Downtown

Downtown

Pete Hamill

Biographies & Memoirs / Literature & Fiction

In Downtown, Hamill leads us on an unforgettable journey through the city he loves, from the island's southern tip to 42nd Street, combining a moving memoir of his days and nights in New York with a passionate history of its most enduring places and people. From the Battery's traces of the early port to Washington Square's ghosts of executed convicts and well-heeled Knickerbockers; from the Five Points, once the most dangerous and squalid slum in America, to the mansions of the robber barons on "the Fifth Avenue"; from the Bowery of the 1860s, the vibrant heart of the city's theater world, to the Village of the 1960s, with its festival-like street life, this is downtown as we've never seen it before. Hamill weaves his own memories of Manhattan with the liveliest moments from its past, and points out the hints of that past living on in the city of today, fueling the ever-present nostalgia of its inhabitants.Hamill introduces us to the New Yorkers who have left indelible...
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A Drinking Life

A Drinking Life

Pete Hamill

Biographies & Memoirs / Literature & Fiction

As a child during the Depression and World War II, Pete Hamill learned early that drinking was an essential part of being a man, inseparable from the rituals of celebration, mourning, friendship, romance, and religion. Only later did he discover its ability to destroy any writer's most valuable tools: clarity, consciousness, memory. In A Drinking Life, Hamill explains how alcohol slowly became a part of his life, and how he ultimately left it behind. Along the way, he summons the mood of an America that is gone forever, with the bittersweet fondness of a lifelong New Yorker.
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The Christmas Kid

The Christmas Kid

Pete Hamill

Biographies & Memoirs / Literature & Fiction

"Hamill, a master raconteur, mines his own roots in this enchanting new anthology." ---New York TimesPete Hamill's collected stories about Brooklyn present a New York almost lost but not forgotten. They read like messages from a vanished age, brimming with nostalgia---for the world after the war, the days of the Dodgers and Giants, and even, for some, the years of Prohibition and the Depression.THE CHRISTMAS KID is vintage Hamill. Set in the borough where he was born and raised, it is a must-read for his many fans, for all who love New York, and for anyone who seeks to understand the world today through the lens of the world that once was.
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Stranger

Stranger

Sherwood Smith

Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Many generations ago, a mysterious cataclysm struck the world. Governments collapsed and people scattered, to rebuild where they could. A mutation, "the Change," arose, granting some people unique powers. Though the area once called Los Angeles retains its cultural diversity, its technological marvels have faded into legend. "Las Anclas" now resembles a Wild West frontier town... where the Sheriff possesses superhuman strength, the doctor can warp time to heal his patients, and the distant ruins of an ancient city bristle with deadly crystalline trees that take their jewel-like colors from the clothes of the people they killed. Teenage prospector Ross Juarez's best find ever – an ancient book he doesn't know how to read – nearly costs him his life when a bounty hunter is set on him to kill him and steal the book. Ross barely makes it to Las Anclas, bringing with him a precious artifact, a power no one has ever had before, and a whole lot of trouble.
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The Dreyfus Affair

The Dreyfus Affair

Piers Paul Read

Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction / Biographies & Memoirs

July 20, 1894. The German Military Attache in Paris. Colonel Maximillien von Schwarzkoppen received a visit from a seedy-looking middle-aged Frenchman who would not give his name. He told Schwarzkoppen that he was a French army officer serving on the General Staff; that he was in desperate need of money; and was therefore prepared to sell military secrets to the Germans.Captain Alfred Dreyfus, then aged 35, was a high-flying career artillery officer. Shy, reserved, sometimes awkward, but intelligent and ambitious, Dreyfus had everything he might have hoped for: a wife, two enchanting children, plenty of money and a post on the General Staff. However, Dreyfus' rise in the army had not made him friends. Many of them came from the impoverished Catholic aristocracy and disliked Dreyfus because he was rich, bourgeois and, above all, a Jew.On October 13, Captain Dreyfus was summoned by the General de Boisdeffre to the Ministry of War. Despite minimal evidence against...
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The Tongues of Angels

