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books tagged “Love Stories”
books tagged “Love Stories”
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100 Years of Solitudeby Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gregory RabassaISBN 0060919655 (0-06-091965-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: '100 Years of Solitude'Book summary:"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics:
A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house."
With One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-century literature. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Always Time to Dieby Elizabeth LowellISBN 0060504196 (0-06-050419-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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And the Bride Wore Plaidby Karen HawkinsISBN 0060514086 (0-06-051408-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'And the Bride Wore Plaid'Book summary:Devon St John has never had a problem in his lifeuntil now. Born to wealth and privilege, surrounded by a warm and loving family, he has pursued a life of leisure, chasing the most beautiful women London has to offer. All told, he has the perfect life and no intentions of ever settling down in any shape, form or fashion. So resolved, he heads to his friends Scottish castle, unaware that fate is already hard at work.
As the illegitimate half-sister to Viscount Strathmore, Melody Macdonald refuses to reside under his roof and instead lives in a thatched house on the edge of the forest that borders Strathmore Castle. Ever since she ran off at the tender age of twelve to become an apprentice to a master of stained glass, Melody has been deplorably independent and wild. When Devon arrives at Strathmore Castle, he is taken aback by the rude, overbearing, illegitimate Scotswoman who refuses even to pretend to possess any feminine wiles. But Devon is determined to teach the strong-willed Melody a lesson in love ...
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Anne Of Green Gablesby L.M. Montgomery, Laura F. MarshISBN 0060791470 (0-06-079147-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anne Of Green Gables'Book summary:A girl with spunk and dreams in search of a place to call home . . .
Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert planned to adopt a boy to help out around the farm, but waiting at the train station is a frecklefaced, redheaded elevenyearold orphan named Anne Shirley. From the minute Anne sets foot in Matthew's buggy, Green Gables will never be the same! Anne is overflowing with spunk and dreams, but at heart what she wants most of all is a place to call home.
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Anne of the Islandby L.M. MontgomeryISBN 0060758597 (0-06-075859-7)
Softcover, Harperfestival
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anne of the Island'Book summary:This volume contains "Anne of The Island" and "Anne of Windy Willows". Anne is older now, and her friends are beginning to get married and move away; meanwhile her romance with Gilbert Blythe begins to blossom, and there are developments in her career as a schoolteacher. [via]
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The Beautiful and Damnedby F. Scott FitzgeraldISBN 0020199708 (0-02-019970-8)
Softcover, Collier Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Beautiful and Damned'Book summary:F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, first published in 1922. It chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux riches and New York's nightlife of reckless ambition and squandered talent, it is also a shattering portrait of a marriage fueled by alcohol and wasted by wealth. (from back cover) [via]
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Bel Cantoby Ann PatchettISBN 0060838728 (0-06-083872-8)
Softcover, Perennial
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bel Canto'Book summary:In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. His hosts hope that Mr. Hosokawa can be persuaded to build a factory in their Third World backwater. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.
Among the hostages are not only Hosokawa and Roxane Coss, the American soprano, but an assortment of Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types. Reuben Iglesias, the diminutive and gracious vice president, quickly gets sideways of the kidnappers, who have no interest in him whatsoever. Meanwhile, a Swiss Red Cross negotiator named Joachim Messner is roped into service while vacationing. He comes and goes, wrangling over terms and demands, and the days stretch into weeks, the weeks into months.
With the omniscience of magic realism, Ann Patchett flits in and out of the hearts and psyches of hostage and terrorist alike, and in doing so reveals a profound, shared humanity. Her voice is suitably lyrical, melodic, full of warmth and compassion. Hearing opera sung live for the first time, a young priest reflects:
Never had he thought, never once, that such a woman existed, one who stood so close to God that God's own voice poured from her. How far she must have gone inside herself to call up that voice. It was as if the voice came from the center part of the earth and by the sheer effort and diligence of her will she had pulled it up through the dirt and rock and through the floorboards of the house, up into her feet, where it pulled through her, reaching, lifting, warmed by her, and then out of the white lily of her throat and straight to God in heaven.
Joined by no common language except music, the 58 international hostages and their captors forge unexpected bonds. Time stands still, priorities rearrange themselves. Ultimately, of course, something has to give, even in a novel so imbued with the rich imaginative potential of magic realism. But in a fractious world, Bel Canto remains a gentle reminder of the transcendence of beauty and love. --Victoria Jenkins [via] 
Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christby Lew WallaceISBN 0060145218 (0-06-014521-8)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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Charms for the Easy Lifeby Kaye GibbonsISBN 0060760257 (0-06-076025-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Charms for the Easy Life'Book summary:A family without men, the Birches live gloriously offbeat lives in the lush, green backwoods of North Carolina. Radiant, headstrong Sophia and her shy, brilliant daughter, Margaret, possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that often beats a path to their door. And they are protected by the eccentric wisdom and muscular love of the remarkable matriarch Charlie Kate, a solid, uncompromising, self-taught healer who treats everything from boils to broken bones to broken hearts.
Sophia, Margaret, and Charlie Kate find strength in a time when women almost always depended on men, and their bond deepens as each one experiences love and loss during World War II. Charms for the Easy Life is a passionate, luminous, and exhilarating story about embracing what life has to offer ... even if it means finding it in unconventional ways.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more. [via]More editions of Charms for the Easy Life:
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The Discovery of Chocolateby James RuncieISBN 0060184817 (0-06-018481-7)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Discovery of Chocolate'Book summary:A young Spaniard sets off for South America in 1518 with Cortes and the Conquistadors, propelled by his love's declaration that she will not marry until he returns with a special treasure -- a symbol of their love -- that no man or woman has ever before received. But during his travels he falls in love with Ignacia, a native woman who introduces him to the secrets of the most delicious drink he has ever tasted: chocolate. Their passionate affair is cut short by the chaotic conquest of Mexico.
So begins this charming and adventurous story about the magical substance we now know as chocolate, and of the passions and obsessions it has inspired from its earliest days. Our hero later discovers that his lover had secretly added the elixir to life to his chocolate drink. This allows him to travel through history: to Paris during the time of the Revolution, to Vienna in the nineteenth century, to late Victorian England, and to Hershey Pennsylvania -- accompanied all the while by his trusty greyhound, Pedro. unable to die, he searches to recapture the magic of Ignacia's chocolate -- and to learn to love life just as fully. Playful and intelligent, this is a romantic story about love and loss inspired by a very enchanting substance. [via]
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Earthly Joysby Philippa GregoryISBN 0002253178 (0-00-225317-8)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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Ethan Fromeby Edith WhartonISBN 0020264801 (0-02-026480-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ethan Frome'Book summary:Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome is the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In her Introduction, the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. [via]More editions of Ethan Frome:
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The First Love Storiesby Diane WolksteinISBN 0060922729 (0-06-092272-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The First Love Stories'Book summary:Passion, joy, and longing abound in seven original classic love stories, newly retold by a master storyteller. Wolkstein has vividly re-created unforgettable myths of love, published together in a single collection for the first time. Includes "Inanna and Dumuzi," "Shiva and Sati," "The Song of Songs," "Psyche and Eros," and more. [via]
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Forever...by Judy BlumeISBN 0027110303 (0-02-711030-3)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Forever...'Book summary:This timeless retellings of one of the world's greatest stories is accompanied by magnificient artwork. [via]
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Gaudy Nightby Dorothy Leigh SayersISBN 0060808241 (0-06-080824-1)
Softcover, Harper & Row
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gaudy Night'Book summary:Obscene graffiti, poison pen letters and a disgusting effigy greeted Harriet Vane on her return to Oxford. A graduate of ten years before and now a successful novelist, this should have been a pleasant, nostalgic visit for her. She asks her lover, Lord Peter Wimsey, for help. [via]
How to Treat a Ladyby Karen HawkinsISBN 0060514051 (0-06-051405-1)
Softcover, Avon Books
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Kiss Me Quickby Margaret MooreISBN 0060526203 (0-06-052620-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kiss Me Quick'Book summary:The instant Lady Diana Westover spies Edmond Terrington, Viscount Adderley, across a crowded room, the lovely, sheltered miss believes she's found the man she's been searching for. Though she knowsnothing of men, Diana longs to pen a romantic novel. So she resolves to study the darkly handsome, scandalously seductive lord's every move, to experience the pleasures of his soft kisses and sensuous caresses ... all in the name of research.
Who is this infuriating female who is everywhere he turns? Edmond is used to fawning admirers, but this attractive chit seems interested in something other than passion. And the more immune she remains to Edmond's charms, the more enchanted he is by hers. Well, this calls for a serious seduction, for he will be bested by no woman, no matter how bright, witty and delightful! But once he sets Diana's desires gloriously free, how will Edmond contain the yearnings of his own traitorous heart?
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LA Cucinaby Lily PriorISBN 006019538X (0-06-019538-X)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Cucina'Book summary:Since childhood, Rosa Fiore -- daughter of a sultry Sicilian matriarch and her hapless husband -- found solace in her family's kitchen. La Cucina, the heart of the family's lush estate, was a place where generations of Fiore women prepared sumptuous feasts and where the drama of extended family life was played out around the age-old table.
When Rosa was a teenager, her own cooking became the stuff of legend in this small community that takes pride in the bounty of its landscape and the eccentricity of its inhabitants. Rosa's infatuation with culinary arts was rivaled only by her passion for a young man, Bartolomeo, who, unfortunately, belonged to another. After their love affair ended in tragedy, Rosa retreated first into her kitchen and then into solitude, as a librarian in Palermo. There she stayed for decades, growing corpulent on her succulent dishes, resigned to a loveless life.
Then, one day, she meets the mysterious chef, known only is I'Inglese, whose research on the heritage of Sicilian cuisine leads him to Rosa's library, and into her heart. They share one sublime summer of discovery, during which I'lnglese awakens the power of Rosa's sensuality, and together they reach new heights of culinary passion. When I'Inglese suddenly vanishes, Rosa returns home to the farm to grieve for the loss of her second love. In the comfort of familiar surroundings, among her, growing family, she discovers the truth about her loved ones and finds her life transformed once more by the magic of her cherished Cucina.
Exuberant and touching, La Cucina is a magical evocation of lifes mysterious seasons and the treasures found in each one. It celebrates family, food, passion, and the eternal rapture of romance. [via]
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Lady in Redby Karen HawkinsISBN 0060584068 (0-06-058406-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Lighthousekeepingby Jeanette WintersonISBN 0007181515 (0-00-718151-5)
Hardcover, Fourth Estate
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lighthousekeeping'Book summary:'A child born of chance might imagine that Chance was its father, in the way that gods fathered children, and then abandoned them, without a backward glance, but with one small gift. I wondered if a gift had been left for me. I had no idea where to look, or what I was looking for, but I know now that all important journeys start that way. 'Motherless and anchorless, Silver is taken in by the timeless Mr. Pew, keeper of the Cape Wrath lighthouse. Pew tells Silver ancient tales of longing and rootlessness, of ties that bind and of the slippages that occur throughout every life. One life, Babel Dark's, a nineteenth century clergyman, opens like a map that Silver must follow. Caught in her own particular darknesses, she embarks on an Ulyssean sift through the stories we tell ourselves, stories of love and loss, of passion and longing, stories of unending journeys that move through places and times, and the bleak finality of the shores of betrayal. But finally, "I love you. The most difficult words in the world. But what else can I say?" A story of mutability, of talking birds and stolen books, of Darwin and Stevenson and of the Jekyll and Hyde in all of us. [via]
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Little Womenby Louisa May Alcott, Kevin McIntyreISBN 0020412401 (0-02-041240-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Women'Book summary:The girls gave their hearts into their mother's keeping, their souls into their father's; and to both parents ... they gave a love that grew with their growth, and bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life and outlives death. Pretty Meg, tomboy Jo, shy Beth, and vain Amy, the four March sisters, are as different as sisters can be, but more devoted and loyal sisters you'll never find. For though the March girls fight, tease, nag, and scold as all sisters do, they do so with the knowledge that nothing is as precious as a sister's love. Discover the magic of family in the first part of this classic novel cherished by young girls everywhere.
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Love Storyby Erich W. SegalISBN 0060748095 (0-06-074809-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Love Story'Book summary:The Phenomenal National Bestseller
and Enduring ClassicHe is Oliver Barett IV, a rich jock from a stuffy WASP family on his way to a Harvard degree and a career in law.
She is Jenny Cavilleri, a wisecracking working-class beauty studying music at Radcliffe.
Opposites in nearly every way, Oliver and Jenny immediately attract, sharing a love that defies everything ... yet will end too soon. Here is a love that will linger in your heart now and forever.
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Match Me If You Canby Susan Elizabeth PhillipsISBN 0060734566 (0-06-073456-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Namesakeby Jhumpa LahiriISBN 000225901X (0-00-225901-X)
Hardcover, Flamingo
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Namesake'Book summary:Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.
Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer [via]
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Natural Flights of the Human Mindby Clare MorrallISBN 0060843365 (0-06-084336-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gabriel García MárquezISBN 0060740450 (0-06-074045-0)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'Book summary:"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics:
A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house."
With One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-century literature. --Alix Wilber [via]
More editions of One Hundred Years of Solitude:
- One Hundred Years of Solitude: ISBN 0060750766 (0-06-075076-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins - One Hundred Years of Solitude: ISBN 0060114185 (0-06-011418-5)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited - One Hundred Years of Solitude: ISBN 0060531045 (0-06-053104-5)
Hardcover, Harpercollins - One Hundred Years of Solitude: ISBN 0060929790 (0-06-092979-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins - One Hundred Years of Solitude: ISBN 0060740450 (0-06-074045-0)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
- One Hundred Years of Solitude: ISBN 0060750766 (0-06-075076-6)
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One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gregory Rabassa, Gabriel Garcia MarquezISBN 0060883286 (0-06-088328-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'Book summary:"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics:
A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house."
With One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-century literature. --Alix Wilber [via]
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One Night of Scandalby Teresa MedeirosISBN 0060513640 (0-06-051364-0)
Softcover, Avon Books
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The Other Side of the Storyby Marian KeyesISBN 0060592060 (0-06-059206-0)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Other Side of the Story'Book summary:Jojo Harvey is a dead ringer for Jessica Rabbit and the most ferocious literary agent in town. A former NYPD cop, she now lives in London making million-dollar book deals while trying to make partner at her firm . . . all the while sleeping with the boss man.
Lily Wright is an author who believes in karma, and is waiting for the sky to fall after stealing her former best friend's man. Though her first book failed to sell, her life turns upside down when her most recent book becomes a huge bestseller.
Gemma Hogan is an event designer extraordinaire, but her personal life is nonexistent after losing the love of her life and her best friend in one fell swoop. To make matters worse, her father has just left her mother. While taking care of her mother, she e-mails a close colleague about her frustrations, who in turn forwards the hilarious e-mails to a famous literary agent named Jojo Harvey, who just happens to represent her former friend, now enemy, Lily Wright. . . .
Written in the charming and chatty voice that has become Marian Keyes's signature style, this hilarious and heartwarming novel proves there are three sides to every story . . . especially in the world of publishing!
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Prodigal Summerby Barbara KingsolverISBN 0060199660 (0-06-019966-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prodigal Summer'Book summary:There is no one in contemporary literature quite like Barbara Kingsolver. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal. With Prodigal Summer, she returns from the Congo to a "wrinkle on the map that lies between farms and wildness." And there, in an isolated pocket of southern Appalachia, she recounts not one but three intricate stories.
Exuberant, lush, riotous--the summer of the novel is "the season of extravagant procreation" in which bullfrogs carelessly lay their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, "apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms," and in which a woman may learn to "tell time with her skin." It is also the summer in which a family of coyotes moves into the mountains above Zebulon Valley:
The ghost of a creature long extinct was coming in on silent footprints, returning to the place it had once held in the complex anatomy of this forest like a beating heart returned to its body. This is what she believed she would see, if she watched, at this magical juncture: a restoration.
The "she" is Deanna Wolfe, a wildlife biologist observing the coyotes from her isolated aerie--isolated, that is, until the arrival of a young hunter who makes her even more aware of the truth that humans are only an infinitesimal portion in the ecological balance. This truth forms the axis around which the other two narratives revolve: the story of a city girl, entomologist, and new widow and her efforts to find a place for herself; and the story of Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley, who seem bent on thrashing out the countless intimate lessons of biology as only an irascible traditional farmer and a devotee of organic agriculture can. As Nannie lectures Garnett, "Everything alive is connected to every other by fine, invisible threads. Things you don't see can help you plenty, and things you try to control will often rear back and bite you, and that's the moral of the story."Structurally, that gossamer web is the story: images, phrases, and events link the narratives, and these echoes are rarely obvious, always serendipitous. Kingsolver is one of those authors for whom the terrifying elegance of nature is both aesthetic wonder and source of a fierce and abiding moral vision. She may have inherited Thoreau's mantle, but she piles up riches of her own making, blending her extravagant narrative gift with benevolent concise humor. She treads the line between the sentimental and the glorious like nobody else in American literature. --Kelly Flynn [via]
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Pygmalionby George Bernard ShawISBN 003053299X (0-03-053299-X)
Hardcover, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pygmalion'Book summary:When George Bernard Shaw wrote "Pygmalion" more than a half century ago, it seemed unlikely that his little play would eventually be converted into one of the great musicals of our time, "My Fair Lady," and a motion picture that captured numerous Academy Awards. Yet such popularity should not have been surprising since succeeding generations of readers and playgoers find continual relevance in the story of a speech therapist who successfully converts an untutored flower girl into a darling of high society. The extraordinary wit of the master dramatist of the twentieth century has not lost its sharp edge as it cuts away at the artificially of class distinctions and the callousness of indifference to human worth. [via]
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The Reluctant Suitorby Kathleen E. WoodiwissISBN 0060185708 (0-06-018570-8)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Reluctant Suitor'Book summary:For as long as she can remember, Lady Adriana Sutton has adored Colton Wyndham, to whom she has been promised by an agreement of courtship and betrothal since childhood. As a young girl, she was wounded by Colton's stubborn refusal to comply with his father's wishes and by his angry departure. He was too proud and too stubborn to accept a future not of his own choosing. Rather than submit, he fled from his ancestral home for a life of adventure and danger as an officer in the British army. The years have been immensely kind to Lady Adriana. No longer the plain, thin tomboy Colton had spurned, she has blossomed into an uncommon beauty desired by nearly every eligible bachelor in the land. Yet the only man she desires is the decorated hero who has finally come home to claim his rightful title. Arrogant, unmoved, and seductive as ever, he remains averse to the idea of their betrothal in spite of his growing desire for her. To demonstrate his belief that love cannot be forced, Colton agrees to court Lady Adriana for ninety days, after which time he will be allowed to keep his precious freedom if he so wishes. But much has changed since he balked at his father's plans. Forced into a courtship with this stunning, spirited woman, who is as different today from the young chit he left behind as spring is to winter, the heroic heart that was once closed to Adriana is moved by her charm, her grace, and her sensuality ... and begins to yield. But a secret from Colton's past may doom their burgeoning love ... even as the treacherous schemes of a sinister rival threaten to steal the remarkable lady from his arms forever. [via]
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The Scarlet Letterby Nathaniel HawthorneISBN 0030098602 (0-03-009860-2)
Softcover, Harcourt College Pub
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Set This House in Orderby Matt RuffISBN 0060195622 (0-06-019562-2)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Set This House in Order'Book summary:"I suppose I should tell you about the house.... The house, along with the lake, the forest, and Coventry, are all in Andy Gage's head, or what would have been Andy Gage's head if he had lived. Andy Gage was horn in 1965 and murdered not long after by his stepfather ... It was no ordinary murder.. though the torture and abuse that killed him were real, Andy Gage's death wasn't. Only his soul actually died, and when it died, it broke in pieces. Then the pieces became souls in their own right, coinheritors of Andy Gage's life. . . . "
From the author of the cult classic Fool on the Hill comes a strange and moving story of self-discovery. Andy Gage was "born" just two years ago, called into being to serve as the public face of a multiple personality. While Andy deals with the outside world, more than a hundred other souls share an imaginary house inside Andy's head, struggling to maintain an orderly co-existence: Aaron, the father figure, who makes the rules; Adam, the mischievous teenager, who breaks them; Jake, the frightened little boy; Aunt Sam, the artist; Seferis, the defender; and Gideon, the dark soul, who wants to get rid of Andy and the others and run things on his own.
Andrew's new coworker, Penny Driver, is also a multiple personality -- a fact that Penny is only partially aware of. When several of Penny's other souls ask Andy for help, Andy reluctantly agrees, setting in motion a chain of events that threatens to destroy the stability of the house. Now Andy and Penny must work together to uncover a terrible secret that Andy has been keeping from himself....
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The Sheltering Skyby Paul BowlesISBN 006083482X (0-06-083482-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sheltering Sky'Book summary:American novelist and short-story writer, poet, translator, classical music composer, and filmscorer Paul Bowles has lived as an expatriate for more than 40 years in the North African nation of Morocco, a country that reaches into the vast and inhospitable Sahara Desert. The desert is itself a character in The Sheltering Sky, the most famous of Bowles' books, which is about three young Americans of the postwar generation who go on a walkabout into Northern Africa's own arid heart of darkness. In the process, the veneer of their lives is peeled back under the author's psychological inquiry. [via]
Solitaireby Kelley EskridgeISBN 0060086602 (0-06-008660-2)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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Stories from Hans Christian Andersenby H. C. Andersen, Philippa PearceISBN 0001847678 (0-00-184767-8)
Hardcover, Collins
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Switcherooby Olivia GoldsmithISBN 0060175680 (0-06-017568-0)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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The Tempestby William Shakespeare, Stephen OrgelISBN 0019812973 (0-01-981297-3)
Hardcover, Clarendon Press
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The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Veniceby William ShakespeareISBN 0030522277 (0-03-052227-7)
Softcover, Harcourt School
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Twelfth Nightby William Shakespeare, Sydney MusgraveISBN 005001532X (0-05-001532-X)
Hardcover, Oliver & Boyd
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The Water Dancersby Terry GambleISBN 0060542675 (0-06-054267-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Yours Until Dawnby Teresa MedeirosISBN 0060513659 (0-06-051365-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Candideby Francois M. VoltaireISBN 0030801206 (0-03-080120-6)
Softcover, Holt Rinehart & Winston
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'Book summary:Brought up in the household of a powerful Baron, Candide is an open-minded young man, whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that 'all is for the best'. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is cast out to make his own way in the world. And so he and his various companions begin a breathless tour of Europe, South America and Asia, as an outrageous series of disasters befall them - earthquakes, syphilis, a brush with the Inquisition, murder - sorely testing the young hero's optimism. [via]
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