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
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.
In the "stifling heat of equatorial Newark," a terrifyingepidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey citywith maiming, paralysis, life-long disability, and even death. Thisis the startling and surprising theme of Roth's wrenching new book:a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect ithas on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and itschildren. At the center of NEMISIS is a vigorous, dutiful, twenty-threeyear old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower andweightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed withhimself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in thewar alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor's dilemmas aspolio begins to ravage his playground--and on the everday realitieshe faces--Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such apestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, thebewilderment, the suffering, and the pain. Moving between the smoldering, malodorous streets of besieg
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of theDay comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, andloss. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham,an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside.It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules whereteachers were constantly reminding their charges of how specialthey were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy havereentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to lookback at their shared past and understand just what it is that makesthem special–and how that gift will shape the rest of their timetogether. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, NeverLet Me Go is another classic by the author of The Remains ofthe Day
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.
Nine strokes from an old country church toll out the death ofan unknown man and call Lord Peter Wimsey to one of his mostbaffling cases. Set in the strange, flat fen-country of EastAnglia, this is a classic tale of suspense by a master ofmystery.
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.
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.
From the early Soviet period, the impassioned short fictionof the great Russian-Jewish writer One of the most powerful short-story writers of the twentiethcentury, Isaac Babel expressed his sense of inner conflict throughdisturbing tales that explored the contradictions of Russiansociety. Whether reflecting on anti-Semitism in stories such as“Story of My Dovecote” and “First Love,” or depicting Jewishgangsters in his native Odessa, Babel’s eye for the comical laidbare the ironies of history. His masterpiece, “Red Cavalry,” set inthe Soviet-Polish war, is one of the classics of modern fiction. Byturns flamboyant and restrained, this collection of Babel’sbest-known stories vividly expresses the horrors of his age. “Amazing not only as literature but as biography.” —RichardBernstein, The New York Times “Marvelously subtle, tragic, and often comic.” —James Wood, The New Republic
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.
Dreams are realized in the eagerly-awaited fourthnovel in Nora Roberts's Bride Quartet. As thepublic face of Vows wedding planning company, Parker Brown has anuncanny knack for fulfilling every bride's vision. She just can'tsee where her own life is headed. Mechanic Malcomb Kavanaugh lovesfiguring out how things work, and Parker is no exception. Both knowthat moving from minor flirtation to major hook-up is a seriousstep. Parker's business risks have always paid off, but now she'llhave to take the chance of a lifetime with her heart...
WHEN GOD WAS A RABBIT is an incredibly exciting debut from anextraordinary new voice in fiction. Spanning four decades, from1968 onwards, this is the story of a fabulous but flawed family andthe slew of ordinary and extraordinary incidents that shape theireveryday lives. It is a story about childhood and growing up, lossof innocence, eccentricity, familial ties and friendships, love andlife. Stripped down to its bare bones, it's about the unbreakablebond between a brother and sister.
This is a unique tribute to Florence, combining history,artistic de*ion, and social observation. A memorable portraitof the Florentine spirit and of those figures who exemplify thisspirit, such as Dante, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Donatello, andMachiavelli.
As soon as it first appeared in 1953, this gem by the greatSaul Bellow was hailed as an American classic. Bold, expansive, andkeenly humorous, "The Adventures of Augie March" blends streetlanguage with literary elegance to tell the story of a poor Chicagoboy growing up during the Great Depression. A aborn recruit, aAugie makes himself available for hire by plungers, schemers, risktakers, and operators, compiling a record of choices that isato saythe leasta eccentric.
This superb Pulitzer Prize-winning collection gives voice tofailure with a wry, deft touch from one of this country's mostengaging and uncompromising poets. In "Failure, "Philip Schultzevokes the pleasures of family, marriage, beaches, and dogs; NewYork City in the 1970s; revolutions both interior and exterior; andthe terrors of 9/11 with a compassion that demonstrates he is amaster of the bittersweet and fierce, the wondrous and direct, andthe brilliantly provocative. Filled with poems of "heartbreakingtenderness that go] beyond mere pity" (Gerald Stern), "Failure "isa collection to savor from this major American poet.
“Philip Roth has become an American Master,a writercertainlyin出e upper rank of artistic achievement.1ikeJohn Coltrane in musicor Jackson Pollock in artThe prolific Roth is athe height of hisconsiderablepowers,and his work transcends much of hiscontem—poraries’output in psychological insight,pure intelli—genceand even readability,”
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).
Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is a divorced, depressed historyteacher. To lift his spirits, a colleague suggests he rent acertain video. Tertuliano watches the film, unimpressed. But duringthe night, when he is awakened by noises in his apartment, he goesinto the living room to find that the VCR is replaying the video.He watches in astonishment as a man who looks exactly like him-or,more specifically, exactly like he did five years before,mustachioed and fuller in the face-appears on the screen. He sleepsbadly. Against his better judgment, Tertuliano decides to pursuehis double. As he roots out the man's identity, what begins as awhimsical story becomes a "wonderfully twisted meditation onidentity and individuality" (The Boston Globe). Saramago displayshis remarkable talent in this haunting tale of appearance versusreality.
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.
One of the greatest French novelists, Balzac was also anaccomplished writer of shorter fiction. This volume includes twelveof his finest short stories many of which feature characters fromhis epic series of novels the Comedie Humaine. Compelling tales ofacute social and psychological insight, they fully demonstrate themastery of suspense and revelation that were the hallmarks ofBalzac's genius. In The Atheist's Mass, we learn the true reasonfor a distinguished atheist surgeon's attendance at religiousservices; La Grande Breteche describes the horrific truth behindthe locked doors of a decaying country mansion, while The Red Innrelates a brutal tale of murder and betrayal. A fascinatingcounterpoint to the renowned novels, all the stories collected herestand by themselves as mesmerizing works by one of the finestwriters of nineteenth-century France.