On her twelfth birthday, Sierva Maria - the only child of adecaying noble family in an eighteenth-century South Americanseaport - is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, sheis brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumblesFather Cayetano Delaura, who has already dreamed about a girl withhair trailing after her like a bridal train. As he tends to herwith holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels somethingshocking begin to occur. He has fallen in love - and it is not longuntil Sierva Maria joins him in his fevered misery. Unsettling andindelible, "Of Love and Other Demons" is an evocative, majestictale of the most universal experiences known to woman and man.

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throngoutside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to MollyLane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's loversin the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive isBritain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is editor ofthe newspaper "The Judge." Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers,too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notoriousright-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days thatfollow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact withconsequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make adisastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to itslimits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life.A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comicnovel, Amsterdam is "as sheerly enjoyable a book as one is likelyto pick up this year" ("The Washington Post Book World").

In this classic novel by John Updike, we return to a characteras compelling and timeless as Rabbit Angstrom: the inimitable HenryBech. Famous for his writer's block, Bech is a Jew adrift in aworld of Gentiles. As he roams from one adventure to the next, heviews life with a blend of wonder and cynicism that will make youlaugh with delight and wince in recognition.

From her humble beginnings as the daughter of a countrysideblacksmith, Emy Lyon went on to claim the undying love of navalhero Admiral Nelson, England’s most famous native son. She servedas model and muse to eighteenth-century Europe’s most renownedartists, and consorted with kings and queens at the royal court ofNaples. Yet she would end her life in disgraced exile, pennilessand alone. In this richly drawn portrait, Flora Fraser maps thespectacular rise and fall of legendary eighteenth-century beautyEmma, Lady Hamilton—as she came to be called—a woman of abundantaffection and overwhelming charm, whose eye for opportunity wasrivaled only by her propensity for overindulgence and scandal.Wonderfully intimate and lavishly detailed, Beloved Emma brings to life the incomparable Lady Hamilton and the politics,passions, and enchantments of her day.

Because of its frank treatment of human sexuality and itsunflinching fatalism, Jude the Obscure aroused such a stormof controversy upon its publication in 1895 that, partly inresponse, Thomas Hardy abandoned the art of novel-writingaltogether and devoted the rest of his life to poetry. Though wehave come a long way in our social attitudes in the ensuingcentury, nothing about Hardy's masterpiece has lost its power toshock us and disturb our dreams.

In a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacherGeorge Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone withhis teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his songrow and change as he himself begins to lost touch with his life.Interwoven with the myth of Chiron, the noblest centaur, and hisown relationship to Prometheus, The Centaur one of John Updike'smost brilliant and unusual novels.

In this powerfully affecting Flaubert's Parrot gives readers abrilliant take on the deceptions that make up the quiveringsubstrata of erotic love. "An interplay of serious thought anddazzling wit. . . . It's moving, it's funny, it's frightening . . .fiction at its best."--New York Times Book Review.

Phaedra is consumed with passion for Hippolytus, her stepson.Believing her husband dead, she confesses her love to him and isrebuffed. When her husband returns alive, Phaedra convinces himthat it was Hippolytus who attempted to seduce her. In hisinterpretation, Racine replaced the stylized tragedy withhuman-scale characters and actions. Introduction by RichardWilbur.

A New Translation and Afterword by Maureen Freely Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detectivenovel–loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for herex-husband or Cel?l, a popular newspaper columnist? But Cel?l, too,seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himselfassuming the enviable Cel?l's identity, wearing his clothes,answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursuesevery conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keepschanging, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fearthe worst. With its cascade of beguiling stories about Istanbul, The BlackBook is a brilliantly unconventional mystery, and a provocativemeditation on identity. For Turkish literary readers it is thecherished cult novel in which Orhan Pamuk found his original voice,but it has largely been neglected by English-language readers. Now,in Maureen Freely’s beautiful new translation, they, too, mayencounter all its riches.

Called the greatest of short story writer, Anton Chekhov changedthe genre itself with his spare, impressionistic depictions ofRussian life and the human condition. Now, thirty of his best talesfrom the major periods of his creative life are available in thisoutstanding one volume edition. Included are Chekhov'scharacteristically brief, evocative early pieces such as "TheHuntsman" from 1885, which brilliantly conveys the complex textureof two lives during a meeting on a summer's day. Four years later,Chekhov produced the tour de force "A Boring Story" (1889), thepenetrating and caustic self-analysis of a dying professor ofmedicine. Dark irony, social commentary, and symbolism mark thestories that follow, particularly "Ward No. 6" (1892), where thetables turn on the director of a mental hospital and make him aninmate. Here, too, is one of Chekhov's best -known stories. "TheLady with the Little Dog" (1899), a look at illicit love, as wellas his own favorite among his stories, "The Student," a movingpiece about

Eight Neanderthals encounter another race of beings likethemselves, yet strangely different. This new race, Homo sapiens,fascinating in their skills and sophistication, terrifying in theircruelty, sense of guilt, and incipient corruption, spell doom forthe more gentle folk whose world they will inherit. Golding, authorof Lord of the Flies, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature.

