That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner-party tip from Mrs Algernon Smith, he feels convinced that he has hit on just the chap to cover a promising little war in the African Republic of Ishmaelia. One of Evelyn Waugh's most exuberant comedies, "Scoop" is a brilliantly irreverent satire of "Fleet Street" and its hectic pursuit of hot news.

    A dual biography of two great nineteenth-century British poets discusses their courtship, marriage, and literary work in terms of the mores, institutions, and events of the Victorian era.

    She enjoyed privileges, but her teenage years were blighted, leaving her unable to receive essential medical treatment until she was 21. She became a model and a designer, and in the 1970s embarked on a short and violent marriage to Lord Colin Campbell. In this autobiography she writes of a life-long struggle to be accepted as the woman she is. She tells of her formative years in Jamaica and New York, her many love affairs, her connection with members of the Royal Family, her activities as a socialite and international charity organizer, and her current life as the fulfilled mother of two adopted Russian children.

    Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. Elizabeth persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as smuggling. The first step in a brilliant career, The Man Within offers a foretaste of Green’s recurring themes of religion, the individual’s struggles against cynicism, and the indifferent forces of a hostile world. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Jonathan Yardley.

    Much to his consternation, she says yes. As Wilfred attempts to extricate himself from the situation, his betrothed’s overbearing father presents further complications. And when Wilfred meets another woman he does wish to marry, a comedy of manners ensues. Set in rural Wales during the 1920s, Wendy Jones’s charming first novel is a deceptive, subtly humorous entrance to the mores and social conventions of a world gone by.

    Beginning with a dilemma about whether he spends more money on reading or smoking, George Orwell's entertaining and uncompromising essays go on to explore everything from the perils of second-hand bookshops to the dubious profession of being a critic, from freedom of the press to what patriotism really means.

    H. Auden’s Selected Poems adds twenty poems to the hundred in the original edition, broadening its focus to better reflect the enormous wealth of form, rhetoric, tone and content in Auden’s work. Newly included are such favorites as “Funeral Blues” and other works that represent Auden’s lighter, comic side, giving a fuller picture of the range of his genius. Also new are brief notes explaining references that may have become obscure to younger generations of readers and a revised introduction that draws on recent additions to knowledge about Auden.As in the original edition, the new Selected Poems makes available the preferred original versions of some thirty poems that Auden revised later in life, making it the best source for enjoying the many facets of Auden’s art in one volume.

    Here is Erma Bombeck, laughing her way through childhood, marriage, motherhood, and celebrity status, even keeping her sense of humor as she battled terminal illness.

    Beautiful divorcee Tory is painfully involved with her neighbour, Robert, while his wife Beth, Tory's best friend, is consumed by the worlds she creates in her novels, oblivious to the relationship developing next door. Their daughter Prudence is aware, however, and is appalled by the treachery she observes. Mrs Bracey, an invalid whose grasp on life is slipping, forever peers from her window, constantly prodding her daughters for news of the outside world. And Lily Wilson, a lonely young widow, is frightened of her own home. Into their lives steps Bertram, a retired naval officer with the unfortunate capacity to inflict lasting damage while trying to do good.

    The two beautiful daughters of a wealthy merchant of the Channel Islands fall in love with the same man, are very diferent. Marianne, the eldest sister is brilliant, passionate, and moody, by whom William was both fascinated and repelled... And Marguerite, the younger sister is pretty, dreamy and quietly, whom William adored.The sisters had both loved him for years. He has gone abroad to seek his fortune to New Zealand. Now they were waiting for him to return from his journeys and claim his bride. But drunkenly he addresses his proposal to the wrong sister.Though the book is fiction, and the characters not portraits, it is based on fact. A stunning tale of loss and self-sacrifice, it is truly one of the most memorable love stories of the last century.

    The fairy tale-based works of the tortured confessional poet, whose raw honesty and wit in the face of psychological pain have touched thousands of readers.

