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

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has cor-rected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations. New to the Fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind this beloved work. Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are in-cluded, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A. Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and criti-cal reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role Victorian Christianity plays in the novel

The bestselling tale of Romanov intrigue from the author of"The Kitchen Boy" Book groups and historical fiction buffs havemade Robert Alexanderas two previous novels word-of-mouth favoritesand national bestsellers. Set against a backdrop of ImperialRussiaas twilight, "The Romanov Bride" has the same enduringappeal. The Grand Duchess Elisavyetaas story begins like a fairytaleaa German princess renowned for her beauty and kind heartmarries the Grand Duke Sergei of Russia and enters the Romanovaslavish court. Her husband, however, rules his wife as he doesMoscowawith a cold, hard fist. And, after a peaceful demonstrationbecomes a bloodbath, the fires of the revolution link Elisavyetaasdestiny to that of Pavelaa young Bolshevikaforever.

Nabokov's first novel. A tale of youth, first love andnostalgia. In a Berlin rooming house, a vigorous young officerpoised between his past and his future relives his first loveaffair.

A revised edition of a medieval masterpiece-the firstnarrative history written by a woman Written between 1143 and 1153 by the daughter ofByzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, The Alexiad is one ofthe most popular and revealing primary sources in the vast canon ofmedieval literature. Princess Anna Komnene, eldest child of theimperial couple, reveals the inner workings of the court, profilesits many extraordinary personages, and offers a firsthand accountof immensely significant events such as the First Crusade, as wellas its impact on the relationship between eastern and westernChristianity. A celebrated triumph of Byzantine letters, this is anunparalleled view of the glorious Constantinople and the medievalworld.

This major collection contains all of Doris Lessing's shortfiction, other than the stories set in Africa, from the beginningof her career until now. Set in London, Paris, the south of France,the English countryside, these thirty-five stories reflect thethemes that have always characterized Lessing's work: the bedrockrealities of marriage and other relationships between men andwomen; the crisis of the individual whose very psyche is threatenedby a society unattuned to its own most dangerous qualities; thefate of women.

Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleepswith a different virgin, executing her next morning. To end thisbrutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter,Shahrazad, begins to tell the king tales of adventure, love, richesand wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled with princes andhunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of thevoyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba's outwitting a band of fortythieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequenceof stories will last 1,001 nights.

"Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of thehero--sullen, gawky Hugh Person--to Switzerland . . . As a youngpublisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armandeon the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from agrinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride. . . . Eightyears later--following a murder, a period of madness and a briefimprisonment--Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle outhis past. . . . The several strands of dream, memory, and time[are] set off against the literary theorizing of R. and, morecentrally, against the world of observable objects." --MartinAmis

Wishing she could enjoy the freedoms and pleasures so casuallyenjoyed by ordinary women, orthodox rabbi's daughter Rachelanticipates her arranged marriage and imagines what her life willbe like. Reprint.

Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises fourremarkable novels that explore social class in America and theinner lives of young Americans. As powerful and relevant today asit on its initial publication, them chronicles the tumultuous livesof a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, fromthe 1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her“potent, life-gripping imagination,” Oates traces the aspirationsand struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy young mother who isfilled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequentdestinies of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight tosurvive in a world of violence and danger. Winner of the National Book Award, them is an enthralling novelabout love, class, race, and the inhumanity of urban life. It is,raves The New York Times, “a superbly accomplished vision.” Them is the third novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books thatcomplete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights,Expensive Peo

GRAHAM SWIFT was born in l 949 and iS theauthor of eight acclaimed novels and a collection of shortstories；his most recent work iS Making an Elephant,a book ofessays，portraits，poetry and reflections on his life in writing．WithWaterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize(1 983)，and with LastOrders the Booker Prize(1 996)．Both novels have since been madeinto films．Graham Swirl’S work has appeared in over thirtylanguages．

" Zamyatin's] intuitive grasp of the irrational side oftotalitarianism- human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself-makesWe] superior to Huxley's Brave New World]."-George Orwell Aninspiration for George Orwell's "1984" and a precursor to the workof Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem, We is a classic of dystopianscience fiction ripe for rediscovery. Written in 1921 by theRussian revolutionary Yevgeny Zamyatin, this story of the thirtiethcentury is set in the One State, a society where all live for thecollective good and individual freedom does not exist. The noveltakes the form of the diary of state mathematician D-503, who, tohis shock, experiences the most disruptive emotion imaginable: lovefor another human being.At once satirical and sobering-and nowavailable in a powerful new modern translation-We speaks to all whohave suffered under repression of their personal and artisticfreedom. "One of the greatest novels of the twentiethcentury."-Irving Howe

The Subterraneans haunt the bars and clubs of San Francisco,surviving on a diet of booze and benzedrine, Proust and Verlaine.Living amongst them is Leo, an aspiring writer, and Mardou,half-Indian, half-Negro, beautiful and neurotic. Their bitter-sweetand ill-starred love affair sees Kerouac at his most evocative.Many regard this as being Kerouac's most touching and tenderbook.

