In the "stifling heat of equatorial Newark," a terrifyingepidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey citywith maiming, paralysis, life-long disability, and even death. Thisis the startling and surprising theme of Roth's wrenching new book:a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect ithas on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and itschildren. At the center of NEMISIS is a vigorous, dutiful, twenty-threeyear old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower andweightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed withhimself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in thewar alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor's dilemmas aspolio begins to ravage his playground--and on the everday realitieshe faces--Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such apestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, thebewilderment, the suffering, and the pain. Moving between the smoldering, malodorous streets of besieg

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Evelyn Waugh's short stories arethe marvelous, concentrated riffs of his comic genius, revealing inminiaturized perfection all the elements that made him the greatestcomic writer of our century. We find in them Waugh's almostsuperhuman technical skill as a writer and his quicksilverattentiveness to the minutiae of human absurdity, as well as hisworldly knowledge, his tenderness, his perceptive compassion, andhis sophisticated, disabused, but nevertheless forceful idealism.The thirty-nine stories collected here include such smallmasterpieces as "Mr. Loveday's Little Outing" and "Scott-King'sModern Europe"; an alternative ending to Waugh's novel "A Handfulof Dust"; a "missing chapter" in the life of Charles Ryder, thehero of "Brideshead Revisited"; and two linked stories, remnants ofan abandoned novel that Waugh considered his best writing. Thisedition contains the original illustrations to "Love Among theRuins," as well as more than thirty graphics produced by the authoras an Ox

The first three books in von Ziegesar's Gossip Girls series are packaged together in this paperback boxed set. Includes "Gossip Girl, You Know You Love Me," and "All I Want Is Everything."

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Franz Kafka's imagination so faroutstripped the forms and conventions of the literary tradition heinherited that he was forced to turn that tradition inside out inorder to tell his splendid, mysterious tales. Scrupulouslynaturalistic on the surface, uncanny in their depths, these storiesrepresent the achieved art of a modern master who had the gift ofmaking our problematic spiritual life palpable and real. Thisedition of his stories includes all his available shorter fictionin a collection edited, arranged, and introduced by GabrielJosipovici in ways that bring out the writer's extraordinary rangeand intensity of vision. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

From the acclaimed author of Conquistador comes this thrillingaccount of one of history’s greatest adventures of discovery. Withcinematic immediacy and meticulous attention to historical detail,here is the true story of a legendary sixteenth-century explorerand his death-defying navigation of the Amazon—river of darkness,pathway to gold. In 1541, the brutal conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and hiswell-born lieutenant Francisco Orellana set off from Quito insearch of La Canela, South America’s rumored Land of Cinnamon, andthe fabled El Dorado, “the golden man.” Driving an enormous retinueof mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, hunting dogs, and otheranimals across the Andes, they watched their proud expedition beginto disintegrate even before they descended into the nightmarishjungle, following the course of a powerful river. Soon hopelesslylost in the swampy labyrinth, their numbers diminishing dailythrough disease, starvation, and Indian attacks, Pizarro andOrellana made a fateful decisi

Spanning a period of almost 50 years, the stories of Henry Jamesrepresent one of the most remarkable feats of sustained literarycreation in modern times -- a body of work that, for sheerrichness, variety, and intensity, is unsurpassed in its genre. Thiscollection includes all the major stories as well as many that areunfamiliar but equally fascinating and memorable.Volume II includesthe magnificent works of James's maturity -- "The Figure in theCarpet", "The Turn of the Screw", "The Beast in the Jungle", amongmany others -- in which the deepening darkness of the author's ownlife casts a tragic but heroic shadow on the themes of hisyouth.

First published in 1938, The Hobbit is a story that "grew inthe telling," and many characters and events in the published bookare completely different from what Tolkien first wrote to readaloud to his young sons as part of their "fireside reads." For thefirst time, The History of the Hobbit reproduces the originalversion of one of literature's most famous stories, and includesmany little-known illustrations and previously unpublished maps forThe Hobbit created by Tolkien himself. Also featured are extensiveannotations and commentaries on the date of composition, howTolkien's professional and early mythological writings influencedthe story, the imaginary geography he created, and how he came torevise the book in the years after publication to accommodateevents in The Lord of the Rings.

"There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before TheLord of the Rings, and the story told in this book is set in thegreat country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: landswhere Treebeard once walked, but that were drowned in the greatcataclysm that ended the First Age of the World. "In that remotetime Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress ofAngband, the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Turinand his sister Nienor unfolded within the shadow of the fear ofAngband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secretcities of the Elves. "Their brief and passionate lives weredominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as thechildren of Hurin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn himto his face. Against them he sent his most formidable servant,Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragonof fire. Into this story of brutal conquest and flight, of foresthiding-places and pursuit, of resistance with lessening hope, theD

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaurDNA has been discovered. Creatures once extinct now roam JurassicPark, soon-to-be opened as a theme park. Until something goeswrong...and science proves a dangeroustoy...."Wonderful...Powerful."THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD "Fromthe Paperback edition."

