Surreal: books tagged “surreal” (15/21) @ BookFinder.com

ISBN 9780606160087 (0-606-16008-6, 0606160086)

2001 A Space Odyssey

by Arthur C. Clarke

ISBN 0606160086 (0-606-16008-6)
Hardcover, Demco Media

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Book summary:

When an enigmatic monolith is found buried on the moon, scientists are amazed to discover that it's at least 3 million years old. Even more amazing, after it's unearthed the artifact releases a powerful signal aimed at Saturn. What sort of alarm has been triggered? To find out, a manned spacecraft, the Discovery, is sent to investigate. Its crew is highly trained--the best--and they are assisted by a self-aware computer, the ultra-capable HAL 9000. But HAL's programming has been patterned after the human mind a little too well. He is capable of guilt, neurosis, even murder, and he controls every single one of Discovery's components. The crew must overthrow this digital psychotic if they hope to make their rendezvous with the entities that are responsible not just for the monolith, but maybe even for human civilization.

Clarke wrote this novel while Stanley Kubrick created the film, the two collaborating on both projects. The novel is much more detailed and intimate, and definitely easier to comprehend. Even though history has disproved its "predictions," it's still loaded with exciting and awe-inspiring science fiction. --Brooks Peck [via]

More editions of 2001 A Space Odyssey:

2001 A Space Odyssey: ISBN 0606160086 (0-606-16008-6)
Hardcover, Demco Media

ISBN 9780582461369 (0-582-46136-7, 0582461367)

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2001 Space Odyssey

ISBN 0582461367 (0-582-46136-7)
Softcover, Prentice Hall

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When an enigmatic monolith is found buried on the moon, scientists are amazed to discover that it's at least 3 million years old. Even more amazing, after it's unearthed the artifact releases a powerful signal aimed at Saturn. What sort of alarm has been triggered? To find out, a manned spacecraft, the Discovery, is sent to investigate. Its crew is highly trained--the best--and they are assisted by a self-aware computer, the ultra-capable HAL 9000. But HAL's programming has been patterned after the human mind a little too well. He is capable of guilt, neurosis, even murder, and he controls every single one of Discovery's components. The crew must overthrow this digital psychotic if they hope to make their rendezvous with the entities that are responsible not just for the monolith, but maybe even for human civilization.

Clarke wrote this novel while Stanley Kubrick created the film, the two collaborating on both projects. The novel is much more detailed and intimate, and definitely easier to comprehend. Even though history has disproved its "predictions," it's still loaded with exciting and awe-inspiring science fiction. --Brooks Peck [via]

More editions of 2001 Space Odyssey:

2001 Space Odyssey: ISBN 0582461367 (0-582-46136-7)
Softcover, Prentice Hall

ISBN 9780679759287 (0-679-75928-X, 067975928X)

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All in the Timing: Fourteen Plays

by David Ives

ISBN 067975928X (0-679-75928-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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The world according to David Ives is a very add place, and his plays constitute a virtual stress test of the English language -- and of the audience's capacity for disorientation and delight. Ives's characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias," where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet. And a con man peddles courses in a dubious language in which "hello" translates as "velcro" and "fraud" comes out as "freud."

At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this original paperback edition of Ives's plays includes "Sure Thing," "Words, Words, Words," "The Universal Language," "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," "The Philadelphia," "Long Ago and Far Away," "Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue," "Seven Menus," "Mere Mortals," "English Made Simple," "A Singular Kinda Guy," "Speed-the-Play," "Ancient History," and "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread." [via]

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All in the Timing: Fourteen Plays: ISBN 067975928X (0-679-75928-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc

ISBN 9780613719278 (0-613-71927-1, 0613719271)

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The Amber Spyglass

by Philip Pullman

ISBN 0613719271 (0-613-71927-1)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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From the very start of its very first scene, The Amber Spyglass will set hearts fluttering and minds racing. All we'll say here is that we immediately discover who captured Lyra at the end of The Subtle Knife, though we've yet to discern whether this individual's intent is good, evil, or somewhere in between. We also learn that Will still possesses the blade that allows him to cut between worlds, and has been joined by two winged companions who are determined to escort him to Lord Asriel's mountain redoubt. The boy, however, has only one goal in mind--to rescue his friend and return to her the alethiometer, an instrument that has revealed so much to her and to readers of The Golden Compass and its follow-up. Within a short time, too, we get to experience the "tingle of the starlight" on Serafina Pekkala's skin as she seeks out a famished Iorek Byrnison and enlists him in Lord Asriel's crusade:

A complex web of thoughts was weaving itself in the bear king's mind, with more strands in it than hunger and satisfaction. There was the memory of the little girl Lyra, whom he had named Silvertongue, and whom he had last seen crossing the fragile snow bridge across a crevasse in his own island of Svalbard. Then there was the agitation among the witches, the rumors of pacts and alliances and war; and then there was the surpassingly strange fact of this new world itself, and the witch's insistence that there were many more such worlds, and that the fate of them all hung somehow on the fate of the child.

Meanwhile, two factions of the Church are vying to reach Lyra first. One is even prepared to give a priest "preemptive absolution" should he succeed in committing mortal sin. For these tyrants, killing this girl is no less than "a sacred task."

In the final installment of his trilogy, Philip Pullman has set himself the highest hurdles. He must match its predecessors in terms of sheer action and originality and resolve the enigmas he already created. The good news is that there is no critical bad news--not that The Amber Spyglass doesn't contain standoffs and close calls galore. (Who would have it otherwise?) But Pullman brings his audacious revision of Paradise Lost to a conclusion that is both serene and devastating. In prose that is transparent yet lyrical and 3-D, the author weaves in and out of his principals' thoughts. He also offers up several additional worlds. In one, Dr. Mary Malone is welcomed into an apparently simple society. The environment of the mulefa (again, we'll reveal nothing more) makes them rich in consciousness while their lives possess a slow and stately rhythm. These strange creatures can, however, be very fast on their feet (or on other things entirely) when necessary. Alas, they are on the verge of dying as Dust streams out of their idyllic landscape. Will the Oxford dark-matter researcher see her way to saving them, or does this require our young heroes? And while Mary is puzzling out a cure, Will and Lyra undertake a pilgrimage to a realm devoid of all light and hope, after having been forced into the cruelest of sacrifices--or betrayals.

