**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.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Raymond Chandler's first threenovels, published here in one volume, established his reputation asan unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction. "The BigSleep," Chandler's first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, aprivate detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralyzed Californiamillionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder. In"Farewell, My Lovely," Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, amurder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentiallydeadly women. In "The High Window," Marlowe searches the Californiaunderworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself deep in thetangled affairs of a dead coin collector. In all three novels,Chandler's hard-edged prose, colorful characters, vivid vernacular,and, above all, his enigmatic loner of a hero, enduringly establishhis claim not only to the heights of his chosen genre but to thepantheon of literary art.

Written during 1951-52, this novel was an underground legendby the time it was finally published in 1972. Written in anexperimental form, Kerouac created the ultimate account of hisvoyages with Neal Cassady, which he captured in a different formfor On the Road.

This is not your father's list of classics. In thesedelightful essays, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda introducesnearly ninety of the world's most entertaining books. Writing withaffection as well as authority, Dirda covers masterpieces offantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well asepics, history, essay, and children's literature. Organizedthematically, these are works that have shaped our imaginations."Love's Mysteries" moves from Sappho and Arthurian romance to SorenKierkegaard and Georgette Heyer. In other categories Dirdadiscusses not only "Dracula" and Sherlock Holmes but also the "TaoTe Ching" and Icelandic sagas, Frederick Douglass and "Fowler'sModern English Usage." Whether writing about Petronius or Perelman,Dirda makes literature come alive. "Classics for Pleasure" is aperfect companion for any reading group or lover of books.

This tale of two princesses - one beautiful and oneunattractive - and of the struggle between sacred and profane loveis Lewis?’s reworking of the myth of Cupid and Psyche and one ofhis most enduring works.

"At the heart of "American Widow" is the notion of Sept. 11 asa personal, rather than a national or political, tragedy, which,this achingly tender work reminds us, is exactly what it was." -- LA Times Want to honor those who passed during 9-11? Turn off the stupiddocumentary glorifying all of those images we've seen over andover, and read this sincere account of how that fateful dayeffected one person that represents all of us.” — Aint It CoolNews “[A] raw, occasionally maddening, bracing graphic memoir…Unbearably moving.” — The New York Times Book Review “Reading it, you feel that Torres could be your friend or neighbor;she makes an epic tragedy intimate.” — Newsday On September 10, 2001, Eddie Torres started his dream job at CantorFitzgerald in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The nextmorning, he said goodbye to his 7?-months-pregnant wife, Alissa,and headed out the door. In an instant, Alissa’s world was thrown into chaos. Forced to dealwith unimaginable challenges,

From esteemed New Yorker writer Mark Singer comes thiscautionary tale of the Penn Square Bank, the oil and gas broker inan Oklahoma City shopping mall whose collapse in 1982 staggeredAmerica's banking industry. Recounting the whole spectacular storyand its colorful characters, Singer makes brilliantly (andhilariously) clear what actually happened and why it had to happenin boom-time Oklahoma. Nowhere else did money flow in quite thesame spontaneous fashion. " A] tale of wonderful verve" (New YorkTimes), Funny Money comes to life through Singer's vivid prose andcontinues to resonate in today's culture of corporatecorruption.

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.

Woolf continually used stories and sketches to experiment withnarrative models and themes for her novels. This collection ofnearly fifty pieces brings together the contents of two publishedvolumes, A Haunted House and Mrs. Dalloway's Party; a number ofuncollected stories; and several previously unpublished pieces.Edited and with an Introduction by Susan Dick.

"While a single short story may have a difficult time raisingenough noise on its own to be heard over the din of civilization,short stories in bulk can have the effect of swarming bees,blocking out sound and sun and becoming the only thing you canthink about," writes Ann Patchett in her introduction to The BestAmerican Short Stories 2006. This vibrant, varied sampler of theAmerican literary scene revels in life's little absurdities,captures timely personal and cultural challenges, and ultimatelyshares subtle insight and compassion. In "The View from CastleRock," the short story master Alice Munro imagines a fictionalaccount of her Scottish ancestors' emigration to Canada in 1818.Nathan Englander's cast of young characters in "How We Avenged theBlums" confronts a bully dubbed "The Anti-Semite" to both comic andtragic ends. In "Refresh, Refresh," Benjamin Percy gives aforceful, heart-wrenching look at a young man's choices when hisfather -- along with most of the men in his small town -- isdeployed to Ir

Originally subtitled "An Adventurous Education, 1935-1946",this book is a key volume in Kerouac's lifework, the series ofautobiographical novels he referred to as The Legend of Duluoz. Awonderfully unassuming look back at the origins of his career--aprehistory of the Beat era, written from the perspective of thepsychedelic '60s.

The Tin Drum, one of the great novels of the twentiethcentury, was published in Ralph Manheim's outstanding translationin 1959. It became a runaway bestseller and catapulted its youngauthor to the forefront of world literature. To mark the fiftiethanniversary of the original publication, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,along with Grass's publishers all over the world, is bringing out anew translation of this classic novel. Breon Mitchell, acclaimedtranslator and scholar, has drawn from many sources: from a wealthof detailed scholarship; from a wide range of newly-availablereference works; and from the author himself. The result is atranslation that is more faithful to Grass's style and rhythm,restores omissions, and reflects more fully the complexity of theoriginal work. After fifty years, THE TIN DRUM has, if anything,gained in power and relevance. All of Grass's amazing evocationsare still there, and still amazing: Oskar Matzerath, theindomitable drummer; his grandmother, Anna Koljaiczek; his mother,Agnes;

One of Vonnegut's major works, this is an apocalyptic tale ofthe planet's ultimate fate, featuring a cast of unlikelyheroes.

After a long winter of red noses and wet mittens, summer is awelcome time for Miss Read and her downland village friends. SUMMERAT FAIRACRE charmingly recounts this bright, bustling season andthe problems and possibilities that unfold against the backgroundof roses, skylarks, and bees. Joseph Coggs finds a temporary homein the schoolhouse while his mother is in the hospital. Miss Read'sfriend Amy mysteriously disappears. Perhaps most difficult of all,Mrs. Pringle, the grumpy school cleaner, is unable to work becausethe pain in her bad leg flares up. Still, the sounds of childrenplaying and the fragrance of summertime flowers fill the air, asMiss Read shepherds her students and friends through the warmseason.

When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another thatseemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, abeautiful mother, and two little girls. The youngest girls fromeach family—one of them Jane—even shared a birthday. With so much in common, the two families became almost instantlyinseparable. Within months, affairs had ignited between the adults,and before long the pairs had exchanged partners—divorced,remarried, and moved on. As if in a cataclysm of nature, twofamilies were ripped asunder, and two new ones were formed. Twopairs of girls were left in shock, a “silent, numb shock, like acrack inside stone, not enough to split it but inside, silentlyfissuring.” And Jane and her stepsister were thrown into a state ofsilent combat for the affections of their absent fathers—a contestthat, for one of them at least, would prove tragic. Readers drawn to The Glass Castle will be moved by Alison’sstunning emotional insight as she recounts the intimatedevastations of family

First published in 1939, these three short novels secured theauthor's reputation as a master of short fiction.

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.

A treasury of Lewis’s thought, gathered from all of his morethan forty books and his uncollected essays, on subjects as variedas sin, hell and heaven, the Trinity, and love and sex. Edited andwith a Preface by Clyde S. Kilby.