books tagged “women”

books tagged “women”

English

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  Beloved
  

  by Toni Morrison, A. S. Byatt

  ISBN 0307264882 (0-307-26488-2)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc

  
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  Book summary:

  Toni Morrison gently reads her own Pulitzer Prize-winning work in the unabridged version of this riveting tale of ex-slave Sethe and the beloved ghost that haunts her. While Morrison makes occasional odd pauses in her reading, what is lost in smoothness is more than made up for in quiet intensity as the author reads words obviously deeply felt. Her intimate knowledge of the characters and their motivations lends this reading an authority that helps the listener sort out the breaks in time and dialogue in this complex story of a woman coming to terms with her enslaved past and the loss of her husband and baby daughter. (Running time: 12 hours, eight cassettes) --Kimberly Heinrichs [via]

  More editions of Beloved:

  • Beloved: ISBN 0140283404 (0-14-028340-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA
  • Beloved: ISBN 037540273X (0-375-40273-X)
    Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
  • Beloved: ISBN 0307264882 (0-307-26488-2)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc
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  Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women
  

  by Elizabeth Wurtzel

  ISBN 0385484011 (0-385-48401-1)
  Softcover, Random House Inc

  
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  Book summary:

  Elizabeth Wurtzel, an ex-rock critic for The New Yorker, won controversial fame with her bestselling 1994 memoir Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, which described how Prozac saved the precocious Harvard grad from suicide. Her second book, Bitch is a celebration of the defiant, rock-and-roll spirit of self-destructive women through the ages: Delilah, Amy Fisher, Princess Di, and hundreds more (including the awesomely reckless Wurtzel). There is no comprehensible central line of argument, perhaps because the author did her exhaustive research and writing on a speedy Kerouacesque drug binge that, by her own admission, sent her to rehab upon the book's conclusion. But Wurtzel has the remains of a fine mind: her insights are often sharp, sometimes bitchy, and always shameless as she zooms in a very few pages from The Oresteia to O.J. to her first crush on a fictional character Heathcliff) to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Richard Pryor, Chrissie Hynde, Leaving Las Vegas, Gone with the Wind, Sylvia Plath's "Daddy," Schindler's List, Oliver! Carousel, and Andrea Dworkin. Most pop culture pundits incline to grandiose blather, but Wurtzel is punchy, and her quotes are more often apt than pretentious. Bitch is like a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride in a library, with frequent rampages through the film and music archives. Like rock music, Wurtzel's prose style lives for the moment. She glories in breaking rules to bits, is never giddier than when she's saying something shocking, and apparently has no moral code except self-expression--with the attitude volume knob cranked up to 11. --Tim Appelo [via]

  More editions of Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women:

  • Bitch : In Praise of Difficult Women: ISBN 0385484003 (0-385-48400-3)
    Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
  • Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women: ISBN 0385484011 (0-385-48401-1)
    Softcover, Random House Inc
• 
  The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order
  

  by Debbie Stoller, Marcelle Karp

  ISBN 0140277749 (0-14-027774-9)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA

  
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  More editions of The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order:

  • The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order: ISBN 0140277749 (0-14-027774-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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  Edith Wharton
  

  by Edith Wharton

  ISBN 068100570X (0-681-00570-X)
  Softcover, Octopus Publishing Group

  
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  Book summary:

  Age of Innocence House of Mirth Ethan Frome [via]

  More editions of Edith Wharton:

  • Edith Wharton: ISBN 068100570X (0-681-00570-X)
    Softcover, Octopus Publishing Group
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  Emma Bovary
  

  by Harold Bloom

  ISBN 0791009351 (0-7910-0935-1)
  Hardcover, Facts on File

  
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  More editions of Emma Bovary:

  • Emma Bovary: ISBN 0791009351 (0-7910-0935-1)
    Hardcover, Facts on File
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  Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation
  

  by Cokie Roberts

  ISBN 0060533315 (0-06-053331-5)
  Softcover, Harpercollins

  
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  Book summary:

  Cokie Roberts's number one New York Times bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, examined the nature of women's roles throughout history and led USA Today to praise her as a "custodian of time-honored values." Her second bestseller, From This Day Forward, written with her husband, Steve Roberts, described American marriages throughout history, including the romance of John and Abigail Adams. Now Roberts returns with Founding Mothers, an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families -- and their country -- proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.

