Random House Inc.

With astonishing authority and clarity, Richard Pipes has fused a lifetime’s scholarship into a single focused history of Communism, from its hopeful birth as a theory to its miserable death as a practice. At its heart, the book is a history of the Soviet Union, the most comprehensive reorganization of human society ever attempted by a nation-state. This is the story of how the agitation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two mid-nineteenth-century European thinkers and writers, led to a great and terrible world religion that brought down a mighty empire, consumed the world in conflict, and left in its wake a devastation whose full costs can only now be tabulated.

In the annals of espionage, one name towers above all others: that of H.A.R. “Kim” Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies. A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence, and, as MI6’s liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in the early years of the Cold War. Written from Moscow in 1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John le Carré’s Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history’s most successful spy. He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the process, the art of espionage writing.

One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the 'cancerous' Soviet police state. Withdrawn from publication in Russia in 1964, it became, along with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a work that awoke the conscience of the world. As Robert Service wrote of its appeal in the Independent, 'In waging his struggle against Soviet communism, Solzhenitsyn the novelist preferred the rapier to the cudgel'.

The remarkable memoir of film star Michael J. Fox and his first ten years living with Parkinson's Disease. Diagnosed in 1991, Michael eventually lost his balance, his grace, his spontaneity, and the ability to read the morning newspaper. Even so, he realizes that, in fact, he is a lucky man.

Youth's narrator, a student in 1950s South Africa, has long been plotting an escape from his native country. Studying mathematics, reading poetry, saving money, he tries to ensure that when he arrives in the real world he will be prepared to experience life to its full intensity, and transform it into art. Arriving at last in London, however, he finds neither poetry nor romance. Instead he succumbs to the monotony of life as a computer programmer, from which random, loveless affairs offer no relief. Devoid of inspiration, he stops writing and begins a dark pilgrimage in which he is continually tested and continually found wanting. Set against the background of the 1960s, Youth is a remarkable portrait of a consciousness turning in on itself. J.M. Coetzee explores a young man's struggle to find his way in the world with tenderness and a fierce clarity.

The bestselling author of The Surgeon returns — and so does that chilling novel's diabolical villain. Though held behind bars, Warren Hoyt still haunts a helpless city, seeming to bequeath his evil legacy to a student all-too-diligent...and all-too-deadly. It is a boiling hot Boston summer. Adding to the city's woes is a series of shocking crimes, in which wealthy men are made to watch while their wives are brutalized. A sadistic demand that ends in abduction and death. The pattern suggests one man: serial killer Warren Hoyt, recently removed from the city's streets. Police can only assume an acolyte is at large, a maniac basing his attacks on the twisted medical techniques of the madman he so admires. At least that's what Detective Jane Rizzoli thinks. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her — literally and figuratively — she is determined to finally end Hoyt's awful influence...even if it means receiving more resistance from her all-male homicide squad. But Rizzoli isn't counting on the U.S. government's sudden interest. Or on meeting Special Agent Gabriel Dean, who knows more than he will tell. Most of all, she isn't counting on becoming a target herself, once Hoyt is suddenly free, joining his mysterious blood brother in a vicious vendetta... Filled with superbly created characters — and the medical and police procedural details that are her trademark — The Apprentice is Tess Gerritsen at her brilliant best. Set in a stunning world where evil is easy to learn and hard to end, this is a thriller by a master who could teach other authors a thing or two.

Today is your birthday! Today you are you!...There is no one alive that is younger than you! Six pages of rollicking pop-ups animate this simple adaptation of the Dr. Seuss classic. It's the best-of-the-best way to say...Happy Birthday to You!

Middle-aged Harry Angstrom, chief sales representative of a Toyota dealership, copes with inflation, governmental ineffectiveness, the return of his prodigal son, and a chance encounter with an old girlfriend, in Rabbit Is Rich, while in Rabbit at Rest, Harry «Rabbit» Angstrom, now living in a Florida condominium, faces middle age, heart trouble, and a wife.