The Tongues of Angels

Reynolds Price

Literature & Fiction / Short Stories / Biographies & Memoirs

“I’m as peaceful a man as you’re likely to meet in America now, but this is about a death I may have caused. Not slowly over time by abuse or meanness but on a certain day and by ignorance, by plain lack of notice. Though it happened thirty-four years ago, and though I can’t say it’s haunted my mind that many nights lately, I suspect I can draw it out for you now, clear as this noon. I may need to try...." A summer camp in the Blue Ridge mountains, the deceptively tranquil 1950s, a classic semicomic cast and setting (teachers, swarms of rowdy boys, crafts, Indian lore, campfires), the twenty-one-year-old painting teacher and one superbly gifted boy, haunted by a tragic past yet calmly heroic. All advance through splendid weather, natural grandeur and riotous fun toward a startling fate that none will forget. In his eighth novel, Reynolds Price provides again the kind of voice that won his readers in Kate Vaiden, winner of the 1986 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. A sane adult looks back at his life, finds and gives us the interesting facts, the meanings he thought he learned for good on the threshold of manhood and how they look now, in full maturity. The Tongues of Angels is intimate, enveloping, relentless and rich. Any veteran of summer camp, boys’ or girls’, will hear deep echoes, recalling the buried forecasts of youth. Any reader stands to gain throughout.
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Little Britches

Little Britches

Ralph Moody

Biographies & Memoirs

Ralph Moody was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes we experience the pleasures and perils of ranching there early in the twentieth century. Auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms give authentic color to Little Britches. So do adventures, wonderfully told, that equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary. Little Britches was the literary debut of Ralph Moody, who wrote about the adventures of his family in eight glorious books, all available as Bison Books.
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Fields of Home

Fields of Home

Ralph Moody

Biographies & Memoirs

The fatherless Moody family moved from Colorado to Medford, Massachusetts, in 1912, when Ralph was entering his teens. "I tried as hard as I could to be a city boy, but I didn't have very good luck," he says at the beginning of The Fields of Home. "Just little things that would have been all right in Colorado were always getting me in trouble." So he is sent to his grandfather's farm in Maine, where he finds a new set of adventures.
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Home Ranch

Home Ranch

Ralph Moody

Biographies & Memoirs

Little Britches becomes the "man" in his family after his father's early death, taking on the concomitant responsibilities as well as opportunities. During the summer of his twelfth year he works on a cattle ranch in the shadow of Pike's Peak, earning a dollar a day. Little Britches is tested against seasoned cowboys on the range and in the corral. He drives cattle through a dust storm, eats his weight in flapjacks, and falls in love with a blue outlaw horse. Following Little Britches and developing an episode noted near the end of Man of the Family, The Home Ranch continues the adventures of young Ralph Moody. Soon after returning from the ranch, he and his mother and siblings will go east for a new start, described in Mary Emma & Company and The Fields of Home. All these titles have been reprinted as Bison Books.
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Horse of a Different Color

Horse of a Different Color

Ralph Moody

Biographies & Memoirs

Horse of a Different Color ends the "roving days" of young Ralph Moody. His saga began on a Colorado ranch in Little Britches and continued at points east and west in Man of the Family, The Fields of Home, The Home Ranch, Mary Emma & Company, Shaking the Nickel Bush, and The Dry Divide. All have been reprinted as Bison Books.
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Dry Divide

Dry Divide

Ralph Moody

Biographies & Memoirs

Ralph Moody, just turned twenty, had only a dime in his pocket when he was put off a freight in western Nebraska. It was the Fourth of July in 1919. Three months later he owned eight teams of horses and rigs to go with them. Everyone who worked with him shared in the prosperity—the widow whose wheat crop was saved and the group of misfits who formed a first-rate harvesting crew. But sometimes fickle Mother Nature and frail human nature made sure that nothing was easy. The tension between opposing forces never lets up in this book. Without preaching, The Dry Divide warmly illustrates the old-time virtues of hard work ingenuity, and respect for others. The Ralph Moody who was a youngster in Little Britches and who grew up without a father and with early responsibilities in Man of the Family, The Fields of Home, The Home Ranch, Mary Emma & Company, and Shaking the Nickel Bush (all Bison Books) has become a man to reckon with in The Dry Divide.
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The Greek Myths, Volume 1

