books tagged “20th century”

English

Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut

ISBN 0805013199 (0-8050-1319-9)
Hardcover, Holt & Company, Henry

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Book summary:
Cat's Cradle, one of Vonnegut's most entertaining novels, is filled with scientists and G-men and even ordinary folks caught up in the game. These assorted characters chase each other around in search of the world's most important and dangerous substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature. At one time, this novel could probably be found on the bookshelf of every college kid in America; it's still a fabulous read and a great place to start if you're young enough to have missed the first Vonnegut craze. [via]
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Cat's Eye
by Margaret Atwood

ISBN 1853811262 (1-85381-126-2)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square

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Cat's Eye is one of Margaret Atwood's most intriguing novels, a ruminative, symbol-laced, and deceptively loose book that encompasses many of the concerns of her earlier works, compounding them with a new awareness of aging and the curious vagaries of memory. Its premise is simple enough: Elaine Risley, a successful painter living on the West Coast, returns to Toronto, the scene of her childhood and artistic development, for a retrospective of her work at an independent feminist gallery. As Risley arrives in Toronto, she begins to examine her past in that city, from her early girlhood through to the final days of her first marriage. Risley's memories dominate the book; her exhibition is a light but important counterpoint to all that has gone before it.
In a sense, Cat's Eye is a feminist deconstruction of the artist's coming-of-age novel, but Risley's feminism is skeptical and detached. Her painful girlhood friendships haunt her through her middle age, and she has far more sympathy for men than she does for the women who have supported her career. As a result, Cat's Eye transcends orthodox feminism and rigorously examines troubling questions of gender, sexuality, and art from a wryly nonpartisan perspective. Fans of Atwood's more recent novels will love Cat's Eye, but it is a book that deserves the attention of her numerous detractors; perhaps it will encourage them to give her a second look. --Jack Illingworth [via]
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The Chosen
by Chaim Potok

ISBN 1568493193 (1-56849-319-3)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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Book summary:
Few stories offer more warmth, wisdom, or generosity than this tale of two boys, their fathers, their friendship, and the chaotic times in which they live. Though on the surface it explores religious faith--the intellectually committed as well as the passionately observant--the struggles addressed in The Chosen are familiar to families of all faiths and in all nations.
In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a secular Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love. (This is not a conventional children's book, although it will move any wise child age 12 or older, and often appears on summer reading lists for high school students.) [via]
More editions of The Chosen:
- The Chosen: ISBN 1568493193 (1-56849-319-3)
  Hardcover, Buccaneer Books
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The Chosen
by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791081737 (0-7910-8173-7)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Book summary:
Enjoy a comprehensive analysis and summary of The Chosen. Includes biographical sketches, summaries, an annotated bibliography, contributor profiles and index. [via]
More editions of The Chosen:
- The Chosen: ISBN 0791081737 (0-7910-8173-7)
  Hardcover, Facts on File
Darkness at Noon
by Arthur Koestler, Daphne Hardy

ISBN 1416540261 (1-4165-4026-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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More editions of Darkness at Noon:
- Darkness at Noon: ISBN 0808576364 (0-8085-7636-4)
  Hardcover, Bt Bound
- Darkness at Noon: ISBN 1416540261 (1-4165-4026-1)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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Death Comes for the Archbishop
by Willa Cather

ISBN 1417904232 (1-4179-0423-2)
Softcover, Kessinger Publishing, LLC

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Book summary:
In 1851 Bishop Latour and his friend Father Valliant are despatched to New Mexico to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism. Moving along the endless prairies, Latour spreads his faith the only way he knowsgently, although he must contend with the unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Over nearly 40 years, they leave converts and enemies, crosses, and occasionally ecstasy in their wake. But it takes a death for them to make their mark on the landscape forever.
[via]
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Dracula
by Bram Stoker

ISBN 0862277493 (0-86227-749-3)
Hardcover, Grandreams

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- Dracula: ISBN 0862277493 (0-86227-749-3)
  Hardcover, Grandreams
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Early Novels and Stories
by Willa Cather, Sharon O Brien

