With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and peopl

From Publishers Weekly Gruen enjoys minimal luck in trying to recapture the magic of herenormously successful Water for Elephants in this clumsy outingthat begins with the bombing of the Great Ape Language Lab, auniversity research center dedicated to the study of thecommunicative behavior of bonobo apes. The blast, which terrorizesthe apes and severely injures scientist Isabel Duncan, occurs oneday after Philadelphia Inquirer reporter John Thigpen visits thelab and speaks to the bonobos, who answer his questions in signlanguage.

The Sorrow Gondola was the great Swedish poet TomasTranstromer's first collection of poems after his stroke in 1990.Translated by Michael McGriff, Transtromer's great work isavailable in its first single-volume English edition.

These controversial epic poems demonstrate Milton's genius forfusing sense and sound, classicism and innovation, narrative anddrama in profound explorations of the moral problems of God'sjustice-and what it truly means to be human.

New chronology and further reading; Tony Tanner's originalintroduction reinstated Edited with an introduction by Kathryn Sutherland.

The Greatest Survivor Stories Never Told offers an entirely new definition of what it means to win against all odds. These exciting true stories of people from all walks of life who battled death toe-to-toe include: The badly hurt New York cop who was able to stumble out of the collapse of the south tower of the World Trade Center only to be buried by debris when the north tower fell. The injured teenage girl who hobbled for days in the Amazon jungle after falling out of the sky when the passenger plane she was in exploded, killing everyone but her. The lost prospector who defied death after staggering in the sun-baked Arizona desert for nearly a week without a drop of water.

Winner of the 2002 Commonwealth Writer's Prize - Best First Book in South East Asia and South Pacific Region. Hounded from country to country by Stalin's GPU agents, in January 1937 Leon Trotsky finally finds refuge in Mexico. There he encounters the fire and splendour of the artist Frida Kahlo, who with her husband Diego Rivera welcomes Trotsky and his wife Natalia into The Blue House at Coyoacan. Moves gracefully through the private histories of love, despair and deception ... brimming with energy and conviction?—Literary Review Reading this novel is like peering into a kaleidoscope ... the writing is vibrant and vivid, illuminated by flashes of brilliance?—Sunday Telegraph. Brilliantly reconstructs the atmosphere of Trotsky's house, his circle of friends and, inparticular, the place of the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in his entourage?—Sunday Business Post.

When Sir Francis Drake returned to England in 1580, manyquestions concerning his momentous voyage were left unanswered—hisjournals were impounded and his men were forbidden, on pain ofdeath, to divulge where they had been. Drawing on newly uncoveredevidence, geographer and maritime historian Samuel Bawlfmasterfully reconstructs Francis Drake’s historic round-the-worldexpedition, exploring the drama surrounding the voyage and offeringintriguing insights into life at sea in the sixteenth century. Butit is Bawlf’s assertion of Drake’s whereabouts in the summer of1579 that gives the book even greater originality: from anintensive study of maps of the period, Bawlf shows with certaintythat Drake sailed all the way to Alaska—much farther than anyonehas heretofore imagined—thereby rewriting the history ofexploration in North America.