The Greek Myths, Volume 1

Robert Graves

Literature & Fiction / Poetry / Biographies & Memoirs

Endymion, Pelops, Daedalus, Pygmalion – what are the stories behind these and the hundreds of other familiar names from Greek mythology – names that recur throughout the history of European culture?In a two-volume work that has become a classic reference book for both the serious scholar and the casual inquirer, Robert Graves retells the adventures of the important gods and heroes worshipped by the ancient Greeks.Drawing on an enormous range of sources, he has brought together all the elements of every myth in simple narrative form, supplying detailed cross-references and indexes. Each entry has a full commentary which examines problems of interpretation in both historical and anthropological terms, and in the light of contemporary research.
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Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth

Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth

Robert Graves

Literature & Fiction / Poetry / Biographies & Memoirs

Robert Graves first came across the name of Roger Lamb in 1914, when Graves was an English officer instructing his platoon in regimental history. Lamb was a British soldier who had served his king during the American War of Independence, and whose claim to a footnote in history is that he managed to escape twice from American prison camps. When Graves went to America in the 1930s, he remembered Sergeant Lamb, investigated his story and created this fictionalized memoir telling Lamb's story from his Irish childhood to war and revolution, weaving a mesmerizing tale of courage and adventure.
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Hebrew Myths

Hebrew Myths

Robert Graves

Literature & Fiction / Poetry / Biographies & Memoirs

This is a comprehensive look at the stories that make up the Old Testament and the Jewish religion, including the folk tales, apocryphal texts, midrashes, and other little-known documents that the Old Testament and the Torah do not include. In this exhaustive study, Robert graves provides a fascinating account of pre-Biblical texts that have been censored, suppressed, and hidden for centuries, and which now emerge to give us a clearer view of Hebrew myth and religion than ever.Venerable classicist and historian Robert Graves recounts the ancient Hebrew stories, both obscure and familiar, with a rich sense of storytelling, culture, and spirituality. This book is sure to be riveting to students of Jewish or Judeo-Christian history, culture, and religion.
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The End of the World as We Know It

The End of the World as We Know It

Robert Goolrick

Biographies & Memoirs / Literature & Fiction

It was the 1950s, a time of calm, a time when all things were new and everything seemed possible. A few years before, a noble war had been won, and now life had returned to normal. For one little boy, however, life had become anything but "normal." To all appearances, he and his family lived an almost idyllic life. The father was a respected professor, the mother a witty and elegant lady, someone everyone loved. They were parents to three bright, smiling children: two boys and a girl. They lived on a sunny street in a small college town nestled neatly in a leafy valley. They gave parties, hosted picnics, went to church—just like their neighbors. To all appearances, their life seemed ideal. But it was, in fact, all appearances. Lineage, tradition, making the right impression—these were matters of great importance, especially to the mother. But behind the facade this family had created lurked secrets so dark, so painful for this one...
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Chess Story

Chess Story

Stefan Zweig

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Chess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig’s final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942. It is the only story in which Zweig looks at Nazism, and he does so with characteristic emphasis on the psychological.Travelers by ship from New York to Buenos Aires find that on board with them is the world champion of chess, an arrogant and unfriendly man. They come together to try their skills against him and are soundly defeated. Then a mysterious passenger steps forward to advise them and their fortunes change. How he came to possess his extraordinary grasp of the game of chess and at what cost lie at the heart of Zweig’s story. This new translation of Chess Story brings out the work’s unusual mixture of high suspense and poignant reflection.Review"[Zweig is a] writer who understands perfectly the life he is describing, and who has great analytic gifts . . . . He has achieved the very considerable feat of inventing, in his description of the game of chess, a metaphor for the terribly grim game he is playing with his Nazi tormentors . . . the case history here is no longer that of individuals; it is the case history of Europe." —Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books "Always [Zweig] remains essentially the same, revealing in all . . . mediums his subtlety of style, his profound psychological knowledge and his inherent humaneness." —Barthold Fles, The New Republic "Zweig possesses a dogged psychological curiosity, a brutal frankness, a supreme impartiality . . . [a] concentration of talents." —Herbert Gorman, The New York Times Book Review "His writing reveals his sympathy for fellow human beings." —Ruth Franklin, London Review of BooksAbout the AuthorStefan Zweig (1881-1942), novelist, biographer, poet, and translator, was born in Vienna into a wealthy Austrian Jewish family. During the 1930s, he was one of the best-selling writers in Europe, and was among the most translated German-language writers before the Second World War. With the rise of Nazism, he moved from Salzburg to London (taking British citizenship), to New York, and finally to Brazil, where he committed suicide with his wife. New York Review Books has published Zweig’s novels The Post-Office Girl and Beware of Pity as well as the novella Chess Story. Peter Gay is Director of the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. He wrote Schnitzler’s Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815–1914.
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Ruler of Naught

