Daedalus Books

An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man's world, passionately sexual — though, as she maintained, a virgin — Elizabeth I is famed as England's most successful ruler. David Starkey's brilliant new biography concentrates on Elizabeth's formative years — from her birth in 1533 to her accession in 1558 — and shows how the experiences of danger and adventure formed her remarkable character and shaped her opinions and beliefs. From princess and heir-apparent to bastardized and disinherited royal, accused traitor to head of the princely household, Elizabeth experienced every vicissitude of fortune and extreme of condition — and rose above it all to reign during a watershed moment in history. A uniquely absorbing tale of one young woman's turbulent, courageous, and seemingly impossible journey toward the throne, Elizabeth is the exhilarating story of the making of a queen.

Popular and scholarly history presents a one-dimensional image of Napoleon as an inveterate instigator of war who repeatedly sought large-scale military conquests. This book dismantles this false conclusion using a researched study that helps in understanding the French emperor better.

A final, apocalyptic, world war has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending the majority of mankind off-planet. Those who remain, venerate all remaining examples of life, and owning an animal of your own is both a symbol of status and a necessity. For those who can't afford an authentic animal, companies build incredibly realistic simulacrae: horses, birds, cats, sheep... even humans.

A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible--and tries to stay alive doing it.

A Victorian scientist, R.W. Greasebeam, presents the original correspondence of early explorers who encountered some of the world's most fearsome dragons. Base's fans will be delighted by his humorous stories and intricate renderings of these colorful creatures.

The great American artist William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) completed a wide variety of portraits over his long career. Among his subjects were presidents, businessmen, celebrities, New York luminaries, and members of his family as well as a number of self-portraits. Chase's ability to capture a likeness was renowned, yet it was his dashing and bravura brushwork that truly set his portraits apart. This highly anticipated book presents for the first time the entire collection of Chase's known portraits in oil. Each is gorgeously reproduced, and many are published in colour for the first time. This is the second of four volumes cataloguing the complete works of William Merritt Chase. The catalogue raisonne project has presented immense challenges, for Chase kept no records at all, and staggering numbers of forgeries of his work appeared soon after he died. Finding many of his portraits was especially difficult, as no log book of sitters has been located and no other records exist for those works that were not publicly exhibited. Nevertheless, Ronald Pisano's meticulous research has uncovered more than six hundred portraits in private and public collections. Among the most notable are Chase's penetrating portrait of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), a commanding portrait of Dora Wheeler (Cleveland Museum of Art), The Feather Fan featuring Chase's oldest daughter, Alice (Musee d'Orsay, Paris), and a 1908 self-portrait (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).

London life just after World War I, devoid of values and moving headlong into chaos at breakneck speed — Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay, like Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, portrays a world of lost souls madly pursuing both pleasure and meaning. Fake artists, third-rate poets, pompous critics, pseudo-scientists, con-men, bewildered romantics, cock-eyed futurists — all inhabit this world spinning out of control, as wildly comic as it is disturbingly accurate. In a style that ranges from the lyrical to the absurd, and with characters whose identities shift and change as often as their names and appearances, Huxley has here invented a novel that bristles with life and energy, what the New York Times called a delirium of sense enjoyment!

Western-style furniture was a relatively late arrival in Asia, where climates and lifestyles were markedly different from those in Europe. But colonial incursions and circumstances of history conspired to bring about profound changes, and furniture design in Asia blossomed into a major decorative art. Each of the eight countries covered here — China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Tibet and the Philippines — developed its own particular designs, creating pieces furniture as works of art. Today these diverse pieces are treasured by collectors worldwide, from Manhattan lofts to Parisian apartments, as well as in the countries they originated.

Create Jewelry: Crystals presents 20 glittering projects ranging in difficulty from easy stringing pieces to seed bead weaving designs. All projects are glamorous and timeless and represent unique ways to use crystals in jewelry designs for necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings. In Create Jewelry: Crystals, the editors of Beadwork magazine combine innovative designs with intriguing anecdotes, history and tips about these multi-faceted beads. Designs are divided into the Classics, Special Occasions, and Fashion Forward so readers can easily find designs of their choosing. Beautiful photos are accompanied by step-by-step instructions that are easy to follow so readers can recreate their own designs. Additional material of interest for crystal lovers includes crystal basics, how to tell the difference between manmade and rock crystal, entertaining tidbits about this specialty bead, and more.

A policeman, a criminal overlord, a Bollywood film star, beggars, cultists, spies, and terrorists — the lives of the privileged, the famous, the wretched, and the bloodthirsty interweave with cataclysmic consequences amid the chaos of modern-day Mumbai, in this soaring, uncompromising, and unforgettable epic masterwork of literary art.

