a path of increasingly terrifying acts, culminating in a quest to create the ultimate perfume. Patrick S\u00fcskind's novel is a haunting narrative of murder and sensual depravity, told with a brilliant flair that captivates the reader.

It is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness.

As their once-casual friendship quickens, these two eccentric men begin to discover in each other a possible antidote to their feelings of hopelessness and mortality—a spiritual symmetry forged by their shared passion for music, a strange sense of humor, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and fear in the face of death.

Part memoir, part fiction, Wittgenstein’s Nephew is both a meditation on the artist’s struggle to maintain a solid foothold in a world gone incomprehensibly askew, and an eulogy to a real-life friendship.

El libro de los abrazos es una síntesis perfecta del imaginario más inspirado de su autor. Celebraciones, sucedidos, profecías, crónicas, sueños, memorias y desmemorias, deliciosos relatos breves en los que hasta las paredes hablan.

Un libro ilustrado por partida doble: a la mirada luminosa de Galeano se suman sus grabados.

“Lea una historia por día y será usted feliz la mitad del año. Lea una historia por día y estará usted triste la otra mitad. Cada página es tan hermosa como el libro.” (Koos Hageraats, HP/De Tijd, Holanda.)

Phil Hastings was a lucky man – he had money, a growing reputation as a screenwriter, a happy, loving family with three kids, and he'd just moved into the house of his dreams in rural magic. Everything was about to be altered irrevocably by a magic more real than any he dared imagine.

For with the Magic came the Bad Thing, and the Faerie, and then the cool... and the resurrection of a primordial war with a forgotten people – a war that not only the Hastings but the whole human race could lose.

Feist's skillfully crafted prose illuminates many of the darker sides of fairy stories, creating a narrative that is absorbing, thought-provoking, and thoroughly magical.

For as long as she could remember, Jane Stuart and her mother lived with her grandmother in a dreary mansion in Toronto. Jane always believed her father was dead until she accidentally learned he was alive and well and living on Prince Edward Island.

When Jane spends the summer at his cottage on Lantern Hill, doing all the wonderful things Grandmother deems unladylike, she dares to dream that there could be such a house back in Toronto... a house where she, Mother, and Father could live together without Grandmother directing their lives — a house that could be called home.

The Temple of My Familiar is a visionary novel that weaves together a cast of characters, intertwining their past and present into a brilliantly intricate tapestry of tales. It tells the story of the dispossessed and displaced, of peoples whose history is ancient and whose future is yet to come.

Meet Lissie, a woman of many pasts; Arveyda, the great guitarist, and his Latin American wife who has had to flee her homeland; Suwelo, the history teacher, and his former wife Fanny, who has fallen in love with spirits. Hovering tantalizingly above their stories are Miss Celie and Shug, the beloved characters from The Color Purple.

This novel transcends time, examining contradictions such as black vs. white, man vs. woman, sexual freedom vs. sexual slavery, and past vs. present. As Alice Walker follows these astonishing characters, she weaves a new mythology from old fables and history, providing a profoundly spiritual explanation for centuries of shared African American experience.

Lioness Rampant is the final installment in Tamora Pierce's celebrated Song of the Lioness quartet, which has been honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award. Alanna of Trebond has achieved her dream of becoming the first female knight errant, but she finds herself at a crossroads, uncertain of what her next step should be. Despite her legendary triumphs in countless battles, Alanna realizes that there might be more she needs beyond the life of a knight errant.

However, Alanna's reflections are put on hold when she faces an impossible challenge. She must secure the Dominion Jewel, a gem of legendary power that can bring great good when wielded by the right hands. But time is of the essence, as the kingdom of Tortall faces grave threats from all sides. Enemies, both powerful and petty, are conspiring to destroy everything and everyone that Alanna holds dear.

As Alanna embarks on this perilous quest, she discovers that her future is indeed as epic as her past, both as a formidable warrior and as a woman forging her own path.

Michel Foucault takes us into the first two centuries of our own era, into the Golden Age of Rome, to reveal a subtle but decisive break from the classical Greek vision of sexual pleasure.

He skillfully explores the whole corpus of moral reflection among philosophers such as Plutarch, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca, and physicians of the era. Foucault uncovers an increasing mistrust of pleasure and growing anxiety over sexual activity and its consequences.

