Daedalus Books

Balram Halwai is the White Tiger — the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor for him to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centres, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one way he can become part of this glamorous new India — by murdering his master. The White Tiger presents a raw and unromanticised India, both thrilling and shocking — from the desperate, almost lawless villages along the Ganges, to the booming Wild South of Bangalore and its technology and outsourcing centres. The first-person confession of a murderer, The White Tiger is as compelling for its subject matter as for the voice of its narrator — amoral, cynical, unrepentant, yet deeply endearing.

An exhilarating exploration of how the world's languages are likely to transform and be transformed by their speakers Mark Abley, author of Spoken Here, takes the reader on a global journey like no other — from Singapore to Tokyo, from Oxford to Los Angeles, through the Internet and back in time. As much a travel book as a tour of words at play, The Prodigal Tongue goes beyond grammar and vocabulary to discover how language is irrevocably changing the people of the world in far-reaching ways.On his travels, Abley encounters bloggers, translators, novelists, therapists, dictionary makers, hip-hop performers, and Web-savvy teens. He talks to a married couple who corresponded passionately online before they met in meatspace. And he listens to teenagers, puzzling out the words they coin in chat rooms and virtual worlds. Everywhere he goes, he asks what the future is likely to hold for the ways we communicate. Abley balances a traditional concern for honesty and accuracy in language with a less traditional delight in the sheer creative energy of new words and expressions. Provocative, perceptive, and often hilarious, this is a book for everyone who cherishes the words we use.

Two leading thinkers engage in a landmark conversation about human emotions and the pursuit of psychological fulfillment. At their first meeting, a remarkable bond was sparked between His Holiness the Dalai Lama, one of the world's most revered spiritual leaders, and the psychologist Paul Ekman, whose groundbreaking work helped to define the science of emotions. Now these two luminaries share their thinking about science and spirituality, the bonds between East and West, and the nature and quality of our emotional lives. In this unparalleled series of conversations, the Dalai Lama and Ekman prod and push toward answers to the central questions of emotional experience. What are the sources of hate and compassion? Should a person extend her compassion to a torturer — and would that even be biologically possible? What does science reveal about the benefits of Buddhist meditation, and can Buddhism improve through engagement with the scientific method? As they come to grips with these issues, they invite us to join them in an unfiltered view of two great traditions and two great minds. Accompanied by commentaries on the findings of emotion research and the teachings of Buddhism, their interplay — amusing, challenging, eye-opening, and moving — guides us on a transformative journey in the understanding of emotions.

In her most eagerly anticipated novel yet, Elizabeth George brings back Scotland Yard's Thomas Lynley to investigate a ruthless crime. After the senseless murder of his wife, Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley retreated to Cornwall, where he has spent six solitary weeks hiking the bleak and rugged coastline. But no matter how far he walks, no matter how exhausting his days, the painful memories of Helen's death do not diminish. On the forty-third day of his walk, at the base of a cliff, Lynley discovers the body of a young man who appears to have fallen to his death. The closest town, better known for its tourists and its surfing than its intrigue, seems an unlikely place for murder. However, it soon becomes apparent that a clever killer is indeed at work, and this time Lynley is not a detective but a witness and possibly a suspect. The head of the vastly understaffed local police department needs Lynley's help, though, especially when it comes to the mysterious, secretive woman whose cottage lies not far from where the body was discovered. But can Lynley let go of the past long enough to solve a most devious and carefully planned crime?

Many years ago, the storytellers say, the great King Arthur brought justice to England with the help of his gallant Knights of the Round Table. Of these worthy knights, there was never one so fearless, so chivalrous, so honorable, so... shiny, as the dashing Sir Lancelot, who was quite good at defending the helpless and protecting the weak, just as long as he'd had his afternoon nap. Behold the very exciting and very funny adventures of Lancelot the Great, as only the acclaimed Arthurian author Gerald Morris can tell them.

This comprehensive, two-volume work presents the extraordinary panorama of Italian painting spanning the period from 1300 to 1610, including all the great masters and their most famous works. The first volume is devoted to the artists who dedicated themselves to lines and drawing, starting with famous fresco painters such as Giotto and Piero della Francesco and moving on to Botticelli, Perugino, Pinturicchio and Michelangelo, whose works are the culmination of the first volume. The second volume focuses on the work of the painters who developed their pictures through colour («colore»), including Leonardo, Raphael, and the famous Venetians Tintoretto and Titian. Throughout both volumes, the texts are written in a lively style and convey a vivid impression of the artists' personalities, of the circumstances in which they worked and their social standing, and even the relationships of the painters among themselves in various artistic centres. The two volumes are rounded off by recent scholarly findings, an extensive appendix, tables summarizing information about the painters' lives and concurrent historical developments, and a bibliography. The Great Painters Of The Italian Renaissance is an indispensable compendium of the fascinating history of Italian art, both for the seasoned connoisseur and for amateurs with an interest in the arts.