  While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history. Roberts brings us the women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, often defending their very doorsteps. While the men went off to war or to Congress, the women managed their businesses, raised their children, provided them with political advice, and made it possible for the men to do what they did. The behind-the-scenes influence of these women -- and their sometimes very public activities -- was intelligent and pervasive.

  Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of these fascinating women, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed, and Martha Washington -- proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might never have survived.

  Social history at its best, Founding Mothers unveils the drive, determination, creative insight, and passion of the other patriots, the women who raised our nation. Roberts proves beyond a doubt that like every generation of American women that has followed, the founding mothers used the unique gifts of their gender -- courage, pluck, sadness, joy, energy, grace, sensitivity, and humor -- to do what women do best, put one foot in front of the other in remarkable circumstances and carry on.

  [via]

  More editions of Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation:

  • Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation: ISBN 0060533315 (0-06-053331-5)
    Softcover, Harpercollins
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  The House of Mirth
  

  by Edith Wharton

  ISBN 1404308199 (1-4043-0819-9)
  Softcover, IndyPublish.com

  
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  Book summary:

  An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door, and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her skill to the test. [via]

  More editions of The House of Mirth:

  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 1419124684 (1-4191-2468-4)
    Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 1593081537 (1-59308-153-7)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 1840224193 (1-84022-419-3)
    Softcover, Wordsworth Editions, Limited
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 1844082938 (1-84408-293-8)
    Softcover, Virago Pr
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 1853265772 (1-85326-577-2)
    Softcover, Lb May & Assoc Inc
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 1593081049 (1-59308-104-9)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 1853811009 (1-85381-100-9)
    Softcover, Trafalgar Square
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0140187294 (0-14-018729-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0192835793 (0-19-283579-3)
    Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0312062346 (0-312-06234-6)
    Softcover, Bedford/st Martins
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0375753753 (0-375-75375-3)
    Softcover, Modern Library
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0393959015 (0-393-95901-5)
    Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0451527569 (0-451-52756-9)
    Softcover, New Amer Library Classics
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0486420493 (0-486-42049-3)
    Softcover, Dover Pubns
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0553213202 (0-553-21320-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 068480123X (0-684-80123-X)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0743217179 (0-7432-1717-9)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0679406670 (0-679-40667-0)
    Hardcover, Everymans Library
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0684146584 (0-684-14658-4)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0684842203 (0-684-84220-3)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0140390375 (0-14-039037-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Books
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0192829440 (0-19-282944-0)
    Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 042507370X (0-425-07370-X)
    Softcover, Berkley Pub Group
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0451523628 (0-451-52362-8)
    Softcover, New Amer Library Classics
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0679725393 (0-679-72539-3)
    Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0684719282 (0-684-71928-2)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 0312106335 (0-312-10633-5)
    Hardcover, Palgrave Macmillan
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 078627736X (0-7862-7736-X)
    Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 1404308199 (1-4043-0819-9)
    Softcover, IndyPublish.com
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  The House of Mirth
  

  by Janet Beer, Elizabeth Nolan

  ISBN 1551115670 (1-55111-567-0)
  Softcover, Broadview Pr

  
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  Book summary:

  "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.

  One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.

  Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak [via]

  More editions of The House of Mirth:

  • The House of Mirth: ISBN 1551115670 (1-55111-567-0)
    Softcover, Broadview Pr
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  Madame Bovary
  

  by Gustave Flaubert

  ISBN 1419131915 (1-4191-3191-5)
  Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

  
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  Book summary:

  Provided in Spanish only. [via]

  More editions of Madame Bovary:

