books tagged “novels”

books tagged “novels”

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  • Brautigan, Richard: Abortion
    Abortion
    by Richard Brautigan
    ISBN 0671827979 (0-671-82797-9)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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  • Brautigan, Richard: The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966
    The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966
    by Richard Brautigan
    ISBN 0671208721 (0-671-20872-1)
    Hardcover, Simon and Schuster

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  • Ada or Ardor a Family Chronicle
    by Vladimir Nabokov
    ISBN 0679725229 (0-679-72522-9)
    Softcover, Vintage Books

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    Book summary:

    Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist.  It tells a love story troubled by incest.  But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue.   Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat.

    This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously  sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom. [via]

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  • Angle of Repose
    by Wallace Stegner
    ISBN 0679603387 (0-679-60338-7)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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    Book summary:

    Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1971, Angle of Repose has also been selected by the editorial board of the Modern Library as one of the hundred best novels of the twentieth century.
            
    Wallace Stegner's uniquely American classic centers on Lyman Ward, a noted historian who relates a fictionalized biography of his pioneer grandparents at a time when he has become estranged from his own family. Through a combination of research, memory, and exaggeration, Ward voices ideas concerning the relationship between history and the present, art and life, parents and children, husbands and wives. Set in many parts of the West, Angle of Repose is a story of discovery--personal, historical, and geographical--that endures as Wallace Stegner's masterwork: an illumination of yesterday's reality that speaks to today's.

            "Angle of Repose is a long, intricate, deeply rewarding novel," wrote William Abrahams in the Atlantic Monthly. "[It] is neither the predictable historical-regional Western epic, nor the equally predictable four-decker family saga, the Forsytes in California, so to speak. . . . For all [its] breadth and sweep, Angle of Repose achieves an effect of intimacy, hence of immediacy, and, though much of the material is 'historical,' an effect of discovery also, of experience newly minted rather than a pageantlike re-creation. . . . Wallace Stegner has written a superb novel, with an amplitude of scale and richness of detail altogether uncommon in contemporary fiction."


    "Angle of Repose is a novel about Time, as much as anything--about people who live through time, who believe in both a past and a future. . . . It reveals how even the most rebellious crusades of our time follow paths that our great-grandfathers' feet beat dusty."
            --Wallace Stegner [via]

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  • Around the World in Eighty Days
    by Jules Verne, James Prunier
    ISBN 0670867934 (0-670-86793-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    The global dash of the intrepid Phileas Fogg is accompanied by lavish illustrations that depict remarkable period scenes that evince for younger readers such cultures as Victorian England and the American Wild West. [via]

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  • Wallace, Lew: Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ
    Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ
    by Lew Wallace, Harold King
    ISBN 0679203923 (0-679-20392-3)
    Hardcover, D. McKay Co

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  • Quindlen, Anna: Black and Blue
    Black and Blue
    by Anna Quindlen
    ISBN 0679435395 (0-679-43539-5)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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  • Bluest Eye
    by Toni Morrison
    ISBN 0671742922 (0-671-74292-2)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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    Book summary:

    Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 2000: Originally published in 1970, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself.

    Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear:

    You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.
    There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye.

    This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin too much of the blame on the beauty myth: "Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives The Bluest Eye the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one. --James Marcus [via]

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  • James, Henry: Bostonians
    Bostonians
    by Henry James
    ISBN 0679417508 (0-679-41750-8)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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  • The Broom of the System
    by David Foster Wallace
    ISBN 0670812307 (0-670-81230-7)
    Hardcover, Penguin USA

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    Book summary:

    Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenores great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

    [via]

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  • Cannery Row
    by John Steinbeck
    ISBN 0670202819 (0-670-20281-9)
    Hardcover, Penguin USA

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    Book summary:

    Unburdened by the material necessities of the more fortunate, the denizens of Cannery Row discover rewards unknown in more traditional society. Henry the painter sorts through junk lots for pieces of wood to incorporate into the boat he is building, while the girls from Dora Floods bordello venture out now and then to enjoy a bit of sunshine. Lee Chong stocks his grocery with almost anything a man could want, and Doc, a young marine biologist who ministers to sick puppies and unhappy souls, unexpectedly finds true love. Cannery Row is just a few blocks long, but the story it harbors is suffused with warmth, understanding, and a great fund of human values.

    First published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is—both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. John Steinbeck draws on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, and interweaves their stories in this world where only the fittest survive—creating what is at once one of his most humorous and poignant works. In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck returns to the setting of Tortilla Flat to create another evocative portrait of life as it is lived by those who unabashedly put the highest value on the intangibles—human warmth, camaraderie, and love.

    [via]

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  • Children of God
    by Mary Doria Russell
    ISBN 067945635X (0-679-45635-X)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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    Book summary:

    Mary Doria Russell's debut novel, The Sparrow, took us on a journey to a distant planet and into the center of the human soul. A critically acclaimed bestseller, The Sparrow was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year, a finalist for the Book-of-the-Month Club's First Fiction Prize and the winner of the James M. Tiptree Memorial Award. Now, in Children of God, Russell further establishes herself as one of the most innovative, entertaining and philosophically provocative novelists writing today.

    The only member of the original mission to the planet Rakhat to return to Earth, Father Emilio Sandoz has barely begun to recover from his ordeal when the So-ciety of Jesus calls upon him for help in preparing for another mission to Alpha Centauri. Despite his objections and fear, he cannot escape his past or the future.

    Old friends, new discoveries and difficult questions await Emilio as he struggles for inner peace and understanding in a moral universe whose boundaries now extend beyond the solar system and whose future lies with children born in a faraway place.