Throughout his galvanizing epic, Pullman sustains scenes of fierce beauty and tenderness. He also allows us a moment or two of comic respite. At one point, for instance, Lyra's mother bullies a series of ecclesiastical underlings: "The man bowed helplessly and led her away. The guard behind her blew out his cheeks with relief." Needless to say, Mrs. Coulter is as intoxicating and fluid as ever. And can it be that we will come to admire her as she plays out her desperate endgame? In this respect, as in many others, The Amber Spyglass is truly a book of revelations, moving from darkness visible to radiant truth. --Kerry Fried [via]

More editions of The Amber Spyglass:

The Amber Spyglass: ISBN 0613719271 (0-613-71927-1)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

ISBN 9780679735779 (0-679-73577-1, 0679735771)

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American Psycho

by Bret Easton Ellis

ISBN 0679735771 (0-679-73577-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Now a major motion picture from Lion's Gate Films starring Christian Bale (Metroland), Chloe Sevigny (The Last Days of Disco), Jared Leto (My So Called Life), and Reese Witherspoon (Cruel Intentions), and directed by Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol).

In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront. [via]

More editions of American Psycho:

American Psycho: ISBN 0679735771 (0-679-73577-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc

Amrita

by Banana Yoshimoto, Russell F. Wasden

ISBN 0671532855 (0-671-53285-5)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Amrita: ISBN 0671532855 (0-671-53285-5)
Softcover, Pocket Books

ISBN 9780590479899 (0-590-47989-X, 059047989X)

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Bamboozled

by David Legge

ISBN 059047989X (0-590-47989-X)
Hardcover, Scholastic

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Book summary:

A young girl visits her eccentric grandfather's house where tea is always served in flower pots and cleaning house means mowing the rug. [via]

More editions of Bamboozled:

Bamboozled: ISBN 059047989X (0-590-47989-X)
Hardcover, Scholastic

Basic Kafka

by Franz Kafka, Erich Heller

ISBN 067153145X (0-671-53145-X)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Book summary:

Published together for the first time are selections from all Kafka's writings: The Metamorphosis, Josephine The Singer, plus his short stories, parables, and his personal diaries and letters. [via]

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British Summertime

by Paul Cornell

ISBN 0575074043 (0-575-07404-3)
Softcover, Victor Gollancz

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British Summertime: ISBN 0575074043 (0-575-07404-3)
Softcover, Victor Gollancz

ISBN 9780679437222 (0-679-43722-3, 0679437223)

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Catch-22

by Joseph Heller

ISBN 0679437223 (0-679-43722-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:

There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian, the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. Again and again, Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what is sensible, is nonsense.

Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. It's a good thing, too. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority, Catch-22 will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. It's an utterly serious and sad, but damn funny book. [via]

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ISBN 9780679810292 (0-679-81029-3, 0679810293)

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Changes

by Anthony Browne

ISBN 0679810293 (0-679-81029-3)
Hardcover, Random House Children's Books

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As he waits at home for his parents to return, a young boy ponders his father's remark "Things are going to change around here" and begins to imagine all kinds of changes in the world around him. [via]

More editions of Changes:

Changes: ISBN 0679810293 (0-679-81029-3)
Hardcover, Random House Children's Books

Civil War Land in Bad Decline : Stories and a Novella

by George Saunders

ISBN 0679448128 (0-679-44812-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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Civil War Land in Bad Decline : Stories and a Novella: ISBN 0679448128 (0-679-44812-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

ISBN 9780679741145 (0-679-74114-3, 0679741143)

Confessions of a Crap Artist-Jack Isidore

by Philip K. Dick

ISBN 0679741143 (0-679-74114-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Confessions of a Crap Artist-Jack Isidore: ISBN 0679741143 (0-679-74114-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc

ISBN 9780671442132 (0-671-44213-9, 0671442139)

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Confessions of a Crap Artists

by Philip Dick

ISBN 0671442139 (0-671-44213-9)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Book summary:

Jack Isidore is a 'crap artist', a collector of crackpot ideas and worthless objects. His beliefs make him a man apparently unsuited for real life and so his sister, an edgy and aggressive woman, and his brother-in-law, a crass and foul-mouthed businessman, feel compelled to rescue him from it. But, observed through Jack's murderously innocent gaze, Fay and Charley Hume are seen to be just as obsessed as Jack. Their obsessions may be a little more acceptable than Jack's but they are uglier. And, in the end and thanks to Jack's intervention, theirs lead to tragedy . . . [via]

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Confessions of a Crap Artists: ISBN 0671442139 (0-671-44213-9)
Softcover, Pocket Books

ISBN 9780613673228 (0-613-67322-0, 0613673220)

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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]

More editions of Coraline:

Coraline: ISBN 0613673220 (0-613-67322-0)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

ISBN 9780586089538 (0-586-08953-5, 0586089535)

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The Dalkey Archive

by Flann O'Brien

ISBN 0586089535 (0-586-08953-5)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr

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Considered by the author to be almost a work of science fiction, the book includes among its "characters" St Augustine, James Joyce and a man who is in danger of turning into a bicycle. There is also the first published portrait of the mad scientist, who was later to achieve fame as de Selby. [via]

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The Dalkey Archive: ISBN 0586089535 (0-586-08953-5)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr

Dangerous Angels

by Francesca Lia Block

ISBN 0613114647 (0-613-11464-7)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Dangerous Angels: ISBN 0613114647 (0-613-11464-7)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

Dangerous Angels the Weetzie Bat Books

by Francesca Lia Block

ISBN 060616975X (0-606-16975-X)
Hardcover, Demco Media

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Dangerous Angels the Weetzie Bat Books: ISBN 060616975X (0-606-16975-X)
Hardcover, Demco Media

The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish

by Neil Gaiman

ISBN 0613789369 (0-613-78936-9)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish: ISBN 0613789369 (0-613-78936-9)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

Days Between Stations

by Steve Erickson

ISBN 0671532758 (0-671-53275-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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Days Between Stations: ISBN 0671532758 (0-671-53275-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

ISBN 9780679724612 (0-679-72461-3, 0679724613)

