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.

"The best way to understand Pasternak's achievementinDoctorZh/vago is to see it in terms of this great Russianliterarytradition, as a fairy tale, not so much of good and evil asof opposing forces and needs in human destiny and historythat cannever be reconciled... [Zhivago is] a figure whoembodies theprinciple of life itself, the principle that contradicts everyabstraction of revolutionary politics."

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just inthe figurative sense, not just because he was one of the lastpeople to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to havegiven Hank the final morphine dose that killed him. In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is wracked byaddiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, hismorphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So helives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south sideof San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knifeor gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant,appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc's services, miraculousthings begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist thatnever heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand.Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe,for Hank's angry ghost—who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doingwell. A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of m

Mesmerizing...an exquisite rendering of what one might callfeels at the subatomic level." -The New York Times A prime number is a lonely thing. It can only be divided byitself or by one, and it never truly fits with another. Alice andMattia are both "primes"-misfits haunted by early tragedies. Whenthe two meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred,damaged spirit. Years later, a chance encounter reunites them andforces a lifetime of concealed emotion to the surface. But can twoprime numbers ever find a way to be together? A brilliantlyconceived and elegantly written debut novel, The Solitude of PrimeNumbers is a stunning meditation on loneliness, love, and what itmeans to be human.

Book De*ion Remember when flying was glamorous and sexy, even fun? Whenairline food was gourmet, everyone dressed up for a flight, andstewardesses catered to our every need-at least in ourimaginations? This classic memoir by two audaciously outspokenyoung ladies, who lived and loved the free-spirited stewardesslife, jets you back to those golden days of air travel-from thecaptain who's as subtle as a 747 when he's on the make to thepassenger who mistakes the overhead luggage rack for an upperberth; from the names of celebrities who were a pleasure to serve(and some surprising notables on the "bad guy" list) to the originsof some naughty stereotypes-Spaniards "are" the best lovers, actorsthe most foul-mouthed. This huge bestseller, a First Class jet-agejournal, offers a hilarious gold mine of outrageous anecdotes fromthe high-flying and amorous lives of those busty, lusty,adventuresome young women of the swinging '60s known as"stews." About Author Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones were name

city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which sparesno one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital,but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealingfood rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to thisnightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with nomother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barrenstreets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundingsare harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation anda vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century,Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayalof man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimatelyexhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will tosurvive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize forLiterature.

二十一岁的巴特与十八岁的新兵莫菲，於美国出兵伊拉克前夕于军中相识，两人一见如故，巴特答应莫菲母亲，会平安带著她儿子归来，但二○○五年，只剩巴特独自一人退伍返国。莫菲在伊拉克战场上因饱受死亡威胁，精神崩溃逃出军营，巴特与士官长施大林发现他时，莫菲已遭不明人士虐杀，全身赤裸，不仅眼睛被挖出，耳朵、鼻子被割掉，生殖器也几乎被切断，两人在怕事的心态下将莫菲丢入河中佯装失踪，巴特事后假扮莫菲写了封信给莫菲之母。然而等到巴特退伍回国后，莫菲的尸体浮现在底格里斯河与幼发拉底河的汇流处…… A novel written by a veteran of the war in Iraq, The YellowBirds is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stayalive. "The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins thispowerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq,twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighte

Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing just a poundat birth, at twenty-three weeks gestation. During the delivery shebegged the doctors to "let her babies go" she knew all too wellthat at twenty-three weeks they could very well die and, if theysurvived, they would face a high risk of permanent disabilities.However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter diedjust four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiplydisabled: blind, nonverbal, and dependent on a feeding tube. ThisLovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of theForman family after the birth of the twins the harrowing medicalinterventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity oflife and death. In the end, the longdelayed first steps of afive-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of atriumph narrative. Formans intelligent voice gives a sensitive,nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventualacceptance in this portrait of a mothers fierce love for herchildren.

When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another thatseemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, abeautiful mother, and two little girls. The youngest girls fromeach family—one of them Jane—even shared a birthday. With so much in common, the two families became almost instantlyinseparable. Within months, affairs had ignited between the adults,and before long the pairs had exchanged partners—divorced,remarried, and moved on. As if in a cataclysm of nature, twofamilies were ripped asunder, and two new ones were formed. Twopairs of girls were left in shock, a “silent, numb shock, like acrack inside stone, not enough to split it but inside, silentlyfissuring.” And Jane and her stepsister were thrown into a state ofsilent combat for the affections of their absent fathers—a contestthat, for one of them at least, would prove tragic. Readers drawn to The Glass Castle will be moved by Alison’sstunning emotional insight as she recounts the intimatedevastations of family

Two classic plays translated by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poetinto English verse. In The Misanthrope, society itself is indictedand the impurity of its critics motives is exposed. In Tartuffe,the bigoted and prudish Orgon falls completely under the power ofthe wily Tartuffe. Introductions by Richard Wilbur.

Michael Adams is a composer of advertising jingles whoshares a bachelor pad with three other guys. He spends his dayslying in bed (a minifridge positioned perfectly within reach) andplaying trivia games with his underachieving roommates. And when hefeels like it, Michael crosses the city and returns home to hisunsuspecting wife and two small children. Michael is living adouble life, stretching out his "wilting salad days" with imaginarybusiness trips and fake deadlines while his wife enjoys theexhausting misery of the little ones. It's the best thing for hismarriage, Michael figures. She can care for the new loves of herlife as it seems only she knows how, and he can sleep until theafternoon. Can this double life continue indefinitely? In The Besta Man Can Get, best-selling comic novelist John O'Farrell takesreaders on a dark romp through the soul of the contemporary male,torn between eternal adolescence and the very real demands offatherhood. It's wry, witty, and surprisingly charming.