  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 1583488138 (1-58348-813-8)
    Softcover, Iuniverse Inc
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 1593080522 (1-59308-052-2)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 1853260789 (1-85326-078-9)
    Softcover, Lb May & Assoc Inc
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 1854597752 (1-85459-775-2)
    Softcover, Theatre Communications Group
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 1404383581 (1-4043-8358-1)
    Hardcover, Indypublish.Com
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 1417618051 (1-4176-1805-1)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 1421806266 (1-4218-0626-6)
    Hardcover, 1st World Library
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 006095695X (0-06-095695-X)
    Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0075543788 (0-07-554378-8)
    Softcover, McGraw-Hill College
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0140449124 (0-14-044912-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0192840398 (0-19-284039-8)
    Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0393979172 (0-393-97917-2)
    Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0451528204 (0-451-52820-4)
    Softcover, New Amer Library Classics
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0486292576 (0-486-29257-6)
    Softcover, Dover Pubns
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0553213415 (0-553-21341-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0679736360 (0-679-73636-0)
    Softcover, Random House Inc
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0685349004 (0-685-34900-4)
    Softcover, French & European Pubns
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0883324679 (0-88332-467-9)
    Softcover, Schoenhofs Foreign Books
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0679420312 (0-679-42031-2)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0140445269 (0-14-044526-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0192815644 (0-19-281564-4)
    Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0192833995 (0-19-283399-5)
    Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0393096084 (0-393-09608-4)
    Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0394329864 (0-394-32986-4)
    Softcover, Random House Espanol
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0395052106 (0-395-05210-6)
    Softcover, Houghton Mifflin College Div
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0451523873 (0-451-52387-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0804900892 (0-8049-0089-2)
    Softcover, Airmont Pub Co
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0805502866 (0-8055-0286-6)
    Softcover, Hart Pub Co
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0192100254 (0-19-210025-4)
    Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0192805495 (0-19-280549-5)
    Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0385487193 (0-385-48719-3)
    Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0517626365 (0-517-62636-5)
    Hardcover, Random House Value Pub
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0679600132 (0-679-60013-2)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 2070368041 (2-07-036804-1)
    Softcover, Schoenhofs Foreign Books
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 2253004863 (2-253-00486-3)
    Softcover, Hachette
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 8437605881 (84-376-0588-1)
    Softcover, Catedra Ediciones
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 8441408351 (84-414-0835-1)
    Softcover, Edaf Antillas
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 9500306190 (950-03-0619-0)
    Softcover, Oceano De Mexico
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 389508252X (3-89508-252-X)
    Hardcover, Konemann
  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 1419131915 (1-4191-3191-5)
    Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co
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  Madame Bovary
  

  by Outlet Book Company Staff, Random House Value Publishing Staff

  ISBN 0517385880 (0-517-38588-0)
  Hardcover, Random House Value Publishing

  
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  More editions of Madame Bovary:

  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0517385880 (0-517-38588-0)
    Hardcover, Random House Value Publishing
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  Madame Bovary
  

  by Victor Hugo

  ISBN 0582454085 (0-582-45408-5)
  Softcover, Prentice Hall

  
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  Book summary:

  Emma Bovary is the beautiful wife of Charles Bovary and one of the great heroines of literature. Emma attempts to escape her tedious marriage by entering into romantic fantasies, but her longing for a lover has disastrous results. A portrait of French bourgeois life, Madame Bovary is a masterpiece of world literature. [via]

  More editions of Madame Bovary:

  • Madame Bovary: ISBN 0582454085 (0-582-45408-5)
    Softcover, Prentice Hall
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  A Midwife's Tale : The Life of Martha Ballard Based O
  

  by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

  ISBN 0394568443 (0-394-56844-3)
  Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group

  
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  Book summary:

  Drawing on the diaries of a midwife and healer in eighteenth-century Maine, this intimate history illuminates the medical practices, household economies, religious rivalries, and sexual mores of the New England frontier.
  
  
  From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]

  More editions of A Midwife's Tale : The Life of Martha Ballard Based O:

  • A Midwife's Tale : The Life of Martha Ballard Based O: ISBN 0394568443 (0-394-56844-3)
    Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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  A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
  

  by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

  ISBN 0679733760 (0-679-73376-0)
  Softcover, Random House Inc

  
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  Book summary:

  Drawing on the diaries of a midwife and healer in eighteenth-century Maine, this intimate history illuminates the medical practices, household economies, religious rivalries, and sexual mores of the New England frontier. [via]

  More editions of A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812:

  • A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812: ISBN 0679733760 (0-679-73376-0)
    Softcover, Random House Inc
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  My Antonia
  

  by Willa Cather, John J. Murphy, Wladyslaw T. Benda

  ISBN 0140187642 (0-14-018764-2)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA

  
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  Book summary:

  It seems almost sacrilege to infringe upon a book as soulful and rich as Willa Cather's My Ántonia by offering comment. First published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land ("not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made") comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: "I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America," and it seems almost certain that readers of Cather's masterpiece will just as easily pinpoint the first time they heard of Ántonia and her world. It seems equally certain that they, too, will remember that moment as one of great light in an otherwise unremarkable trip through the world.

