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books tagged “great britain”
books tagged “great britain”
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Aftermathby Peter RobinsonISBN 0380811812 (0-380-81181-2)
Softcover, Avon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aftermath'Book summary:Penzler Pick, October 2001: The mystery novels of Peter Robinson (Aftermath is his 12th) are of increasing power and intensified intelligence. It's a dirty little secret of the crime-fiction genre that many of its writers simply spin their wheels, repeating over and over those old tricks which always have worked for them. They coast on past successes and repeat the formula hoping, if not assuming, that their fans won't notice.
Writers like Robinson, however, actually seem to grow in front of our eyes, delivering books of greater complexity each time. His previous two books, Cold Is the Grave and In a Dry Season, were novels of character and novels of crime, equally, and now Aftermath is here to reward his fans and new readers alike.
Like recent books by fellow English writers Reginald Hill, Val McDermid, and Stephen Booth, Aftermath centers upon a grim case in which attractive young girls have disappeared, victims of a cunning psychotic killer whose identity is well concealed behind a façade of respectability. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks of the Yorkshire Police is in charge of the case, but he's also got unavoidable personal distractions. His separated wife, Sandra, is pregnant by her lover, Sean, and wanting the divorce he's been dragging his heels over.
There is nothing cozy about the kind of English mysteries written by Peter Robinson, even if they do take place where picturesque rural villages make up the landscape. He's not afraid of gore or deviance, of violence, or of any of the baser emotions, and it's a raw old world behind the hedgerows and cottage walls. If Aftermath is your first taste of his tough-tender sensibility, it won't be surprising if you soon are hooked on the work of one of today's most accomplished practitioners of detective fiction. --Otto Penzler [via]
Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Talesby Alan Garner, Derek CollardISBN 0385294255 (0-385-29425-5)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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The Amber Spyglassby Philip PullmanISBN 0375823352 (0-375-82335-2)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Amber Spyglass'Book summary:From the very start of its very first scene, The Amber Spyglass will set hearts fluttering and minds racing. All we'll say here is that we immediately discover who captured Lyra at the end of The Subtle Knife, though we've yet to discern whether this individual's intent is good, evil, or somewhere in between. We also learn that Will still possesses the blade that allows him to cut between worlds, and has been joined by two winged companions who are determined to escort him to Lord Asriel's mountain redoubt. The boy, however, has only one goal in mind--to rescue his friend and return to her the alethiometer, an instrument that has revealed so much to her and to readers of The Golden Compass and its follow-up. Within a short time, too, we get to experience the "tingle of the starlight" on Serafina Pekkala's skin as she seeks out a famished Iorek Byrnison and enlists him in Lord Asriel's crusade:
A complex web of thoughts was weaving itself in the bear king's mind, with more strands in it than hunger and satisfaction. There was the memory of the little girl Lyra, whom he had named Silvertongue, and whom he had last seen crossing the fragile snow bridge across a crevasse in his own island of Svalbard. Then there was the agitation among the witches, the rumors of pacts and alliances and war; and then there was the surpassingly strange fact of this new world itself, and the witch's insistence that there were many more such worlds, and that the fate of them all hung somehow on the fate of the child.
Meanwhile, two factions of the Church are vying to reach Lyra first. One is even prepared to give a priest "preemptive absolution" should he succeed in committing mortal sin. For these tyrants, killing this girl is no less than "a sacred task."In the final installment of his trilogy, Philip Pullman has set himself the highest hurdles. He must match its predecessors in terms of sheer action and originality and resolve the enigmas he already created. The good news is that there is no critical bad news--not that The Amber Spyglass doesn't contain standoffs and close calls galore. (Who would have it otherwise?) But Pullman brings his audacious revision of Paradise Lost to a conclusion that is both serene and devastating. In prose that is transparent yet lyrical and 3-D, the author weaves in and out of his principals' thoughts. He also offers up several additional worlds. In one, Dr. Mary Malone is welcomed into an apparently simple society. The environment of the mulefa (again, we'll reveal nothing more) makes them rich in consciousness while their lives possess a slow and stately rhythm. These strange creatures can, however, be very fast on their feet (or on other things entirely) when necessary. Alas, they are on the verge of dying as Dust streams out of their idyllic landscape. Will the Oxford dark-matter researcher see her way to saving them, or does this require our young heroes? And while Mary is puzzling out a cure, Will and Lyra undertake a pilgrimage to a realm devoid of all light and hope, after having been forced into the cruelest of sacrifices--or betrayals.
Throughout his galvanizing epic, Pullman sustains scenes of fierce beauty and tenderness. He also allows us a moment or two of comic respite. At one point, for instance, Lyra's mother bullies a series of ecclesiastical underlings: "The man bowed helplessly and led her away. The guard behind her blew out his cheeks with relief." Needless to say, Mrs. Coulter is as intoxicating and fluid as ever. And can it be that we will come to admire her as she plays out her desperate endgame? In this respect, as in many others, The Amber Spyglass is truly a book of revelations, moving from darkness visible to radiant truth. --Kerry Fried [via]
Angel of Deathby Anthea CohenISBN 0385191251 (0-385-19125-1)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Armageddon: The Battle For Germany, 1944-1945by Max HastingsISBN 0375714227 (0-375-71422-7)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Arthurby Steve LawheadISBN 0380708906 (0-380-70890-6)
Softcover, Avon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Arthur'Book summary:In a forgotten age of darkness a magnificent king arose to light the world.
They called him unfit to rulea lowborn, callow boy, Uther's bastard. But his coming had been foretold in the songs of the bard Taliesin. He had learned the uses of power from his guide and protector, Merlin. He was Arthur, Pendragon of the Island of the Mightywho would rise to legendary greatness in a Britain torn by violence, greed and war; the Lord of Summer who would usher in a glorious reign of peace and prosperity . . . and whose noble, trusting heart would be broken by treachery.
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The Autograph Man: A Novelby Zadie SmithISBN 037570387X (0-375-70387-X)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Autograph Man: A Novel'Book summary:Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. His business is to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, and occasionally fake them-all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of forties movie actress Kitty Alexander. With fries.The Autograph Man is a deeply funny existential tour around the hollow trappings of modernity: celebrity, cinema, and the ugly triumph of symbol over experience. It offers further proof that Zadie Smith is one of the most staggeringly talented writers of her generation. [via]
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Beowulf : A Dual Language Editionby Howell D. ChickeringISBN 0385062133 (0-385-06213-3)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beowulf : A Dual Language Edition'Book summary:This presentation of the translation and the Old English Text on facing pages allows the reader to approach the first major poem in English literature in a fresh and exciting new way. Includes a Guide to Reading Aloud, Introduction, Commentary and notes for translation from the original. [via]
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Blast from the Pastby Ben EltonISBN 0385334524 (0-385-33452-4)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blast from the Past'Book summary:Ready to follow Nick Hornsby and Helen Fielding as the next big thing from Cool Britannia to hit America is Ben Elton. Already known to a wide public television audience as the funnyman behind Blackadder, The Young Ones, and The Thin Blue Line, Elton, author of Popcorn, lights up the literary sky with Blast from the Past.
Part noir thriller, part hilarious send-up of the politics of extremism, Blast from the Past is the new novel from English comedy phenomenon (stand-up, playwright, television writer, and author) Ben Elton--a name soon to be known in all circles once Joel Schumacher's film of his book Popcorn reaches the silver screen.
In the early 80s, when Polly was a seventeen-year-old ideological peace protestor and Jack was a U.S. Army captain stationed at England's Greenham Common, the two had a secret and very unlikely affair. No two people could have had more to argue about, save that they couldn't live without each other, yet one day Jack came to the conclusion that he loved soldiering more than Polly and sacrificed their love to be a career army man.
Now, sixteen years later, Polly is a lonely thirty-something social services employee and Jack is a four-star general who has returned to Britain to find her, his only true love. With only one night to resolve their differences, and a knife-wielding stalker lurking in the shadows, for everyone concerned this will be a night like no other. [via]-
Broken Music: A Memoirby StingISBN 0385338651 (0-385-33865-1)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Broken Music: A Memoir'Book summary:Having been a songwriter most of my life, condensing my ideas and emotions into short rhyming couplets and setting them to music, I had never really considered writing a book. But upon arriving at the reflective age of fifty, I found myself drawn, for the first time, to write long passages that were as stimulating and intriguing to me as any songwriting I had ever done.
And so Broken Music began to take shape. It is a book about the early part of my life, from childhood through adolescence, right up to the eve of my success with the Police. It is a story very few people know.
I had no interest in writing a traditional autobiographical recitation of everything thats ever happened to me. Instead I found myself drawn to exploring specific moments, certain people and relationships, and particular events which still resonate powerfully for me as I try to understand the child I was, and the man I became. [via] 
Cabalby Michael DibdinISBN 0375707700 (0-375-70770-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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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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Can You Keep a Secret?by Sophie KinsellaISBN 0385338082 (0-385-33808-2)
Softcover, Delta
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Can You Keep a Secret?'Book summary:With the same wicked humor, buoyant charm, and optimism that have made her Shopaholic novels beloved international bestsellers, Sophie Kinsella delivers a hilarious new novel and an unforgettable new character. Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets:
Secrets from her mother:
I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur.
Sammy the goldfish in my parents' kitchen is not the same goldfish that Mum gave me to look after when she and Dad were in Egypt.
Secrets from her boyfriend:
I weigh one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Not one eighteen, like Connor thinks.
I've always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.
From her colleagues:
When Artemis really annoys me, I feed her plant orange juice. (Which is pretty much every day.) It was me who jammed the copier that time. In fact, all the times.
Secrets she wouldn't share with anyone in the world:
My G-string is hurting me.
I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is.
Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger.
But come Monday morning, Emma's office is abuzz about the arrival of Jack Harper, the company's elusive CEO. Suddenly Emma is face-to-face with the stranger from
the plane, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her. Things couldn't possibly get worse-Until they do. [via]More editions of Can You Keep a Secret?:
Canterbury Talesby Geoffrey ChaucerISBN 0385000286 (0-385-00028-6)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucerby Geoffrey ChaucerISBN 0385098693 (0-385-09869-3)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Churchillby Martin GilbertISBN 0385155875 (0-385-15587-5)
Hardcover, Doubleday
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The Cloud Atlasby David MitchellISBN 0375507256 (0-375-50725-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cloud Atlas'Book summary:Now a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant, and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer
A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles of genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian lore of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.
[David] Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across this novels every page. The New York Times Book Review
One of those how-the-holy-hell-did-he-do-it? modern classics that no doubt isand should beread by any student of contemporary literature. Dave Eggers
Wildly entertaining . . . a head rush, both action-packed and chillingly ruminative. People
The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book, and yetnot just dazzling, amusing, or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too. Ive never read anything quite like it, and Im grateful to have lived, for a while, in all its many worlds. Michael Chabon [via]More editions of The Cloud Atlas:
Coasting: A Private Journeyby Jonathan RabanISBN 0375725938 (0-375-72593-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Coleridge: Early Visions 1772-1804by Richard HolmesISBN 0375705406 (0-375-70540-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Coleridge: Early Visions 1772-1804'Book summary:Winner of the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year, this is the first volume of Holmes's seminal two-part examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of Britain's greatest poets.
Coleridge: Early Visions is the first part of Holmes's classic biography of Coleridge that forever transformed our view of the poet of 'Kubla Khan' and his place in the Romantic Movement. Dismissed by much recent scholarship as an opium addict, plagiarist, political apostate and mystic charlatan, Richard Holmes's Coleridge leaps out of the page as a brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking figure who invades the imagination. This is an act of biographical recreation which brings back to life Coleridge's poetry and encyclopaedic thought, his creative energy and physical presence. He is vivid and unexpected. Holmes draws the reader into the labyrinthine complications of his subject's personality and literary power, and faces us with profound questions about the nature of creativity, the relations between sexuality and friendship, the shifting grounds of political and religious belief. [via]More editions of Coleridge: Early Visions 1772-1804:
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Conquering Familyby Thomas Bertram CostainISBN 0385040881 (0-385-04088-1)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Conquering Family'Book summary:Thomas B. Costain's four-volume history of the Plantagenets begins with THE CONQUERING FAMILY and the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, closing with the reign of John in 1216.
The troubled period after the Norman Conquest, when the foundations of government were hammered out between monarch and people, comes to life through Costain's storytelling skill and historical imagination.
"Brilliant, swift-moving, full of action, rich in color." (B-O-M-C News) [via]
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Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766by Fred AndersonISBN 0375706364 (0-375-70636-4)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766'Book summary:Histories of the American Revolution tend to start in 1763, the end of the Seven Year's War, a worldwide struggle for empire that pitted France against England in North America, Europe, and Asia. Fred Anderson, who teaches history at the University of Colorado, takes the story back a decade and explains the significance of the conflict in American history. Demonstrating that independence was not inevitable or even at first desired by the colonists, he shows how removal of the threat from France was essential before Americans could develop their own concepts of democratic government and defy their imperial British protectors. Of great interest is the importance of Native Americans in the conflict. Both the French and English had Indian allies; France's defeat ended a diplomatic system in which Indian nations, especially the 300-year-old Iroquois League, held the balance between the colonial powers. In a fast-paced narrative, Anderson moves with confidence and ease from the forests of Ohio and battlefields along the St. Lawrence to London's House of Commons and the palaces of Europe. He makes complex economic, social, and diplomatic patterns accessible and easy to understand. Using a vast body of research, he takes the time to paint the players as living personalities, from George III and George Washington to a host of supporting characters. The book's usefulness and clarity are enhanced by a hundred landscapes, portraits, maps, and charts taken from contemporary sources. Crucible of War is political and military history at its best; it never flags and is a pleasure to read. --John Stevenson [via]
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A Dangerous Fortuneby Ken FollettISBN 0385311214 (0-385-31121-4)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Death of a Good Womanby Marjorie EcclesISBN 0385246196 (0-385-24619-6)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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The Death of an Irish Politicianby Bartholomew GillISBN 0380732734 (0-380-73273-4)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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A Dedicated Manby Peter RobinsonISBN 0380716453 (0-380-71645-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Dedicated Man'Book summary:A dedicated man is dead in the Yorkshire dales -- a former university professor, wealthy historian and archaeologist who loved his adopted village. It is a particularly heinous slaying, considering the esteem in which the victim, Harry Steadman, was held by his neighbors and colleagues -- by everyone, it seems, except the one person who bludgeoned the life out of the respected scholar and left him half-buried in a farmer's field.
Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks left the violence of London behind for what he hoped would be the peaceful life of a country policeman. But the brutality of Steadman's murder only reinforces one ugly, indisputable truth: that evil can flourish in even the most bucolic of settings. There are dangerous secrets hidden in the history of this remote Yorkshire community that have already led to one death. And Banks will have to plumb a dark and shocking local past to find his way to a killer before yesterday's sins cause more blood to be shed. [via]
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Dialogues of the Deadby Reginald HillISBN 0385336004 (0-385-33600-4)
Hardcover, Dell Publishing
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Draculaby Bram Stoker, Peter StraubISBN 0375756701 (0-375-75670-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dracula'Book summary:Of the many admiring reviews Bram Stokers Dracula received when it first appeared in 1897, the most astute praise came from the author's mother, who wrote her son: 'It is splendid. No book since Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality, or terror.'
A popular bestseller in Victorian England, Stoker's hypnotic tale of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula, whose nocturnal atrocities are symbolic of an evil ages old yet forever new, endures as the quintessential story of suspense and horror. The unbridled lusts and desires, the diabolical cravings that Stoker dramatized with such mythical force, render Dracula resonant and unsettling a century later.
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Draculaby Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bram StokerISBN 0385095805 (0-385-09580-5)
Hardcover, Doubleday
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Dreaming the Bullby Manda ScottISBN 0385336713 (0-385-33671-3)
Hardcover, Dell Publishing
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Dreaming the Eagleby Manda ScottISBN 0385337736 (0-385-33773-6)
Softcover, Delta
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dreaming the Eagle'Book summary:Dreaming the Eagle is the first part of the gloriously imagined epic trilogy of the life of Boudica.
Boudica means Bringer of Victory (from the early Celtic word boudeg ). She is the last defender of the Celtic culture in Britain; the only woman openly to lead her warriors into battle and to stand successfully against the might of Imperial Rome -- and triumph.
It is 33 AD and eleven-year-old Breaca (later named Boudica), the red-haired daughter of one of the leaders of the Eceni tribe, is on the cusp between girl and womanhood. She longs to be a Dreamer, a mystical leader who can foretell the future, but having killed the man who has attacked and killed her mother, she has proven herself a warrior. Dreaming the Eagle is also the story of the two men Boudica loves most: Caradoc, outstanding warrior and inspirational leader; and Bàn, her half-brother, who longs to be a warrior, though he is manifestly a Dreamer, possibly the finest in his tribes history. Bàn becomes the Druid whose eventual return to the Celts is Boudicas salvation.
Dreaming the Eagle is full of brilliantly realised, luminous scenes as the narrative sweeps effortlessly from the epic -- where battle scenes are huge, bloody, and action-packed -- to the intimate. Manda Scott plunges us into the unforgettable world of tribal Britain in the years before the Roman invasion: a world of druids and dreamers and the magic of the gods where the natural world is as much a character as any of the people who live within it, a world of warriors who fight for honour as much as victory, a world of passion, courage and spectacular heroism pitched against overwhelming odds.
Dreaming the Eagle stunningly recreates the roots of a story so powerful its impact has lasted through the ages. [via]
Dreaming The Houndby Manda ScottISBN 0385337744 (0-385-33774-4)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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The Druid Kingby Norman SpinradISBN 0375724966 (0-375-72496-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Druid King'Book summary:A major triumph of historical fiction, The Druid King, is a masterly retelling of the life of the legendary general Vercingetorix and his brilliant crusade against the Roman invasion of Gaul.Vercingetorix was both a man of myth and a real historical figurehe managed, where others had failed, to unite the tribes of Gaul and lead them against the might of the entire Roman empire.
After watching his fathers harrowing death, young Vercingetorix retreats to the forest where he learns the ways of the druids. Soon he must return to civilization to reclaim his birthright and his fathers honor, but the city of his birth has changed. Now, he must confront the greatest military power the world has even known--the Roman legions of Julius Ceasar. This is the story of Vercingetorix, Druid King of Gaul. [via]More editions of The Druid King:
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England, Englandby Julian BarnesISBN 0375705503 (0-375-70550-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'England, England'Book summary:Imagine being able to visit England--all of England--in a single weekend. Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Stonehenge and Hadrian's Wall, Harrods, Manchester United Football Club, the Tower of London, and even the Royal Family all within easy distance of the each other, accessible, and, best of all, each one living up to an idealized version of itself. This fantasy Britain is the very real (and some would say very cynical) vision of Sir Jack Pitman, a monumentally egomaniacal mogul with a more than passing resemblance to modern-day buccaneers Sir Rupert Murdoch or Robert Maxwell: "'We are not talking theme park,' he began. 'We are not talking heritage centre. We are not talking Disneyland, World's Fair, Festival of Britain, Legoland or Parc Asterix.'" No indeed; Sir Jack proposes nothing less than to offer "the thing itself," a re-creation of everything that adds up to England in the hearts and minds of tourists looking for an "authentic" experience. But where to locate such an enterprise? As Sir Jack points out,
England, as the mighty William and many others have observed, is an island. Therefore, if we are serious, if we are seeking to offer the thing itself, we in turn must go in search of a precious whatsit set in a silver doodah.
Soon the perfect whatsit is found: the Isle of Wight; and a small army of Sir Jack's forces are sent to lay siege to it. Swept up in the mayhem are Martha Cochrane, a thirtysomething consultant teetering on the verge of embittered middle age, and Paul Harrison, a younger man looking for an anchor in the world. The two first find each other, then trip over a skeleton in Sir Jack's closet that might prove useful to their careers but disastrous to their relationship. In the course of constructing this mad package-tour dystopia, Julian Barnes has a terrific time skewering postmodernism, the British, the press, the government, celebrity, and big business. At the same time his very funny novel offers a provocative meditation on the nature of identity, both individual and national, as the lines between the replica and the thing itself begin to blur. Readers of Barnes have learned to expect the unexpected, and once again he more than lives up to the promise in England, England. But then, that was only to be expected. --Alix Wilber [via] 
Faith and Treason: The Gunpowder Plotby Antonia FraserISBN 0385256205 (0-385-25620-5)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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The First World Warby John KeeganISBN 0375700455 (0-375-70045-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The First World War'Book summary:The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society--and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. With The First World War, John Keegan, one of our most eminent military historians, fulfills a lifelong ambition to write the definitive account of the Great War for our generation.Probing the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict, Keegan takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. He reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent.But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequalled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend--Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli among them--and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe--from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg and Joffre. [via]
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The Future That Doesn't Work: Social Democracy's Failures in Britainby Samuel Brittan, R. Emmett TyrrellISBN 0385121865 (0-385-12186-5)
Hardcover, Doubleday
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Gallows Viewby Peter RobinsonISBN 0380714000 (0-380-71400-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gallows View'Book summary:Former London policeman Alan Banks relocated to Yorkshire seeking some small measure of peace. But depravity and violence are not unique to large cities. His new venue, the quaint little village of Eastvale, seems to have more than its fair share of malefactors, among them a brazen Peeping Tom who hides in night's shadows spying on attractive, unsuspecting ladies as they prepare for bed. And when an elderly woman is found brutally slain in her home, Chief Inspector Banks wonders if the voyeur has increased the intensity of his criminal activities. But whether related or not, perverse local acts and murderous ones are combining to profoundly touch Banks's suddenly vulnerable personal life, forcing a dedicated law officer to make hard choices he'd dearly hoped would never be necessary. [via]
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Ghostwrittenby David MitchellISBN 0375724508 (0-375-72450-8)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ghostwritten'Book summary:"What is real and what is not?" David Mitchell's Ghostwritten: A Novel in Nine Parts plays with precisely this question throughout its elaborately compartmentalized narrative. (That there are 10 chapters in this 9-part invention is just one more aspect of the author's mysterious schema.) With its multitude of voices and globe-girdling locations--Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Petersburg, London--this first novel offers readers a vertiginous, sometimes seductive, display of persona and place.
At the heart of Mitchell's book is the global extension of the postmodern city, and the networks (cultural, technological, phantasmagoric) to which it gives rise. A metropolis like Tokyo is quite literally beyond our comprehension:
Twenty million people live and work in Tokyo. It's so big that nobody really knows where it stops. It's long since filled up the plain, and now it's creeping up the mountains to the west and reclaiming land from the bay in the east. The city never stops rewriting itself. In the time one street guide is produced, it's already become out of date. It's a tall city, and a deep one, as well as a spread-out one.
At this level, urban sprawl becomes an epistemological condition. On one hand it leads to a Japanese death cult, purging the "unclean" from the city's subway with nerve gas. And on the other, it produces a certain splintering of the human personality. "I'm this person, I'm this person, I'm that person, I'm that person too," chants Neal, the narrator of the book's second part. "No wonder it's all such a ... mess." He's talking about his life as a Hong Kong trader, a "man of departments, compartments, apartments." But he might also be describing the experience of reading Ghostwritten. At once loquacious and knowing, leisurely and frantic, Mitchell offers a huge, but fragmentary, portmanteau. And while he's labored diligently to solder together the many parts--the aching bodies, the reality police, the impossibly complex machinery of contemporary life--his novel, too, may suffer from an excess of split personality. --Vicky Lebeau [via]More editions of Ghostwritten:
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Golden Compassby Philip PullmanISBN 037582345X (0-375-82345-X)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Golden Compass'Book summary:Some books improve with age--the age of the reader, that is. Such is certainly the case with Philip Pullman's heroic, at times heart-wrenching novel, The Golden Compass, a story ostensibly for children but one perhaps even better appreciated by adults. The protagonist of this complex fantasy is young Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Oxford University. But it quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own--nor is her world. For one thing, people there each have a personal daemon, the manifestation of their soul in animal form. For another, hers is a universe in which science, theology, and magic are closely allied:
As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had daemons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them.
Not that Lyra spends much time worrying about it; what she likes best is "clambering over the College roofs with Roger the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war." But Lyra's carefree existence changes forever when she and her daemon, Pantalaimon, first prevent an assassination attempt against her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, and then overhear a secret discussion about a mysterious entity known as Dust. Soon she and Pan are swept up in a dangerous game involving disappearing children, a beautiful woman with a golden monkey daemon, a trip to the far north, and a set of allies ranging from "gyptians" to witches to an armor-clad polar bear.In The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman has written a masterpiece that transcends genre. It is a children's book that will appeal to adults, a fantasy novel that will charm even the most hardened realist. Best of all, the author doesn't speak down to his audience, nor does he pull his punches; there is genuine terror in this book, and heartbreak, betrayal, and loss. There is also love, loyalty, and an abiding morality that infuses the story but never overwhelms it. This is one of those rare novels that one wishes would never end. Fortunately, its sequel, The Subtle Knife, will help put off that inevitability for a while longer. --Alix Wilber [via]
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wildeby Moises KaufmanISBN 0375702326 (0-375-70232-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Heart of Darkness & Selections from the Congo Diaryby Joseph Conrad, Caryl PhillipsISBN 037575377X (0-375-75377-X)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness & Selections from the Congo Diary'Book summary:Introduction by Caryl PhillipsCommentary by H. L. Mencken, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chinua Achebe, and Philip GourevitchOriginally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring works of fiction. Written several years after Joseph Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890-the first notes, in effect, for the novel, which was composed at the end of that decade. Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad: "His books are full of moments of vision. They light up a whole character in a flash. . . . He could not write badly, one feels, to save his life." [via]
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In a Dry Seasonby Peter RobinsonISBN 0380794772 (0-380-79477-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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James Clavell's Whirlwindby James ClavellISBN 0380703122 (0-380-70312-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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![[???]: Knopf Citymap London](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0375709541.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg "[???]: Knopf Citymap London")
Knopf Citymap LondonISBN 0375709541 (0-375-70954-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Last Chance Saloonby Marian KeyesISBN 0380820293 (0-380-82029-3)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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Le Morte D'Arthurby Thomas MaloryISBN 0375753222 (0-375-75322-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Le Morte D'Arthur'Book summary:The legends of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table have inspired some of the greatest works of literature--from Cervantes's Don Quixote to Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Although many versions exist, Malory's stands as the classic rendition. Malory wrote the book while in Newgate Prison during the last three years of his life; it was published some fourteen years later, in 1485, by William Caxton. The tales, steeped in the magic of Merlin, the powerful cords of the chivalric code, and the age-old dramas of love and death, resound across the centuries.
The stories of King Arthur, Lancelot, Queen Guenever, and Tristram and Isolde seem astonishingly moving and modern. Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur endures and inspires because it embodies mankind's deepest yearnings for brotherhood and community, a love worth dying for, and valor, honor, and chivalry. [via]More editions of Le Morte D'Arthur:
Londonby Seymourina Cruse, Knopf Guides StaffISBN 0375702555 (0-375-70255-5)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Lyra's Oxfordby Philip PullmanISBN 0375828192 (0-375-82819-2)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lyra's Oxford'Book summary:Attention all serious book collectors and fans of Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials. This undoubtedly beautiful packagecloth-bound in a classy red and adorned by numerous illustrations by master engraver and illustrator John Lawrenceis a must-purchase. A pint-sized pocket volume, Lyras Oxford packages together a short story set in the same universe as his famous trilogy, a fold-out map of the alternate-reality city of Oxford, a short brochure for a cruise to The Levant aboard the S.S. Zenobia, and a postcard from the inventor of the amber spyglass, Mary Malone. Pullman, in his introduction, suggests that the peripheral items within "might be connected with the story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that havent appeared yet. Its difficult to tell."
A very sumptuous and lovingly crafted but tantalizingly brief book , Lyras Oxford begins when Lyra and Pantalaimon spot a witchs daemon called Ragi being pursued over the rooftops of Oxford by a frenzied pack of birds. The daemon heads straight for Lyra (the creature was given Lyras name as somebody who might help) and is given shelter. Together Lyra and Pan try to guide the daemon to the home of Sebastian Makepeacean alchemist living in a part of Oxford known as Jerichobut it is a journey fraught with more danger than they had at first anticipated. (Age 10 and over) --John McLay [via]
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Mansfield Parkby Jane Austen, Carol ShieldsISBN 0375757813 (0-375-75781-3)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mansfield Park'Book summary:Though Jane Austen was writing at a time when Gothic potboilers such as Ann Ward Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto were all the rage, she never got carried away by romance in her own novels. In Austen's ordered world, the passions that ruled Gothic fiction would be horridly out of place; marriage was, first and foremost, a contract, the bedrock of polite society. Certain rules applied to who was eligible and who was not, how one courted and married and what one expected afterwards. To flout these rules was to tear at the basic fabric of society, and the consequences could be terrible. Each of the six novels she completed in her lifetime are, in effect, comic cautionary tales that end happily for those characters who play by the rules and badly for those who don't. In Mansfield Park, for example, Austen gives us Fanny Price, a poor young woman who has grown up in her wealthy relatives' household without ever being accepted as an equal. The only one who has truly been kind to Fanny is Edmund Bertram, the younger of the family's two sons.
Into this Cinderella existence comes Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary, who are visiting relatives in the neighborhood. Soon Mansfield Park is given over to all kinds of gaiety, including a daring interlude spent dabbling in theatricals. Young Edmund is smitten with Mary, and Henry Crawford woos Fanny. Yet these two charming, gifted, and attractive siblings gradually reveal themselves to be lacking in one essential Austenian quality: principle. Without good principles to temper passion, the results can be disastrous, and indeed, Mansfield Park is rife with adultery, betrayal, social ruin, and ruptured friendships. But this is a comedy, after all, so there is also a requisite happy ending and plenty of Austen's patented gentle satire along the way. Describing the switch in Edmund's affections from Mary to Fanny, she writes: "I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that everyone may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people." What does not vary is the pleasure with which new generations come to Jane Austen. --Alix Wilber [via]
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The Mayor of Casterbridgeby Thomas Hardy, J.I.M. StewartISBN 0375760067 (0-375-76006-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'Book summary:One of Hardy's most powerful novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a shocking and haunting scene: In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard-having gained power and success as the mayor-finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him. The Mayor of Casterbridge is a rich, psychological novel about a man whose own flaws combine with fate to cause his ruin. This Modern Library Paperback Classic reprints the authoritative 1912 Wessex edition, as well as Hardy's map of Wessex. [via]
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Meetings with Remarkable Treesby Thomas PakenhamISBN 0375752684 (0-375-75268-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Merlinby Steve LawheadISBN 0380708892 (0-380-70889-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Merlin'Book summary:He was born to greatness, the son of a druid bard and a princess of lost Atlantis. A trained warrior, blessed with the gifts of prophecy and song, he grew to manhood in a land ravaged by the brutal greed of petty chieftains and barbarian invaders.
Merlin: Respected, feared and hated by many, he was to have a higher destiny. for It was he who prepared the way for the momentous event that would unite the Island of the Mightythe coming of Arthur Pendragon, Lord of the Kingdom of Summer.
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Miss Zukas and the Library Murdersby Jo DereskeISBN 038077030X (0-380-77030-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Miss Zukas and the Library Murders'Book summary:Meet Miss Zukas . . . the very proper, exceedingly conscientious, and relentlessly curious local librarian of tiny Bellehaven, Washington--and one heck of an amateur sleuth!
The Bellehaven police are baffled when a dead body turns up right in the middle of the library's fiction stacks. But Miss Helma Zukas--who never fails to make note of the slightest deviation from the norm of everyday life--is not willing to let this rather nasty disruption stand. Her precious literary sanctuary has been violated, and if the local law cannot get to the bottom of this case, Miss Zukas certainly intends to--with the help of her not-so-proper best friend, Ruth, a six-foot-tall bohemian artist with a nose for gossip and a penchant for getting into trouble. But their research project is bringing them a little too close to a killer . . . who'd like nothing better than to write Helma and Ruth out of the story completely! [via]
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Mysterious Britainby Colin BordISBN 038502648X (0-385-02648-X)
Hardcover, Doubleday
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The National Velvetby Enid Bagnold, Ted LewinISBN 0380712350 (0-380-71235-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The National Velvet'Book summary:The timeless story of spirited Velvet Brown and her beloved horse has thrilled generations of readers. And now the republication of this classic story in a fresh, up-to-date package will charm confirmed fans while captivating new ones. Fourteen-year-old Velvet is determined to turn her untamed horse into a champion and personally ride him to victory in the world's greatest steeplechase, the Grand National. [via]
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Northanger Abbeyby Jane Austen, Robert KielyISBN 0375759174 (0-375-75917-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Northanger Abbey'Book summary:Though Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Of all her novels, this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it, Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence, besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters." Furthermore, her mother does not die giving birth to her, and Catherine herself, far from engaging in "the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush" vastly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes.
Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Austen amuses herself and us as Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most wonderfully prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels, but to expose the even more horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage, 19th-century British style. --Alix Wilber [via]
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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:
The Old Vengefulby Anthony PriceISBN 0385187505 (0-385-18750-5)
Hardcover, Doubleday
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On Green Dolphin Streetby Sebastian FaulksISBN 0375704566 (0-375-70456-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Lifeby Charles DarwinISBN 0375751467 (0-375-75146-7)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life'Book summary:Introduction by Edward J. Larson
ÿPerhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific inquiry, The Origin of Species sold out its first printing on the very day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street. Based largely on Darwins experience as a naturalist while on a five-year voyage aboard H. M. S. Beagle, The Origin of Species set forth a theory of evolution and natural selection that challenged contemporary beliefs about divine providence and the immutability of species. This Modern Library edition includes a Foreword by the Pulitzer Prizewinning science historian Edward J. Larson, an introductory historical sketch, and a glossary Darwin later added to the original text. [via]More editions of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life:
Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canalby Zachary KarabellISBN 037570812X (0-375-70812-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Past Reason Hatedby Peter RobinsonISBN 0380733285 (0-380-73328-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Pendragonby Stephen R. LawheadISBN 0380717573 (0-380-71757-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climateby Nancy MitfordISBN 0375718990 (0-375-71899-0)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate'Book summary:Few aristocratic English families of the 20th century have enjoyed quite the delicious notoriety that the Mitford sisters courted in the years bracketed by two world wars. For a start, two of the girls, Unity and Diana, were Fascists (the former was a friend of Hitler and Goebbels, and the latter married Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists). Two others took the writing route: Jessica ran away from home and became a famous muckraking journalist, and Nancy composed maliciously witty--and transparently autobiographical--novels as well as several biographies. The Pursuit of Love (1945), her greatest fictional success, and its companion, Love in a Cold Climate (1949), keep closely to the spirit (and details) of their youthful amusements and more grown-up adventures.
Seen through the adoring eyes of Fanny Logan, the self-effacing cousin who records their shenanigans with a wicked sincerity, the Radletts of Alconleigh shine with Gloucestershire glamour: apoplectic Uncle Matthew; Lord Alconleigh (modeled to a fine nuance after Mitford's father, Lord Redesdale, who like Uncle Matthew used to hunt his children with bloodhounds); his kind, rather vague wife, Aunt Sadie; as well as Fanny's favorite cousin Linda and the other six Radlett children. The Radlett daughters and Fanny wait impatiently for life to become interesting. Because of their station, however, nothing but marriage is expected of them, so they hurl themselves at love like crusaders, with varied and always fascinating results. At one point Fanny recounts:
A few minutes only after Linda had left me to go back to London, Christian and the comrades, I had another caller. This time it was Lord Merlin...."This is a bad business," he said, abruptly, and without preamble, though I had not seen him for several years. "I'm just back from Rome, and what do I find--Linda and Christian Talbot. It's an extraordinary thing that I can't ever leave England without Linda getting herself mixed up with some thoroughly undesirable character. This is a disaster--how far has it gone? Can nothing be done?"
The Pursuit of Love follows the romantic fortunes of Linda Radlett, while Love in a Cold Climate ventures further afield with the story of Polly Hampton's shocking love affair and its unexpectedly funny aftermath. Fanny's inexhaustible narration is a pleasant buffer for Mitford's deft teasing, which dances along just this side of mockery. The author of U and Non-U, a famous tongue-in-cheek treatise on the shibboleths of upper-class mores, Mitford often leaves the reader wondering just where she stands in the class wars, and much of her humor arises in the fine distinctions of aristocratic manners and speech. Still, there's an inimitable tart sweetness to these stories of true love and its pallid imitators, making them perfect snapshots of a vanished world. --Barrie Trinkle [via]More editions of Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate:
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Qb VIIby Leon UrisISBN 0385034520 (0-385-03452-0)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Qb VII'Book summary:[via]A writer must defend himself against a doctor whom hes accused of committing atrocities during World War IIFor Abe Cady, settlement is not an option when the facts of the Holocaust are on trial. A journalist and screenwriter, Cady produced the definitive account of the Holocaust just after World War II. But Polish doctor Adam Kelno, who was pressed into service in a notorious concentration camp, sues Cady for his books claim that the doctor conducted terrible experiments on camp inmates. The libel trial that follows tears open old wounds, disrupts lives, and becomes a battle for justice on behalf of tens of thousands of lost and damaged souls.QB VII is a gripping drama, largely based on author Uriss own protracted libel defense against a former concentration camp surgeon named in his novel Exodus. It was made into the first miniseries in television history.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Leon Uris including rare photos from the authors estate.More editions of Qb VII:
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Quicksilverby Neal StephensonISBN 0380977427 (0-380-97742-7)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quicksilver'Book summary:In Quicksilver, the first volume of the "Baroque Cycle," Neal Stephenson launches his most ambitious work to date. The novel, divided into three books, opens in 1713 with the ageless Enoch Root seeking Daniel Waterhouse on the campus of what passes for MIT in eighteenth-century Massachusetts. Daniel, Enoch's message conveys, is key to resolving an explosive scientific battle of preeminence between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over the development of calculus. As Daniel returns to London aboard the Minerva, readers are catapulted back half a century to recall his years at Cambridge with young Isaac. Daniel is a perfect historical witness. Privy to Robert Hooke's early drawings of microscope images and with associates among the English nobility, religious radicals, and the Royal Society, he also befriends Samuel Pepys, risks a cup of coffee, and enjoys a lecture on Belgian waffles and cleavage-all before the year 1700.
In the second book, Stephenson introduces Jack Shaftoe and Eliza. "Half-Cocked" Jack (also know as the "King of the Vagabonds") recovers the English Eliza from a Turkish harem. Fleeing the siege of Vienna, the two journey across Europe driven by Eliza's lust for fame, fortune, and nobility. Gradually, their circle intertwines with that of Daniel in the third book of the novel.
The book courses with Stephenson's scholarship but is rarely bogged down in its historical detail. Stephenson is especially impressive in his ability to represent dialogue over the evolving worldview of seventeenth-century scientists and enliven the most abstruse explanation of theory. Though replete with science, the novel is as much about the complex struggles for political ascendancy and the workings of financial markets. Further, the novel's literary ambitions match its physical size. Stephenson narrates through epistolary chapters, fragments of plays and poems, journal entries, maps, drawings, genealogic tables, and copious contemporary epigrams. But, caught in this richness, the prose is occasionally neglected and wants editing. Further, anticipating a cycle, the book does not provide a satisfying conclusion to its 900 pages. These are minor quibbles, though. Stephenson has matched ambition to execution, and his faithful, durable readers will be both entertained and richly rewarded with a practicum in Baroque science, cypher, culture, and politics. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
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Robin and the Kingby Parke GodwinISBN 0380709961 (0-380-70996-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Robin and the King'Book summary:With Sherwood, Parke Godwin reshaped the familiar story of Robin Hood to create his own unique version of the centuries-old legend. Taking the popular characters of Robin and Maid Marian, Little John and Will Scatloch, Godwin spun a tale of the adventures in Sherwood Forest vastly different from other renditions of the myth. This latest volume from Parke Godwin reveals a fascinating new aspect of the Robin Hood legend - the story of his later life and exploits as defender of the English people. Robin and the King continues the magic of this fabled epic in a drama richer, more powerful, and grander in scope than Sherwood, weaving two historical men into Robin's life: the friendship of the king's son Rossel and the dangerous enmity of Ranulf of Bayeux. The tale returns again to Nottingham and Sherwood Forest, now set later in the reign of William of Normandy, who had conquered the Anglo-Saxon peoples years earlier when Robin was a mere youth. A now older Robin has remained fiercely committed to freeing his fellow countrymen from absolute rule by any king, be he English or Norman. But this long-standing rivalry between Robin and the crown is soon overshadowed by a more dangerous enemy - a foe from the outside who threatens William's entire kingdom, including the way of life of Robin's own England, a life that was largely preserved under Norman rule. This foreign threat sets in motion an explosive set of adventures as Robin engages in fierce sea battles, secret undercover operations behind enemy lines, and bloody saber skirmishes with fresh troops from the French Army. And throughout it all, whether supporting him by his side or defending their home from the royal brutes back in England,his wife, Marian, emerges as a powerful ally, united with Robin in their last heroic efforts to save their people. Robin and the King triumphs as a masterpiece of both history and legend. Employing popular myth as well as historical detail, Parke Godwin has expertly placed the stor [via]
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Samuel Pepysby Claire TomalinISBN 0375725539 (0-375-72553-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Samuel Pepys'Book summary:For a decade, beginning in 1660, an ambitious young London civil servant kept an astonishingly candid account of his life during one of the most defining periods in British history. In Samuel Pepys, Claire Tomalin offers us a fully realized and richly nuanced portrait of this man, whose inadvertent masterpiece would establish him as the greatest diarist in the English language.
Against the backdrop of plague, civil war, and regicide, with John Milton composing diplomatic correspondence for Oliver Cromwell, Christopher Wren drawing up plans to rebuild London, and Isaac Newton advancing the empirical study of the world around us, Tomalin weaves a breathtaking account of a figure who has passed on to us much of what we know about seventeenth-century London. We witness Pepyss early life and education, see him advising King Charles II before running to watch the great fire consume London, learn about the great events of the day as well as the most intimate personal details that Pepys encrypted in the Diary, follow him through his later years as a powerful naval administrator, and come to appreciate how Pepyss singular literary enterprise would in many ways prefigure our modern selves. With exquisite insight and compassion, Samuel Pepys captures the uniquely fascinating figure whose legacy lives on more than three hundred years after his death. [via]More editions of Samuel Pepys:
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Sense And Sensibilityby Jane Austen, David GatesISBN 0375756736 (0-375-75673-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sense And Sensibility'Book summary:Though not the first novel she wrote, Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen published. Though she initially called it Elinor and Marianne, Austen jettisoned both the title and the epistolary mode in which it was originally written, but kept the essential theme: the necessity of finding a workable middle ground between passion and reason. The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she "loves him tenderly," she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister:
Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!
Soon however, Marianne meets a man who measures up to her ideal: Mr. Willoughby, a new neighbor. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behavior begins to border on the scandalous. Then Willoughby abandons her; meanwhile, Elinor's growing affection for Edward suffers a check when he admits he is secretly engaged to a childhood sweetheart. How each of the sisters reacts to their romantic misfortunes, and the lessons they draw before coming finally to the requisite happy ending forms the heart of the novel. Though Marianne's disregard for social conventions and willingness to consider the world well-lost for love may appeal to modern readers, it is Elinor whom Austen herself most evidently admired; a truly happy marriage, she shows us, exists only where sense and sensibility meet and mix in proper measure. --Alix Wilber [via]More editions of Sense And Sensibility:
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Shopaholic & Sisterby Sophie KinsellaISBN 0385336829 (0-385-33682-9)
Softcover, Delta
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shopaholic & Sister'Book summary:Becky Bloomwood, America's favorite shopaholic, is back in a hilarious heartwarming tale of married, life, best friends, and long-long sisters. Free Mangetic Book Mark with order.... [via]
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Shopaholic and Sisterby Sophie KinsellaISBN 0385338090 (0-385-33809-0)
Hardcover, Dell Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shopaholic and Sister'Book summary:Sophie Kinsella has conquered the hearts of millions with her New York Times bestselling Shopaholic novels, which feature the irresistible one-woman shopping phenomenon Becky Bloomwood. Now Beckys back in a hilarious, heartwarming tale of married life, best friends, and long-lost sisters (and the perils of simply having to own an Angel handbag!).
