In her youth, Gugu—the beautiful daughter of a famous doctor and staunch Communist—is revered for her skill as a midwife. But when her lover defects, Gugu’s own loyalty to the Party is questioned. She decides to prove her allegiance by strictly enforcing the one-child policy, keeping tabs on the number of children in the village, and performing abortions on women as many as eight months pregnant.

    Zapparoni, a brilliant businessman, has turned his advanced understanding of technology and his strategic command of the information and entertainment industries into a discrete form of global domination. But Zapparoni is worried that the scientists he depends on might sell his secrets. He needs a chief of security, and Richard, a veteran and war hero, is ready for the job. However, when he arrives at the beautiful country compound that is Zapparoni's headquarters, he finds himself subjected to an unexpected ordeal. Soon he is led to question his past, his character, and even his senses....

    First published in France in 1862, it is Victor Hugo's greatest achievement--the ultimate tale of redemption. Former prisoner Jean Valjean struggles to live virtuously after an unexpected act of forgiveness by a kindly bishop changes his life. His righteous actions change people's lives in surprising ways and culminate in romance between two young people. Now available as part of the Word Cloud Classics series, Les Miserables is a must-have addition to the libraries of all classic literature lovers.

    A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succès de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance.This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction.

    Elisa Lindheim, a violinist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, is of Jewish heritage but has adopted an Aryan stage name. Thus she is able to travel and play in Germany even though a 1935 law forbade Jewish musicians to do so. Her dear friend Leah, a cellist already introduced to Thoene readers in A Daughter of Zion, and her husband Shimon must escape Austria or perish in the coming Holocaust.John Murphy, a reporter for the New York Times in Berlin and Austria, becomes linked with English politicians in a plan to overthrow Hitler. Elisa and John's mutual connections with the Jewish Underground entangle them in a web of intrigue, danger, and conspiracy that neither could have known.

    He wakes one morning to find that something has attacked one of his beehives, brutally killing every inhabitant. Heartbroken, he soon learns that a mysterious swarm of vicious hornets committed the mass murder—but where did they come from, and how can he stop them? If he is going to unravel this mystery and save his bees from annihilation, Sidi must venture out into the village and then brave the big city and beyond in search of answers.Along the way, he discovers a country and a people turned upside down by their new post–Arab Spring reality as Islamic fundamentalists seek to influence votes any way they can on the eve of the country’s first democratic elections. To succeed in his quest, and find a glimmer of hope to protect all that he holds dear, Sidi will have to look further than he ever imagined.In this brilliantly accessible modern-day parable, Yamen Manai uses a masterful blend of humor and drama to reveal what happens in a country shaken by revolutionary change after the world stops watching.

    They have been charged by their commanders to track down and bring back for execution 'one of them' - a Jew. Having flushed out the young man hiding in the woods, they decide to rest in an abandoned house before continuing their journey back to the camp. As they prepare food, they are joined by a passing Pole whose outspoken anti-Semitism adds tension to an already charged atmosphere. Before long, the group's sympathies have splintered as they consider the moral implications of their murderous mission and confront their own consciences to ask themselves: should the Jew be offered food? And, having shared their meal, should he be taken back, or set free?

    From the civil rights struggle in the United States to the Nazi crimes against humanity in Europe, there are more stories than people passing one another every day on the bustling streets of every crowded city. Only some stories survive to become history.Recently released from prison, Lamont Williams, an African American probationary janitor in a Manhattan hospital and father of a little girl he can’t locate, strikes up an unlikely friendship with an elderly patient, a Holocaust survivor who was a prisoner in Auschwitz-Birkenau.A few blocks uptown, historian Adam Zignelik, an untenured Columbia professor, finds both his career and his long-term romantic relationship falling apart. Emerging from the depths of his own personal history, Adam sees, in a promising research topic suggested by an American World War II veteran, the beginnings of something that might just save him professionally, and perhaps even personally.As these men try to survive in early-twenty-first-century New York, history comes to life in ways neither of them could have foreseen. Two very different paths—Lamont’s and Adam’s—lead to one greater story as The Street Sweeper, in dealing with memory, love, guilt, heroism, the extremes of racism and unexpected kindness, spans the twentieth century to the present, and spans the globe from New York to Chicago to Auschwitz.Epic in scope, this is a remarkable feat of storytelling.

    Depicting both the horrors of the Holocaust and the lifetime of emptiness that pursues a survivor, 'The Shawl' and 'Rosa' recall the psychological and emotional scars of those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

    Ever since Gabriela can remember, she and Luna have struggled to connect. But when tragedy strikes, Gabriela senses there's more to her mother than painted nails and lips.Desperate to understand their relationship, Gabriela pieces together the stories of her family's previous generations—from Great-Grandmother Mercada the renowned healer, to Grandma Rosa who cleaned houses for the English, to Luna who had the nicest legs in Jerusalem. But as she uncovers shocking secrets, forbidden romances, and the family curse that links the women together, Gabriela must face a past and present far more complex than she ever imagined.Set against the Golden Age of Hollywood, the dark days of World War II, and the swingin' '70s, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem follows generations of unforgettable women as they forge their own paths through times of dramatic change. With great humor and heart, Sarit Yishai-Levi has given us a powerful story of love and forgiveness—and the unexpected and enchanting places we find each.

    In short order, her father commits suicide, and her mother and younger brother are dispatched to the gas chambers, but 15 year old Hanka Kaudersova is still alive. Faced with the choice of certain death in the camp or working in a German military brothel on the eastern front, she chooses a chance at life. Passing as an Aryan, Hanka's days in the brothel are full of cold and hunger, fear and shame. She is sustained by her loathing of the men who visit her and by a fierce, indomitable will to live. This devastatingly beautiful novel soars beyond the nightmare to leave the reader with a transcendent sense of hope.

    Unlike an earlier version adapted for the English-language stage, this translation adheres faithfully to the author's original play as it was published and performed in German.The action of The Visit takes place in the small town of Guellen, "somewhere in Central Europe." An elderly millionairesse, Claire Zachanassian, returns to Guellen, her home town, after an absence of many years. Merely on the promise of her millions, she shortly turns what has been a depressed area into a boom town. But there is a condition attached to her largess, which the natives of Guellen realize only after they have become enmeshed in her vengeful plot: murder. Out of these elements, Durrenmatt has fashioned a many-leveled play which is at once a macabre parable, a deeply moving tragedy, and a scathing indictment of the power of greed.

    "Each family," writes the author, "stood confident of being able to go on with what was theirs, while in fact they were playthings, often victims, of the now united Germany and what was brewing therein." Did the monstrous thing that followed have its foundation in families such as these? "Writing about them made me think so. Hence the title."

    Over a series of long, solitary walks she reminisces about the rivers she has encountered during her life, from the Rhine, her childhood river, to the Saint Lawrence, and a stream in Tel-Aviv. Filled with poignancy and poetic observation, River cements Esther Kinsky as a leading European prose stylist.

    An apocyphral invention by some 17th or 18th century scolar, or a transcrpit of what it appears to be - a hitherto unheard of letter to St Augustine to a woman he renounced for chastity? VITA BREVIS is both an entrancing human document and a fascinating insight into the life and philosophy of St.Augustine. Gaarder'sinterpretation of Floria's letter is as playful, inventive and questioning as Sophie's World. About The Author: Jostein Gaarder was born in Olso, Norway on August 8, 1952. A former high school philosophy teacher, he now writes numerous novels for children and adults. His best known work is Sophie's World. He has received numerous awards including the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1994 for Sophie's World, the Buxtehude Bulle in 1997, and the Willy-Brandt-Award in 2004.