Nine strokes from an old country church toll out the death ofan unknown man and call Lord Peter Wimsey to one of his mostbaffling cases. Set in the strange, flat fen-country of EastAnglia, this is a classic tale of suspense by a master ofmystery.
Beautiful Chiara is smitten by the brilliant but pennilessdoctor Salvatore. Desiring the unwilling Salvatore as a futurehusband, she engages in a series of comic attempts to land herobject of affection, only to create a greater chasm between thestar-crossed would-be lovers.
Karen Wynn Fonstad's THE ATLAS OF MIDDLE-EARTH is an essentialvolume that will enchant all Tolkien fans. Here is the definitiveguide to the geography of Middle-earth, from its founding in theElder Days through the Third Age, including the journeys of Bilbo,Frodo, and the Fellowship of the Ring. Authentic and updated --nearly one third of the maps are new, and the text is fully revised-- the atlas illuminates the enchanted world created in THESILMARILLION, THE HOBBIT, and THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Hundreds oftwo-color maps and diagrams survey the journeys of the principalcharacters day by day -- including all the battles and keylocations of the First, Second, and Third Ages. Plans andde*ions of castles, buildings, and distinctive landforms aregiven, along with thematic maps describing the climate, vegetation,languages, and population distribution of Middle-earth throughoutits history. An extensive appendix and an index help readerscorrelate the maps with Tolkien's novels.
Narrated by a fifteen-year-old girl with a ruthless regard fortruth, The Last Life is a beautifully told novel of lies andghosts, love and honor. Set in colonial Algeria, and in the southof France and New England, it is the tale of the LaBasse family,whose quiet integrity is shattered by the shots from agrandfather's rifle. As their world suddenly begins to crumble,long-hidden shame emerges: a son abandoned by the family before hewas even born, a mother whose identity is not what she has claimed,a father whose act of defiance brings Hotel Bellevue-the familybusiness-to its knees. Messud skillfully and inexorably describeshow the stories we tell ourselves, and the lies to which we cling,can turn on us in a moment. It is a work of stunning power from awriter to watch.
The murder of a young Polish girl in wartime London puts JohnMadden on the trail of a ruthless hired killer On a freezing Londonnight in 1944, Rosa Novak is brutally murdered during a blackout.The police suspect she was the victim of a random act of violenceand might have dropped the case if former police investigator JohnMadden hadn't been the victim's employer. Madden's old colleaguesat Scotland Yard are working on it, but their scant clues lead themto Europe, where the ravages of the war halt their inquiries.Madden feels he owes it to Rosa to find her killer and pushes theinvestigation until he stumbles upon the dead girl's connection toa murdered Parisian furrier, a member of the Resistance, and astolen cache of diamonds. With rich psychological insights andvivid historical details, this riveting third novel in the Maddenseries promises to expand Airth's readership among discerning fansof crime fiction.
A treasury of Lewis’s thought, gathered from all of his morethan forty books and his uncollected essays, on subjects as variedas sin, hell and heaven, the Trinity, and love and sex. Edited andwith a Preface by Clyde S. Kilby.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Franz Kafka's imagination so faroutstripped the forms and conventions of the literary tradition heinherited that he was forced to turn that tradition inside out inorder to tell his splendid, mysterious tales. Scrupulouslynaturalistic on the surface, uncanny in their depths, these storiesrepresent the achieved art of a modern master who had the gift ofmaking our problematic spiritual life palpable and real. Thisedition of his stories includes all his available shorter fictionin a collection edited, arranged, and introduced by GabrielJosipovici in ways that bring out the writer's extraordinary rangeand intensity of vision. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
This stunning and steamy debut chronicles the adventures ofNan King, a small town girl at the turn of the century whose lifetakes a wild turn of its own when she follows a local music hallstar to London...
Written in the third century BC in Alexandria, this is theonly full surviving account of Jason's legendary quest for theGolden Fleece. It describes the thrilling adventures of theArgonauts on their voyage to Colchis to plead with king Aeetes forthe fleece, his greatest treasure and the Eros-inspired passionfelt by his daughter, the beautiful witch-princess Medea, for thescheming Jason. Chronicling a journey that sees Jason and his crewtraverse perilous seas, negotiate the treacherous Cyanean Rocks,and confront the lure of the Sirens' song, The Voyage of Argo is amasterful depiction of distinctly human heroism and betrayal causedby love. An eloquent marriage of romance and realism, it tells thedefinitive version of one of the greatest legends of the classicalage: an epic tale of bravery, prophecy and magic.
