A man went to knock at the king's door and said, Give me aboat. The king's house had many other doors, but this was the doorfor petitions. Since the king spent all his time sitting at thedoor for favors (favors being offered to the king, you understand),whenever he heard someone knocking at the door for petitions, hewould pretend not to hear . . ." Why the petitioner required aboat, where he was bound for, and who volunteered to crew for him,the reader will discover in this delightful fable, a philosophiclove story worthy of Swift or Voltaire.

Eugene wants to get on in the world. So he has come to Paris,where the streets teem with chancers, criminals and social climbers- and everyone is out for what they can get. When he finds a placeto stay at a shabby boarding house, he sees a potential plan tomake a fortune: the two beautiful, aristocratic women whomysteriously come at night to visit the lonely old lodger Goriot.Could they bring him the status and acceptance he craves? In thecity nothing is as it seems though. Soon Eugene gets out of hisdepth in a world of greed and obsession that he could never haveimagined. One that can only end in terrible tragedy.

Senhor Jose is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry,where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. Amiddle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond thecertificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are hisdaily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of ananonymous young woman, something happens to him. Obsessed, SenhorJose sets off to follow the thread that may lead him to thewoman-but as he gets closer, he discovers more about her, and abouthimself, than he would ever have wished. The loneliness of people'slives, the effects of chance, the discovery of love-all coalesce inthis extraordinary novel that displays the power and art of JoseSaramago in brilliant form.

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by G. H.McWilliam

GBF Discussion; Guide online Introduction by CynthiaOzick.

From the moment of its publication, The Apprentice establisheditself as an "instant classic" (Anthony Bourdain). With sparklingwit and occasional pathos, the man whom Julia Child has called "thebest chef in America" tells the captivating story of his rise froma terrified thirteen-year-old toiling in an Old World Frenchkitchen to an American superstar who ad-libbed and demonstratedculinary wizardry as the cameras rolled and changed Americantastes. The Apprentice is an engrossing tale of the modern cookingscene and how it came to be, told from an engaging personalperspective. The story begins in prewar France, with young Jacquescutting his teeth in his mother's small restaurants. Moving toParis, it offers tantalizing glimpses of Sartre and Genet. In hisrole as Charles de Gaulle's personal chef, Jacques witnesseshistory being made from behind the swinging door of the kitchen. InAmerica, he rejects an offer to be chef in the Kennedy White House,choosing instead to work at Howard Johnson's. He then proceeds

In this exuberant book, the best-selling author Natalie Angierdistills the scientific canon to the absolute essentials,delivering an entertaining and inspiring one-stop scienceeducation. Angier interviewed a host of scientists, posing thesimple question "What do you wish everyone knew about your field?"The Canon provides their answers, taking readers on a joyridethrough the fascinating fundamentals of the incredible world aroundus and revealing how they are relevant to us every day. Angierproves a rabble-rousing, wisecracking, deeply committed tour guidein her irresistible exploration of the scientific process and thebasic concepts of physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology,cellular and molecular biology, geology, and astronomy. Evenscience-phobes will find her passion infectious as she strives "tomake the invisible visible, the distant neighborly, the ineffableaffable."

Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision seen through the eyesof the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the UnitedStates), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible resultsof today's follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it istransformed by Vonnegut's pen into hilarious farce (a finalslapstick that may be the Almighty's joke on us all.) "Vonnegut'songoing puppet show...that fabulous is reborn."--John Updike "Bothfunny and sad...just about perfect "--"Los AngelesTimes""Imaginative and hilarious...a brilliant vision of ourwrecked, wacked-out future."--"Hartford Courant "*"The New YorkTimes"

The author of Leviathan returns with a dazzling, picaresque,new novel in which Walter Claireborne Rawley, now an octogenarian,recounts his extraordinary vaudevillian adventures as "Walt theWonder Boy" in 1924. "One hears every page of this novel, and seesit as well".--Washington Post.

"You see, even after all these years, I wonder if you reallyloved me."Vanessa and Virginia are sisters, best friends, bitterrivals, and artistic collaborators. As children, they fight for theattention of their overextended mother, their brilliant butdifficult father, and their adored brother, Thoby. As young women,they support each other through a series of devastating deaths,then emerge in bohemian Bloomsbury, bent on creating new lives andgroundbreaking works of art. Through everything--marriage, lovers,loss, madness, children, success and failure--the sisters remainthe closest of co-conspirators. But they also betray each other.Inthis lyrical, impressionistic account, written as a love letter andan elegy from Vanessa to Virginia, Sellers imagines her way intothe heart of the lifelong relationship between the writer VirginiaWoolf and the painter Vanessa Bell. With sensitivity and fidelityto what is known of both lives, Sellers has created a powerfulportrait of sibling rivalry.

