Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate s least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times.
As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself " a rakeamong scholars, a scholar among rakes." Little does he realize howprophetic this motto will be-- or how damning. For as Philip Rothfollows Kepesh from the domesticity of childhood into the vastwilderness of erotic possibility, from a me nage a trois in Londonto the throes of loneliness in New York, he creates a supremelyintelligent, affecting, and often hilarious novel about the dilemmaof pleasure: where we seek it; why we flee it; and how we struggleto make a truce between dignity and desire.
The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romanticexpressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and redroses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful incommunicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in thefoster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and heronly connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings.Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go,Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through theflowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with amysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in herlife. And when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from herpast, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for asecond chance at happiness.
The hero of Charlotte Bronte's first novel escapes a drearyclerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher inBelgium. There, however, his entanglement with the sensuous butmanipulative Zoraide Reuter, complicates his affections for apenniless girl who is both teacher and pupil in Reuter's school.Also included in this edition is Emma, Charlotte Bronte's last,unfinished novel. Both works are drawn from the original Clarendontexts. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable editionof this title.
Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubbyLondon bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rentedroom, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the "moneyworld" of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind ofsecurity symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits inevery middle-class British window.
A national bestseller, Snobbery examines the discriminatingqualities in all of us. With dishy detail, Joseph Epstein skewersall manner of elitism in contemporary America. He offers his archobservations of the new footholds of snobbery: food, fashion,high-achieving children, schools, politics, being with-it,name-dropping, and much more. Clever, incisive, and immenselyentertaining, Snobberyexplores the shallows and depths of statusand taste -- with enviable results.
In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be amodel cou-ple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young childrenand a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too youngand started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. AndApril never saw herself as a housewife.Yet they have always livedon the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner.But now that certainty is about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, RichardYates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritualbirthright, betraying not only each other, but their bestselves.
Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies avision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dreamcountry, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death bybeheading for andquot; gnostical turpitude.andquot; an imaginarycrime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his last days inan absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers. anexecutioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by hisin-laws. who lug their furniture with them into his cell. WhenCincinnatus is led out to be executed. he simply wills hisexecutioners out of existence: they disappear, along with the wholeworld they inhabit.
The novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterousproprietor of a men's clothing emporium store. Ruddy,self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnantto his exquisite but cold middle-class wife Martha. Attracted tohis money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs fortheir nephew instead, the myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin,Franz soon repays his uncle's condescension in his aunt's bed.
The bestselling tale of Romanov intrigue from the author of"The Kitchen Boy" Book groups and historical fiction buffs havemade Robert Alexanderas two previous novels word-of-mouth favoritesand national bestsellers. Set against a backdrop of ImperialRussiaas twilight, "The Romanov Bride" has the same enduringappeal. The Grand Duchess Elisavyetaas story begins like a fairytaleaa German princess renowned for her beauty and kind heartmarries the Grand Duke Sergei of Russia and enters the Romanovaslavish court. Her husband, however, rules his wife as he doesMoscowawith a cold, hard fist. And, after a peaceful demonstrationbecomes a bloodbath, the fires of the revolution link Elisavyetaasdestiny to that of Pavelaa young Bolshevikaforever.
Newlyweds Jennifer and Matt really love each other. They never lived together before they were married-and so both were shocked to learn all the little things that go with living with one's spouse. Who knew that in his family, Saturdays were for tackling chores, while in her family Saturdays were for sleeping late? Now, two nice people from nice families are finding out that they do everything differently-and suddenly, they're in the ring with gloves on! Week by week, the fights take both of them by surprise-they never meant to be the kind of couple that acts this way. Simultaneously, though, Jennifer and Matt are building something strong, knocking down old walls of habit and finding the strong foundation of a love that will see them through.This is one year in a marriage-the beginning of a lifetime.
From the author of "Chatterton" and "Shakespeare: A Biography"comes a gripping novel set in London that re-imagines an infamous19th-century Shakespeare forgery. Charles and Mary Lamb, who willin time achieve lasting fame as the authors of "Tales fromShakespeare for Children," are still living at home, caring fortheir dotty and maddening parents. Reading Shakespeare is thesiblings' favorite reprieve, and they are delighted when anambitious young bookseller comes into their lives claiming topossess a 'lost' Shakespearea play. Soon all of London is eagerlyanticipating opening night of a star-studded production of the playnot knowing that they have all been duped by charlatan and afraud.