Ruler of Naught

Sherwood Smith

Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

In the sequel to The Phoenix in Flight, Brandon vlith-Arkad, who fled the Mandalic Palace and his old life only hours ahead of assassination, is now heir to the Panarchy. He wants only to rescue his father, the Panarch. But everyone wants a piece of him. The Dol'jharians, who smashed the Panarchy and took his father prisoner. A Rifter pirate and her crew, who helped him escape a doomed planet - twice - and now wonder what to do about a royal prisoner with the price of ten planets on his head. And the remnants of the government of the Thousand Suns, for whom he'd at best be an inconvenience.And that's before things go seriously pear-shaped. Racing ahead of the light-speed news of their attack with FTL comms and weapons looted from a fortress built millions of years ago, the Dol'jharians and those Rifters allied with them are consolidating their victories. Elements of the Panarchist Navy struggle to understand what's happening, find surviving units, and strike back. And...
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The Rifter's Covenant

The Rifter's Covenant

Sherwood Smith

Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

In this rewritten fourth volume of Exordium, the Panarchy is in shambles, coalescing at the military base Ares. Brandon has inherited not only this political tinderbox, but also must face the escalating threat from the invading Dol'jharians and their Rifter allies before they can power up the ancient artifact they call the Suneater. But moving with secret, deadly precision against Brandon is a traitor who will do anything for power. Meanwhile Brandon has fallen in love, but everyone thinks it's with the wrong person. Space battles, political in-fighting, and personal struggles ramp up the stakes in this penultimate volume in the five book Exordium series.
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A Prison Unsought

A Prison Unsought

Sherwood Smith

Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

In the third volume of Exordium, this swashbuckling space opera continues with Brandon and the Rifter crew of the Telvarna arriving at the Panarchic Navy's headquarters. The Rifters are imprisoned, and Brandon finds himself, as sole heir to the Phoenix Throne, fighting a battle of symbols, his only weapon his wits as he strives against the powerful and sophisticated aristocrats who hide lethal intent behind urbanity and style. His goal is to win back control of the Navy and rescue his father from the vicious end planned for him by the usurping Doljharians, resulting in a race to the harsh planet of Gehenna.
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The Thrones of Kronos

The Thrones of Kronos

Sherwood Smith

Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Completely revised, in this last volume the desperate fight to recover the Panarchy of the Thousand Suns is about to commence. Brandon hai-Arkad has been crowned Emperor, but his throne remains in the hands of his enemy, Jerrod Eusabian of Dol'jhar. The fleet has been gathered, the order of battle drawn. Brandon will reclaim his father's empire, or face annihilation. This is the exciting conclusion to the Exordium series.
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The Phoenix in Flight

The Phoenix in Flight

Sherwood Smith

Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Brandon nyr-Arkad, the Emperor's scapegrace youngest son, defies protocol and evades a ceremonial duty, an act punishable by death. He's just ahead of an attack on the Panarchy of the Thousand Suns by Eusabian, a revenge twenty years in the making. Phoenix in Flight begins the five volume arc of Exordium, as Brandon discovers what happened to his home after he left, and he has to make a decision: stay an outlaw, or return and deal with the smoking ruins of his rejected world?
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Wondrak

Wondrak

Stefan Zweig

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Compulsion, In the Snow and Wondrak all concern Zweig s strong anti-war feelings following the First World War. The artist Ferdinand, central figure of Compulsion, partly reflects Zweig s own experience. In The Snow tells of the plight of a group of Jews who freeze to death while trying to escape a medieval pogrom. In Wondrak, a woman, disfigured since birth, attempts to save her only child from being drafted into the military. In this newly available English translation the reader discovers the essential humanist preoccupations of the author of Amok and Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman: his compassion towards human suffering, his horror of war and his faith in idealism, generosity, love values that can, in an instant, illuminate an entire existence.
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Fantastic Night