Where the Wild Things Are takes us on a journey with Max, who, after being sent to bed without supper, imagines sailing away to a far-off land. This land is inhabited by the Wild Things, fearsome creatures who crown Max as their king. Rather than being a story of terror, it's a tale of empowerment and imagination as Max learns to navigate the challenges he faces.

Maurice Sendak's magnificent illustrations and succinct narrative have turned this book into a beloved classic for readers of all ages, making it a staple of children's literature. It's a celebration of creativity, with Max's wild rumpus resonating deeply with anyone who has ever dreamed of exploring their own personal wildness.

In The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice continues her extraordinary Vampire Chronicles in a feat of mesmeric storytelling, a chillingly hypnotic entertainment in which the oldest and most powerful forces of the night are unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Three brilliantly colored narrative threads intertwine as the story unfolds:

• The rock star known as Vampire Lestat, worshipped by millions of spellbound fans, prepares for a concert in San Francisco. Among the audience--pilgrims in a blind swoon of adoration--are hundreds of vampires, creatures who see Lestat as a "greedy fiend risking the secret prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals," fiends themselves who hate Lestat's power and who are determined to destroy him.

• The sleep of certain men and women--vampires and mortals scattered around the world--is haunted by a vivid, mysterious dream: of twins with fiery red hair and piercing green eyes who suffer an unspeakable tragedy. It is a dream that slowly, tauntingly reveals its meaning to the dreamers as they make their way toward each other--some to be destroyed on the journey, some to face an even more terrifying fate at journey's end.

• Akasha--Queen of the Damned, mother of all vampires, rises after a 6,000 year sleep and puts into motion a heinous plan to "save" mankind from itself and make "all myths of the world real" by elevating herself and her chosen son/lover to the level of the gods: "I am the fulfillment and I shall from this moment be the cause".

These narrative threads wind sinuously across a vast, richly detailed tapestry of the violent, sensual world of vampirism, taking us back 6,000 years to its beginnings. As the stories of the "first brood" of blood drinkers are revealed, we are swept across the ages, from Egypt to South America to the Himalayas to all the shrouded corners of the globe where vampires have left their mark. Vampires are created--mortals succumbing to the sensation of "being emptied, of being devoured, of being nothing." Vampires are destroyed. Dark rituals are performed--the rituals of ancient creatures prowling the modern world. And, finally, we are brought to a moment in the twentieth century when, in an astonishing climax, the fate of the living dead--and perhaps of the living, all the living--will be decided.

Under the spell of quantum physics, Bach and his wife Leslie are catapulted into an alternate world, one in which they exist simultaneously in many different incarnations. First, they encounter themselves as they were 16 years ago on the day they first met. In this version of their lives, they do not marry, and never achieve the happiness Bach assures us that their real union has produced.

Bach once again displays an inventive imagination and inspirational zeal that will have readers examining their own lives.

Paris in the spring of 1968. The city is beginning to emerge from hibernation, and an obscure spirit of social and political renewal is in the air. Yet Théo, his twin sister Isabelle, and Matthew, an American student they have befriended, think only of immersing themselves in another, addictive form of hibernation: moviegoing at the Cinémathèque Française.

Night after night, they take their place beside their fellow cinephiles in the very front row of the stalls and feast insatiably off the images that flicker across the vast white screen. Denied their nightly 'fix' when the French government suddenly orders the Cinémathèque's closure, Théo, Isabelle, and Matthew gradually withdraw into a hermetically sealed world of their own creation.

An airless universe of obsessive private games, ordeals, humiliations, and sexual jousting which finds them shedding their clothes and their inhibitions with equal abandon. A vertiginous free fall interrupted only, and tragically, when the real world outside their shuttered apartment succeeds at last in encroaching on their delirium.

The study of a triangular relationship whose perverse eroticism contrives nevertheless to conserve its own bruised purity, brilliant in its narrative invention and startling in its imagery, The Dreamers belongs to the romantic French tradition of Les Enfants Terribles and Le Grand Meaulnes and resembles no other work in recent British fiction.