胖查理在伦敦过着正常的生活，当他给住在美国、久已疏远的父亲打电话，请他来参加自己的婚礼时，却发现父亲刚刚过世了。胖查理去佛罗里达参加了父亲的葬礼，于是惊心动魄的故事逐一上演…… 因为他发现两件事：，他的父亲是化作人形的蜘蛛神阿纳西，一个来自非洲的骗子之神；第二，他还有个叫“蜘蛛”的兄弟继承了父亲的部分神力。蜘蛛拥有胖查理所没有的一切优点：幸运、快活、充满自信，还有父亲的如簧巧舌和追求女人的天份。他的出现把胖查理有条不紊的生活被蜘蛛搅得天翻地覆，他偷走了胖查理的工作、未婚妻，甚至是家中好的房间，更糟的是，他还害胖查理被警方当作挪用公款和谋杀客户的嫌疑犯…… 胖查理身陷囹圄，只得回到佛罗里达，试图摆脱兄弟的干扰。他借助于魔法，进入了图腾动物神祗们居住的灵魂世界，但故

Jane Austen's debut in our award-winning graphic-coverseries. Written during Jane Austen's race against failing health,Persuasion tells the story of Anne Elliot, a woman who-attwenty-seven-is no longer young and has few romantic prospects.Eight years ago, she was persuaded by her friend Lady Russell tobreak off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome navalcaptain with neither fortune nor rank. When Anne and Frederick meetagain, he has acquired both, but still feels the sting of herrejection. A brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, Austen'slast completed novel is also a movingly told love story tinged withthe heartache of missed opportunities.

Starting with a rush-hour subway ride to South Station inBoston to catch the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, Theroux winds upon the poky, wandering Old Patagonian Express steam engine, whichcomes to a halt in a desolate land of cracked hills and thornbushes. But with Theroux the view along the way is what matters:the monologuing Mr. Thornberry in Costa Rica, the bogus priest ofCali, and the blind Jorge Luis Borges, who delights in havingTheroux read Robert Louis Stevenson to him.

Last year, awareness about global warming reached a tippingpoint. Now one of the most dynamic writers and one of the mostrespected scientists in the field of climate change offer the firstconcise guide to both the problems and the solutions. Guiding uspast a blizzard of information and misinformation, Gabrielle Walkerand Sir David King explain the science of warming, the mostcutting-edge technological solutions from small to large, and thenational and international politics that will affect our efforts.While there have been many other books about the problem of globalwarming, none has addressed what we can and should do about it soclearly and persuasively, with no spin, no agenda, and noexaggeration. Neither Walker nor King is an activist or politician,and theirs is not a generic green call to arms. Instead theypropose specific ideas to fix a very specific problem. Mostimportant, they offer hope: This is a serious issue, perhaps themost serious that humanity has ever faced. But we can still dosomething about

Peter Pan, the "boy who would not grow up," originally appearedas a baby living a magical life among birds and fairies in J.M.Barrie’s sequence of stories, Peter Pan in KensingtonGardens . His later role as flying boy hero was brought to thestage by Barrie in the beloved play Peter Pan , which openedin 1904 and became the novel Peter and Wendy in 1911. In anarrative filled with vivid characters, epic battles, pirates,fairies, and fantastic imagination, Peter Pan’s adventures capturethe spirit of childhood— and of rebellion against the role ofadulthood in conventional society. This edition includes the novel and the stories, as well as anintroduction by eminent scholar Jack Zipes. Looking at the manbehind Peter Pan and sifting through the psychologicalinterpretations that have engaged many a critic, Zipes explores thelarger cultural and literary contexts in which we should appreciateBarrie’s enduring creation and shows why Peter Pan is a worknot for children but for adults seeking to reconnect

After a nine-year absence, the fiercely resourceful NativeAmerican guide Jane Whitefield is back, in the latest superbthriller by award-winning author Thomas Perry. For more than adecade, Jane pursued her unusual profession: "I'm a guide . . . Ishow people how to go from places where somebody is trying to killthem to other places where nobody is." Then she promised herhusband she would never work again, and settled in to live a happy,quiet life as Jane McKinnon, the wife of a surgeon in Amherst, NewYork. But when a bomb goes off in the middle of a hospitalfundraiser, Jane finds herself face to face with the cause of theexplosion: a young pregnant girl who has been tracked across thecountry by a team of hired hunters. That night, regardless of whatshe wants or the vow she's made to her husband, Jane must come backto transform one more victim into a runner. And her quest forsafety sets in motion a mission that will be a rescue operation--ora chance for revenge.

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily's harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother. --This text refers to the Paperback edition

Disgrace--set in post--apartheid Cape Town and on a remote farm in the Eastern Cape--is deft, lean, quiet, and brutal. A heartbreaking novel about a man and his daughter, Disgrace is a portrait of the new South Africa that is ultimately about grace and love. At fifty--two Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire but lacking passion. An affair with one of his students leaves him jobless and friendless, except for his daughter, Lucy, who works her smallholding with her neighbor, Petrus, an African farmer now on the way to a modest prosperity. David's attempts to relate to Lucy, and to a society with new racial complexities, are disrupted by an afternoon of violence that changes him and his daughter in ways he could never have foreseen. In this wry, visceral, yet strangely tender novel, Coetzee once again tells "truths [that] cut to the bone" (The New York Time Book Review). A finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Awards Coetzee is the only writer to have been awarded

Best-selling novelist Harlan Coben, a master of suspense andcreator of the critically-acclaimed Myron Bolitar series, editsthis latest collection of the must-reads in mysteries from the pastyear.

In Munich, a Jewish scholar is assassinated. In Venice, Mossadagent and art restorer Gabriel Allon receives the news, puts downhis brushes, and leaves immediately. And at the Vatican, the newpope vows to uncover the truth about the church's response to theHolocaust-while a powerful cardinal plots his next move. Now, asAllon follows a trail of secrets and unthinkable deeds, the livesof millions are changed forever-and the life of one man becomesexpendable...