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books tagged “General fiction”
books tagged “General fiction”
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The Accidental Touristby Anne TylerISBN 0345452003 (0-345-45200-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Accidental Tourist'Book summary:"POIGNANT . . . FUNNY . . . THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST IS ONE OF HER BEST. . . . [TYLER] HAS NEVER BEEN STRONGER." - The New York Times Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates both travel and anything out of the ordinary. He is grounded by loneliness and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts when he meets Muriel, a deliciously peculiar dog-obedience trainer who up-ends Macon's insular world-and thrusts him headlong into a remarkable engagement with life. "BITTERSWEET . . . EVOCATIVE . . . It's easy to forget this is the warm lull of fiction; you half-expect to run into her characters at the dry cleaners . . . Tyler [is] a writer of great compassion." - The Boston Globe "Tyler has given us an endlessly diverting book whose strength gathers gradually to become a genuinely thrilling one." - Los Angeles Times "A DELIGHT . . . A GRACEFUL COMIC NOVEL ABOUT GETTING THROUGH LIFE." - The Wall Street Journal [via]
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The Accidental Tourist and Ladder of Yearsby Anne TylerISBN 0345487648 (0-345-48764-8)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Adventures of Don Quixoteby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Tobias George SmollettISBN 0374519439 (0-374-51943-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Don Quixote'Book summary:The adventures of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza continue as he carries on his quest for chivalry and romance. Part 2. (Nine 90-minute cassettes) [via]
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The Adventures of Don Quixote De La Manchaby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Tobias George SmollettISBN 0374142327 (0-374-14232-7)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus, Giroux
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyerby Mark TwainISBN 0375756817 (0-375-75681-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'Book summary:Few books capture both the simplicity and complexities of American life quite like these enduring "boyhood" classics by Mark Twain.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Take a lighthearted, nostalgic trip to a simpler time, seen through the eyes of a special boy named Tom Sawyer. It is a summertime world of hooky and adventure, pranks and punishment, villains and young love. [via]More editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:
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As I Lay Dyingby William FaulknerISBN 0375504524 (0-375-50452-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'As I Lay Dying'Book summary:Faulkner's distinctive narrative structures--the uses of multiple points of view and the inner psychological voices of the characters--in one of its most successful incarnations here in As I Lay Dying. In the story, the members of the Bundren family must take the body of Addie, matriarch of the family, to the town where Addie wanted to be buried. Along the way, we listen to each of the members on the macabre pilgrimage, while Faulkner heaps upon them various flavors of disaster. Contains the famous chapter completing the equation about mothers and fish--you'll see. [via]
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Blackberry Wineby Joanne HarrisISBN 0380815923 (0-380-81592-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blackberry Wine'Book summary:Joanne Harris's first novel, Chocolat, was set in the sleepy French village of Lansquenet, where enchantment, romance, and soft-centered truths issued from the local confectioner's shop. She returns to the same location for Blackberry Wine. But as the title suggests, she's shifted her focus from food to drink, choosing a half-dozen bottles of homemade plonk as the catalyst for her "layman's alchemy." And even the narrator is no human being but a faintly tannic Fleurie 1962: "A pert, garrulous wine, cheery and little brash, with a pungent taste of blackcurrant!"
There are, of course, some less vinous characters in the novel. Harris's protagonist, Jay Mackintosh, is a former literary star, now sadly stalled. He spends his time writing second-rate science fiction, leading a hollow media life, and drinking: "Not to forget, but to remember, to open up the past and find himself there again." Yet the nice, expensive wines don't do the trick. Instead, six "Specials"--a gift from his old friend Joe--function as Jay's magical elixir. Like Proust's lime-blossom tisane, they give him the gift of his memories but also unlock his future, which encourages him to flee the rut of his London life and buy a house in Lansquenet.
As Jay settles in, he contemplates his childhood friendship with Joe, whose idiosyncratic outlook was the inspiration for his only successful book. Meanwhile, he becomes involved in village life, encountering some familiar faces from Chocolat. Caro and Toinette, the snooty troublemakers, soon put in an appearance, and Josephine, the bar owner and battered wife of the earlier novel, becomes a real friend. But it's a new character, the enigmatic Marise, who becomes the focus of Jay's attention--and who helps to restore his literary joie de vivre. This feat of resurrection makes for a hugely enjoyable read. It also goes one step further in adding Lansquenet to the map of imaginary destinations, where daydreams can come true with intoxicating frequency. --Eithne Farry [via]
The Blackboard Jungleby Evan HunterISBN 0380008599 (0-380-00859-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Bluest Eyeby Toni MorrisonISBN 0375411550 (0-375-41155-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bluest Eye'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 2000: Originally published in 1970, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself.
Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear:
You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.