    Strikingly original, richly plotted, replete with memorable characters and filled with humanity and humor, Chil-dren of God is an unforgettable and uplifting novel that is a potent successor to The Sparrow and a startlingly imaginative adventure for newcomers to Mary Doria Russell's special literary magic. [via]

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  • The Children of Men
    by P. D. James
    ISBN 0679418733 (0-679-41873-3)
    Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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    Book summary:

    Told with P. D. James's trademark suspense, insightful characterization, and riveting storytelling, The Children of Men is a story of a world with no children and no future. The human race has become infertile, and the last generation to be born is now adult. Civilization itself is crumbling as suicide and despair become commonplace. Oxford historian Theodore Faron, apathetic toward a future without a future, spends most of his time reminiscing. Then he is approached by Julian, a bright, attractive woman who wants him to help get her an audience with his cousin, the powerful Warden of England. She and her band of unlikely revolutionaries may just awaken his desire to live . . . and they may also hold the key to survival for the human race.From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]

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  • King, Stephen: Christine
    Christine
    by Stephen King
    ISBN 0670220264 (0-670-22026-4)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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  • Cider House Rules
    by John Irving
    ISBN 0679603352 (0-679-60335-2)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    First published in 1985, The Cider House Rules is John Irving's sixth novel. Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist. It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. [via]

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  • Cities of the Plain
    by Cormac McCarthy
    ISBN 0679423907 (0-679-42390-7)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    On a ranch in southeastern Texas, soon after World War II, a group of solitary, inarticulately lonely men gathers to work animals as the sun sets for good on the mythic American West. All of these men nurse losses both personal (siblings or wives) and collective (a shared lifestyle and philosophy). Among them is John Grady Cole, the adolescent hero of the first book in Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy, All the Pretty Horses. John Grady remains the magnificent horseman he always was, and he still dreams too much. On the ranch, he meets Billy Parham, whose own tragic sojourn through Mexico in The Crossing, the second book of the set, continues to quietly suffocate him. The two form a friendship that will nurture both but save neither from the destiny that McCarthy's characters always sense lurching to meet them.

    Soaked in storm-heavy atmosphere but brightened by the ranch-hands' easy camaraderie and gentle humor, Cities of the Plain surprises with its sweetness. The awkward doomed-romance plot at the center of this tight, concise novel fails to convince, but, remarkably, does little to undercut the book's impact. What lingers here, and what matters, are the brooding, eerie portraits of the plains and the riders, glimpsed mostly alone but occasionally leaning together, who slip across them, over the horizon into memory. --Glen Hirshberg [via]

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  • Color of Magic
    by Terry Pratchett
    ISBN 0613277732 (0-613-27773-2)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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    The Colour of Magic is Terry Pratchett's maiden voyage through the bizarre land of Discworld. His entertaining and witty series has grown to more than 20 books, and this is where it all starts--with the tourist Twoflower and his hapless wizard guide, Rincewind ("All wizards get like that ... it's the quicksilver fumes. Rots their brains. Mushrooms, too."). Pratchett spoofs fantasy clichés--and everything else he can think of--while marshalling a profusion of characters through a madcap adventure. The Colour of Magic is followed by The Light Fantastic. --Blaise Selby [via]

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  • Coraline
    by Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean
    ISBN 0613673220 (0-613-67322-0)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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    Coraline lives with her preoccupied parents in part of a huge old house--a house so huge that other people live in it, too... round, old former actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible and their aging Highland terriers ("We trod the boards, luvvy") and the mustachioed old man under the roof ("'The reason you cannot see the mouse circus,' said the man upstairs, 'is that the mice are not yet ready and rehearsed.'") Coraline contents herself for weeks with exploring the vast garden and grounds. But with a little rain she becomes bored--so bored that she begins to count everything blue (153), the windows (21), and the doors (14). And it is the 14th door that--sometimes blocked with a wall of bricks--opens up for Coraline into an entirely alternate universe. Now, if you're thinking fondly of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, you're on the wrong track. Neil Gaiman's Coraline is far darker, far stranger, playing on our deepest fears. And, like Roald Dahl's work, it is delicious.

    What's on the other side of the door? A distorted-mirror world, containing presumably everything Coraline has ever dreamed of... people who pronounce her name correctly (not "Caroline"), delicious meals (not like her father's overblown "recipes"), an unusually pink and green bedroom (not like her dull one), and plenty of horrible (very un-boring) marvels, like a man made out of live rats. The creepiest part, however, is her mirrored parents, her "other mother" and her "other father"--people who look just like her own parents, but with big, shiny, black button eyes, paper-white skin... and a keen desire to keep her on their side of the door. To make creepy creepier, Coraline has been illustrated masterfully in scritchy, terrifying ink drawings by British mixed-media artist and Sandman cover illustrator Dave McKean. This delightful, funny, haunting, scary as heck, fairy-tale novel is about as fine as they come. Highly recommended. (Ages 11 and older) --Karin Snelson [via]

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  • Balzac, Honore De: Cousin Bette
    Cousin Bette
    by Honore De Balzac, James Waring
    ISBN 0679406719 (0-679-40671-9)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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  • The Cunning Man
    by Robertson Davies
    ISBN 0670859117 (0-670-85911-7)
    Hardcover, Penguin USA

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    Book summary:

    "Canada's leading man of letters and literary virtuoso" (Chicago Tribune) crowns an astonishing literary career with a new novel in the spirit of hi s bestselling What's Bred in the Bone. A mysterious death prologues a rich and meaty saga, narrated by Dr. Jonathan Hullah, which looks back over a long life punctuated by the dazzling intellectual highjinks and compassionate philosophies of Hullah and his circle. [via]

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  • Dead Souls
    by Nikolai Gogol, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky
    ISBN 0679430229 (0-679-43022-9)
    Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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    A socially adept newcomer fluidly inserts himself into an unnamed Russian town, conquering first the drinkers, then the dignitaries. All find him amiable, estimable, agreeable. But what exactly is Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov up to?--something that will soon throw the town "into utter perplexity."

