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.
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 of its publication, The Apprentice establisheditself as an "instant classic" (Anthony Bourdain). With sparklingwit and occasional pathos, the man whom Julia Child has called "thebest chef in America" tells the captivating story of his rise froma terrified thirteen-year-old toiling in an Old World Frenchkitchen to an American superstar who ad-libbed and demonstratedculinary wizardry as the cameras rolled and changed Americantastes. The Apprentice is an engrossing tale of the modern cookingscene and how it came to be, told from an engaging personalperspective. The story begins in prewar France, with young Jacquescutting his teeth in his mother's small restaurants. Moving toParis, it offers tantalizing glimpses of Sartre and Genet. In hisrole as Charles de Gaulle's personal chef, Jacques witnesseshistory being made from behind the swinging door of the kitchen. InAmerica, he rejects an offer to be chef in the Kennedy White House,choosing instead to work at Howard Johnson's. He then proceeds
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen short storiesfrom one of the most original writers in American fiction. Thisseries of perfectly rendered vignettes, never before published inKurt Vonnegut’s lifetime, reveals a warm, wise, and funny portraitof life in post–World War II America—a world where squabblingcouples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, andsmall-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology,moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Featuring a Forewordby author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit, Look at theBirdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought thatVonnegut’s voice had been stilled forever—and serves as a terrificintroduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet toexperience his genius.
Jane Austen's debut in our award-winning graphic-coverseries. Written during Jane Austen's race against failing health,Persuasion tells the story of Anne Elliot, a woman who-attwenty-seven-is no longer young and has few romantic prospects.Eight years ago, she was persuaded by her friend Lady Russell tobreak off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome navalcaptain with neither fortune nor rank. When Anne and Frederick meetagain, he has acquired both, but still feels the sting of herrejection. A brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, Austen'slast completed novel is also a movingly told love story tinged withthe heartache of missed opportunities.
Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse isperfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love ormarriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering inthe romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings ofher good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitablematch for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soonunravel and have consequences that she never expected. With itsimperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle explorationof relationships, "Emma" is often seen as Jane Austen's mostflawless work.
In Victorian England, an orphan girl is sent to a countryestate to work for-and ultimately woo-its young heiress, on behalfof a mysterious benefactor known as Gentleman.
The editors of the best-selling rediscovered Tolkien novelRoverandom present an expanded fiftieth anniversary edition ofTolkien's beloved classic Farmer Giles of Ham, complete with a map,the original story outline, the original first-editionillustrations by Pauline Baynes, and the author's notes for anunpublished sequel. Farmer Giles of Ham is a light-hearted satirefor readers of all ages that tells the tale of a reluctant hero whomust save his village from a dragon. It is a small gem of a talethat grows more delightful with each rereading.
About to depart on his first vacation inyears, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent tohelp one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. Histask is to search their library stacks for a precious medievalcodex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for manyreasons. Enlisting the help of passionate medievalist MargaretNapier, Edward is determined to solve the mystery of the codex-tounderstand its significance to his wealthy clients, and to decipherthe seeming parallels between the legend of the codex and anobsessive role-playing computer game that has absorbed him in thedark hours of the night. The chilling resolution brings together the medieval and themodern aspects of the plot in a twist worthy of earning comparisonsto novels by William Gibson and Dan Brown, not to mention those byA. S. Byatt and Umberto Eco. Lev Grossman's Codex is a thriller ofthe highest order. When hotshot young investment banker Edward Wozny is called tothe home of an important and
COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED TO INCLUDE THE LATESTCUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH. The best-selling Optimum Nutrition Bible hasrevolutionised health. It explains how, by giving yourself the bestpossible intake of nutrients, to allow your body to be as healthyas it possibly can. This revised and updated edition shows you:What a well balanced diet really means; How to boost your immunesystem; How to increase your energy and fitness levels; How toprevent cancer and turn back the ageing clock; How to avoid heartdisease and lower your blood pressure without drugs; Why the wrongfats can kill and the right fats can heal; How to increase your IQ,memory and mental performance; Includes new charts and six newchapters, on Stimulants, Water, Eating right for your blood type,Detox, Homocysteine and Toxic Minerals.