There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye.This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin too much of the blame on the beauty myth: "Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives The Bluest Eye the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one. --James Marcus [via]
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The Bonesetter's Daughterby Amy TanISBN 0345457374 (0-345-45737-4)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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The Book of Danielby E. L. DoctorowISBN 0375508341 (0-375-50834-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book of Daniel'Book summary:The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia.
His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted.
Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new lifemarriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him.
In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different.
It is a confession of his most intimate relationshipswith his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him.
It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House.
It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniels interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks.
It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the caselawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself.
It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this countryits sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations.
It is The Book of Daniel. [via]More editions of The Book of Daniel:
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Cakes and Aleby W. Somerset MaughamISBN 0375725024 (0-375-72502-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cakes and Ale'Book summary:Cakes and Ale is a delicious satire of London literary society between the Wars. Social climber Alroy Kear is flattered when he is selected by Edward Driffield's wife to pen the official biography of her lionized novelist husband, and determined to write a bestseller. But then Kear discovers the great novelist's voluptuous muse (and unlikely first wife), Rosie. The lively, loving heroine once gave Driffield enough material to last a lifetime, but now her memory casts an embarrissing shadow over his career and respectable image. Wise, witty, deeply satisfying, Cakes and Ale is Maugham at his best. [via]
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Cat's Cradleby Kurt VonnegutISBN 0385281269 (0-385-28126-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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The Catch Trapby Marion Zimmer BradleyISBN 0345315642 (0-345-31564-2)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Catch Trap'Book summary:Tommy was born into a circus family, but he didn't want to join his father's act - he hated lions. His dreams were higher, up in the rigging with the flying trapeze. When Mario Santelli offered to teach him to fly, it was the start of not only a terrific circus act but also a lifelong partnership. A tremendously moving tale, a rich family saga, a wise and compassionate portrait of a special love in a special world. [via]
Charity Girlby Georgette HeyerISBN 0370014316 (0-370-01431-6)
Hardcover, Bodley Head
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Chattertonby Peter AckroydISBN 0345358228 (0-345-35822-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chatterton'Book summary:Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), apparently a suicide at 18, posthumously astonished literary England when he was revealed as the author of a sequence of famous and influential "medieval" poems he claimed to have discovered. An authentic talent as well as a literary counterfeiter, he is the guiding spirit of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant novel. In today's London, a young poet and an elderly novelist engage the mystery of Chatterton by trying to decode the clues found in an old manuscript, only to discover that their investigation discloses other riddles for which there are no solutions. Chatterton is at once a hilariously witty comedy; a thoughtful and dramatic exploration of the deepest issues of authenticity in both life and art; and a subtle and touching story of failed lives, parental love, doomed marriages, and erotic passions.[via]More editions of Chatterton:
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The Chequer Boardby Nevil ShuteISBN 034532174X (0-345-32174-X)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Chequer Board'Book summary:A young man with a chequered past, has been told he has just one year to live. He decides to use his time in search of three very different men he met briefly during the war: a snobbish British pilot, a young corporal accused of murder, and a GI accused of attempted rape. He learns about forgiveness, tolerance and second chances. [via]
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Christmas Holidayby W. Somerset MaughamISBN 0375724613 (0-375-72461-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Clan of the Cave Bearby Jean M. AuelISBN 0375431802 (0-375-43180-2)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Clan of the Cave Bear'Book summary:When her parents are killed by an earthquake, 5-year-old Ayla wanders through the forest completely alone. Cold, hungry, and badly injured by a cave lion, the little girl is as good as gone until she is discovered by a group who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. This clan, left homeless by the same disaster, have little interest in the helpless girl who comes from the tribe they refer to as the "Others." Only their medicine woman sees in Ayla a fellow human, worthy of care. She painstakingly nurses her back to health--a decision that will forever alter the physical and emotional structure of the clan. Although this story takes place roughly 35,000 years ago, its cast of characters could easily slide into any modern tale. The members of the Neanderthal clan, ruled by traditions and taboos, find themselves challenged by this outsider, who represents the physically modern Cro-Magnons. And as Ayla begins to grow and mature, her natural tendencies emerge, putting her in the middle of a brutal and dangerous power struggle.