Arturo Perez-Reverte has enthralled readers and critics around the globe with his Captain Alatriste series. Having sold four and a half million copies to date in the Spanish-speaking world, the series has made Perez-Reverte a literary superstar and his fictional seventeenth-century mercenary a national icon. And the appeal of Perez-Reverte's adventurer and his exploits continues to grow, as evidenced by the extraordinary reception for the first two translated volumes in the series-Captain Alatriste and Purity of Blood. And now, in The Sun over Breda, Perez-Reverte continues his thrilling chronicle of the swordsman-for-hire, as Captain Alatriste takes up his blade and rejoins his elite Cartagena regiment as they take part in the battles and siege of Breda. Fifteen-year-old Inigo Balboa enlists to serve as his master's aide, and narrates their further adventures of swordplay and skirmishes, of mutiny and wartime honor. And, back in Spain, Alatriste's nemesis Luis de Alquezar grows more powerful, as Inigo's mysterious friend Angelica hints at some plans upon his return.

Laminated with a pink cover and illustrated with authentically detailed watercolors in a timeless style, this tall, slim book retells ten classic fairy tales for all ages: «Aladdin and the Magic Lamp», «The Frog Prince», «Peter Pan», «Pinocchio», «Thumbelina» and five traditional tales are each told in a few pages, with pictures reminiscent of such treasuries from decades ago.

C.S. Lewis's beloved Narnia chronicles spring to life here in the dramatic pop-up tableaus of paper engineer Robert Sabuda. Each of the seven books in the series has its own pop-up spread, rendered in spectacular detail with special effects; in the scene for «The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe», Peter, Susan, Lucy, and Edmund are emerging from the wardrobe under a snowy, sparkling forest as Mr. Tumnus walks nearby. Lift the flap to see the Witch on her sleigh. Like Sabuda's other wonderful creations, this book for youngsters up to 8 is best enjoyed with an adult.

In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house. But then one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension. Joey's walk between the worlds makes him prey to two terrible forces — armies of magic and science who will do anything to harness his power to travel between dimensions. When he sees the evil those forces are capable of, Joey makes the only possible choice: to join an army of his own, an army of versions of himself from different dimensions who all share his amazing power and who are all determined to fight to save the worlds. Master storyteller Neil Gaiman and Emmy Award-winning science-fiction writer Michael Reaves team up to create a dazzling tale of magic, science, honor, and the destiny of one very special boy — and all the others like him.

With Cop Hater, the first of his superb 87th Precinct crime novels, Ed McBain debuted in 1956. Here, after more than 100 books, the MWA Grand Master culls 25 stories he wrote before he was Ed McBain, writing in «Manhunt» and other detective magazines as Evan Hunter, Richard Marsten, and Hunt Collins. Hunter — already well known as the author of «The Blackboard Jungle» and other books before he adopted the name McBain for his police procedurals — provides new introductions for these stories of kids in trouble and women in jeopardy, private eyes and innocent bystanders, and cops and robbers, explaining how they helped launch his career as McBain.

Honored with a National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2000, a National Medal of Arts in 2004, and a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 2007, Ray Bradbury continues to present new work after 70 years. This is an omnibus of two previously unpublished novellas: «Somewhere a Band Is Playing» follows a writer drawn by his dreams to tiny Summerton, Arizona, a community hidden in plain view, where no small children play, and where the residents never seem to age; «Leviathan '99» is a futuristic adaptation of «Moby Dick» (Bradbury co-wrote the screenplay for John Huston's 1956 film version of Melville's book), in which fledgling astronaut Ishmael Hunnicut Jones boards the ship of a madman pursuing a planet-smashing comet.

To a generation in full revolt against any form of authority, «Tune in, turn on, drop out» became a mantra, and its popularizer, Timothy Leary, a guru. A charismatic and brilliant psychologist, Leary became first intrigued and then obsessed by the effects of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s while teaching at Harvard, where he not only encouraged but instituted their experimental use among students and faculty. Journalist and editor Robert Greenfield (also the biographer of Jerry Garcia and rock promoter Bill Graham) presents this first major biography of Leary, immersing the reader in the life and times of this intriguing but troubled counterculture icon.

Andie DeGrasse, an aspiring actress and single mom is not your typical juror. Hoping to get dismissed from the pool, she tells the judge that most of her legal knowledge comes from the Sopranos — only to still end up as juror №11 in a landmark case against a notorious mob boss. A really good edge of your seat thriller in the court room and outside of it. The judge is terrified of the defendant and so is the jury.