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Dictionary of the Khazars

by Milorad Pavic, Christina Pribicevic-Zoric

ISBN 0679724613 (0-679-72461-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:

A national bestseller, Dictionary of the Khazars was cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of the year. Written in two versions, male and female (both available in Vintage International), which are identical save for seventeen crucial lines, Dictionary is the imaginary book of knowledge of the Khazars, a people who flourished somewhere beyond Transylvania between the seventh and ninth centuries. Eschewing conventional narrative and plot, this lexicon novel combines the dictionaries of the world's three major religions with entries that leap between past and future, featuring three unruly wise men, a book printed in poison ink, suicide by mirrors, a chimerical princess, a sect of priests who can infiltrate one's dreams, romances between the living and the dead, and much more. [via]

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Dummyland: Book Three of the Accomplice Series

by Steve Aylett

ISBN 0575074108 (0-575-07410-8)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square

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Dummyland: Book Three of the Accomplice Series: ISBN 0575074108 (0-575-07410-8)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square

Einstein's Dreams

by Alan Lightman

ISBN 0679416463 (0-679-41646-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

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Einstein's Dreams: ISBN 0679416463 (0-679-41646-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

Falconer

by John Cheever

ISBN 0679737863 (0-679-73786-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Falconer: ISBN 0679737863 (0-679-73786-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc

ISBN 9780679740667 (0-679-74066-X, 067974066X)

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Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

by Philip K. Dick

ISBN 067974066X (0-679-74066-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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>On October 11 the television star Jason Taverner is so famous that 30 million viewers eagerly watch his prime-time show. On October 12 Jason Taverner is not a has-been but a never-was -- a man who has lost not only his audience but all proof of his existence. And in the claustrophobic betrayal state of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, loss of proof is synonyms with loss of life.

Taverner races to solve the riddle of his disappearance", immerses us in a horribly plausible Philip K. Dick United States in which everyone -- from a waiflike forger of identity cards to a surgically altered pleasure -- informs on everyone else, a world in which omniscient police have something to hide. His bleakly beautiful novel bores into the deepest bedrock self and plants a stick of dynamite at its center. [via]

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Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said: ISBN 067974066X (0-679-74066-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc

Gerald's Party

by Robert Coover

ISBN 0671606557 (0-671-60655-7)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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Gerald's Party: ISBN 0671606557 (0-671-60655-7)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

Girl Goddess

by Francesca Lia Block

ISBN 0606129448 (0-606-12944-8)
Hardcover, Demco Media

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Girl Goddess: ISBN 0606129448 (0-606-12944-8)
Hardcover, Demco Media

ISBN 9780679879244 (0-679-87924-2, 0679879242)

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Golden Compass

by Philip Pullman

ISBN 0679879242 (0-679-87924-2)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books

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Book summary:

Some books improve with age--the age of the reader, that is. Such is certainly the case with Philip Pullman's heroic, at times heart-wrenching novel, The Golden Compass, a story ostensibly for children but one perhaps even better appreciated by adults. The protagonist of this complex fantasy is young Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Oxford University. But it quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own--nor is her world. For one thing, people there each have a personal daemon, the manifestation of their soul in animal form. For another, hers is a universe in which science, theology, and magic are closely allied:

As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had daemons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them.

Not that Lyra spends much time worrying about it; what she likes best is "clambering over the College roofs with Roger the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war." But Lyra's carefree existence changes forever when she and her daemon, Pantalaimon, first prevent an assassination attempt against her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, and then overhear a secret discussion about a mysterious entity known as Dust. Soon she and Pan are swept up in a dangerous game involving disappearing children, a beautiful woman with a golden monkey daemon, a trip to the far north, and a set of allies ranging from "gyptians" to witches to an armor-clad polar bear.

In The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman has written a masterpiece that transcends genre. It is a children's book that will appeal to adults, a fantasy novel that will charm even the most hardened realist. Best of all, the author doesn't speak down to his audience, nor does he pull his punches; there is genuine terror in this book, and heartbreak, betrayal, and loss. There is also love, loyalty, and an abiding morality that infuses the story but never overwhelms it. This is one of those rare novels that one wishes would never end. Fortunately, its sequel, The Subtle Knife, will help put off that inevitability for a while longer. --Alix Wilber [via]

More editions of Golden Compass:

ISBN 9780670348329 (0-670-34832-5, 0670348325)

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Gravity's Rainbow

by Thomas Pynchon

ISBN 0670348325 (0-670-34832-5)
Hardcover, Viking Press

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Book summary:

Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem. Whenever he gets an erection, a Blitz bomb hits. Slothrop gets excited, and then (as Thomas Pynchon puts it in his sinister, insinuatingly sibilant opening sentence), "a screaming comes across the sky," heralding an angel of death, a V-2 rocket. The novel's title, Gravity's Rainbow, refers to the rocket's vapor arc, a cruel dark parody of what God sent Noah to symbolize his promise never to destroy humanity again. History has been a big trick: the plan is to switch from floods to obliterating fire from the sky.

Slothrop's father was an unwitting part of the cosmic doublecross. To provide for the boy's future Harvard education, he took cash from the mad German scientist Laszlo Jamf, who performed Pavlovian experiments on the infant Tyrone. Laszlo invented Imipolex G, a new plastic useful in rocket insulation, and conditioned Tyrone's privates to respond to its presence. Now the grown-up Tyrone helplessly senses the Imipolex G in incoming V-2s, and his military superiors are investigating him. Soon he is on the run from legions of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric horrors of Germany.

That's just the Imipolex G tip of the shrieking vehicle that is Pynchon's book. It's pretty much impossible to follow a standard plot; one must have faith that each manic episode is connected with the great plot to blow up the world with the ultimate rocket. There is not one story, but a proliferation of characters (Pirate Prentice, Teddy Bloat, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, Saure Bummer, and more) and events that tantalize the reader with suggestions of vast patterns only just past our comprehension. You will enjoy Pynchon's cartoon inferno far more if you consult Steven Weisenburger's brief companion to the novel, which sorts out Pynchon's blizzard of references to science, history, high culture, and the lowest of jokes. Rest easy: there really is a simple reason why Kekulé von Stradonitz's dream about a serpent biting its tail (which solved the structure of the benzene molecule) belongs in the same novel as the comic-book-hero Plastic Man.

