Just a touch here and a tweak there . . . .MacKinlay Kantor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, master storyteller, shows us how the South could have won the Civil War, how two small shifts in history (as we know it) in the summer of 1863 could have turned the tide for the Confederacy. What would have happened: to the Union, to Abraham Lincoln, to the people of the North and South, to the world?If the South Had Won the Civil War originally appeared in Look Magazine nearly half a century ago. It immediately inspired a deluge of letters and telegrams from astonished readers and became an American classic overnight. Published in book form soon after, Kantor's masterpiece has been unavailable for a decade. Now, this much requested classic is once again available for a new generation of readers and features a stunning cover by acclaimed Civil War artist Don Troiani, a new introduction by award-winning alternate history author Harry Turtledove, and fifteen superb...

The classic memoir of the Nobel Prize–winning poet, now expanded with newly discovered material ...

A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill Housei must stop writing letters and get to writing a novel.Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among our greatest chroniclers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson’s beloved fiction: flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad.i am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story—with as many levels as grand central station—with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet.Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson’s college...

Oisín Mahoney is an American Army vet in his 70s who is asked to lead a group of young grand-nieces and grand-nephews on a walk through the hills of California's Central Coast. Walking toward a setting sun, their destination is a place called The Museum of Rain, which may or may not still exist, and whose origin and meaning are elusive to all. In one of his most elegiac stories, Eggers gives us a beautiful testament to family, memory, and what we leave behind.

The first complete English-language edition of one of Calvino's important early short story collections Throughout his stories, Calvino delights in discovering hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life. Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the tales in this collection take place in a World War II–era and postwar Italy tinged with visionary and fablelike qualities. Three novice burglars accidentally break into a pastry shop; a pair of children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In the title story, a compact masterpiece of shifting perspectives, a panicked soldier tries to keep his wits—and his life—when he faces off against a young partisan with a loaded rifle and miraculous aim. Stories from Last Comes the Raven have been published in translation, but the collection as a whole has never appeared in English. This volume, including...

From the bestselling author of Underground Airlines and Golden State, this sweeping legal thriller follows a sixteen-year-old who suffers from a neurological condition that has frozen him in time—and the team of lawyers, doctors, and detectives who are desperate to wake him up.In 2008, a cheerful ambulance-chasing lawyer named Jay Shenk persuades the grieving Keener family to sue a private LA hospital. Their son Wesley has been transformed by a routine surgery into a kind of golem, absent all normal functioning or personality, walking in endless empty circles around his hospital room. In 2019, Shenk—still in practice but a shell of his former self—is hired to defend Wesley Keener's father when he is charged with murder . . . the murder, as it turns out, of the expert witness from the 2008 hospital case. Shenk's adopted son, a fragile teenager in 2008, is a wayward adult, though he may find his purpose when he investigates what...

Find inspiration in these messages of hope from the forty-fourth president of the United States.This curated collection of landmark speeches chronicles Barack Obama's presence on the national stage, from his time as a senator from Illinois to his eight-year term as the 44th president of the United States—and also includes notable speeches he made after he left the White House. Obama's eloquent speaking style and ability to connect to a wide range of audiences made him one of the most admired presidents in recent memory, even as he dealt with staunch party-line opposition in Congress. Barack Obama Selected Speeches is a volume that will appeal to those with a keen interest in history, politics, and the role that the United States has played in shaping today's world.

Perfect for fans of The One and Only Ivan, this exquisite middle grade novel from Newbery Honoree and National Book Award finalist Kathi Appelt follows an old camel out to save two baby kestrel chicks during a massive storm in the Texas desert— filled with over a dozen illustrations by Caldecott winner Eric Rohmann.Zada is a camel with a treasure trove of stories to tell. She's won camel races for the royal Pasha of Smyrna, crossed treacherous oceans to new land, led army missions with her best camel friend by her side, and outsmarted a far too pompous mountain lion. But those stories were from before. Now, Zada wanders the desert as the last camel in Texas. But she's not alone. Two tiny kestrel chicks are nestled in the fluff of fur between her ears—kee-killy-keeing for their missing parents—and a dust storm the size of a mountain is taking Zada on one more grand adventure. And it could lead to this achy old camel's most...

