The difficult choices a family must make when a child is diagnosed with a serious disease are explored with pathos and understanding in this 11th novel by Picoult (Second Glance, etc.). The author, who has taken on such controversial subjects as euthanasia (Mercy), teen suicide (The Pact) and sterilization laws (Second Glance), turns her gaze on genetic planning, the prospect of creating babies for health purposes and the ethical and moral fallout that results. Kate Fitzgerald has a rare form of leukemia. Her sister, Anna, was conceived to provide a donor match for procedures that become increasingly invasive. At 13, Anna hires a lawyer so that she can sue her parents for the right to make her own decisions about how her body is used when a kidney transplant is planned. Meanwhile, Jesse, the neglected oldest child of the family, is out setting fires, which his firefighter father, Brian, inevitably puts out. Picoult uses multiple viewpoints to reveal each character's intentions and observations, but she doesn'
From the first tee to the nineteenth hole, here's a collection of above-par cartoons and comic strips featuring favorite cartoon characters on the links, in the rough, and out of luck when it comes to the game of golf!
This is the perfect introduction for young readers to the lives and times of America’s 43 most influential leaders. Just as the new president is inaugurated, readers can easily relive the course of American history through a detailed timeline, more than 50 vivid photographs and illustrations, information about each president’s term in office, and the major political issues of each era. Quick-reference sidebars provide brief summaries of the major events and important people who emerged during each presidential term. Famous quotes and fun facts about each president ensure that this perennial favorite continues to be an entertaining and enlightening addition to any child’s library.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) A famous legend surrounding thecreation of "Anna Karenina" tells us that Tolstoy began writing acautionary tale about adultery and ended up falling in love withhis magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the bookwho doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval. AnnaKarenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist intheir own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-centuryRussian milieu, but it still belongs entirely to the woman whosename it bears, whose portrait is one of the truest ever made by awriter. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
Leo Tolstoy’s short works, like his novels, show readers his narrative genius, keen observation, and historical acumen—albeit on a smaller scale. This Norton Critical Edition presents twelve of Tolstoy’s best-known stories, based on the Louise and Aylmer Maude translations (except “Alyosha Gorshok”), which have been revised by the editor for enhanced comprehension and annotated for student readers. The Second Edition newly includes “A Prisoner in the Caucasus,” “Father Sergius,” and “After the Ball,” in addition to Michael Katz’s new translation of “Alyosha Gorshok.” Together these stories represent the best of the author’s short fiction before War and Peace and after Anna Karenina. “Backgrounds and Sources” includes two Tolstoy memoirs, A History of Yesterday (1851) and The Memoirs of a Madman (1884), as well as entries—expanded in the Second Edition—from Tolstoy’s “Diary for 1855” and selected letters (1858–95) that shed light on the author’s creative p
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The story of the mysteriousindictment, trial, and reckoning forced upon Joseph K. in FranzKafka's "The Trial" is one of the twentieth century's masterparables, reflecting the central spiritual crises of modern life.Kafka's method-one that has influenced, in some way, almost everywriter of substance who followed him-was to render the absurd andthe terrifying convincing by a scrupulous, hyperrealmatter-of-factness of tone and treatment. He thereby imparted tohis work a level of seriousness normally associated withcivilization's most cherished poems and religious texts. Translatedby Willa and Edwin Muir
Though the story has been told on film—and whispered inhistoric gossip—this is the first book in almost fifty years tosolely explore the great queen’s attachment to her beloved RobertDudley, the Earl of Leicester. Fueled by scandal and intrigue,their relationship set the explosive connection between public andprivate life in sixteenth-century England in bold relief. Why didthey never marry? How much of what seemed a passionate obsessionwas actually political convenience? Elizabeth and Leicesterreignites this 400- year-old love story in a book for anyoneinterested in Elizabethan literature.
Among the few indispensable, common-property books upon whichWestern culture can be founded ... it is hardly too much to saythat these tales rank next to the Bible in importance. - W.H.Auden A wonderful collection of all 210 tales and popular legendscollected by the Grimm brothers over a century ago.
Newlyweds Jennifer and Matt really love each other. They never lived together before they were married-and so both were shocked to learn all the little things that go with living with one's spouse. Who knew that in his family, Saturdays were for tackling chores, while in her family Saturdays were for sleeping late? Now, two nice people from nice families are finding out that they do everything differently-and suddenly, they're in the ring with gloves on! Week by week, the fights take both of them by surprise-they never meant to be the kind of couple that acts this way. Simultaneously, though, Jennifer and Matt are building something strong, knocking down old walls of habit and finding the strong foundation of a love that will see them through.This is one year in a marriage-the beginning of a lifetime.
"What’s the matter? A mine? Some kid step on a mine? A blessure?" "No. Not a mine." We walk in and there’s a mother standing by her child. It’s a little girl. She’s a very beautiful girl with straight black hair, maybe six or eight, big eyes, a bit younger than Smiles and just as lovely. But she’s lying too still under a white sheet on the bamboo bed and her mother is talking in a monotone, staring off to the corner asking for help from Buddha. The little girl is staring at me, tracking every move I make. She’s so weak, all she can do is move her eyes. Sok Samuth approaches the bed and takes down the sheets. It’s very sad what we see. The girl is inhumanly thin and her skin is peeling off. He pulls the sheet up over the girl’s body again and the mother keeps up her monotone plea for Buddha while the little girl follows me, eye to eye. She wants me to make her feel better. I’m thinking, no, not this one. The whole thing was about this one. It was always about this one.