Alienated from society, Harry Hailer is the Steppenwolf:wild,strange and shy. His despair and desire for death draw himintoan enchanted Faustian underworld. Through a series ofshadowyencounters - romantic, freakish and savage by turn -Hailer beginsto rediscover the lost dreams of his youth. Adopted by the sixties' counterculture,Steppenwolf captured the mood of a disaffected generation that wasbeginning to question everything.
On the eve of the Russian Revolution, Frank Reid, a strugglingBritish-born printer in Moscow, is abandoned by his wife and isleft to care for his three children while keeping his businessafloat.
Welcome to Rome. It is the summer of 1978, and the Krasnanskyfamily, bickering, tired and confused, are supposed to be passingthrough. Alongside thousands of other Soviet Jewish refugees -among them criminals, dissidents and refuseniks - they awaitpassage to their new homes in the West. But escaping Communism isnot so easy, especially when some of the Krasnanskys insist onbringing it with them, and even more so when their sponsor in theUSA lets them down and they find that they're no longer passingthrough at all. On the contrary, they're stuck. Welcome, then, tothe waiting room of your life, and to a tragic yet comic tale ofreckless brothers and long-suffering sisters, ailing parents andinnocent children, of love affairs and criminal liaisons, of awonderfully troubled family and a perpetually wandering people, andtheir epic search for a home: somewhere, anywhere - or Canada, asit turns out.
Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision seen through the eyesof the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the UnitedStates), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible resultsof today's follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it istransformed by Vonnegut's pen into hilarious farce (a finalslapstick that may be the Almighty's joke on us all.) "Vonnegut'songoing puppet show...that fabulous is reborn."--John Updike "Bothfunny and sad...just about perfect "--"Los AngelesTimes""Imaginative and hilarious...a brilliant vision of ourwrecked, wacked-out future."--"Hartford Courant "*"The New YorkTimes"
Omar Khayyam Shakil had three mothers whoshared the symptoms of pregnancy, as they dideverything else, inseparably. At their six breasts,Omar was warned against all feelings and nuancesof shame. It was training which would prove usefulwhen he left his mothers' fortress (via the dumb-waiter) to face his shameless future. As captivatingfairy-tale, devastating political satire and exquisite,uproarious entertainment, shame is a novelwithout rival.
Hans Christian Andersen was the profoundly imaginative writerand storyteller who revolutionized literature for children. He gaveus the now standard versions of some traditional fairy tales - withan anarchic twist - but many of his most famous tales sprangdirectly from his imagination. The thirty stories here range fromexuberant early works such as "The Tinderbox" and "The Emperor'sNew Clothes" through poignant masterpieces such as "The LittleMermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling," to more subversive later talessuch as "The Ice maiden" and "The Wood Nymph."
When the three novellas in The King of Trees were publishedseparately in China in the 1980s, "Ah Cheng fever" spread acrossthe country. Never before had a fiction writer dealt with theCultural Revolution in such Daoist-Confucian terms, discardingMao-speak, and mixing both traditional and vernacular elements withan aesthetic that emphasized not the hardships and miseries ofthose years, but the joys of close, meaningful friendships. In TheKing of Chess, a student's obsession with finding worthy chessopponents symbolizes his pursuit of the dao; in The King ofChildren-made into an award-winning film by Chen Kaige, thedirector of Farewell My Concubine-an educated youth is sent toteach at an impoverished village school where one boy's devotion tolearning is so great he is ready to spend 500 days copying histeacher's dictionary; and in the title novella a peasant's innateconnection to a giant primeval tree takes a tragic turn when agroup of educated youth arrive to clear the mountain forest. Asmoving and enduring a
Edited by the award-winning, best-sellingauthor Geraldine Brooks, this year's collection will be another"sure bet for gripping, emotional challenging reading" (San DiegoUnion-Tribune). With Brooks picking the best of the best, America'soldest and best-selling story anthology is sure to satisfy thisyear. 自1915年成立以来，美国*这一系列就已经成为该国首屈一指的*秀的短篇小说和散文年度展示平台。对于每个册，编辑都会阅读几百种系列期刊，然后从五十至一百五十个优秀作品中选。然后客座编辑--在其领域被公认为*秀的作家，会将其削减到二十左右。这一独特的系统使美国系列在同类图书中成为美国受人尊敬的，也是流行的。
The surprise New York Times bestseller, from an author who delivers American storytelling at its best. The story of marriage, family, and forgiveness that has become not just a bestseller but an instant classic Their story begins with one letter on their wedding night, a letter from the groom, promising to write his bride every week for as long they both shall live. Thirty-nine years later, Jack and Laurel Cooper die in each others arms. And when their grown children return to the family B&B to arrange the funeral, they discover thousands of letters. The letters they read tell of surprising joys and sorrows. They also hint at a shocking family secret and ultimately force the children to confront a life-changing moment of truth
