Their old friend from college days, Sam Sharp, who has since become a successful screenplay writer, drops by unexpectedly on the way to Los Angeles. Sam is fuming over a scathing profile of himself by Fanny Tarrant, one of the new breed of pugnacious interviewers, in that day's newspaper. Together, Sam and Adrian plan to take revenge on the journalist, though Adrian is risking what he values most: his privacy. What follows is unexpected and upsetting for all of them, including Fanny.David Lodge's delicious novella examines with characteristic wit and insight the tensions between private life and public interest in contemporary culture.

    The soul of the 1857 War of Independence; orphaned poetess of the Chowk; captivating wife of King Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh; the Rani of Jhansi's contemporary and soul sister; freedom fighter and misunderstood mother; illicit lover and intrepid war leader--she risked everything only to face the greatest betrayal of all...This is a salute to Hazrat Mahal--a dazzling meteor in Indian history.

    . . a man who could never lover her, never let her go . . . .

    W. S. Merwin's incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition with an introduction by Cristina Garcia, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.The most popular work by Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet, and the subject of Pablo Larraín's acclaimed feature film Neruda starring Gael García Bernal.

    It made no difference that she'd only just met the exotic half-blood or that he was the scandal of polite society. Flora had never lived according to anybody's rules, and the instant she felt the heat of Adam's savage passion, the only thing that mattered was that she wanted him.PURE SEDUCTIONAdam Serre couldn't help but be wary. Lady Flora was quite spectacular, with her daring beauty and delicious conversation, but the noble daughter of a famed archaeologist did not fall into the category of amorous interludes. And after just extricating himself from a vicious marriage, his interest in women was purely transitory. Until the incomparable Flora set out to seduce him with a temptation that was ... Pure Sin.

    His stories give expression to the bewildered experience of the ordinary Soviet citizen struggling to survive in the 1920's and `30s, beset by an acute housing shortage, ubiquitous theft and corruption, and the impenetrable new ideological language of the Soviet state. Written in the semi-educated talk of the man or woman on the street, these stories enshrine one of the greatest achievements of the people of the Soviet Union—their gallows humor. Housing block tenants who reject electricity because it illuminates their squalor too harshly, a young couple who live in a bathroom, a railway-line manager making a speech against bribery who accidentally mentions his own affinity for kickbacks—in all of Zoschenko's characters, petty materialism is balanced with a poignant faith in the revolutionary project. Zoschenko, the self-described "temporary substitute for the proletarian writer," combines wicked satire and an earthy empathy with a brilliance that places him squarely in the classic Russian comic tradition. Jeremy Hick's translation of The Galosh brings together sixty five of Zoschenko's finest short stories—bringing the choice writings of perhaps Soviet Russia's most humorous and moving writer to American readers for the first time.

    The exciting sequel to Dropped From The Clouds by master fantasist Jules Verne, this classic novel is a continuation of the saga of the struggling characters trying to survive in such a hostile environment.

    Set in Dresden in the early 1930's it chronicles Frabato's magical battles with the members of a powerful and dangerous black lodge. His escape from Germany during the final desperate days of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of his spiritual mission culminating with his classic books on Hermetic magic.More than an occult novel, Frabato the Magician is itself a work of magic which illuminates Bardon's other books as well as providing a revealing look into the dark occult forces which lay behind the rise of the Third Reich. Threaded throughout the true tale, and written between the lines, are many valuable and practical esoteric lessons.

    George Corson, earthman, is sent on secret mission to end a long smoldering war with the birdlike inhabitants of the planet, Uria, 6000 years in the future, only to be used as a pawn by powerful god-like beings. Is there such a thing as the ultimate weapon? Can war be ended once & for all? Is the destruction of the universe necessary to achieve peace? Originally published in France under the title Les Seigneurs de la Guerre, this book is a novel of powerful imagery & scope whose concept of war as a monstrous self-perpetuating parasite fatterning off all intelligent life will arrest all who read it. Illustrated by Margo Herr.

