Roman Fever


Edith Wharton - 1934
    The best of her short fiction is collected here in Roman Fever and Other Stories. From her picture of erotic love and illegitimacy in the title story to her exploration of the aftermath of divorce detailed in "Souls Belated" and "The Last Asset," Wharton shows her usual skill "in dissecting the elements of emotional subtleties, moral ambiguities, and the implications of social restrictions," as Cynthia Griffin Wolff writes in her introduction. Roman Fever and Other Stories is a surprisingly contemporary volume of stories by one of our most enduring writers.

Fletch


Gregory McDonald - 1974
    Currently he’s living on the beach with the strung-out trying to find to the source of the drugs they live for. FletchHe’s taking more than a little flack from his editor. She doesn’t appreciate his style. Or the expense account items he’s racking up. Or his definition of the word deadline. Or the divorce lawyers who keep showing up at the office.FletchSo when multimillionaire Alan Stanwyk offers Fletch the job of a lifetime, which could be worth a fortune, he’s intrigued and decides to do a little investigation. What he discovers is that the proposition is anything but what it seems.

Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women


Elizabeth Wurtzel - 1998
    Bitch is a brilliant tract on the history of manipulative female behavior. By looking at woman who derive their power from their sexuality, Wurtzel offers a trenchant cultural critique of contemporary gender relations. Beginning with Delilah, the first woman to supposedly bring a great man down (latter day Delilahs include Yoko Ono, Pam Smart, Bess Myerson), Wurtzel finds many biblical counterparts to the men and woman in today's headlines. In five brilliant extended essays, she links the lives of women as demanding and disparate as Amy Fisher, Hillary Clinton, Margaux Hemingway, and Nicole Brown Simpson. Wurtzel gives voice to these women whose lives have been misunderstood, who have been dismissed for their beauty, their madness, their youth. She finds in the story of Amy Fisher the tragic plight of all Lolitas, our thirst for their brief and intense flame. She connects Hemingway's tragic suicide to those of Sylvia Plath, Edie Sedgwick, and Marilyn Monroe, women whose beauty was an end, ultimately, in itself. Wurtzel, writing about the wife/mistress dichotomy, explains how some women are anointed as wife material, while others are relegated to the role of mistress. She takes to task the double standard imposed on women, the cultural insistence on goodness and society's complete obsession with badness: what's a girl to do? Let's face it, if women were any real threat to male power, "Gennifer Flowers would be sitting behind the desk of the Oval Office," writes Wurtzel, "and Bill Clinton would be a lounge singer in the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock."Bitch tells a tale both celebratory and cautionary as Wurtzel catalogs some of the most infamous women in history, defending their outsize desires, describing their exquisite loneliness, championing their take-no-prisoners approach to live and love. Whether writing about Courtney Love, Sally Hemmings, Bathsheba, Kimba Wood, Sharon Stone, Princess Di-- or waxing eloquent on the hideous success of The Rules, the evil that is The Bridges of Madison County, the twisted logic of You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again-- Wurtzel is back with a bitchography that cuts to the core. In prose both blistering and brilliant, Bitch is a treatise on the nature of desperate sexual manipulation and a triumph of pussy power.

Oracle Night


Paul Auster - 2003
    It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.Paul Auster's mesmerizing eleventh novel reads like an old-fashioned ghost story. But there are no ghosts in this book - only flesh-and-blood human beings, wandering through the haunted realms of everyday life. Oracle Night is a narrative tour de force that confirms Auster's reputation as one of the boldest, most original writers at work in America today.

Snow White and Rose Red


Jacob Grimm - 1827
    In front of the cottage was a garden wherein stood two rose-trees, one of which bore white and the other red roses. She had two children who were like the two rose-trees, and one was called Snow-white, and the other Rose-red. They were as good and happy, as busy and cheerful as ever two children in the world were, only Snow-white was more quiet and gentle than Rose-red. Rose-red liked better to run about in the meadows and fields seeking flowers and catching butterflies; but Snow-white sat at home with her mother, and helped her with her housework, or read to her when there was nothing to do.The two children were so fond of one another that they always held each other by the hand when they went out together, and when Snow-white said: 'We will not leave each other,' Rose-red answered: 'Never so long as we live,' and their mother would add: 'What one has she must share with the other.' They often ran about the forest alone and gathered red berries, and no beasts did them any harm, but came close to them trustfully. The little hare would eat a cabbage-leaf out of their hands, the roe grazed by their side, the stag leapt merrily by them, and the birds sat still upon the boughs, and sang whatever they knew. No mishap overtook them; if they had stayed too late in the forest, and night came on, they laid themselves down near one another upon the moss, and slept until morning came, and their mother knew this and did not worry on their account......

Marathon Man


William Goldman - 1974
    But an unexpected visit from his beloved older brother will set in motion a chain of events that plunge Babe into a vortex of terror, treachery, and murder--and force him into a race for his life . . . and for the answer to the fateful question, "Is it safe?"