This Norton Critical Edition is designed to make Paradise Lost accessible for student readers, providing invaluable contextual and biographical information and the tools students need to think critically about this landmark epic. Gordon Teskey's freshly edited text of Milton's masterpiece is accompanied by a new introduction and substantial explanatory annotations. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized, the latter, importantly, within the limits imposed by Milton's syntax. "Sources and Backgrounds" collects relevant passages from the Bible and Milton's prose writings, including selections from The Reason of Church Government and the full text of Areopagitica. "Criticism" brings together classic interpretations by Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, Victor Hugo, and T. S. Eliot, among others, and the most important recent criticism and scholarship surrounding the epic, including essays by Northrop Frye, Barbara Lewalski, Christopher Ricks, and Helen Vendler. A Glossary and Selected Biblio
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The most famous day inliterature is June 16, 1904, when a certain Mr. Leopold Bloom ofDublin eats a kidney for breakfast, attends a funeral, admires agirl on the beach, contemplates his wife's imminent adultery, and,late at night, befriends a drunken young poet in the city'sred-light district. An earthy story, a virtuoso technical display,and a literary revolution all rolled into one, James Joyce's"Ulysses" is a touchstone of our modernity and one of the toweringachievements of the human mind.
For three young friends it had been the most golden of summers. But the fire on Snake Mountain, spawned on a moonless night by a single shaft of lightning, was to burn a brand upon all their lives. After a tragic death for which she holds herself accountable teacher Julia Bishop is forced to choose between the two men she loves. The one she spurns embarks on a dark journey to the heart of human suffering. Reckless of a life he no longer values, war photographer Connor Ford finds fame but never happiness, until another fateful day when he must walk through fire once more - for Julia, her child and all he holds dear.
With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELYHUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literarysensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and itscompassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novelis considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece firstpublished by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is thedeaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various typesof misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearnsfor escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goesinsane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, thebook's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace inher music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation thatunderlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racialtensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettablestory that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and themistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet,in
From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Remains ofthe Day" "comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born inearly-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age ofnine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, morethan twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in Londonsociety; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him famehas done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents'alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthinecity of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own,painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyondrecognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficultto trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful andpsychologically acute, When We Were Orphans" "offers a profoundmeditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibilityof avenging one's past.
Introduction by Ron PowersIncludes Newly Commissioned EndnotesArguably the first major American novel to satirize the politicalmilieu of Washington, D.C. and the wild speculation schemes thatexploded across the nation in the years that followed the CivilWar, The Gilded Age gave this remarkable era its name. Co-writtenby Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, this rollicking novel isrife with unscrupulous politicians, colorful plutocrats, andblindly optimistic speculators caught up in a frenzy of romance,murder, and surefire deals gone bust. First published in 1873 andfilled with unforgettable characters such as the vaingloriousColonel Sellers and the ruthless Senator Dilsworthy, The Gilded Ageis a hilarious and instructive lesson in American history.
Ibsen ascended to the first ranks of European writers in the late nineteenth century and has remained there ever since. The Norton Critical Edition includes five major plays spanning Ibsen’s long career in recent translations by Brian Johnston (Peer Gynt, The Wild Duck, and The Master Builder) and Brian Johnston and Rick Davis (A Doll House and Hedda Gabler). The translation of Peer Gynt appears for the first time in this Norton Critical Edition. “Backgrounds” gives students an understanding of Ibsen’s creative process with selections from his correspondence and other writings. Twenty-seven documents have been collected and arranged by play, with a section of autobiographical writings at the end. Ibsen’s plays continue to provoke diverse commentary. “Criticism” includes nineteen of the most important responses to Ibsen’s work, among them essays by Bernard Shaw, Sandra Saari, E. M. Forster, Hugh Kenner, and Joan Templeton. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also incl
The Kama Sutra is a compilation of timeless wisdom from the third century AD about the arts of pleasurable living. It contains detailed advice on topics ranging from attraction, courtship, seduction, marriage, and sexual union.Written twelve hundred years later, Ananga Ranga is an updated version, drawing extensively upon the cornucopia of sexual positions that The Kama Sutra first proposed.Their sexual candor, along with vivid de*ions of sexual positions, make The Kama Sutra and Ananga Ranga indispensable guides to couples seeking to enhance theirsexual relationship.
The Unconsoled is at once a gripping psychological mystery, awicked satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study ofa man whose public life has accelerated beyond his control. Thesetting is a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renownedpianist, has come to give the most important performance of hislife. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic andinfuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital cluesto his own past. In The Unconsoled Ishiguro creates a work that isitself a virtuoso performance, strange, haunting, and resonant withhumanity and wit. "A work of great interest and originality....Ishiguro has mapped out an aesthetic territory that is all hisown...frankly fantastic and] fiercer and funnier thanbefore."--"The New Yorker"
Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, orArdor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the gloriousculmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love storytroubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale,epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of thehistory of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor isno less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensiveand ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under theanagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.