    

    For Ducky, Princess Victoria Melita, hers was a Romanov cousin, a member of the doomed Russian royal family. Her father is Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria's second son. Her mother is Grand Duchess Marie, the daughter of Tsar Alexander II. Ducky seems doomed to be a pawn on her grandmother's dynastic chessboard. But Ducky is not so easily controlled. In an era when death is considered preferable to divorce she fights for the freedom to be with the true love of her life. From disgraced exile in Paris to the glitter of St Petersburg and the mud and carnage of the Eastern Front, she forges her own path. As Russia descends into the chaos of 1917 and the Romanov dynasty falters, Ducky is right at the heart of events. Exiled once more, she tells us her story.

    Birthing class brings together two sets of expectant parents who couldn't be more different. Huge and his spoiled wife Amanda plan to throw money at the problem of parenthood, making use of private hospitals and nurses, while environmentally friendly Jake and Alice have arranged a home delivery complete with birthing pool and whale music.But even after their babies are born, these seemingly disparate couples can't escape each other. When Amanda decides she's not cut out for motherhood and Huge must look elsewhere for a sympathetic ear, the couples are inextricably drawn together once again, resulting in hilarious social comedy, as only Wendy Holden can write it.Wendy Holden is [a] superstar. -- Evening Standard (London)

    Joletta tries to track down the formula through journals written by her ancestress, Violet Fossier, who in 1854 made a grand tour of Europe. As Joletta follows Violet's itinerary across the continent, the story goes back in time, to nineteenth- century Europe and a scandalous love affair that is intimately bound up in the mystery of the perfume. In the present Joletta finds herself attracted to--and suspicious of--Rone Adamson, a Southern playboy whose astounding knowledge of perfume makes Joletta wary. Yet his chivalrous charms prove too much for her scruples, and Jolettta succumbs to her dubious white knight, even as danger swirls around them....A Main Selection of the Doubelday Book ClubFrom the Paperback edition.

    Sara has been struggling to build a new life for herself and her ten-year-old brother Doug and teenage sisters Carrie and Abby, after she was forced to give up her dreams and come home to Chicago to take care of them.Now Mack, the brother who had abandoned them three years earlier, is threatening to undercut everything she does. Swinging dangerously from kindness to mystery to cruelty, he begins to win over the children with expensive gifts and fascinating stories, challenging Sara's efforts to keep the family together.With events at home and at work seeming out of control, Sara desperately needs an ally. She finds one in Reuben Lister, a transplanted New Yorker, lonely and guarding his own secrets. Dealing with both the past and the present, Reuben and Sara discover a closeness neither has known before, as they find for themselves what truly makes a family.

    In these he jotted down his first ideas, whenever he used one, he crossed it out at once. But even the ones which are left undeveloped are splendid as promises.One such jotting reads: "Humour is the whole truth." This might have served as the motto for Please Sir!, one of the world's unforgettable, unfading books. Unfading, in spite of the fifty years which have elapsed, and in spite of a series of educational reforms. It reaches to the raw centre, the never-congealed experience, through which we have all passed at the time of our greatest sensitivity, in the state of highest tension, in our teens.For is there anyone who has never crept along silent, deserted school corridors, when classes had already begun, who had never been struck by the dark terror of being fatally, irrevocably late? And is there anyone who does not recall the deadly, frozen silence before opening an exam paper, when the one subject not properly covered turned out to be the compulsory question? And who did not, especially in Hungarian schools where examination is carried out by oral tests, try to shrink behind his desk, become annihilated, step out from life just this once, while the teacher was rustling his notebook to call the next to be examined? And who has never tried to explain a school report at home, and who has never been tempted to sell a textbook second-hand, at a time when pocket-money seemed far more desirable than a grammar?These were the great moments of life; and Karinthy, even in his early work, is a grand master of prose. He does not have to set the scene-there is never a superfluous word - we are in the thick of it at once, at explosion point. Every situation he creates chokes the reader in a suddenly tightened noose of memory.