The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence--perhaps even the limits of human life --when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.

    Forster marvelled at it, but F.R. Leavis considered it to be 'not only not one of his great books, but to be a bad one.' As for the author, he held The Ambassadors as the favorite among all his novels.Sent from Massachusetts by the formidable Mrs. Newsome to recall her son, Chad, from what she assumes to be a corrupt life in Paris, Strether finds his intentions subtly and profoundly transformed as he falls under the spell of the city and of his charge. He is quick to perceive that Chad has been not so much corrupted as refined, and over the course of the hot summer months in Paris he gradually realizes that this discovery and acceptance of Chad's unconventional new lifestyle alter his own ideals and ambitions.One of Henry James's three final novels, all of which have sharply divided modern critics, The Ambassadors is the finely drawn portrait of a man's late awakening to the importance of morality that is founded not on the dictates of convention but on its value per se.

    Stanley West weaves rollicking humor, riveting suspense, and a bittersweet love story into the fabric of those optimistic times. Through a seemingly harmless prank and a chance conversation, Cal Gant, previously secure in the friendly neighborhoods of his idyllic life, stumbles onto the naked face of cruelty, incest, and murder. When he attempts to rescue a strange and haunting girl, he finds himself in a heart-stopping struggle with her ruthless father, leading Cal to the brink of self-doubt, terror, and death itself. Can he find within himself the backbone to stand against the horror and the daring to concoct some scheme to set Gretchen free?

    As an imperious, acerbic old woman lies dying, she is tended by two other women and visited by a young man. Albee's frank dialogue about everything from incontinence to infidelity portrays aging without sentimentality. His scenes are charged with wit, pain, and laughter, and his observations tell us about forgiveness, reconciliation, and our own fates. But it is his probing portrait of the three women that reveals Albee's genius. Separate characters on stage in the first act, yet actually the same "everywoman" at different ages in the second act, these "tall women" lay bare the truths of our lives—how we live, how we love, what we settle for, and how we die. Edward Albee has given theatergoers, critics, and students of drama reason to rejoice.

    In this comprehensive guidebook, three experienced entertainment lawyers tell you everything you need to know to produce and market an independent film-from the development process to deal making, financing, setting up the production, hiring directors and actors, distributing and marketing your film.

    His death has brought into her midst both her sister, Claire, who wants to take Catherine back to New York with her, and Hal, a former student of Catherine's father who hopes to find some hint of Robert's genius among his incoherent scribblings. The passion that Hal feels for math both moves and angers Catherine, who, in her exhaustion, is torn between missing her father and resenting the great sacrifices she made for him. For Catherine has inherited at least a part of her father's brilliance -- and perhaps some of his instability as well. As she and Hal become attracted to each other, they push at the edges of each other's knowledge, considering not only the unpredictability of genius but also the human instinct toward love and trust.

    The novel is notable for its detailed portrait of the people, culture, and varied religions of India. The book presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road.Two men - a boy who grows into early manhood and an old ascetic priest, the lama - are at the center of the novel. A quest faces them both. Born in India, Kim is nevertheless white, a sahib. While he wants to play the Great Game of Imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama. His aim, as he moves chameleon-like through the two cultures, is to reconcile these opposing strands, while the lama searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life. A celebration of their friendship in a beautiful but often hostile environment, 'Kim' captures the opulence of India's exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj.

    Whether you've watched "Casablanca" countless times or you're going to see it for the first time, "The Casablanca Companion" will both deepen your understanding and heighten your enjoyment.

    But when he’s passed over for a promotion as commissioner of police, the humiliation hits hardest for his wife, Louise. Already oppressed by the appalling climate, frustrated in a loveless marriage, and belittled by the wives of more privileged officers, Louise wants out. Feeling responsible for her unhappiness, Henry decides against his better judgment to accept a loan from a black marketeer to secure Louise’s passage. It’s just a single indiscretion, yet for Henry it precipitates a rapid fall from grace as one moral compromise after another leads him into a web of blackmail, adultery, and murder. And for a devout man like Henry, there may be nothing left but damnation.

    Fighting time, heat, malaria, and bullets, they make their escape on the rickety steamboat The African Queen...and hatch their own outrageous military plan. Originally published in 1935, The African Queen is a tale replete with vintage Forester drama - unrelenting suspense, reckless heroism, impromptu military manoeuvres, near-death experiences - and a good old-fashioned love story to boot.

    What follows is a rich, nostalgic look at one of our most cherished national pastimes and a remarkable story about fathers and sons, love and family, and the inimitable joy of finding your way home.

    Since all journalists and writers were barred from the shooting of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, actor Bob Balaban's diary is a rare on-the-spot account of the making of Steven Spielberg's classic sci-fi film.

    It is the attitude of Dowell, his puzzlement, his uncertainty, and the seemingly haphazard manner of his narration that make the book so powerful and mysterious. Despite its catalogue of death, insanity, and despair, the novel has many comic moments, and has inspired the work of several distinguished writers, including Graham Greene. This is the only annotated edition available.

    Samuel Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood shines an iconoclastic light on the hypocrisy of a Victorian clerical family's domestic life. It also foreshadows the crumbling of nineteenth-century bourgeois ideals in the aftermath of the First World War, as well as the ways in which succeeding generations have questioned conventional values. Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement," this chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex spans four generations, focusing chiefly on the relationship between Ernest and his father, Theobald. Written in the wake of Darwin's Origin of Species, it reflects the dawning consciousness of heredity and environment as determinants of character. Along the way, it offers a powerfully satirical indictment of Victorian England's major institutions—the family, the church, and the rigidly hierarchical class structure.