Random House Inc.

A devastating analysis of America's political actions (as opposed to its rhetoric) before, during and after the Cold War. Using secret National Security Council planning documents and taking post-war Europe and Central America as paradigms, the author examines America's aggressive colonialist policy.It draws alarming connections between its repression of information inside the U.S. and its aggressive empire-building abroad.

What do we do when the world's walls — its family structures, its value-systems, it political forms — crumble? The central character of this novel, 'Moor' Zogoiby, only son of a wealthy, artistic-bohemian Bombay family, finds himself in such a moment of crisis. His mother, a famous painter and an emotional despot, worships beauty, but Moor is ugly, he has a deformed hand. Moor falls in love, with a married woman; when their secret is revealed, both are expelled; a suicide pact is proposed, but only the woman dies. Moor chooses to accept his fate, plunges into a life of depravity in Bombay, then becomes embroiled in a major financial scandal. The novel ends in Spain, in the studio of a painter who was a lover of Moor's mother: in a violent climax Moor has, one more, to decide whether to save the life of his lover by sacrificing his own.

The woods outside of Kingsmarkham were lovely, dark, and deep. And they were about to vanish forever when the new highway cut through them. While Chief Inspector Wexford privately despaired about the loss of his hiking grounds, local residents and outsiders were organizing a massive protest. Some of them were desperate enough to kidnap five hostages and threaten to kill them. One hostage was Wexford's wife, Dora. Now, combining high technology with his extraordinary detecting skills, Wexford and his team race to find the kidnappers' whereabouts. Because someone has crossed from political belief to fanaticism, and as the first body is found, good intentions may become Wexford's personal path to hell.

Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece «Huckleberry Finn», «Life on the Mississippi» is Mark Twain’s most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work. It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War, a priceless collection of humorous anecdotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twain’s life before he began to write. Written in a prose style that has been hailed as among the greatest in English literature, «Life on the Mississippi» established Twain as not only the most popular humorist of his time but also America’s most profound chronicler of the human comedy.

Poet, painter, engraver and visionary, Blake’s was a radical spirit fired by genius. Yet his life has remained an enigma.In this magnificent biography Peter Ackroyd discloses the true nature of William Blake’s life and art.

Subtitled ‘A Romantic Novel in Honour of the Passing of a Great Race’, «The Torrents of Spring» – Hemingway’s second published work – wonderfully parodies the themes and styles of the ‘great race’ of writers of his generation. Spring is coming to the small towns of Michigan, but the snow still covers the land when Scripps O’Neil sets of for Chicago, decides to stop a while in Petoskey, and meets up with Yogi Johnson. Their bizarre stories are a brilliant satire on conventional fiction. The characters they meet are absurd and yet strangely familiar. Short, fast-paced, funny, «The Torrents of Spring» throws light on Hemingway’s later work – and is a delight to read.

Leon Uris retums to the land of his acclaimed best-seller Exodus for an epic story of hate and love, vengeance and forgiveness and forgiveness. The Middle East is the powerful setting for this sweeping tale of a land where revenge is sacred and hatred noble. Where an Arab ruler tries to save his people from destruction but cannot save them from themselves. When violence spreads like a plague across the lands of Palestine — this is the time of «The Haj».

Christopher Snow is different from all the other residents of Moonlight Bay, different from anyone you've ever met. For Christopher Snow has made his peace with a very rare genetic disorder that leaves him dangerously vulnerable to light. His life is filled with the fascinating rituals of one who must embrace the dark. He knows the night as no one else can — its mystery, its beauty, its terrors, and the eerie silken rhythms that seduce one into believing anything — even freedom — is possible. Until the night Christopher Snow witnesses a series of disturbing incidents that sweep him into a violent mystery only he can solve, a mystery that will force him to rise above all fears and confront the many-layered secrets of Moonlight Bay and its strange inhabitants. A place, like all places, that looks a lot different after dark.

