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.

After a long winter of red noses and wet mittens, summer is awelcome time for Miss Read and her downland village friends. SUMMERAT FAIRACRE charmingly recounts this bright, bustling season andthe problems and possibilities that unfold against the backgroundof roses, skylarks, and bees. Joseph Coggs finds a temporary homein the schoolhouse while his mother is in the hospital. Miss Read'sfriend Amy mysteriously disappears. Perhaps most difficult of all,Mrs. Pringle, the grumpy school cleaner, is unable to work becausethe pain in her bad leg flares up. Still, the sounds of childrenplaying and the fragrance of summertime flowers fill the air, asMiss Read shepherds her students and friends through the warmseason.

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.

A modern classic, now in a welcome new edition, "Wonder Boys"firmly established Michael Chabon as a force to be reckoned with inAmerican fiction. At once a deft parody of the American famefactory and a piercing portrait of young and old desire, this novelintroduces two unforgettable characters: Grady Tripp, a formerpublishing prodigy now lost in a fog of pot and passion and stalledin the midst of his endless second book, and Grady's student, JamesLeer, a budding writer obsessed with Hollywood self-destruction andstruggling with his own searching heart. All those who love MichaelChabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and his PulitzerPrize-winning "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" willfind the same elegant imagination, bold humor, and undeniablewarmth at work in "Wonder Boys." " A] wise, wildly funny story . .. Chabon is a flat-out wonderful writer- evocative and inventive,pointed and poignant.""-Chicago Tribune" "Whether making us laughor making us feel the breathtaking impermanence of things, M

理查德·梅休是伦敦一个平平常常的生意人，过着平平常常的生活。但有一天，他做了件不太平常的事：把一位身负重伤、素不相识的姑娘带回了自己的公寓。 从此，一切都变得不同寻常—— 同事们看不见他，从前的恋人不再认识他，甚至连他的家都不再属于他。他走在人流中，人们却完全意识不到他的存在。理查德·梅休这个人不复存在了，仿佛从未存在过。 都是因为这个名叫门菲的姑娘。她为他打开了一扇门，通往另一个世界—— 一个隐藏在伦敦之下、阴险邪恶却又充满刺激的乌有乡。 Under the streets of London there's a world most people couldnever even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers andangels, and pale girls in black velvet. Richard Mayhew is a youngbusinessman who is about to find out more than he bargained forabout this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him outof h

Taking his title from the wounded cry of the once great MaxBialystock in The Producers -- "Look at me now Look at me now I'mwearing a cardboard belt " -- the charming essayist Joseph Epsteingives us his largest and most adventurous collection to date. Withhis signature gifts of sparkling humor and penetratingintelligence, he issues forth as a memoirist, polemicist, literarycritic, and amused observer of contemporary culture. In deeplyconsidered examinations of writers from Paul Valery to TrumanCapote, in incisive take-downs of such cultural pooh-bahs as HaroldBloom and George Steiner, and in personally revealing essays abouthis father and about his years as a teacher, this remarkablecollection from one of America's best essayists is a book to besavored.

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

Published in 1934, Tender Is the Night was one of the mosttalked-about books of the year. "It's amazing how excellent much ofit is," Ernest Hemingway said to Maxwell Perkins. "I will say now,"John O'Hara wrote Fitzgerald, "Tender Is the Night is in the earlystages of being my favorite book, even more than This Side ofParadise." And Archibald MacLeish exclaimed: "Great God,Scott...You are a fine writer. Believe it -- not me." Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Nightis the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and thestylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant youngpsychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband anddoctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not hisown, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise.A profound study of the romantic concept of character -- lyrical,expansive, and hauntingly evocative -- Tender Is the Night, MabelDodge Luhan remarked, raised F. Scott Fitzgerald to the heights of"a mode

Everybody who is anybody is seen at the glittering partiesheldin millionaire Jay Gatsby's mansion in West Egg, east ofNew York. The riotous throng congregates in his sumptuous garden,coollydebating Gatsby's origins and mysterious past. None of thefrivoloussocialites understands him, and among various rumours is theconviction that 'he killed a man'. A detached onlooker,Gatsby isoblivious to the speculation he creates, though always seems to bewatching and waiting, but what for no one knows.As the tragic storyunfolds, Gatsby's destructive dreams andpassions are revealed,leading to disturbing consequences. Abrilliant evocation of 1920shigh society, The Great Gatsby peels away the layers of thisglamorous world to display the coldness and cruelty at itsheart.