Perhaps the most brilliant comic strip ever created, Calvin and Hobbes continues to entertain with dazzling cartooning and tremendous humor. Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes has been a worldwide favorite since its introduction in 1985. The strip follows the richly imaginative adventures of Calvin and his trusty tiger, Hobbes. Whether a poignant look at serious family issues or a round of time-travel (with the aid of a well-labeled cardboard box), Calvin and Hobbes will astound and delight you.

Beginning with the day Hobbes sprang into Calvin's tuna fish trap, the first two Calvin and Hobbes collections, Calvin and Hobbes and Something Under The Bed Is Drooling, are brought together in this treasury. Including black-and-white dailies and color Sundays, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes also features an original full-color 16-page story.

"Под игото" е първият български роман. Подзаглавие - „Из живота на българина в навечерието на Освобождението“. Написан е от Иван Вазов по време на изгнание в Одеса, пренесен е в България с руската дипломатическа поща.

Композиционно романът се състои от три части и 88 глави, които обхващат подготовката, избухването и потушаването на Априлското въстание. Сюжетното действие започва с идването на Бойчо Огнянов в Бяла Черква през май 1875 г. и завършва с неговата смърт през май 1876 г. Но фабулата на творбата не се изчерпва с личните драми на героите, нито с действията и противодействията им през тази година, защото не личните, а историческите събития са в основата на сюжетното действие и определят неговия епически характер.

Своеобразна кулминация и развръзка на романа са главите "Пиянството на един народ" и "Пробуждане", в които Вазов постига редки за българската литература прозрения по философия на българската история с резките й преходи от опиянение към отрезвяване и страх, от подем към покруса, разочарование и предателство.

Романът "Под игото" е първата книга, която носи литературна слава на Вазов и на България. Въпреки някои слабости и противоречия, това е най-мащабната и недостигната още "енциклопедия на българския национален живот".

More than three million readers have witnessed the return of the dragons... And now the books that began the best-selling 'Dragonlance' saga are collected in their entirety in this special edition, along with all of the artwork from the trilogy.

This splendid collector's edition is a must for the millions of readers who fell in love with the fantasy world of Krynn.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, a Monarch Notes edition, provides a comprehensive guide to understanding one of literature's great novels. This study guide includes detailed analyses of characters, themes, and the narrative structure, along with a deep dive into Dostoyevsky's literary techniques. Whether you're a student preparing for exams or a literature enthusiast eager to gain a deeper understanding of Dostoyevsky's work, this guide is an invaluable resource.

The Dragonriders of Pern brings together the first three books in the world’s most beloved science-fiction series, making it a must-have for both longtime fans and newcomers.

On a beautiful world called Pern, an ancient way of life is about to come under attack. Lessa is an outcast survivor—her parents murdered, her birthright stolen—a strong young woman who has never stopped dreaming of revenge. But when an ancient threat reemerges, Lessa will rise—upon the back of a great dragon with whom she shares a telepathic bond more intimate than any human connection. Together, dragon and rider will fly, and Pern will be changed forever.

Since Lessa and Ramoth, her golden queen dragon, traveled into the past to bring forward a small army of dragons and riders to save their world from deadly alien spores, fear and desperation have spread across the land. But while the dragonriders struggle with threats both human and otherworldly, a young rider named F’nor and his brown dragon, Canth, hatch a bold plan to destroy the alien scourge at its source—the baleful Red Star that fills the heavens and promises doom to all.

Never in the history of Pern has there been a dragon like Ruth. Mocked by other dragons for his small size and pure white color, Ruth is smart, brave, and loyal—qualities that he shares with his rider, the young Lord Jaxom. Unfortunately, Jaxom is also looked down upon by his fellow lords, and by other riders as well. His dreams of joining the dragonriders in defending Pern are dismissed. What else can Jaxom and Ruth do but strike out on their own, pursuing in secret all they are denied? But in doing so, the two friends will find themselves facing a desperate choice—one that will push their bond to the breaking point . . . and threaten the future of Pern itself.

When a passenger check-in desk at London's Heathrow Airport disappears in a ball of orange flame, the explosion is deemed an act of God. But which god, wonders holistic detective Dirk Gently? What god would be hanging around Heathrow trying to catch the 3:37 to Oslo? And what has this to do with Dirk's latest--and late-- client, found only this morning with his head revolving atop the hit record "Hot Potato"? Amid the hostile attentions of a stray eagle and the trauma of a very dirty refrigerator, super-sleuth Dirk Gently will once again solve the mysteries of the universe...