    After more than a week of entertainment and "passing the time, as they say, very pleasantly," he gets down to business--heading off to call on some landowners. More pleasantries ensue before Chichikov reveals his bizarre plan. He'd like to buy the souls of peasants who have died since the last census. The first landowner looks carefully to see if he's mad, but spots no outward signs. In fact, the scheme is innovative but by no means bonkers. Even though Chichikov will be taxed on the supposed serfs, he will be able to count them as his property and gain the reputation of a gentleman owner. His first victim is happy to give up his souls for free--less tax burden for him. The second, however, knows Chichikov must be up to something, and the third has his servants rough him up. Nonetheless, he prospers.

    Dead Souls is a feverish anatomy of Russian society (the book was first published in 1842) and human wiles. Its author tosses off thousands of sublime epigrams--including, "However stupid a fool's words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man," and is equally adept at yearning satire: "Where is he," Gogol interrupts the action, "who, in the native tongue of our Russian soul, could speak to us this all-powerful word: forward? who, knowing all the forces and qualities, and all the depths of our nature, could, by one magic gesture, point the Russian man towards a lofty life?" Flannery O'Connor, another writer of dark genius, declared Gogol "necessary along with the light." Though he was hardly the first to envision property as theft, his blend of comic, fantastic moralism is sui generis.--Kerry Fried [via]

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  • The Dead Zone
    by Stephen King
    ISBN 0670260770 (0-670-26077-0)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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    Book summary:

    In the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, Gary Westfahl predicts that "King has already earned himself a place in the history of literature.... At the very least, he will enjoy the status of a latter-day Anthony Trollope, an author respected for his popularity and social commentary.... More likely, he will be enshrined as the Charles Dickens of the late 20th century, the writer who perfectly reflected, encapsulated, and expressed the characteristic concerns of his era."

    If any of King's novels exemplifies his skill at portraying the concerns of his generation, it's The Dead Zone (1979). Although it contains a horrific subplot about a serial killer, it isn't strictly a horror novel. It's the story of an unassuming high school teacher, an Everyman, who suffers a gap in time--like a Rip Van Winkle who blacks out during the years 1970-75--and thus becomes acutely conscious of the way that American society is rapidly changing. He wakes up as well with a gap in his brain, the "dead zone" of the title. The zone gives him crippling headaches, but also grants him second sight, a talent he doesn't want and is reluctant to use. The crux of the novel concerns whether he will use that talent to alter the course of history.

    The Dead Zone is a tight, well-crafted book. When asked in 1983 which of his novels so far was "the best," Stephen King answered, "The one that I think works the best is Dead Zone. It's the one that [has] the most story." --Fiona Webster [via]

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  • The Defense: A Novel
    by Michael Scammell, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokvov
    ISBN 0679727221 (0-679-72722-1)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    Nabokov's third novel, The Luzhin Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive,  distracted, withdrawn, sullen--an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life.  His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster--but at a cost:  in Luzhin' s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality.   His own world falls apart during a crucial championship match, when the intricate defense he has devised withers  under his opponent's unexpected and unpredictabke lines of assault. [via]

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  • Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
    by Douglas Adams
    ISBN 0671746723 (0-671-74672-3)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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    Book summary:

    What do a dead cat, a computer whiz-kid, an Electric Monk who believes the world is pink, quantum mechanics, a Chronologist over 200 years old, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poet), and pizza have in common? Apparently not much; until Dirk Gently, self-styled private investigator, sets out to prove the fundamental interconnectedness of all things by solving a mysterious murder, assisting a mysterious professor, unravelling a mysterious mystery, and eating a lot of pizza -- not to mention saving the entire human race from extinction along the way (at no extra charge). To find out more, read this book (better still, buy it, then read it) -- or contact Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. 'A thumping good detective-ghost-horror-whodunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy epic.' The author [via]

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  • Trollope, Anthony: Doctor Thorne
    Doctor Thorne
    by Anthony Trollope, N. John Hall
    ISBN 0679423044 (0-679-42304-4)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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  • Drop City
    by T. C. Boyle
    ISBN 0670031720 (0-670-03172-0)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    With Drop City, T. Coraghessan Boyle offers proof that he has become one of America's most prolific, gifted storytellers. Set in the 1970s, Boyle entertains readers with the denizens of "Drop City," a counterculture California commune that welcomes anyone wanting to live off the grid, use drugs, and practice free love. Boyle sublimely captures the sociology of its rebellious members, who doubt the sincerity or beliefs of newcomers, express some insecurity about nonconformity, and chastise outsiders while remaining oblivious to their own hypocrisy. Marco, Pan, Star, and other "cats" and "chicks" live hassle-free until dissention and cries of racism mount amid increasing run-ins with the local government (a young girl is raped, installation of a sewage system is mandated, a mother lets her toddlers drink LSD-laced juice). Seeking refuge, the citizens move north, to Alaska, to reinvent their utopia, but soon learn the natural environment is more unforgiving of a lackadaisical lifestyle.

