Nine strokes from an old country church toll out the death ofan unknown man and call Lord Peter Wimsey to one of his mostbaffling cases. Set in the strange, flat fen-country of EastAnglia, this is a classic tale of suspense by a master ofmystery.

Paul Theroux, the author of the train travel classics "TheGreat Railway Bazaar" and "The Old Patagonian Express", takes tothe rails once again in this account of his epic journey throughChina. He hops aboard as part of a tour group in London and setsout for China's border. He then spends a year traversing thecountry, where he pieces together a fascinating snapshot of aunique moment in history. From the barren deserts of Xinjiang tothe ice forests of Manchuria, from the dense metropolises ofShanghai, Beijing, and Canton to the dry hills of Tibet, Therouxoffers an unforgettable portrait of a magnificent land and anextraordinary people.

A 13th-century French version of the Camelot legend, writen byan unknown author. It depicts a Round Table diminished in strengthafter the Quest for the Holy Grail. Whispers of Queen Guinevere'sinfidelity distress King Arthur, leaving him no match for themachinations of Sir Mordred.

Julie Powell thought cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking was the craziest thingshe'd ever do--until she embarked on the voyage recounted in hernew memoir, CLEAVING.Her marriage challenged by an insane,irresistible love affair, Julie decides to leave town and immerseherself in a new obsession: butchery. She finds her way toFleischer's, a butcher shop where she buries herself in the detailsof food. She learns how to break down a side of beef and French arack of ribs--tough, physical work that only sometimes distractsher from thoughts of afternoon trysts. The camaraderie at Fleischer's leads Julie to search out fellowbutchers around the world--from South America to Europe to Africa.At the end of her odyssey, she has learned a new art and perhapseven mastered her unruly heart.

Die Geschichte über eine junge Frau und ihren Kampf gegen dieDepressionen w?hrend ihres ersten Jahres in Harvard.

In a breathtaking adventure story, the paranoid and brilliantinventor Allie Fox takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle,determined to build a civilization better than the one they'veleft. Fleeing from an America he sees as mired in materialism andconformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life. But his utopianexperiment takes a dark turn when his obsessions lead the familytoward unimaginable danger.

Dr. Alfred Jones is a henpecked, slightly pompous middle-agedscientist at the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence in Londonwhen he is approached by a mysterious sheikh about an outlandishplan to introduce the sport of salmon fishing into the Yemen. Dr.Jones refuses, but the project, however scientifically absurd,catches the eye of British politicians, who pressure him to work onit. His diaries of the Yemen Salmon Project, from beginning toglorious, tragic end, form the narrative backbone of this novel;interspersed throughout are government memos, e-mails, letters, andinterview tran*s that deftly capture the absurdity ofbureaucratic dysfunction.With a wickedly wonderful cast ofcharacters--including a weasel-like spin doctor, a missing soldierand his intrepid fiancee, and Dr. Jones's own devilish wife--SalmonFishing in the Yemen is the whimsical story of an unlikely hero whodiscovers true love, finds himself first a pawn and then a victimof political spin, and learns to believe in the impossible.

Taking his title from the wounded cry of the once great MaxBialystock in The Producers -- "Look at me now Look at me now I'mwearing a cardboard belt " -- the charming essayist Joseph Epsteingives us his largest and most adventurous collection to date. Withhis signature gifts of sparkling humor and penetratingintelligence, he issues forth as a memoirist, polemicist, literarycritic, and amused observer of contemporary culture. In deeplyconsidered examinations of writers from Paul Valery to TrumanCapote, in incisive take-downs of such cultural pooh-bahs as HaroldBloom and George Steiner, and in personally revealing essays abouthis father and about his years as a teacher, this remarkablecollection from one of America's best essayists is a book to besavored.