ISBN 0940450399 (0-940450-39-9)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
"Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet." Willa Cather's remark describes her own reasons for re-creating in her powerful fiction the Nebraska frontier of her youth. The vast Great Plains, where the earth has only recently come beneath the plow and the sky is huge and open, mirrors the uniquely American ethic of her characters: their heroic aspirations and stoicism, their passion for creativity, their rebelliousness of spirit. This volume, the first in The Library of America's authoritative three-volume collected Cather, includes the story collection "The Troll Garden," her first work of fiction, along with the beloved novels "O Pioneers!," "The Song of the Lark," "My Antonia," and "One of Ours," which earned a Pulitzer Prize. [via]
More editions of Early Novels and Stories:
- Early Novels and Stories: ISBN 0940450399 (0-940450-39-9)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton

ISBN 1404349391 (1-4043-4939-1)
Softcover, Indypublish.Com

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Book summary:
Ethan Frome is a tale remembered because exactly it speaks to something inside so many of us. It's the tale of an old man, shriveled at the heart -- and how he got to be that way. It's a tale of love conflicted and compounded -- a tale of tragedy and a lifetime of its aftermath.
ETHAN FROME [via]
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Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett

ISBN 1414505930 (1-4145-0593-0)
Softcover, Pavilion Pr

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Book summary:
Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'" As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]
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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
by J. K. Rowling, Mary Grandpre

ISBN 1594130019 (1-59413-001-9)
Softcover, Large Print Pr

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Book summary:
What makes the Harry Potter series so successful? Maybe it's the fact that J.K. Rowling doesn't write children's books, she writes children's stories, more in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm than Dr. Seuss. The exploits of Harry and his friends captivate even the shortest attention spans by engaging the imagination with vivid characters and fast-moving action, instead of trying to merely catch the eye with colorful pictures or pop-up effects. Not surprisingly, the Potter tales sound wonderful read aloud, and adapt to the audiobook format extremely well. Broadway actor Jim Dale's impressive vocal range gives each character in the book its own distinctive voice--a considerable task, given the pantheon of witches, warlocks, ghosts, ghouls, dwarves, and elves that Harry encounters in his second outing. And thankfully, since the book is read unabridged, no one's favorite character is omitted. Engaging for children without being childish, the audio version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is worthy addition to the deservedly popular series. (Running time: 9 hours, 7 CDs) --Andrew Nieland [via]
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The Immoralist
by Andre Gide, Dorothy Bussy

ISBN 1417909781 (1-4179-0978-1)
Softcover, Kessinger Publishing, LLC

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Book summary:
With today's headlines and talk shows, it takes a lot to shock a reader--certainly more than was required in 1902, when André Gide's The Immoralist was first published. What was seen then as a story of dereliction translates today into a tale of introspection and fierce self-discovery. While traveling to Tunis with his new bride, the Parisian scholar Michel is overcome by tuberculosis. As he slowly convalesces, he revels in the physical pleasures of living and resolves to forgo his studies of the past in order to experience the present--to let "the layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there."
But this is not the Michel his colleagues knew, nor the man Marceline married, and he must hide his new values under the patina of what he now reviles. Bored by Parisian society, he moves to a family farm in Normandy. He is happy there, especially in the company of young Charles, but he must soon return to the city and academe. Michel remains restless until he gives his first lecture and runs into Ménalque, who has long outraged society, and recognizes in him a reflection of his torment. Finally, Michel heads south, deeper into the desert, until, as he confides to his friends, he is lost in the sea of sand, under a clear, directionless sky.
What Gide's story lacks in sensationalism is fulfilled by his descriptive prose, which evokes the exotic nature of Michel's inner and outer journey: "I did not understand the forbearance of this African earth, submerged for days at a time and now awakening from winter, drunk with water, bursting with new juices; it laughed in this springtime frenzy whose echo, whose image I perceived within myself." --Joannie Kervran Stangeland [via]
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L'Immoraliste
by Andre Gide