  Ántonia, who, even as a grown woman somewhat downtrodden by circumstance and hard work, "had not lost the fire of life," lies at the center of almost every human condition that Cather's novel effortlessly untangles. She represents immigrant struggles with a foreign land and tongue, the restraints on women of the time (with which Cather was very much concerned), the more general desires for love, family, and companionship, and the great capacity for forbearance that marked the earliest settlers on the frontier.

  As if all this humanity weren't enough, Cather paints her descriptions of the vastness of nature--the high, red grass, the road that "ran about like a wild thing," the endless wind on the plains--with strokes so vivid as to make us feel in our bones that we've just come in from a walk on that very terrain ourselves. As the story progresses, Jim goes off to the University in Lincoln to study Latin (later moving on to Harvard and eventually staying put on the East Coast in another neat encompassing of a stage in America's development) and learns Virgil's phrase "Optima dies ... prima fugit" that Cather uses as the novel's epigraph. "The best days are the first to flee"--this could be said equally of childhood and the earliest hours of this country in which the open land, much like My Ántonia, was nothing short of a rhapsody in prairie sky blue. --Melanie Rehak [via]

  More editions of My Antonia:

  • My Antonia: ISBN 0140283277 (0-14-028327-7)
    Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
  • My Antonia: ISBN 019283200X (0-19-283200-X)
    Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
  • My Antonia: ISBN 0140187642 (0-14-018764-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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  No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
  

  by Alexander McCall Smith

  ISBN 1400031346 (1-4000-3134-6)
  Softcover, Random House Inc

  
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  Book summary:

  Penzler Pick, July 2001: Working in a mystery tradition that will cause genre aficionados to think of such classic sleuths as Melville Davisson Post's Uncle Abner or Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee, Alexander McCall Smith creates an African detective, Precious Ramotswe, who's their full-fledged heir.

  It's the detective as folk hero, solving crimes through an innate, self-possessed wisdom that, combined with an understanding of human nature, invariably penetrates into the heart of a puzzle. If Miss Marple were fat and jolly and lived in Botswana--and decided to go against any conventional notion of what an unmarried woman should do, spending the money she got from selling her late father's cattle to set up a Ladies' Detective Agency--then you have an idea of how Precious sets herself up as her country's first female detective. Once the clients start showing up on her doorstep, Precious enjoys a pleasingly successful series of cases.

  But the edge of the Kalahari is not St. Mary Mead, and the sign Precious orders, painted in brilliant colors, is anything but discreet. Pointing in the direction of the small building she had purchased to house her new business, it reads "THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY. FOR ALL CONFIDENTIAL MATTERS AND ENQUIRIES. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED FOR ALL PARTIES. UNDER PERSONAL MANAGEMENT."

  The solutions she comes up with, whether in the case of the clinic doctor with two quite different personalities (depending on the day of the week), or the man who had joined a Christian sect and seemingly vanished, or the kidnapped boy whose bones may or may not be those in a witch doctor's magic kit, are all sensible, logical, and satisfying. Smith's gently ironic tone is full of good humor towards his lively, intelligent heroine and towards her fellow Africans, who live their lives with dignity and with cautious acceptance of the confusions to which the world submits them. Precious Ramotswe is a remarkable creation, and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency well deserves the praise it received from London's Times Literary Supplement. I look forward with great eagerness to the upcoming books featuring the memorable Miss Ramotswe, Tears of the Giraffe and Morality for Beautiful Girls, soon to be available in the U.S. --Otto Penzler [via]

  More editions of No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency:

