George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist,producing throughout his life an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflected--and illuminated--the fraught times in which he lived. "
As a critic, George Orwell cast a wide net. Equally at home discussing Charles Dickens and Charlie Chaplin, he moved back and forth across the porous borders between essay and journalism, high art an
A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imag
Richard Wilbur’s translations of the great French dramas have been a boon to acting troupes, students of French literature and history, and theater lovers. He continues this wonderful work with two pl
Ida Joner gets on her brand-new bike and sets off toward town. A good-natured, happy girl, she is looking forward to her tenth birthday. Thirty-five minutes after Ida should have come home, her mothe
Pete Ferry, our narrator, teaches high school English in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Lake Forest and moonlights as a travel writer. On his way home after work one evening he witnesses a car acciden
Sustained by a deep religious faith, Jason Harrow has built a stable family and become a pillar of principle and patriotism in the Midwest. Then the phone rings, and his past is on the other end of th
When you kill yourself, you kill every memory everyone has of you. You’re saying “I’m gone and you can’t even be sure who it is that’s gone, because you never knew me.” Sixteen years ago, Joan Wicker
The former editor in chief of the Economist returns to the territory of his bestselling book The Sun Also Sets to lay out a fresh analysis of the growing rivalry between China, India, and Japan -- wha
When Phil Kramer is shot dead on a deserted suburban street in the middle of the night, his wife, Emily, is left with an emptied bank account and a lot of questions. How could Phil leave her penniles
Fresh out of journalism school, Chinese-American writer Jen Lin-Liu moves to China to learn about the country her grandparents fled half a century before. In the booming coastal cities and remote inla
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef has lived all her days in the small town of Port Dundas, Ontario and is now making her way toward retirement with something less than grace. Hobbled by a bad back a
Jane Levitsky is a bright light in the field of nineteenth-century Russian literature, making her name as an expert on the novels of Grigory Karkov and the diaries of his wife, the long-suffering Mas
On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet – pristine and habitable, like our own was 65 million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. Off the air, Billie Crusoe
"I want my wines to tell a good story. I want them natural and most of all, like my dear friends, I want them to speak the truth even if we argue," says Alice Feiring. Join her as she sets off on her
Born in the wake of World War II, RAND quickly became the creator of America’s anti-Soviet nuclear strategy. A magnet for the best and the brightest, its ranks included Cold War luminaries such
That Little Something is the superb eighteenth collection from one of America's most vital and honored poets, Charles Simic. Over the course of his singular career, Simic has won nearly every accolade
From the moment Bob Langmuir, a down-and-out rare book dealer, spies some intriguing photographs in the archive of a midcentury Times Square freak show, he knows he's on to something. It turns out he'
A rich and varied selection of writings ? from the early sixties to the present ? by Amos Oz, one of Israel’s leading novelists, public intellectuals, and political activists.The Reader features exten
This superb Pulitzer Prize–winning collection gives voice to failure with a wry, deft touch from one of this country’s most engaging and uncompromising poets. In Failure, Philip Schultz e
Cal Innes is fresh out of prison, working out of a gym closet as a private investigator, and trying to sever his ties to local gang lord “Uncle”Morris Tiernan. But when Tiernan hires him
From the author of The Necropolis Railway, The Blackpool Highflyer, and The Lost Luggage Porter comes another thrilling mystery featuring railway detective Jim Stringer. It is winter 1909, and Jim de
Eleanor Cahn, a professor of literature, wife of a preeminent surgeon, and devoted mother of two, is in Paris to present a paper on Anna Karenina. A chance encounter brings to the surface passions sh
Untitled and unpunctuated, the seventy poems in this acclaimed collection seem to cascade from one page to another. Maurice Manning extolls the virtues of nature and its many gifts, and finds deep gra
When police detective Will Grayson and his partner, Helen Walker, investigate the violent death of Stephen Bryan, a gay academic, their first thoughts are of an ill-judged sexual encounter or a fatal
Cyrla's neighbors have begun to whisper. Her cousin, Anneke, is pregnant and has passed the rigorous exams for admission to the Lebensborn, a maternity home for girls carrying German babies. But Annek
Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed off the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before saili
The time: 2000 to 2005, the years of neoconservatism, terrorism, the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the ascension of Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In this serie
A delightful, old-fashioned love story with a uniquely twenty-first-century twist, Landing is a romantic comedy that explores the pleasures and sorrows of long-distance relationships?the kind millions
Critically acclaimed novelist and short-story writer Mary Gaitskill continues the tradition of identifying the best young writers on the cusp of their careers in this year’s volume of Best New
The novel tells the story of Akira Kumo, a retired couturier living in Paris, owner of the world's largest collection of books about clouds, and Virginie Latour, whom Kumo hires to help catalogue his
Today’s dispute over the line between church and state (or the lack thereof) is neither the first nor the fiercest in our history. In a revelatory look at our nation’s birth, Forrest Chur
Space Walk blasts off into realms of experience that show the imagination’s limitless capacity to be both brutal and uplifting. While many of the poems in this daring collection confront head-on our c
Offers an insider's look at Hollywood in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s as it was experienced by one of the non-glamorous workers inside the industry, with scoops on the stars and memories of how the mag
Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science and one the leading young environmental journalists and bloggers working today, immerses readers in the world of those who study hurricanes. What
We don’t just live in the air; we live because of it. It’s the most miraculous substance on earth, responsible for our food, our weather, our water, and our ability to hear. In this exuberant book, gi
From one of Spain's most celebrated writers, an extraordinary, inspired book—at once fiction, history, and memoir—that draws on the Sephardic diaspora, the Holocaust, and Stalin's purges
In "Hi! Howya Doin!" an intrusive jogger meets with an abrupt fate; in "The Man Who Fought Roland LaStarza" a young woman’s romantic view of her girlhood is devastated by her father’s confessions; and
A new and revised edition! Bestselling children's author and internationally respected literacy expert Mem Fox reveals the incredible emotional and intellectual impact reading aloud to
A debut anthology of short fiction explores the ultimate human quest for love, understanding, and companionship, in a collection that includes such tales as "Beaching It," "Me and Paul," and "Bill," i