From the author of the international bestseller The GlassPalace, The Hungry Tide is a novel of adventure and romance set inthe exotic Sundarbans -- treacherous islands in the Bay of Bengalwhere isolated inhabitants live in fear of drowning tides andman-eating tigers. A headstrong young American arrives in this lushlandscape to study a rare species of river dolphin. She enlists theaid of a local fisherman and a translator, and soon their fates onthe waterways will be determined by the forces of nature and humanfolly.

George Bowling, the hero of this comic novel, is a middle-agedinsurance salesman who lives in an average English suburban rowhouse with a wife and two children. One day, after winning somemoney from a bet, he goes back to the village where he grew up, tofish for carp in a pool he remembers from thirty years before. Thepool, alas, is gone, the village has changed beyond recognition,and the principal event of his holiday is an accidental bombing bythe RAF.

A treasury of Lewis’s thought, gathered from all of his morethan forty books and his uncollected essays, on subjects as variedas sin, hell and heaven, the Trinity, and love and sex. Edited andwith a Preface by Clyde S. Kilby.

This Third Edition of Tess of the d'Urbert,illes intro-duces a new text--that of the Clarendon edition(1983), edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell.The text is fully annotated and includes, for ease of refer- ence, a separate table of contents for the novel. Also new to the Third Edition are reproductions of Hardy's map of Wessex and the manu* title page for the First Edition. "Hardy and the Novel" includes seven poems by Hardy that provide greater insight into his ethos, passages from Michael Millgate's biogra-phy of Hardy that depict the relationship between parts of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and the author's own life, and excerpts from Grindle and Gatrelt's introduction to the 1983 edition that discuss Hardy's revision process in both manu*s and early printed editions of the novel. "Criticism" features three new contemporary reviews including the first feminist review of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Also new to the Third Edition is "A Chat with Mr. Hardy," a hitherto un-reprinted post-publicatio

On its way to becoming a cult classic, "Ablutions" is themuch-acclaimed debut of a literary star in the making.Enter afamous but declining Hollywood bar. There, a barman, morbidlyamused by the decadent decay of his surroundings, establishestentative friendships with variously pathological regulars, all thewhile making notes for his novel.But as his tenure at the barcontinues, he begins to serve himself more often than hiscustomers. The moments he lives outside the bar become more andmore painful: he loses his wife, his way, himself. Trapped by hishabits and his loneliness, he hatches a terrible, necessary plan ofescape, his only chance for redemption.Patrick deWitt's stunningdebut novel has been compared to the work of Charles Bukowski,Denis Johnson, and Hunter S. Thompson. It is funny and horrifyingand beautiful and honest, the kind of book whose "dirty realism"makes Gary Shteyngart "want to roll in the mud with" the author."Ablutions" is destined to be a backlist favorite for manyyears.

Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is a divorced, depressed historyteacher. To lift his spirits, a colleague suggests he rent acertain video. Tertuliano watches the film, unimpressed. But duringthe night, when he is awakened by noises in his apartment, he goesinto the living room to find that the VCR is replaying the video.He watches in astonishment as a man who looks exactly like him-or,more specifically, exactly like he did five years before,mustachioed and fuller in the face-appears on the screen. He sleepsbadly. Against his better judgment, Tertuliano decides to pursuehis double. As he roots out the man's identity, what begins as awhimsical story becomes a "wonderfully twisted meditation onidentity and individuality" (The Boston Globe). Saramago displayshis remarkable talent in this haunting tale of appearance versusreality.

In 1551, King Jo?o III of Portugal gave Archduke Maximilian anunusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon. The elephant’sjourney from Lisbon to Vienna was witnessed and remarked upon byscholars, historians, and ordinary people. Out of this material,José Saramago has spun a novel already heralded as “a triumph oflanguage, imagination, and humor” (El País). Solomon and his keeper, Subhro, begin in dismal conditions,forgotten in a corner of the palace grounds. When it occurs to theking and queen that an elephant would be an appropriate weddinggift, everyone rushes to get them ready: Subhro is given two newsuits of clothes and Solomon a long overdue scrub. Accompanied by the Archduke, his new wife, and the royal guard,our unlikely heroes traverse a continent riven by the Reformationand civil wars. They make their way through the storied cities ofnorthern Italy: Genoa, Piacenza, Mantua, Verona, Venice, andTrento, where the Council of Trent is in session. They brave theAlps and the

This unusual fictional account, in good part autobiographical,narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of apenniless British writer among the down-and-out of two greatcities. In the tales of both cities we learn some soberingOrwellian truths about poverty and society.

