In his debut novel， The Kite Runner， Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do。 He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country’s political turmoil--in this case， Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over。 And he does this on his first try。 The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir， the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul， and Hassan， the son of Amir’s father’s servant。 As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s， the boys are inseparable。 They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever， and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted。 Even after Amir and his father flee to America， Amir r

A magnificent volume of short novels and an essential WorldWar II report from one of America's great twentieth-centurywriters On the heels of the enormous success of his masterwork The Grapesof Wrath-and at the height of the American war effort-JohnSteinbeck, one of the most prolific and influential literaryfigures of his generation, wrote Bombs Away, a nonfiction accountof his experiences with U.S. Army Air Force bomber crews duringWorld War II. Now, for the first time since its originalpublication in 1942, Penguin Classics presents this exclusiveedition of Steinbeck's introduction to the then-nascent U.S. ArmyAir Force and its bomber crew-the essential core unit behindAmerican air power that Steinbeck described as "the greatest teamin the world."

We don't just live in the air; we live because of it. It's themost miraculous substance on earth, responsible for our food, ourweather, our water, and our ability to hear. In this exuberantbook, gifted science writer Gabrielle Walker peels back the layersof our atmosphere with the stories of the people who uncovered itssecrets: - A flamboyant Renaissance Italian discovers how heavy ourair really is: The air filling Carnegie Hall, for example, weighsseventy thousand pounds. - A one-eyed barnstorming pilot finds aset of winds that constantly blow five miles above our heads. - Animpoverished American farmer figures out why hurricanes move in acircle by carving equations with his pitchfork on a barn door. - Awell-meaning inventor nearly destroys the ozone layer. - Areclusive mathematical genius predicts, thirty years before he'sproved right, that the sky contains a layer of floating metal fedby the glowing tails of shooting stars.

Now a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry,Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant, and directed by Lana and AndyWachowski and Tom Tykwer Includes a new Afterword by David Mitchell A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles and genres,David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love ofpuzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bendingphilosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of HarukiMurakami, Umberto Eco, and Philip K. Dick. The result isbrilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate peopleconnect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls driftacross time like clouds across the sky. By the author of THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, DavidMitchell's bestselling and Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, one ofRichard Judy's 100 Books of the Decade, CLOUD ATLAS has nowbeen adapted for film. The major motion picture, directed by theWachowskis and Tom Tykwer, stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, SusanSarandon, Jim Sturg

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

"Mothers and Sons" is a sensitive and beautifully writtenmeditation on the dramas surrounding this most elemental ofrelationships. Psychologically intricate and emotionally incisive,each finely wrought story teases out the delicate and difficultstrands woven between mothers and sons. This is an acute, masterfuland moving collection that confirms Toibin as a great prose stylistof our time. 'Colm Toibin is a writer of extraordinary emotionalclarity. Each of the nine stories is a snapshot of a point ofcrisis ...Toibin perfectly understands the instantaneous nature ofthe ideal short story; the sense that the pen is going straightinto a major vein. These are beautiful stories, beautifullycrafted' - Kate Saunders, "Literary Review". 'The last story inthis excellent collection is a superbly powerful tale of betrayaland desertion. Quintessential Toibin' - "Spectator". 'Moving...beautifully captured moments of longing and loss ...Toibin is asubtle, intelligent and deeply felt writer' - "Guardian" 'By turnssurpr

Here, collected in one volume, are all four full-length novels and 56 short stories chronicling the colorful adventures of Sherlock Holmes--every word Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote about Baker Street's most famous resident. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

In four cities across the world, four people die violently and mysteriously. The dead share a single crucial link: each was connected to an all-powerful environmental think tank. Two of the victims' widows-accomplished artist Diane Stevens and international supermodel Kelly Harris-may hold the key to their husbands' demise. Terrified for their lives, suspicious of each other, and armed only with their own wits and guile, they must join forces in a nightmare cycle of hunt-and-kill. At stake is the shattering truth about the tragedies that robbed them of the men they loved...and about an awesome conspiracy whose ultimate target is as big as the earth and as close as the air we breathe.

Saint-Pétersbourg, 1919. Sonetchka, une jeune fille, estengagée par Maria, une cantatrice de la haute société, pour êtreson accompagnatrice. Maria est belle et talentueuse; Sonetchka estinsignifiante et miséreuse. Parce que la soprano rayonne et qu'ellea tout, alors qu'elle-même n'a rien, Sonetchka, d'abord fascinée,entreprend bient?t de détruire le bonheur trop parfait de lachanteuse... Le dossier de l'édition permet d'analyser les procédésnarratifs de l'écriture de soi. Il réunit également des articles depresse pour étudier la réception critique de l'?uvre.