Fantastic Night

Stefan Zweig

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Five of Stefan Zweig's most compelling novellas are presented together in this powerful volume. Fantastic Night is the story of one transforming evening in the life of a rich and bored young man. He spends a day at the races and an evening in the seedy but thrilling company of the dregs of society. His experiences jolt him out of his languor and give him a newfound relish for life, which is then cut short by the Great War. Fantastic Night is joined by The Invisible Collection and Buchmendel, two of Zweig's most powerful works, which explore lives led in the single minded pursuit of art and literature against a backdrop of poverty and corruption. And finally, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Zweig's poignant and heartbreaking tale of the strength and madness of unrequited love and The Fowler Snared, in which it is the man whose passion remains unrequited, complete the collection.
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Triumph and Disaster

Triumph and Disaster

Stefan Zweig

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

One of two beautifully designed hardback gift editions of Stefan Zweig's breathlessly dramatic historical sketches, out in time for Christmas.A single Yes, a single No, a Too Soon or a Too Late makes that hour irrevocable for hundreds of generations while deciding the life of a single man or woman, of a nation, even the destiny of all humanity.Five vivid dramatizations of some of the most pivotal episodes in human history, from the Fall of Constantinople to Scott's doomed attempt to reach the South Pole, bringing the past to life in brilliant technicolor.Included in this collection:"The Field of Waterloo": A fascinating little known story of Napoleon's defeat."The Race to Reach the South Pole": The failed expedition of the English to discover the South Pole first."The Conquest of Byzantium": Sultan Mahomet's defeat of Byzantium through a neglected door."The Sealed Train": Lenin's triumphant return from exile."Wilson's Failure": The Treaty of...
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Messages from a Lost World

Messages from a Lost World

Stefan Zweig

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Stefan Zweig was a leading talisman of a united Europe of unfettered movement, of pro-active cultural exchange, humane decency and tolerance, all polar opposites of the Nationalist regimes he loathed, and which came to power in the 1930s. In these poignant essays and addresses, forged in the last years or even months of his life, he shows his profound concern for and dedication to the survival of Europe's spiritual integrity.These essays form the natural accompaniment to Zweig's renowned memoir The World of Yesterday, registering the same themes and evoking the same nostalgia for a world brutally consigned to history. They can be seen as a vital addendum to that major work or as a prefiguration. But perhaps even more so than the prose of the memoir, these essays, few in number but rich in content, reveal the essence of Zweig's thought.From the Hardcover edition.
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Princess Sultana's Daughters

Princess Sultana's Daughters

Jean Sasson

Biographies & Memoirs / History / Nonfiction

Readers of PRINCESS were gripped by Jean Sasson's powerful indictment of women's lives behind the veil. Now, in the compelling sequel, Jean Sasson and Princess Sultana turn the spotlight on Sultana's two teenage daughters, Maha and Amani.As second-generation members of the royal family who have benefited from Saudi oil wealth, Maha and Amani are surrounded by untold opulence and luxury from the day they were born. And yet, they are stifled by the unbearably restrictive lifestyle imposed on them, driving them to desperate measures.Throughout, Sultana and Sasson never tire of their quest to expose the injustices which society levels against women. Princess Sultana once more strikes a chord among all women who are lucky enough to have the freedom to speak out for themselves.PRAISE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PRINCESS:"Absolutely riveting and profoundly sad..." --People"A chilling story...a vivid account of an air-conditioned nightmare..." --Entertainment Weekly"Must-reading for...
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Twice a Prince: Sasharia En Garde Book 2

Twice a Prince: Sasharia En Garde Book 2

Sherwood Smith

Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Sasha s prince is wicked, Sun s is missing­they take up the sword, L.A. style! Sasharia En Garde Book 2 In the magical world of Khanerenth, there s a long way to go before Sasha and her dream prince, Jehan, can get to perfect. Jehan s deception has left her unable to trust him, and grimly determined to search for her missing father. Jehan only wants to protect Sasha from the dangerous undercover mission he s undertaken to heal the broken kingdom, but he knows she can t afford to listen to him­not when he s the one living a lie. Enemies, allies­and temptation­make the ballroom floor as dangerous as pirate raids. In a world where love is danger and honor is difficult to define, the crown is not the only thing on the line for a wicked prince and a princess with a core of steel. There s a royal price for love.
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Let Me Tell You