Jane Goodall's account of her life among the wild chimpanzees ofGombe is one of the most enthralling stories of animal behaviorever written. Her adventure began when the famous anthropologistLouis Leakey suggested that a long-term study of chimpanzees in thewild might shed light on the behavior of our Stone Age ancestors.Accompanied by only her mother and her African assistants, she setup camp in the remote Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanzania.For months the project seemed hopeless; out in the jungle from dawnuntil dark, she had but fleeting glimpses of frightened animals. Atlast came the day when she was accepted and no longer feared. Shewas able to record previously unknown behavior, such as theuse--and even the making--of tools, until then believed to be anexclusive skill of man. As she came to know the chimps asindividuals, she deciphered their complicated social hierarchy,their rituals, and many other extraordinary behaviors, which haveforever changed our understanding of the profound connectionb

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.

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.

First published in 1938, The Hobbit is a story that "grew inthe telling," and many characters and events in the published bookare completely different from what Tolkien first wrote to readaloud to his young sons as part of their "fireside reads." For thefirst time, The History of the Hobbit reproduces the originalversion of one of literature's most famous stories, and includesmany little-known illustrations and previously unpublished maps forThe Hobbit created by Tolkien himself. Also featured are extensiveannotations and commentaries on the date of composition, howTolkien's professional and early mythological writings influencedthe story, the imaginary geography he created, and how he came torevise the book in the years after publication to accommodateevents in The Lord of the Rings.

Originally subtitled "An Adventurous Education, 1935-1946",this book is a key volume in Kerouac's lifework, the series ofautobiographical novels he referred to as The Legend of Duluoz. Awonderfully unassuming look back at the origins of his career--aprehistory of the Beat era, written from the perspective of thepsychedelic '60s.

Disgrace--set in post--apartheid Cape Town and on a remote farm in the Eastern Cape--is deft, lean, quiet, and brutal. A heartbreaking novel about a man and his daughter, Disgrace is a portrait of the new South Africa that is ultimately about grace and love. At fifty--two Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire but lacking passion. An affair with one of his students leaves him jobless and friendless, except for his daughter, Lucy, who works her smallholding with her neighbor, Petrus, an African farmer now on the way to a modest prosperity. David's attempts to relate to Lucy, and to a society with new racial complexities, are disrupted by an afternoon of violence that changes him and his daughter in ways he could never have foreseen. In this wry, visceral, yet strangely tender novel, Coetzee once again tells "truths [that] cut to the bone" (The New York Time Book Review). A finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Awards Coetzee is the only writer to have been awarded

The Restoration Court knows Lady Dona St Columb to be ripe forany folly, any outrage that will alter the tedium of her days. Butthere is another, secret Dona who longs for a life of honest love-- and sweetness, even if it is spiced with danger. It is this Donawho flees the stews of London for remote Navron, looking for peaceof mind in its solitary woods and hidden creeks. She finds therethe passion her spirit craves -- in the love of a daring piratehunted by all Cornwall, a Frenchman who, like Dona, would gamblehis life for a moment's joy.

How is it that we can recognize photos from our high schoolyearbook decades later, but cannot remember what we ate forbreakfast yesterday? And why are we inclined to buy more cans ofsoup if the sign says "LIMIT 12 PER CUSTOMER" rather than "LIMIT 4PER CUSTOMER?" In "Kluge, "Gary Marcus argues convincingly that ourminds are not as elegantly designed as we may believe. Theimperfections result from a haphazard evolutionary process thatoften proceeds by piling new systems on top of old ones--and thosesystems don't always work well together. The end product is a"kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. Taking us on atour of the essential areas of human experience--memory, belief,decision making, language, and happiness--Marcus unveils afundamentally new way of looking at the evolution of the human mindand simultaneously sheds light on some of the most mysteriousaspects of human nature.

Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 LadyChatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for theonce-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--theadulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-classmarried woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned byher wheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex,and seeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel ismemorable for better reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterfuland lyrical writer, whose story takes us bodily into the world ofits characters. --This text refers to an alternate Paperbackedition.

Penelope Fitzgerald's first novel, THE GOLDEN CHILD, combinesa deft comedy of manners with a classic mystery set in London'smost refined institution -- the museum. When the glitteringtreasure of ancient Garamantia, the golden child, is delivered tothe museum, a web of intrigue tightens around its personnel,especially the hapless museum officer Waring Smith. While prowlingthe halls one night, Waring is nearly strangled. Two suspiciousdeaths ensue, and only the cryptic hieroglyphics of the Garamantescan bring an end to the mayhem. Fitzgerald has an unerring eye forhuman nature, and this satirical look at the art world delivers aterrifically witty read.

胖查理在伦敦过着正常的生活，当他给住在美国、久已疏远的父亲打电话，请他来参加自己的婚礼时，却发现父亲刚刚过世了。胖查理去佛罗里达参加了父亲的葬礼，于是惊心动魄的故事逐一上演…… 因为他发现两件事：，他的父亲是化作人形的蜘蛛神阿纳西，一个来自非洲的骗子之神；第二，他还有个叫“蜘蛛”的兄弟继承了父亲的部分神力。蜘蛛拥有胖查理所没有的一切优点：幸运、快活、充满自信，还有父亲的如簧巧舌和追求女人的天份。他的出现把胖查理有条不紊的生活被蜘蛛搅得天翻地覆，他偷走了胖查理的工作、未婚妻，甚至是家中好的房间，更糟的是，他还害胖查理被警方当作挪用公款和谋杀客户的嫌疑犯…… 胖查理身陷囹圄，只得回到佛罗里达，试图摆脱兄弟的干扰。他借助于魔法，进入了图腾动物神祗们居住的灵魂世界，但故