A blistering novel about fake news, memory, and the ways in which truth gives over to fiction When Satya, a professor and author, attends a prestigious artist retreat to write, he finds the pressures of the outside world won’t let up: the president rages online; a dangerous virus envelopes the globe; and the twenty-four-hour news cycle throws fuel on every fire. For most of the retreat fellows, such stories are unbearable distractions, but for Satya, who sees them play out in both America and his native India, these Orwellian interruptions begin to crystallize into an idea for his new novel, Enemies of the People, about the lies we tell ourselves and one another. Satya scours his life for instances in which truth bends toward the imagined and misinformation is mistaken as fact. Mixing Satya’s experiences—as a father, husband, and American immigrant—with newspaper clippings, the president’s tweets, and...

Now adapted for young adults—the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir which Toni Morrison called "quite extraordinary,” offers an intimate look at Barack Obama’s early days. This is a compelling journey tracing the future 44th President's odyssey through family, race, and identity.   A revealing portrait of a young Black man asking questions about self-discovery and belonging—long before he became one of the most important voices in America. This unique edition includes a new introduction from the author, full color photo insert and family tree.    The son of a white American mother and a Black Kenyan father, Obama was born in Hawaii, where he lived until he was six years old, when he moved with his mother and stepfather to Indonesia. At twelve, he returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. Obama brings readers along as he faces the challenges of high school and college, living in New York, becoming...

Jennifer Sahary, an American artist, and her husband Karim, a professor and Iranian immigrant, make an extended visit to Teheran shortly after the Iran-Iraq War, encountering unforeseen dangers and sexual temptations that change the course of their lives.When their young son is taken by his grandmother to the holy city of Qom without Jennifer's knowledge, she sets out to find him, learning much about Iran and about herself along the way. And as Karim renews contact with his family and surveys the misery and needs of his war-torn country, he begins to question where he can best achieve his ideals.In sensuous and elegant prose, Rachlin weaves the interlinking stories of a man and a woman and their contrasting cultures with balance and sympathy."One can learn a lot from this novel . . ."— Publishers WeeklyNahid Rachlin is an Iranian who lives in New York City, where she teaches creative writing at Barnard College. She is author of Veils:...

This sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea tells the epic story of Violeta Del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century.ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Oprah Daily, The Washington Post, Business Insider, Marie Claire, Bustle, Ms. magazine, PopSugar, The Week, Electric Lit, The Millions, She Reads, Lit Hub, Book RiotVioleta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.Through her father’s prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression...

New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende celebrates the pleasures of the sensual life in this rich, joyful and slyly humorous book, a combination of personal narrative and treasury of erotic lore. Under the aegis of the Goddess of Love, Isabel Allende uses her storytelling skills brilliantly in Aphrodite to evoke the delights of food and sex. After considerable research and study, she has become an authority on aphrodisiacs, which include everything from food and drink to stories and, of course, love. Readers will find here recipes from Allende's mother, poems, stories from ancient and foreign literatures, paintings, personal anecdotes, fascinating tidbits on the sensual art of foodand its effects on amorous performance, tips on how to attract your mate and revive flagging virility, passages on the effect of smell on libido, a history of alcoholic beverages, and much more. An ode to sensuality that is an irresistible...

The final speeches of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, and First Lady Michelle Obama. Both speeches were instant and moving landmarks, as well as stirring testaments to the time this inspiring and beloved couple spent in the White House.

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER'Exceptionally brilliant and powerful' Marina Hyde'This book is a hilarious memoir, a passionate polemic, and a moving manifesto on how to be a decent person and try, in the face of countless stresses, to live a full open-hearted, joyous life' Sunday TimesA decade ago, Caitlin Moran thought she had it all figured out. Her instant bestseller How to Be a Woman was a game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy, and the general 'hoo-ha' of becoming a woman. Back then, she firmly believed 'the difficult bit' was over, and her forties were going to be a doddle.If only she had known: when middle age arrives, a whole new bunch of tough questions need answering. Why isn't there such a thing as a 'Mum Bod'? How did sex get boring? What are men really thinking? Where did all that stuff in the kitchen drawers come from? Can feminists have Botox? Why has wine...