Part culinary travelogue, part cultural history, Save the Deliis a must-read for anyone whose idea of perfect happiness istucking into a pastrami on rye with a pickle on the side Cornedbeef. Pastrami. Brisket. Matzo balls. Knishes. Mustard and rye. Inthis book about Jewish delicatessens, about deli's history andcharacters, its greatest triumphs, spectacular failures, andultimately the very future of its existence, David Sax goes deepinto the world of the Jewish deli. He explores the histories andexperiences of the immigrant counterman and kvetching customer;examines the pressures that many delis face; and enjoys the foodthat is deli's signature. In New York and Chicago, Florida, L.A.,Montreal, Toronto, Paris, and beyond, Sax strives to answer thequestion, Can Jewish deli thrive, and if so, how? Funny, poignant,and impeccably written, Save the Deli is the story of one man'ssearch to save a defining element of a culture -- and thesandwiches -- he loves.

Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen short storiesfrom one of the most original writers in American fiction. Thisseries of perfectly rendered vignettes, never before published inKurt Vonnegut’s lifetime, reveals a warm, wise, and funny portraitof life in post–World War II America—a world where squabblingcouples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, andsmall-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology,moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Featuring a Forewordby author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit, Look at theBirdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought thatVonnegut’s voice had been stilled forever—and serves as a terrificintroduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet toexperience his genius.

"I wonder this: If you take a woman and push her to the edge,how will she behave?" The question is posed by Jean, aphotographer, who arrives on Smuttynose Island, off the coast ofNew Hampshire, to research a century-old crime. As she immersesherself in the details of the case--an outburst of passion thatresulted in the deaths of two women--Jean herself enters precariousemotional territory. The suspicion that her husband is having anaffair burgeons into jealousy and distrust, and ultimately propelsJean to the verge of actions she had not known herself capableof--actions with horrific consequences. Everywhere hailed for itsbeauty and power, The Weight of Water takes us on an unforgettablejourney through the furthest extremes of emotion.

The imaginative breadth and the intellectual depth of The WildAss's Skin make it one of the greatest of Balzac's 'Etudesphilosophiques'. With its central symbol of the magic piece ofshagreen, it expresses the peculiarly Balzacian idea of the humanwill and dramatises with startling urgency the choice betweenruthless self- gratification and asceticism, between vice andvirtue, between dissipation and restraint. The symbolism ispowerful but not overpowering: shrewd psychology, superblychiselled dialogue and the sheer energy of the de*ive passages-- the gambling den, the orgy, the devastating finale--give TheWild Ass's Skin a compelling and forceful realism.

At last A zesty, exuberant follow-up to the wildlypopular How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, full of JuliaAlvarez's keen observations and tender affection for hercharacters.The Garcia Girls are back, most notably Yolanda, or"Yo", who has grown up to be a writer. In the process, she hasmanaged to get kicked out of college, break more than a few hearts,have her own heart broken many times, return for extended visits tothe Dominican Republic her family fled when she was a child, andmarry three times. She has also infuriated her entire family bypublishing the intimate details of their lives as fiction.Theinjured parties -- her mother, her sisters, the Dominican cousins,the maid's daughter, her teachers, her lover, want to tell theirside of the story, and Yo hands the microphone to them. CousinLucinda shrugs off Yo's characterization of her as a "LatinAmerican Barbie" with "a size three soul", saying, "Looking at herin her late 30s, knocking around the world without a husband,house, or children, I thin