Following on from his bestselling study of violence, THE FOOTBALL FACTORY, John King considers Britain's other obsession-sex. Formed in the chemical mists of New year's Eve, The Sex Division sees the once-sacred act of procreation at its most material, as five men devise system based on the sexual act. In this lagerosoaked league, the most that women can offer man is 4 points-unless, that is, she leaves her handbag unattended...From its base in the asset-stripped, emotionally castrated 90s, HEADHUNTERS shows the dreams of The Sex Division members breaking through the heavy media cloud of anorexic pin-ups and paedophile fashion. A missing brother, prophetic visions, a love affair, and tit-for-tat confrontation draw the characters out into the open-revealing the men behind the machismo, their need for mutual respect, and their recognition of the hidden or suppressed affinities.

A turn-of-the-century doctor tracks a cunning killer in the New York Times bestselling sequel to the acclaimed historical thriller The Alienist.

When Mitchell McDeere qualified third in his class at Harvard, offers poured in from every law firm in America. The firm he chose was small, but-well respected. They were prepared to match, and then exceed Mitch's wildest dreams: eighty thousand a year, a BMW and a low-interest mortgage. Now the house, the car and the job are his. Then the nightmares begin: the secret files, the bugs in the new bedroom, the mysterious deaths of colleagues, and the millions of dollars of mob money pouring through the office into the Cayman Islands, dollars that the FBI would do anything to trace. Now Mitch is in the place where dreams end and nightmares begin...

This is the story of a lie that became the most powerful kind of truth. A timeless novel as urgently compelling as War Day or Alas, Babylon, David Brin's The Postman is the dramatically moving saga of a man who rekindled the spirit of America through the power of a dream, from a modern master of science fiction. He was a survivor — a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war. Fate touches him one chill winter's day when he borrows the jacket of a long-dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.

Two Supreme Court Justices are dead. Their murders are connected only in one mind, and in one legal brief conceived by that mind. Brilliant, beautiful and ambitious, New Orleans legal student Darby Shaw little realises that her speculative brief will penetrate to the highest levels of power in Washington and cause shockwaves there. Shockwaves that will see her boyfriend atomised in a bomb blast, that will send hired killers chasing after her, that will propel her across the country to meet investigative reporter Gray Grantham, the one man who is as near the truth as she is.

Ever since her engagement, the strangest thing has been happening to Marian McAlpin: she can't eat. First meat. Then eggs, vegetables, cake, pumpkin seeds — everything! Worse yet, she has the crazy feeling that she's being eaten. Marian ought to feel consumed with passion, but she really just feels... consumed. A brilliant and powerful work rich in irony and metaphor, «The Edible Woman» is an unforgettable masterpiece by a true master of contemporary literary fiction.

They had been inseparable in college, Mary Stuart, Tanya, and Zoe. But in the more than twenty years that followed, the three had moved on with their lives, settled in different cities, and found successful careers and new roles as mothers and wives. By chance, each would find herself alone for a few weeks one summer, wrestling with the present and the past. At a sprawling ranch in the foothills of Wyoming's Grand Teton Range, the three women come together and find courage, healing, and truth, and reach out to each other once again. Despite the honesty they once shared, now pretense between them runs high. Mary Stuart Walker, married for twenty-two years to a Manhattan lawyer, kept herself busy with volunteer work, and now masks the loneliness that consumes her life. A year has past, and Mary Stuart still hasn't gotten over the guilt, or the fear that her husband will never forgive her for their son's death... Tanya Thomas, an award winning singer and rock star, enjoys all the trappings of fame and success-a mansion in Bel Air, legions of fans, and a broken heart. All the Grammy awards in the world can't make up for the children she wanted but never had, the men who have taken advantage of her, and just gone along for the ride, and still are... Dr. Zoe Phillips has her hands full as a single mother to an adopted two-year-old, and as a doctor at an AIDS clinic in San Francisco. Predictably, as they all know, she is as liberal as she ever was, and marriage was never a dream she coveted or shared with them. Tending to her patients is a full-time job that leaves Zoe little time for herself-until unexpected news forces her to reevaluate both her future, and her current life. But despite the changes in their lives, their friendship is still a bond they all treasure and share. For each of the women, a few weeks at the ranch will bring healing and release, as old hurts are buried, ancient secrets revealed, and love replaced or renewed. In The Ranch, bestselling novelist Danielle Steel brings reality to the meaning of friendship, with dramas whose truths we all share.

Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies, she offers truth; and instead of sugarplums, she brings us the nourishment of holidays that precipitate change, growth, and new beginnings. The stories in This Year It Will Be Different powerfully evoke many lives — step-families grappling with exes, long-married couples faced with in-law problems, a wandering husband choosing between «the other woman» and his wife, a child caught in grown-up tugs-of-war — during the one holiday when feelings cannot be easily hidden.

In A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin has created a genuine masterpiece, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill the pages of the first volume in an epic series sure to delight fantasy fans everywhere. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the North of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom's protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

A novel set in colonial South Africa, where a lonely sheepfarmer makes a bid for private salvation in the arms of a black concubine, while his daughter dreams of and executes a bloody revenge. From the author of DUSKLANDS and WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS.

Records case studies of parapsychology and the contacts made with entities throughout the New England states and presents historical research attesting to the actual lives of these spirits.

The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a menage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving's cool eye spares none of his foursome, he writes with genuine compassion for the sexual tests and illusions they perpetrate on each other; but the sexual intrigue between them demonstrates how even the kind can be ungenerous, and even the well-intentioned, destructive.

A ten-minute play is a streak of theatrical lightning. It doesn't last long, but its power can stand your hair on end. This splendid anthology contains enough wattage to light up a small city. For in its pages, thirty-two of our finest playwrights hone their skills on a form that has been called the haiku of the American stage. The plays that Nina Shengold and Eric Lane have collected in this volume range from monologues to an eight-character farce. Eminently producible, ideally suited for the classroom and audition, Take Ten is a marvelous resource for teachers and students of drama, as well as a stimulating read for lovers of the theatre. Contributors include: John Augustine, Cathy Celesia, Laura Cunningham, Joe Pintauro, Mary Sue Price, Megan Terry, Jose Rivera, Romulus Linney, David Mamet, Jane Martin, David Ives, and many others.

A silly book with a serious purpose — to help children recognize, remember, and really enjoy using a basic vocabulary of 1350 words. Written and illustrated by P. D. Eastman — with help from the Cat (Dr. Seuss) — this decades-old dictionary pairs words with pictures that carry their meaning, making it simple enough even for nonreaders to understand. A wacky cast of characters reappears throughout the book, making this perhaps the only dictionary in the world that is actually fun to read.

As president of a major pharmaceutical empire, Peter Haskell has everything. Power, position, a career and a family, which mean everything to him, and for which he has sacrificed a great deal. Compromise has been key in Peter Haskell's life, and integrity is the base on which he lives. Olivia Thatcher is the wife of a famous senator. She has given to her husband's ambitions and career until her soul is bone dry. She is trapped in a web of duty and obligation, married to a man she once loved and no longer even knows. When her son died, a piece of Olivia died too. Accidentally, on the night of a bomb threat, they meet in Paris, at the Ritz. Their totally different lives converge for one magical moment in the Place Vendome, as Olivia carefully, silently, steps out of her life and walks away. As the two strangers meet, their lives become briefly enmeshed. In a cafe in Montmartre, their hearts are laid bare. Peter, once so sure of his path, so certain of his marriage and success, but suddenly faced with his professional future in jeopardy. Olivia, no longer sure of anything except that she can't go on anymore. When Olivia disappears, only Peter suspects that it may not be foul play. And if he finds her again, where will they go from there? Five days in Paris is all they have. They go back to their separate lives, but nothing is the same. At home again, they both must pursue their lives, despite challenges, compromise, and betrayal. Everything they believe is put on the line, until they each realize they must stand fast against compromise and face life's challenges head-on.

If Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, would ever admit to an Achilles' heel-which they wouldn't-it would be a weakness for damsels in distress. In these three charming chillers the duo answer the call of helpless heroines with nothing to lose-except their lives. First a beautiful young Aphrodite comes to Nero looking for a hero-and the answer to the mystery of her father's death... Then an old flame of Archie's reignites with a plan that may corner him into a lifetime commitment-behind bars... And finally a detective's work is never done, as a hot tip leads the team into the sizzling center of a sexy scandal that could leave them cold-dead cold.