ISBN 088133474X (0-88133-474-X)
Softcover, Waveland Pr Inc

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More editions of L'Immoraliste:
- L'Immoraliste: ISBN 088133474X (0-88133-474-X)
  Softcover, Waveland Pr Inc
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Mason and Dixon
by Thomas Pynchon

ISBN 0805058370 (0-8050-5837-0)
Softcover, Holt & Company, Henry

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A sprawling, complex, and comic work from one of the country's most celebrated and idiosyncratic authors, Mason & Dixon is Thomas Pynchon's Most Magickal reinvention of the 18th-century novel. It follows the lifelong partnership and adventures of the English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon (of Mason-Dixon Line fame) as they travel the world mapping and measuring through an uncharted pre-Revolutionary America of Native Americans, white settlers, taverns, and bawdy establishments of ill-repute. Fans of the postmodern master of paranoia will recognize Pynchon's personality in the novel's first phrase: "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs," a brief echo of the rockets that curve across the skies in the writer's masterpiece Gravity's Rainbow. [via]
More editions of Mason and Dixon:
- Mason and Dixon: ISBN 0805037586 (0-8050-3758-6)
  Hardcover, Holt & Company, Henry
- Mason and Dixon: ISBN 0805058370 (0-8050-5837-0)
  Softcover, Holt & Company, Henry
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Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs, Barry Miles, James Grauerholz

ISBN 0802140181 (0-8021-4018-1)
Softcover, Grove Pr

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"He was," as Salon's Gary Kamiya notes, "20th-century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of dread.... Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughly and obsessively rendered as Blake's."
Why has this homosexual ex-junkie, whose claim to fame rests entirely on one book--the hallucinogenic ravings of a heroine addict--so seized the collective imagination? Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in a Tangier, Morocco, hotel room between 1954 and 1957. Allen Ginsberg and his beatnik cronies burst onto the scene, rescued the manuscript from the food-encrusted floor, and introduced some order to the pages. It was published in Paris in 1959 by the notorious Olympia Press and in the U.S. in 1962; the landmark obscenity trial that ensued served to end literary censorship in America.
Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol. Read it and see for yourself. [via]
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Neuromancer
by William Gibson

ISBN 1569564116 (1-56956-411-6)
Softcover, William a Thomas Braille

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More editions of Neuromancer:
- Neuromancer: ISBN 0932096417 (0-932096-41-7)
  Hardcover, Phantasia Press
- Neuromancer: ISBN 1569564116 (1-56956-411-6)
  Softcover, William a Thomas Braille
O Pioneers!
by Willa Cather

ISBN 1593082053 (1-59308-205-3)
Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman." . . .
"The land belongs to the future . . . that's the way it seems to me. . . . I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it -- for a little while." -- Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
Willa Cather -- born in Back Creek, Virginia, in 1873 -- was nine when she and her family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska. She grew up on the plains -- and the plains grew into her as she did. This 1913 novel -- the story of an immigrant family's struggle to save their Nebraska farm -- grew out of her, and, of course, through her: there's a reason that this -- Cather's second novel -- is the famous book it has become. Cather attended the University of Nebraska, and worked six years on the editorial staff at McClure's Magazine in New York City; she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours. [via]
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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Suskind

ISBN 1557360200 (1-55736-020-0)
Hardcover, ABC-CLIO

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More editions of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer:
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer: ISBN 1557360200 (1-55736-020-0)
  Hardcover, ABC-CLIO
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The Pfizer Guide: Pharmacy Career Opportunities
by John Frook

ISBN 1885031009 (1-885031-00-9)
Hardcover, Merritt Communications Inc

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Book summary:
A true account of three young men and their six-month voyage along Labrador's graveyard of a coast. One of the greatest sea stories ever written. [via]
More editions of The Pfizer Guide: Pharmacy Career Opportunities:
- The Pfizer Guide: Pharmacy Career Opportunities: ISBN 1885031009 (1-885031-00-9)
  Hardcover, Merritt Communications Inc
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Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver

ISBN 1417687703 (1-4176-8770-3)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:
Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 2000: As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?
In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member's fortune across a span of more than 30 years.
The Poisonwood Bible is arguably Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and it reveals both her great strengths and her weaknesses. As Nathan Price's wife and daughters tell their stories in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenage Rachel's tendency towards precious malapropisms is particularly annoying (students practice their "French congregations"; Nathan's refusal to take his family home is a "tapestry of justice"). More problematic is Kingsolver's tendency to wear her politics on her sleeve; this is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, in which she uses her characters as mouthpieces to explicate the complicated and tragic history of the Belgian Congo.
Despite these weaknesses, Kingsolver's fully realized, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the first half, when Nathan Price is still at the center of the action. And in her treatment of Africa and the Africans she is at her best, exhibiting the acute perception, moral engagement, and lyrical prose that have made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber [via]
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving, Diane Podnar

ISBN 1560774142 (1-56077-414-2)
Softcover, Center for Learning

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More editions of A Prayer for Owen Meany:
- A Prayer for Owen Meany: ISBN 0792481976 (0-7924-8197-6)
  Hardcover, World Pubns
- A Prayer for Owen Meany: ISBN 1560774142 (1-56077-414-2)
  Softcover, Center for Learning
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Library Edition
by Muriel Spark

ISBN 1568496982 (1-56849-698-2)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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Book summary:
The classic bestselling book--the subject of a play, movie, and a song--that tells the darkly fascinating story of a young, unorthodox teacher and her special, and ultimately dangerous, relationship with six of her students. [via]
More editions of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Library Edition:
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Library Edition: ISBN 185089051X (1-85089-051-X)
  Hardcover, Ulverscroft Large Print Books
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Library Edition: ISBN 1568496982 (1-56849-698-2)
  Hardcover, Buccaneer Books
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The Secret Garden
by Dalmatian Press Staff

ISBN 1577595556 (1-57759-555-6)
Hardcover, Dalmatian Press

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Book summary:
Product Details Reading level: Ages 5 and up Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: Dalmatian Press (November 2001) Language: English [via]
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- The Secret Garden: ISBN 1577595556 (1-57759-555-6)
  Hardcover, Dalmatian Press
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The Secret Garden
by Martha Hailey, Lucy Corvino, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Arthur Pober

ISBN 1402713193 (1-4027-1319-3)
Hardcover, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

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Book summary:
Following Sterling's spectacularly successful launch of its children's classic novels (240,000 books in print to date),comes a dazzling new series: Classic Starts. The stories are abridged; the quality is complete. Classic Starts treats the world's beloved tales (and children) with the respect they deserve--all at an incomparable price.

The discovery of a neglected garden transforms the life of a sullen and unloved little girl-and everyone around her, too. When the newly orphaned Mary Lennox leaves her native India and arrives at her uncle's mansion in Yorkshire, everything seems strange to her. Then Mary hears of a mysterious garden where no one has set foot in 10 years. With the help of some new friends, she plans to uncover its secrets...and make it blossom once again.
[via]
More editions of The Secret Garden:
- The Secret Garden: ISBN 1402713193 (1-4027-1319-3)
  Hardcover, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
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The Secret Garden
by Scott McKowen

ISBN 1402714599 (1-4027-1459-9)
Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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Book summary:
Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'" As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]
More editions of The Secret Garden:
- The Secret Garden: ISBN 1402714599 (1-4027-1459-9)
  Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc
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The Secret Garden : A Young Reader's Edition of the Classic Story
by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Louise Betts, Karen Prichett

ISBN 0816712042 (0-8167-1204-2)
Softcover, Troll Communications L.L.C.

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Book summary:
This kindle book also includes bonus annotations:

- information on the historical context of the book
- biography of the author
- literary critique

The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format starting in autumn 1910; the book was first published in its entirety in 1911.

Its working title was Mistress Mary, in reference to the English nursery rhyme Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary. It is now one of Burnett's most popular novels, and is considered to be a classic of children's literature.

