Starred Review. In her debut novel, Agus follows the fortunes ofa Sardinian woman whose adventures begin as WWII comes to an end;the unnamed narrator is her granddaughter who is about to bemarried. The woman had suitors, but with no firm proposals by 30,she was forced into a marriage to a widower whose experiences inthe brothel dictate their life in the bedroom. Several miscarriagesand kidney stones later, she is sent to thermal baths on themainland for a cure, where she takes as her lover a war veteranwhose kindness is in stark contrast to her husband's indifference.The veteran has a wife and daughter in Milan and she returns hometo give birth to a son. Years later, she searches for her lostlove, wandering the streets of Milan. The narrator constantlyamends the tale, demonstrating the uncertainty of stories passeddown. Agus's de*ions of the everyday are as beautiful andhaunting as her portrayal of life's most dramatic episodes. Add anunexpected ending and the result is a graceful, powerful book.(Jan.) (c) C

With a brilliant comic voice as well as Jane Austen's penchant for social satire, Candace Bushnell, who with Sex and the City changed forever how we view New York City, female friendships, and the love of a good pair of Manolos, now brings us a sharply observant, keenly funny, wildly entertaining latter day comedy of manners. Modern-day heroine Janey Wilcox is a lingerie model whose reach often exceeds her grasp, and whose new-found success has gone to her head. As we follow Janey's adventures, Bushnell draws us into a seemingly glamorous world of $100,000 cars, hunky polo players and media moguls, Fifth Avenue apartments, and relationships whose hidden agendas are detectable only by the socially astute. But just as Janey enters this world of too much money and too few morals, unseen forces conspire to bring her down, forcing her to reexamine her values about love and friendship-and how far she's really willing to go to realize her dreams.

A Menage Anthology When Dani, Bailey and Kaya get together for an unusual girls night,they wish on a shower of falling stars and soon find their mosterotic dreams coming true. In Sinful Desires , magic is in the air when a mysteriousstranger and one wild night of passion help Dani Harris admit herfeelings for her longtime friend Liam, who has been in love withher for years. Sinful Sensations follows the story of Bailey Wagner, whointends to stick to her five-year plan while she waits for Mr.Right. But when her sexy new boss convinces her to let loose withhim--and a few of his friends--what begins as a kinky work breakturns out to be a dream come true. Fortune-teller by day and waitress by night, Kaya Honahni is toobusy running from the expectations of her traditional Hopi familyto search for romance, but in Sinful Pleasures , it findsher--times two. Despite her best efforts, Kaya can't deny herattraction to Jace, or to his secretive best friend. Andconsidering the way they respond to her, she won't hav

First in a brand new series from the "New York Times"bestselling creator of the Myth and Phule novels. A low-stakes conartist and killer poker player, Griffen "Grifter" McCandlesgraduated college fully expecting his wealthy family to have a jobwaiting for him. Instead, his mysterious uncle reveals a strangefamily secret: Griffen and his sister, Valerie, are actuallydragons. Unwilling to let Uncle Mal take him under his wing, so tospeak, Griffen heads to New Orleans with Valerie to make a livingthe only way he knows how. And even the criminal underworld of theFrench Quarter will heat up when Griffen lands in town.

在波澜壮阔的三国时代，除了曹操、诸葛亮、刘备、孙权、周瑜等家喻户晓的人物，还有许多配角，他们也有自己的喜怒哀乐。作者从微小的史料记载中，想象出许多配角的故事。 ???《街亭》借“马谡失街亭”事件，追问马谡的结局，*后揭示了街亭之战被掩埋的真相。 ???《白帝城之夜》以刘备白帝城病重为背景，虚构了一出皇位更迭的故事。 ???《官渡杀人事件》讲述徐他刺杀曹操事件，这背后隐藏着怎样的悄无声息却惊心动魄的激烈交锋？ ???《宛城惊变》分析“宛城之战”必死之局为何只有曹操逃出生天的秘密。 ???《孔雀东南飞》中焦仲卿与刘兰芝二人的爱情悲剧与三国波澜壮阔的群雄争霸有何关联？ ???《洛神赋》流传千古，甄宓、曹丕、曹植三人之间究竟有何纠葛？ ???《三国新语》与《三国志·步幸传》借三国史实逸事

“Forbidden Bread is a sunny, can-do look at intense cultureshock. Debeljak makes a humorous, self-effacing guide to her ownstory and the only complaint I have is that I wish she’d told usmore. I hope someday she gives us a sequel.” —Christian Science Monitor "[Forbidden Bread is] a touching record of the mores of a countrythat remains a strange, unknown land to most Western readers. Wittyand warm." —Kirkus Reviews [Debeljak’s] memoir functions as a love letter to her husband andan introduction to the Slovenian world, its language, socialcustoms and tangled history (Slovenia, formerly part of Yugoslavia,officially became a nation-state in 1991)... [T]he author offers anintriguing story about the birth of a new state as well as the‘series of coincidences, mishaps, and thunderbolts’ that led [her]from Brooklyn to Ljubljana.” —Publishers Weekly “Erica Johnson Debeljak takes us on a journey of love to, of allplaces, Slovenia. Her

