In Naked, David Sedaris's message is pay attention to me.Whether he's taking to the road with a thieving quadriplegic,sorting out the fancy from the extra-fancy in a bleak fruit-packingfactory, or celebrating Christmas in the company of a recentlyparoled prostitute, this collection of memoirs creates a wickedlyincisive portrait of an all-too-familiar world. It takes Sedarisfrom his humiliating bout with obsessive behavior in 'A Plague ofTics' to the title story, in which he is finally forced to face hisnaked self in the mirrored sunglasses of a lunatic. At this soulfuland moving moment, he picks potato chip crumbs from his pubic hairand wonders what it all means. This remarkable journey into his ownlife follows a path of self-effacement and a lifelong search foridentity, leaving him both under suspicion and overdressed.
Gabriel Allon faces his most determined enemy-and greatestchallenge-in the stunning novel from the world-class practitionerof spy fiction.
Elaine Risley, a painter, returns to Toronto to find herselfoverwhelmed by her past. Memories of childhood - unbearablebetrayals and cruelties - surface relentlessly, forcing her toconfront the spectre of Cordelia, once her best friend andtormentor, who has haunted her for forty years. 'Not since GrahamGreene has a novelist captured so forcefully the relationshipbetween school bully and victim...Atwood's games are played,exquisitely, by little girls' LISTENER An exceptional novel fromthe winner of the 2000 Booker Prize
From the author of "On The Road" comes this story of two menenganged in a passionate search for Dharma or truth. Their majoradventure is the pursuit of the Zen Way, which takes them climbinginto the high sierras to seek the lesson of solitude.
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.
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
Freeman Dyson, renowned physicist and public intellectual, editsthis year's volume of the finest science and nature writing.
The novel that defined the Beat generation, this exuberanttale of two men traversing America is as fresh and fantastic asever.
From esteemed New Yorker writer Mark Singer comes thiscautionary tale of the Penn Square Bank, the oil and gas broker inan Oklahoma City shopping mall whose collapse in 1982 staggeredAmerica's banking industry. Recounting the whole spectacular storyand its colorful characters, Singer makes brilliantly (andhilariously) clear what actually happened and why it had to happenin boom-time Oklahoma. Nowhere else did money flow in quite thesame spontaneous fashion. " A] tale of wonderful verve" (New YorkTimes), Funny Money comes to life through Singer's vivid prose andcontinues to resonate in today's culture of corporatecorruption.
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.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A LIVING, POWERFULLY PHYSICAL WORK . . .UPDIKE IS A SUPERBLY SKILLFUL WRITER.""-The Wall StreetJournal""WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS UPDIKE Our own king of eruditionhas gone back to the Hamlet story to imagine its inception: itsoffstage pre-story, when Claudius fell in love with his brother'squeen and that first dastardly deed in the garden was set inmotion. Wickedly replete with allusions, weaving the history ofideas with the lustier possibilities of adulterous coupling. . . .There is something delightful about following Updike down thispath, seeing his sentiments and sympathies unfold.""-The BostonGlobe""WITTY . . . FRESH AND MOVING . . . Engrossing enough on itsown terms to stand independently of Shakespeare's play."-"Time" "UPDIKE] HAS MANAGED TO CREATE IN GERTRUDE A GENUINELY COMPELLINGCHARACTER, a woman who is, by turns, vulnerable and outspoken,daring and naive. . . . One of his most sympathetic and persuasivefemale characters.""-The New York Times""BRILLIANT.""-NewRepublic"
A mystery writer assumes a detective's identity and embarks ona bizzare case: he must protect a man from his criminally insanefather, and as he follows the elusive criminal, he embarks on amission that takes him to the depths of his own soul. Auster's Inthe Country of Last Things is being published this month byViking.
Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on thegracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysittingcharges when she's approached by silver-haired, elegant MarcusKidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant;like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, thechildren's books he's written, his classical music, the marvelousart in his study, his lavish presents to her -- Mr. Kidder's lifecouldn't be more different from Katya's drab working-classexistence back home in South Jersey, or more enticing. But bydegrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing forMr. Kidder's new painting isn't the lighthearted endeavor it oncewas. What does he really want from her? And how far will he go toget it? In the tradition of Oates's classic story "Where Are YouGoing, Where Have You Been?" "A Fair Maiden "is an unsettling,ambiguous tale of desire and control.
Jill Taylor was a 37-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientistwhen a blood vessel exploded in her brain. Through the eyes of acurious scientist, she watched her mind deteriorate whereby shecould not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life.Because of her understanding of the brain, her respect for thecells in her body, and an amazing mother, Jill completelyrecovered. In My Stroke of Insight, she shares her recommendationsfor recovery and the insight she gained into the unique functionsof the two halves of her brain. When she lost the skills of herleft brain, her consciousness shifted away from normal realitywhere she felt "at one with the universe." Taylor helps others notonly rebuild their brains from trauma, but helps those of us withnormal brains better understand how we can consciously influencethe neural circuitry underlying what we think, how we feel and howwe react to life's circumstances.
When a commercial airliner is blown out of the sky off theEast Coast, the CIA scrambles to find the perpetrators. A body isdiscovered near the crash site with three bullets to the face: thecalling card of a shadowy international assassin. Only agentMichael Osbourne has seen the markings before-on a woman he onceloved. Now, it's personal for Osbourne. Consumed by his darkobsession with the assassin, he's willing to risk his family, hiscareer, and his life-to settle a score...
Alienated from society, Harry Hailer is the Steppenwolf:wild,strange and shy. His despair and desire for death draw himintoan enchanted Faustian underworld. Through a series ofshadowyencounters - romantic, freakish and savage by turn -Hailer beginsto rediscover the lost dreams of his youth. Adopted by the sixties' counterculture,Steppenwolf captured the mood of a disaffected generation that wasbeginning to question everything.
'I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If Icannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientificbig-wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heavebricks into the middle of them.' With "The Way of All Flesh",Samuel Butler threw a subversive brick at the smug face ofVictorian domesticity. Published in 1903, a year after Butler'sdeath, the novel is a thinly disguised account of his own childhoodand youth 'in the bosom of a Christian family'. With irony, wit andsometimes rancour, he savaged contemporary values and beliefs,turning inside-out the conventional novel of a family's lifethrough several generations.
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.
Omar Khayyam Shakil had three mothers whoshared the symptoms of pregnancy, as they dideverything else, inseparably. At their six breasts,Omar was warned against all feelings and nuancesof shame. It was training which would prove usefulwhen he left his mothers' fortress (via the dumb-waiter) to face his shameless future. As captivatingfairy-tale, devastating political satire and exquisite,uproarious entertainment, shame is a novelwithout rival.
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?
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.