An "entirely wonderful" novel about an unplanned pregnancy, and an unwanted marriage, in early-1960s New Jersey—"hilarious and deeply touching" (Anne Lamott). Virginia and Buddy "had to get married." Their daughter, Madeline, was conceived the first time they "did it" in Buddy's room at college. Virginia's school asked her to leave, and her parents put on a wedding. And now? Well, as Virginia puts it, "now that we know each other a little better it turns out we are actually strangers." In this second summer of Virginia and Buddy's marriage, there is no money, no love, and no foreseeable future. Virginia, all of nineteen, is determined to either make it work or find a way out, especially after Buddy starts hanging around with an old girlfriend. But it won't be easy, in this "masterful" tale of a less-than-perfect journey into adulthood that puts a surprising twist on what happily-ever-after can mean (Newsday). From the...

All I wanted for my 30th birthday was an epic night to remember…Instead, I got knocked up by my boss. Okay, wait. Before you start judging me (I can see you), I didn’t know he was my boss at the time. All I knew was that he was the sexiest man I’d ever seen in my life, complete with a deep British accent and lips that owned me for hours in bed. Yet, when he ASSumed he was getting a second round after insulting my “cracker box” apartment, I kicked him out, hoping I’d never see him again. Until four weeks later… That’s when I realized I was ‘late,’ when twenty different pregnancy tests revealed a truth I didn’t want to believe. And just when I thought I’d have to spend another four weeks searching for him, he waltzed through the company’s doors, and my supervisor announced that he was our new CEO. That’s not even the worst part about this situation, though. Not even close. Turns out, this man was harboring a secret on the night we first met, and the next eight months were about to get far more complicated than I could ever imagine… ‘Definitely Not Him’ is a sexy, standalone ‘single at 30’ story.

John Irving, one of the world's greatest novelists, returns with his first novel in seven years—a ghost story, a love story, and a lifetime of sexual politics.In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor. Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, Adam will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts; in The Last Chairlift, they aren't the first or the last ghosts he sees. John Irving has written some of the most acclaimed books of our time—among them, The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules. A visionary voice on the subject of sexual...

On the Journey of Life, Do You Sometimes Wish You Had a Map? You now hold such a map in your hands-a guide through the twelve gateways of personal growth to the summit of your potential. Dan Millman makes your ascent accessible by bringing enlightenment down to earth-applying spiritual wisdom to the practical realities of everyday life. Explore the challenges and mysteries of body, mind, and emotions. Discover a new approach to success. Change confusion into clarity and knowledge into action. It begins as you turn the first page and enter... 1. Discover Your Worth 2. Reclaim Your Will 3. Energize Your Body 4. Manage Your Money 5. Tame Your Mind 6. Trust Your Intuition 7. Accept Your Emotions 8. Face Your Fears 9. Illuminate Your Shadow 10. Embrace Your Sexuality 11. Awaken Your Heart 12. Serve Your World The Time is Now. The Road is Open. Your Destiny Awaits.

Each one of Dan Millman's best-selling books presents new keys to the "peaceful warrior's way of living." Each offers a different aspect of Dan's philosophy - relevant, user-friendly, real-world guidance for everyday life. For the first time, in Living on Purpose, Dan answers some of the toughest questions we face. Organized into twenty-four key principles to answer some of life's toughest questions, Living on Purpose refines and expands on the teaching of his other books with fresh insight. Each of the principles, in turn, features further questions and answers more specific, related challenges. Building a bridge between idealism and realism, Dan applies timeless principles to pressing questions from all over the world — questions on metaphysics, destiny versus free will, control and surrender, goal making, and setting life priorities, as well as common everyday challenges, such as child rearing, divorce, drugs, money and work, sexuality, and simplifying your life. In...

Drawing on his extensive experience as a coach and world champion athlete, bestselling author Dan Millman reveals a path to success not only in sports but in any life endeavor that requires training and the integration of the body and mind — from golf and tennis to playing the piano. Body Mind Mastery is a revised and updated edition of Millman's classic The Inner Athlete and includes a brand new Peaceful Warrior warmup, with photos and instructions on creating a daily exercise routine from Millman's principles, as well as a new section on the aging athlete. Through personal experience, as well as anecdotes from teaching and coaching at such schools as Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, and Oberlin College, Millman directs the reader through the detailed process of attaining the optimum performance of body and mind, where "our minds are free of concern or anxiety, focused on the present moment; our bodies relaxed, sensitive, elastic, and aligned with gravity; our emotions...