Eminent poet, translator, and scholar Burton Raffel — whose translation of «Beowulf» has sold more than a million copies — presents a pitch-perfect new translation of the lively, absorbing, and outrageously funny «Canterbury Tales», in a new, unabridged version that ensures none of Chaucer's wit or wisdom is lost.

Righting the Mother Tongue tells the cockamamie story of English spelling. When did ghost acquire its silent 'h'? Will cyberspace kill the one in rhubarb? And was it really rocket scientists who invented spell-check? Seeking to untangle the twisted story of English spelling, David Wolman takes us on a wordly adventure from English battlefields to Google headquarters. Along the way, he pickets with spelling reformers outside the national spelling bee, visits the town in Belgium, not England, where the first English books were printed, and takes a road-trip with the boss at Merriam-Webster Inc. The journey is punctuated by spelling battles waged by the likes of Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie and the members of today's Simplified Spelling Society. Rich with history, pop culture, curiosity and humor, Righting the Mother Tongue explores how English spelling came to be, traces efforts to mend the code and imagines the shape of tomorrow's words.

»I think my father's rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and has never left me», writes Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing in this combined novella and memoir exploring the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War. In the fictional first half of Alfred and Emily, she imagines the happier lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war, a story that begins with their meeting at a village cricket match outside Colchester. What follows is Lessing's piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was through the Great War and the family's move to Africa — and the impact her parents' marriage had on her, a young woman growing up in a strange land. «In her first major work since receiving the Nobel Prize, Lessing looks back to the enduring mysteries of her parents' lives. 'The First World War did them both in', she writes. Her father lost a leg and was tormented by untreated post-traumatic stress syndrome. Her mother never got over the suffering of the countless soldiers she nursed in London, or her husband's misery, made worse by the severe diabetes that shortened his life. Haunted by her parents' sacrifices, Lessing imagines alternative lives for Alfred and Emily in a sparkling novella. Laced with the subtlest of observations and the wryest of wit, it's a charming yet cutting story of rapid social change, the resiliency of women, class conflicts, the call to do good, and the confounding dynamics of marriage and parenthood. Lessing then switches to memoir to disclose true-life inspirations for the novella, sharing bristling tales of her family's precarious existence in British colonial Africa and musing over her resourceful mother's kitchen clinic and her contemplative father's fascination with spiders and stars. This unusual marriage of fiction and memoir (and family photographs) results in a book at once spellbinding, rueful, and tragic. And how keenly Lessing decries injustice, wastefulness, and war; how much of her parents' smashed dreams and root-deep sorrows she still harbors».

Feeling jealous over the attentions given his new baby sibling, a little fox runs away from home, in the first story in this treasury. In other stories, a bear can't get to sleep and keeps disturbing his friends; a hungry ginger cat goes looking for some milk; and a toddler asks his mother to tell him a story. This collection of four stories for prereaders is illustrated with Atsuko Morozumi's detailed, dimensionally shaded watercolor drawings, and includes four «picture stories» — busy, two-page scenes where so much is going on that youngsters can make up their own stories.

This newest edition to the Best American Series — «A genuine salute to comics» (Houston Chronicle) — returns with a set of both established and up-and-coming contributors. Editor Lynda Barry and brand new series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden — acclaimed cartoonists in their own right — have sought out the best stories culled from graphic novels, pamphlet comics, newspapers, magazines, mini-comics, and the Web to create this cutting-edge collection «perfect for newbies as well as fans» — The San Diego Union Tribune. This newest volume features luminaries like Chris Ware, Seth, and Alison Bechdel alongside Paul Pope's «Batman» and beloved daily cartoonists like Matt Groening. Lynda Barry is a writer and cartoonist whose comic strip, “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” celebrates its 30th year in print in 2007. She is a recipient of the Washington State Governor's Award for her novel, The Good Times are Killing Me, which she adapted into a long-running off-broadway play. The New York Times called her second novel, Cruddy, “A work of terrible beauty”. She received the 2003 William Eisner award for Best Graphic Album and an American Library Association Alex award for her book, One! Hundred! Demons! She lives and works in southern Wisconsin.