Although Jean Auel obviously takes certain liberties with the actions and motivations of all our ancestors, her extensive research into the Ice Age does shine through--especially in the detailed knowledge of plants and natural remedies used by the medicine woman and passed down to Ayla. Mostly, though, this first in the series of four is a wonderful story of survival. Ayla's personal evolution is a compelling and relevant tale. --Sara Nickerson [via]
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A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Courtby Mark Twain, Daniel Carter Beard, Roy BlountISBN 0375757805 (0-375-75780-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'Book summary:Hank Morgan awakens one morning to find he has been transported from nineteenth-century New England to sixth-century England and the reign of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Morgan brings to King Arthur's utopian court the ingenuity of the future, resulting in a culture clash that is at once satiric, anarchic, and darkly comic. Critically deemed one of Twain's finest and most caustic works, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is both a delightfully entertaining story and a disturbing analysis of the efficacy of government, the benefits of progress, and the dissolution of social mores. It remains as powerful a work of fiction today as it was upon its first publication in 1889. [via]
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The Crow Roadby Iain BanksISBN 0349103232 (0-349-10323-2)
Hardcover, Abacus
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crow Road'Book summary:TV trade edition paperback, fine in specially printed TV dw (fine (as new)) [via]
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The Da Vinci Codeby Dan BrownISBN 0375432302 (0-375-43230-2)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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Don Quixoteby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Tobias George SmollettISBN 037575699X (0-375-75699-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Don Quixote'Book summary:Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they wend their way across sixteenth-century Spain. Milan Kundera calls Cervantes the founder of the Modern Era and Lionel Trilling observes that it can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition reproduces the acclaimed Tobias Smollett translation; as Salman Rushdie declares, To my mind, this is the only English rendering of the Quixote that reads like a great novel, a novel of immense daring, much wildness and many colours. It releases Don Quixote from the grey academic prison of many more recent translations, unleashing him upon the English language in all his brilliant, foolish glory . This edition also contains new endnotes. [via]More editions of Don Quixote:
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Don Quixote of the Manchaby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Walter Crane, Judge Parry, Edward Abbott ParryISBN 037540659X (0-375-40659-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Don Quixote of the Mancha'Book summary:The story of the Spanish knight whose devotion to tales of chivalry leads him and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, into a series of bizarre adventures blends fantasy, comedy, and drama in a way that has gripped the world's imagination for centuries. This edition has been abridged and adapted for children, and enhanced by the delightful illustrations of Walter Crane. [via]
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An Equal Musicby Vikram SethISBN 037570924X (0-375-70924-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Equal Music'Book summary:The author of the international bestseller A Suitable Boy returns with a powerful and deeply romantic tale of two gifted musicians. Michael Holme is a violinist, a member of the successful Maggiore Quartet. He has long been haunted, though, by memories of the pianist he loved and left ten years earlier, Julia McNicholl. Now Julia, married and the mother of a small child, unexpectedly reenters his life and the romance flares up once more.
Against the magical backdrop of Venice and Vienna, the two lovers confront the truth about themselves and their love, about the music that both unites and divides them, and about a devastating secret that Julia must finally reveal. With poetic, evocative writing and a brilliant portrait of the international music scene, An Equal Music confirms Vikram Seth as one of the world's finest and most enticing writers. [via]More editions of An Equal Music:
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Fahrenheit 451by Ray BradburyISBN 0345342968 (0-345-34296-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fahrenheit 451'Book summary:In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.
Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman [via]
Fay Weldon's the Life and Loves of a She-Devilby Fay WeldonISBN 0345323750 (0-345-32375-0)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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First Lightby Peter AckroydISBN 0345368878 (0-345-36887-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'First Light'Book summary:First Light begins with an ominous coincidence: the reappearance of the ancient night sky during the excavation of an astronomically aligned Neolithic grave in Dorset. A group of eccentrics archaeologists, astronomers, local rustics, a civil servant, and a stand-up comic converge on the site, disturbing the quiet seclusion of Pilgrin Valley. Someone (or something) is trying to sabotage the best efforts of the excavators, headed by Mark Clare, to unearth the dormant secrets of the burial ground. Meanwhile, at the nearby observatory, astronomer Damien Fall, his telescope focused on the red star Aldebaran, is unnerved by the deeper significance he imputes to the celestial sophistication of the region's ancient inhabitants. And Joey Hanover, a retired music hall and TV entertainer searching for his own past, has learned secrets from Farmer Mint and his son, Boy, the weirdly cryptic guardians of their ancestral home in the valley. All is masterfully woven into an immensely engaging and entertaining novel, a suspenseful reflection on life, nature, and the cosmos, and above all an illuminating and enchanting story.[via]More editions of First Light:
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Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Singsby Christopher MooreISBN 0380978415 (0-380-97841-5)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings'Book summary:In his entertaining adventure-in-whale-researching, Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings, Nathan Quinn, a prominent marine biologist, has been conducting studies in Hawaii for years trying to unravel the secret of why humpback whales sing. During a typical day of data gathering, Nate believes his mind is failing: the subject whale has "Bite Me" scrawled across its tail. Events become even stranger as the self-proclaimed "action nerds," Nate, photographer Clay, their research assistant Amy, and Kona, a white Rasta (a Jewish kid from New Jersey), encounter sabotage to their data and equipment. They also observe increasingly bizarre whale behavior, including a phone call from the whale to their wealthy sponsor to ask that Nate bring it a hot pastrami and Swiss on rye, and discover both a thriving underwater city and the secret to what happened to Amelia Earhart.