In 1922, Vladimir Lenin personally drew up a list of some 160 «undesirable» intellectuals — mostly philosophers, academics, scientists, and journalists — to be deported from the new Soviet State. «We're going to cleanse Russia once and for all» he wrote to Stalin, whose job it was to oversee the deportation. Two ships sailed from Petrograd that autumn, taking Old Russia's eminent men and their families away to what would become permanent exile in Berlin, Prague, and Paris. Through journals, letters, memoirs, and personal accounts, Lesley Chamberlain creates a rich portrait of these banished thinkers and their families. She describes the world they left behind, the émigré communities they were forced to join, and the enduring power of the works they produced in exile.

First published in 1997, «The Mother-Daughter Book Club» is Shireen Dodson's story of the monthly reading club she started and the group of mothers and their daughters whose relationships were strengthened and changed by it. Her book also offered a practical step-by-step guide with stories, anecdotes, and reading lists, intended to inspire parents to start reading clubs of their own, and promoting the message that reading, learning, and sharing ideas can help nourish a daughter's confidence, spirit, and independence. This is one in a series of boxed sets that contain age-appropriate books for mothers and daughters to share — both time-honored classics and critically acclaimed modern works — along with an abbreviated version of Dodson's book.

WELCOME to the big top and get ready to experience a spectacular show, hosted by our mouse emcee Will Ellie the elephant be able to jump from a very tall ladder into a tiny glass of water? The suspense mounts as Ellie climbs up, gets nervous, can't look down and then jumps...right into the glass of water. Through the clever use of gatefold flaps, the reader will learn that what seemed big (Ellie) is really little, and what seemed little (our mouse host) is really big, This simple story can be used on many levels — as a novelty book, as an early reader, and as a literacy tool for those who cannot read English, since the story tells itself through John Stadler's wonderful expressive illustrations.

When Lieutenant Charles Acland is flown home from Iraq with serious head injuries, he faces not only permanent disfigurement but also an apparent change to his previously outgoing personality. Crippled by migraines, and suspicious of his psychiatrist, he begins to display sporadic bouts of aggression, particularly against women, especially his ex-fiancee who seems unable to accept that the relationship is over. After his injuries prevent his return to the army, he cuts all ties with his former life and moves to London. Alone and unmonitored, he sinks into a private world of guilt and paranoid distrust...until a customer annoys him in a Bermondsey pub...Out of control and only prevented from killing the man by the intervention of a 250-pound female weightlifter called Jackson, he attracts the attention of police who are investigating three 'gay' murders in the Bermondsey area which appear to have been motivated by extreme rage...Under suspicion, Acland is forced to confront the real issues behind his isolation. How much control does he have over the dark side of his personality? Do his migraines contribute to his rages? Has he always been the duplicitous chameleon that his ex-fiancee claims? And why if he hates women does he look to a woman for help?

Bestselling British author Sebastian Faulks reinvents the unreliable narrator with his singular, haunting creation — Mike Engleby. «My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university.» With that brief introduction we meet one of the most mesmerizing, singular voices in a long tradition of disturbing narrators. Despite his obvious intelligence and compelling voice, it is clear that something about solitary, odd Mike is not quite right. When he becomes fixated on a classmate named Jennifer Arkland and she goes missing, we are left with the looming question: Is Mike Engleby involved? As he grows up, finding a job and even a girlfriend in London, Mike only becomes more and more detached from those around him in an almost anti-coming-of-age. His inability to relate to others and his undependable memory (able to recall countless lines of text yet sometimes incapable of summoning up his own experiences from mere days before) lead the reader down an unclear and often darkly humorous path where one is never completely comfortable or confident about what is true. Mike Engleby is a chilling and unforgettable character, and Engleby is a novel that will surprise and beguile Sebastian Faulks' readership.

Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, sprang from an early passion for the derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books. Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollicking spirit of legendary adventures-from The Arabian Nights to Alexandre Dumas to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories-in a wonderful new novel brimming with breathless action, raucous humor, cliff-hanging suspense, and a cast of colorful characters worthy of Scheherazade's most tantalizing tales. «They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can-as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. No strangers to tight scrapes and close shaves, they've left many a fist shaking in their dust, tasted their share of enemy steel, and made good any number of hasty exits under hostile circumstances.» None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire. Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-tempered young royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so will demand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and foolhardy bravado...not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at leastsupply the former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to become generals in a full-scale revolution? The only certainty is that getting there-along a path paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of-will be much more than half the fun.