The main character of this story is Mary Lennox. She has been born to rich British parents that are currently living in India. Her parents were busy with extravagent parties and left Mary with her ayah for most of the time. Orphaned by an outbreak of cholera, she is sent back to England to be cared for by her mother's sister's husband, Archibald Craven, a reclusive widower. Craven's wife, Lilian, passed away ten years earlier. He is still mourning that loss. To escape his sad memories, he constantly travels abroad, leaving the entire manor, including Mary, to be cared for by his housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock. The only person who has any time for the little girl is the chambermaid Martha Sowerby, who tells Mary about a locked up garden, surrounded by a wall that was the late Mrs. Craven's favorite place. No one has entered the garden since she died because Archibald locked its entrance and buried the key. He hasn't told anyone where it is.

Mary finds the key to the secret garden hidden in a box in the house. A robin shows her where the door is hidden beneath overgrown ivy. Once inside, she discovers that although the roses seem lifeless, some of the other flowers have survived. She decides to tend the garden herself. Mary wants to keep her new found garden a secret, but she knows she needs help tending it. She gets this help from Martha's brother Dickon. He seems to have a connection with all wild animals and plants. Mary gives him money to buy gardening implements and he shows her that the roses, though neglected, are not dead. When Mary's uncle briefly meets with her for the first time since her arrival, Mary asks him for permission to claim her own garden from any abandoned part of the grounds, and he acquiesces. Thanks to her new-found interests and activities, Mary herself begins to blossom, becoming more healthy looking and more pleasant to be around.

Some nights, Mary hears someone weeping in another part of the house. When she asks questions, the servants become evasive. They tell her that she is hearing things, like a servant with a toothache. Shortly after her uncle's visit, she goes exploring and discovers her uncle's son, Colin, a lonely, bedridden boy as petulant and disagreeable as Mary used to be. His father shuns him because the child closely resembles his mother. Mr. Craven is a mild hunchback, and both he and Colin are morbidly convinced that the boy will develop the same condition. The servants have been keeping Mary and Colin a secret from one another because Colin doesn't like strangers staring at him and is prone to terrible tantrums.

Mr. Craven has been traveling through Europe, but is inspired to rush home after hearing the voice of his dead wife in a dream and receiving a letter from Mrs. Sowerby (Martha's and Dickon's mother, who also knows the secret) telling him, "I think your lady would ask you to come if she was here." He arrives while the children are outdoors and finds himself drawn toward the secret garden. As he approaches nearer, he is astonished to hear their voices inside the walls; Colin bursts out of the garden door toward him, actually winning a footrace against Mary and Dickon. The story's heartwarming ending has Colin able to walk, Archibald smiling again, and Mary has a family and friends who love her. [via]
More editions of The Secret Garden : A Young Reader's Edition of the Classic Story:
- The Secret Garden : A Young Reader's Edition of the Classic Story: ISBN 0816725594 (0-8167-2559-4)
  Softcover, Andrews McMeel Publishing
- The Secret Garden : A Young Reader's Edition of the Classic Story: ISBN 0816712042 (0-8167-1204-2)
  Softcover, Troll Communications L.L.C.
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Sula
by Toni Morrison

ISBN 1400033438 (1-4000-3343-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
In Sula, Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature, tells the story of two women--friends since childhood, separated in young adulthood, and reunited as grown women. Nel Wright grows up to become a wife and mother, happy to remain in her hometown of Medallion, Ohio. Sula Peace leaves Medallion to experience college, men, and life in the big city, an exceptional choice for a black woman to make in the late 1920s.
As girls, Nel and Sula are the best of friends, only children who find in each other a kindred spirit to share in each girl's loneliness and imagination. When they meet again as adults, it's clear that Nel has chosen a life of acceptance and accommodation, while Sula must fight to defend her seemingly unconventional choices and beliefs. But regardless of the physical and emotional distance that threatens this extraordinary friendship, the bond between the women remains unbreakable: "Her old friend had come home.... Sula, whose past she had lived through and with whom the present was a constant sharing of perceptions. Talking to Sula had always been a conversation with herself."
Lyrical and gripping, Sula is an honest look at the power of friendship amid a backdrop of family, love, race, and the human condition. --Gisele Toueg [via]
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Three Novels by Samuel Beckett
by Samuel Beckett

