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

The true, declassified account of CIA operative Tony Mendez'sdaring rescue of American hostages from Iran that inspired thecritically-acclaimed film directed by and starring Ben Affleck, andco-starring John Goodman, Alan Arkin, and Bryan Cranston. On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the Americanembassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages,sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics stillreverberating today. But there is a little-known drama connected tothe crisis: six Americans escaped. And a top-level CIA officernamed Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky planto rescue them before they were detected. Disguising himself as a Hollywood producer, and supported by acast of expert forgers, deep cover CIA operatives, foreign agents,and Hollywood special effects artists, Mendez traveled to Tehranunder the guise of scouting locations for a fake science fictionfilm called Argo. While pretending to find the perfect filmbackdrops, Mendez and a

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"

"Whether Alice Munro's The Beggar Maid is a collection of stories or a new kind of novel I'm not quite sure, but whatever it is, it's wonderful. The psychological precision...is a delight, and the startling twists -- the unexpected leaps in time, the transformation of familiar characters -- they make the book what books ought to be, a little wild, a little mysterious." -- John Gardner In this exhilarating series of interweaving stories, Alice Munro re-creates the evolving bond -- one that is both constricting and empowering -- between two women in the coupe of almost forty years. One is Flo, practical, suspicious of other people's airs, at times dismayingly vulgar. The other is Rose, Flo's stepdaughter, a clumsy, shy girl who somehow-in spite of Flo's ridicule and ghastly warnings -- leaves the small town she grew up in to achieve her own equivocal success in the larger world. "The stories are absolutely wonderful-every word she writes is interesting." -- Alice Adams "The best stories of the year." -- The

Orwell draws on his years of experience in India to tell thisstory of the waning days of British imperialism. A handful ofEnglishmen living in a settlement in Burma congregate in theEuropean Club, drink whiskey, and argue over an impending order toadmit a token Asian.

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

"Drinking a toast to the visible world, his impendingdisappearance from it be damned." That's how John Updike describesan elderly character in his remarkable final collection. He mighthave been talking about himself. In My Father's Tears, Updikerevisits his people, places, and themes--Americans in suburbs,cities, and small towns grappling with faith and infidelity--invivid portraits of the aged, people for whom the past has becomeparamount. My Father's Tears is a superb set of tales that is avital and unforgettable farewell.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A LIVING, POWERFULLY PHYSICAL WORK . . .UPDIKE IS A SUPERBLY SKILLFUL WRITER.""-The Wall StreetJournal""WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS UPDIKE Our own king of eruditionhas gone back to the Hamlet story to imagine its inception: itsoffstage pre-story, when Claudius fell in love with his brother'squeen and that first dastardly deed in the garden was set inmotion. Wickedly replete with allusions, weaving the history ofideas with the lustier possibilities of adulterous coupling. . . .There is something delightful about following Updike down thispath, seeing his sentiments and sympathies unfold.""-The BostonGlobe""WITTY . . . FRESH AND MOVING . . . Engrossing enough on itsown terms to stand independently of Shakespeare's play."-"Time" "UPDIKE] HAS MANAGED TO CREATE IN GERTRUDE A GENUINELY COMPELLINGCHARACTER, a woman who is, by turns, vulnerable and outspoken,daring and naive. . . . One of his most sympathetic and persuasivefemale characters.""-The New York Times""BRILLIANT.""-NewRepublic"

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