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.

Offers a detailed, fact-filled examination of the AirborneTask Force, complete with exclusive photographs, illustrations,diagrams, and an extensive interview with the commander of the 18thAirborne Corps, General John Keen. Original."

Written with complete access to the Queen Mother's personalletters and diaries, William Shawcross's riveting biography is thetruly definitive account of this remarkable woman, whose lifespanned the twentieth century. Elizabeth Angela Marguerite BowesLyon,the youngest daughter of the Earl of Strathmore, was born on 4August 1900. Drawing on her private correspondence and otherunpublished material from the Royal Archives, William Shawcrossvividly reveals the witty girl who endeared herself to soldiersconvalescing at Glamis in the First World War; the assured youngDuchess of York; the Queen, at last feeling able to look the EastEnd in the face at the height of the Blitz; the Queen Mother,representing the nation at home and abroad throughout her longwidowhood.

Cicero’s speeches "In Defence of Sextus Roscius of Amerina,""In Defence of Aulus Cluentius Habitus," "In Defence of GaiusRabirius," "Note on the Speeches in Defence of Caelius and Milo,"and "In Defence of King Deiotarus" provide insight into Roman life,law, and history.

An unconventional war requires unconventional men the Special Forces. Green Berets Navy SEALS Rangers Air Force Special Operations PsyOps Civil Affairs and other special-mission units The first two Commanders books, Every Man a Tiger and Into the Storm, provided masterly blends of history, biography, you-are-there narrative, insight into the practice of leadership, and plain old-fashioned storytelling. Shadow Warriors is all of that and more, a book of uncommon timeliness, for, in the words of Lieutenant General Bill Yarborough, there are itches that only Special Forces can scratch. Now, Carl Stiner the second commander of SOCOM, the U.S. Special Operations Command and Tom Clancy trace the transformation of the Special Forces from the small core of outsiders of the 1950s, through the cauldron of Vietnam, to the rebirth of the SF in the late 1980s and 1990s, and on into the new century as the bearer of the largest, most mixed, and most complex set of missions in the U.S. militar

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

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

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

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?

A funny, raucous, and delightfully dirty 900-yearhistory of the royal marriages of Europe's most famous-andinfamous-monarchs. Since time immemorial, royal marriages have had littleto do with love- and almost everything to do with diplomacy anddynasty. Clashing personalities have joined in unholy matrimony toform such infamous couples as Russia's Peter II and Catherine theGreat, and France's Henri II and Catherine de Medici-all with thepurpose of begetting a male heir. But with tensions high andsilverware flying, kings like England's Henry II have fled to thebeds of their nubile mistresses, while queens such as Eleanor ofAquitaine have plotted their revenge... Full of the juicy gossip and bad behavior that characterized Royal Affairs , this book chronicles the love-hate marriagesof the crowned heads of Europe-from the Angevins to Charles andDi-and ponders how dynasties ever survived at all.

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.

In this superb work of fiction, Nobel Laureate Saul Bellowwrites comically and wisely about the tenacious claims of firstlove. Harry Trellman, an aging, astute businessman, has neverbelonged anywhere and is as awkward in his human attachments as heis gifted in observing the people around him. But Harry'sobservational talents have not gone unnoticed by "trillionaire"Sigmund Adletsky, who retains Harry as his advisor. Soon the oldman discovers Harry's intense forty-year passion for atwice-divorced interior designer, Amy Wustrin. At the exhumationand reburial of her husband, Harry is provided, thanks to Sigmund,perhaps the final means for disclosing feelings amassed over alifetime. Written late in Bellow's career, "The Actual" is amaestro's dissection of the affairs of the heart.

