First published in 1938, The Hobbit is a story that "grew inthe telling," and many characters and events in the published bookare completely different from what Tolkien first wrote to readaloud to his young sons as part of their "fireside reads." For thefirst time, The History of the Hobbit reproduces the originalversion of one of literature's most famous stories, and includesmany little-known illustrations and previously unpublished maps forThe Hobbit created by Tolkien himself. Also featured are extensiveannotations and commentaries on the date of composition, howTolkien's professional and early mythological writings influencedthe story, the imaginary geography he created, and how he came torevise the book in the years after publication to accommodateevents in The Lord of the Rings.

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 Restoration Court knows Lady Dona St Columb to be ripe forany folly, any outrage that will alter the tedium of her days. Butthere is another, secret Dona who longs for a life of honest love-- and sweetness, even if it is spiced with danger. It is this Donawho flees the stews of London for remote Navron, looking for peaceof mind in its solitary woods and hidden creeks. She finds therethe passion her spirit craves -- in the love of a daring piratehunted by all Cornwall, a Frenchman who, like Dona, would gamblehis life for a moment's joy.

How is it that we can recognize photos from our high schoolyearbook decades later, but cannot remember what we ate forbreakfast yesterday? And why are we inclined to buy more cans ofsoup if the sign says "LIMIT 12 PER CUSTOMER" rather than "LIMIT 4PER CUSTOMER?" In "Kluge, "Gary Marcus argues convincingly that ourminds are not as elegantly designed as we may believe. Theimperfections result from a haphazard evolutionary process thatoften proceeds by piling new systems on top of old ones--and thosesystems don't always work well together. The end product is a"kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. Taking us on atour of the essential areas of human experience--memory, belief,decision making, language, and happiness--Marcus unveils afundamentally new way of looking at the evolution of the human mindand simultaneously sheds light on some of the most mysteriousaspects of human nature.

In the town of Hawkins Hollow, itas called the Seven. Everyseven years, on the seventh day of the seventh month, madnessdescends on this small town. But three men bound by blood and threewomen bound by ancestry to a demon have pledged their soulsaandtheir heartsato stop it.

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

Book De*ion Remember when flying was glamorous and sexy, even fun? Whenairline food was gourmet, everyone dressed up for a flight, andstewardesses catered to our every need-at least in ourimaginations? This classic memoir by two audaciously outspokenyoung ladies, who lived and loved the free-spirited stewardesslife, jets you back to those golden days of air travel-from thecaptain who's as subtle as a 747 when he's on the make to thepassenger who mistakes the overhead luggage rack for an upperberth; from the names of celebrities who were a pleasure to serve(and some surprising notables on the "bad guy" list) to the originsof some naughty stereotypes-Spaniards "are" the best lovers, actorsthe most foul-mouthed. This huge bestseller, a First Class jet-agejournal, offers a hilarious gold mine of outrageous anecdotes fromthe high-flying and amorous lives of those busty, lusty,adventuresome young women of the swinging '60s known as"stews." About Author Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones were name

Everybody who is anybody is seen at the glittering partiesheldin millionaire Jay Gatsby's mansion in West Egg, east ofNew York. The riotous throng congregates in his sumptuous garden,coollydebating Gatsby's origins and mysterious past. None of thefrivoloussocialites understands him, and among various rumours is theconviction that 'he killed a man'. A detached onlooker,Gatsby isoblivious to the speculation he creates, though always seems to bewatching and waiting, but what for no one knows.As the tragic storyunfolds, Gatsby's destructive dreams andpassions are revealed,leading to disturbing consequences. Abrilliant evocation of 1920shigh society, The Great Gatsby peels away the layers of thisglamorous world to display the coldness and cruelty at itsheart.

Don Juan, the "Seducer of Seville," originated as ahero-villain of Spanish folk legend, is a famous lover andscoundrel who has made more than a thousand sexual conquests. Oneof Molire's best-known plays, Don Juan was written while Tartuffewas still banned on the stages of Paris, and shared much with theoutlawed play. Modern directors transform Don Juan in every newera, as each director finds something new to highlight in thistimeless classic. Richard Wilbur's flawless translation will be thestandard for generations to come, as have his translations ofMolire's other plays. Witty, urbane, and poetic in its prose, DonJuan is, most importantly, as funny now as it was for audienceswhen it was first presented.