Life: A User's Manual is an unclassified masterpiece, a sprawling compendium as encyclopedic as Dante's Commedia and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and, in its break with tradition, as inspiring as Joyce's Ulysses. Perec's spellbinding puzzle begins in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris where, chapter by chapter, room by room, like an onion being peeled, an extraordinary rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary. From the confessions of a racing cyclist to the plans of an avenging murderer, from a young ethnographer obsessed with a Sumatran tribe to the death of a trapeze artist, from the fears of an ex-croupier to the dreams of a sex-change pop star to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate pastime, Life is a manual of human irony, portraying the mixed marriages of fortunes, passions and despairs, betrayals and bereavements, of hundreds of lives in Paris and around the world.

But the novel in more than an extraordinary range of fictions; it is a closely observed account of life and experience. The apartment block's one hundred rooms are arranged in a magic square, and the book as a whole is peppered with a staggering range of literary puzzles and allusions, acrostics, problems of chess and logic, crosswords, and mathematical formulae. All are there for the reader to solve in the best tradition of the detective novel.

Set in seventeenth-century Poland, The Slave tells the poignant story of Jacob, a young Talmudic scholar sold into slavery after the Chmielnicki massacres. Jacob, a slave and cowherd in a Polish village high in the mountains, falls in love with Wanda, his master's daughter.

Even after he is ransomed, he finds he can't live without her, and the two escape together to a distant Jewish community. Racked by his consciousness of sin in taking a Gentile wife and by the difficulties of concealing her identity, Jacob nonetheless stands firm as the violence of the era threatens to destroy the ill-fated couple.

The internationally renowned novel about the life and death of Jesus Christ. Hailed as a masterpiece by critics worldwide, The Last Temptation of Christ is a monumental reinterpretation of the Gospels that brilliantly fleshes out Christ’s Passion. This literary rendering of the life of Jesus Christ has courted controversy since its publication by depicting a Christ far more human than the one seen in the Bible. He is a figure who is gloriously divine but earthy and human, a man like any other—subject to fear, doubt, and pain.

In elegant, thoughtful prose Nikos Kazantzakis, one of the greats of modern literature, follows this Jesus as he struggles to live out God’s will for him, powerfully suggesting that it was Christ’s ultimate triumph over his flawed humanity, when he gave up the temptation to run from the cross and willingly laid down his life for mankind, that truly made him the venerable redeemer of men.

The long awaited sequel to Gene Wolfe’s four-volume classic, The Book of the New Sun. We return to the world of Severian, now the Autarch of Urth, as he leaves the planet on one of the huge spaceships of the alien Hierodules to travel across time and space to face his greatest test: to become the legendary New Sun or die.

The strange, rich, original spaceship scenes give way to travels in time, wherein Severian revisits times and places which fill in parts of the background of the four-volume work. This will thrill and intrigue particularly all readers of the earlier books.

But The Urth of the New Sun is an independent structure all of a piece, an integral masterpiece to shelve beside the classics, one itself.

Mere Christianity is C.S. Lewis's forceful and accessible doctrine of Christian belief. First heard as informal radio broadcasts and then published as three separate books - The Case for Christianity, Christian Behavior, and Beyond Personality - Mere Christianity brings together what Lewis saw as the fundamental truths of the religion.

Rejecting the boundaries that divide Christianity's many denominations, C.S. Lewis finds a common ground on which all those who have Christian faith can stand together, proving that "at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks the same voice."

Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.

Orphaned siblings create a macabre secret world for themselves in this “irresistibly readable” novel by the New York Times-bestselling author (The New York Review of Books).

This “powerful and disconcerting” novel by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Children Act and Atonement (The Daily Telegraph) tells the story of a dying family who live in a dying part of the city.

A father of four children decides, in an effort to make his garden easier to control, to pave it over. In the process, he has a heart attack and dies, leaving the cement garden unfinished and the children to the care of their mother. Soon after, the mother too dies and the children, fearful of being separated by social services, decide to cover up their parents’ deaths: they bury their mother in the cement garden.