The deeply moving, propulsive story of ten teenagers brought together by a high school production of The Diary of Anne Frank that will shape and influence the rest of their lives.Evanston, Illinois, 1982. A group of students at a magnet high school meet to audition for the spring play. They are eager for the chance to escape their difficult everyday lives. Declan, an experienced senior, is confident he'll get his first-choice role, but when the capricious, charismatic drama director casts Franklin, an unknown underclassman-and the two are seen alone at the director's house-a series of events that will haunt the cast for years begins to unfold. 2016. The actors have moved on with their lives. Some are wildly successful, some never left their hometown, and some just want to be left alone. Everything changes, however, when one former cast member comes forward with an allegation dating back to the time of the play. The consequences of this...

Twelve stories comprise John Buchan's last collection of short stories, a classic of British interwar short fiction written from 1913 to 1927. Buchan's most popular character Richard Hannay battles an ancient curse in South Africa in 'The Green Wildebeest' and Edward Leithen tags along in an assassins' war in 'Sing a Song of Sixpence'. The Runagates Club features First World War spy and code-cracking thrillers 'The Loathly Opposite' and 'Dr Lartius'; tales of supernatural possession in deepest Wales, comfortable Oxfordshire and the House of Commons, in 'The Wind in the Portico', Fullcircle' and '"Tendebant Manus"'; and stories of survival in the far North and in Depression-era Canada with 'Skule Skerry' and 'Ship to Tarshish'. There is farce too, in 'The Frying-Pan and the Fire' and '"Divus" Johnston', and the riotous journalistic romp of 'The Last Crusade' is the last word on fake news, for all eras. What makes The Runagates Club special is that...

One of New York Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of the FallHow far can a single leader alter the course of history?From one of the leading historians of twentieth-century Europe and the author of the definitive biography of Hitler, Personality and Power is a masterful reckoning with how character conspired with opportunity to create the modern age’s uniquely devastating despots—and how and why other countries found better paths. The modern era saw the emergence of individuals who had command over a terrifying array of instruments of control, persuasion and death. Whole societies were reshaped and wars were fought, often with a merciless contempt for the most basic norms. At the summit of these societies were leaders whose personalities somehow enabled them to do whatever they wished, regardless of the consequences for others.Ian Kershaw’s new book is a compelling, lucid and challenging attempt to understand these rulers, whether...

NY Library Best Books for The Teen Age ListWren thought she was an orphan. After discovering that she might have family, she wants to spend her first vacation from Cantirmoor's Magic School in finding them. But her quest turns into a far more dangerous adventure than she ever imagined, what with robbers, guardsmen, and an angry sorcerer after her. And when her traveling companion, young prince Connor Shaltar, begins to meddle with magic as well - things get entirely out of hand - meanwhile, back in Cantirmoor, Wren's best friend, Princess Teressa, is trying to get accustomed to living in court. Not so easy after all those years in an orphanage. Especially when someone is causing trouble in Cantirmoor, not just between courtiers, but magical trouble. And Tyron, her friend, is involved. It takes all four friends to solve this mystery.

All her life Wren has hoped for an adventure. Now she has one - with a kidnapped princess, a handsome prince, and a magician. What does it matter if the princess is only Tess, her best friend from the orphanage; if the prince is a youngest son with no chance of becoming king; and the magician is an apprentice? Wren leads the other three over mountains and past killing spells, fighting battles along the way. But then she finds herself up against some shape-changing magic that may end her life as a human forever!

When the evil Andreus's hunger for power leads to war, Wren and her friends are thrust into the middle of the struggle. Teressa is heir to the throne, Tyron her chief magicmaker, and Prince Connor a reluctant warrior. As allies die and others disappear, they must put aside their feelings for one another if they are to defeat the sorcerous Andreus. They know they need magic to save them. Can they turn the bloody tide?NY Public Library Best Books for Teen Age List, 1995; Finalist for Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature, 1995. Anne Spencer Lindbergh Honor Book, 1996.

