**DEBUT FICTION** Mary Todd Lincoln is one of history's mostmisunderstood and enigmatic women. The first president's wife to becalled First Lady, she was a political strategist, a supporter ofemancipation, and a mother who survived the loss of three childrenand the assassination of her beloved husband. Yet she also ran herfamily into debt, held seances in the White House, and wascommitted to an insane asylum. In Janis Cooke Newman's debut novel,Mary Todd Lincoln shares the story of her life in her own words.Writing from Bellevue Place asylum, she takes readers from hertempestuous childhood in a slaveholding Southern family through theyears after her husband's death. A dramatic tale filled withpassion and depression, poverty and ridicule, infidelity andredemption, Mary allows us entry into the inner, intimate world ofthis brave and fascinating woman.
Four friends come together in a hot contemporary erotic novelfrom the author of Chain Reaction. Meet the friends: Free spirited Jamie is not one to be tieddown—unless it’s in the bedroom. Caleb is Jamie’s sexuallyadventurous lover who has no desire to domesticate her. Mia isJamie’s naive friend whose sexual fulfillment has depended solelyon her first and only lover. Aidan thinks he knows what Mia wants.That’s because he’s the only man she’s ever gone to, to getit. This weekend, four best friends at the crossroads of theirrelationships have decided to do something different. But as sexualpartners shift, Jamie, Caleb, Mia, and Aidan will discover moreabout themselves and each other than they ever imagined.
Published in 1934, Tender Is the Night was one of the mosttalked-about books of the year. "It's amazing how excellent much ofit is," Ernest Hemingway said to Maxwell Perkins. "I will say now,"John O'Hara wrote Fitzgerald, "Tender Is the Night is in the earlystages of being my favorite book, even more than This Side ofParadise." And Archibald MacLeish exclaimed: "Great God,Scott...You are a fine writer. Believe it -- not me." Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Nightis the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and thestylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant youngpsychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband anddoctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not hisown, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise.A profound study of the romantic concept of character -- lyrical,expansive, and hauntingly evocative -- Tender Is the Night, MabelDodge Luhan remarked, raised F. Scott Fitzgerald to the heights of"a mode
Narrated by a fifteen-year-old girl with a ruthless regard fortruth, The Last Life is a beautifully told novel of lies andghosts, love and honor. Set in colonial Algeria, and in the southof France and New England, it is the tale of the LaBasse family,whose quiet integrity is shattered by the shots from agrandfather's rifle. As their world suddenly begins to crumble,long-hidden shame emerges: a son abandoned by the family before hewas even born, a mother whose identity is not what she has claimed,a father whose act of defiance brings Hotel Bellevue-the familybusiness-to its knees. Messud skillfully and inexorably describeshow the stories we tell ourselves, and the lies to which we cling,can turn on us in a moment. It is a work of stunning power from awriter to watch.
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which sparesno one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital,but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealingfood rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to thisnightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with nomother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barrenstreets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundingsare harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation anda vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century,Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayalof man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimatelyexhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will tosurvive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize forLiterature
You know the authors’ names. You recognize the title. You'veprobably used this book yourself. And now The Elements of Style–themost widely read and employed English style manual–is available ina specially bound 50th Anniversary Edition that offers the title'svast audience an opportunity to own a more durable and elegantlybound edition of this time-tested classic. Offering the same content as the Fourth Edition, revised in 1999,the new casebound 50th Anniversary Edition includes a briefoverview of the book's illustrious history. Used extensively byindividual writers as well as high school and college students ofwriting, it has conveyed the principles of English style tomillions of readers. This new deluxe edition makes the perfect giftfor writers of any age and ability level.
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
When Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: AMemoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have the piece ofshattering knowledge that would finally make sense of the chaos ofher life. At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type Irapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolardisorder. In Madness, Hornbacher tells her new story. Through scenes ofastonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside herown desperate attempts to counteract violently careening moodswings by self-starvation, substance abuse, numbing sex, andself-mutilation. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madnessthat all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in adifficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage—where bipolaralways beckons—is at the center of this brave and heart-stoppingmemoir. Millions of people in America today are struggling with a varietyof disorders that may disguise their bipolar disease. MaryaHornbacher's fiercely self-aware portrait revolutioniz
Kenneth Trachtenberg, the witty and eccentric narrator of"More Die of Heartbreak," has left his native Paris for theMidwest. He has come to be near his beloved uncle, theworld-renowned botanist Benn Crader, self-described aplantvisionary.a While his studies take him around the world, Benn, arestless spirit, has not been able to satisfy his longings afterhis first marriage and lives from affair to affair and from ablissto breakdown.a Imagining that a settled existence will end hisanguish, Benn ties the knot again, opening the door to a flood ofnew torments. As Kenneth grapples with his own problems involvinghis unusual lady-friend Treckie, the two men try to figure out whygifted and intelligent people invariably find themselves aknee-deepin the garbage of a personal life.a
In Victorian England, an orphan girl is sent to a countryestate to work for-and ultimately woo-its young heiress, on behalfof a mysterious benefactor known as Gentleman.