The hilarious Christmas story of a dog who rids a young Santa of his slacker ways. It's Christmastime, and young Santa is doing a lot of sitting around. Every now and then he'll eat some fruitcake or watch TV, but the elves and Santa's dog, Rodney, do all the work. When Christmas Eve arrives and Santa falls asleep in the sleigh, Rodney takes charge. Soon, the determined dog has the North Pole buzzing with efficiency, and he even gives Santa lessons about what to eat to lookjolly and how to drive a sleigh. But will Rodney ever get Santa Claus to start doing his job?

»The fourth novel in the immensely satisfying Captain Alatriste series by Arturo Pérez-Reverte opens with a Spanish galleon sailing into a home port that is festooned with English corpses. The slain enemies, fruit of a failed Anglo-Dutch attack on Cádiz, 'hung from gallows erected on the shore, along the edge of the vineyards... bunches of grapes ripe for harvesting, except that these grapes had been harvested already'. Such carnage is a welcome sight to Spanish eyes in 1626, even eyes as jaded as those of our hero, Alatriste. For us, though, the scene is unsettling. Instead of action, we find action's putrefied aftermath. The tone is not triumphant but exhausted. Alatriste, his young protégé Ínigo and his battered comrades are tired of adventures. But they need another one that pays well. An air of cynical resignation pervades The King's Gold. Pérez-Reverte, even as he stages exhilarating scenes, darkens the mood, making this novel one of his finest. 'War is at least clean', Alatriste observes, whereas the business of empire is extremely grubby. The gold at the center of this novel has been smuggled from the West Indies and is destined not for King Philip's treasury but for 'private pockets', perhaps even for the coffers of Spain's enemies. Pérez-Reverte succinctly explains the political and economic background, which we discover along with Alatriste as he learns the details of his mission: to recover the king's treasure from a ship off Seville. Not for glory or patriotism — both sullied terms in Alatriste's world — but for the gold itself. 'Spain is going to the dogs', a courtier reflects. 'Everyone steals, cheats, and lies and no one pays his debts'. Except for Alatriste, whose dented moral compass still steers him toward loyalty and a man's word'. Since there were no old gods in whom one could trust', Ínigo observes, 'no great words that could be bandied about during combat, it was a salve to everyone's honor — or, at least, better than nothing at all — to have a king for whom one could fight.' A wistful narrator, Ínigo recalls not only their daring escapades but also his youthful self, hopelessly in love with the manipulative Angelica. Even stock scenes of romantic assignation, swordplay, torture and execution appear fresh and profound in these pages, tinged as they are with longing for a time that never was as glorious as other swashbucklers would have us believe».

Can you find all the eggs in this Easter hunt book? Kirby the farm dog thinks he's the Easter Bunny. Every year the big black lab puts on his bunny ears (a pretty comical sight in itself) and delivers beautifully decorated eggs to all the animals in the farmyard. Each pop-up spread in this book for youngsters up to 6 features elements that move as the pages are opened, sometimes revealing eggs and sometimes hiding them. Sharp-eyed readers can add up all the eggs they've spotted; the total is hidden on the last page under a flap.

Kirby the black lab hosts an annual soapbox derby for his animal friends in this pop-up book for readers up to 6. Animal puns abound, as well as hilarious themed vehicles — Monkey drives a banana-shaped car, of course — and each two-page spread is full of comical details.

Two years after the best-selling Arthur & George, Julian Barnes gives us a memoir on mortality that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction. If the fear of death is “the most rational thing in the world”, how does one contend with it? An atheist at twenty, an agnostic at sixty, Barnes looks into the various arguments for and against and with God, and at the bloodline whose archivist, following his parents’ death, he has become — another realm of mystery, wherein a drawer of mementos and his own memories (not to mention those of his philosopher brother) often fail to connect. There are other ancestors, too: the writers — “most of them dead, and quite a few of them French” — who are his daily companions, supplemented by composers and theologians and scientists whose similar explorations are woven into this account with an exhilarating breadth of intellect and felicity of spirit. Deadly serious, masterfully playful, and surprisingly hilarious, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a riveting display of how this supremely gifted writer goes about his business and a highly personal tour of the human condition and what might follow the final diagnosis.

Why do we say “I am reading a catalog” instead of «I read a catalog?» Why do we say “do” at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Language distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history. Covering such turning points as the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during the fifth century ad, John McWhorter narrates this colorful evolution with vigor. Drawing on revolutionary genetic and linguistic research as well as a cache of remarkable trivia about the origins of English words and syntax patterns, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue ultimately demonstrates the arbitrary, maddening nature of English — and its ironic simplicity due to its role as a streamlined lingua franca during the early formation of Britain. This is the book that language aficionados worldwide have been waiting for (and no, it’s not a sin to end a sentence with a preposition).