An indispensable guide to right living from a Founding Father. Benjamin Franklin, one of our nation's most revered founders, was a man of uncommonly fine common sense. Although he was never able to finish his project of compiling a comprehensive compendium of practical wisdom, he was able to lay down the beginnings of this work in his later writings. Collected within this volume are Franklin's writings organized around his timeless philosophy on living well, containing his thoughts on justice, moderation, chastity, and more. The Art of Virtue is a simple, concise, and illuminating guide to living a virtuous and fulfilling life. Perfect for readers young and old alike.

"Wonderful... Calvino's prose is sparkling as ever, and he approaches ideas with wit and an open mind, always ready to challenge a stale point of view. This anthology will delight Calvino fans old and new." —Publishers WeeklyA rich collection of essays offering an extraordinary global view of Calvino's approach to writing, reading, and interpreting literature.An extraordinary collection of essays, forewords, articles, and interviews, The Written World and the Unwritten World displays the remarkable intelligence and razor-sharp wit of prolific Italian writer Italo Calvino as he explores the meaning of literature in a rapidly changing world. From classics to contemporary literature, from tradition to the avant-garde, Calvino masterfully explores reading, writing, and translating through careful and illuminating discussion of the works of Bakhtin, Brecht, Cortázar, Thomas Mann, Octavio Paz, Georges Perec,...

EDITORIAL REVIEW: ***New York Times Notable Book New York Times Bestseller****What Is the What*** is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called Lost Boys—was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, **What Is the What** is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man.

EDITORIAL REVIEW: **The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. **In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s *The Moonstone *to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. *The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher *is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'A page-turner with the authority of history' PHILIPPA GREGORY'As gripping as a novel. An engaging, unsettling, deeply satisfying read' SARAH WATERS'A wonderful book about the world of mediums' HILARY MANTEL, Open Book, BBC Radio 4London, 1938. Alma Fielding, an ordinary young woman, begins to experience supernatural events in her suburban home. Nandor Fodor – a Jewish-Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical research – begins to investigate. In doing so he discovers a different and darker type of haunting: trauma, alienation, loss – and the foreshadowing of a nation's worst fears. As the spectre of Fascism lengthens over Europe, and as Fodor's obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed. With rigour, daring and insight, the award-winning pioneer of historical narrative...

From the winner of the Edgar Award and the Samuel Johnson Prize, a cultural history of “everyday madness”The Book of Phobias and Manias is a thrilling compendium of 99 obsessions that have shaped us all, the rare and the familiar, from ablutophobia (a horror of washing) to syllogomania (a compulsion to hoard) to zoophobia (a fear of animals). Phobias and manias are deeply personal experiences, and among the most common anxiety disorders of our time, but they are also clues to our shared past. The award-winning author Kate Summerscale uses rich and riveting case studies to trace the origins of our obsessions, unearthing a history of human strangeness, from the middle ages to the present day, and a wealth of explanations for some of our most powerful aversions and desires.

Early in the morning of Monday 8 July 1895, thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes and his twelve-year-old brother Nattie set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbours, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next ten days Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes house, a strange smell began to emanate from the building.When the police were finally called to investigate, the discovery they made sent the press into a frenzy of horror and alarm, and Robert and Nattie were swept up in a criminal trial that echoed the outrageous plots of the 'penny dreadful' novels that Robert loved to read. In The Wicked Boy, Kate Summerscale has uncovered a fascinating true story of...

One of Canada's most celebrated author's debut novel for young readersBeatrice, a young girl of uncertain age, wakes up all alone in a tree house in the forest. How did she arrive in this cozy dwelling, stocked carefully with bookshelves and oatmeal accoutrements? And who has been leaving a trail of clues, composed in delicate purple handwriting?So begins the adventure of a brave and resilient Black girl's search for identity and healing in bestselling author Lawrence Hill's middle-grade debut. Though Beatrice cannot recall how or why she arrived in the magical forest of Argilia—where every conceivable fish, bird, mammal and reptile coexist, and any creature with a beating heart can communicate with any other—something within tells her that beyond this forest is a family that is waiting anxiously for her return.Just outside her tree-house door lives Beatrice's most unlikely ally, the enormous and mercurial King Crocodile Croc...

Crossing California is a cinematic and unforgettable look at the end of an era, the turning point when the idealism of the sixties gave way to the pragmatism of the eighties.California Avenue, in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood, separates the upper-middle-class Jewish families on the west from the mostly middle-class Jewish households east of the divide. This funny and heartbreaking novel, which spans the Iran hostage crisis through the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as president, tells the story of three families and their teenage children living on either side of California. It follows their loves, heartaches, friendships, and losses during a memorable and defining moment of American history.