The story is told from the point of view of Jack, one of the sons, who is entering adolescence with all of its attendant curiosity and appetites. Julie, the eldest, is almost a grown woman. Sue is rather bookish and observes all that goes on around her. And Tom is the youngest and the baby of the lot. The children seem to manage in this perverse setting rather well—until Julie brings home a boyfriend who threatens their secret by asking too many questions.

“[A] beautiful but disturbing novel.”—The AV Club
“McEwan’s evocative detail and perfect British prose lend a genteel decorum to the death and decay that surround the family.”—The New Yorker

Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for twenty-eight years—and it shows: in their quarrels, in their routines, in their ability to tolerate with affection each other’s eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an irrepressible optimist, wants nothing more than to fix her son’s broken marriage. Ira is infuriatingly practical, a man “who should have married Ann Landers.”

What begins as a day trip to a funeral becomes an adventure in the unexpected. As Maggie and Ira navigate the riotous twists and turns, they intersect with an assorted cast of eccentrics—and rediscover the magic of the road called life and the joy of having somebody next to you to share the ride . . . bumps and all.

The Lady in the Lake is a thrilling novel by the master of hardboiled crime fiction, Raymond Chandler. It features the iconic private detective Philip Marlowe in his fourth novel appearance.

Marlowe is hired to investigate the case of two missing wives—one belonging to a wealthy man and the other to a man of modest means. As he delves deeper into the mystery, he uncovers a web of deceit, Mexican divorces, gigolos, and possibly a murder.

Throughout the investigation, Marlowe remains characteristically detached, realizing that he is not paid to care, yet drawn into the intrigue and danger that surrounds him. The narrative is peppered with Chandler's signature witty dialogue and vivid descriptions, making it a captivating read.

This novel is a staple of the noir genre, filled with suspense and twists that keep readers on the edge of their seats. A true classic that explores the depths of human nature and the complexities of truth and deception.

In a rolling sea off the coast of South America, a target disappears in a puff of green light. In the Soviet hills of Dushanbe near the Afghanistan border, an otherworldly array of pillars and domes rises into the night. To the two greatest nations on earth, no contest is more urgent than the race to build the first Star Wars missile defense system.

No one knows this more than the two men charged with assessing the Soviets' capabilities: Colonel Mikhail Filitov of the Soviet Union, an old-line warrior distrusted by the army's new inner circle of technocrats, and CIA analyst Jack Ryan, hero of the Red October affair.

Each must use all his craft to arrive at the truth, but Filitov gets there first — and that's when all hell breaks loose. Because Filitov, code-named Cardinal, is America's highest agent in the Kremlin, and he is about to be betrayed to the KGB. His rescue could spell the difference between peace and war, and it is up to Jack Ryan to accomplish it — if he can.

In a breathtaking sequence of hunter and hunted, Filitov's life, and Ryan's, and that of the world itself, literally hang in the balance.

An American Childhood is the electrifying memoir of the wide-eyed and unconventional upbringing that influenced the lifetime love of nature and the stunning writing career of Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard. From her mother's boundless energy to her father's low-budget horror movies, jokes, and lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away, the events of Dillard's 1950s Pittsburgh childhood loom larger than life.

An American Childhood fizzes with playful observations and sparkling prose, illuminating the seemingly ordinary and yet always thrilling, dizzying moments of a childhood and adolescence lived fearlessly. This poignant and vivid memoir captures the hearts of readers across the country, resonating with anyone who has ever recalled with longing playing baseball on an endless summer afternoon, caring for a pristine rock collection, or knowing in your heart that a book was written just for you.

As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Brian Weiss was astonished and skeptical when one of his patients began recalling past-life traumas that seemed to hold the key to her recurring nightmares and anxiety attacks. His skepticism was eroded, however, when she began to channel messages from the space between lives, which contained remarkable revelations about Dr. Weiss' family and his dead son. Using past-life therapy, he was able to cure the patient and embark on a new, more meaningful phase of his own career.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid....He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. This is the Code of the Private Eye as defined by Raymond Chandler in his 1944 essay 'The Simple Act of Murder.' Such a man was Philip Marlowe, private eye, an educated, heroic, streetwise, rugged individualist and the hero of Chandler's first novel, The Big Sleep. This work established Chandler as the master of the 'hard-boiled' detective novel, and his articulate and literary style of writing won him a large audience, which ranged from the man in the street to the most sophisticated intellectual.

A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.