Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writersthe winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three children from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fashion. Other stories uncover the “deep-holes” in a marriage, the unsuspected cruelty of children, and how a boy’s disfigured face provides both the good things in his life and the bad. And in the long title story, we accompany Sophia Kovalevskya late-nineteenth-century Russian émigré and mathematicianon a winter journey that takes her from the Riviera, where she visits her lover, to Paris, Germany, and, Denmark, where she has a fateful meeting with a local doctor, and finally to Sweden, where she teaches at the only university in Europe willing to employ a female mathematician. With clarity an

Jill Taylor was a 37-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientistwhen a blood vessel exploded in her brain. Through the eyes of acurious scientist, she watched her mind deteriorate whereby shecould not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life.Because of her understanding of the brain, her respect for thecells in her body, and an amazing mother, Jill completelyrecovered. In My Stroke of Insight, she shares her recommendationsfor recovery and the insight she gained into the unique functionsof the two halves of her brain. When she lost the skills of herleft brain, her consciousness shifted away from normal realitywhere she felt "at one with the universe." Taylor helps others notonly rebuild their brains from trauma, but helps those of us withnormal brains better understand how we can consciously influencethe neural circuitry underlying what we think, how we feel and howwe react to life's circumstances.

In eight new stories, a master of the form extends and magnifies her great themes--the vagaries of love, the passion that leads down unexpected paths, the chaos hovering just under the surface of things, and the strange, often comical desires of the human heart. Time stretches out in some of the stories: a man and a woman look back forty years to the summer they met--the summer, as it turns out, that the true nature of their lives was revealed. In others time is telescoped: a young girl finds in the course of an evening that the mother she adores, and whose fluttery sexuality she hopes to emulate, will not sustain her--she must count on herself. Some choices are made--in a will, in a decision to leave home--with irrevocable and surprising consequences. At other times disaster is courted or barely skirted: when a mother has a startling dream about her baby; when a woman, driving her grandchildren to visit the lakeside haunts of her youth, starts a game that could have dangerous consequences.

In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunchwith a handsome Frenchman--and never went home again. Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slideffortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak's pinkjuices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? LUNCH IN PARIS is amemoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionatelove affairs--one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with Frenchcuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world's mostromantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a world of bustlingopen-air markets, hipster bistros, and size 2 femmesfatales . She learns to gut her first fish (with a little helpfrom Jane Austen), soothe pangs of homesickness (with the rise of achocolate soufflé) and develops a crush on her local butcher (whobears a striking resemblance to Matt Dillon). Elizabeth finds thatthe deeper she immerses herself in the world of French cuisine, themore Paris itself begins to translate. French culture, shediscovers, is not unlik

The Door, Margaret Atwood's first book of poetry since Morningin the Burned House, is a magnificent achievement. Here inpaperback for the first time, these fifty lucid, urgent poems rangein tone from lyric to ironic to mediative to prophetic, and insubject from the personal to the political, viewed in its broadestsense. They investigate the mysterious writing of poetry itself, aswell as the passage of time and our shared sense of mortality.Brave and compassionate, The Door interrogates the certainties thatwe build our lives on, and reminds us once again of MargaretAtwood's unique accomplishments as one of the finest and mostcelebrated writers of our time.

If you had to pick the top-ten iconic sporting events, whatwould they be? Jim Gorant asked himself this question, and theanswer resulted in a yearlong journey into the heart of sports.From the Kentucky Derby to the Super Bowl, from a day game atWrigley Field to a fortnight at Wimbledon, from the NCAA Final Fourto the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field, Gorant takes us along forthe ride, evoking the best (and sometimes the worst) sports has tooffer. He enters the inner sanctum of NASCAR, witnesses JackNicklaus teeing off for the last time at the Masters, and takespart in one of college football’s biggest rivalries—Ohio Stateversus Michigan. Fanatic is a rollicking story of the ultimatesports road trip. Jim Gorant captures these ten unforgettableevents in all their color and commotion and gives sports fanseverywhere reason to cheer.

Recent Yale graduate Megan Smith comes to Manhattan with bigplans for a career in journalism and even bigger student loan debt:$75,000. When she flails at her trashy tabloid job, she's given anescape hatch: tutor seventeen-year-old identical twins Rose andSage Baker--yes, the infamous Baker heiresses of Palm Beach,Florida, best known for their massive fortunes and their penchantfor drunkenly flashing the paparazzi -- and get their SAT scores upenough to get into Duke. Impossible job -- yes. But if shesucceeds, her student debts are history. Unfortunately for Megan,the Baker twins aren't about to curtail their busy social schedulesfor basic algebra. And they certainly aren't thrilled to have tosit down for a study session with dowdy Megan. Megan quicklydiscovers that if she's going to get her money, she'll have tolearn her Pucci from her Prada. And if she can look the part,maybe, just maybe, she can teach the girls something along theway.

