The inspiration for the major motion picture starring BradPitt and Cate Blanchettaplus eighteen other stories by the belovedauthor of "The Great Gatsby" IN THE TITLE STORY, a baby born in1860 begins life as an old man and proceeds to age backward. F.Scott Fizgerald hinted at this kind of inversion when he called hisera aa generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought,all faiths in man shaken.a Perhaps nowhere in American fiction hasthis aLost Generationa been more vividly preserved than inFitzgeraldas short fiction. Spanning the early twentieth-centuryAmerican landscape, this original collection captures, withFitzgeraldas signature blend of enchantment and disillusionment,America during the Jazz Age.

Hailed as a classic upon its first publication in 1934, TheValleys of the Assassins firmly established Freya Stark as oneof her generation's most intrepid explorers. The book chroniclesher travels into Luristan, the mountainous terrain nestled betweenIraq and present-day Iran, often with only a single guide and on ashoestring budget. Stark writes engagingly of the nomadic peoples who inhabit theregion's valleys and brings to life the stories of the ancientkingdoms of the Middle East, including that of the Lords of Alamut,a band of hashish-eating terrorists whose stronghold in the ElburzMountains Stark was the first to document for the RoyalGeographical Society. Her account is at once a highly readabletravel narrative and a richly drawn, sympathetic portrait of apeople told from their own compelling point of view. This edition includes a new Introduction by Jane FletcherGeniesse, Stark's biographer.

In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearinglyirascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa byrattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry,and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, heendures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances. Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers,missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightfulmeditation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and itspeople, and "a vivid portrayal of the secret sweetness, the hiddenvitality, and the long-patient hope that lies just beneath thesurface" (Rocky Mountain News). In a new post*, Therouxrecounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visitZimbabwe.

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.

Deadeye Dick is Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look atthe death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors-adouble murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, anannihilation of a city by a neutron bomb-Rudy Waltz, a.k.a. DeadeyeDick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness.Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink whatwe believe...and who we say we are.

You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he lovesyou ...'. Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for heruntil she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, andfinds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes areopened by the unconventional characters she meets at the PensionBertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the CockneySignora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate sonGeorge. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life inItaly and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified inher terminally dull fiance Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn tofollow her own heart? "A Room with a View" is a sunny, brilliantlywitty comedy of manners.

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

From the author of "On The Road" comes this story of two menenganged in a passionate search for Dharma or truth. Their majoradventure is the pursuit of the Zen Way, which takes them climbinginto the high sierras to seek the lesson of solitude.

Stephen W. Sears has delivered a masterwork in Gettysburg, hissingle-volume history of the Civil War's greatest campaign. Drawingon original source material, from soldiers' letters to the OfficialRecords of the war, Sears offers dramatic and informed accounts ofevery aspect of the campaign, from well-hewn portraits of thebattle's leaders to detailed analyses of their strategies andtactics. Sears depicts General Meade's remarkable performance inhis first week of army command and pinpoints General Lee'sresponsibility in the agonizing failure of the Confederate army.With characteristic style and insight, Sears brings the epic taleof the battle in Pennsylvania vividly to life.

In this classic novel Richard Yates, hailed as a preeminentchronicler of the American condition and author of the acclaimed"Revolutionary Road, " weaves a masterful, unflinching tale of twofamilies brought together by chance, desperation, and desire. EvanShepard was born with good looks, bad luck, and a love for the openro But it was on one such drive, with his father from rural LongIsland into lower Manhattan, that Evan's life would be changedforever. When their car breaks down on a Greenwich Village street,Evan's father presses a random doorbell, looking for a telephone.Within hours, two families--sharing equally complex and addledhistories--will come together. There will be flirtation. There willbe a marriage. There will be a child, a new home... But as Evanmoves further into the uncharted land of manhood, as the women andmen around him come into focus, he faces roads not taken and ajourney not made--in Richard Yates' haunting exploration of humanrestlessness, family secrets, and a future shaped by them b

Written during 1951-52, this novel was an underground legendby the time it was finally published in 1972. Written in anexperimental form, Kerouac created the ultimate account of hisvoyages with Neal Cassady, which he captured in a different formfor On the Road.

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

Despondent over the futility of life in the South, black tenantfarmer Grange Copeland leaves his wife and son in Georgia to headNorth. After meeting an equally humiliating existence there, hereturns to Georgia, years later, to find his son, Brownfield,imprisoned for the murder of his wife. As the guardian of thecouple's youngest daughter, Grange Copeland is looking at his third-- and final -- chance to free himself from spiritual and socialenslavement.

Whilst awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison, Howard W. Campbell Jr sets down his memoirs on an old German typewriter. He has used such a typewriter before, when he worked as a Nazi propagandist under Goebbels. Though that was before he agreed to become a spy for US military. Is Howard guilty? Can a black or white verdict ever be reached in a world that's a gazillion shades of grey?

Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is a divorced, depressed historyteacher. To lift his spirits, a colleague suggests he rent acertain video. Tertuliano watches the film, unimpressed. But duringthe night, when he is awakened by noises in his apartment, he goesinto the living room to find that the VCR is replaying the video.He watches in astonishment as a man who looks exactly like him-or,more specifically, exactly like he did five years before,mustachioed and fuller in the face-appears on the screen. He sleepsbadly. Against his better judgment, Tertuliano decides to pursuehis double. As he roots out the man's identity, what begins as awhimsical story becomes a "wonderfully twisted meditation onidentity and individuality" (The Boston Globe). Saramago displayshis remarkable talent in this haunting tale of appearance versusreality.

'I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If Icannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientificbig-wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heavebricks into the middle of them.' With "The Way of All Flesh",Samuel Butler threw a subversive brick at the smug face ofVictorian domesticity. Published in 1903, a year after Butler'sdeath, the novel is a thinly disguised account of his own childhoodand youth 'in the bosom of a Christian family'. With irony, wit andsometimes rancour, he savaged contemporary values and beliefs,turning inside-out the conventional novel of a family's lifethrough several generations.

In prose possessed of the radically stripped-down beauty andferocious wit that characterize his work, this early novel by NobelPrize winner Samuel Beckett recounts the grotesque and improbableadventures of a fantastically logical Irish servant and his master.Watt is a beautifully executed black comedy that, at its core, isrooted in the powerful and terrifying vision that made Beckett oneof the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

Four friends come together in a hot contemporary erotic novelfrom the author of Chain Reaction. Meet the friends: Free spirited Jamie is not one to be tieddown—unless it’s in the bedroom. Caleb is Jamie’s sexuallyadventurous lover who has no desire to domesticate her. Mia isJamie’s naive friend whose sexual fulfillment has depended solelyon her first and only lover. Aidan thinks he knows what Mia wants.That’s because he’s the only man she’s ever gone to, to getit. This weekend, four best friends at the crossroads of theirrelationships have decided to do something different. But as sexualpartners shift, Jamie, Caleb, Mia, and Aidan will discover moreabout themselves and each other than they ever imagined.

**DEBUT FICTION** Mary Todd Lincoln is one of history's mostmisunderstood and enigmatic women. The first president's wife to becalled First Lady, she was a political strategist, a supporter ofemancipation, and a mother who survived the loss of three childrenand the assassination of her beloved husband. Yet she also ran herfamily into debt, held seances in the White House, and wascommitted to an insane asylum. In Janis Cooke Newman's debut novel,Mary Todd Lincoln shares the story of her life in her own words.Writing from Bellevue Place asylum, she takes readers from hertempestuous childhood in a slaveholding Southern family through theyears after her husband's death. A dramatic tale filled withpassion and depression, poverty and ridicule, infidelity andredemption, Mary allows us entry into the inner, intimate world ofthis brave and fascinating woman.

"While a single short story may have a difficult time raisingenough noise on its own to be heard over the din of civilization,short stories in bulk can have the effect of swarming bees,blocking out sound and sun and becoming the only thing you canthink about," writes Ann Patchett in her introduction to The BestAmerican Short Stories 2006. This vibrant, varied sampler of theAmerican literary scene revels in life's little absurdities,captures timely personal and cultural challenges, and ultimatelyshares subtle insight and compassion. In "The View from CastleRock," the short story master Alice Munro imagines a fictionalaccount of her Scottish ancestors' emigration to Canada in 1818.Nathan Englander's cast of young characters in "How We Avenged theBlums" confronts a bully dubbed "The Anti-Semite" to both comic andtragic ends. In "Refresh, Refresh," Benjamin Percy gives aforceful, heart-wrenching look at a young man's choices when hisfather -- along with most of the men in his small town -- isdeployed to Ir

This superb Pulitzer Prize-winning collection gives voice tofailure with a wry, deft touch from one of this country's mostengaging and uncompromising poets. In "Failure, "Philip Schultzevokes the pleasures of family, marriage, beaches, and dogs; NewYork City in the 1970s; revolutions both interior and exterior; andthe terrors of 9/11 with a compassion that demonstrates he is amaster of the bittersweet and fierce, the wondrous and direct, andthe brilliantly provocative. Filled with poems of "heartbreakingtenderness that go] beyond mere pity" (Gerald Stern), "Failure "isa collection to savor from this major American poet.

Coming down from his carefree youth and unwanted fame, JackKerouac undertakes a mature confrontation of some of his mosttroubling emotional issues: a burgeoning problem with alcoholism,addiction, fear, and insecurity. He dutifully records hisever-changing states of consciousness, which culminate in apowerful religious experience. Big Sur was written some time afterJack Kerouac's best-known works, following a visit to northernCalifornia and the first feelings of midlife crisis. Kerouac stayedfor several weeks in a cabin in Big Sur, California, and withfriends in San Francisco. Upon returning home, he wrote thisaccount in a two-week period. Critic Richard Meltzer referred toBig Sur as Kerouac's 'masterpiece, and one of the great, greatworks of the English language.' --This text refers to the AudioCassette edition.

A REVEALING AND DRAMATIC LOOK AT THE INSIDE OF THE AMERICAN SPACE PROGRAM FROM ONE OF ITS PIONEERS. This is the astronaut story never before told--about the fear, love, and sacrifice demanded of the few men who dared to reach beyond the heavens for the biggest prize of all: the Moon.