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.

The inspiration for the major motion picture starring BradPitt and Cate Blanchettaplus eighteen other stories by the belovedauthor of "The Great Gatsby" IN THE TITLE STORY, a baby born in1860 begins life as an old man and proceeds to age backward. F.Scott Fizgerald hinted at this kind of inversion when he called hisera aa generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought,all faiths in man shaken.a Perhaps nowhere in American fiction hasthis aLost Generationa been more vividly preserved than inFitzgeraldas short fiction. Spanning the early twentieth-centuryAmerican landscape, this original collection captures, withFitzgeraldas signature blend of enchantment and disillusionment,America during the Jazz Age.

Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse isperfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love ormarriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering inthe romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings ofher good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitablematch for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soonunravel and have consequences that she never expected. With itsimperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle explorationof relationships, "Emma" is often seen as Jane Austen's mostflawless work.

In eight new stories, a master of the form extends and magnifies her great themes--the vagaries of love, the passion that leads down unexpected paths, the chaos hovering just under the surface of things, and the strange, often comical desires of the human heart. Time stretches out in some of the stories: a man and a woman look back forty years to the summer they met--the summer, as it turns out, that the true nature of their lives was revealed. In others time is telescoped: a young girl finds in the course of an evening that the mother she adores, and whose fluttery sexuality she hopes to emulate, will not sustain her--she must count on herself. Some choices are made--in a will, in a decision to leave home--with irrevocable and surprising consequences. At other times disaster is courted or barely skirted: when a mother has a startling dream about her baby; when a woman, driving her grandchildren to visit the lakeside haunts of her youth, starts a game that could have dangerous consequences.

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

From the author of "On The Road" comes this story of two menenganged in a passionate search for Dharma or truth. Their majoradventure is the pursuit of the Zen Way, which takes them climbinginto the high sierras to seek the lesson of solitude.

Together in one extraordinary boxed set- "Naked in Death,""Glory in Death," and "Immortal in Death"-the first three In Deathnovels featuring New York Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas. Naked inDeath Eve Dallas is a New York police lieutenant using herinstincts to hunt for a ruthless killer. Breaking every rule, Evegets involved with Roarke, an Irish billionaire-and a suspect inEve's murder investigation. But passion and seduction have rulesall their own. Glory in Death Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas has noproblem finding connections between two violent crimes. Bothvictims were beautiful and highly successful women whose intimaterelations with men of great power and wealth provide Eve with along list of suspects-including her own lover, Roarke. Immortal inDeath A top model is dead, the victim of a brutal murder. PoliceLieutenant Eve Dallas puts her professional life on the line totake the case when suspicion falls on her best friend, the otherwoman in a fatal love triangle. And beneath the facade of glamour,Ev

'I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If Icannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientificbig-wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heavebricks into the middle of them.' With "The Way of All Flesh",Samuel Butler threw a subversive brick at the smug face ofVictorian domesticity. Published in 1903, a year after Butler'sdeath, the novel is a thinly disguised account of his own childhoodand youth 'in the bosom of a Christian family'. With irony, wit andsometimes rancour, he savaged contemporary values and beliefs,turning inside-out the conventional novel of a family's lifethrough several generations.

Why do people dodge responsibility when things fall apart? Whythe parade of public figures unable to own up when they screw up?Why the endless marital quarrels over who is right? Why can we seehypocrisy in others but not in ourselves? Are we all liars? Or dowe really believe the stories we tell? Backed by years of research and delivered in lively, energeticprose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinatingexplanation of self-deception—how it works, the harm it can cause,and how we can overcome it.

Taking his title from the wounded cry of the once great MaxBialystock in The Producers -- "Look at me now Look at me now I'mwearing a cardboard belt " -- the charming essayist Joseph Epsteingives us his largest and most adventurous collection to date. Withhis signature gifts of sparkling humor and penetratingintelligence, he issues forth as a memoirist, polemicist, literarycritic, and amused observer of contemporary culture. In deeplyconsidered examinations of writers from Paul Valery to TrumanCapote, in incisive take-downs of such cultural pooh-bahs as HaroldBloom and George Steiner, and in personally revealing essays abouthis father and about his years as a teacher, this remarkablecollection from one of America's best essayists is a book to besavored.