ISBN 0802150918 (0-8021-5091-8)
Softcover, Grove Pr

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Book summary:
Samuel Beckett's brilliance as a dramatist--as the creator of Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape, and that despairing pas de deux Endgame--has tended to overshadow his gifts as a novelist. Yet he's unmistakably one of the great fiction writers of our century. As a young man he took dictation (literally) from James Joyce, and absorbed everything that myopic maestro had to offer when it came to Anglo-Irish prosody. Still, Beckett's instincts would ultimately steer him away from Joyce's delirious play with high and low diction, toward a more concentrated, even compulsive style. His earlier novels, like Murphy or Watt, give us a taste of what was to come. But Beckett truly hit his stride with a trilogy of early-1950s masterpieces: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. Here he dispenses with all the customary props of contemporary fiction--including exposition, plot, and increasingly, paragraphs--and turns his attention to consciousness itself. Nobody has ever evoked the pain of existence, or the steady slide toward nonexistence, with such poetic, garrulous accuracy. And once you've attuned yourself to the epistemological vaudeville of Beckett's prose, he turns out to be the funniest writer on the planet--ever.
None of the three entries in the trilogy is exactly amenable to summary. It's fair to say, though, that Molloy is the easiest to read, with at least a bare-bones narrative and an abundance of comical set pieces. In one famous episode, the narrator spends page after page figuring out how to vary the sucking stones he carries in his pockets:
And while I gazed thus at my stones, revolving interminable martingales all equally defective, and crushing handfuls of sand, so that the sand ran through my fingers and fell back on the strand, yes, while thus I lulled my mind and part of my body, one day suddenly it dawned on the former, dimly, that I might perhaps achieve my purpose without increasing the number of my pockets, or reducing the number of my stones, but simply by sacrificing the principle of trim. The meaning of this illumination, which suddenly began to sing within me, like a verse of Isaiah, or of Jeremiah, I did not penetrate at once, and notably the word trim, which I had never met with, in this sense, long remained obscure.
This nutty ratiocination goes on for much, much longer, until the narrator loses patience and throws the stones away. And that's a fair encapsulation of Beckett's philosophy: he argues for the essential pointlessness of life--the solitary, wretched splendor of human existence--but does so in a comic rather than a tragic register, which ends up softening or even overpowering the bleakness of his initial premise. So Malone Dies opens with a typically morbid mood-lifter ("I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of it all") and then makes endless comedic hay out of Malone's failure to keel over. And by the time we hit The Unnamable, we're forced to wonder whether the narrator actually exists: "I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on." Happily, Beckett worried these same questions and hypotheses to the end of his career, with increasingly minimalistic gusto. But he never topped the intensity or linguistic brilliance of this mind-bending three-part invention. --James Marcus [via]
More editions of Three Novels by Samuel Beckett:
- Three Novels by Samuel Beckett: ISBN 0802150918 (0-8021-5091-8)
  Softcover, Grove Pr
Trilogy
by Samuel Beckett

ISBN 1857152360 (1-85715-236-0)
Hardcover, Everyman's Library Ltd

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More editions of Trilogy:
- Trilogy: ISBN 1857152360 (1-85715-236-0)
  Hardcover, Everyman's Library Ltd

Latin

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Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum / Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
by J. K. Rowling, Peter Needham

ISBN 159990067X (1-59990-067-X)
Hardcover, Bloomsbury USA

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Book summary:
Following the success of Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis comes a Latin edition of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second novel in the phenomenally successful saga of wizard-in-training Harry Potter. After a miserable summer with his relatives, the Dursleys, Harry returns to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his second year. There, he teams up again with bosom buddies Hermione and Ron to figure out who--or what--is behind the terrifying incidents that are leaving some students petrified&literally. Perfect for Latin scholars, collectors, or any Harry Potter fan who simply must have every book, no matter what language it's in!
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More editions of Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum / Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
- Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum / Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: ISBN 159990067X (1-59990-067-X)
  Hardcover, Bloomsbury USA

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