Pynchon doesn't want you to rest easy with solved mysteries, though. Gravity's Rainbow uses beautiful prose to induce an altered state of consciousness, a buzz. It's a trip, and it will last. --Tim Appelo [via]

More editions of Gravity's Rainbow:

Gravity's Rainbow: ISBN 0670348325 (0-670-34832-5)
Hardcover, Viking Press

ISBN 9780679601289 (0-679-60128-7, 0679601287)

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Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

by Herbert A. Wise, Phyllis Cerf Wagner

ISBN 0679601287 (0-679-60128-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:

This bargain of a book is a thick hardcover anthology--more than 1,000 pages long--containing stories of naturalistic and supernatural terror. First published in 1944, it has stood the test of time and become a classic in the field. Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural is rivaled only by David G. Hartwell's The Dark Descent as the essential horror anthology. Fortunately, there's little overlap: of the 52 tales in this anthology, only 5 are duplicated in The Dark Descent. Included here are such memorable stories as W.W. Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw"; Saki's "Sredni Vashtar" and "The Open Window"; Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game"; Conrad Aiken's "Silent Snow, Secret Snow"; Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan"; along with gems by E.F. Benson, H.G. Wells, Ambrose Bierce, Rudyard Kipling, Walter de la Mare, M.R. James, Guy de Maupassant, and O. Henry. [via]

More editions of Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural:

Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural: ISBN 0679601287 (0-679-60128-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

Harold and the Purple Crayon

by Crockett Johnson

ISBN 0590339427 (0-590-33942-7)
Softcover, Scholastic Paperbacks

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Harold and the Purple Crayon: ISBN 0590339427 (0-590-33942-7)
Softcover, Scholastic Paperbacks

ISBN 9780575074019 (0-575-07401-9, 0575074019)

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The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse

by Robert Rankin

ISBN 0575074019 (0-575-07401-9)
Softcover, Victor Gollancz

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Book summary:

In Robert Rankin's latest warped fantasy, a serial killer is murdering notable nursery-rhyme characters and leaving very special sweeties as calling cards at the scene of each crime: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse.

Humpty Dumpty is the first of Toy City's upper crust to sleep with the fishes. Boiled alive in his own swimming pool. A nasty fate, but maybe not as nasty as Little Boy Blue's, with his own shepherd's crook thrust a long way into a place where the sun does not shine.

Bill Winkie the P.I. has gone missing, and his hard-drinking teddybear sidekick Eddie takes up the case. Down these mean streets a bear must go. He needs a hand, though--two hands, owing to a lack of opposable thumbs--and reluctantly teams up with "gormster" country boy Jack, who foolishly thinks he can make his fortune in Toy City.

Of course the police, jolly bouncy rubber policemen who are sadistic at heart, object to interfering freelances. So does the mystery assassin, who seems to be a curvaceous woman in a kinky rubber outfit--death on high heels. Even kindly old Mother Goose, madame of the Toy City brothel, gets her neck wrung before she can talk, and Eddie is in serious danger of losing his very stuffing.

Fast, demented, fairytale-noir action, filled with gruesomely silly deaths, self-referential thriller gags, and the true meanings of those nursery rhymes whose royalties made Humpty and the rest so rich.

Robert Rankin is fond of introducing peculiar, repeated figures of speech, and this book's is the Maddeningly Incomplete Simile. Like this: Hollow Chocolate Bunnies is as good as. It's as weird as. It's as deeply bonkers as. In short, it's as Rankin as.--David Langford [via]

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Homo Zapiens

by Victor Pelevin, Andrew Bromfield

ISBN 067003066X (0-670-03066-X)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Homo Zapiens: ISBN 067003066X (0-670-03066-X)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780613027656 (0-613-02765-5, 0613027655)

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House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende, Magda Bogin

ISBN 0613027655 (0-613-02765-5)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:

We begin - at the turn of the century, in an unnamed South American country - in the childhood home of the woman who will be the mother and grandmother of the clan, Clara del Valle. A warm-hearted, hypersensitive girl, Clara has distinguished herself from an early age with her telepathic abilities - she can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, the fabled Rosa the Beautiful, Clara has been mute for nine years, resisting all attempts to make her speak. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon. Her husband-to-be is Esteban Trueba, a stern, willful man, given to fits of rage and haunted by a profound loneliness. At the age of thirty-five, he has returned to the capital from his country estate to visit his dying mother and to find a wife. (He was Rosa's fiance, and her death has marked him as deeply as it has Clara.) This is the man Clara has foreseen - has summoned - to be her husband; Esteban, in turn, will conceive a passion for Clara that will last the rest of his long and rancorous life. We go with this couple as they move into the extravagant house he builds for her, a structure that everyone calls "the big house on the corner," which is soon populated with Clara's spiritualist friends, the artists she sponsors, the charity cases she takes an interest in, with Esteban's political cronies, and, above all, with the Trueba children: Blanca, a practical, self-effacing girl who will, to the fury of her father, form a lifelong liaison with the son of his foreman, and the twins, Jaime and Nicolas, the former a solitary, taciturn boy who becomes a doctor to the poor and unfortunate; the latter a playboy, a dabbler in Eastern religions and mystical disciplines and, in the third generation, the child Alba, Blanca's daughter (the family does not recognize the real father for years, so great is Esteban's anger), a child who is fondled and indulged and instructed by them all. For all their good fortune, their natural (and supernatural) talents, and their powerful attachments to one another, the inhabitants of "the big house on the corner" are not immune to the larger forces of the world. And, as the twentieth century beats on, as Esteban becomes more strident in his opposition to Communism, as Jaime becomes the friend and confidant of the Socialist leader known as the Candidate, as Alba falls in love with a student radical, the Truebas become actors - and victims - in a tragic series of events that gives The House of the Spirits a deeper resonance and meaning. [via]

More editions of House of the Spirits:

ISBN 9780613285292 (0-613-28529-8, 0613285298)

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I Was a Teenage Fairy

by Francesca Lia Block

ISBN 0613285298 (0-613-28529-8)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:

