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Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a «strong man» of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.

National Bestseller On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.

Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle — the culture of congestion — and its architecture. Manhattan, he writes, is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone... occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall). Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical indicement of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. It is a tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time in Italy plotting to survive.

When a bright young heiress with a flair for romance and one too many enemies is found brutally murdered, Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, find themselves embroiled in a case that is not as black and white as it first appears. Susan Brooke has everything going for her. Men would have killed themselves to marry her, and, in fact, one did.Susan came to New York to find love and fulfillment, and ended up dead on a tenement floor. The police say her black fiance did it, but Wolfe has other ideas. Before he's done, he'll prove that good intentions and bad deeds often go hand in hand and that the highest ideals can sometimes have the deadliest consequences.

Ian McEwan's Somerset Maugham Award-winning collection First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness. These tales are as horrifying as anything written by Clive Barker or Stephen King, but they are crafted with a lyricism and intensity that compel us to confront our secret kinship with the horrifying.

Political and amorous intrigues, cold-blooded murders and financial crises... old-fashioned entertainment! In 1866, tragedy strikes at the exclusive Windfield School. A young student drowns in a mysterious accident involving a small circle of boys. The drowning and its aftermath initiates a spiraling circle of treachery that will span three decades and entwine many loves... From the exclusive men's club and brothels that cater to every dark desire of London's upper classes to the dazzling ballrooms and mahogany-paneled suites of the manipulators of the world's wealth, Ken Follett conjures up a stunning array of contrasts. This breathtaking novel portrays a family splintered by lust, bound by a shared legacy... men and women swept toward a perilous climax where greed, fed by the shocking truth of a boy's death, must be stopped, or not just one man's dreams, but those of a nation, will die... Breathlessly plotted... relentlessly suspensenseful. Gripping, complex plot... sexual intrigue... fascinating characters... you won't be able to put down this exciting page-turner!

La novela mejor vendida, trata de una niña que crece en una de las comunidades latinas de Chicago-algunas veces le romperá el corazón y otras veces le dará gran alegría-describe un nuevo paisaje americano a través de sus múltiples personajes.

Three witnesses hold all the clues in three crimes of passion that have even the great Nero Wolfe guessing to the very end. A dead million comes back to life, only to wind up dead again; a black Labrador retriever becomes a killer's worst enemy; and an answering service with three untalkative operators may mean an innocent man will get the chair.

One thing is certain to distract Nero Wolfe from his culinary and horticultural pursuits: murder. This time Wolfe and his able assistant, Archie Goodwin, are put in the hot seat when they are called upon to investigate three different murders.

Wilbur Swain and his twin sister, Eliza, are so immensely hideous, helpless and vile in their infancy that their wealthy parents are forced to send them to live on a nearby asteroid. But behind their facade of idiocy, the monstrous pair possess a joint intelligence that could outstrip the most advanced computers...

When Cyril Orchard is poisoned during a radio talk show, the brilliant detective, Nero Wolfe, is hired to investigate the murder.

This novel of love, adventure, and male rivalry on the frontiers of nineteenth-century Russia — completed in 1862, when Tolstoy was in his early thirties — has always surprised readers who know Tolstoy best through the vast, panoramic fictions of his middle years. Unlike those works, The Cossacks is lean and supple, economical in design and execution.

Once in a generation a book, a vision, a writer, capture the imagination and emotions of millions. «Jonathan Livingston Seagull» was such a book. Richard Bach's unique vision again shines forth, touching with magic the drama of life in all its limitless horizons. Once again Richard Bach has written a masterpiece to help you touch that part of your home that is the sky.

In the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity, a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders... until he meets Donald Shimoda — former mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard's imagination soar... In Illusions, the unforgettable follow-up to his phenomenal bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don't need airplanes to soar...that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them... and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest places — like hay fields, one-traffic-light midwestern towns, and most of all, deep within ourselves.

The tranquility of Mars is disrupted by the earthmen who have come to conquer space, colonize the planet, and escape a doomed earth.

The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Poems: Rimbaud contains selections from Rimbaud's work, including over 100 poems, selected prose, « Letter to Paul Demeny, May 15, 1871», and an index of first lines.