    Drop City is funny, evocative, and well-paced, shifting between the hippies and the Alaskan locals--primarily Sess and his new bride Pamela (a city dweller who arranged stays with several trappers over a few weeks to determine whom she would marry)--until the two cultures collide. Balanced between plot and character, Boyle excels at describing the physical world and his characters' interaction with it, whether portraying the harshness (or sheer beauty) of the Alaskan wilderness, the simple survival routines of its grizzled inhabitants, or the sounds wafting through Drop City: "the goats bleating to be milked or fed, the single sharp ringing note of a dog surprised by its own hunger, the regular slap of the screen door at the back of the house--and underneath it all, like the soundtrack to a movie, the dull hum of rock and roll leaking out the kitchen windows." Truly American in spirit, Drop City is a strong novel of freedom and those in pursuit of lives of liberty. --Michael Ferch [via]

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  • El Doctor Zhivago / The Doctor Zhivago
    by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Max Hayward, Manya Harari
    ISBN 0679407596 (0-679-40759-6)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    This new trade paperback edition of Pasternak's classic evokes the life and loves of the poet-physician Zhivago during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. This edition features a thorough introduction by Oxford University scholar John Bayley. [via]

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  • Everything Is Illuminated
    by Jonathan Safran Foer
    ISBN 0618173870 (0-618-17387-0)
    Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin

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    The simplest thing would be to describe Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer's accomplished debut, as a novel about the Holocaust. It is, but that really fails to do justice to the sheer ambition of this book. The main story is a grimly familiar one. A young Jewish American--who just happens to be called Jonathan Safran Foer--travels to the Ukraine in the hope of finding the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He is aided in his search by Alex Perchov, a naïve Ukrainian translator, Alex's grandfather (also called Alex), and a flatulent mongrel dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. On their journey through Eastern Europe's obliterated landscape they unearth facts about the Nazi atrocities and the extent of Ukrainian complicity that have implications for Perchov as well as Safran Foer. This narrative is not, however, recounted from (the character) Jonathan Safran Foer's perspective. It is relayed through a series of letters that Alex sends to Foer. These are written in the kind of broken Russo-English normally reserved for Bond villains or Latka from Taxi. Interspersed between these letters are fragments of a novel by Safran Foer--a wonderfully imagined, almost magical realist, account of life in the shtetl before the Nazis destroyed it. These are in turn commented on by Alex, creating an additional metafictional angle to the tale.

    If all this sounds a little daunting, don't be put off; Safran Foer is an extremely funny as well as intelligent writer who combines some of the best Jewish folk yarns since Isaac Bashevis Singer with a quite heartbreaking meditation on love, friendship, and loss. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.uk [via]

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  • Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
    by Jonathan Safran Foer
    ISBN 0618329706 (0-618-32970-6)
    Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin

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    Book summary:

    Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination.
    Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
    An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.
    [via]

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  • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    by Jonathan Safran Foer
    ISBN 0618711651 (0-618-71165-1)
    Softcover, Houghton Mifflin

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    Jonathan safran foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, everything is illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history.nine-year-old oskar schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of new york. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the world trade center on the morning of september 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey [via]

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  • The Fermata
    by Nicholson Baker
    ISBN 0679415866 (0-679-41586-6)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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    The Fermata is the most risky of Nicholson Baker's emotional histories. His narrator, Arno Strine, is a 35-year-old office temp who is writing his autobiography. "It's harder than I thought!" he admits. His "Fold-powers" are easier; he can stop the world and use it as his own pleasure ground. Arno uses this gift not for evil or material gain (he would feel guilty about stealing), though he does undress a good number of women and momentarily place them in compromising positions--always, in his view, with respect and love. Anyone who can stop time and refer in self-delight to his "chronanisms" can't be all bad! Like Baker's other books, The Fermata gains little from synopsis. The pleasure is literally in the text. What's memorable is less the sex and the sex toys (including the "Monasticon," in the shape of a monk holding a vibrating manuscript) than Arno's wistful recollections of intimacy: the noise, for instance, of his ex-girlfriend's nail clipper, "which I listened to in bed as some listen to real birdsong." [via]

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  • Firestarter
    by Stephen King
    ISBN 0670315419 (0-670-31541-9)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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    Mass market paperback. [via]

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  • Tey, Josephine: The Franchise Affair
    The Franchise Affair
    by Josephine Tey
    ISBN 0671508121 (0-671-50812-1)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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  • The Gods Themselves
    by Isaac Asimov
    ISBN 0613186982 (0-613-18698-2)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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    Book summary:

    Winner of the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. [via]

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  • The Green Knight
    by Iris Murdoch
    ISBN 0670852295 (0-670-85229-5)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    When an attempt by the sharp, feral, uncommonly intelligent Lucas to murder his brother, Clement, backfires and Lucas kills a stranger, the stranger reappears with specific demands for reparation. 35,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo. [via]

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  • Gut Symmetries
    by Jeanette Winterson
    ISBN 0679454756 (0-679-45475-6)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    ailed in the Washington Post as "one of our most important writers in English, " Jeanette Winterson has firmly established her reputation as an extraordinarily daring and original novelist. In Gut Symmetries, lives and universes run parallel in a complex contemporary love story set in New York and Liverpool, and aboard the QE2. [via]

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  • Have Space Suit, Will Travel: Library Edition
    by Robert Heinlein
    ISBN 061313639X (0-613-13639-X)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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  • The Hippopotamus
    by Stephen Fry
    ISBN 0679438793 (0-679-43879-3)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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    Ted Wallace is an old, sour, womanising, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic, but he has his faults too.

    Fired from his newspaper, months behind on his alimony payments and disgusted with a world that undervalues him, Ted seeks a few months repose and free drink at Swafford Hall, the country mansion of his old friend Lord Logan.

    But strange things have been going on at Swafford.  Miracles, Healings, Phenomena beyond the comprehension of a mud-caked hippopotamus like Ted... [via]

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  • The Hotel New Hampshire
    by John Irving
    ISBN 0671687948 (0-671-68794-8)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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    The first of my fathers illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels. So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they dream on in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Prayer for Owen Meany and Last Night in Twisted River.

