Humans first settled the islands of Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and New Guinea some sixty millennia ago, and as they had elsewhere across the globe, immediately began altering the environme
The Raymond Chandler Papers brings together the correspondence and other previously uncollected writing of America's undisputed master of crime fiction and creator of the iconic private eye Phillip M
Fair Warning is acclaimed novelist Robert Olen Butler's enthralling glimpse into a Manhattan auction house that caters to the shopping pheromones of the rich and powerful. At age forty, the company's
Called "elegantly, starkly beautiful" by The New York Times Book Review, The Siege is Helen Dunmore's masterpiece. Her canvas is monumental -- the Nazis' 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed si
Lobby Hero, nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play, tells the story of Jeff, a luckless young security guard trying to get his life together after being thrown
A Washington Post Best Book of 2001, Rebecca Miller's powerful debut, Personal Velocity, is the basis for her Sundance Festival award-winning film by the same name. Acclaimed by The New York Times as
Ivan Klima has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as "a literary gem who is too little appreciated in the West" and a "Czech master at the top of his game." In No Saints or Angels, a Washington Post
"Lady." Let's face it: the word brings to mind a host of associations‚ many of which call to mind costume dramas or tea-sipping debutantes. That is, until The Art and Power of Being a Lady̵
Sarah Lindsay's poems have been hailed as "dark-edged ... with a buoying sense of respect-for the different, the unexpected and the challenging." (Publishers Weekly) Lindsay's new collection, Mount C
In C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans poet Jimmy Santiago Baca takes us on a guided tour of the darkest corners of a brutal, unjust world.C-train is a series of episodes from the life of Dream-boy, a youn
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Washington Post Best Book of 2001, Mary Shelley has been called "a harrowing life, wonderfully retold" (The Washington Post). This "splendid biography"
Jim Harrison is one of this country's most beloved writers, a muscular, brilliantly economic stylist with a salty wisdom. For over twenty years, he has also been writing some of the best food critici
British critics have compared Christopher Brookmyre's writing to the "sassy, nasty, fast style of the Americans Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen" (The Guardian) and called his work "perpetually in-you
A Washington Post Best Book of 2001, Scourge provides a definitive account of the dramatic story of smallpox by a leading "expert on biological and chemical weapons" (The New York Times). Jonathan B.
New York Times best-selling author P. J. O'Rourke lobbed one-liners on the battlefields of the Gulf War, traded quips with communist rebels in the jungles of the Philippines, and went undercover at t
From the hard-ridden half-pipe of a suburban driveway to teens doing boardslides down stairway handrails in Rio de Janeiro, from the bright-light glare of ESPN's X-Games to the groundbreaking street-
Innocents is a taut, wickedly clever descent into the anatomy of an obsession, the debut of a precociously assured young literary voice. Forcing someone vulnerable and naive into a sexual relationshi
Life at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has long captivated readers, drawn by accounts of the intrigues and pageantry that came to such a sudden and unexpected end. Stefan Zweig's Marie A
John Fuegi traces the evolution of Brecht's parasitic relationships and aggressive ambition through close analysis of diaries, letters, and drafts of the literary works, revealing a man who was perso
The Washington Post Book World has written that Fernando Pessoa was "Portugal's greatest writer of the twentieth century [though] some critics would even leave off that last qualifying phrase" and "on
The Guardian (London) has called comic-thriller writer Christopher Brookmyre "the next star of the genre". His American debut, Not the End of the World, is a fast and furious novel set in Los Angeles
In Neutral Buoyancy, journalist and diver Tim Ecott takes you on a guided tour of the history of undersea exploration and the emergence of diving culture. He tells the extraordinary story of man's at
Jimmy Santiago Baca's harrowing, brilliant memoir of his life before, during, and immediately after the years he spent in a maximum-security prison garnered tremendous critical acclaim and went on to
Tom Spanbauer is one of the most enchanting writers in America today, and In the City of Shy Hunters, his first novel in ten years, is a "rich and colorful" portrait of New York in the 1980s, told wi
Published to great critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, the iridescent stories in Claire Keegan's debut collection, Antarctica, have been acclaimed by The Observer to be "among the finest
Liu Heng is one of contemporary China's most acclaimed and masterful writers, and with Green River Daydreams he has written "of the struggle between Western ideas and the old political system, all of
Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico's most acclaimed young writers, and Leaving Tabasco tells of the coming-of-age of Delmira Ulloa, raised in an all-female home in Agustini, in the Mexican province of
A "powerful tale of romantic regret" (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer), Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, and finalist for the French Prix Medicis, On the Water tells the poignant story of
A Gentleman's Game is the story of young Timmy Price, whose mastery of the game of golf inspires awe among the adult membership and envy among his peers on the shaded fairways and immaculate greens of
In 1952, Madeleine Blais's father died suddenly, leaving his pregnant wife and their five young children to face their future alone. Uphill Walkers is the story of how the Blais family pulled together
Barry Hannah has long been considered one of the country's best living writers, whose singular voice and wicked genius for storytelling have earned him legions of diehard fans. His first novel in ten
While Jim Dodge is internationally known for his fiction, his first and abiding passion is poetry. After eighteen years of publishing anonymously and reading only to local crowds in the Pacific North
Pushcart Prize winner Ana Menendez landed firmly in the literary landscape last year with the hardcover publication of In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd. Reviewers overwhelmingly agree that she is an i
In The Eternal Frontier, world-renowned scientist and historian Tim Flannery tells the unforgettable story of the geological and biological evolution of the North American continent, from the time of
Anne Enright is one of the most exciting writers of Ireland's younger generation, a beguiling storyteller The Seattle Times has praised for "the ... way she writes about women ...their adventures to
Based on three years of research, new documentary evidence, and interviews with 250 of Dylan's intimates -- many exclusive -- Down the Highway has gone beyond the scope of other accounts to become th
Acclaimed novelist, Beat godfather, prolific screenwriter, and one of the founders of New Journalism, as well as the only guy to wear shades on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's cover, Terry Southern was an
Stewart O'Nan's critically acclaimed novel Everyday People brings together the stories of the people of an African-American Pittsburgh neighborhood during one fateful week in the early fall of 1998.
The Orlando Sentinel described The Grove Book of Hollywood as "a marvelous overview of the mythical world of Screenland through the eyes of those who observed it firsthand." In pieces by bemused outsi
Diana Athill's Stet is "a beautifully written, hardheaded, and generally insightful look back at the heyday of postwar London publishing by a woman who was at its center for nearly half a century" (T