When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne,everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. Butwhen Meaulnes disappears for several days, and returns with talesof a strange party at a mysterious house and a beautiful girlhidden within it, he has been changed forever. In his restlesssearch for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there,Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losingeverything he ever had. Poised between youthful admiration andadult resignation, Alain-Fournier's compelling narrator carries thereader through this evocative and unbearably poignant portrayal ofdesperate friendship and vanished adolescence.

Sony brings this powerful and moving story of love andredemption to the big screen in a major motion picture starringLiam Neeson, Uma Thurman, Academy Award-winner Geoffrey Rush, andClaire Danes.

As a child, Catherine Crier was enchanted by film portrayals of crusading lawyers like Clarence Darrow and Atticus Finch. As a district attorney, private lawyer, and judge herself, she saw firsthand how the U.S. justice system worked – and didn’t. One of the most respected legal journalists and commentators today, she now confronts a profoundly unfair legal system that produces results and profits for the few – and paralysis, frustration, and injustice for the many. Alexis de Tocqueville’s dire prediction in Democracy in America has come true: We Americans have ceded our responsibility as citizens to resolve the problems of society to "legal authorities" – and with it our democratic freedoms. The Case Against Lawyers is both an angry indictment and an eloquent plea for a return to common sense. It decries a system of laws so complex even the enforcers – such as the IRS – cannot understand them. It unmasks a litigation-crazed society where billion-dollar judgments mostly line the pockets of p

Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet comprises fourremarkable novels that explore social class in America and theinner lives of young Americans. In "A Garden of Earthly Delights,"Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole,the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers.Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence andpoverty, determined not to repeat her mother's life, Clarastruggles for independence by way of her relationships with fourvery different men: her father, a family man turned itinerantlaborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, whorescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love;Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; andSwan, Clara's son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burdenof his mother's ambition. A masterly work from a writer with "theuncanny ability to give us a cinemascopic vision of her America"("National Review"), "A Garden of Earthly Delights "is the openingstanza i

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Arriving in a village to takeup the position of land surveyor for the mysterious lord of acastle, the character known as K. finds himself in a bitter andbaffling struggle to contact his new employer and go about hisduties. As the villagers and the Castle officials block his effortsat every turn, K.'s consuming quest-quite possibly a self-imposedone-to penetrate the inaccessible heart of the Castle and take itsmeasure is repeatedly frustrated. Kafka once suggested that thewould-be surveyor in "The Castle" is driven by a wish "to get clearabout ultimate things," an unrealizable desire that provided thedriving force behind all of Kafka's dazzlingly uncanny fictions.Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

From Ernest Hemingway's Preface: 'There are many kinds ofstories in this book. I hope you will find some that you like - Ingoing where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, andseeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument youwrite with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know Ihad to put it on the grindstone and hammer it into shape and put awhetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, thanto have it bright and shining, and nothing to say, or smooth andwell-oiled in the closet, but unused.' This is a collection ofHemingway's first forty-nine short stories, featuring a briefintroduction by the author and lesser known as well as familiartales, including "Up in Michigan", "Fifty Grand", and "The Light ofthe World", and the "Snows of Kilimanjaro", "Winner Take Nothing"and "Men Without Women" collections.

The best-known novellas and stories of one of the seminalwriters of the twentieth century. Included are "The Judgment, " "ACountry Doctor, " and "A Hunger Artist." New Foreword by AnneRice.

This selection of the works of W B Yeats, includes the finalbook from the unfairly neglected narrative poem "The Wanderings ofOisin" and a number of lyrics from Yeats' work as poetic dramatist.It breaks new ground by allowing the reader to engage with a dozenpoems in alternative versions; in many other cases it providessignificant variants, so that Yeats's struggle to revise his poetrycan be experienced with unusual immediacy.

Vanity Fair , by William Makepeace Thackeray , ispart of the Barnes Noble Classics series,which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the studentand the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtfuldesign, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of theremarkable features of Barnes Noble Classics : New introductions commissioned from today's top writers andscholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporaryhistorical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes andendnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems,books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired bythe work Comments by other famous authors Study questions tochallenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographiesfor further reading Indices Glossaries, when appropriateAlleditions are beautifully designed and are printed to superiorspecifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes Noble Classics pulls together a constellationof i