    [via]

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  • Independence Day
    by Richard Ford
    ISBN 0679735186 (0-679-73518-6)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Frank Bascombe is no longer a sportswriter, yet he's still living in Haddam, New Jersey, where he now sells real estate. He's still divorced, though his ex-wife, to his dismay, has remarried and moved along with their children to Connecticut. But Frank is happy enough in his work and pursuing various civic and entrepreneurial sidelines. He has high hopes for this 4th of July weekend: a search for a house for deeply hapless clients relocating to Vermont; a rendezvous on the Jersey shore with his girlfriend; then up to Connecticut to pick up his larcenous and emotionally troubled teenage son and visit as many sports halls of fame as they can fit into two days. Frank's Independence Day, however, turns out not as he'd planned, and this decent, appealingly bewildered, profoundly observant man is wrenched, gradually and inevitably, out of his private refuge. Independence Day captures the mystery of life  in all its conflicted glory  with grand humour, intense compassion and transfixing power.


    From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]

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  • It
    by Stephen King
    ISBN 0670813028 (0-670-81302-8)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they were grown-up men and women who had gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them could withstand the force that drew them back to Derry, Maine to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name. What was it? Read It and find out...if you dare! [via]

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  • The Jungle Book
    by Rudyard Kipling, Kurt Wiese
    ISBN 0679436375 (0-679-43637-5)
    Hardcover, Everymans Library

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    Young man-cub Mowgli's exciting life among his jungle animal family members and friends is complemented by lavish illustrations that offer young readers a perspective on colorful colonial India. [via]

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  • Durrell, Lawrence: Justine
    Justine
    by Lawrence Durrell
    ISBN 0671451049 (0-671-45104-9)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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  • Kidnapped
    by Robert Louis Stevenson, Rowland Hilder
    ISBN 0679436383 (0-679-43638-3)
    Hardcover, Everymans Library

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    Seventeen-year-old David Balfour's villainous uncle has him kidnapped in order to steal his inheritance. David escapes only to fall into the dangerous company of rebels who are resisting British redcoats in the Scottish highlands.   [via]

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  • Last Chronicle of Barset
    by Anthony Trollope
    ISBN 0679443665 (0-679-44366-5)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    (Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) [via]

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  • Making History : A Novel
    by Stephen Fry
    ISBN 0679459553 (0-679-45955-3)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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    Book summary:

    Those of us who have already discovered Stephen Fry know him as the brilliant British comedian behind TV series such as Jeeves & Wooster and Blackadder, and the author of two enormously funny novels, The Liar and The Hippopotamus. But his new film (in which he plays Oscar Wilde) and his new novel (this one) represent a somewhat alarming departure from his previous work: They're more serious. Though humor is still an essential ingredient of both, Fry's fans are finally getting to witness the emotional depth that this brilliant polymath usually keeps hidden.

    In Making History, Fry has bitten off a rather meaty chunk by tackling an at first deceptively simple premise: What if Hitler had never been born? An unquestionable improvement, one would reason--and so an earnest history grad student and an aging German physicist idealistically undertake to bring this about by preventing Adolf's conception. And with their success is launched a brave new world that is in some ways better than ours--but in most ways even worse. Fry's experiment in history makes for his most ambitious novel yet, and his most affecting. His first book to be set mostly in America, it is a thriller with a funny streak, a futuristic fantasy based on one of mankind's darkest realities. It is, in every sense, a story of our times. [via]

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  • Martin Chuzzlewit
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 067943884X (0-679-43884-X)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    (Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)At The Center of Martin Chuzzlewit -- the novel Angus Wilson called "one of the most sheerly exciting of all Dickens stories" -- is Martin himself, very old, very rich, very much on his guard. What he suspects (with good reason) is that every one of Iris close and distant relations. now converging in droves on the country inn where they believe he is dying, will stop at nothing to become the inheritor of Iris great fortune.Having unjustly disinherited Iris grandson, young Martin, the old fellow now trusts no one but Mary Graham, the pretty girl hired as Iris companion. Though she has been made to understand she will not inherit a penny, she remains old Chuzzlewit's only ally. As the viperish relations and hangers-on close in on him, we meet some of Dickens's most marvelous characters -- among them Mr. Pecksniff (whose name has entered the language as a synonym for ultimate hypocrisy and self-importance); the fabulously evil Jonas Chuzzlewit; the strutting reptile Tigg Montague; and the ridiculous, terrible, comical Sairey Gamp.Reluctantly heading for America in search of opportunity, the penniless young Martin goes west, rides a riverboat, and is overtaken by bad company and mortal danger -- while the battle for his grandfather's gold reveals new depths of family treachery, cunning, and ruthlessness. And in scene after wonderful scene of conflict and suspense, of high excitement and fierce and hilarious satire, Dickens's huge saga of greed versus decency comes to its magnificent climax. [via]

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  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    by John Berendt
    ISBN 0679429220 (0-679-42922-0)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981.  Was it murder or self-defense?  For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares.  John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction.  Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight.  These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story is a sublime and seductive reading experience.  Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city is certain to become a modern classic. [via]

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  • Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil: A Savannah Story
    by John Berendt
    ISBN 0679643419 (0-679-64341-9)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has been heralded as a "lyrical work of nonfiction," and the book's extremely graceful prose depictions of some of Savannah, Georgia's most colorful eccentrics--remarkable characters who could have once prospered in a William Faulkner novel or Eudora Welty short story--were certainly a critical factor in its tremendous success. (One resident into whose orbit Berendt fell, the Lady Chablis, went on to become a minor celebrity in her own right.) But equally important was Berendt's depiction of Savannah socialite Jim Williams as he stands trial for the murder of Danny Hansford, a moody, violence-prone hustler--and sometime companion to Williams--characterized by locals as a "walking streak of sex." So feel free to call it a "true crime classic" without a trace of shame. [via]

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  • The Moonstone
    by Wilkie Collins
    ISBN 0679417222 (0-679-41722-2)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

    Introduction by Catherine Peters [via]

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  • The Namesake
    by Jhumpa Lahiri
    ISBN 0618485228 (0-618-48522-8)
    Softcover, Houghton Mifflin

