When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another thatseemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, abeautiful mother, and two little girls. The youngest girls fromeach family—one of them Jane—even shared a birthday. With so much in common, the two families became almost instantlyinseparable. Within months, affairs had ignited between the adults,and before long the pairs had exchanged partners—divorced,remarried, and moved on. As if in a cataclysm of nature, twofamilies were ripped asunder, and two new ones were formed. Twopairs of girls were left in shock, a “silent, numb shock, like acrack inside stone, not enough to split it but inside, silentlyfissuring.” And Jane and her stepsister were thrown into a state ofsilent combat for the affections of their absent fathers—a contestthat, for one of them at least, would prove tragic. Readers drawn to The Glass Castle will be moved by Alison’sstunning emotional insight as she recounts the intimatedevastations of family
Only a handful of fictional characters are recognized by first name alone. Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas is one of those rare literary heroes who have come alive in readers’ imaginations as he explores the greatest mysteries of this world and the next with his inimitable wit, heart, and quiet gallantry. Now Koontz follows Odd as he is irresistibly drawn onward to a destiny he cannot imagine and to undreamed of places where the perils he will face and the stakes for which he fights will eclipse all that he has known.
In the stillness of a golden September afternoon, deep in thewilderness of the Rockies, a solitary craftsman, Grady Adams, andhis magnificent Irish wolfhound, Merlin, step from shadow intolight...and into an encounter with mystery. That night, a pair ofsingular animals will watch Grady's isolated home, waiting to maketheir approach. A few miles away, Camillia Rivers, a local veterinarian, beginsto unravel the threads of a puzzle that will bring to her door allthe forces of a government in peril. At a nearby farm, long-estranged identical twins come togetherto begin a descent into darkness...In Las Vegas, a specialist inchaos theory probes the boundaries of the unknowable...On a Seattlegolf course, two men make matter-of-fact arrangements formurder...Along a highway by the sea, a vagrant scarred by the pastbegins a trek toward his destiny. In a novel that is at once wholly of our time and timeless,fearless and funny, Dean Koontz takes readers into the momentbetween one turn of the world and the next, acros
Many people among them Henry James) have considered Balzac tobe the greatest of all novelists. Eugenie Grandet, his spare,classical story of a girl whose life is blighted by her father'shysterical greed, goes a long way to justifying that opinion. Oneof the most magnificent of his tales of early nineteenth-centuryFrench provincial life, this novel is the work of a writer on whomnothing was lost, and who represents most fully the ability of thehuman animal to understand and illuminate its own condition. Translated By Ellen Marriage With An Introduction By Fredric R.Jameson Fredric R. Jameson is William A. Lane, Jr. Professor ofComparative Literature at Duke University in North Carolina. Hispublications include Sartre: The Origins of a Style, Signatures ofthe Visible, and Post-modernism, or, The Cultural Logic of LateCapitalism, with Aesthetics of the Geopolitical forthcoming. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
The true story of one of America's greatestphilanthropists This is Jane Addams's graphic account of her famed settlementhouse in Chicago's West Side slums. Covering the years 1889 to1909, a time when America was fired with fear of subversives andsuspicion of foreigners, this book stands as the immortal testamentof a woman who lived and worked among the immigrant settlers, thesweatshop toilers, the unwed mothers, the hungry, the aged, thesick, to show them the true concept of American Democracy. * Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition ofher philanthropic work * This new edition features an afterword by Manhattan BoroughPresident Ruth Messinger which examines the current state ofsettlement houses in America
Undeniably powerful, an enormously affecting and intenselyhuman story. --The Washington Post Book World "A GUT-WRENCHING PIECE OF WORK. . . Carcaterra's graphic narrativegrips like gunfire in a dark alley." --The Atlanta Journal Constitution "In his controversial memoir SLEEPERS, Carcaterra remembersharrowing months in the Wilkinson Home for Boys and the elaboratevengeance he and his friends exacted against the guards. He tellsit all in spare, stylish prose . . . [with] relentless momentum andsheer drama. . . . SLEEPERS is a thriller, to be sure, but it isequally a wistful hymn to another age." --The Washington Post Book World "A TERRIFYING ACCOUNT OF BRUTALITY AND RETRIBUTION, searing in itsemotional truth, peopled with murderers, sadists, and thugs, butbiblical in its passion and scope." --People "SLEEPERS is so many things: a Dickensian portrait of coming of agein Hell's Kitchen, a terrifying and heartbreaking account of thebrutalization of youth, a shocking--and disturbinglysatisfying--climax worthy of
Beautiful Chiara is smitten by the brilliant but pennilessdoctor Salvatore. Desiring the unwilling Salvatore as a futurehusband, she engages in a series of comic attempts to land herobject of affection, only to create a greater chasm between thestar-crossed would-be lovers.