Thoughtful, irreverent, and often hilarious, Moore has crafted a tale that contains a bit of the saga of declining whale populations due to hunting and habitat destruction, as well as his over-the-top, decadent wit as applied to scientific methodology and professional jealousies. Moore notes a pasty, rival scientist "looked like Death out for his after-dinner stroll before a busy night of e-mailing heart attacks and tumors to a few million lucky winners," and that killer whales (which are all named Kevin), are "just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car." Smart, sincere, and a whale of a story, Fluke is terrific. --Michael Ferch [via]
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Foreign Affairsby Alison LurieISBN 0380709902 (0-380-70990-2)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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Foucault's Pendulumby Umberto EcoISBN 0345368754 (0-345-36875-4)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Foucault's Pendulum'Book summary:"As brilliant and quirky as THE NAME OF THE ROSE, as mischievous and wide-raning....A virtuoso performance."
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Three clever book editors, inspired by an extraordinary fable they heard years befoe, decide to have a little fun. Randomly feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all their entires, they think they are creating a long lazy game--until the game starts taking over....
Here is an incredible journey of thought and history, memory and fantasy, a tour de force as enthralling as anything Umberto Eco--or indeed anyone--has ever devised.
From the Paperback edition. [via] 
Geek Loveby Katherine DunnISBN 0375713344 (0-375-71334-4)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Glamoramaby Bret Easton EllisISBN 0375703845 (0-375-70384-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Glamorama'Book summary:Glamorama is a satirical mass-murder opus more ambitious than Bret Easton Ellis's 1990 American Psycho. It starts as a spritz-of-consciousness romp about kid-club entrepreneur Victor Ward, "the It boy of the moment," an actor-model up for Flatliners II. Ellis has perfect pitch for glam-speak, and he gives nightlife the fizz, pace, and shimmer it lacks in drab reality. Anyone could cite the right celeb names and tunes, but like a rock-polishing machine, his prose gives literary sheen to fame-chasing air-kissers. He's coldly funny: when Victor's girl tries to argue him out of a breakup, she angrily snorts six bumps of coke, stops, mutters, "Wrong vial," snorts four corrective doses from whatever she has in her other fist, then objects to a rival at the party wearing the same dress she's wearing.
You had to be there; Ellis makes you feel you are. But such satire is a very smart bomb targeting a very large barn. Models' status anxiety doesn't merit Ellis's Tom Wolfe-esque expertise. Glamorama gets better when Victor gets drafted into a mysterious group of model-terrorists who bomb 747s and the Ritz in Paris, wearing Kevlar-lined Armani suits. Oh, they still behave like shallow snobs, pronouncing "cool" as if it had 12 o's. But now when somebody swills Cristal, it's apt to be poisoned, to horrific effect, which Ellis expertly, affectlessly describes. His enfant-terrible debut, Less Than Zero, aped Joan Didion. Now Ellis has grown into a lesser Don DeLillo--and that's high praise. --Tim Appelo [via]
A Good Man in Africaby William BoydISBN 038071566X (0-380-71566-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Good Soldierby Ford Madox FordISBN 0374927731 (0-374-92773-1)
Hardcover, Octagon Books
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Grendelby John Champlin GardnerISBN 0345288653 (0-345-28865-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Grendel'Book summary:Grendel is a beautiful and heartbreaking modern retelling of the Beowulf epic from the point of view of the monster, Grendel, the villain of the 8th-century Anglo-Saxon epic. This book benefits from both of Gardner's careers: in addition to his work as a novelist, Gardner was a noted professor of medieval literature and a scholar of ancient languages. [via]
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Hammerhead Ranch Motelby Tim DorseyISBN 0380732343 (0-380-73234-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hammerhead Ranch Motel'Book summary:Penzler Pick, August 2000: Is it Florida, or is it the mystery writers who set their stories there? There seems to be a tradition of Florida noir that is as loony as that name implies. Tim Dorsey is the newest writer from the Sunshine State whose stories are inhabited by a cast of characters who, in any other state, would probably be behind bars. In Dorsey's world, not only are they roaming free, they are also wreaking havoc with impunity up and down the peninsula.
