A New York Times Notable Book and aSan Jose Mercury News Top 20 Nonfiction Book of 2003In 1606, approximately 105 British colonists sailed to America, seeking gold and a trade route to the Pacific. In
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times national correspondent Timothy Egan turns to fiction with The Winemaker's Daughter, a lyrical and gripping novel about the harsh realities and ecological challeng
As a young guardsman, Grigory Potemkin caught the eye of Catherine the Great with a theatrical act of gallantry during the coup that placed her on the throne. Over the next thirty years he would becom
Nothing in Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension-filled, plot-driven realism of Natsuo Kirino’s award-winning literary mystery Out.This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal m
Fiendishly devious and addictively readable, Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake is a moral labyrinth constructed around the uneasy relationship between literature and lying. In steamy, fetid Kuala Lumpur
In his now-famous progress through modern times, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the scion of a liberal Argentine family, abandoned a medical career to become a revolutionary. A fiery comrade of Fidel Castro'
In this collection of monologue plays, Eric Lane and Nine Shengold have gathered an array of human voices and stories by master playwrights and emerging new writers. Each of the plays, ranging from o
At the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate
When Arthur Abel Simpson first spots Harper in the Athens airport, he recognizes him as a tourist unfamiliar with the city and in need of a private driver. In other words, the perfect mark for Simpso
When Fletch arrives as the new press representative for Governor Caxton Wheeler's presidential campaign, he isn't sure which mystery to solve first: what his new job actually is or why the campaign h
This indispensable guide to the search for kinship with God was written by the great nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), whose writings set the stage for existentialis
The illegitimate son of a landowner, Arkady Dolgoruky was raised by foster parents and tutors, and has scarcely ever seen his father, Versilov, and his mother, Versilov's peasant common-law wife. Ark
In the course of his short, dramatic life, Aleksandr Pushkin gave Russia not only its greatest poetry–including the novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin–but a new literary language. He also gave it a figure o
Michael Chabon is back with a brand-new collection that reinvigorates the stay-up-all-night, edge-of-the seat, fingernail-biting, page-turning tradition of literary short stories, featuring Margaret A
John Julius Norwich’s A History of Venice has been dubbed “indispensable” by none other than Jan Morris. Now, in his second book on the city once known as La Serenissima, Norwich advances the story in
In this first installment of his epic Haitian trilogy, Madison Smartt Bell brings to life a decisive moment in the history of race, class, and colonialism. The slave uprising in Haiti was a momentous
Continuing his epic trilogy of the Haitian slave uprising, Madison Smartt Bell’s Master of the Crossroads delivers a stunning portrayal of Toussaint Louverture, ?former slave, military genius?and?libe
The first word in this mesmerizing novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is “No.” It is how the novel’s narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian-Jewish writer, answers an acquaintance who ask
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Rick Bragg lends his remarkable narrative skills to the story of the most famous POW this country has known.In I Am a Soldier, Too, Bragg let’s
A lively history of the contested landscapes where the majority of Americans now live, Building Suburbia chronicles two centuries in the birth and development of America’s metropolitan regions.From ru
The Venus de Milo is both a great work of art and a popular icon, and from the moment of her discovery in 1820 by a French naval ensign, she has been an object of controversy. In Disarmed, Gregory Cu
In recent years American readers have been thrilling to the work of such Indian writers as Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth. Now this extravagant and wonderfully discerning anthology unfurls the full di
As a movie actress Lucille Ball was, in her own words, “queen of the B-pluses.” But on the small screen she was a superstar–arguably the funniest and most enduring in the history of TV. In this exempl
A modern classic, Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is
National Bestseller?Murders present meet murders past in P.D. James’s latest harrowing, thought-provoking thriller. Commander Adam Dalgliesh is already acquainted with the Dupayne--a museum dedi
With floods threatening both the town of Kingsmarkham and his own home and no end to the rain in sight, Chief Inspector Wexford already has his hands full when he learns that two local teenagers have
No writer alive today exerts the magical appeal of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Now, in the long-awaited first volume of his autobiography, he tells the story of his life from his birth in 1927 to the mome
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is a moving, passionate love story set amid the turmoil and terror of Rwanda’s genocide.All manner of Kigali residents pass their time by the pool of the Mille-Collines
The twenty plays presented here in full or in part include insightful looks at the pressure-cooker caste system of American high schools as well as heartbreaking, edgy portrayals of twentysomethings
In 1913, 13-year-old Mary Phagan was found brutally murdered in the basement of the Atlanta pencil factory where she worked. The factory manager, a college-educated Jew named Leo Frank, was arrested,
A Question of Honor is the gripping, little-known story of the refugee Polish pilots who joined the RAF and played an essential role in saving Britain from the Nazis, only to be betrayed by the Allies
John Keegan, whose many books, including classic histories of the two world wars, have confirmed him as the premier miltary historian of our time, here presents a masterly look at the value and limita
In his novels, poetry, and memoirs Michael Ondaatje moves from the blasted landscape of Billy the Kid in 1880s New Mexico to the New Orleans jazz world of the legendary Buddy Bolden at the turn of th
Fabulist, realist, critic, and winner of the Booker Prize for her now-classic novel Possession, A. S. Byatt has boundless intellectual and literary gifts and a fathomless imagination on which to nouri
In the thirteen stories in her second collection, Alice Munro demonstrates the precise observation, straightforward prose style, and masterful technique that led no less a critic than John Updike to c
At different times in its history Tibet has been renowned for pacifism and martial prowess, enlightenment and cruelty. The Dalai Lama may be the only religious leader who can inspire the devotion of a
Jamesland, the buoyant second novel by Michelle Huneven, critically acclaimed author of Round Rock, is a witty, sophisticated, and deeply humane comedy of unlikely redemption.When thirty-three-year-ol
The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of
In September 1857, a wagon train passing through Utah laden with gold was attacked. Approximately 140 people were slaughtered; only 17 children under the age of eight were spared. This incident in an
Dig. The Demon Dog gets down with a new book of scenes from America’s capital of kink: Los Angeles. Fourteen pieces, some fiction, some nonfiction, all true enough to be admissible as state’s evidence