In Victorian England, an orphan girl is sent to a countryestate to work for-and ultimately woo-its young heiress, on behalfof a mysterious benefactor known as Gentleman.

The editors of the best-selling rediscovered Tolkien novelRoverandom present an expanded fiftieth anniversary edition ofTolkien's beloved classic Farmer Giles of Ham, complete with a map,the original story outline, the original first-editionillustrations by Pauline Baynes, and the author's notes for anunpublished sequel. Farmer Giles of Ham is a light-hearted satirefor readers of all ages that tells the tale of a reluctant hero whomust save his village from a dragon. It is a small gem of a talethat grows more delightful with each rereading.

Arriving in the New World, Europeans were awestruck by acontinent awash with birds. Today tens of millions of Americansbirders have made a once eccentric hobby into something somainstream it's (almost) cool. Scott Weidensaul traces the colorfulevolution of American birding: from the frontier ornithologists whocollected eggs between border skirmishes to the society matrons whoorganized the first effective conservation movement; from theluminaries with checkered pasts, such as convicted blackmailerAlexander Wilson and the endlessly self-mythologizing John JamesAudubon, to the awkward schoolteacher Roger Tory Peterson, whose "AField Guide to the Birds" prompted the explosive growth of modernbirding. Spirited and compulsively readable, "Of a Feather"celebrates the passions and achievements of birders throughoutAmericcan history.

'What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence'. In thisnightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and hisfriends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture andmurder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the Statetries to reform him - but at what cost? Social prophecy? Blackcomedy? Study of freewill? "A Clockwork Orange" is all of these. Itis also a dazzling experiment in language, as Burgess creates a newlanguage - 'nadsat', the teenage slang of a not-too-distantfuture.

Meet Sugar, a nineteen-year-old prostitute innineteenth-century London who yearns for escape to a better life.From the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, she begins herascent through society, meeting a host of lovable, maddening,unforgettable characters on the way. They begin with WilliamRackham, an egotistical perfume magnate whose empire is fueled byhis lust for Sugar; his unhinged, child-like wife Agnes; hismysteriously hidden-away daughter, Sophie; and his pious brotherHenry, foiled in his devotional calling by a persistentlyless-than-chaste love for the Widow Fox. All this is overseen byassorted preening socialites, drunken journalists, untrustworthyservants, vile guttersnipes, and whores of all stripes andpersuasions. Teeming with life, this is a big, juicy must-read of a novel thathas enthralled hundreds of thousands of readers-and will continueto do so for years to come.

From the moment these two legendary players took the court onopposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychologicalbattle. In Celtic green was Larry Bird, the hick from French Lick,with laser-beam focus, relentless determination, and a deadly jumpshot, a player who demanded excellence from everyone around him andwhose caustic wit left opponents quaking in their high-tops. MagicJohnson was Mr. Showtime, a magnetic personality with all the rightmoves. Young, indomitable, he was a pied piper in purple and gold.And he burned with an inextinguishable desire to win. Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize themost thrilling rivalry in the NBA—East vs. West, physical vs.finesse, old school vs. Showtime, even white vs. black. Each pushedthe other to greatness, and together Bird and Johnson collectedeight NBA Championships and six MVP awards, helping to save afloundering NBA. At the start they were bitter rivals, but alongthe way they became lifelong friends.

In a perfect pairing of talent, this volume blends twentyillustrations by Peter SA-s with Jorge Luis Borgesas 1957compilation of 116 astrange creatures conceived through time andspace by the human imagination, a from dragons and centaurs toLewis Carrollas Cheshire Cat and the Morlocks of H. G. Wellsas "TheTime Machine." A lavish feast of exotica brought vividly to lifewith art commissioned specifically for this volume, "The Book ofImaginary Beings" will delight readers of classic fantasy as wellas Borgesas many admirers.

"There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before TheLord of the Rings, and the story told in this book is set in thegreat country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: landswhere Treebeard once walked, but that were drowned in the greatcataclysm that ended the First Age of the World. "In that remotetime Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress ofAngband, the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Turinand his sister Nienor unfolded within the shadow of the fear ofAngband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secretcities of the Elves. "Their brief and passionate lives weredominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as thechildren of Hurin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn himto his face. Against them he sent his most formidable servant,Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragonof fire. Into this story of brutal conquest and flight, of foresthiding-places and pursuit, of resistance with lessening hope, theD

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-outstreets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with itsbeginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of fourLondoners-three women and a young man with a past-whose lives, andthose of their friends and lovers, connect in tragedy, stunningsurprise and exquisite turns, only to change irreversibly in theshadow of a grand historical event.