    Funny and laid-back, his clear, often brief poems are easy to understand and enjoy -- which is why his readings are sometimes standing-room-only affairs. Collins may be a college professor and NEA-grant recipient, but he's not above using a disinfectant ad as an epigraph. "Public restrooms give me the willies," reads the epigraph to a poem appropriately titled "The Willies." That man-on-the-street brand of humor, utterly stripped of academic pretense, is trademark Collins. QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS, a reissue of Collins's fourth volume of poems, offers 70 pages of well-formed, very American verse that -- not surprisingly -- doesn't require a shelf of dictionaries. In fact, just as he laughs at epigraphs, Collins gleefully pokes fun at the very concept of dictionaries. Here, for example, are the opening lines to "The Hunt," which initially offer the flowing, dreamy verse many expect from a poet:       Somewhere in the rolling hills and farm country      that lie beyond speech      Noah Webster and his assistants are moving      across the landscape tracking down a new word.Then Collins really gets going, letting his claws dig in. In the next stanza, that trademark humor really shows:      It is a small noun about the size of a mouse,       one that will seldom be used by anyone,       like a synonym for isthmus      but they are pursuing the creature zealouslyCollins could be talking about poetry itself, a form "zealously pursued" but too often "seldom used." Despite the deadpan tone, these are poems that are aware of poetic tradition. QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS opens with a poem called "American Sonnet," which announces that "We do not speak like Petrarch or wear a hat like Spenser." Collins seems to believe that his particular American landscape and culture requires a variation on the standard forms of Western tradition. This country, he seems to say, demands a rethinking of it all.Part of that rethinking is a probe of the whole idea of a "poet." Collins asks the questions his students would love to ask, if they only had the guts. How, he asks, do you know for sure if a poet is contemporary? This, of course, is a twist on the earlier, unspoken-but-understood question of "What makes a sonnet a sonnet, anyway?" addressed in the first poem.Just as he produced an American "sonnet" that rolls off the tongue with the ease of banter, Collins comes up with an American, can-do answer to the "who's a contemporary poet?" question:       It is easy to find out if a poet is a contemporary poet      and thus avoid the imbroglio of calling him Victorian      or worse, Elizabethan, or worse, medieval.      If you look him up in The Norton Anthology of English Literature      and the year of his birth is followed only by a dash      and a small space for the numerals only spirits know,       then it is safe to say that he is probably aliveThough clothed in simple words and humor, Collins is actually taking a pretty sophisticated jab in these two stanzas, which are the first part of the appropriately titled poem "The Norton Anthology of English Literature." Is a poet worthy simply because he is in the anthology? And do these omnipresent anthologies really define periods and countries? Coming just a few pages after the Noah Webster reference, Collins may also be pushing his readers to wonder about the anthologizers' research processes.Collins loves to mix poems to history's overachievers with odes to underachievers or family pets who never seemed to have much, if any, ambition. In one of the book's sweeter poems, Collins offers praise of a character named Riley. Here's the last stanza of the very brief poem "The Life of Riley: A Definitive Biography," where yet again, Collins mixes the quotidian and the poetic, letting his linguistic ability peep through the everyman persona at key moments:      He never had a job, a family or a sore throat.       He never mowed a lawn.       Passersby would always stop to remind him      whose life it was he was living.       He died in a hammock weighing a cloud. In a book that mentions weighing a dog and stripping layers of clothing off as he writes, it makes sense that this poet doesn't flinch from depicting the weighing of a cloud. Like the character who never had a sore throat, Collins writes glitch-free poems that are both a breeze and a blast to read. --Aviya Kushner

    With this richly textured and utterly absorbing page-tumer, Vine adds to her growing reputation as one of the great writers of our time.Bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Gerald Candless dies suddenly, and leaves behind a wife and two doting daughters. To sort through her grief, his daughter Sarah puts aside her university studies and agrees to write a biography of her famous father. But as she begins her research and pulls back the veil of his past, her life is slowly torn apart: a terrible logic begins to unfold that explains her mother's remoteness, her father's need to continually reinvent himself -- and sheds shocking light on a long-forgotten London murder.

    At the end she chooses The Devil.

    . . Reacher is like a fully detached version of Travis McGee' LEE CHILD Travis McGee isn't your typical knight in shining armour. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: He'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half. Discover Travis McGee with this special collection. Features books four, five and six of John D. MacDonald's classic series. The Quick Red Fox Hollywood's leading lady Lysa Dean isn't in the business of making mistakes. But a night involving a debauched party and some naked photos turns out to be one mistake too many. Travis McGee soon finds himself led on a wild chase across the country, trying to track down everyone associated with the fateful evening. But just when Travis thinks he knows exactly where things are headed, one big twist shakes his very core . . . A Deadly Shade of Gold When Travis McGee picks up the phone and hears a voice from his past, he can't help it, he has to meddle. Especially when he has the chance to reunite Sam, his reckless, restless old friend, with the woman who's been waiting for him. But the case takes a sinister turn when Sam shows up brutally cut and lying in a pool of his own blood. Travis is left to uncover the truth in a violent chase that takes him to dark but beautiful Mexico. But when the truth is as terrifying as this, does he really want answers at all? Bright Orange for the Shroud When an old friend, conned out of his life savings by his ex-wife, unexpectedly turns up at Travis McGee's door, he finds himself pursuing a violently twisted hustler to get it back. What starts out as a simple job soon turns into a dangerous mission when he comes face-to-face with a quick-thinking and quicker-fisted enemy. To beat him, Travis is going to have to play him at his own game . . . Features an introduction by Lee Child JOHN D. MACDONALD: A GRAND MASTER CRIME WRITER 'The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller' - Stephen King '. . . my favorite novelist of all time' - Dean Koontz 'What a joy that these timeless and treasured novels are available again' - Ed McBain 'There's only one thing as good as reading a John D. MacDonald novel: reading it again . . . He is the all-time master of the American mystery novel' - John Saul