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    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, ore 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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  • Malamud, Bernard: The Natural
    The Natural
    by Bernard Malamud
    ISBN 0671782738 (0-671-78273-8)
    Hardcover, Pocket Books

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  • Nicholas Nickleby: Library Edition
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 0679423079 (0-679-42307-9)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    (Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Introduction by John Carey [via]

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  • Mitchell, Stephen: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
    The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
    by Stephen Mitchell, Rainer Maria Rilke
    ISBN 0679732454 (0-679-73245-4)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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  • Old Goriot
    by Honore De Balzac, Ellen Marriage
    ISBN 0679405356 (0-679-40535-6)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    (Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)

    Introduction by Daniel Adamson [via]

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  • On Beauty
    by Zadie Smith
    ISBN 0670045276 (0-670-04527-6)
    Hardcover, Viking Canada

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    Book summary:

    Good binding with dust cover [via]

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  • Other Voices, Other Rooms
    by Truman Capote, John Berendt
    ISBN 0679643222 (0-679-64322-2)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Published when Truman Capote was only twenty-three years old, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a literary touchstone of the mid-twentieth century. In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skullys Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval he seeks.

    Fueled by a world-weariness that belied Capotes tender age, this novel tempers its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence with an appreciation for small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.

    This new edition, featuring an enlightening Introduction by John Berendt, offers readers a fresh look at Capotes emerging brilliance as a writer of protean power and effortless grace. [via]

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  • Grisham, John: A Painted House
    A Painted House
    by John Grisham
    ISBN 0613494512 (0-613-49451-2)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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  • Steinbeck, John: The Pearl
    The Pearl
    by John Steinbeck
    ISBN 0670545759 (0-670-54575-9)
    Hardcover, Penguin USA

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  • Bellow, Saul: Ravelstein
    Ravelstein
    by Saul Bellow
    ISBN 067084134X (0-670-84134-X)
    Hardcover, Penguin USA

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  • Davies, Robertson: The Rebel Angels
    The Rebel Angels
    by Robertson Davies
    ISBN 0670590630 (0-670-59063-0)
    Hardcover, Viking Press

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  • Panshin, Alexei: Rite of Passage
    Rite of Passage
    by Alexei Panshin
    ISBN 0671440683 (0-671-44068-3)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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  • A River Runs Through It
    by Norman F. Maclean, Sally Peters
    ISBN 0671776975 (0-671-77697-5)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Book summary:

    From its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," to the last, "I am haunted by waters," "A River Runs Through It" is an American classic.

    Based on Norman Maclean's childhood experiences, "A River Runs Through It" has established itself as one of the most moving stories of our time; it captivates readers with vivid descriptions of life along Montana's Big Blackfoot River and its near magical blend of fly fishing with the troubling affections of the heart.

    This handsome edition is designed and illustrated by Barry Moser. There are thirteen two-color wood engravings.

    "A masterpiece. . . . This is more than stunning fiction: It is a lyric record of a time and a life, shining with Maclean's special gift for calling the reader's attention to arts of all kinds-- the arts that work in nature, in personality, in social intercourse, in fly-fishing."--Kenneth M. Pierce, "Village Voice"

    Norman Maclean (1902-90), woodsman, scholar, teacher, and storyteller, grew up in the Western Rocky Mountains of Montana and worked for many years in logging camps and for the United States Forestry Service before beginning his academic career. He retired from the University of Chicago in 1973. [via]

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  • The Secret History
    by Donna Tartt
    ISBN 0679410325 (0-679-41032-5)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Truly deserving of the accolade a modern classic, Donna Tartts novel is a remarkable achievementboth compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.

    Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.


    From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]

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  • Sexing the Cherry
    by Jeanette Winterson
    ISBN 0676973485 (0-676-97348-5)
    Softcover, Random House of Canada Ltd

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    Set in 17th century London, Sexing the Cherry is about the journeys taken by the boisterous Dog-Woman and her son Jordan: journeys across seas to find bananas and pineapples; journeys through time that weave snatches of the present with tales of Charles 1 and Oliver Cromwell; journeys in search of the self. As mothers go, the Dog-Woman takes some beating. She's a giant, wrapped in a skirt that could "serve as a sail for some wartorn ship" and strong enough to fling an elephant into the air. She's hideous too, with smallpox scars on her face where fleas live, a flat nose and black, broken teeth. To top it all, she's a "fantasist, a liar and a murderer". But her son, Jordan, is proud of her--who else has a mother who can hold a dozen oranges in her mouth at once?

    Like the best of Winterson's writing, such as Oranges are not the Only Fruit and The Passion, the novel is engaging, ambitious and contrary. Alongside a hearty historical realism, young girls swoon in locked towers that don't exist, islands slip sideways in time and mysterious diseases wipe out towns and cities. Even though Sexing the Cherry is short, it is impossible to read it in a straight line--fairy tales and dreams run in and out of the text and it's hard to resist chasing them. There is an exceptional playfulness at work too--an unravelling of the most solid of historical facts and fantastically unconventional fairy tales in which princesses smash the skulls of their princes with silver candlesticks or become worn and grey "like old sweaters". --Jane Honey [via]

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  • Single and Single
    by John Le Carré
    ISBN 0671027972 (0-671-02797-2)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    On a Turkish hillside, ex-Communist mobsters shatter the skull of a corrupt English lawyer. In a sleepy English village, the authorities ask a lonely children's magician how come £5,000,030 sterling just got anonymously deposited in his baby daughter's bank account. With machine-like logic and soulful literary magic, John le Carré links these two events in Single & Single, a stay-up-all-night thriller.