An odd, amusing and still provocative fantasy. The narrator is aSquare who lives in a world of two dimensions, and whose vision ofa third gets him into grave trouble with the authorities. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition ofthis title.
From the celebrated imagination of Dean Koontz comes a powerfulreworking of one of the classic stories of all time. If you thinkyou know the legend, you know only half the truth. Now themesmerizing saga concludes. . . . As a devastating hurricaneapproaches, as the benighted creations of Victor Helios begin tospin out of control, as New Orleans descends into chaos and thefuture of humanity hangs in the balance, the only hope rests withVictor’s first, failed attempt to build the perfect human.Deucalion’s centuries-old history began as the originalmanifestation of a soulless vision–and it is fated to end in theultimate confrontation between a damned creature and his madcreator. But first they must face a monstrosity not even Victor’smalignant mind could have conceived–an indestructible entity thatsteps out of humankind’s collective nightmare with powers, and apurpose, beyond imagining.
Set in the years leading up to and culminating in Napoleon's disastrous Russian invasion, this novel focuses upon an entire society torn by conflict and change. Here is humanity in all its innocence and corruption, its wisdom and folly.
In Blindness, a city is overcome by an epidemic ofblindness that spares only one woman. She becomes a guide for agroup of seven strangers and serves as the eyes and ears for thereader in this profound parable of loss and disorientation. Wereturn to the city years later in Saramago’s Seeing, asatirical commentary on government in general and democracy inparticular. Together here for the first time, this beautifuledition will be a welcome addition to the library of any Saramagofan.
So begins the ageless epic of Aeneas and his men, who areseemingly destined to wander the ancient world endlessly, theplaythings of wrathful gods. Fleeing the ruins of Troy, Aeneas mustfight his battles with little notion that Jupiter has ordained thatthe Trojan champion shall promulgate a race that will be theforebears of Rome.
The original vampire Since its publication in 1897, Dracula continues to terrify readerswith its depiction of a vampire with an insatiable thirst for bloodand the group of hunters determined to end his existence before hedestroys a young woman's soul.
Jane Goodall's account of her life among the wild chimpanzees ofGombe is one of the most enthralling stories of animal behaviorever written. Her adventure began when the famous anthropologistLouis Leakey suggested that a long-term study of chimpanzees in thewild might shed light on the behavior of our Stone Age ancestors.Accompanied by only her mother and her African assistants, she setup camp in the remote Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanzania.For months the project seemed hopeless; out in the jungle from dawnuntil dark, she had but fleeting glimpses of frightened animals. Atlast came the day when she was accepted and no longer feared. Shewas able to record previously unknown behavior, such as theuse--and even the making--of tools, until then believed to be anexclusive skill of man. As she came to know the chimps asindividuals, she deciphered their complicated social hierarchy,their rituals, and many other extraordinary behaviors, which haveforever changed our understanding of the profound connectionb
David Baldacci-the #1 bestselling author of The WholeTruth and First Family-returns with his most surprising,heart-stopping, and timely thriller to date . . . DELIVER US FROM EVIL Evan Waller is a monster. He has built a fortune from hiswillingness to buy and sell anything . . . and anyone. In search ofnew opportunities, Waller has just begun a new business venture:one that could lead to millions of deaths all over theglobe. On Waller's trail is Shaw, the mysterious operative from TheWhole Truth, who must prevent Waller from closing his latest deal.Shaw's one chance to bring him down will come in the most unlikelyof places: a serene, bucolic village in Provence. But Waller's depravity and ruthlessness go deeper than Shawknows. And now, there is someone else pursuing Waller inProvence-Reggie Campion, an agent for a secret vigilante groupheadquartered in a musty old English estate-and she has an agendaof her own. Hunting the same man and unaware
On the eve of the Russian Revolution, Frank Reid, a strugglingBritish-born printer in Moscow, is abandoned by his wife and isleft to care for his three children while keeping his businessafloat.
