Many people among them Henry James) have considered Balzac tobe the greatest of all novelists. Eugenie Grandet, his spare,classical story of a girl whose life is blighted by her father'shysterical greed, goes a long way to justifying that opinion. Oneof the most magnificent of his tales of early nineteenth-centuryFrench provincial life, this novel is the work of a writer on whomnothing was lost, and who represents most fully the ability of thehuman animal to understand and illuminate its own condition. Translated By Ellen Marriage With An Introduction By Fredric R.Jameson Fredric R. Jameson is William A. Lane, Jr. Professor ofComparative Literature at Duke University in North Carolina. Hispublications include Sartre: The Origins of a Style, Signatures ofthe Visible, and Post-modernism, or, The Cultural Logic of LateCapitalism, with Aesthetics of the Geopolitical forthcoming. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Qu'importe que la cantatrice soit chauve puisqu'elle n'existepas ! Dans cette petite "anti-pièce", première oeuvredramatique de Ionesco, il n'est fait référence que deux fois à lacantatrice chauve, personnage dont on ne sait rien et quin'appara?t jamais. Il s'agit bien là d'un Nouveau Thé?tre, celuiqui donne naissance à des pièces sans héros, sans sacro-saintedivision en actes, sans action, sans intrigue, avec en guise dedénouement la quasi-répétition du début, et dont lestraditionnelles retrouvailles sont remplacées par une parodie dereconnaissance d'une invraisemblance ahurissante. Les personnages,tout droit sortis d'un manuel de langue, ne s'expriment que parclichés, disent une chose pour aussit?t affirmer son contraire,trouvent une jubilation idiote à employer proverbes et maximes touten les pervertissant sans même s'en apercevoir... Cependant, trèsvite, le langage s'"autonomise", se libère de toute contrainte, etl'on assiste avec plaisir au divorce du sens et du verbe. Il enré

A REVEALING AND DRAMATIC LOOK AT THE INSIDE OF THE AMERICAN SPACE PROGRAM FROM ONE OF ITS PIONEERS. This is the astronaut story never before told--about the fear, love, and sacrifice demanded of the few men who dared to reach beyond the heavens for the biggest prize of all: the Moon.

In his introduction to the The BestAmerican Noir of the Century , James Ellroywrites, “noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of thehard-boiled school of fiction. It’s the long drop off theshort pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfectmisalliance. It’s the nightmare of flawed souls with bigdreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing thatgoes bad.” Offering the best examples of literary surethings gone bad, this collection ensuresthat nowhere else can readers find a darker, morethorough distillation of American noir fiction.

'...it is an universal phenomenon of our nature that the mournful, the fearful, even the horrible, allures with irresistible enchantment.' Chaucer Burr, Memoir, 1850 The Wordsworth Book of Horror Stories is a superb collection of some of the greatest tales of the genre, many are classics while others are lesser -known gems unearthed from this vintage era of the supernatural. From time immemorial, man the world over has drawn upon the worst fears of his conscious and subconscious mind to furnish legends of terrror. In this volume authors such as M.R.James, Le Fanu, Henry James, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Bierce, Balzac, Gaskell, and many others invite you to close the curtains, lock the doors, draw the armchair closer to the blazing fire and settle down to a spine-chilling read.

Montmirail, Marne, 51. Antonio, un ma?on portugais, croise unjour Véronique Chambon, l'institutrice de son fils. Entre eux senoue une idylle secrète, inavouée. Pourquoi et comment tombe-t-onamoureux ? Il peut suffire d'un regard timide, d'une sonate deviolon, d'un champ de blé pour découvrir des sentiments et desémotions qu'on ne soup?onnait pas... Histoire d'une passion simple,Mademoiselle Chambon est aussi une chronique de la vieprovinciale.

Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia,Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinatingstory of the final days of Russian monarchs Nicholas and Alexandraas seen through the eyes of the Romanov's young kitchen boy,Leonka.

Far in the future, 60,000 light-years from Earth, a loose confederacy of Terran exiles is locked in battle with the enigmatic Protoss and the ruthless Zerg Swarm, as each species struggles to ensure its own survival among the stars -- war that will herald the beginning of mankind's greatest chapter or foretell its violent, bloody end. All Ardo Menikov ever dreamed of was to live in peace on the verdant colony world of Bountiful. But when the vicious Zerg Swarm attacked the colony and annihilated his loved ones, Ardo was forced to wake from his dream and accept the brutal realities of a war-torn galaxy. Now a confederate marine, charged with defending the worlds of the Terran confederacy, Ardo must come to terms with the painful memories of his past -- and the unsettling truths that may dominate his future.

The President's son and daughter are abducted, and DetectiveAlex Cross is one of the first on the scene. But someone veryhigh-up is using the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA to keep him offthe case and in the dark. A deadly contagion in the water supply cripples half of thecapital, and Alex discovers that someone may be about to unleashthe most devastating attack the United States has everexperienced. As his window for solving both crimes narrows, Alex makes adesperate decision that goes against everything he believes--onethat may alter the fate of the entire country. KILL ALEX CROSS isfaster, more exciting, and more tightly wound than any Alex Crossthriller James Patterson has ever written!

In these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia. And Munro shows us how one woman's romantic tale of capture and escape in the high Balkans may end up inspiring another woman who is fleeing a husband and lover in present-day Canada. "Open Secrets is a book that dazzles with its faith in language and in life."--New York Times Book Review

How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?" the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner. "Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did," came the answer. "So I took them seriously." Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who -- thanks to the selflessness of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community -- emerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim. The inspiration for a major motion picture, Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredible adversity, and the healing power of love.

An inside look at one of the greatest business stories of our day: Lou Gerstner's dramatic transformation of IBM from a dying company into a nimble giant When Lou Gerstner took the helm at IBM in 1993, the company was headed toward bankruptcy. Six years later Big Blue was back and better than ever: its stock at an all-time high; its coffers filled with cash; and its market capitalization a healthy $169 billion. How did Gerstner do it? With unprecedented access to current and former IBM employees, and drawing upon more than 150 interviews and hundreds of pages of documents, journalist Doug Garr offers the first in-depth took at the IBM miracle and the man who made it happen. From the complete overhaul of the company's image and culture to the takeover of Lotus and the development of network technology, Garr vividly illustrates Gerstner's operating methods, management philosophy, and vision. Fastpaced and fascinating, IB14 Redux provides rare insight into the world of information services and offers presc

Marlowe is hired by an influential lawyer he's never herd of totail a gorgeous redhead, but decides he prefers to help out theredhead. She's been acquitted of her alcoholic husband's murder,but her father-in-law prefers not to take the court's word for it.andquot; Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested thesun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence:andquot; -- Ross Macdonald

While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body and the floor around him covered in baffling symbols. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci--clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. Even more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion--an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others--and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle--while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move--the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever.

When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, theContinental Op stayed on to punish the guilty--even if that meanttaking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crimenovel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence inthe American grain.