Once upon a time, in the bubble-gum-snapping, glitter polish-wearing, lip-gloss-applying San Fernando Valley, a gentle girl named Barbie met a feisty fairy named Mab: "Maybe Mab was real. Maybe there really are girls the size of pinkies with hair the color of the darkest red oleander blossoms and skin like the greenish-white underbellies of calla lilies.... But it doesn't matter if Mab is real or imagined, Barbie thought, as long as I can see her." Mab, with her crabby commentary and no-holds-barred opinions, gives Barbie the strength she needs to face the horrors casting a shadow over her life in sunny, shimmering California. How else could Barbie survive her over-perfumed, over-tanned, overbearing stage mother, dragging her daughter to modeling agencies in the gold-plated hope of reliving her younger days as a beauty queen? Or the "cadaver-pale skin" and "fleshy mouth" of Hamilton Waverly, the "crocodile pedophile" photographer who makes Barbie feel "like the doll she had been named for, without even a hole where her mouth was supposed to be"? Mab glimmers and gabs by Barbie's side throughout her teen years as she becomes a successful fashion model, falls in love, and endures all the troubles that come along for the ride--in addition to facing the black secret of her past.

Francesca Lia Block, author of the magical Weetzie Bat books that are collected in Dangerous Angels, and the empowering, punchy Girl Goddess #9, has once again crafted a mystical tale whose ethereal, original language will wrap readers in its gossamer grip. Block carries us to the weeping heart of despair, but would never be so cruel as to leave us there: Barbie gets a new, skyward-gazing name, Selena Moon, and readers get a glimmersome vision of living happily ever after. (Ages 13 and older) --Brangien Davis [via]

More editions of I Was a Teenage Fairy:

I Was a Teenage Fairy: ISBN 0613285298 (0-613-28529-8)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

ISBN 9780671670559 (0-671-67055-7, 0671670557)

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Inferno

by Larry Niven

ISBN 0671670557 (0-671-67055-7)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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After being thrown out the window of his luxury apartment, science fiction writer Allen Carpentier wakes to find himself at the gates of hell. Feeling he's landed in a great opportunity for a book, he attempts to follow Dante's road map. Determined to meet Satan himself, Carpentier treks through the Nine Layers of Hell led by Benito Mussolini, and encounters countless mental and physical tortures. As he struggles to escape, he's taken through new, puzzling, and outlandish versions of sin--recast for the present day.

[via]

More editions of Inferno:

Inferno: ISBN 0671670557 (0-671-67055-7)
Softcover, Pocket Books

ISBN 9780679732761 (0-679-73276-4, 0679732764)

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Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

ISBN 0679732764 (0-679-73276-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:

A classic from the moment it first appeared in 1952, The Invisible Man chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness. Searching for a context in which to know himself, he exists in a very peculiar state. "I am an invisible man," he says in his prologue, "When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me." But this is hard-won self-knowledge, earned over the course of many years.

As the book gets started, the narrator is expelled from his Southern Negro college for inadvertently showing a white trustee the reality of black life in the south, including an incestuous farmer and a rural whorehouse. The college director chastises him: "Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of an education are you getting around here?" Mystified, the narrator moves north to New York City, where the truth, at least as he perceives it, is dealt another blow when he learns that his former headmaster's recommendation letters are, in fact, letters of condemnation.

What ensues is a search for what truth actually is, which proves to be supremely elusive. The narrator becomes a spokesman for a mixed-race band of social activists called "The Brotherhood" and believes he is fighting for equality. Once again, he realises he's been duped into believing what hethought was the truth, when in fact it is only another variation. Of the Brothers, he eventually discerns: "They were blind, bat blind, moving only by the echoed sounds of their voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves.... Here I thought they accepted me because they felt that colour made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either colour or men".

Invisible Man is certainly a book about race in America, andsadly enough, few of the problems it chronicles have disappeared even now. But Ellison's first novel transcends such a narrow definition. It's also a book about the human race stumbling down the path to identity, challenged and successful to varying degrees. None of us can ever be sure of the truth beyond ourselves, and possibly not even there. The world isa tricky place, and no one knows this better than the invisible man, who leaves us with these chilling, provocative words: "And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" --Melanie Rehak, Amazon.com [via]

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A Journey to the Center of the Earth

by Jules Verne

ISBN 0590085522 (0-590-08552-2)
Softcover, Scholastic Paperbacks

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Journey to the Center of the Earth

by Billy Aronson

ISBN 0613052846 (0-613-05284-6)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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More editions of Journey to the Center of the Earth:

Journey to the Center of the Earth: ISBN 0613052846 (0-613-05284-6)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

ISBN 9780575070899 (0-575-07089-7, 0575070897)

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Karloff's Circus

by Steve Aylett

ISBN 0575070897 (0-575-07089-7)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square

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Book summary:

This book is a fourth trip to Accomplicethe Wonderland of a sick Alice. As an era of Accomplice history comes to a close, the Circus of the Hearts Shell transforms the town square into a venue for hellish clowning. Sweeneys forces are closing in on Barny from several directions. Will Fang be reunited with his zombie family? Will Gregor survive a boxing match with the slob demon? Damnationit takes as long as it takes.

[via]

More editions of Karloff's Circus:

Karloff's Circus: ISBN 0575070897 (0-575-07089-7)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square

Karloff's Circus: Accomplice Book 4

by Steve Aylett

ISBN 0575076259 (0-575-07625-9)
Softcover, Victor Gollancz

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Karloff's Circus: Accomplice Book 4: ISBN 0575076259 (0-575-07625-9)
Softcover, Victor Gollancz

The Land of Laughs

by Jonathan Carroll

ISBN 0670417556 (0-670-41755-6)
Hardcover, Penguin USA

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The Land of Laughs: ISBN 0670417556 (0-670-41755-6)
Hardcover, Penguin USA

Leap Year

by Steve Erickson

ISBN 0671671340 (0-671-67134-0)
Hardcover, Poseidon Press

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Leap Year: ISBN 0671671340 (0-671-67134-0)
Hardcover, Poseidon Press

ISBN 9780590541787 (0-590-54178-1, 0590541781)

Little Theme

by Philip Pullman

ISBN 0590541781 (0-590-54178-1)
Softcover, Scholastic

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This is the first in a trilogy in which a new universe has been created. A world where daemons swoop and scuttle along the streets of Oxford and London, where the mysterious Dust swirls invisibly through the air, and where one child knows secrets the adults would kill for. [via]