In his first book, Florida Roadkill, Dorsey introduced us to several characters who are still at large as his second story begins. Serge A. Storms is a spree killer and Florida history buff, still looking for the five million dollars that's stashed in the trunk of a Chrysler--unbeknownst to the driver--somewhere in the state. Johnny Vegas is a playboy who, because catastrophic events always seem to get in the way, has yet to lose his virginity. Also along for the zany ride is 90-year-old Mrs. Edna Ploomfield, who blows away a man delivering her flowers and chocolates; a DJ who changed his name legally to Boris the Hateful Piece of BLEEP so that he would not be BLEEPED on the air every time he used the name; and Safety Officer Chester "Porkchop" Dole who watches the monitors on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Along with a dancing Chihuahua who forecasts the weather, the Diaz Boys, Harvey Fiddlebottom, undercover cops, and a variety of oddballs, they will congregate in or around the seediest place never to have been shut down, the Hammerhead Ranch Motel on the Gulf of Mexico. There, they will play out their lunacy as Hurricane Rolando-berto bears down on them. This is a wonderful summertime read, relentlessly funny and impossible to put down. --Otto Penzler [via]
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The Haunted Bookshopby Christopher MorleyISBN 0380626950 (0-380-62695-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Haunted Bookshop'Book summary:This anthology is a thorough introduction to classic literature for those who have not yet experienced these literary masterworks. For those who have known and loved these works in the past, this is an invitation to reunite with old friends in a fresh new format. From Shakespeares finesse to Oscar Wildes wit, this unique collection brings together works as diverse and influential as The Pilgrims Progress and Othello. As an anthology that invites readers to immerse themselves in the masterpieces of the literary giants, it is must-have addition to any library. [via]
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The Hotel New Hampshireby John IrvingISBN 034540047X (0-345-40047-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hotel New Hampshire'Book summary:The first of my fathers illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels. So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they dream on in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Prayer for Owen Meany and Last Night in Twisted River.
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The Human Factorby Graham GreeneISBN 0380414910 (0-380-41491-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Human Factor'Book summary:From the author of THE COMEDIANS and DOCTOR FISCHER OF GENEVA OR THE BOMB PARTY, a novel in which a leak is traced back to a small sub-section of the SIS, and Maurice Castle decides it is time to retire and live peacefully with his wife. In the VINTAGE CLASSICS series. [via]
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Singsby Maya AngelouISBN 0375507892 (0-375-50789-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'Book summary:In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit black community there. These very lessons carried her throughout the hardships she endured later in life, including a tragic occurrence while visiting her mother in St. Louis and her formative years spent in California--where an unwanted pregnancy changed her life forever. Marvelously told, with Angelou's "gift for language and observation," this "remarkable autobiography by an equally remarkable black woman from Arkansas captures, indelibly, a world of which most Americans are shamefully ignorant." [via]
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Kidnappedby Robert Louis Stevenson, Barry MenikoffISBN 0375757252 (0-375-75725-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kidnapped'Book summary:A finely honed, stirring adventure about the orphan David Balfour, who is kidnapped by his villainous uncle and escapes through the Scottish highlands, only to become involved in the Scottish struggle for independence. This edition features a new introduction by Margot Livesey. [via]
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Lady Chatterley's Loverby D. H. Lawrence, Kathryn HarrisonISBN 0375758003 (0-375-75800-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Lady of Qualityby Georgette HeyerISBN 0370014790 (0-370-01479-0)
Hardcover, Bodley Head
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lady of Quality'Book summary:A woman of independent means and spirit, stunning Annis Wynchwood has no yearning for wedlock, and has dashed the hopes of many lordly suitors. But never has she encountered such a rakish specimen as notorious Oliver Carleton. And when a femme comes face-to-face with a most incorrigible rogue, there ensues a tug-of-war that only love can overcome. [via]
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Londonby Edward RutherfurdISBN 0345455681 (0-345-45568-1)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'London'Book summary:Edward Rutherfurd belongs to the James Michener school: he writes big, sprawling history-by- the-pound. His novel, London, stretches two millennia all the way from Roman times to the present. The author places his vignettes at the most dramatic moments of that city's history, leaping from Caesar's invasion to the Norman Conquest to the Great Fire to (of course) the Blitz, with many stops in between. London is ambitious, and students of English history will eat it up. The author doesn't skimp on historical detail, and that's a signal pleasure of the book. Ultimately, though, the structure of the novel determines the lion's share of its success. Rutherfurd is a good storyteller and each vignette makes for a good story; however, he has given himself the inevitable task of beginning what amounts to a new book every 40 pages or so. Just as one begins to warm to the characters, they are hurried off the stage. You can't read London without a scorecardbut that's part of the fun. [via]
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Lost in a Good Bookby Jasper FfordeISBN 0340733578 (0-340-73357-8)
Softcover, Hodder & Stoughton
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lost In A Good Book'Book summary:Thursday Next, literary detective and newlywed is back to embark on an adventure that begins, quite literally on her own doorstep. It seems that Landen, her husband of four weeks, actually drowned in an accident when he was two years old. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is responsible. The sinister Goliath Corporation wants its operative Jack Schitt out of the poem in which Thursday trapped him, and it will do almost anything to achieve this - but bribing the ChronoGuard? Is that possible? Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday must battle corrupt politicians, try to save the world from extinction, and help the Neanderthals to species self-determination. Mastadon migrations, journeys into Just William, a chance meeting with the Flopsy Bunnies, and violent life-and-death struggles in the summer sales are all part of a greater plan. But whose? and why? [via]
Moon and Sixpenceby W. Somerset MaughamISBN 0375724567 (0-375-72456-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Moonstoneby Wilkie Collins, Carolyn G. HeilbrunISBN 0375757856 (0-375-75785-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Moonstone'Book summary:"The Moonstone is a page-turner," writes Carolyn Heilbrun. "It catches one up and unfolds its amazing story through the recountings of its several narrators, all of them enticing and singular." Wilkie Collins's spellbinding tale of romance, theft, and murder inspired a hugely popular genre-the detective mystery. Hinging on the theft of an enormous diamond originally stolen from an Indian shrine, this riveting novel features the innovative Sergeant Cuff, the hilarious house steward Gabriel Betteridge, a lovesick housemaid, and a mysterious band of Indian jugglers.This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive 1871 edition. [via]
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My Brother Michaelby Mary StewartISBN 0380820757 (0-380-82075-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Nine Coaches Waitingby Mary StewartISBN 0380820765 (0-380-82076-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nine Coaches Waiting'Book summary:The opulence and history surrounding Linda Martin at ChateÂu Valmy are all part of some wondrous, ecstatic dream. But there is a palpable terror crouching in the shadows. And then an accident that is no accident nearly kills the young English nanny's innocent, nine-year-old charge.