Whats a round-the-world honeymoon if you cant buy the odd souvenir to ship back home? Like the Chinese urns and twenty silk dressing gowns Becky found in Hong Kong&the five kilim rugs from Turkey&the splendid hand-carved dining table (and ten chairs) from Sri Lanka&the, um, huge wooden giraffes from Malawi (that her husband Luke expressly forbade her to buy)&
Only now Becky and Luke have returned home to London and Luke is furious. Two truckloads of those souvenirs have cluttered up their usually immaculate loft, and the bills for them are outrageous. Beckys even maxed out on her second secret credit card, and she doesnt have a new job yet!
Luke insists she go on a budget. And worse: her beloved best friend Suze has found a new best friend while Becky was away. Beckys feeling rather bluewhen her parents deliver some incredible news. She has a long-lost sister! Becky is thrilled! Shes convinced her sister will be a true soulmate. Theyll go shopping together, drink cappuccinos together, have manicures together, and watch their favorite videos together.
Until she meets Jessica for the first time and gets the shock of her life. Surely Becky Bloomwoods sister cant&hate shopping? [via]More editions of Shopaholic and Sister:
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Stardustby Neil GaimanISBN 0380804557 (0-380-80455-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stardust'Book summary:De Féerie, le pays magique, les habitants du petit village de Wall savent peu de choses. Il faut dire qu'un grand mur les en séparent. Un mur dans lequel est ouvert une brèche, une brèche bien gardée, par laquelle ils n'ont droit de passer qu'une fois l'an, le jour de la grande foire de Wall. C'est ce jour-là, justement, que le jeune Tristram Thorn, décidé à conquérir le cSur de sa belle, part pour le pays de fée afin de lui ramener une étoile filante. Mais dans un pays magique, rien n'est comme ailleurs. Les distances sont immenses, on y croise nains et licornes, des chasseurs d'éclairs naviguent sur des bateaux volants et l'on est jamais à l'abri d'un mauvais sort qui pourra vous transformer en arbre, en chèvre ou en rat. Un monde plein de dangers et de merveilles que Tristram est loin d'imaginer, comme il est loin d'imaginer que son étoile filante est une belle et pure jeune fille, dont la présence ici-bas va éveiller la concupiscence des sept seigneurs de Sromhold comme de quelques vilaines sorcières...
Neil Gaiman est aussi à l'aise dans la BD (Sandman), que dans le roman (Neverwhere). Un talent inépuisable qu'il confirme une fois de plus ici en revisitant avec bonheur l'univers des contes de fées. À la fois drôle, merveilleux et volontairement naïf, Stardust est une réussite. --Georges Louhans [via]
Stonehenge Decodedby Gerald S. HawkinsISBN 038528974X (0-385-28974-X)
Softcover, Bantam Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stonehenge Decoded'Book summary:This book was digitized and reprinted from the collections of the University of California Libraries. Together, the more than one hundred UC Libraries comprise the largest university research library in the world, with over thirty-five million volumes in their holdings. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found online in the HathiTrust Digital Library.HP's patented BookPrep technology was used to clean artifacts resulting from use and digitization, improving your reading experience. [via]
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Subtle Knifeby Philip PullmanISBN 0375823468 (0-375-82346-8)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Subtle Knife'Book summary:With The Golden Compass Philip Pullman garnered every accolade under the sun. Critics lobbed around such superlatives as "elegant," "awe-inspiring," "grand," and "glittering," and used "magnificent" with gay abandon. Each reader had a favorite chapter--or, more likely, several--from the opening tour de force to Lyra's close call at Bolvangar to the great armored-bear battle. And Pullman was no less profligate when it came to intellectual firepower or singular characters. The dæmons alone grant him a place in world literature. Could the second installment of his trilogy keep up this pitch, or had his heroine and her too, too sullied parents consumed him? And what of the belief system that pervaded his alternate universe, not to mention the mystery of Dust? More revelations and an equal number of wonders and new players were definitely in order.
The Subtle Knife offers everything we could have wished for, and more. For a start, there's a young hero--from our world--who is a match for Lyra Silvertongue and whose destiny is every bit as shattering. Like Lyra, Will Parry has spent his childhood playing games. Unlike hers, though, his have been deadly serious. This 12-year-old long ago learned the art of invisibility: if he could erase himself, no one would discover his mother's increasing instability and separate them.
As the novel opens, Will's enemies will do anything for information about his missing father, a soldier and Arctic explorer who has been very much airbrushed from the official picture. Now Will must get his mother into safe seclusion and make his way toward Oxford, which may hold the key to John Parry's disappearance. But en route and on the lam from both the police and his family's tormentors, he comes upon a cat with more than a mouse on her mind: "She reached out a paw to pat something in the air in front of her, something quite invisible to Will." What seems to him a patch of everyday Oxford conceals far more: "The cat stepped forward and vanished." Will, too, scrambles through and into another oddly deserted landscape--one in which children rule and adults (and felines) are very much at risk. Here in this deathly silent city by the sea, he will soon have a dustup with a fierce, flinty little girl: "Her expression was a mixture of the very young--when she first tasted the cola--and a kind of deep, sad wariness." Soon Will and Lyra (and, of course, her dæmon, Pantalaimon) uneasily embark on a great adventure and head into greater tragedy.
As Pullman moves between his young warriors and the witch Serafina Pekkala, the magnetic, ever-manipulative Mrs. Coulter, and Lee Scoresby and his hare dæmon, Hester, there are clear signs of approaching war and earthly chaos. There are new faces as well. The author introduces Oxford dark-matter researcher Mary Malone; the Latvian witch queen Ruta Skadi, who "had trafficked with spirits, and it showed"; Stanislaus Grumman, a shaman in search of a weapon crucial to the cause of Lord Asriel, Lyra's father; and a serpentine old man whom Lyra and Pan can't quite place. Also on hand are the Specters, beings that make cliff-ghasts look like rank amateurs.
Throughout, Pullman is in absolute control of his several worlds, his plot and pace equal to his inspiration. Any number of astonishing scenes--small- and large-scale--will have readers on edge, and many are cause for tears. "You think things have to be possible," Will demands. "Things have to be true!" It is Philip Pullman's gift to turn what quotidian minds would term the impossible into a reality that is both heartbreaking and beautiful. --Kerry Fried [via]
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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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Taliesinby Steve LawheadISBN 038070613X (0-380-70613-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Taliesin'Book summary:It was a time of legend, when the last shadows of the mighty Roman conqueror faded from the captured Isle of Britain. While across a vast sea, bloody war shattered a peace that had flourished for two thousand years in the doomed kingdom of Atlantis. Taliesin is the remarkable adventure of Charis, the Atlantean princess who escaped the terrible devastation of her homeland, and of the fabled seer and druid prince Taliesin, singer at the dawn of the age. It is the story of an incomparable love that joined two worlds amid the fires of chaos, and spawned the miracles of Merlin...and Arthur the king. [via]
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Up at the Villaby W. Somerset MaughamISBN 0375724621 (0-375-72462-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Up at the Villa'Book summary:Now a major motion picture from USA Films starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Sean Penn, and director Philip Haas (director of Angels and Insects).