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2010: "The awful thing about life is this:" says Octave to the Marquis in Renoir's Rules of the Game. "Everyone has his reasons." That could be a motto for novelists as well, few more so than Jonathan Franzen, who seems less concerned with creating merely likeable characters than ones who are fully alive, in all their self-justifying complexity. Freedom is his fourth novel, and, yes, his first in nine years since The Corrections. Happy to say, it's very much a match for that great book, a wrenching, funny, and forgiving portrait of a Midwestern family (from St. Paul this time, rather than the fictional St. Jude). Patty and Walter Berglund find each other early: a pretty jock, focused on the court and a little lost off it, and a stolid budding lawyer, besotted with her and almost burdened by his integrity. They make a family and a life together, and, over time, slowly lose track of each other. Their stories align at times with Big Issues--among them mountaintop removal, war pro

Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city innorthern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterateschemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, hisboss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams-but the results arenever the expected ones. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen andKurt Wolff Book

Book De*ion Reissued to coincide with the September Random House release ofThe Last Don, here is the sweeping saga of a family and of itsleader, a friendly and reasonable man who just happens to be thedeadliest gang leader in the Cosa Nostra. Amazon.com The story of Don Vito Corleone, the head of a New York Mafiafamily, inspired some of the most successful movies ever. It is inMario Puzo's The Godfather that Corleone first appears. AsCorleone's desperate struggle to control the Mafia underworldunfolds, so does the story of his family. The novel is full ofexquisitely detailed characters who, despite leading unconventionallifestyles within a notorious crime family, experience the triumphsand failures of the human condition. Filled with the requisitevalor, love, and rancor of a great epic, The Godfather is thedefinitive gangster novel. From Library Journal Diehard Godfather fans play second banana to no other subculturein their obsession with the minutiae of Puz

When the Good Friday peace accords are shattered by threesavage acts of terrorism, Northern Ireland is blown back into thedepths of conflict. And after his father-in-law is nominated tobecome the new American ambassador to London, retired CIA agentMichael Osbourne is drawn back into the game. He soon discoversthat his father-in-law is marked for execution. And that he himselfis once again in the crosshairs of a killer known as October, oneof the most merciless assassins the world has ever known...

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 Bestselling New Detective Series of the Decade Just GotHotter, Deadlier, and More Suspenseful. In a deadly late-nightshowdown, San Francisco police lieutenant Lindsay Boxer fires herweapon and sets off a dramatic chain of events that leaves a policeforce disgraced, a family destroyed, and Lindsay herself at themercy of twelve jurors. During a break in the trial, she retreatsto a picturesque town that is reeling from a string of grislymurders-crimes that bear a link to a haunting, unsolved case fromher rookie years.Now, with her friends in the Women's Murder Club,Lindsay must battle for her life on two fronts: in a trial rushingto a climax, and against an unknown adversary willing to doanything to hide the truth about the homicides-including killagain?

They were Easy Company, 101st Army Airborne-the World War IIfighting unit legendary for their bravery against nearlyinsurmountable odds and their loyalty to one another in the face ofdeath. Every soldier in this band of brothers looked to one man forleadership: Major Dick Winters. This is the riveting story of an ordinary man who became anextraordinary hero. After he enlisted in the army's arduous newAirborne division, Winters's natural combat leadership helped himclimb the ranks, but he was never far from his men. Decades later,Stephen E. Ambrose's Band of Brothers made him world-famous. Fullof never-before-published photographs, interviews, and Winters'scandid insights, Biggest Brother is the story of a man who became asoldier, a leader, and a living testament to the valor of the humanspirit.

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in themisty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder orself-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermathreverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hungoaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed,suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossingnovel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfullyinterweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life inthis isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictabletwists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkablecharacters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman'sCard Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless reclusewho owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man,woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern bellewho is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariouslyfunny black drag queen; the ace

Former Israeli intelligence operative Gabriel Allon is drawnback into the game to take on a cunning terrorist on one lastkilling spree, a Palestinian zealot who played a dark part inGabriel's past. And what begins as a manhunt turns into aglobe-spanning duel fueled by both political intrigue and deeppersonal passions...

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily's harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother. --This text refers to the Paperback edition