This is not "chance" -- this is something planned...and deadly. [via]More editions of Nine Coaches Waiting:
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The Nonesuchby Georgette HeyerISBN 0373834446 (0-373-83444-6)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Nonesuch'Book summary:Sir Waldo Hawkridge, wealthy, handsome, eligible, and known as The Nonesuch for his athletic prowess, believes he is past the age of falling in love.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of The Nonesuch:
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Of Human Bondageby W. Somerset Maugham, Gore VidalISBN 037575315X (0-375-75315-X)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Of Human Bondage'Book summary:It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham," wrote Gore Vidal. "He was always so entirely there."
Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man's yearning for freedom. This classic bildungsroman tells the story of Philip Carey, a sensitive boy born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Philip yearns for adventure, and at eighteen leaves home, eventually pursuing a career as an artist in Paris. When he returns to London to study medicine, he meets the androgynous but alluring Mildred and begins a doomed love affair that will change the course of his life. There is no more powerful story of sexual infatuation, of human longing for connection and freedom.
"Here is a novel of the utmost importance," wrote Theodore Dreiser on publication. "It is a beacon of light by which the wanderer may be guided. . . . One feels as though one were sitting before a splendid Shiraz of priceless texture and intricate weave, admiring, feeling, responding sensually to its colors and tones."
With an Introduction by Gore Vidal
Commentary by Theodore Dreiser and Graham Greene [via]More editions of Of Human Bondage:
Only in London : A Novelby Hanan Al-Shaykh, Catherine CobhamISBN 0375421335 (0-375-42133-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Parnassus on Wheelsby Christopher MorleyISBN 0380627035 (0-380-62703-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Plague Dogsby Richard AdamsISBN 0345494024 (0-345-49402-4)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Practical Demonkeepingby Christopher MooreISBN 0380730375 (0-380-73037-5)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Practical Demonkeeping'Book summary:Christopher Moore's demonically seductive storylines and zany, addictive brand of humor have earned him comparisons to Carl Hiaasen, Christopher Buckley, Douglas Adams, and other comic virtuosos. He's given us lovelorn vampires, marooned love goddesses, and addled sea beasts. Now discover his ingenious debut novel, in which we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. the good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and "road" scholar Travis O'Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor facade of Pine cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, Neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose... [via]
The Rainbow and the Roseby Nevil ShuteISBN 0345322517 (0-345-32251-7)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Razor's Edgeby W. Somerset MaughamISBN 0385043791 (0-385-04379-1)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Rembrandt's Hatby Bernard MalamudISBN 0374249091 (0-374-24909-1)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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The Sicilianby Mario PuzoISBN 0345441702 (0-345-44170-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sicilian'Book summary:the book is fantasic [via]
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Skinny Dipby Carl HiaasenISBN 0375411089 (0-375-41108-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Skipping Christmasby John GrishamISBN 0375431624 (0-375-43162-4)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Skipping Christmas'Book summary:John Grisham turns a satirical eye on the overblown ritual of the festive holiday season, and the result is Skipping Christmas, a modest but funny novel about the tyranny of December 25. Grisham's story revolves around a typical middle-aged American couple, Luther and Nora Krank. On the first Sunday after Thanksgiving they wave their daughter Blair off to Peru to work for the Peace Corps, and they suddenly realize that "for the first time in her young and sheltered life Blair would spend Christmas away from home."
Luther Krank sees his daughter's Christmas absence as an opportunity. He estimates that "a year earlier, the Luther Krank family had spent $6,100 on Christmas," and have "precious little to show for it." So he makes an executive decision, telling his wife, friends, and neighbors that "we won't do Christmas." Instead, Luther books a 10-day Caribbean cruise. But things start to turn nasty when horrified neighbors get wind of the Krank's subversive scheme and besiege the couple with questions about their decision.
Grisham builds up a funny but increasingly terrifying picture of how this tight-knit community turns on the Kranks, who find themselves under increasing pressure to conform. As the tension mounts, readers may wonder whether they will manage to board their plane on Christmas day. Skipping Christmas is Grisham-lite, with none of the serious action or drama of his legal thrillers, but a funny poke at the craziness of Christmas. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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A Son of the Circusby John IrvingISBN 0345389964 (0-345-38996-4)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Son of the Circus'Book summary:"A SON OF THE CIRCUS IS COMIC GENIUS....GET READY FOR IRVING'S MOST RAUCOUS NOVEL TO DATE."
--The Boston Globe
"Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, reared in Bombay by maverick foes of tradition, educated in Vienna, married to an Austrian and long a resident of Toronto, is a 59-year-old without a country, culture or religion to call his own....The novel may not be 'about' India, but Irving's imagined India, which Daruwalla visits periodically, is a remarkable achievement--a pandemonium of servants and clubmen, dwarf clowns and transvestite whores, missionaries and movie stars. This is a land of energetic colliding egos, of modern media clashing with ancient cultures, of broken sexual boundaries."
--New York Newsday
"HIS MOST DARING AND MOST VIBRANT NOVEL...The story of circus-as-India is told with gusto and delightful irreverence."
--Bharati Mukherjee
The Washington Post Book World
"Ringmaster Irving introduces act after act, until three (or more) rings are awhirl at a lunatic pace....[He] spills characters from his imagination as agilely as improbable numbers of clowns pile out of a tiny car....His Bombay and his Indian characters are vibrant and convincing."
--The Wall Street Journal
"IRRESISTIBLE...POWERFUL...Irving's gift for dialogue shines."
--Chicago Tribune
From the Paperback edition. [via] -
Sulaby Toni MorrisonISBN 0375415351 (0-375-41535-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sula'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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Summertime : A Novelby Raffaella BarkerISBN 0375503870 (0-375-50387-0)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Tales from Watership Downby Richard AdamsISBN 0380729342 (0-380-72934-2)
Softcover, Avon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tales from Watership Down'Book summary:Mass market paperback. [via]
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This Side of Paradiseby F. Scott Fitzgerald, Susan OrleanISBN 0375758860 (0-375-75886-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'This Side of Paradise'Book summary:Fitzgerald's first novel, reprinted in the handsome Everyman's Library series of literary classic, uses numerous formal experiments to tell the story of Amory Blaine, as he grows up during the crazy years following the First World War. It also contains a new introduction by Craig Raine that describes critical and popular reception of the book when it came out in 1920. [via]
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The Thorn Birdsby Colleen McCulloughISBN 0380018179 (0-380-01817-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Thorn Birds'Book summary:Product Details Paperback Publisher: Avon Books 1996-03-01 (1996) Language: English [via]
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The Towers of Trebizondby Rose MacaulayISBN 0374278547 (0-374-27854-7)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Towers of Trebizond'Book summary:This story describes the experiences of a group of people on a trip to Turkey. Aunt Dot is set on the emancipation of Turkish women through the encouragement of a wider use of the bathing hat, whilst Laurie's only object is pleasure. [via]
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Treasure Islandby Edwards, N. C. WyethISBN 0361027966 (0-361-02796-6)
Hardcover, Heinemann/Raintree
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Treasure Island'Book summary:Climb aboard for the swashbuckling adventure of a lifetime. Treasure Islandhas enthralled (and caused slight seasickness) for decades. The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic. --Naomi Gesinger [via]
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Treasure Islandby Robert Louis Stevenson, David CordinglyISBN 0375756825 (0-375-75682-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Treasure Island'Book summary:Climb aboard for the swashbuckling adventure of a lifetime. Treasure Islandhas enthralled (and caused slight seasickness) for decades. The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic. --Naomi Gesinger [via]
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The Twenty-Seventh Cityby Jonathan FranzenISBN 0374279721 (0-374-27972-1)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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Ulyssesby James Joyce, Claus Melchior, Wolfhard Steppe, Hans Walter GablerISBN 0370307372 (0-370-30737-2)
Hardcover, Bodley Head
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ulysses'Book summary:Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged, and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's sheer command of the English language.
Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be Everything. William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.
Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call Early Yeats Lite--will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naive curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus [via]
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The Well of Lost Plotsby Jasper FfordeISBN 0340825928 (0-340-82592-8)
Softcover, Hodder & Stoughton
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Well of Lost Plots'Book summary:Leaving Swindon behind her to hide out in the Well of Lost Plots (the place where all fiction is created), Thursday Next, Literary Detective and soon-to-be one parent family, ponders her next move from within an unpublished book of dubious merit entitled 'Caversham Heights'. Landen, her husband, is still eradicated, Aornis Hades is meddling with Thursday's memory, and Miss Havisham - when not sewing up plot-holes in 'Mill on the Floss' - is trying to break the land-speed record on the A409. But something is rotten in the state of Jurisfiction. Perkins is 'accidentally' eaten by the minotaur, and Snell succumbs to the Mispeling Vyrus. As a shadow looms over popular fiction, Thursday must keep her wits about her and discover not only what is going on, but also who she can trust to tell about it ...With grammasites, holesmiths, trainee characters, pagerunners, baby dodos and an adopted home scheduled for demolition, 'The Well of Lost Plots' is at once an addictively exciting adventure and an insight into how books are made, who makes them - and why there is no singular for 'scampi'. In the words of one critic: 'Don't ask. Just read it.' [via]
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When We Were Orphansby Kazuo IshiguroISBN 0375724400 (0-375-72440-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'When We Were Orphans'Book summary:When 9-year-old Christopher Banks's father--a British businessman involved in the opium trade--disappears from the family home in Shanghai, the boy and his friend Akira play at being detectives: "Until in the end, after the chases, fist-fights and gun-battles around the warren-like alleys of the Chinese districts, whatever our variations and elaborations, our narratives would always conclude with a magnificent ceremony held in Jessfield Park, a ceremony that would see us, one after another, step out onto a specially erected stage ... to greet the vast cheering crowds."
But Christopher's mother also disappears, and he is sent to live in England, where he grows up in the years between the world wars to become, he claims, a famous detective. His family's fate continues to haunt him, however, and he sifts through his memories to try to make sense of his loss. Finally, in the late 1930s, he returns to Shanghai to solve the most important case of his life. But as Christopher pursues his investigation, the boundaries between fact and fantasy begin to evaporate. Is the Japanese soldier he meets really Akira? Are his parents really being held in a house in the Chinese district? And who is Mr. Grayson, the British official who seems to be planning an important celebration? "My first question, sir, before anything else, is if you're happy with the choice of Jessfield Park for the ceremony? We will, you see, require substantial space."
In When We Were Orphans Kazuo Ishiguro uses the conventions of crime fiction to create a moving portrait of a troubled mind, and of a man who cannot escape the long shadows cast by childhood trauma. Sherlock Holmes needed only fragments--a muddy shoe, cigarette ash on a sleeve--to make his deductions, but all Christopher has are fading recollections of long-ago events, and for him the truth is much harder to grasp. Ishiguro writes in the first person, but from the beginning there are cracks in Christopher's carefully restrained prose, suggestions that his version of the world may not be the most reliable. Faced with such a narrator, the reader is forced to become a detective too, chasing crumbs of truth through the labyrinth of Christopher's memory.
Ishiguro has never been one for verbal pyrotechnics, but the unruffled surface of this haunting novel only adds to its emotional power. When We Were Orphans is an extraordinary feat of sustained, perfectly controlled imagination, and in Christopher Banks the author has created one of his most memorable characters. --Simon Leake [via]
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Women in Loveby D. H. Lawrence, Joyce Carol OatesISBN 0375754881 (0-375-75488-1)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Women in Love'Book summary:With an Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates
foreword by the author
Commentary by Carl van Doren, Rebecca West,
Aldous Huxley, and Henry Miller
It is . . . the world of the poets and the preponderance of the poet in [Lawrence] that is the key to his work. He magnified and deepened experience in the manner of a poet," wrote Anaïs Nin in 1934.
Privately printed in 1920 and published commercially in 1921, Women in Love is the novel Lawrence himself considered his masterpiece. Set in the English Midlands, the novel traces the lives of two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, and the men with whom they fall in love. All four yearn for fufillment in their romantic lives, yet struggle in a world that is increasingly violent and destructive. Commenting on the novel, which was composed in the midst of the First World War in 1916, Lawrence wrote, "The bitterness of the war may be taken for granted in the characters." Rich in symbolism and lyrical prose, Women in Love is a complex meditation on the meaning of love in the modern world.
To the critic Alfred Kazin, "No other writer of [Lawrence's] imaginative standing has in our time written books that are so open to life."
D. H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930), the son of a coal miner and a lace worker, completed his formal studies at University College, Nottingham, in 1908 and began teaching at a boys' school. By 1912, he had abandoned teaching to write full-time. His novels include The White Peacock (1911), The Trespasser (1912), Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), The Plumed Serpent (1926), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), which was banned as pornographic in England until 1960. [via]More editions of Women in Love:
Wuthering Heightsby Emily BronteISBN 0375756442 (0-375-75644-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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