Stephen W. Sears has delivered a masterwork in Gettysburg, hissingle-volume history of the Civil War's greatest campaign. Drawingon original source material, from soldiers' letters to the OfficialRecords of the war, Sears offers dramatic and informed accounts ofevery aspect of the campaign, from well-hewn portraits of thebattle's leaders to detailed analyses of their strategies andtactics. Sears depicts General Meade's remarkable performance inhis first week of army command and pinpoints General Lee'sresponsibility in the agonizing failure of the Confederate army.With characteristic style and insight, Sears brings the epic taleof the battle in Pennsylvania vividly to life.
Stunning reissue of an international bestseller, from theauthor of The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter's DaughterOlivia Yeeis only five years old when Kwan, her older sister from China,comes to live with the family and turns her life upside down,bombarding her day and night with ghostly stories of strangeancestors from the world of Yin. Olivia just wants to lead a normalAmerican life. For the next thirty years, Olivia endures visitsfrom Kwan and her ghosts, who appear in the living world to offeradvice on everything from restaurants to Olivia's failed marriage.But just when she cannot bear it any more, the revelations of atragic family secret finally open her mind to the startling truthshidden in Kwan's unorthodox vision of the world.
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen short storiesfrom one of the most original writers in American fiction. Thisseries of perfectly rendered vignettes, never before published inKurt Vonnegut’s lifetime, reveals a warm, wise, and funny portraitof life in post–World War II America—a world where squabblingcouples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, andsmall-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology,moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Featuring a Forewordby author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit, Look at theBirdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought thatVonnegut’s voice had been stilled forever—and serves as a terrificintroduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet toexperience his genius.
"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
Comparing Google to an ordinary business islike comparing a rocket to an Edsel. No academic analysis orbystander’s account can capture it. Now Doug Edwards, EmployeeNumber 59, offers the first inside view of Google, giving readers achance to fully experience the bizarre mix of camaraderie andcompetition at this phenomenal company. Edwards, Google’s firstdirector of marketing and brand management, describes it as ithappened. We see the first, pioneering steps of Larry Page andSergey Brin, the company’s young, idiosyncratic partners; theevolution of the company’s famously nonhierarchical structure(where every employee finds a problem to tackle or a feature tocreate and works independently); the development of brand identity;the races to develop and implement each new feature; and the manyideas that never came to pass. Above all, Edwards—a formerjournalist who knows how to write—captures the “Google Experience,”the rollercoaster ride of being part of a company creating itselfin a whole new u
In "Swann's Way," the themes of Proust's masterpiece areintroduced, and the narrator's childhood in Paris and Combray isrecalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous maternalgood-night kiss. The recollection of the narrator's love forSwann's daughter Gilberte leads to an account of Swann's passionfor Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins. For thisauthoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revisedthe late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. ScottMoncrieff's translation to take into account the new definitiveFrench editions of "A la recherche du temps perdu" (the finalvolume of these new editions was published by the Bibliotheque dela Pleiade in 1989).
McCarthy's most celebrated novel portrays the experiences ofeight young women from Vassar College, Class of '33. As the storyopens, they meet in New York City for the wedding of Kay, one of"the group." The author then describes the lives, loves, andaspirations of these women until they reconvene seven years laterin the same city for Kay's funeral. "Juicy, shocking, witty, andalmost continually brilliant" (Cosmopolitan).
In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walkerspeaks out as a black woman, writer, mother, and feminist inthirty-six pieces ranging from the personal to the political. Amongthe contents are essays about other writers, accounts of the civilrights movement of the 1960s and the antinuclear movement of the1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring childhood injury and herdaughters healing words.
For over fifty years, Eudora Welty and William Maxwell, two ofour most admired writers, penned letters to each other. They sharedtheir worries about work and family, literary opinions andscuttlebutt, moments of despair and hilarity. Living half acontinent apart, their friendship was nourished and maintained bytheir correspondence. "What There Is to Say We Have Said" bearswitness to Welty and Maxwell's editorial relationships - both inhis capacity as New Yorker editor and in their collegial back-andforth on their work. It's also a chronicle of the literary world ofthe time; read talk of James Thurber, William Shawn, Katherine AnnePorter, J. D. Salinger, Isak Dinesen, William Faulkner, JohnUpdike, Virginia Woolf, Walker Percy, Ford Madox Ford, JohnCheever, and many more. It is a treasure trove of readingrecommendations.
Love blooms in the second novel in Nora Roberts's celebratedBride Quartet series. As little girls MacKensie, Emma, Laurel, andParker spent hours acting out their perfect make believe "I do"moments. Years later their fantasies become reality when they starttheir own wedding planning company to make every woman's dream daycome true. With perfect flowers, delicious desserts, and joyfulmoments captured on film, Nora Roberts's Bride Quartet shares eachwoman's emotionally magical journey to romance. "In Bed of Roses,"florist Emma Grant is finding career success with her friends atVows wedding planning company, and her love life appears to bethriving. Though men swarm around her, she still hasn't found Mr.Right. And the last place she's looking is right under her nose.But that's just where Jack Cooke is. He's so close to the women ofVows that he's practically family, but the architect has begun toadmit to himself that his feelings for Emma have developed intomuch more than friendship. When Emma returns his pa
