Lit with humor, full of African birdsong and told with great narrative force, No Mercy is the magnum opus of "probably the finest writer of travel books in the English language,"??as Bill Bryson wrote
With its dozens of outlying islands and the native Conch's historically low regard for the law, Key West is a smuggler's paradise. All that's needed are the captains to run the contraband. Breeze Alb
Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan 80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for
Toddy Kent was born with a gizmo in his head -- a taient for finding the easy money -- but Toddy's gift has the habit of deserting him when he needs it most. When he discovers a seemingly limitless (a
In his most ambitious novel to date, Phillips creates a dazzling kaleidoscope of historical fiction, one that illuminates the dark legacy of Europe's obsession with race and blood. At the center of Th
With a new Preface by the noted writer Madeleine L'Engle, author of nearly fifty books of fiction and non-fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time. St. Francis of Assisi's ecstatic embrace of a life of po
The questions, discussion topics, and suggested reading list that follow are intended to enhance your group's experience of reading Bernard Lefkowitz's Our Guys .??We hope they will provide you with a
How did women in 16th century western Europe cope with the consequences of being considered inherently sinful--as well as being legally and economically subordinate to their fathers, husbands, brother
"Authoritative . . . highly nuanced . . . gives the reader a palpable sense of Mr. Eastwood's career."--The New York TimesFrom the moment The Man With No Name first fixed the screen
Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating, lyrical memoir of his coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem. Here was the testament of a born outsider: a Puerto Rican
"Dazzlement and enchantment are Bester's methods. His stories never stand still a moment."—Damon Knight, author of Why Do BirdsAlfred Bester took science fiction into hyperdrive, endowing it with a wi
One of the sinuous and subtly crafted stories in Tobias Wolff's new collection--his first in eleven years--begins with a man biting a dog. The fact that Wolff is reversing familiar expectations is onl
In this perceptive and provocative look at everything from computer software that requires faster processors and more support staff to antibiotics that breed resistant strains of bacteria, Edward Tenn
A collection of essays on notable writers and their work, including analyses of T.S. Eliot's fascination with fascism, Isaac Babel and the Red Cossacks, Henry James and modernism, and other studies of
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year When Marion Winik fell in love with Tony Heubach during a wild Mardi Gras in New Orleans, her friends shook their heads. For starters, she was straight and
In this ebullient and inventive novel, Gish Jen restores multiculturalism from high concept to a fact of life. At least that's what it becomes for teenaged Mona Chang, who in 1968 moves with her newly
In his first collection of short stories, Barnes explores the narrow body of water containing the vast sea of prejudice and misapprehension which lies between England and France with acuity humor, and
From the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire,and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and 19
Time Magazine's Best Book of the YearBooker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie combines a ferociously witty family saga with a surreally imagined and sometimes blasphemous chronicle of modern India a
The questions, discussion topics, author biography, and??bibliography that follow are meant to enhance your group's reading of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled . We hope that they will provide you with
Almost twenty years have passed since Anthony Galton disappeared, along with a suspiciously streetwise bride and several thousand dollars of his family's fortune. Now Anthony's mother wants him back a
With a restraint that barely conceals the ferocity of his characters' passions, one of Japan's great postwar novelists tells the luminous story of Kikuji and the tea party he attends with Mrs. Ota, th
In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps--a community devoted exclusively to sickness--as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.
This magisterial volume follows the death of ancient traditions, the triumph of new classes, and the emergence of new technologies, sciences, and ideologies, with vast intellectual daring and aphorist
In this book, Eric Hobsbawm chronicles the events and trends that led to the triumph of private enterprise and its exponents in the years between 1848 and 1875. Along with Hobsbawm's other volumes, th
Alternating a tale of the past that has become a part of Key West legend with a contemporary story that reflects the pulse of life there today, Hersey weaves in these stories a brilliant human tapestr
By day Ogata Shingo is troubled by small failures of memory. At night he hears a distant rumble from the nearby mountain, a sound he associates with death. In between are the relationships that were o
Two old friends strike up an old feud filled with dangerous games on the vast preserve of their hunting club in this rollicking story of boyhood rivalries pushed to the limit.
With the brushstroke suggestiveness and astonishing grasp of motive that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, Yasunari Kawabata tells a story of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western
At forty, the writer Nathan Zuckerman comes down with a mysterious affliction - pure pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession of his spirit. Zuckerman, who
Along with his groundbreaking essays that redefine politics, language, identity, and friendship in the light of gay experience and desire, this magisterial collection of 25 years of White's nonfiction
Writing with the telegraphic swiftness and microscopic sensitivity that have made her one of our most distinguished journalists, Joan Didion creates a shimmering novel of innocence and evil.A Book of
Returning home to Key West, Thomas Skelton attempts to come to terms with the town's hostility and bizarreness as he tries to establish himself as a fishing guide in the face of a death threat from an
A cult classic with an ever-growing audience, Tracks is the brilliantly written and frequently hilarious account of a young woman's odyssey through the deserts of Australia, with no one but her dog an
In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of violence--which is loosely based on the notorious 1955 killing of Emmett Till--James Bald
By the time of her death thirty years ago, at the tragically young age of thirty-four, Lorraine Hansberry had created two electrifying masterpieces of the American theater. With A Raisin in the Sun, H
The questions, topics, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group's reading and discussion of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man . We hope that they will provide you with new ways
The discussion topics, author biography, and bibliography that follow are meant to enhance your group's reading of James Salter's Light Years. We hope that they will provide you with new ways of looki
This devastating book begins with an account of a crime that is by now almost commonplace: on December 16, 1988, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Elliot walked into his Virginia high school with a Cobray M-1