In Up at the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham portrays a wealthy young English woman who finds herself confronted rather brutally by the repercussions of whimsy.
On the day her older and prosperous friend asks her to marry him, Mary Leonard demurs and decides to postpone her reply a few days. But driving into the hills above Florence alone that evening, Mary offers a ride to a handsome stranger. And suddenly, her life is utterly, irrevocably altered.
For this stranger is a refugee of war, and he harbors more than one form of passion. Before morning, Mary will witness bloodshed, she will be forced to seek advice and assistance from an unsavory man, and she will have to face the truth about her own yearnings. Erotic, haunting, and maddeningly suspenseful, Up at the Villa is a masterful tale of temptation and the capricious nature of fate. [via]More editions of Up at the Villa:
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Villette: Library Editionby Charlotte Bronte, Deborah Lutz, A. S. Byatt, Ignes SodreISBN 037575850X (0-375-75850-X)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Villette: Library Edition'Book summary:
"Villette! Villette! Have you read it?" exclaimed George Eliot when Charlotte Brontë's final novel appeared in 1853. "It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power."
Arguably Brontë's most refined and deeply felt work, Villette draws on her profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings. Lucy Snowe, the narrator of Villette,flees from an unhappy past in England to begin a new file as a teacher at a French boarding school in the great cosmopolitan capital of Villette. Soon Lucy's struggle for independence is overshadowed by both her freindship with a wordly English doctor and her feelings for an autocratic schoolmaster. Brontë's strikingly modern heroine must decide if there is any man in her society with whom she can live and still be free.
"Villette is an amazing book," observed novelist Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. "Written before psychoanalysis came into being, Villette is nevertheless a psychoanalytic worka psychosexual study of its heroine, Lucy Snowe. Written before the philosophy of existentialism was formulated, the novel's view of the world can only be described as existential. . . . Today it is read and discussed more intensely than Charlotte Brontë's other novels, and many critics now beleive it to be a true master-piece, a work of genius that more than fulfilled the promise of Jane Eyre." Indeed, Virginia Woolf judged Villette to be Brontë's "finest novel."
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The Voyage Outby Virginia WoolfISBN 0375757279 (0-375-75727-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Voyage Out'Book summary:The Modern Library is proud to include Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out--together with a new Introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham. Published to acclaim in England in 1915 and in America five years later, The Voyage Out marks Woolf's beginning as one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and prolific writers.
Less formally experimental than her later novels, The Voyage Out none-theless clearly lays bare the poetic style and innovative technique--with its multiple figures of consciousness, its detailed portraits of characters' inner lives, and its constant shifting between the quotidian and the profound--that are the signature of Woolf's fiction.
Rachel Vinrace, Woolf's first heroine, is a motherless young woman who, at twenty-four, embarks on a sea voyage with a party of other English folk to South America. Guileless, and with only a smattering of education, Rachel is taken under the wing of her aunt Helen, who desires to teach Rachel "how to live."Arriving in Santa Marina, a village on the South American coast, Rachel and Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates. Among them is the young, sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer, with whom Rachel falls in love. But theirs is ultimately a tale of doomed love, set against a chorus of other stories and other points of view, as the narrative shifts focus between its central and peripheral characters. E. M. Forster praised The Voyage Out as "a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path."
This edition includes a new Introduction by Michael Cunningham, bestselling author of The Hours. Cunningham at once unfolds an engaging short essay of Woolf's early life and career, an insightful exploration of the themes to which Woolf returns again and again in her fiction, and a spirited defense of the relevance and lasting importance of her art. Katherine Anne Porter wrote of Woolf: "The world of arts was her native territory; she ranged freely under her own sky, speaking her mother tongue fearlessly."
From the Hardcover edition. [via]More editions of The Voyage Out:
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Watership Downby Richard George AdamsISBN 0380002930 (0-380-00293-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Watership Down'Book summary:Watership Down has been a staple of high-school English classes for years. Despite the fact that it's often a hard sell at first (what teenager wouldn't cringe at the thought of 400-plus pages of talking rabbits?), Richard Adams's bunny-centric epic rarely fails to win the love and respect of anyone who reads it, regardless of age. Like most great novels, Watership Down is a rich story that can be read (and reread) on many different levels. The book is often praised as an allegory, with its analogs between human and rabbit culture (a fact sometimes used to goad skeptical teens, who resent the challenge that they won't "get" it, into reading it), but it's equally praiseworthy as just a corking good adventure.
The story follows a warren of Berkshire rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a land developer. As they search for a safe haven, skirting danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band and its compelling culture and mythos. Adams has crafted a touching, involving world in the dirt and scrub of the English countryside, complete with its own folk history and language (the book comes with a "lapine" glossary, a guide to rabbitese). As much about freedom, ethics, and human nature as it is about a bunch of bunnies looking for a warm hidey-hole and some mates, Watership Down will continue to make the transition from classroom desk to bedside table for many generations to come. --Paul Hughes [via]
We, the Britishby Ivor RichardISBN 0385145314 (0-385-14531-4)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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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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White Teeth: Reader's Companionby Zadie SmithISBN 0375703861 (0-375-70386-1)
Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'White Teeth: Reader's Companion'Book summary:Epic in scale and intimate in approach, White Teeth is a formidably ambitious debut. First novelist Zadie Smith takes on race, sex, class, history, and the minefield of gender politics, and such is her wit and inventiveness that these weighty subjects seem effortlessly light. She also has an impressive geographical range, guiding the reader from Jamaica to Turkey to Bangladesh and back again.
Still, the book's home base is a scrubby North London borough, where we encounter Smith's unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal, who served together in the so-called Buggered Battalion during World War II. In the ensuing decades, both have gone forth and multiplied: Archie marries beautiful, bucktoothed Clara--who's on the run from her Jehovah's Witness mother--and fathers a daughter. Samad marries stroppy Alsana, who gives birth to twin sons. Here is multiculturalism in its most elemental form: "Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks."
Big questions demand boldly drawn characters. Zadie Smith's aren't heroic, just real: warm, funny, misguided, and entirely familiar. Reading their conversations is like eavesdropping. Even a simple exchange between Alsana and Clara about their pregnancies has a comical ring of truth: "A woman has to have the private things--a husband needn't be involved in body business, in a lady's... parts." And the men, of course, have their own involvement in bodily functions:
The deal was this: on January 1, 1980, like a New Year dieter who gives up cheese on the condition that he can have chocolate, Samad gave up masturbation so that he might drink. It was a deal, a business proposition, that he had made with God: Samad being the party of the first part, God being the sleeping partner. And since that day Samad had enjoyed relative spiritual peace and many a frothy Guinness with Archibald Jones; he had even developed the habit of taking his last gulp looking up at the sky like a Christian, thinking: I'm basically a good man.
Not all of White Teeth is so amusingly carnal. The mixed blessings of assimilation, for example, are an ongoing torture for Samad as he watches his sons grow up. "They have both lost their way," he grumbles. "Strayed so far from what I had intended for them. No doubt they will both marry white women called Sheila and put me in an early grave." These classic immigrant fears--of dilution and disappearance--are no laughing matter. But in the end, they're exactly what gives White Teeth its lasting power and undeniable bite. --Eithne Farry [via]More editions of White Teeth: Reader's Companion:
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