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Little Theme: ISBN 0590541781 (0-590-54178-1)
Softcover, Scholastic

ISBN 9780671742515 (0-671-74251-5, 0671742515)

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The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

by Douglas Adams

ISBN 0671742515 (0-671-74251-5)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Book summary:

book [via]

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ISBN 9780606309318 (0-606-30931-4, 0606309314)

The Lovely Bones

by Alice Sebold

ISBN 0606309314 (0-606-30931-4)
Hardcover, Demco Media

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The Lovely Bones: ISBN 0606309314 (0-606-30931-4)
Hardcover, Demco Media

ISBN 9780679740674 (0-679-74067-8, 0679740678)

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The Man in the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick

ISBN 0679740678 (0-679-74067-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. the few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake. [via]

More editions of The Man in the High Castle:

The Man in the High Castle: ISBN 0679740678 (0-679-74067-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc

Masks of the Illuminati

by Robert Wilson

ISBN 0671825852 (0-671-82585-2)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Masks of the Illuminati: ISBN 0671825852 (0-671-82585-2)
Softcover, Pocket Books

ISBN 9780679444626 (0-679-44462-9, 0679444629)

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Midnight's Children

by Salman Rushdie

ISBN 0679444629 (0-679-44462-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

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Anyone who has spent time in the developing world will know that one of Bombay's claims to fame is the enormous film industry that churns out hundreds of musical fantasies each year. The other, of course, is native son Salman Rushdie--less prolific, perhaps than Bollywood, but in his own way just as fantastical. Though Rushdie's novels lack the requisite six musical numbers that punctuate every Bombay talkie, they often share basic plot points with their cinematic counterparts. Take, for example, his 1980 Booker Prize-winning Midnight's Children: two children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947--the moment at which India became an independent nation--are switched in the hospital. The infant scion of a wealthy Muslim family is sent to be raised in a Hindu tenement, while the legitimate heir to such squalor ends up establishing squatters' rights to his unlucky hospital mate's luxurious bassinet. Switched babies are standard fare for a Hindi film, and one can't help but feel that Rushdie's world-view--and certainly his sense of the fantastical--has been shaped by the films of his childhood. But whereas the movies, while entertaining, are markedly mediocre, Midnight's Children is a masterpiece, brilliant written, wildly unpredictable, hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure.

Rushdie's narrator, Saleem Sinai, is the Hindu child raised by wealthy Muslims. Near the beginning of the novel, he informs us that he is falling apart--literally:

I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug--that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of an acceleration.

In light of this unfortunate physical degeneration, Saleem has decided to write his life story, and, incidentally, that of India's, before he crumbles into "(approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust." It seems that within one hour of midnight on India's independence day, 1,001 children were born. All of those children were endowed with special powers: some can travel through time, for example; one can change gender. Saleem's gift is telepathy, and it is via this power that he discovers the truth of his birth: that he is, in fact, the product of the illicit coupling of an Indian mother and an English father, and has usurped another's place. His gift also reveals the identities of all the other children and the fact that it is in his power to gather them for a "midnight parliament" to save the nation. To do so, however, would lay him open to that other child, christened Shiva, who has grown up to be a brutish killer. Saleem's dilemma plays out against the backdrop of the first years of independence: the partition of India and Pakistan, the ascendancy of "The Widow" Indira Gandhi, war, and, eventually, the imposition of martial law.

We've seen this mix of magical thinking and political reality before in the works of Günter Grass and Gabriel García Márquez. What sets Rushdie apart is his mad prose pyrotechnics, the exuberant acrobatics of rhyme and alliteration, pun, wordplay, proper and "Babu" English chasing each other across the page in a dizzying, exhilarating cataract of words. Rushdie can be laugh-out-loud funny, but make no mistake--this is an angry book, and its author's outrage lends his language wings. Midnight's Children is Salman Rushdie's irate, affectionate love song to his native land--not so different from a Bombay talkie, after all. --Alix Wilber [via]

More editions of Midnight's Children:

Midnight's Children: ISBN 0679444629 (0-679-44462-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

ISBN 9780679725169 (0-679-72516-4, 0679725164)

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No Exit and Three Other Plays

by Jean Paul Sartre

ISBN 0679725164 (0-679-72516-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:

4 plays about an existential portrayal of Hell, the reworking of the Electra-Orestes story, the conflict of a young intellectual torn between theory and conflict and an arresting attack on American racism. [via]

More editions of No Exit and Three Other Plays:

No Exit and Three Other Plays: ISBN 0679725164 (0-679-72516-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc

Observatory Mansions : A Novel

by Edward Carey

ISBN 0609606808 (0-609-60680-8)
Hardcover, Crown Publishing Group

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Observatory Mansions : A Novel: ISBN 0609606808 (0-609-60680-8)
Hardcover, Crown Publishing Group

ISBN 9780670841639 (0-670-84163-3, 0670841633)

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Ooh LA LA

by Maira Kalman

ISBN 0670841633 (0-670-84163-3)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

"I can't believe it. Me. Max Stravinsky in Paris. Picasso. Paté. The opera. Ballet. The crème de la crème. The city that gleams. That romantic, extravagantic city of dreams. Oh pluperfect Paris, just give me a chance and I'll toast your beauty, oh Paris of France." So begins Maira Kalman's boldly painted, wildly designed, linguistically playful masterpiece Ooh-la-la (Max in Love), the story of a millionaire poet dog named Max who has come to Paris from New York and is staying at a hotel run by the aromatic Madame Camembert.

Moodily meandering, he wanders through the Parisian parks and boulevards with a hangdog expression on his face. After all, c'est Paris in the spring, and love is in the air for everyone it seems, except Max. Along the way he meets an outlandish cast of characters including Fritz from the Ritz (where he quit in a snit when the chef in a fit threw escargot on his chapeau); his French tutor Charlotte Russe (who came by autobus); and Pierre Potpourri, the owner of the noise-soaked, blue-smoked Crazy Wolf Nightclub, where Max finally encounters the piano-playing Crêpes Suzette, the dog he's been waiting for his whole life. The rest is history!

