50 Great Short Stories is a comprehensive selection from the world’s finest short fiction. The authors represented range from Hawthorne, Maupassant, and Poe, through Henry James, Conrad, Aldous Huxley, and James Joyce, to Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, Faulkner, E.B. White, Saroyan, and O’Connor. The variety in style and subject is enormous, but all these stories have one point in common–the enduring quality of the writing, which places them among the masterpieces of the world’s fiction. 作者简介： Milton Crane is Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at George Washington University and the University of Chicago. His is the author several books and articles on English literature, as well as the editor of the Bantam anthology, 50 Great American Short Stories.

Bestselling novelist Sheldon's memoir is reminiscent of his colorful novels, a rags-to-riches yarn replete with struggle, an indomitable hero and eventual glamour. It opens with a 17-year-old Sheldon preparing to commit suicide in Chicago in 1934. "[L]onely and trapped," he wanted to attend college but couldn't afford it. Thankfully, his father intervened, and the young man got a new lease on life. He went from being an RKO theater usher to a struggling songwriter, then a top-flight Hollywood screenwriter in a few short years. For the next 30-odd years, Sheldon wrote and directed films, meeting studio honchos and stars like Kirk Douglas, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. The author's impressive achievements include a WWII flying stint, a screenwriting Oscar for 1947's The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, a Tony for writing the 1959 Broadway hit Redhead, the creation of four classic TV series (including I Dream of Jeannie) and several bestsellers (Bloodline; The Sands of Time; etc.). Yet these accomplishments came

World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati. Desperate to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and the most secretive vault on earth...the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.

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.

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.

No one conducts a more chilling, suspenseful, thoroughlyengrossing tour through the winding corridors of criminal behaviorand the secret chambers of psychopathology than Jonathan Kellerman,the bestselling “master of the psychological thriller” (People).Now the incomparable team of psychologist Alex Delaware andhomicide cop Milo Sturgis embark on their most dangerous excursionyet, into the dark places where risk runs high and blood runscold. It’s a story tailor-made for the nightly news: Dylan Meserve andMichaela Brand, young lovers and fellow acting students, vanish onthe way home from a rehearsal. Three days later, the two of themare found in the remote mountains of Malibu -battered and terrifiedafter a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor. The details of the nightmarish event are shocking and brutal: Thecouple was carjacked at gunpoint by a masked assailant andsubjected to a horrific regimen of confinement, starvation andassault. But before long, doubts arise a

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by G. H.McWilliam

Tender and tragic, set against the turbulent backdrop of wartime Britain, The Night Watch is the extraordinary story of fbur Londoners: Kay, who wanders the streets in mannish clothes, restless and searching... Helen, who harbours a troubling secret... Viv, glamour girl, recklessly loyal to her soldier lover.., and Duncan, an apparent innocent, struggling with demons of his own. Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit liaisons and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, this is an astonishing novel.

Magic abounds in this tall,deluxe pop-up carousel that brings Hogwarts School to life!Open the book and then tie the covers together with the purple ribbons for an impressive permanent carousel in your child's room...or fold it back up for easy reshelving.Children will adore identifying rooms and objects they remember from the beloved Harry Potter series,with plenty of flaps to lift and tabs to slide to unveil the ghosts and things that go bump in the night.You can even see where Harry Potter sleeps,and lift the lid of the trunk at the end of his bed!The carousel also features a sheet of punch-out cardboard characters from Severus Snape to Hagrid,so imaginative youngsters can move them around the school.Collectors and Harry Potter fans,rejoice!(Ages 4 and older)

《穿普拉达的时尚女魔头》是根据是劳伦·魏丝伯格（Lauren Weisberger）自己根据自己的经历写的一部畅销小说。这部小说在在《纽约时报》畅销书排行榜上一连高悬了15个星期。 根据这部小说拍摄的同名电影，由著名好莱坞演员梅丽尔·斯特里普（Meryl Streep）、安妮·海瑟薇（Anne Hathaway）等表演完成。同名电影同样获得高票房、高收视。 Book De*ion A delightfully dishy novel about the all-time most impossible boss in the history of impossible bosses. Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job “a million girls would die for.” Hired as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously successful editor of Runway magazine, Andrea finds herself in an office that shouts Prada! Armani! Versace! at every turn, a world populated by impossibly thin, heart-wrenchingly stylish women and beautiful men clad in fine-ribbed turtlenecks and tigh

#1 "New York Times" bestselling author Tami Hoag mixes mysteryand romance in this moving classic novel of a missing woman and thesearch that brings together the unlikeliest of lovers.... She was ablond goddess, a box office megastar. Every woman wanted to be her;every man wanted to bed her. But over a year ago Devon Staffordvanished without a trace. As a biographer, Jake Gannon had taughthimself to follow the clues of a person's life story like adetective. As an ex-Marine, he was accustomed to being firmly incontrol. But when his car died in a little town called Mare's Neston the Carolina coast, he had to admit he'd come to a dead end.There he met a .38-toting tow-truck driver named Dixie La Fontaine.She was no celebrity, but Dixie had an irresistible sex appeal allher own. What did this down-to-earth woman know about a missingmovie star? Surprisingly, quite a lot. And Jake was going touncover it all...if Dixie didn't end up shooting him first.