Nobody sane wants war. But what happens when war comes to you?In this first volume of The Norsunder War, the allies introduced in The Rise of the Alliance find their world invaded. For Atan, Queen of Sartor, preserving lives and knowledge come before fleeing to safety. Jilo of Chwahirsland risks his life to resist the return of an evil king. And for Senrid of Marloven Hess, it means facing a combined army whose might hasn't been seen for eight hundred years, and losing everything he holds dear.Heroism. Betrayal. Endurance. Resistance. Both sides encounter unexpected twists as some discover that even when existence is most dire, it can still surprise you...

BONUS: This edition contains a The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie discussion guide and an excerpt from Alan Bradley's The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag.It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best of the Month, April 2009: It's the beginning of a lazy summer in 1950 at the sleepy English village of Bishop's Lacey. Up at the great house of Buckshaw, aspiring chemist Flavia de Luce passes the time tinkering in the laboratory she's inherited from her deceased mother and an eccentric great uncle. When Flavia discovers a murdered stranger in the cucumber patch outside her bedroom window early one morning, she decides to leave aside her flasks and Bunsen burners to solve the crime herself, much to the chagrin of the local authorities. But who can blame her? What else does an eleven-year-old science prodigy have to do when left to her own devices? With her widowed father and two older sisters far too preoccupied with their own pursuits and passions—stamp collecting, adventure novels, and boys respectively—Flavia takes off on her trusty bicycle Gladys to catch a murderer. In Alan Bradley's critically acclaimed debut mystery, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, adult readers will be totally charmed by this fearless, funny, and unflappable kid sleuth. But don't be fooled: this carefully plotted detective novel (the first in a new series) features plenty of unexpected twists and turns and loads of tasty period detail. As the pages fly by, you'll be rooting for this curious combination of Harriet the Spy and Sherlock Holmes. Go ahead, take a bite. --Lauren NemroffA Q&A with Alan Bradley Question: With the publication of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, you’ve become a 70-year-old-first time novelist. Have you always had a passion for writing, or is it more of a recent development? Alan Bradley: Well, the Roman author Seneca once said something like this: “Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms--you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.” So to put it briefly, I’m taking his advice.I actually spent most of my life working on the technical side of television production, but would like to think that I’ve always been a writer. I started writing a novel at age five, and have written articles for various publications all my life. It wasn’t until my early retirement, though, that I started writing books. I published my memoir, The Shoebox Bible, in 2004, and then started working on a mystery about a reporter in England. It was during the writing of this story that I stumbled across Flavia de Luce, the main character in Sweetness.Q: Flavia certainly is an interesting character. How did you come up with such a forceful, precocious and entertaining personality?AB: Flavia walked onto the page of another book I was writing, and simply hijacked the story. I was actually well into this other book--about three or four chapters--and as I introduced a main character, a detective, there was a point where he was required to go to a country house and interview this colonel.I got him up to the driveway and there was this girl sitting on a camp stool doing something with a notebook and a pencil and he stopped and asked her what she was doing and she said “writing down license number plates“ and he said “well there can't be many in such a place“ and she said, “well I have yours, don’t I? “ I came to a stop. I had no idea who this girl was and where she came from.She just materialized. I can't take any credit for Flavia at all. I’ve never had a character who came that much to life. I’ve had characters that tend to tell you what to do, but Flavia grabbed the controls on page one. She sprung full-blown with all of her attributes--her passion for poison, her father and his history--all in one package. It surprised me.Q: There aren’t many adult books that feature child narrators. Why did you want Flavia to be the voice of this novel?AB: People probably wonder, “What’s a 70-year-old-man doing writing about an 11-year-old-girl in 1950s England? “ And it’s a fair question. To me, Flavia embodies that kind of hotly burning flame of our young years: that time of our lives when we’re just starting out, when anything--absolutely anything!