This is one of our favorite picture books of all time ... and for those who are equally mad for Max the poet dog, we can also recommend the hilarious and quirky Max Makes a Million, Max in Hollywood, Baby, and Swami on Rye: Max in India. (All ages, but perhaps especially for adults with stars in their eyes or Paris in their hearts.) --Karin Snelson [via]

More editions of Ooh LA LA:

Ooh LA LA: ISBN 0670841633 (0-670-84163-3)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780613174220 (0-613-17422-4, 0613174224)

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Orlando: A Biography

by Virginia Woolf

ISBN 0613174224 (0-613-17422-4)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Orlando doubles as first an Elizabethan nobleman and then as a Victorian heroine who undergoes all the transitions of history in this novel that examines sex roles and social mores. [via]

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ISBN 9780679723424 (0-679-72342-0, 0679723420)

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Pale Fire

by Vladimir Nabokov

ISBN 0679723420 (0-679-72342-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Like Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is a masterpiece that imprisons us inside the mazelike head of a mad émigré. Yet Pale Fire is more outrageously hilarious, and its narrative convolutions make the earlier book seem as straightforward as a fairy tale. Here's the plot--listen carefully! John Shade is a homebody poet in New Wye, U.S.A. He writes a 999-line poem about his life, and what may lie beyond death. This novel (and seldom has the word seemed so woefully inadequate) consists of both that poem and an extensive commentary on it by the poet's crazy neighbor, Charles Kinbote.

According to this deranged annotator, he had urged Shade to write about his own homeland--the northern kingdom of Zembla. It soon becomes clear that this fabulous locale may well be a figment of Kinbote's colorfully cracked, prismatic imagination. Meanwhile, he manages to twist the poem into an account of Zembla's King Charles--whom he believes himself to be--and the monarch's eventual assassination by the revolutionary Jakob Gradus.

In the course of this dizzying narrative, shots are indeed fired. But it's Shade who takes the hit, enabling Kinbote to steal the dead poet's manuscript and set about annotating it. Is that perfectly clear? By now it should be obvious that Pale Fire is not only a whodunit but a who-wrote-it. There isn't, of course, a single solution. But Nabokov's best biographer, Brian Boyd, has come up with an ingenious suggestion: he argues that Shade is actually guiding Kinbote's mad hand from beyond the grave, nudging him into completing what he'd intended to be a 1,000-line poem. Read this magical, melancholic mystery and see if you agree. --Tim Appelo [via]

More editions of Pale Fire:

ISBN 9780671749606 (0-671-74960-9, 0671749609)

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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

by Patrick Suskind

ISBN 0671749609 (0-671-74960-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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Book summary:

When critics and readers caught scent of Patrick Suskind's Perfume, it became an instant New York Times bestseller in hardcover and paperback. The reviews were sensational, word-of-mouth was incredible--and now it is back in an all-new trade paperback format. "A tour de force of the imagination."--People. [via]

More editions of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer:

ISBN 9780679833703 (0-679-83370-6, 0679833706)

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The Phantom Tollbooth

by Norton Juster

ISBN 0679833706 (0-679-83370-6)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books

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Book summary:

"It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time," Milo laments. "[T]here's nothing for me to do, nowhere I'd care to go, and hardly anything worth seeing." This bored, bored young protagonist who can't see the point to anything is knocked out of his glum humdrum by the sudden and curious appearance of a tollbooth in his bedroom. Since Milo has absolutely nothing better to do, he dusts off his toy car, pays the toll, and drives through. What ensues is a journey of mythic proportions, during which Milo encounters countless odd characters who are anything but dull.

Norton Juster received (and continues to receive) enormous praise for this original, witty, and oftentimes hilarious novel, first published in 1961. In an introductory "Appreciation" written by Maurice Sendak for the 35th anniversary edition, he states, "The Phantom Tollbooth leaps, soars, and abounds in right notes all over the place, as any proper masterpiece must." Indeed.

As Milo heads toward Dictionopolis he meets with the Whether Man ("for after all it's more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be"), passes through The Doldrums (populated by Lethargarians), and picks up a watchdog named Tock (who has a giant alarm clock for a body). The brilliant satire and double entendre intensifies in the Word Market, where after a brief scuffle with Officer Short Shrift, Milo and Tock set off toward the Mountains of Ignorance to rescue the twin Princesses, Rhyme and Reason. Anyone with an appreciation for language, irony, or Alice in Wonderland-style adventure will adore this book for years on end. (Ages 8 and up) [via]

More editions of The Phantom Tollbooth:

The Phantom Tollbooth: ISBN 0679833706 (0-679-83370-6)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books

The Pigeon

by Patrick Suskind, John E. Woods

ISBN 067166770X (0-671-66770-X)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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The Pigeon: ISBN 067166770X (0-671-66770-X)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

by P. Ellison

ISBN 067100901X (0-671-00901-X)
Softcover, Monarch Notes

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Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: ISBN 067100901X (0-671-00901-X)
Softcover, Monarch Notes

The Rifles

by William T. Vollmann

ISBN 0670848565 (0-670-84856-5)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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The Rifles: ISBN 0670848565 (0-670-84856-5)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780671832049 (0-671-83204-2, 0671832042)

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Sadness

by Donald Barthelme

ISBN 0671832042 (0-671-83204-2)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Sadness: ISBN 0671832042 (0-671-83204-2)
Softcover, Pocket Books

ISBN 9780679736295 (0-679-73629-8, 0679736298)

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The Safety of Objects

by A. M. Homes

ISBN 0679736298 (0-679-73629-8)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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Book summary:

The Safety of Objects kidnaps readers into a world of emotional science fiction where reality and the surreal mix in a disturbing vision of the way we live now. As skillful as it is scary, this is a breakthrough collection that gives new meaning to the words angst, anxiety, and anorexia. [via]

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The Safety of Objects: ISBN 0679736298 (0-679-73629-8)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group

The Sea Hag

by David Drake

ISBN 0671654241 (0-671-65424-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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The Sea Hag: ISBN 0671654241 (0-671-65424-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

ISBN 9780671732493 (0-671-73249-8, 0671732498)