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.

Small town Louisiana has a big problem - or rather a number of big problems. And now some of them have come knocking on Sookie's door ...Sookie is an unassuming cocktail waitress in an (outwardly) unremarkable town. She's quiet, keeps to herself and doesn't get out much. Attractive as she is, her hidden 'talents' send men running. For some reason her mindreading skills are just a bit threatening ...Then the unreadable Bill appears on the scene. Tall, dark and handsome, Bill seems to be the man of her dreams. Except he's not technically human. Bill is a vampire and a vampire who keeps seriously bad company, some suspected - unsurprisingly - of murder. Things get a bit close to home when a co-worker is murdered and Sookie starts wondering whether she will be next ... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Susie Salmon speaks to us from heaven, because she was murdered when she was 14 years old by a man who lived in the same neighbourhood. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love and do the things she has never had the chance to do. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.

Pride and Prejudice is a delightful socialcomedy and a timelessly affecting love story. Elizabeth Bennet is the headstrong young woman whom no man seems capable of taming; Fitzwilliam Darcy is the arrogant landowner who disdains to thinkit would be worth his trying to do so. Jane Austen's poisednarrative shows how these two apparently incompatible characterslearn to overcome their initial feelings of mutual dislike. A tourde force of wit and sparkling dialogue, Pride and Prejudice is alsoa sumptuously detailed picture of contemporary society, which, inits exploration of manners and motives, has a great deal to sayabout the society of today. Austen's best-loved novel is amemorable story about the inaccuracy offirst impressions, about the power of reason, and above all aboutthe strange dynamics of human relationships and emotions.

In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions, a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens .of lives. Because Troy Phelan's new will names a sole surprise heir to his l eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil. Enter the lawyers. Nate O'Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan's family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate is crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman--pursued by enemies and friends alike--holds a stunning surprise of her own

Reginald Rose s landmark American drama was a critically acclaimed teleplay, and went on to become a cinematic masterpiece in 1957 starring Henry Fonda, for which Rose wrote the adaptation. A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic belief in the U.S. legal system. The story s focal point, known only as Juror Eight, is at first the sole holdout in an 11-1 guilty vote. Eight sets his sights not on proving the other jurors wrong but rather on getting them to look at the situation in a clear-eyed way not affected by their personal biases. Rose deliberately and carefully peels away the layers of artifice from the men and allows a fuller picture of America, at its best and worst, to form.

In the summer after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, when tension washigh in Northern Ireland, Colm Toibin walked along the border fromDerry to Newry. "Bad Blood" is a stark and evocative account ofthis journey through fear and hatred, and a report on ordinary lifeand the legacy of history in a bleak and desolate landscape. Toibindescribes the rituals - the marches, the funerals, thedemonstrations - observed by both communities along the border, andlistens to the stories which haunt both sides. With sympathy andinsight "Bad Blood" captures the intimacy of life along one of themost contested strips of land in Western Europe. 'Toibin has thenarrative poise of Brian Moore and the patient eye for domesticdetail of John McGahern, but he is very much his own man' -"Observer". 'High-class reportage ...Toibin was conscientious abouttalking to real people, not just 'names' with a good line in TVchat, and went to see and hear and sense things at a local,grassroots level' - "Irish Times".

He wanted power. Oliver Russell is fated to rise to the pinnacle of power, the office of President of the United States. She wanted revenge. Leslie Stewart is his betrayed fiancee, a woman dedicated to a single purpose-the downfall of Oliver Russell. Amassing her own media empire, marshaling all her forces against him, she stands poised to destroy Russell on the eve of his most dazzling triumph. From Sidney Sheldon, the unchallenged master of bestselling fiction, comes a story of blazing ambitions and thwarted love that enthralls and surprises with every page...

In Paris...Washington...and a fabulous villa in Greece, an inno-cent American girl becomes a bewildered, horror-stricken pawn in a game of vengeance and betrayal. She is Catherine Douglas, a woman caught in a web of four lives intertwined by passion as her handsome husband pursues an incredibly beautiful film star...and as Constantin Demiris, a legendary Greek tycoon, tightens the strands that control them all. Welcome to THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT-and one of Sidney Sheldon's most dazzling and sur-prising novels of suspense.

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.

Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages. THE LOVELY BONES is such a book -- a #1 bestseller celebrated at once for its artistry, for its luminous clarity of emotion, and for its astonishing power to lay claim to the hearts of millions of readers around the world. "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, THE LOVELY BONES succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy. The major motion picture version of THE LOVELY BONES, directed by Peter Jackson