Gabriel Allon faces his most determined enemy-and greatestchallenge-in the stunning novel from the world-class practitionerof spy fiction.
The novel that defined the Beat generation, this exuberanttale of two men traversing America is as fresh and fantastic asever.
On a bitter November evening, young Mary Yellan journeysacross the rainswept moors to Jamaica Inn in honour of her mother'sdying request. When she arrives, the warning of the coachman beginsto echo in her memory, for her aunt Patience cowers before hulkingUncle Joss Merlyn. Terrified of the inn's brooding power, Marygradually finds herself ensnared in the dark schemes being enactedbehind its crumbling walls -- and tempted to love a man she daresnot trust.
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.
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...
I threw the piece of paper on the fire. She saw it burn...Orphaned at an early age, Philip Ashley is raised by hisbenevolent older cousin, Ambrose. Resolutely single, Ambrosedelights in Philip as his heir, a man who will love his grand homeas much as he does himself. But the cosy world the two construct isshattered when Ambrose sets off on a trip to Florence. There hefalls in love and marries - and there he dies suddenly. In almostno time at all, the new widow - Philip's cousin Rachel - turns upin England. Despite himself, Philip is drawn to this beautiful,sophisticated, mysterious woman like a moth to the flame. And yet...might she have had a hand in Ambrose's death?
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.
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.
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.
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.
In this dramatic journey through religious and artistichistory, R. A. Scotti traces the defining event of a gloriousepoch: the building of St. Peter’s Basilica. Begun by theferociously ambitious Pope Julius II in 1506, the endeavor wouldspan two tumultuous centuries, challenge the greatest Renaissancemasters—Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante—and enrage MartinLuther. By the time it was completed, Shakespeare had written allof his plays, the Mayflower had reached Plymouth—and Romehad risen with its astounding basilica to become Europe’s holymetropolis. A dazzling portrait of human achievement and excess, Basilica is a triumph of historical writing.
With unparalleled wit, clarity, and intelligence, RichardDawkins, one of the world's most renowned evolutionary biologists,has introduced countless readers to the wonders of science in workssuch as The Selfish Gene. Now, in The Ancestor's Tale, Dawkinsoffers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour throughevolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginningsof life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey Dawkinsspins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topicssuch as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. TheAncestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionarytheory and a riveting read.
They were Easy Company, 101st Army Airborne-the World War IIfighting unit legendary for their bravery against nearlyinsurmountable odds and their loyalty to one another in the face ofdeath. Every soldier in this band of brothers looked to one man forleadership: Major Dick Winters. This is the riveting story of an ordinary man who became anextraordinary hero. After he enlisted in the army's arduous newAirborne division, Winters's natural combat leadership helped himclimb the ranks, but he was never far from his men. Decades later,Stephen E. Ambrose's Band of Brothers made him world-famous. Fullof never-before-published photographs, interviews, and Winters'scandid insights, Biggest Brother is the story of a man who became asoldier, a leader, and a living testament to the valor of the humanspirit.
'Bein' an idiot is no box of chocolates' Laugh, cry, stand up and cheer: Forrest Gump is everyman's story, everyman's dream. A wonderfully warm, savagely barbed, and hilariously funny 'tale told by an idiot', from the razor-sharp pen of a contemporary wizard. No one is spared and everyone is included. If you've ever felt lacking, left out, put upon - or just wanted to have a rollicking good time this book is for you. At 6'6", 240 pounds, Forrest Gump is a difficult man to ignore, so follow Forrest from the football dynasties of Bear Bryant to the Vietnam War, from encounters with Presidents Johnson and Nixon to powwows with Chairman Mao. Go with Forrest to Harvard University, to a Hollywood movie set, on a professional wrestling tour, and into space on the oddest NASA mission ever. Forrest Gump lives! Thank heavens! 'A superbly controlled satire' 'FORREST GUMP is line bred out of Voltaire and Huck Finn; its humour is wild and coarse, a satire right on the money. It is not the less honest f
On the Battersea Reach of the Thames, a mixed bag ofeccentrics live in houseboats. Belonging to neither land nor sea,they belong to one another. There is Maurice, a homosexualprostitute; Richard, a buttoned-up ex-navy man; but most of allthere's Nenna, the struggling mother of two wild little girls. Howeach of their lives complicates the others is the stuff of thisperfect little novel.
"You see, even after all these years, I wonder if you reallyloved me."Vanessa and Virginia are sisters, best friends, bitterrivals, and artistic collaborators. As children, they fight for theattention of their overextended mother, their brilliant butdifficult father, and their adored brother, Thoby. As young women,they support each other through a series of devastating deaths,then emerge in bohemian Bloomsbury, bent on creating new lives andgroundbreaking works of art. Through everything--marriage, lovers,loss, madness, children, success and failure--the sisters remainthe closest of co-conspirators. But they also betray each other.Inthis lyrical, impressionistic account, written as a love letter andan elegy from Vanessa to Virginia, Sellers imagines her way intothe heart of the lifelong relationship between the writer VirginiaWoolf and the painter Vanessa Bell. With sensitivity and fidelityto what is known of both lives, Sellers has created a powerfulportrait of sibling rivalry.
When the Iberian Peninsula breaks free of Europe and begins todrift across the North Atlantic, five people are drawn together onthe newly formed island-first by surreal events and then by love."A splendidly imagined epic voyage...a fabulous fable" (KirkusReviews). Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.
Caryl Phillips’ ambitious and powerful novel spans two hundred and fifty years of the African Diaspora. It tracks two brothers and a sister on their separate journeys through different epochs and continents: one as a missionary to Liberia in the 1830s.one a pioneer on a wagon trail to the American west later that century, and one a Gl posted to a Yorkshire village in the Second World War. Crossing the River won the James Tait Black Memorial Award in 1994, and was shortlist for the 1993Booker Prize. Caryl Phillips exploration of the relations between black and white is nuanced, humane,and sympathetic ,And his deep awareness of the historical proess is combined with an exceptionally inteligent prose style-clear,unecumbered,and compassionate'New Statesman& Society.
Sparks (A Bend in the Road, etc.) logs more miles on thewinding high road of romance with the story of two middle-agedpeople who meet by chance in the small North Carolina coastal townof Rodanthe. The impassioned but doomed romance seems to owe muchto Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County. Once again,a housewife who has focused on everyone but herself indulges in abrief, intense, secret affair with a stranger who changes her lifeforever. As the story begins, Adrienne Willis is 60, the divorcedmother of three grown children. To help her troubled daughter copewith the untimely recent death of her husband, Adrienne tells herthe tale of her love affair, which took place 15 years before. Atthe time, Adrienne was an uptight matron whose ex-husband had justleft her for a younger woman. This rejection colors her entirelife, and Sparks realistically portrays a vulnerable and isolatedwoman who throws herself into raising her children to escape herdespair. Paul Flanner, her paramour, is a surgeon an