Harry Bernstein started chronicling his life at the age ofninety-four, after the death of his beloved wife, Ruby. In hisfirst book, The Invisible Wall , he told a haunting story offorbidden love in World War I-era England. Then Bernstein wrote The Dream , the touching tale of his family’s immigrantexperience in Depression-era Chicago and New York. Now Bernsteincompletes the saga with The Golden Willow , a heart-liftingmemoir of his life with Ruby, a romance that lasted nearly seventyyears. They met at a dance at New York’s legendary Webster Hall, fellinstantly and madly in love, and embarked on a rich and rewardinglife together. From their first tiny rented room on the Upper WestSide to their years in Greenwich Village, immersed in the artscene, surrounded by dancers, musicians, and writers, to their lifein the newly burgeoning suburbs, Harry and Ruby pursued theAmerican dream with gusto, much as Harry’s late mother would havewanted. Together, through a depression, a world war, and the McCarthy era

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just inthe figurative sense, not just because he was one of the lastpeople to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to havegiven Hank the final morphine dose that killed him. In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is wracked byaddiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, hismorphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So helives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south sideof San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knifeor gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant,appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc's services, miraculousthings begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist thatnever heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand.Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe,for Hank's angry ghost—who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doingwell. A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of m

Here for the first time, the original, complete Star Warstrilogy in a special 25th anniversary collector's editionhardcover.Twenty-five years after the phenomenon was born, StarWars remains one of the greatest fantasy epics ever told. Here inone collector's edition are the original stories from the firstthree classic films -- Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: The EmpireStrikes Back, and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi -- each a New YorkTimes bestseller with over one million copies in print. Read thesethrilling novels to see where it all began with Luke Skywalker, afarm boy looking for adventure in a galaxy far, far away....

This selection covers the full range of Kipling's shortstories throughout his career, with the subject matter ranging fromthe Indian to the occult and from animals to domestic comedy.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, TheSoul of a New Machine was a bestseller on its first publication in1981. With the touch of an expert thriller writer, Tracy Kidderrecounts the feverish efforts of a team of Data General researchersto create a new 32-bit superminicomputer. A compelling account ofindividual sacrifice and human ingenuity, The Soul of a New Machineendures as the classic chronicle of the computer age and themasterminds behind its technological advances. "A superb book," said Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art ofMotorcycle Maintenance. "All the incredible complexity and chaosand exploitation and loneliness and strange, half-mad beauty ofthis field are honestly and correctly drawn." The Washington PostBook World said, "Kidder has created compelling entertainment. Heoffers a fast, painless, enjoyable means to an initialunderstanding of computers, allowing us to understand thecomplexity of machines we could only marvel at before, and toappreciate the skills

The Tin Drum, one of the great novels of the twentiethcentury, was published in Ralph Manheim's outstanding translationin 1959. It became a runaway bestseller and catapulted its youngauthor to the forefront of world literature. To mark the fiftiethanniversary of the original publication, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,along with Grass's publishers all over the world, is bringing out anew translation of this classic novel. Breon Mitchell, acclaimedtranslator and scholar, has drawn from many sources: from a wealthof detailed scholarship; from a wide range of newly-availablereference works; and from the author himself. The result is atranslation that is more faithful to Grass's style and rhythm,restores omissions, and reflects more fully the complexity of theoriginal work. After fifty years, THE TIN DRUM has, if anything,gained in power and relevance. All of Grass's amazing evocationsare still there, and still amazing: Oskar Matzerath, theindomitable drummer; his grandmother, Anna Koljaiczek; his mother,Agnes;

The Spartans is a compelling narrative that explores theculture and civilization of the most famous "warrior people": theSpartans of ancient Greece, by the world's leading expert in thefield. Sparta has often been described as the original Utopia--aremarkably evolved society whose warrior heroes were forbidden anyother trade, profession, or business. As a people, the Spartanswere the living exemplars of such core values as duty, discipline,the nobility of arms in a cause worth dying for, sacrificing theindividual for the greater good of the community (illustrated bytheir role in the battle of Thermopylae), and the triumph of willover seemingly insuperable obstacles--qualities that today arefrequently believed to signify the ultimate heroism. Paul Cartledgeis the distinguished scholar and historian who has long been seenas the leading international authority on ancient Sparta. He tracesthe evolution of Spartan society--the culture and the people, aswell as the tremendous influence they had on their worl