In this towering story about a man pitting himself against thesea, against society, and against himself, Robert Stone againdemonstrates that he is "one of the most impressive novelists ofhis generation" (New York Review of Books). Inviting comparisonwith the great sea novels of Conrad, Melville, and Hemingway,Outerbridge Reach is also the portrait of two men and the powerful,unforgettable woman they both love - and for whom they are bothready, in their very different ways, to stake everything. As theSan Francisco Chronicle said, "Robert Stone asks questions of ourtime few writers could imagine and answers them in narratives fewreaders will ever quite forget."

No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe. But also a slot for blackness to pour through... A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a "geographic cure," a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else. "Edgar, does anything make you happy?" "I used to sketch." "Take it up again. You need hedges...hedges against the night." Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach

Douglas Adams is back with the amazing, logic-defying,but-why-stop-now fifth novel in the Hitchhiker Trilogy. Here is theepic story of Random, who sets out on a transgalactic quest to findthe planet of her ancestors. Line drawings. "From the Hardcoveredition."

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.

Swinging to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of beat.

A classic work that has charmed generations of readers, thiscollection assembles Carson McCullers's best stories, including herbeloved novella "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe." A haunting tale of ahuman triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novellaintroduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern womanwhose cafe serves as the town's gathering place. Among other fineworks, the collection also includes "Wunderkind," McCullers's firstpublished story written when she was only seventeen about a musicalprodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a greatpianist. Newly reset and available for the first time in a handsometrade paperback edition, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is a brilliantstudy of love and longing from one of the South's finestwriters.

He has waited for this moment. "He has planned his every move. "He has made it onto the jury in the most explosive trial of the century. "Now the verdict belongs to him. . . . They are at the center of a multimillion dollar legal hurricane: twelve men and women who have been investigated, watched, manipulated, and harassed by high-priced lawyers and consultants who will stop at nothing to secure a verdict. Now that the jury must make a decision in the most explosive trial of the century, a precedent-setting lawsuit against a giant tobacco company. But only a handful of people know the truth: that this jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him... He is known only as Juror #2. But he has a name, a past, and he has planned his every move with the help of a beautiful woman on the outside. Now, while a corporate empire hands in the balance, while a grieving family waits, and while lawyers are plunged into a battle for their careers, the truth about Juror #2 is about to explode, in a cross fire of greed

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.

It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met.But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking aboutone another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship arerevealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. Dex and Em facesquabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter andtears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed,they must come to grips with the nature of love and lifeitself.

Four women--four friends--share a determinationto stop a killer who has been stalking newlyweds in San Francisco.Each one holds a piece of the puzzle: Lindsay Boxer is a homicideinspector in the San Francisco Police Department, Claire Washburnis a medical examiner, Jill Bernhardt is an assistant D.A., andCindy Thomas just started working the crime desk of the SanFrancisco Chronicle. But the usual procedures aren't bringing themany closer to stopping the killings. So these women form a Women'sMurder Club to collaborate outside the box and pursue the case bysidestepping their bosses and giving each other a hand. The four women develop intense bonds as they pursue a killer whosecrimes have stunned an entire city. Working together, they trackdown the most terrifying and unexpected killer they have everencountered--before a shocking conclusion in which everything theyknew turns out to be devastatingly wrong. Full of the breathtakingdrama and unforgettable emotions for which James Patterson isfamous, 1st to Die

The Diary of a Nobody is so unassuming a work that even its author, George Grossmith, seemed unaware that he had produced a masterpiece. For more than a century this wonderfully comic portrayal of suburban life and values has remined in print, a source of delight to generations of readers, and a major literary influence, much imitated but never equalled. If you don't recognise yourself at some point in The Diary you are probably less than human. If you can read it without laughing aloud you have no sense of humour.

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill,Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from therest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into itand fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand issevered as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands inthe neighboring town are divided from their families, and carsexplode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where itcame from, and when -- or if -- it will go away. Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, findshimself teamed with a few intrepid citizens -- town newspaper ownerJulia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, aselect-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big JimRennie, a politician who will stop at nothing -- even murder -- tohold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horriblesecret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Domeitself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.