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.

She was a vision. She was a siren. She was a nightmare. Shewas dead. Now he needed her to disappear. And he knew just how tomake it happen. The Palm Beach elite go to great lengths to protecttheir own—and their own no longer includes Elena Estes. Once upon atime a child of wealth and privilege, Elena turned her back on thatlife. Betrayed and disillusioned by those closest to her, she chosethe life of an undercover cop, the hunt for justice her ownpersonal passion. Then a tragic, haunting mistake ended her career.Now Elena exists on the fringes of her old life, training horsesfor a living. But a shocking event is about to draw her back intothe painful vortex she’s fought so hard to leave behind. First she finds the body—a young woman used, murdered, and dumpedin a canal. Not just a victim, but a friend. As Elena delves intoher dead friend’s secret life, she discovers ties not only to theRussian mob but also to a group of powerful and wealthy Palm Beachbad boys known for giving each other a

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 rousing history of the world's first dominant navy andthe towering empire it built The Athenian Navy was one of the finest fighting forces in thehistory of the world. It engineered a civilization, empowered theworld's first democracy, and led a band of ordinary citizens on avoyage of discovery that altered the course of history. With Lords of the Sea , renowned archaeologist John R. Halepresents, for the first time, the definitive history of the epicbattles, the fearsome ships, and the men-from extraordinary leadersto seductive rogues-that established Athens's supremacy. With ascholar's insight and a storyteller's flair, Hale takes us on anunforgettable voyage with these heroes, their turbulent careers,and far-flung expeditions, bringing back to light a forgottenmaritime empire and its majestic legacy.

At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical indictment of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. It is the tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time in Italy plotting to survive.

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever. Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jea

At the heart of this epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars,is an old slaving-ship, The Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuousvoyage across the Indian Ocean, its crew a motley array of sailorsand stowaways, coolies and convicts. In a time of colonialupheaval, fate has thrown together a truly diverse cast of Indiansand Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed villager, from anevangelical English opium trader to a mulatto American freedman. Astheir old family ties are washed away they, like their historicalcounterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais orship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will spancontinents, races and generations. The vast sweep of thishistorical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, therolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of China. But it isthe panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexedcolonial history of the East itself, which makes Sea of Poppies sobreathtakingly alive -- a masterpiece from one of the world'sfinest novelist

A new trade paperback edition of McCullers' second novel,REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE, immortalized by the 1967 film starringElizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, and John Houston. Set on aSouthern army base in the 1930s, REFLECTIONS tells the story ofCaptain Penderton, a bisexual whose life is upset by the arrival ofMajor Langdon, a charming womanizer who has an affair withPenderton's tempestuous and flirtatious wife, Leonora. Upon thenovel's publication in 1941, reviewers were unsure of what to makeof its relatively scandalous subject matter. But a critic for TimeMagazine wrote, "In almost any hands, such material would yield arank fruitcake of mere arty melodrama. But Carson McCullers tellsher tale with simplicity, insight, and a rare gift of phrase."Written during a time when McCullers's own marriage to Reeves wason the brink of collapse, her second novel deals with her trademarkthemes of alienation and unfulfilled loves.

Stories of famously eccentric Princetonians abound--such as that of chemist Hubert Alyea, the model for The Absent-Minded Professor, or Ralph Nader, said to have had his own key to the library as an undergraduate. Or the "Phantom of Fine Hall," a figure many students had seen shuffling around the corridors of the math and physics building wearing purple sneakers and writing numerology treatises on the blackboards. The Phantom was John Nash, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, who had spiraled into schizophrenia in the 1950s. His most important work had been in game theory, which by the 1980s was underpinning a large part of economics. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for game theory, Nash's name inevitably came up--only to be dismissed, since the prize clearly could not go to a madman. But in 1994 Nash, in remission from schizophrenia, shared the Nobel Prize in economics for work done some 45 years previously. Economist and journalist Sylvia Nasar has written

The best-known and most autobiographical of George Eliot’s novels is now available as a Norton Critical Edition. The text of The Mill on the Floss, that of the 1862 third edition for which Eliot made her last revisions, has been annotated in order to assist the reader with obscure references and allusions Backgrounds includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centering on the novel’s content and composition; "Brother and Sister" (1869), a little-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews and responses, both published and unpublished, on the novel, including those by Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinurne, and John Ruskin. Judiciously chosen from the wealth of essays on The Mill on the Floss published in this century, Criticism includes ten of the best studies of the novel, providing the reader with historical and critical perspective. The contributors are Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf, F. R. Leavis, George Levine, Ulrich Knoepflmacher, Philip Fisher, Mary Jacobus, John Kuci