TAO TE CHING IS ANCIENT CHINA'S GREAT CONTRIBUTION TO THE LITERATURE OF PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, AND MYSTICISM. TAO TE CHING CONTAINS THE TIME-HONORED TEACHINGS OFTAOISM AND BRINGSA MESSAGE OF LIVING SIMPLY, FINDING CONTENTMENT WITH A MINIMUM OFCOMFORT, AND PRIZING CULTURE ABOVE ALL ELSE. THIS IS THE LAUDED TRANSLATION OF THE EIGHTY-ONE POEMS CONSTITUTING AN EASTERN CLASSIC, THE MYSTICAL AND MORALTEACHINGS OF WHICH HAVE PROFOUNDLY INFLUENCED THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MANY RELIGIONS--AND THE LIVES AND HAPPINESS OF COUNTLESS MEN AND WOMEN THROUGH THE CENTURIES. TRANSLATED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BYR. B. BLAKNEY AND WITHANEWAFTERWORD BY RICHARD JOHN LYNN

The second book in Robert Jordan's internationally bestsellingepic fantasy series, THE WHEEL OF TIME, now reissued with astunning new cover design. The Forsaken are loose, the Horn ofValere has been found and the Dead are rising from their dreamlesssleep. The Prophecies are being fulfilled - but Rand al' Thor, theshepherd the Aes Sedai have proclaimed as the Dragon Reborn,desperately seeks to escape his destiny. Rand cannot run forever.With every passing day the Dark One grows in strength and strivesto shatter his ancient prison, to break the Wheel, to bring an endto Time and sunder the weave of the Pattern. And the Patterndemands the Dragon. Look out for more information on this title andothers at www.orbitbooks.co.uk

Selden Edwards, apparently, took 35 years to write this dismal piece of drivel. He started writing at age 25, but I suspect that he conceived the idea at the age of 15. How else to explain the wholly un-ironic adoption of the puerile schoolboy nickname for the main character's guru - the Venerable Haze, a.k.a. the Haze - throughout the book? On page 6, Mr Edwards employs the word 'momentarily' to mean 'in a moment' - when in fact it means 'for a moment'. I would say that if it is English teaching that he has recently retired from, then it is just as well that he has retired. Time travel, I can (only just) live with, but the plot is contrived, and the story wholly devoid of humour, takes itself far too seriously, and employs tortured coincidences to allow the hero to make his way through life in 19th Century 'fin de siecle' (he loves that term!) Vienna. I managed 36 pages of this rubbish, and then gave up in disgust. I trust that Mr Edwards, if he ever does write another novel, will again take 35 years t

In his most brilliant and powerful novel, Pat Conroy tells thestory of Tom Wingo, his twin sister, Savannah, and the dark andviolent past of the family into which they were born. Set in NewYork City and the lowcountry of South Carolina, the novel openswhen Tom, a high school football coach whose marriage and careerare crumbling, flies from South Carolina to New York after learningof his twin sister's suicide attempt. Savannah is one of the mostgifted poets of her generation, and both the cadenced beauty of herart and the jumbled cries of her illness are clues to thetoo-long-hidden story of her wounded family. In the paneled officesand luxurious restaurants of New York City, Tom and SusanLowenstein, Savannah's psychiatrist, unravel a history of violence,abandonment, commitment, and love. And Tom realizes that trying tosave his sister is perhaps his last chance to save himself. Withpassion and a rare gift of language, the author moves from presentto past, tracing the amazing history of the Wingos from Wo

Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of hisdead father. He is shocked to find there the mistress's rival andsuccessor, Mrs. Ota, and that the ceremony has been awkwardlyarranged for him to meet his potential future bride. But he is mostshocked to be drawn into a relationship with Mrs. Ota - arelationship that will bring only suffering and destruction to allof them. "Thousand Cranes" reflects the tea ceremony's poeticprecision with understated, lyrical style and beautiful prose.

There's a saying at Hollywood Station that the full moonbrings out the beast--rather than the best--in the precinct'scitizens. One moonlit night, veteran officers Dana Vaughn and"Hollywood" Nate Weiss get a call about a prowler who's beenbrutally attacking women. Meanwhile, a pair of cops with the surfersobriquets Flotsam and Jetsam are on the lookout for asmooth-talking player in dreads and a crazy-eyed, tattooed biker.But something bigger, more high-tech, and much more deadly is aboutto go down. After a dizzying series of twists, turns, and chases,the cops discover that they've stumbled upon a complex web of crimewhere even the criminals aren't sure who's conning whom. And forsome of the men and women in blue, public duty will exact theheaviest of tolls.

With an Introduction by Richard Jenseth, St Lawrence University The Red Badge of Courage is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It reports on the American Civil War through the eyes of Henry Fleming, an ordinary farm boy turned soldier. It evokes the chaos and the dull clatter of war: the acrid smoke, the incessant rumours of coming battles, the filth and cold, the numbing monotony, the unworldly wailing of the dying. Like an impressionist painter, Crane also captures the strange beauty of war: the brilliant red flags against a blue sky, steel bayonets flashing in the morning sun as soldiers step off into battle. In the midst of this chaotic outer world, he creates an intricate inner world as he takes us inside the head of Henry Fleming.

Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make upBalzac's "History of the Thirteen" are concerned in part with theactivities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secretsociety in nineteenth-century France. While the deeds of "TheThirteen" remain frequently in the background, however, theindividual novels are concerned with exploring various forms ofdesire. A tragic love story, Ferragus depicts a marriage destroyedby suspicion, revelation and misunderstanding. The Duchess deLangeais explores the anguish that results when a society coquettetries to seduce a heroic ex-soldier, while "The Girl with theGolden Eyes" offers a frank consideration of desire and sexuality.Together, these works provide a firm and fascinating foundation forBalzac's many later portrayals of Parisian life in his greatnovel-cycle "The Human Comedy".

In this nightmare vision of a not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends rob, rape, torture and murder - for fun. Alex is jailed for his vicious crimes and the State undertakes to reform him - but how and at what cost?

As special assistant to the president, Arthur Schlesingerwitnessed firsthand the politics and personalities that influencedthe now legendary Kennedy administration. Schlesinger's closerelationship with JFK, as a politician and as a friend, hasresulted in this authoritative yet intimate account in which thepresident "walks through the pages, from first to last, alert,alive, amused and amusing" (John Kenneth Galbraith). A THOUSANDDAYS is "at once a masterly literary achievement and a work ofmajor historical significance" (New York Times).

From the award-winning author of "A Year on Ladybug Farm" comesthe continuing story of three women who learn what it takes to turna house into a home. A year after taking the chance of a lifetime,Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget are still trying to make a home forthemselves on the newly-renovated Ladybug Farm. Life in theShenandoah Valley is picturesque, but filled with unexpectedtrials- such as the introduction of two young people into theordered life the women have tried to build for themselves. As thewalls of the old house reveal their secrets and the lives of thosewho have gone before begin to unfold, the cobbled-togetherhousehold starts to disintegrate into chaos. And when one of theirmembers is threatened by a real crisis, they must all come togetherto fight for the roots they've laid down, the hopes they share, andthe family they've become.

The author of Leviathan returns with a dazzling, picaresque,new novel in which Walter Claireborne Rawley, now an octogenarian,recounts his extraordinary vaudevillian adventures as "Walt theWonder Boy" in 1924. "One hears every page of this novel, and seesit as well".--Washington Post.

Hired by a Massachusetts grand dame to prove the innocence of her grandson, who has been implicated in a school shooting during which seven people were killed, Spenser wonders why the boy seems unconcerned about his possible wrongful imprisonment and faces difficult obstacles in the wake of unhelpful school officials and a blackmail conspiracy.

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.

1348.The Black Death is sweeping through Europe.In Florence,plague has carried off one hundred thousand people.In their Tuscan villas,seven young women and three young men tell tales to recreate the world they have lost,weaving a rich tapestry of comedy,tragedy,ribaldry and farce.Boccaccio's Decameron recasts the storytelling heritage of the ancient and medieval worlds into perennial forms that inspired writers from Chaucer and Shakespeare down to our own day.Boccaccio makes the incredible believable,with detail so sharp we can look straight into the lives of people who lived six hundred years ago.His Decameron hovers between the fading glories of an aristocratic past-the Crusades,the Angevins,the courts of France,the legendary East-and the colourful squalor of contemporary life,where wives deceive husbands,friars and monks pursue fleshly ends,and natural instincts fight for satisfaction.Here are love and jealousy,passion and pride-and a shrewd calculation of profit and loss which heralds the rise of a dynami

The first book in a new post-apocalyptic trilogy from "amaster of the genre" Heather O'Grainne is the Assistant Secretaryin the Office of Future Threat Assessment, investigating rumorssurrounding something called "Daybreak." The group is diverse andradical, and its members have only one thing in common-their hatredfor the "Big System" and their desire to take it down. Now,seemingly random events simultaneously occurring around the worldare in fact connected as part of Daybreak's plan to destroy moderncivilization-a plan that will eliminate America's top governmentpersonnel, leaving the nation no choice but to implement itsemergency contingency program...Directive 51.

The story of Oedipus has captured the human imagination as few others.It is the story of a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother,a man who by a cruel irony brings these things to pass by his very efforts to avoid them.But these plays are not about fate,and not about irnoy.They are about character,choice and consequence.In Antigone we see a woman who will defy human law ,and die for it ,rather than transgress the eternal ,unwritten laws of the gods.Oedipus the Tyrant is the story of a ruler destroyed by those qualities-pride,determination and belief in his own ablitities-which made him ruler in the first place.Finally,in Oedipus at Colonus,written late in Sophocles' life,the aged and blinded king achieves a personal reconciliation,but at a cost-a son who will die in battle against his country,and a daughter who will die burying her brother.

"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.

What if the person you were meant to be with could never be yours? 17-year-old Lucinda falls in love with a gorgeous, intelligent boy, Daniel, at her new school, the grim, foreboding Sword & Cross ...only to find out that Daniel is a fallen angel, and that they have spent lifetimes finding and losing one another as good and evil forces plot to keep them apart. Get ready to fall...

this delightful novel from an author who "has been favored inso many ways by the muse of comedy,"* we meet Margaret Nathan, thebrilliant but forgetful author of an unlikely bestseller. Happilymarried to a benevolently egotistical, slightly dull but sexyprofessor, Margaret seems blessed—until she finds herself seducedby an eighteenthcentury novel she discovers in the library. Wrapped in its lascivious world, Margaret begins to imitate itsprotagonist, embarking on a hilarious jaunt around Manhattan insearch of renewed passion. Will she find fulfillment through herescapades or settle for her husband? Part romantic comedy, partintellectual parody, Rameau’s Niece is wise, affecting, andthoroughly entertaining. * New York Review of Books

Few books have captivated the imagination and won the devotion and praise of readers and critics everywhere as has George R. R. Martin’s monumental epic cycle of high fantasy. Now, in A Feast for Crows, Martin delivers the long-awaited fourth book of his landmark series, as a kingdom torn asunder finds itself at last on the brink of peace...only to be launched on an even more terrifying course of destruction.

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.