Scott Schuman just wanted to take photographs of people that he met on the streets of New York who he felt looked great. His now-famous and much-loved blog, thesartorialist.com, is his showcase for the wonderful and varied sartorial tastes of real people across the globe. This book is a beautiful anthology of Scott ’s favorite images, accompanied by his insightful commentary. It includes photographs of well-known fashion figures alongside people encountered on the street whose personal style and taste demand a closer look. From the streets of New York to the parks of Florence, from Stockholm to Paris, from London to Moscow and Milan, these are the men and women who have inspired Scott and the many diverse and fashionable readers of his blog. After fifteen years in the fashion business, Scott Schuman felt a growing disconnect between what he saw on the runways and in magazines, and what real people were wearing. The Sartorialist was his attempt to redress the balance. Since its beginning, the b

One of the great classics of Western literature，Les Miserables is a magisterial work which is rich in both character portrayal and meticulous historical de*ion. Characters such as the absurdly criminalised Valjean. the street urchin Gavroche.the rascal Thenardier. the implacable detective lavert， and the pitiful figure of the prostitute Fantine and her daughter Cosotte， have entered the pantheon of literary dramatis persoae. The reader is also treated to the unforgettable de*ions of the Battle of Waterloo and Valjean's flight through the Paris sewers.

Oliver Twist was Dickens's second novel and one of his darkest, dealing with burglary, kidnapping, child abuse, prostitution, and murder. Alongside this gallery of horrors are the corrupt and incompetent institutions of 19th-century England set up to address social problems and instead making them worse. The author's moral indignation drives the creation of some of his most memorably grotesque characters: squirming, vile Fagin; brutal Bill Sykes; the brooding, sickly Monks; and Bumble, the pompous and incorrigibly dense beadle. Clearly, a reading of this work must carry the author's passionate narrative voice while being flexible and broad enough to define the wide range of character voices suggested by the text. John Wells's capable but bland reading only suggests the rich possibilities of the material. Restraint and Dickens simply don't go together. The abridgment deftly and seamlessly manages to deliver all major characters and plot lines, but there are many superior audiobook versions of this material, bo

Though not the first novel she wrote, Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen published. Though she initially called it Elinor and Marianne, Austen jettisoned both the title and the epistolary mode in which it was originally written, but kept the essential theme: the necessity of finding a workable middle ground between passion and reason. The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she "loves him tenderly," she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister: Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those

The best-known and most autobiographical of George Eliot’s novels is now available as a Norton Critical Edition. The text of The Mill on the Floss, that of the 1862 third edition for which Eliot made her last revisions, has been annotated in order to assist the reader with obscure references and allusions Backgrounds includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centering on the novel’s content and composition; "Brother and Sister" (1869), a little-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews and responses, both published and unpublished, on the novel, including those by Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinurne, and John Ruskin. Judiciously chosen from the wealth of essays on The Mill on the Floss published in this century, Criticism includes ten of the best studies of the novel, providing the reader with historical and critical perspective. The contributors are Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf, F. R. Leavis, George Levine, Ulrich Knoepflmacher, Philip Fisher, Mary Jacobus, John Kuci

The Dover volume collects 14 of Stoker's lesser-known horror stories such as "The Crystal Cup," "The Burial of the Rats," and "A Gipsey Prophecy." Though most of his other fiction has been overshadowed by Dracula, these offer some real chills and warrant reading. While editions of Dracula, which celebrated its centennial in 1997, are legion, Broadview's offers several extras, including a chronology of Stoker's life and appendixes on Transylvania, London, Mental Physiology, Reviews and Interviews, and more. That along with the full text make this one of the best editions available, especially at this remarkable price.

Lovely, idealistic Tracy Whitney is framed into a fifteen yearsentence in an escape-proof penitentiary. With dazzling ingenuityshe fights back to destroy the untouchable crime lords who put herthere. With her intelligence and beauty as her only weapons, Tracyembarks on a series of extraordinary escapades that sweep heracross the globe. In an explosive confrontation Tracy meets herequal in irresistible Jeff Stevens, whose past is as colorful asTracy's. Show more Show less

The stories that launched Clive Barker's phenomenal career-now in one special collector's edition and featuring a new Introduction by the "New York Times" bestselling author.