Lavinia Lake is set apart from the other women of London's Claremont Lane: she's well-versed in mesmerism, a gift that far surpasses mere charm and physical appeal. Nobody knows this better than the usually coolheaded Tobias March, who has fallen hopelessly under her spell.

The Office of the Public Defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. When Clay Carter reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit Washington DC.

In the years following World War III, a new and powerful faith has arisen from a scorched and poisoned Earth, a faith that embraces the architect of world wide devastation. The Servants of Wrath have deified Carlton Lufteufel and re-christened him the Deus Irae. In the small community of Charlottesville, Utah, Tibor McMasters, born without arms or legs, has, through an array of prostheses, established a far-reaching reputation as an inspired painter. When the new church commissions a grand mural depicting the Deus Irae, it falls upon Tibor to make a treacherous journey to find the man, to find the god, and capture his terrible visage for posterity.

In merry verse and illustrations, Marvin is asked to leave by every conceivable means of transportation.

The fifth novel in Auel's Earth's Children series continues as Ayla and Jondalar face new and perilous challenges at the old stone settlement in prehistoric southwest France — home to the Zelandonii.

The second volume in a trilogy begun in «When Christ and His Saints Slept Here.» Hoping to subdue the Church, Henry II — against the advice of Eleanor of Aquitaine — raises Thomas Becket to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury. But when the once worldly Becket discovers faith, their alliance withers.

First published in 1776, Smith's «primer» provided the first description of the workings of a market economy. This unabridged edition offers the modern reader a fresh look at a timeless work that revolutionized the way the creation and dispersion of wealth are viewed.

It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own story.

A victim of time famine, thirty-five-year-old Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. Factor in a controlling nanny, a chauvinist Australian boss, a long-suffering husband, two demanding children and an e-mail lover, and you have a woman juggling so many balls that some day soon something's going to hit the ground.

Marvin Kreitman lives for sex, or at least he lives for women. Charlie Merriweather, on the other hand, loves just the one woman, also called Charlie. Once a week, the two friends meet for a Chinese lunch, contriving never quite to have the conversation they would like to have — about fidelity and womanising, and which makes happier.

Sefton Goldberg: mid-thirties, English teacher at Wrottesley Poly in the West Midlands; small, sweaty, lustful, definatly unappreciative of beer, nature and organised games; gnawingly aware of being an urban Jew islanded in a sea of country-loving Anglo-Saxons. Obsessed by failure — morbidly, in his own case, gloatingly, in that of his contemporaries — so much so that he plans to write a bestseller on the subject. In the meantime he is uncomfortably aware of advancing years and atrophying achievement, and no amount of lofty rationalisation can disguise the triumph of friends and colleagues, not only from Cambridge days but even within the despised walls of the Poly itself, or sweeten the bitter pill of another's success...

I am Princess Meredith, heir to a throne — if I can stay alive long enough to claim it. After eluding relentless assassination attempts by Prince Cel, her cousin and rival for the Faerie crown, Meredith Gentry, Los Angeles private eye, has a whole new set of problems. To become queen, she must bear a child before Cel can father one of his own. But havoc lies on the horizon: people are dying in mysterious, frightening ways, and suddenly the very existence of the place known as Faerie is at grave risk. So now, while she enjoys the greatest pleasures of her life attempting to conceive a baby with the warriors of her royal guard, she must fend off an ancient evil that could destroy the very fabric of reality. And that's just her day job...

The first and second novels in John Updike's acclaimed quartet of Rabbit books-now in one marvelous volume. RABBIT, RUN Brilliant and poignant... By his compassion, clarity of insight, and crystal-bright prose, [Updike] makes Rabbit's sorrow his and out own.

In this breathtakingly imagined fictional memoir of England's Virgin Queen, the author of the bestselling Guenevere trilogy uses her skills as a storyteller and a scholar to bring to life the woman behind the myth.

The deliciously witty and delightfully dishy novel about life at a glamorous fashion magazine is now a major motion picture from 20th Century Fox, starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, set to open in theaters on June 30.

In this novel, Sharpe turns his attention to a very minor public school, taking hilarious pot-shots at the public school system. The humorous and wild incidents include hoaxes, chases, car crashes, shootings and general mayhem.