Let Me Tell You

Shirley Jackson

Horror / Biographies & Memoirs / Short Stories

From the renowned author of "The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House, a spectacular new volume of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, essays, and other writings. Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American writers of the last hundred years. Since her death in 1965, her place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has grown only more exalted. As we approach the centenary of her birth comes this astonishing compilation of fifty-six pieces--more than forty of which have never been published before. Two of Jackson's children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mother's papers at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion. Let Me Tell You brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays about her large, boisterous family; and whimsical drawings. Jackson's...
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Me and My Shadows

Me and My Shadows

Lorna Luft

Biographies & Memoirs

The question follows Lorna Luft to this day: "What's it like to be Dorothy's daughter?" Although by appearances glamorous and truly thrilling, growing up as the daughter of Judy Garland was anything but a journey over the rainbow.With unsparing candor, Lorna Luft offers the first-ever insider portrait of one of Hollywood's most celebrated families: a rare story of a little girl, her half-sister Liza, and her baby brother trying desperately to hang on to the mother whose life seemed destined to burn brightly but briefly. Lorna makes an extraordinary journey back into the spiral of love, addiction, pain, and loss that lurked behind a charmed facade.Filled with behind-the-scenes dramas, hilarious untold stories, and little-known details of Garland family life, Me and My Shadows is a tribute to Lorna's victory over her own past, a story of hope, of love and its limitations, and a deeply moving testament to the healing powers of embracing one's past and charting a...
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The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

Sylvia Plath

Poetry / Biographies & Memoirs / Literature & Fiction

"A scintillating and poignant autobiography in letters. . . . Her letters blaze with fresh and stunning revelations, with more to come."—Booklist on The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 1The second volume in the definitive, complete collection of the letters of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Sylvia Plath, from the early years of her marriage to Ted Hughes to the final days leading to her suicide in 1963, many never before seen.One of the most talented and beloved poets, Sylvia Plath continues to fascinate and inspire the modern literary imagination. The tragedy of her untimely death at age thirty, almost fifty-five years ago, has left much unknown about her creative and personal life. In this remarkable second volume of the iconic poet and writer's collected letters, the full range of Plath's ambitions, talents, fears, and perspective is made visible through her own powerful words.As engaging as they are revealing, these remarkable letters...
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The Governess and Other Stories

The Governess and Other Stories

Stefan Zweig

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

"Stefan Zweig’s time of oblivion is over for good. . . . It’s good to have him back."  —Salman Rushdie, New York Times These four stories illustrate the wide range of Zweig’s subject matter dating from quite early in his career as a writer of fiction ("The Governess," rooted in a world of strict Edwardian morality), to late ("Did He Do It?," almost an English detective story set near Bath, where Zweig lived in exile). In addition, "The Miracles of Life," set in 16th-century Antwerp during the time of Protestant iconoclasm, and "Downfall of a Heart" both address the theme of anti-Semitism.
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Space Runners #3

Space Runners #3

Jeramey Kraatz

Children's Books / Young Adult / Biographies & Memoirs

Star Wars meets Ridley Pearson's Kingdom Keepers in this high-stakes intergalactic adventure!The Cosmic Alliance is the third installment in an action-packed series for tweens that's perfect for fans of Eoin Colfer and Lisa McMann and that Soman Chainani called "a blockbuster mix of thrills and adrenaline."Benny Love's trip to the moon wasn't supposed to include the start of a war between humans and the Alpha Maraudi, a group of aliens determined to take over Earth.When Benny and his friends get to know a peaceful Alpha Maraudi general and her crew, Benny can't imagine letting the war continue—he'll need to help bring the conflict to a peaceful resolution.But neither group's leaders are interested in talking, and Benny knows that both sides are developing powerful superweapons. Will the Moon Platoon be able to save both their Earth families and their new alien friends?
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Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan

Biographies & Memoirs / Poetry / Literature & Fiction

Spike Milligan's letters contain some of the best material he ever wrote . . . Collected here for the first time are the funniest, rudest and most revealing of them - most of which have never been seen before - from one of the greatest comics of the twentieth century to some of its most famous politicians, actors, celebrities and rock stars (as well as a host of unlikely individuals on some surprising subjects):- rounded teabags ('what did you do with the corners?')- backless hospital gowns ('beyond my comprehension') - heartfelt apologies ('pardon me for being alive') and the imbalance of male and female ducks in London's parks. Here, then, is the real Spike Miligan: obsessive, rude, generous and relentlessly witty.'Milligan's zaniness shines through' Telegraph 'The godfather of alternative comedy' Eddie...
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Wife to Mr. Milton

Wife to Mr. Milton

Robert Graves

Literature & Fiction / Poetry / Biographies & Memoirs

The famous poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, had a wife, and their story is both strange and tumultuous. Consummate historical novelist and poet Robert Graves tells the story from the perspective of the wife, Marie Powell, a young woman who married the poet to escape a debt.From the start, the couple proves mismatched; Milton is a domineering and insensitive husband set on punishing Marie for not providing the promised dowry. John Milton and his young wife are both religiously and temperamentally incompatible, and this portrait of their relationship is spellbinding, if not distinctly unflattering to Milton. It also provides fascinating accounts of the political upheavals of the time, including the execution of Charles I. This book is an excellent read for fans of historical fiction.
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The Sunflower

The Sunflower

Simon Wiesenthal

Biographies & Memoirs / Nonfiction

While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to--and obtain absolution from--a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing. But even years after the way had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place?In this important book, fifty-three distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal's questions. They are theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China and Tibet. Their responses, as varied as their experiences of the world, remind us that Wiesenthal's questions are not limited to events of the past. Often surprising and always thought provoking, The...
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Close to Home

Close to Home

Alice Pung

Biographies & Memoirs / Fiction / Young Adult

A BRILLIANT COLLECTION FROM ONE OF AUSTRALIA'S LEADING WRITERS Close to Home brings together Alice Pung's most loved writing, on topics such as migration, family, art, belonging and identity. Warm, funny, moving and unfailingly honest, this is Alice at her best – an irresistible pleasure for fans and new readers alike. In 2006, Alice Pung published Unpolished Gem, her award-winning memoir of growing up Chinese-Australian in Melbourne's western suburbs. Since then, she has written on everything from the role of grandparents
to the corrosive effects of racism; from the importance of literature to the legacy of her parents' migration from Cambodia as asylum seekers. In all
of this, a central idea is home: how the places we live and the connections we form shape who we become, and what homecoming can mean to those who build their lives in Australia. 'Most people have an idea of home as a place of comfort and safety. But it is more than that....
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Angel Thieves

Angel Thieves

Kathi Appelt

Children's Books / Poetry / Biographies & Memoirs

An ocelot. A slave. An angel thief. Multiple perspectives spanning across time are united through themes of freedom, hope, and faith in a most unusual and epic novel from Newbery Honor–winning author and National Book Award finalist Kathi Appelt.Sixteen-year-old Cade Curtis is an angel thief. After his mother's family rejected him for being born out of wedlock, he and his dad moved to the apartment above a local antique shop. The only payment the owner Mrs. Walker requests: marble angels, stolen from graveyards, for her to sell for thousands of dollars to collectors. But there's one angel that would be the last they'd ever need to steal; an angel, carved by a slave, with one hand open and one hand closed. If only Cade could find it... Zorra, a young ocelot, watches the bayou rush past her yearningly. The poacher who captured and caged her has long since lost her, and Zorra is getting hungrier and thirstier by the day. Trapped, she only has...
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Golden State