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-outstreets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with itsbeginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of fourLondoners-three women and a young man with a past-whose lives, andthose of their friends and lovers, connect in tragedy, stunningsurprise and exquisite turns, only to change irreversibly in theshadow of a grand historical event.
全书由一篇简介开始，简介的内容其实就象是聊天，作者与读者之间的聊天。写这篇文章时候的小花絮，那篇文章的灵感来自哪里，另外一篇写完之后的感受，诸如此类的话题，对于阅读理解后面的文章有一定的帮助。 这本集子的标题“烟与镜”的含义是，魔术师靠镜子与烟雾来表演，镜子能映照出实像，而45度斜放的镜子会让你看到假象，让你以为你所看到的是真的，这个概念在若干篇里都有出现。小说都是镜子，用来反映这个世界，而奇幻小说也是镜子，是魔术师常用的45度斜放的镜子，甚至是凹凸不平的变形镜，它们可以告诉我们一些事情，一些平时看不到的事情。读完所有的故事，你是不是也会看到一些平时看不到的事情呢？ An elderly widow finds the Holy Grail beneath anold fur coat. A stray cat fights and refights a terrible nightlybattle to protect his unwary adoptive fami
Twelve Years a Slave, a chronicle of the amazing ordeal of a free African-American kidnapped from Washington, D.C., and impressed into slavery in Louisiana, is one of the most compelling and detailed slave narratives in existence. Although a best-selling book in its time, Solomon Northup’s narrative has existed in the shadow of more academically prominent and popularly celebrated narratives like The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). Nonetheless, Northup’s account of his kidnapping and enslavement is a masterpiece of historical detail, and the narrative has been noted for its easily researched and widely corroborated elements. The text and story were virtually unchallenged by Southern apologists or partisans of the era. Northup resists the urge to laud himself as an exemplary character or focus solely his own experience, giving contemporary readers a remarkable account of the lives of the slave community as a whole. As an educated man, torn from freedom and plunged into slavery, he
"The best way to understand Pasternak's achievementinDoctorZh/vago is to see it in terms of this great Russianliterarytradition, as a fairy tale, not so much of good and evil asof opposing forces and needs in human destiny and historythat cannever be reconciled... [Zhivago is] a figure whoembodies theprinciple of life itself, the principle that contradicts everyabstraction of revolutionary politics."
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about herlife in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was onlythree when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldierand went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence ofthe past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna,Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor ofGerman history, begins investigating the past and finally unearthsthe dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life. Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation oflife during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, ThoseWho Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure tosurvive and the legacy of shame.
"The best novel to come out of America-or England-for ageneration." -V.S. Pritchett, The New York Review of Books In this unique noir masterpiece by the incomparable Saul Bellow,a young man is sucked into the mysterious, heat-filled vortex ofNew York City. Asa Leventhal, a temporary bachelor with his wifeaway on a visit to her mother, attempts to find relief from aGotham heat wave, only to be accosted in the park by adown-at-the-heels stranger who accuses Leventhal of ruining hislife. Unable to shake the stranger loose, Leventhal is led by hisown self-doubts and suspicions into a nightmare of paranoia andfear.
First published in 1908, "The Old Wives' Tale" affirms theintegrity of ordinary lives as it tells the story of the Bainessisters - shy, retiring Constance and defiant, romantic Sophia -over the course of nearly half a century. Bennett traces thesisters' lives from childhood in their father's drapery shop inprovincial Bursley, England, during the mid-Victorian era, throughtheir married lives, to the modern industrial age, when they arereunited as old women. The setting moves from the Five Towns ofStaffordshire to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris, while the actionmoves from the subdued domestic routine of the Baines household tothe siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.