Property


Valerie Martin - 2003
    The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress.Exploring the permutations of Manon’s own obsession with Sarah against the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and powerful.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Hockey For Dummies


John Davidson - 1997
    If the first edition didn't already make you a fan, then this edition will!" --Mark Messier, NHL All-Star"My dog, Blue, and I ran out to get Hockey For Dummies, 2nd Edition. We give it two paws up!" --Don Cherry, former NHL coach and "Coaches Corner" commentator for Hockey Night in Canada..".a must read for all hockey fans!" --John Vanbiesbrouck, former goaltender, New York Islanders"...the most comprehensive, easily understood source of hockey history and instruction I've ever come across. Not only was 'JD' a superb player in the NHL, he is also an extremely skilled commentator sharing his knowledge of the game with fans all over North America. From hat tricks to power plays, Hockey For Dummies provides the reader with the wisdom of an expert. --From the Foreword by Wayne GretzkyThis updated edition of the bestselling guide to all things hockey is packed with illustrations and play-by-play descriptions, diagrams, and photos of the NHL's greatest players. It tells you how to:Gear up safely with the right equipment Improve your skills with drills Warm up mentally--and physically--before hitting the ice Respect rules and good sportsmanship Find US and Canadian leagues and camps Former New York Ranger, John Davidson offers you plays only the pros know and tips for playing hockey at any level. And he fills you in on:Hockey ABCs, its origins, positions, gear, rules, and more The complete NHL--explores the various leagues, greatest players, training, and tons of fascinating facts, figures, and priceless trivia The best ways to follow the game from the stands or on TV How the pros do it--includes tips from Gretzky on passing, Messier on winning face-offs, and other star players on how to play like a pro From youth leagues to the secrets of the NHL greats, Hockey For Dummies, is your total guide to this cool sport.

Notes of a Dirty Old Man


Charles Bukowski - 1969
    A bum off the road brings in a gypsy and his wife and we talk . . . . drink half the night. A long distance operator from Newburgh, N.Y. sends me money. She wants me to give up drinking beer and to eat well. I hear from a madman who calls himself 'King Arthur' and lives on Vine Street in Hollywood and wants to help me write my column. A doctor comes to my door: 'I read your column and think I can help you. I used to be a psychiatrist.' I send him away . . ."

How to Breathe Underwater


Julie Orringer - 2003
    In "When She is Old and I Am Famous" a young woman confronts the inscrutable power of her cousin's beauty. In "Note to Sixth-Grade Self" a band of popular girls exerts its social power over an awkward outcast. In "Isabel Fish" fourteen-year-old Maddy learns to scuba dive in order to mend her family after a terrible accident. Alive with the victories, humiliations, and tragedies of youth, How to Breathe Underwater illuminates this powerful territory with striking grace and intelligence.

The New Way Things Work


David Macaulay - 1998
    To help make sense of the computer age, David Macaulay brings us The New Way Things Work. This completely updated and expanded edition describes twelve new machines and includes more than seventy new pages detailing the latest innovations. With an entirely new section that guides us through the complicated world of digital machinery, where masses of electronic information can be squeezed onto a single tiny microchip, this revised edition embraces all of the newest developments, from cars to watches. Each scientific principle is brilliantly explained--with the help of a charming, if rather slow-witted, woolly mammoth.

It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us


Hillary Rodham Clinton - 1995
    Her long experience with children -- not only through her personal roles as mother, daughter, sister, and wife but also as advocate, legal expert, and public servant -- has strengthened her conviction that how children develop and what they need to succeed are inextricably entwined with the society in which they live and how well it sustains and supports its families and individuals. In other words, it takes a village to raise a child.This book chronicles her quest -- both deeply personal and, in the truest sense, public -- to discover how we can make our society into the kind of village that enables children to grow into able, caring, resilient adults. It is time, Mrs. Clinton believes, to acknowledge that we have to make some changes for our children's sake. Advances in technology and the global economy along with other developments society have brought us much good, but they have also strained the fabric of family life, leaving us and our children poorer in many ways -- physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.She doesn't believe that we should, or can, turn back the clock to "the good old days." False nostalgia for "family values" is no solution. Nor is it useful to make an all-purpose bogeyman or savior of "government." But by looking honestly at the condition of our children, by understanding the wealth of new information research offers us about them, and, most important, by listening to the children themselves, we can begin a more fruitful discussion about their needs. And by sifting the past for clues to the structures that once bound us together, bylooking with an open mind at what other countries and cultures do for their children that we do not, and by identifying places where our "village" is flourishing -- in families, schools, churches, businesses, civic organizations, even in cyberspace -- we can begin to create for our children the better tomorrow they deserve.

Howl


Allen Ginsberg - 2010
    Now a Major Motion PictureFirst published in 1956, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is a prophetic masterpiece—an epic raging against dehumanizing society that overcame censorship trials and obscenity charges to become one of the most widely read poems of the century.

Freaky Friday


Mary Rodgers - 1972
    If she were a grown-up, she could do whatever she wanted! Then one morning she wakes up to find she’s turned into her mother…and she soon discovers it’s not as easy as it looks!

Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 1: 1884-1933


Blanche Wiesen Cook - 1992
    This volume begins with her harrowing childhood, describes the difficulties of her marriage & explains how she persuaded Franklin to make the reforms that would make him famous.