Golden State

Ben H. Winters

Humor / Biographies & Memoirs / Historical Fiction

A shocking vision of our future that is one part Minority Report and one part Chinatown. Lazlo Ratesic is 54, a 19-year veteran of the Speculative Service, from a family of law enforcement and in a strange alternate society that values law and truth above all else. This is how Laz must, by law, introduce himself, lest he fail to disclose his true purpose or nature, and by doing so, be guilty of a lie. Laz is a resident of The Golden State, a nation resembling California, where like-minded Americans retreated after the erosion of truth and the spread of lies made public life, and governance, increasingly impossible. There, surrounded by the high walls of compulsory truth-telling, knowingly contradicting the truth--the Objectively So--is the greatest possible crime. Stopping those crimes, punishing them, is Laz's job. In its service, he is one of the few individuals permitted to harbor untruths--to "speculate" on what might have happened in the commission of a crime. But the Golden State is far less a paradise than its name might suggest. To monitor, verify, and enforce the Objectively So requires a veritable panopticon of surveillance, recording, and record-keeping. And when those in control of the truth twist it for nefarious means, the Speculators may be the only ones with the power to fight back.
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Hallelujah Anyway

Hallelujah Anyway

Anne Lamott

Biographies & Memoirs / Nonfiction / Religion & Spirituality

From the bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow and Stitches comes a powerful exploration of mercy, its limitless (if sometimes hidden) presence, why we ignore it, and how we can embrace it."Mercy is radical kindness," Anne Lamott writes in her enthralling and heartening book, Hallelujah Anyway. It's the permission you give others—and yourself—to forgive a debt, to absolve the unabsolvable, to let go of the judgment and pain that make life so difficult. In Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy Lamott ventures to explore where to find meaning in life. We should begin, she suggests, by "facing a great big mess, especially the great big mess of ourselves." It's up to each of us to recognize the presence and importance of mercy everywhere—"within us and outside us, all around us"—and to use it to forge a deeper understanding of ourselves and more honest connections with each other. While that can be difficult to...
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Happy Death Day & Happy Death Day 2U

Happy Death Day & Happy Death Day 2U

Aaron Hartzler

Young Adult / Biographies & Memoirs / Literature & Fiction

The official novelization of the #1 smash hit film Happy Death Day and its sequel Happy Death Day 2U, from Blumhouse (Split, Get Out, The Purge franchise) and Universal Pictures.In Happy Death Day, Teresa "Tree" Gelbman's birthday is the worst day of her life, starting when she wakes up in a stranger's bed. It's also the last day of her life, ending when she's killed by a psychotic killer with a knife. She's dead. And then she wakes up in a stranger's bed, it's September 18, and she has to live it all over again . . . until she's hunted down and wakes up, again, and again. It's a Groundhog Day situation, only with murder, guns, and mean girls, and Tree's only shot at living to see the next day is to relive the day of her murder, over and over, until she discovers her killer's identity.Happy Death Day 2U picks up the story without missing a beat. Tree Gelbman thought she'd finally lived to see a brand-new day. But when...
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Help, Thanks, Wow

Help, Thanks, Wow

Anne Lamott

Biographies & Memoirs / Nonfiction / Religion & Spirituality

New York Times-bestselling author Anne Lamott writes about the three simple prayers essential to coming through tough times, difficult days and the hardships of daily life.Readers of all ages have followed and cherished Anne Lamott's funny and perceptive writing about her own faith through decades of trial and error. And in her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, she has coalesced everything she knows about prayer to these fundamentals.It is these three prayers – asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating what we have that is good, and feeling awe at the world around us – that can get us through the day and can show us the way forward. In Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they mean to her and how they have helped, and explores how others have embraced these same ideas.Insightful and honest as only Anne Lamott can be, Help, Thanks, Wow is the everyday faith book that new...
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Heroes

Heroes

Stephen Fry

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs / Travel

Mortals and Monsters. Quests and Adventures . . . *** Pre-order HEROES by Stephen Fry now ***___________There are Heroes - and then there are Greek Heroes.Few mere mortals have ever embarked on such bold and heart-stirring adventures, overcome myriad monstrous perils, or outwitted scheming vengeful gods, quite as stylishly and triumphantly as Greek heroes.In this companion to his bestselling Mythos, Stephen Fry brilliantly retells these dramatic, funny, tragic and timeless tales. Join Jason aboard the Argo as he quests for the Golden Fleece. See Atalanta - who was raised by bears - outrun any man before being tricked with golden apples. Witness wily Oedipus solve the riddle of the Sphinx and discover how Bellerophon captures the winged horse Pegasus to help him slay the monster Chimera.Filled with white-knuckle chases and battles, impossible puzzles and riddles, acts of base cowardice and real bravery,...
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