    The magician is Oliver Single, the tormented son of Tiger Single, a rogue banker the Financial Times calls "the knight errant of Gorbachev's New East." In fact, Tiger is sinking his fangs into that crucial one-tenth of world trade free of pesky regulations--illegal drugs--and secretly selling donated disaster-relief blood. Mum's the word in Tiger's mob: as the lawyer's executioner notes, "Is not convenient to hear that American capitalists are bleeding poor nations literally."

    Oliver comes in from the cold to help spymaster Brock track Tiger down. That £30 sterling signified Judas's silver, but Oliver yearns to save Tiger's life, too. Le Carré wizardly juggles dozens of characters in a zigzag, globetrotting plot. You-are-there realism, narrative drive, pitch-perfect dialog--why can't movies be this good? Like lightning, le Carré's metaphors both dazzle and blazingly illuminate the world.

    Ex-spy le Carré was there when the Berlin Wall went up, and his spy craft is legendarily realistic. His female spy/love interest is less so--the opposite of a femme fatale, she might be termed a "deus sex machina." But the book's crucial father-son relationship is quite real, because, like the irresistible villain of A Perfect Spy, Tiger is based on le Carré's own con-man dad. The cold war is over, but le Carré is hot. And he will endure. --Tim Appelo [via]

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  • Smiley's People: A Novel
    by John Le Carré
    ISBN 0671042769 (0-671-04276-9)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Book summary:

    John le Carré's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him -- and his hero, British Secret Service Agent George Smiley -- unprecedented worldwide acclaim.

    In Smiley's People, George Smiley is asked to come out of retirement for one last confrontation with his soviet counterpart, Karla. Smiley's people crisscross Paris, London, Germany, and Switzerland in an extraordinary final showdown of unrelenting suspense. [via]

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  • Lawrence, D. H.: Sons and Lovers
    Sons and Lovers
    by D. H. Lawrence
    ISBN 067001804X (0-670-01804-X)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Sons and Lovers was the first modern portrayal of a phenomenon that later, thanks to Freud, became easily recognizable as the Oedipus complex. Never was a son more indentured to his mother's love and full of hatred for his father than Paul Morel, D.H. Lawrence's young protagonist. Never, that is, except perhaps Lawrence himself. In his 1913 novel he grappled with the discordant loves that haunted him all his life--for his spiritual childhood sweetheart, here called Miriam, and for his mother, whom he transformed into Mrs. Morel. It is, by Lawrence's own account, a book aimed at depicting this woman's grasp: "as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers--first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother--urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives."

    Of course, Mrs. Morel takes neither of her two elder sons (the first of whom dies early, which further intensifies her grip on Paul) as a literal lover, but nonetheless her psychological snare is immense. She loathes Paul's Miriam from the start, understanding that the girl's deep love of her son will oust her: "She's not like an ordinary woman, who can leave me my share in him. She wants to absorb him." Meanwhile, Paul plays his part with equal fervor, incapable of committing himself in either direction: "Why did his mother sit at home and suffer?... And why did he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he hated her--and he easily hated her." Soon thereafter he even confesses to his mother: "I really don't love her. I talk to her, but I want to come home to you."

    The result of all this is that Paul throws Miriam over for a married suffragette, Clara Dawes, who fulfills the sexual component of his ascent to manhood but leaves him, as ever, without a complete relationship to challenge his love for his mother. As Paul voyages from the working-class mining world to the spheres of commerce and art (he has fair success as a painter), he accepts that his own achievements must be equally his mother's. "There was so much to come out of him. Life for her was rich with promise. She was to see herself fulfilled... All his work was hers."

    The cycles of Paul's relationships with these three women are terrifying at times, and Lawrence does nothing to dim their intensity. Nor does he shirk in his vivid, sensuous descriptions of the landscape that offers up its blossoms and beasts and "shimmeriness" to Paul's sensitive spirit. Sons and Lovers lays fully bare the souls of men and earth. Few books tell such whole, complicated truths about the permutations of love as resolutely without resolution. It's nothing short of searing to be brushed by humanity in this manner. --Melanie Rehak [via]

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  • Straight Man
    by Richard Russo
    ISBN 0679432469 (0-679-43246-9)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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    First Jane Smiley came out of the comedy closet with Moo, a campus satire par excellence, and now Richard Russo has gotten in on the groves-of-academe game. Straight Man is hilarious sport, with a serious side. William Henry Devereaux Jr., is almost 50 and stuck forever as chair of English at West Central Pennsylvania University. It is April and fear of layoffs--even among the tenured--has reached mock-epic proportions; Hank has yet to receive his department budget and finds himself increasingly offering comments such as "Always understate necrophilia" to his writing students. Then there are his possible prostate problems and the prospect of his father's arrival. Devereaux Sr., "then and now, an academic opportunist," has always been a high-profile professor and a low-profile parent.

    Though Hank tries to apply William of Occam's rational approach (choose simplicity) to each increasingly absurd situation, and even has a dog named after the philosopher, he does seem to cause most of his own enormous difficulties. Not least when he grabs a goose and threatens to off a duck (sic) a day until he gets his budget. The fact that he is also wearing a fake nose and glasses and doing so in front of a TV camera complicates matters even further. Hank tries to explain to one class that comedy and tragedy don't go together, but finds the argument "runs contrary to their experience. Indeed it may run contrary to my own." It runs decidedly against Richard Russo's approach in Straight Man, and the result is a hilarious and touching novel. [via]

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  • Studs Lonigan
    by James T. Farrell, Charles Fanning
    ISBN 0613175395 (0-613-17539-5)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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  • McCarthy, Cormac: Suttree
    Suttree
    by Cormac McCarthy
    ISBN 067964265X (0-679-64265-X)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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  • Thief of Time
    by Terry Pratchett
    ISBN 0613572874 (0-613-57287-4)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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    Book summary:

    If you were helpless with laughter over Shanghai Noon, enjoy satirical British humor and terrible puns, or just need your Pratchett fix, grab this book. Unfamiliar with Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series? It's time to discover one of the funniest, most literate, and most thought-provoking authors writing today.