I Married a Communist is the story of the rise and fall of IraRingold, a big American roughneck who begins life as a teenageditch-digger in 1930s Newark, becomes a big-time 1940s radio star,and is destroyed, as both a performer and a man, in the McCarthywitchhunt of the 1950s. In his heyday as a star--and as a zealous,bullying supporter of "progressive" political causes--Ira marriesHollywood's beloved silent-film star, Eve Frame. Their glamoroushoneymoon in her Manhattan townhouse is shortlived, however, and itis the publication of Eve's scandalous bestselling expose thatidentifies him as "an American taking his orders from Moscow." Inthis story of cruelty, betrayal, and revenge spilling over into thepublic arena from their origins in Ira's turbulent personal life,Philip Roth--who "Commonweal" calls the "master chronicler of theAmerican twentieth century--has written a brilliant fictionalprotrayal of that treacherous postwar epoch when the anti-Communistfever not only infected national politics but tra

Marcel Proust （1871-1922） spent the last fourteen years of his life writing A la recherche du temps perdu. It is an intimate epic, an excavation of the self, and a comedy of manners by turns and all at once. Proust is the twentieth century's Dante, presenting us with a unique, unsettling picture of ourselves as jealous lovers and unmitigated snobs, frittering our lives away, with only the hope of art as a possible salvation. He offers us a form of redemption for a sober and secular age. Scott Moncrieff's delightful translation was for many years the only access to Proust in English. A labour of love that took him nearly as many years as Proust spent writing the original. Moncrieff's translation strives to capture the extraordinary blend of muscular analysis with poetic reverie that typifies Proust's style. It remains a justly famous classic of translation.

"It is, quite simply, Updike's best novel yet." NEWSWEEK Adeftly satirical portrait of life and love in a suburban town asonly Updike can paint it. "From the Paperback edition."

JOHN UPDIKE IS "A STYLIST OF THE HIGHEST ORDER, capable ofilluminating the sublime in the mundane, thereby elevating all ofhuman experience."--Chicago Tribune Toward the End of Time "is the journal of a 66-year-old man, BenTurnbull . . . [which] reveals not only the world but thewanderings of his wits. . . . So what if he jumps from a UnitedStates in the next century, disintegrating after a war with China,to ancient Egypt, or to virtual reality? So what if charactersappear and disappear like phantoms in a dream? . . . Turnbull'sjournal is like Walden gone haywire. . . . If Ben's ruthlessness isevenhanded, so is his alarming intelligence; it falls on everyscene, person, object, and thought in the book, giving it an eerieambiance." --The New York Times Book Review "A BOOK AIMED NOT TO RESOLVE BUT TO AROUSE A READER'S WONDER . .. Vintage Updike: marital angst worked out against the chillybackdrop of privilege, rendered with a lyricism and insight and eyefor detail reminiscent of the work of Jane Austen." --Th

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Introduction by Alfred KazanFirst published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M.Forster recognition as a major writer. At its heart lie twofamilies--the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the culturedand idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent HelenSchlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, aseries of events is sparked--some very funny, some verytragic--that results in a dispute over who will inherit HowardsEnd, the Wilcoxes' charming country home. As much about the clashbetween individual wills as the clash between the sexes and theclasses, Howards End is a novel whose central tenet, "Onlyconnect," remains a powerful pre*ion for modern life. "Fromthe Trade Paperback edition."

Eleanor Cahn, a professor of literature, wife of a preeminentsurgeon, and devoted mother of two, is in Paris to present a paperon Anna Karenina. A chance encounter brings to the surface passionsshe has suppressed for years. As The Life Room unfolds, we learnthe secrets of her erotic past: ethereal William, her high schoolboyfriend; her role as muse to troubled painter Adam; her marriageto loyal, steady Michael. On her return to New York, Eleanor'scharged attraction to another man takes on a life of its own,threatening to destroy everything she has. Jill Bialosky hascreated a fresh, piercingly real heroine who must choose betweenresponsibility and desire.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Albert Camus's spare, laconicmasterpiece about a Frenchman who murders an Arab in Algeria isfamous for having diagnosed, with a clarity almost scientific, thatcondition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion thatcharacterized so much of twentieth-century life. Possessing boththe force of a parable and the excitement of a perfectly executedthriller, "The Stranger" is the work of one of the most engaged andintellectually alert writers of the past century. Translated byMatthew Ward

Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, orArdor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the gloriousculmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love storytroubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale,epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of thehistory of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor isno less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensiveand ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under theanagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.

Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkablenovels that explore social class in America and the inner lives ofyoung Americans. In Expensive People, Oates takes a provocative andsuspenseful look at the roiling secrets of America's affluentsuburbs. Set in the late 1960s, this first-person confession isnarrated by Richard Everett, a precocious and obese boy who seeshimself as a minor character in the alarming drama unfolding aroundhim. Fascinated by yet alienated from his attractive, self-absorbedparents and the privileged world they inhabit, Richard incisivelyanalyzes his own mismanaged childhood, his pretentious privateschooling, his "successful-executive" father, and his elusivemother. In an act of defiance and desperation, eleven-year-oldRichard strikes out in a way that presages the violence ofever-younger Americans in the turbulent decades to come. A NationalBook Award finalist, "Expensive People" is a stunning combinationof social satire and gothic horror. "You cannot put this novel a

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a Wizarding classic, first came to Muggle readers’ attention in the book known as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Now, thanks to Hermione Granger’s new translation from the ancient runes, we present this stunning edition with an introduction, notes, and illustrations by J. K. Rowling, and extensive commentary by Albus Dumbledore. Never before have Muggles been privy to these richly imaginative tales: “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot,” “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart,” “Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump,” and of course, “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” But not only are they the equal of fairy tales we now know and love, reading them gives new insight into the world of Harry Potter. The stories are accompanied by delightful pen-and-ink illustrations by Ms. Rowling herself, featuring a still-life frontispiece for each one. Professor Dumbledore’s commentary—apparently written some eighteen months befor

Adorno's frank and open challenge to directness, and the avoidance of language that 'gives itself over either to the market, to balderdash, or to the predominating vulgarity', is as timely today as it ever has been.