A whisperjewel summoned him to Worlorn, and a love he thoughthe' d lost. But Worlorn isn' t the world Dirk t' Larien imagined,and Gwen Delvano is no longer the woman he once knew. She is boundto another man, and to a dying planet that is trapped in twilight,forever falling toward night. Amid this bleak landscape is aviolent clash of cultures in which there is no code of honor-- andthe hunter and the hunted are often interchangeable. Caught up in adangerous triangle, Gwen is in need of Dirk' s protection, and hewill do anything to keep her safe, even if it means challenging thebarbaric man who has claimed her-- and his cunning cohort. But animpenetrable veil of secrecy surrounds them all, and it' s becomingimpossible for Dirk to distinguish between his allies and hisenemies. While each will fight to stay alive, one is waiting forescape, one for revenge, and another for a brutal, untimelydemise.

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

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.

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.

The Fortress of Solitude is the story of Dylan Ebdus growingup white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It's aneighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along withgames of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a blackteenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. As Lethem follows theknitting and unraveling of their friendship, he creates anoverwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race andclass, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging,loyalty, and memory. The Fortress of Solitude" "is the first greaturban coming of age novel to appear in years.

The writer with a claim to being the world' s foremostliterary escape artist is back, with an intoxicating novel aboutthe business and pleasure of wine, set in his beloved Provence. MaxSkinner has recently lost his job at a London financial firm andjust as recently learned that he has inherited his late uncle' svineyard in Provence. On arrival he finds the climate delicious,the food even better, and two of the locals ravishing.Unfortunately, the wine produced on his new property is swill. Whythen are so many people interested in it? Enter a beguilingCalifornian who knows more about wine than Max does- and may have abetter claim to the estate. Fizzy with intrigue, bursting withlocal color and savor, A Good Year is Mayle at his mostentertaining.

A cursed book. A missing professor. Some nefarious men in graysuits. And a dreamworld called the Troposphere? Ariel Manto has afascination with nineteenth-century scientists--especially ThomasLumas and "The End of Mr. Y, "a book no one alive has read. Whenshe mysteriously uncovers a copy at a used bookstore, Ariel islaunched into an adventure of science and faith, consciousness anddeath, space and time, and everything in between. Seeking answers,Ariel follows in Mr. Y's footsteps: She swallows a tincture, staresinto a black dot, and is transported into the Troposphere--awonderland where she can travel through time and space using thethoughts of others. There she begins to understand all themysteries surrounding the book, herself, and the universe. Or is itall just a hallucination? With "The End of Mr. Y, "Scarlett Thomasbrings us another fast-paced mix of popular culture, love, mystery,and irresistible philosophical adventure.

From the early Soviet period, the impassioned short fictionof the great Russian-Jewish writer One of the most powerful short-story writers of the twentiethcentury, Isaac Babel expressed his sense of inner conflict throughdisturbing tales that explored the contradictions of Russiansociety. Whether reflecting on anti-Semitism in stories such as“Story of My Dovecote” and “First Love,” or depicting Jewishgangsters in his native Odessa, Babel’s eye for the comical laidbare the ironies of history. His masterpiece, “Red Cavalry,” set inthe Soviet-Polish war, is one of the classics of modern fiction. Byturns flamboyant and restrained, this collection of Babel’sbest-known stories vividly expresses the horrors of his age. “Amazing not only as literature but as biography.” —RichardBernstein, The New York Times “Marvelously subtle, tragic, and often comic.” —James Wood, The New Republic

From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comesthis compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed HumanFreakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark,count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways.Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, heworks for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cumdetective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King ofBrooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he setsthem are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatallystabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other twovie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel'sworld is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has troubleeven conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case whiletrying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklynis a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel b