Dan Brown's bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code, has captivated the imagination of millions of readers. Its provocative story and rich historical background has spurred wide interest in the author's source materials and has aroused controversies, both public and private, all over America. Readers everywhere want to know what is fact and what is fiction. Dan Burstein's Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da I4'nci Code sorts out fact, informed speculation, and fiction, by presenting the views of the expertsarchaeologists, theologians, art historians, philosophers and scientists-many of whose works Brown himself relied upon in developing his intriguing tale. . Readers are fascinated by the questions raised in The Da Vinci Code. Was Jesus actually married to Mary Magdalene? Was she one of his disciples and did she write her own gospel? Did they have a child together? Did some geniuses of art and science, people like Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton, belong to secret

Reading any great poem for the first time is always athrilling discovery, even if it's only four lines long, and thiscollection brings together some of the best ever to read, memorize,or recite. Girls of all ages will enjoy reading poems cateredspecifically to them, whether it means envisioning adventures withprincesses and witches, or laughing at the antics of mischievouslittle girls. The book is divided into eight sections: Nature,Imagination, Love Friendship, Inspiration, Animals, NurseryRhymes, Limericks Tongue Twisters, and Fun Nonsense. 100 GREAT POEMS FOR GIRLS is a perfect introduction forthose encountering poetry for the first time, but readers who grewup with poems will also cherish this treasury of classics.

Revised introduction; new chronology and further reading Translated with an Introduction by Paul Turner.

The astounding yet true rags-to-riches saga of a homeless father who raised and cared for his son on the mean streets of San Francisco and went on to become a crown prince of Wall Street At the age of twenty, Milwaukee native Chris Gardner, just out of the Navy, arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. Considered a prodigy in scientific research, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm than Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him as part of the city's working homeless and with a toddler son. Motivated by the promise he made to himself as a fatherless child to never abandon his own children, the two spent almost a year moving among shelters, "HO-tels," soup lines, and even sleeping in the public restroom of a subway station. Never giving in to despair, Gardner made an astonishing transformation

"Emma," by Jane Austen, is part of the "Barnes and NobleClassics"" "series, which offers quality editions at affordableprices to the student and the general reader, including newscholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully craftedextras. Here are some of the remarkable features of "Barnes andNoble Classics": New introductions commissioned from today's topwriters and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies ofcontemporary historical, biographical, and cultural eventsFootnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations,parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, andfilms inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Studyquestions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectationsBibliographies for further reading Indices and Glossaries, whenappropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed tosuperior specifications; some include illustrations of historicalinterest. "Barnes and Noble Classics "pulls together aconstellation of influences-biograph

One of the most celebrated writers of our time gives us hisfirst cycle of short fiction: five brilliantly etched,interconnected stories in which music is a vivid and essentialcharacter. A once-popular singer, desperate to make a comeback, turningfrom the one certainty in his life . . . A man whose unerring tastein music is the only thing his closest friends value in him . . . Astruggling singer-songwriter unwittingly involved in the failingmarriage of a couple he’s only just met . . . A gifted,underappreciated jazz musician who lets himself believe thatplastic surgery will help his career . . . A young cellist whosetutor promises to “unwrap” his talent . . . Passion or necessity—or the often uneasy combination of thetwo—determines the place of music in each of these lives. And, inone way or another, music delivers each of them to a moment ofreckoning: sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes justeluding their grasp. An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable fo

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Virginia Woolf said of EmilyBronte that her writing could "make the wind blow and the thunderroar," and so it does in Wuthering Heights. Catherine Earnshaw,Heathcliff, and the windswept moors that are the setting of theirmythic love are as immediately stirring to the reader of today asthey have been for every generation of readers since the novel wasfirst published in 1847. With an introduction by KatherineFrank.

Edited with an Introduction by David Galloway.

The text of this Norton Critical Edition is that of the corrected edition scrupulously prepared by Noel Polk, whose textual note precedes the text. David Minter's annotations are designed to assist the reader with obscure words and allusions. "Backgrounds" begins with the appendix Faulkner wrote in 1945 and sometimes referred to as another telling of The Souud and the Fury, and includes a selection of Faulkner's letters, excerpts from two Faulkner interviews, a memoir by Faulkner's friend Ben Wasson, and both versions of Faulkner's 1933 "Introduction" to the novel. "Cultural and Historical Contexts" presents four different perspectives, two of them new to the Second Edition, on the South's place in history. Taken together, these works by C. Vann Woodward, Richard H. King, Carolyn Porter, and Robert Penn Warren provide the reader with valuable contexts for understanding the novel. "Criticism" includes seventeen essays on The Sound and the Fury that collectively trace changes in the way we hav

For three young friends it had been the most golden of summers. But the fire on Snake Mountain, spawned on a moonless night by a single shaft of lightning, was to burn a brand upon all their lives. After a tragic death for which she holds herself accountable teacher Julia Bishop is forced to choose between the two men she loves. The one she spurns embarks on a dark journey to the heart of human suffering. Reckless of a life he no longer values, war photographer Connor Ford finds fame but never happiness, until another fateful day when he must walk through fire once more - for Julia, her child and all he holds dear.

From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Remains ofthe Day" "comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born inearly-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age ofnine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, morethan twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in Londonsociety; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him famehas done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents'alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthinecity of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own,painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyondrecognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficultto trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful andpsychologically acute, When We Were Orphans" "offers a profoundmeditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibilityof avenging one's past.

"The Metamorphosis and Other Stories," by Franz Kafka, is partof the ""Barnes and Noble Classics" "series, which offers qualityeditions at affordable prices to the student and the generalreader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages ofcarefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable featuresof "Barnes and Noble Classics": New introductions commissioned fromtoday's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authorsChronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and culturalevents Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations,parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, andfilms inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Studyquestions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectationsBibliographies for further reading Indices and Glossaries, whenappropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed tosuperior specifications; some include illustrations of historicalinterest. "Barnes and Noble Classics "pulls together

In his long-awaited, vastly innovative new novel, Naipaul,"one of literature's great travelers" (Los Angles Times), spanscontinents and centuries to create what is at once an autobiographyand a fictional archaeology of colonialism. "Dickensian . . . abrilliant new prism through which to view (Naipaul's) life andwork."--New York Times.

As a top columnist and stokck picker for The Motley Fool,Sheard pioneered a popular approach to investing using straightforward formuast thar later became the basis of his bestselling book The Unemotional investor.Now he turns his considerable investing and writing skills to a new and vital topic:how to achieve financial independence,stop working ,and lead the life you've always dreamed of. 作者简介: Robert Sheard is an internationally recognized investment writer.He was a senior writer for The Motley Fool for several years before opening his own money management firm,Sheard & Davey Advisors,LLC(sheard-davey.com).His research has been profiled in SmartMoney magazine,the Los Angeles Times,The Miami Herald,the San Jose Mercury News,the Houston Chronicle,The South China Morning Post,and a number of other newspapers and Internet forums.His first book,The Unemotional Inuestor(Simon & Schuster,1998)was a New Youk Times and Business Week best-seller,a number one nonfiction bestseller at Amazon.com,an

Eight Neanderthals encounter another race of beings likethemselves, yet strangely different. This new race, Homo sapiens,fascinating in their skills and sophistication, terrifying in theircruelty, sense of guilt, and incipient corruption, spell doom forthe more gentle folk whose world they will inherit. Golding, authorof Lord of the Flies, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature.

'This book is an expression of a deep enjoyment andappreciation of being alive -in Africa. There is more to it than[hunting]; it .is the feeling of the dew on the .grass in themorning, the shape and colour and smell, of the country, thecompanionship Of friends.., and the feeling that, time has ceasedto matter'

From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to managea coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to theintense colours and ravishing landscapes, Karen Blixen spent herhappiest years on the farm and her experiences and friendships withthe people around her are vividly recalled in these memoirs. "Outof Africa" is the story of a remarkable and unconventional womanand of a way of life that has vanished for ever.

'Cesar Montero was dreaming about elephants. He'd seen them atthe movies on Sunday...' Only moments later, Cesar is led away bypolice as they clear the crowds away from the man he has justkilled. But Cesar is not the only man to be riled by the rumoursbeing spread in his Colombian hometown - under the cover ofdarkness, someone creeps through the streets sticking maliciousposters to walls and doors. Each night the respectable townsfolkretire to their beds fearful that they will be the subject of thefollowing morning's lampoons. As paranoia seeps through the townand the delicate veil of tranquility begins to slip, can theperpetrator be uncovered before accusation and violence leave theinhabitants' sanity in tatters?

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Introduction by JohnBayley

The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his nativeRussian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literarycareer. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the worksof Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: thestory of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished e migre poetliving in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--abook very much like The Gift itself.

Portnoy's Complaint "n." after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] Adisorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses areperpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of aperverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism,voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful;as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neitherfantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but ratherin overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution,particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. "ThePuzzled Penis," "Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse,"Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of thesymptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-childrelationship. With a new Afterword by the author for the 25thAnniversary edition.

Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is anageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living aplacid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with hisfriend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to finedining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and adedication to the collection of antiques. When these relativesbecome aware of the true value of his art collection, however,their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls awayas they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man'sinheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion toCousin Bette, the darkly humorous "Cousin Pons" is among of thelast and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urbansociety: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing considerationof human nature.

High school senior Tyler Miller used to be the kind of guy who faded into the background—average student, average looks, average dysfunctional family. But since he got busted for doing graffiti on the school, and spent the summer doing outdoor work to pay for it, he stands out like you wouldn’t believe. His new physique attracts the attention of queen bee Bethany Milbury, who just so happens to be his father’s boss’s daughter, the sister of his biggest enemy—and Tyler’s secret crush. And that sets off a string of events and changes that have Tyler questioning his place in the school, in his family, and in the world. In Twisted, the acclaimed Laurie Halse Anderson tackles a very controversial subject: what it means to be a man today. Fans and new readers alike will be captured by Tyler’s pitchperfect, funny voice, the surprising narrative arc, and the thoughtful moral dilemmas that are at the heart of all of the author’s award-winning, widely read work.