    The Monks of History live in a Tibetan sort of area known as "enlightenment country." Their job: "to see that tomorrow happens at all." A mysterious Lady wants time-obsessed Jeremy Clockson to build a totally accurate glass clock. It will trap time and stop it, eliminating humanity's irritating unpredictability. This would make the Auditors, who observe the universe and enforce the rules governing it, very happy. It would also put Death out of a job, which the Grim Reaper isn't happy about. Fortunately, the History Monks have encountered this situation before; in fact, Lu Tze, the Sweeper, has personally dealt with it before. Even better, he has a new, gifted apprentice, Lobsang Ludd, the "thief of time." This time, they'll stop trouble before it can start! To add chaos to the mix, there's the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse--the one who quit before they became famous.

    Although there are 25 other Discworld novels and many of the characters appeared first in previous books, you don't need to have read even one to enjoy The Thief of Time. (If you're the sort of reader who hates to miss any references, you might want to track down a copy of The Discworld Companion.) As a bonus, this book is a painless introduction to what quantum physics says about the nature of time. --Nona Vero [via]

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  • The Three Musketeers: Being the First of the D'artagnan Romances; and Twenty Years After, a Sequel
    by Alexandre Dumas, Richard Pevear
    ISBN 0670037796 (0-670-03779-6)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    "We read The Three Musketeers to experience a sense of romance and for the sheer excitement of the story," reflected Clifton Fadiman. "In these violent pages all is action, intrigue, suspense, surprise--an almost endless chain of duels, murders, love affairs, unmaskings, ambushes, hairbreadth escapes, wild rides. It is all impossible and it is all magnificent."
            First published in 1844, Alexandre Dumas's swashbuckling epic chronicles the adventures of D'Artagnan, a gallant young nobleman who journeys to Paris in 1625 hoping to join the ranks of musketeers guarding Louis XIII. He soon finds himself fighting alongside three
    heroic comrades--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis--who seek to uphold the honor of the king by foiling the wicked plots of Cardinal Richelieu and the beautiful spy "Milady."
            "Dumas will be read a hundred, nay, three hundred years on," wrote John Galsworthy. "His greatest creation is undoubtedly D'Artagnan, type at once of the fighting adventurer and of the trusty servant, whose wily blade is ever at the back of those whose hearts have neither his magnanimity nor his courage. Few, if any, characters in fiction inspire one with such belief in their
    individual existences. . . . To one who made D'Artagnan all shall be forgiven." Clifton Fadiman agreed: "Dumas enjoyed writing his stories. . . . The pleasure he must have felt in
    creating D'Artagnan's troubles and triumphs
    flashes out of these pages. . . . Dumas rampaged through the history of France, inventing, changing, distorting--doing whatever was needed to produce a tale to hold the reader breathless." [via]

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  • Time Regained/a Guide to Proust
    by Marcel Proust, Andreas Mayor, D.J. Enright, Joanna Kilmartin, Terence Kilmartin
    ISBN 0679424768 (0-679-42476-8)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    In this, the final volume of Remembrance of Things Past, as the various threads which have emerged through the vast novel are brought together, and sometimes resolved, Marcel considers the nature of time and its effect on himself and the people has has known. "For after death time leaves the body, and memories - indifferent and pale - are obliterated in her who exists no longer and soon will be in him they still torture, memories which perish with the desire of the living body." [via]

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  • The Unconsoled
    by Kazuo Ishiguro
    ISBN 0679404252 (0-679-40425-2)
    Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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    From the universally acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day comes a mesmerizing novel of completely unexpected mood and matter--a seamless, fictional universe, both wholly unrecognizable and familiar. When the public, day-to-day reality of a renowned pianist takes on a life of its own, he finds himself traversing landscapes that are by turns eerie, comical, and strangely malleable. [via]

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  • Villette: Library Edition
    by Charlotte Bronte
    ISBN 0679409882 (0-679-40988-2)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

    Left by harrowing circumstances to fend for herself in the great capital of a foreign country, Lucy Snowe, the narrator and heroine of Villette, achieves by degrees an authentic independence from both outer necessity and inward grief. Charlotte Brontë's last novel, published in 1853, has a dramatic force comparable to that of her other masterpiece, Jane Eyre, as well as strikingly modern psychological insight and a revolutionary understanding of human loneliness. With an introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallet. [via]

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  • The Virgin Suicides
    by Jeffrey Eugenides
    ISBN 061328125X (0-613-28125-X)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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    THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Eugenides, Jeffrey Juxtaposing the common with the gothic, and the humorous with the tragic, the author creates a vivid and compelling portrait of youth and lost innocence. The sensational, b [via]

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  • War and Remembrance
    by Herman Wouk
    ISBN 0671672886 (0-671-67288-6)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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    Book summary:

    Book [via]

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  • James, Henry: Washington Square
    Washington Square
    by Henry James, Elizabeth Hardwick, Library of American Art Staff
    ISBN 0679732292 (0-679-73229-2)
    Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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    "Washington Square is perhaps the only novel in which a man has successfully invaded the feminine field and produced work comparable to Jane Austen's," said Graham Greene.
        Inspired by a story Henry James heard at a dinner party, Washington Square tells how the rakish but idle Morris Townsend tries to win the heart of heiress Catherine Sloper against the objections of her father. Precise and understated, the book endures as a matchless social study of New York in the mid-nineteenth century.
       The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with afford-
    able hardbound editions of impor-
    tant works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-
    fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring
    as its emblem the running torch-
    bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-
    gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices. [via]

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  • Thomas, D. M.: The White Hotel
    The White Hotel
    by D. M. Thomas
    ISBN 0671725203 (0-671-72520-3)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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