**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.

Yambo, a sixtyish rare-book dealer who lives in Milan, hassuffered a loss of memory-he can remember the plot of every book hehas ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his ownname, doesn't recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembersnothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort toretrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in thehills between Milan and Turin. There, in the sprawling attic, hesearches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photoalbums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story ofhis generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, JosephineBaker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and thelife racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel.Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocentimage: that of his first love. A fascinating, abundant newnovel-wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart-from theincomparable Eco.

(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.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The only complete edition ofstories by the undisputed master of detective literature, collectedhere for the first time in one volume, including some stories thathave been unavailable for decades. When Raymond Chandler turned towriting at the age of forty-five, he began by publishing stories inpulp magazines such as "Black Mask" before later writing his famousnovels. These stories are where Chandler honed his art anddeveloped his uniquely vivid underworld, peopled with good cops andbad cops, informers and extortionists, lethally predatory blondesand redheads, and crime, sex, gambling, and alcohol in abundance.In addition to his classic hard-boiled stories-in which hissignature atmosphere of depravity and violence swirls around thecool, intuitive loners whose type culminated in the famousdetective Philip Marlowe-Chandler also turned his hand to fantasyand even a gothic romance. This rich treasury of twenty-fivestories shows Chandler developing the terse, laconic, understatedstyle

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.

'What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence'. In thisnightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and hisfriends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture andmurder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the Statetries to reform him - but at what cost? Social prophecy? Blackcomedy? Study of freewill? "A Clockwork Orange" is all of these. Itis also a dazzling experiment in language, as Burgess creates a newlanguage - 'nadsat', the teenage slang of a not-too-distantfuture.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.