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A Separate Reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan

by Carlos Castaneda

ISBN 0671732498 (0-671-73249-8)
Softcover, Washington Square Pr

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Book summary:

In this book, Castaneda resumes his apprenticeship, determined to go deeper still into don Juan's world, to learn to see beyond the surface realities of life. He continues his dialogue with don Juan, intuitive, wise, demanding, and fierce in his struggle to see and know beyond the vision of ordinary men; and himself, a man of courage and intelligence who submits himself to don Juan's teaching, to enter into another world as a participant rather than an observer. A Separate Reality is a work that is at once the discovery of a hitherto unrecorded body of wisdom and knowledge and the story of a remarkable and shattering personal experience. [via]

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ISBN 9780606049276 (0-606-04927-4, 0606049274)

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Something Wicked This Way Comes

by Ray Bradbury

ISBN 0606049274 (0-606-04927-4)
Hardcover, Demco Media

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Book summary:

A masterpiece of modern Gothic literature, Something Wicked This Way Comes is the memorable story of two boys, James Nightshade and William Halloway, and the evil that grips their small Midwestern town with the arrival of a "dark carnival" one Autumn midnight. How these two innocents, both age 13, save the souls of the town (as well as their own), makes for compelling reading on timeless themes. What would you do if your secret wishes could be granted by the mysterious ringmaster Mr. Dark? Bradbury excels in revealing the dark side that exists in us all, teaching us ultimately to celebrate the shadows rather than fear them. In many ways, this is a companion piece to his joyful, nostalgia-drenched Dandelion Wine, in which Bradbury presented us with one perfect summer as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old. In Something Wicked This Way Comes, he deftly explores the fearsome delights of one perfectly terrifying, unforgettable autumn. --Stanley Wiater [via]

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Something Wicked This Way Comes: ISBN 0606049274 (0-606-04927-4)
Hardcover, Demco Media

Son of Man

by Robert Silverberg

ISBN 0575075015 (0-575-07501-5)
Softcover, Gollancz Limited, Victor

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Son of Man: ISBN 0575075015 (0-575-07501-5)
Softcover, Gollancz Limited, Victor

ISBN 9780679732242 (0-679-73224-1, 0679732241)

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The Sound and the Fury

by William Faulkner

ISBN 0679732241 (0-679-73224-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:

The ostensible subject of The Sound and the Fury is the dissolution of the Compsons, one of those august old Mississippi families that fell on hard times and wild eccentricity after the Civil War. But in fact what William Faulkner is really after in his legendary novel is the kaleidoscope of consciousness--the overwrought mind caught in the act of thought. His rich, dark, scandal-ridden story of squandered fortune, incest (in thought if not in deed), madness, congenital brain damage, theft, illegitimacy, and stoic endurance is told in the interior voices of three Compson brothers: first Benjy, the "idiot" man-child who blurs together three decades of inchoate sensations as he stalks the fringes of the family's former pasture; next Quentin, torturing himself brilliantly, obsessively over Caddy's lost virginity and his own failure to recover the family's honor as he wanders around the seedy fringes of Boston; and finally Jason, heartless, shrewd, sneaking, nursing a perpetual sense of injury and outrage against his outrageous family.

If Benjy's section is the most daringly experimental, Jason's is the most harrowing. "Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say," he begins, lacing into Caddy's illegitimate daughter, and then proceeds to hurl mud at blacks, Jews, his sacred Compson ancestors, his glamorous, promiscuous sister, his doomed brother Quentin, his ailing mother, and the long-suffering black servant Dilsey who holds the family together by sheer force of character.

Notoriously "difficult," The Sound and the Fury is actually one of Faulkner's more accessible works once you get past the abrupt, unannounced time shifts--and certainly the most powerful emotionally. Everything is here: the complex equilibrium of pre-civil rights race relations; the conflict between Yankee capitalism and Southern agrarian values; a meditation on time, consciousness, and Western philosophy. And all of it is rendered in prose so gorgeous it can take your breath away. Here, for instance, Quentin recalls an autumnal encounter back home with the old black possum hunter Uncle Louis:

And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless October, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dogs and to the echo of Louis' voice dying away. He never raised it, yet on a still night we have heard it from our front porch. When he called the dogs in he sounded just like the horn he carried slung on his shoulder and never used, but clearer, mellower, as though his voice were a part of darkness and silence, coiling out of it, coiling into it again. WhoOoooo. WhoOoooo. WhoOooooooooooooooo.

What Faulkner has created is a modernist epic in which characters assume the stature of gods and the primal family events resonate like myths. It is The Sound and the Fury that secures his place in what Edmund Wilson called "the full-dressed post-Flaubert group of Conrad, Joyce, and Proust." --David Laskin [via]

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ISBN 9780670844876 (0-670-84487-X, 067084487X)

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The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

by Jon Scieszka, Lane Smith

ISBN 067084487X (0-670-84487-X)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

The Caldecott Honor Book The Stinky Cheese Manand Other Fairly Stupid Tales has not lost one ounce of its wisecracking, cheeky humor in the past decade. In fact, the only thing about this "Deluxe Limited Special Never Before Never Again Extra Stuff 10 Year Anniversary Edition" that's different from the original is the dust jacket--but it's a very special dust jacket, as narrator Jack is quick to point out. Turn it inside out and discover the long-lost story of "The Boy Who Cried Cow Patty" and the numbers that fell off the table of contents. Open the book to be privy to John Scieszka and Lane Smith's irreverent variations on well-known fairy-tale themes, in which the ugly duckling grows up to be an ugly duck, and the princess who kisses the frog wins only a mouthful of amphibian slime. The Stinky Cheese Man deconstructs not only the tradition of the fairy tale but also the entire notion of a book. Our naughty narrator, Jack, makes a mockery of the title page, the table of contents, and even the endpaper by shuffling, scoffing, and generally paying no mind to structure. Characters slide in and out of tales; Cinderella rebuffs Rumpelstiltskin, and the Giant at the top of the beanstalk snacks on the Little Red Hen. There are no lessons to be learned or morals to take to heart--just good, sarcastic fun that smart alecks of all ages will love. (All ages) [via]

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Stories Of Eva Luna

by Isabel Allende

ISBN 0606300074 (0-606-30007-4)
Hardcover, Demco Media

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