His memories are clouded, except for images of glass and metal. He quickly finds that he’s not alone in this new realm. There are others who all arrived just as he did. In this strange world, people are driven by survival against forces that have little interest in continued human existence. But through the use of special tomes known as 'grimoires,' people are able to enhance themselves to increase their abilities and 'life properties,' giving them a fighting chance against the monsters that surround them. Without a chance to acclimate himself, Chaxin is thrown into a bloody confrontation with monsters born of nightmares. He soon realizes that one false step could mean his death. But death isn’t the worst that the Graymos has to offer. Can he survive in such an unforgiving world? If not, more than just his life could be at stake. Grimoire Bound is a LitRPG-Lite novel, inspired by Dark Souls, Lovecraft and Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash.

    From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, "Ham on Rye" offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

    In a body of work as emotionally powerful, formally innovative, and philosophically profound as Clarice Lispector’s, Água Viva stands out as a particular triumph.

    But in the aftermath of 9/11, Flynn leaves his wife and children, resigns his teaching position and heads west, only to get lost in his guilt and in the mountains of Colorado. When he ends up stuck overnight in a snow drift during a blizzard on the Continental Divide, he realizes he needs to remake himself into the kind of man his children need him to be. With wit and insight, David Hicks turns a compassionate but unblinking eye on what it means to be human—to be lost while putting yourself back together again, to be cowardly while being brave, to fail and fail again on the way to something that might be success.With wit and insight, David Hicks turns a compassionate but unblinking eye on what it means to be human—to be lost while putting yourself back together again, to be cowardly while being brave, to fail and fail again on the way to something that might be success.

    Running through it is the theme of evil, deftly woven into a story as memorable for its action as for its astonishingly vivid set of characters. In fin de siecle Paris, Arthur and Margaret are engaged to be married. Everyone approves and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves—until the menacing and repulsive Oliver Haddo appears.

    Tess Durbeyfield leaves home on the first of her fateful journeys, and meets the ruthless Alec d'Urberville. Thomas Hardy's impassioned story tells of hope and disappointment, rejection and enduring love.

    VERA & LINUS is a series of short sketches. The book's theme is the love between the two protagonists, Vera and Linus. They are mischief makers and tricksters of the most daring sort, and they are constantly up to no good, but the language holds them with a clear restraint, a restraint born perhaps out of the peculiar nature of their love, a love both for each other and the things of the world. Their mastery, and shifting natures allow them to compel the workaday world as they see it, but not to rule over each other, and so their game begins, as Vera struggles to outwit Linus, and Linus to outwit Vera.

    Written in the fifth century BC, this play concerns the predicament of the outcast hero, Philoctetes, whom the Greeks marooned on the island of Lemnos and forgot about until the closing stages of the Siege of Troy. Abandoned because of a wounded foot, Philoctetes nevertheless possesses an invincible bow without which the Greeks cannot win the Trojan War. They are forced to return to Lemnos and seek out Philoctetes' support in a drama that explores the conflict between personal integrity and political expediency.Heaney's version of Philoctetes is a fast-paced, brilliant work ideally suited to the stage. Heaney holds on to the majesty of the Greek original, but manages to give his verse the flavor of Irish speech and context.

    He came of age during the Haight-Ashbury period and has been called “the last of the Beats.” His early books became required reading for the hip generation, and on its publication Trout Fishing in America became an international bestseller. An indescribable romp, the novel is best summed up in one word: mayonnaise. This new edition includes an introduction by the poet Billy Collins, who first encountered Brautigan’s work as a student in California.

    In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is wracked by addiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, his morphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So he lives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south side of San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knife or gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc's services, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist that never heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe, for Hank's angry ghost—who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doing well.  A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of music history, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is also a marvelous novel in its own right, a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

    She struggles for survival and for self-esteem, embarking on a love affair with the 18-year-old son of her most powerful opponent, brutal and charismatic rancher, Buck Calder.

    The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years. Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations. Some of the elements and themes briefly discussed prefigure later fiction concerning genetic engineering and alien life forms. Arthur C. Clarke considered Star Maker to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written.

    Because his poems were often ecstatic love songs from God to his beloved world, many have called Hafiz the "Tongue of the Invisible."With this stunning collection of 250 of Hafiz's most intimate poems, Daniel Ladinsky has succeeded brilliantly in capturing the essence of one of Islam's greatest poetic and religious voices. Each line of THE GIFT imparts the wonderful qualities of the spiritual teacher: an audacious love that empowers lives, profound knowledge, wild generosity, and a sweet, playful genius unparalleled in world literature.

    Alternate-cover edition can be found here In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.

    He recounts the perilous journey of the world’s birds to the faraway peaks of Mount Qaf in search of the mysterious Simorgh, their king. Attar’s beguiling anecdotes and humor intermingle the sublime with the mundane, the spiritual with the worldly, while his poem models the soul’s escape from the mind’s rational embrace.Sholeh Wolpé re-creates for modern readers the beauty and timeless wisdom of the original Persian, in contemporary English verse and poetic prose.