From the imagination of one of the most brilliant writers of ourtime and bestselling author of The Life of Thomas More , anovel that playfully imagines how the "modern" era might appear toa thinker seventeen centuries hence. At the turn of the 38th century, London's greatest orator, Plato,is known for his lectures on the long, tumultuous history of hisnow tranquil city. Plato focuses on the obscure and confusing erathat began in A.D. 1500, the Age of Mouldwarp. His subjects includeSigmund Freud's comic masterpiece "Jokes and Their Relation to theSubconscious," and Charles D.'s greatest novel, "The Origin ofSpecies." He explores the rituals of Mouldwarp, and the later cultof webs and nets that enslaved the population. By the end of hislecture series, however, Plato has been drawn closer to the subjectof his fascination than he could ever have anticipated. At oncefunny and erudite, The Plato Papers is a smart andentertaining look at how the future is imagined, the presentabsorbed, and the past misrepresent
With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poetMary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter andrhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems fromRobert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts anextraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space."Stunning" (Los Angeles Times). Index.
Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965--thirty years after itsoriginal publication-- Despair is the wickedly inventive andrichly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfectcrime--his own murder.
Anchor proudly presents a new omnibus volume of threenovels--previously published separately by Anchor--by NaguibMahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Assembled here isa collection of Mahfouz's artful meditations on the vicissitudes ofpost-Revolution Egypt. Diverse in style and narrative technique,together they render a rich, nuanced, and universally resonantvision of modern life in the Middle East. The Beggar is a complex tale of alienation and despair. In theaftermath of Nasser's revolution, a man sacrifices his work andfamily to a series of illicit love affairs. Released from jail inpost-Revolutionary times, the hero ofThe Thief and the Dogs blamesan unjust society for his ill fortune, eventually bringing himselfto destruction. Autumn Quail is a tale of moral responsibility,isolation, and political downfall about a corrupt bureaucrat who isone of the early victims of the purge after the 1952 revolution inEgypt.
Robert Prentice has spent all his life attempting to escape hismother's stifling presence. His mother, Alice, for her part,struggles with her own demons as she attempts to realize her dreamsof prosperity and success as a sculptor. As Robert goes off tofight in Europe, hoping to become his own man, Richard Yatesportrays a soldier in the depths of war striving to live up to hisheroic ideals. With haunting clarity, Yates crafts an unforgettableportrait of two people who cannot help but hope for more even aslife challenges them both.
A dying man cautiously unravels the mysteries of memory and creation. Vadim is a Russian emigre who, like Nabokov, is a novelist, poet and critic. There are threads linking the fictional hero with his creator as he reconstructs the images of his past from young love to his serious illness.
Inspired by the long-standing affair between Frieda, Lawrence'sGerman wife, and an Italian peasant who eventually became her thirdhusband, Lady Chatterley's Lover is the story of ConstanceChatterley, who, while trapped in an unhappy marriage to anaristocratic mine owner whose war wounds have left him paralyzedand impotent, has an affair with Mellors, the gamekeeper. FrankKermode calls the book Lawrence's "great achievement" and Anais Nindescribes it as "artistically . . . his best novel." This ModernLibrary Paperback Classics edition includes the tran* of thejudge's decision in the famous 1959 obscenity trial that allowedthe novel to be published in the United States.
The real Life of Sebastian Knight is a perversely magicalliterary detective story--subtle, intricate, leading to atantalizing climax--about the mysterious life of a famouswriter.
Kafka's first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story ofthe young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing sexualmisadventure, finds himself "packed off to America" by his parents.Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity,young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzyingreversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures. Although Kafka never visited America, images of its vastlandscape, dangers, and opportunities inspired this saga of the"golden land." Here is a startlingly modern, fantastic andvisionary tale of America "as a place no one has yet seen, in ahistorical period that can't be identified," writes E. L. Doctorowin his new foreword. "Kafka made his first novel from his ownmind's mythic elements," Doctorow explains, "and the research datathat caught his eye were bent like light rays in a field ofgravity."