A millennium into the future two advances have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partner¬ship between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Detective Elijah Baley is called to the Spacer world Aurora to solve a bizarre case of roboticide. The prime suspect is a gifted roboticist who had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit the crime. There's only one catch: Baley and his positronic partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, must prove the man innocent. For in a case of political intrigue and love between woman and robot gone tragically wrong, there's more at stake than sim¬ple justice. This time Baley's career, his life, and Earth's right to pioneer the Galaxy lie in the delicate balance.

Amaya Bajaratt is beautiful, elusive, deadly — and she has set in motion a chilling conspiracy that a desperate government cannot stop. An accomplished assassin and mistress of disguise and deception, she has set in motion the boldest act of terrorism yet conceived. Tyrell Hawthorne was a naval intelligence officer — one of the best — until the rainswept night in Amsterdam when his wife was murdered, an innocent victim of the games spies play. Since then he's been sailing charters in the islands. Now he's called out of retirement for one last assignment. For Hawthorne is the only man alive who can track down the world's most dangerous terrorist. Now, with his life and the life of the President hanging in the balance, Hawthorne must follow Amanya's serpentine trail, a path of seduction, betrayal, an instant death. Racing from a millionaire recluse's fortress to the social whirl of Palm Beach and from the Oval Office to treacherous Caribbean waters, Hawthorne will uncover a sinister network of well-placed men and women who exist to help this consummate killer — and the shattering truth behind the «Scorpio Illusion».

This trilogy of novels about World War II, largely based on his own experiences as an army officer, is the crowning achievement of Evelyn Waugh's career. Its central character is Guy Crouchback, head of an ancient but decayed Catholic family, who at first discovers new purpose in the challenge to defend Christian values against Nazi barbarism, but then gradually finds the complexities and cruelties of war too much for him. Yet, though often somber, the «Sword of Honour» trilogy is also a brilliant comedy, peopled by the fantastic figures so familiar from Waugh's early satires. The deepest pleasures these novels afford come from observing a great satiric writer employ his gifts with extraordinary subtlety, delicacy, and human feeling, for purposes that are ultimately anything but satiric.

»Vanished» tells the story of a man and woman faced with an almost unthinkable tragedy — the mysterious abduction of their son. In the late 1930s, in the shadow of the Lindbergh kidnapping, and as war looms in Europe, Marielle Patterson shares and elegant Manhattan brownstone with her husband, Malcolm, and their little boy, Teddy. Though the couple's lives are filled with secrets, Marielle is a devoted wife and mother, and Malcolm is a man everyone admires. On the eve of Teddy's disappearance, Marielle runs into her first love, American expatriate Charles Delauney. And when Teddy is kidnapped, Charles is first blamed, then arrested. But as the search for Teddy widens, even Marielle is scrutinized by the FBI and special agent John Taylor. Suspicions and accusations mingle with terror and heartbreak as every threat, every failure, every fear, is remembered, examined, explored. During Charles Delauney's trial, a series of revalations begins to unravel the about Marielle, Charles, and Malcolm, uncovering the motives and passions controlling their lives. «Vanished» is a tale of guilt, desire, suspense, and of people drawn inexorably together, seeking the child who... vanished.

In 1918 Ernest Hemingway went to war, to the 'war to end all wars'. He volunteered for ambulance service in Italy, was wounded and twice decorated. Out of his experiences came A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway's description of war is unforgettable. He recreates the fear, the comradeship, the courage of his young American volunteer and the men and women he meets in Italy with total conviction. But A Farewell to Arms is not only a novel of war. In it Hemingway has also created a love story of immense drama and uncompromising passion.

Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change. When the couple drifts to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the bullfight, their affair is strained by new passions, new jealousies, and Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman he loves.

Meet Forrest Gump, the lovable, hurculean, and surprisingly savy hero of this remarkable comic odyssey. After accidentally becoming the star of Univerity of Alabama's football team, Forrest goes on to become a Vietnam War hero, a worl-class Ping-Pong player, a villainous wrestler, and a business tycoon — as he wonders with cildlike wisdome at the insanity all around him. In between misadentures, he manages to compare battle scars with Lyndon Johnson, discover the truth about Richard Nixon, and survive the ups and downs of remaining true to his only love, Jenny, on an extraordinary journey through three decades of the American cultural landscape. Forrest gump has one heck of a story to tell — and you've got to read it to believe it...