The poverty-stricken Raskolnikov, believing he is exempt from moral law, murders a man only to face the consequences not only from society but from his conscience, in this seminal story of justice, morality, and redemption from one of Russia's greatest novelists. Determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammelled individual will, Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, commits an act of murder and theft and sets into motion a story which, for its excrutiating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its profundity of characterization and vision, is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world. The best known of Dostoevsky's masterpieces, Crime and Punishment can bear any amount of rereading without losing a drop of its power over our imagination. 《罪与罚》小说主人公拉斯柯尔尼科夫是一个穷困潦倒的大学生。他受到放高利贷的老太婆伊凡诺夫娜的盘剥后心生不满，于是在一个夜晚杀了伊凡诺

Publisher's Note It is Christmas Eve. Sitting on the steps of the village church infront of an enormous bonfire lit in celebration of the season, afather and his son exchange stories. The father speaks of life asan emigrant from Italy, in perpetual limbo between departure andreturn, between France and his home. The son tells of a life marredby his father's long absences but also of an otherwise idyllicchildhood spent in a vivid, enchanting land. Each hides an awfulsecret concerning the fate of a mysterious man whose affair withthe boy's older sister changed their lives. On this night ofnights, as the long-buried details seep through each man's story, ashared truth will finally emerge.Set in an Arb?resh? town insouthern Italy and told in alternating first-person voices, TheHomecoming is simultaneously a coming-of-age novel, a love story,and a heartfelt cry against the atrocious standards of living thatforce so many southern Italians to seek a better life elsewhere.Here is an intense and moving novel about the

Despite nurse-midwife Patsy Harman’s own financial andpersonal medical trials, including her private battle with uterinecancer, she devotes herself to her patients’ well-being in allaspects of their lives. They, in turn, tell her intimate storiesboth heartbreaking and uplifting.

Patricia Volk’s delicious memoir lets us into her big, crazy,loving, cheerful, infuriating and wonderful family, where you’renever just hungry–your starving to death, and you’re never justfull–you’re stuffed. Volk’s family fed New York City for onehundred years, from 1888 when her great-grandfather introducedpastrami to America until 1988, when her father closed his garmentcenter restaurant. All along, food was pretty much at the center oftheir lives. But as seductively as Volk evokes the food, Stuffed isat heart a paean to her quirky, vibrant relatives: her grandmotherwith the “best legs in Atlantic City”; her grandfather, whoinvented the wrecking ball; her larger-than-life father, whosculpted snow thrones when other dads were struggling with snowmen.Writing with great freshness and humor, Patricia Volk will leaveyou hungering to sit down to dinner with her robust family–both forthe spectacle and for the food.

These lively, varied and thought-provoking science-fiction stories (from the era of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells) are linked by their imposing central character, the pugnaciously adventurous and outrageous Professor Challenger. The Lost World (forebear of Jurassic Park) vividly depicts a perilous region in which the explorers confront creatures from the prehistoric era. 'The Poison Belt' presents an eerie doomsday scenario, while ‘The Disintegration Machine’ satirically comments on scientific cynicism. In ‘When the World Screamed’, the planet responds violently to an experimental incursion. The strangest item is 'The Land of Mist', which seeks to reconcile science with spiritualism. This memorable collection provides imaginative entertainment, entrancing escapism and bold provocation.

Homer'sgreatepicdescribesthemanyadventuresofOdysseus,Greekwarrior,ashestrivesovermanyyearstoreturntohishomeislandofIthacaaftertheTrojanWar.Hiscolourfuladventures,hisendurance,hisloveforhiswifeandsonhavethesamepowertomoveandinspirereaderstodayastheydidinArchaicGreece,2800yearsago.Thispoemhasbeentranslatedmanytimesovertheyears,butChapman'ssinewy,gorgeousrendering(1616)standsinaclassofitsown.ChapmanbelievedhimselfinspiredbythespiritofHomerhimself,andmatchesthebreadthandpoweroftheoriginalwithacomplexandstunningidiomofhisown.JohnKeatsexpressedhisadmirationfortheresultingworkinthefamoussonnet,'OnfirstlookingintoChapman'sHomer':'MuchhaveItravelledintherealmsofgold...'

HarperCollinsisproudtopresentitsnewrangeofbest-loved,essentialclassics.‘Thehorridmysteryhangingoverusinthishousegetsintomyheadlikeliquor,andmakesmewild.’Centredaroundagloriousyellowdiamondthatcarrieswithitamenacinghistory,TheMoonstonetellsthestoryofRachelVerinder,whoinheritsthestoneonhereighteenthbirthday.Thatveryevening,thediamondisstolenandtherebeginsanepicenquiryintohuntingdownthethief.Atthesametime,threeIndianmen,BrahminguardiansofthediamondareattemptingtoreclaimthestoneinordertoreturnittotheirsacredHinduIdol.Toldfromtheperspectiveof11differentcharacters,WilkieCollins’taleofmysteryandsuspicionwasconsideredthefirstmodernEnglishdetectivenovelatitstimeofpublication.

In the winter of 1913, high in the Canadian Arctic, twoCatholic priests set out on a dangerous mission to reach a group ofEskimos and convert them. Upon reaching their destination, thepriests were murdered. Over the next three years, one of theArctic’s most tragic stories became one of North America’sstrangest and most memorable police investigations and trials. Anear-perfect parable of late colonialism, as well as a richexploration of the differences between European Christianity andEskimo mysticism, Bloody Falls of the Coppermine possesses theintensity of true crime and the romance of wildernessadventure.