If ever there was a book to make you switch off your television set, The Dangerous Book for Boys was it. From the same authors, these hardbound, foil-embossed pocket editions for boys (and girls) 8 to 80 are packed with fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. With Things to Know you can impress your friends and family with your knowledge of the solar system, your ability to name the kings and queens of England, and your brilliance at unraveling codes and ciphers. Ever wanted to know what the best ever scientific discoveries were? Or the most gruesome deaths of all time? Or how many great men were assassinated? Facts, Figures and Fun has your answers.

Created by Hal Foster in 1934 and gradually taken over by John Cullen Murphy in the 1970s, Prince Valiant remains an icon of graphic storytelling, noted for the dramatic action and superb detail of its artwork as well as its stories of love, friendship, and swashbuckling adventure set in the days of King Arthur. Written by Mark Schultz and drawn by Gary Gianni since 2004, the strip continues in this great tradition. In this collection of 182 full-page, vividly colored episodes, Val and his son Nathan run afoul of Pictish warriors, while Nathan's young heart is captured by a young shaman girl. Then Val, captured by the Viking Skyrmir, finds himself in Africa, seeking King Solomon's treasure.

Updikes sixth collection of essays and literary criticism opens with a skeptical overview of literary biographies, proceeds to five essays on topics ranging from China and small change to faith and late works, and takes up, under the heading General Considerations, books, poker, cars, and the American libido.

Many years ago, the storytellers say, the great King Arthur held court with his gallant Knights of the Round Table. Poor Givret, who is easily the shortest man at court, bears the brunt of their jokes. But what he lacks in stature, Givret makes up for in brains — and before he knows it, his quick thinking has landed him a place at the famous Round Table And so beginneth the exciting and funny adventures of Sir Givret the Short, Brilliant, and Marvelous.

»Paparazzo» — Italian for pesky — is synonymous with Ron Galella, the photographer who made his name capturing celebrities in unguarded, often private moments. Famously banned from approaching Jackie Onassis and punched by Marlon Brando, Galella was a favorite of Andy Warhol, who shared his fascination with the great and near-great. Warhol himself recorded his nightly rounds through a seemingly endless parade of parties, openings, and happenings in his diaries. In these photographs Galella presents the definitive visual diary of Warhol's life and times, his entourage, and his haunts. Through his «Interview» column, «Glenn O'Brien's Beat», O'Brien was a key commentator on the period. His text places Galella in Warhol's world and in the history of modern photography, describing his ground-breaking work, which Warhol was the first to recognize as «the great unauthorized portrait of our time».

How much of an impact can an animal have? How many lives can one cat touch? How is it possible for an abandoned kitten to transform a small library, save a classic American town, and eventually become famous around the world? You can't even begin to answer those questions until you hear the charming story of Dewey Read more Books, the beloved library cat of Spencer, Iowa. Dewey's story starts in the worst possible way. Only a few weeks old, on the coldest night of the year, he was stuffed into the returned book slot at the Spencer Public Library. He was found the next morning by library director, Vicki Myron, a single mother who had survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare, and an alcoholic husband. Dewey won her heart, and the hearts of the staff, by pulling himself up and hobbling on frostbitten feet to nudge each of them in a gesture of thanks and love. For the next nineteen years, he never stopped charming the people of Spencer with his enthusiasm, warmth, humility, (for a cat) and, above all, his sixth sense about who needed him most. As his fame grew from town to town, then state to state, and finally, amazingly, worldwide, Dewey became more than just a friend; he became a source of pride for an extraordinary Heartland farming town pulling its way slowly back from the greatest crisis in its long history.

From one of America's most beloved and bestselling authors, a wonderfully useful and readable guide to the problems of the English language most commonly encountered by editors and writers. What is the difference between «immanent» and «imminent?» What is the singular form of graffiti? What is the difference between «acute» and «chronic?» What is the former name of «Moldova?» What is the difference between a cardinal number and an ordinal number? One of the English language's most skilled writers answers these and many other questions and guides us all toward precise, mistake-free usage. Covering spelling, capitalization, plurals, hyphens, abbreviations, and foreign names and phrases, Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors will be an indispensable companion for all who care enough about our language not to maul, misuse, or contort it. This dictionary is an essential guide to the wonderfully disordered thing that is the English language. As Bill Bryson notes, it will provide you with «the answers to all those points of written usage that you kind of know or ought to know but can't quite remember».