--is within our capabilities. I think the reason that she manifested herself as a young girl is that I realized that it would really be a lot of fun to have somebody who was virtually invisible in a village. And of course, we don’t listen to what children say--they’re always asking questions, and nobody pays the slightest attention or thinks for a minute that they’re going to do anything with the information that they let slip. I wanted Flavia to take great advantage of that. I was also intrigued by the possibilities of dealing with an unreliable narrator; one whose motives were not always on the up-and-up.She is an amalgam of burning enthusiasm, curiosity, energy, youthful idealism, and frightening fearlessness. She’s also a very real menace to anyone who thwarts her, but fortunately, they don’t generally realize it. Q: Like Flavia, you were also 11 years old in 1950. Is there anything autobiographical about her character?AB: Somebody pointed out the fact that both Flavia and I lacked a parent. But I wasn’t aware of this connection during the writing of the book. It simply didn’t cross my mind. It is true that I grew up in a home with only one parent, and I was allowed to run pretty well free, to do the kinds of things I wanted. And I did have extremely intense interests then--things that you get focused on. When you’re that age, you sometimes have a great enthusiasm that is very deep and very narrow, and that is something that has always intrigued me--that world of the 11-year-old that is so quickly lost.Q: Your story evokes such a vivid setting. Had you spent much time in the British countryside before writing this book?AB: My first trip to England didn’t come until I went to London to receive the 2007 Debut Dagger Award, so I had never even stepped foot in the country at the time of writing Sweetness. But I have always loved England. My mother was born there. And I‘ve always felt I grew up in a very English household. I had always wanted to go and had dreamed for many years of doing so. When I finally made it there, the England that I was seeing with my eyes was quite unlike the England I had imagined, and yet it was the same. I realized that the differences were precisely those differences between real life, and the simulation of real life, that we create in our detective novels. So this was an opportunity to create on the page this England that had been in my head my whole life.Q: You have five more books lined up in this series, all coming from Delacorte Press. Will Flavia age as the series goes on?AB: A bit, not very much. I think she’s going to remain in the same age bracket. I don’t really like the idea of Flavia as an older teenager. At her current age, she is such a concoction of contradictions. It's one of the things that I very much love about her. She's eleven but she has the wisdom of an adult. She knows everything about chemistry but nothing about family relationships. I don’t think she’d be the same person if she were a few years older. She certainly wouldn’t have access to the drawing rooms of the village.Q: Do you have a sense of what the next books in the series will be about?AB: The second book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, is finished, and I’m working on the third book. I have a general idea of what’s happening in each one of the books, because I wanted to focus on some bygone aspect of British life that was still there in the '50s but has now vanished. So we have postage stamps in the first one... The second book is about the travelling puppet shows on the village green. And one of them is about filmmaking--it sort of harks back to the days of the classic Ealing comedies with Alec Guinness and so forth.Q: Not every author garners such immediate success with a first novel. After only completing 15 pages of Sweetness, you won the Dagger award and within 8 days had secured book deals in 3 countries. You’ve since secured 19 countries. Enthusiasm continues to grow from every angle. How does it feel?AB: It's like being in the glow of a fire. You hope you won't get burned. I’m not sure how much I’ve realized it yet. I guess I can say I‘m “almost overwhelmed”--I’m not quite overwhelmed, but I’m getting there. Every day has something new happening, and communications pouring in from people all over. The book has been receiving wonderful reviews and touching people. But Flavia has been touching something in people that generates a response from the heart, and the most often mentioned word in the reviews is love--how much people love Flavia and have taken her in as if she’s a long-lost member of their family, which is certainly very, very gratifying.(Photo © Jeff Bassett)From Publishers WeeklyFans of Louise Fitzhugh's iconic Harriet the Spy will welcome 11-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce, the heroine of Canadian journalist Bradley's rollicking debut. In an early 1950s English village, Flavia is preoccupied with retaliating against her lofty older sisters when a rude, redheaded stranger arrives to confront her eccentric father, a philatelic devotee. Equally adept at quoting 18th-century works, listening at keyholes and picking locks, Flavia learns that her father, Colonel de Luce, may be involved in the suicide of his long-ago schoolmaster and the theft of a priceless stamp. The sudden expiration of the stranger in a cucumber bed, wacky village characters with ties to the schoolmaster, and a sharp inspector with doubts about the colonel and his enterprising young detective daughter mean complications for Flavia and enormous fun for the reader. Tantalizing hints about a gardener with a shady past and the mysterious death of Flavia's adventurous mother promise further intrigues ahead. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.