  • The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency: ISBN 1400034779 (1-4000-3477-9)
    Softcover, Random House Inc
  • No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: ISBN 140009688X (1-4000-9688-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books
  • The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: ISBN 0307261581 (0-307-26158-1)
    Softcover, Anchor Books
  • No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: ISBN 0748662529 (0-7486-6252-9)
    Softcover, Polygon
  • No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: ISBN 0864864388 (0-86486-438-8)
    Hardcover
  • No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: ISBN 1400031346 (1-4000-3134-6)
    Softcover, Random House Inc
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  The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
  

  by R. A. McCall Smith

  ISBN 0375423877 (0-375-42387-7)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc

  
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  Book summary:

  Penzler Pick, July 2001: Working in a mystery tradition that will cause genre aficionados to think of such classic sleuths as Melville Davisson Post's Uncle Abner or Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee, Alexander McCall Smith creates an African detective, Precious Ramotswe, who's their full-fledged heir.

  It's the detective as folk hero, solving crimes through an innate, self-possessed wisdom that, combined with an understanding of human nature, invariably penetrates into the heart of a puzzle. If Miss Marple were fat and jolly and lived in Botswana--and decided to go against any conventional notion of what an unmarried woman should do, spending the money she got from selling her late father's cattle to set up a Ladies' Detective Agency--then you have an idea of how Precious sets herself up as her country's first female detective. Once the clients start showing up on her doorstep, Precious enjoys a pleasingly successful series of cases.

  But the edge of the Kalahari is not St. Mary Mead, and the sign Precious orders, painted in brilliant colors, is anything but discreet. Pointing in the direction of the small building she had purchased to house her new business, it reads "THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY. FOR ALL CONFIDENTIAL MATTERS AND ENQUIRIES. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED FOR ALL PARTIES. UNDER PERSONAL MANAGEMENT."

  The solutions she comes up with, whether in the case of the clinic doctor with two quite different personalities (depending on the day of the week), or the man who had joined a Christian sect and seemingly vanished, or the kidnapped boy whose bones may or may not be those in a witch doctor's magic kit, are all sensible, logical, and satisfying. Smith's gently ironic tone is full of good humor towards his lively, intelligent heroine and towards her fellow Africans, who live their lives with dignity and with cautious acceptance of the confusions to which the world submits them. Precious Ramotswe is a remarkable creation, and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency well deserves the praise it received from London's Times Literary Supplement. I look forward with great eagerness to the upcoming books featuring the memorable Miss Ramotswe, Tears of the Giraffe and Morality for Beautiful Girls, soon to be available in the U.S. --Otto Penzler [via]

  More editions of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency:

  • The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: ISBN 0375423877 (0-375-42387-7)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc
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  Poisonwood Bible
  

  by Barbara Kingsolver

  ISBN 0060512822 (0-06-051282-2)
  Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited

  
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  Book summary:

  Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 2000: As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?

  In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member's fortune across a span of more than 30 years.

  The Poisonwood Bible is arguably Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and it reveals both her great strengths and her weaknesses. As Nathan Price's wife and daughters tell their stories in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenage Rachel's tendency towards precious malapropisms is particularly annoying (students practice their "French congregations"; Nathan's refusal to take his family home is a "tapestry of justice"). More problematic is Kingsolver's tendency to wear her politics on her sleeve; this is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, in which she uses her characters as mouthpieces to explicate the complicated and tragic history of the Belgian Congo.

  Despite these weaknesses, Kingsolver's fully realized, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the first half, when Nathan Price is still at the center of the action. And in her treatment of Africa and the Africans she is at her best, exhibiting the acute perception, moral engagement, and lyrical prose that have made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber [via]

  More editions of Poisonwood Bible:

  • Poisonwood Bible: ISBN 0060786507 (0-06-078650-7)
    Softcover, Harpercollins
  • Poisonwood Bible: ISBN 0060175400 (0-06-017540-0)
    Hardcover, Harpercollins
  • The Poisonwood Bible : A Novel: ISBN 0060930535 (0-06-093053-5)
    Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
  • The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel: ISBN 0060512822 (0-06-051282-2)
    Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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  The World's Great Classics
  

  ISBN 0717200019 (0-7172-0001-9)
  Hardcover, Xs Books

  
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  Book summary:

  Odyssey, The: The World's Great Classics, by Homer; tr. by S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang [via]

  More editions of The World's Great Classics:

  • The World's Great Classics: ISBN 0717200019 (0-7172-0001-9)
    Hardcover, Xs Books