the phenomenon of false entries within dictionaries and works of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement.Peter Winceworth, Victorian lexicographer, is toiling away at the letter S for Swansby's multivolume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. His disaffection compels him to insert unauthorized fictitious entries into the dictionary in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom.In the present day, Mallory, a young intern employed by the publisher, is tasked with uncovering these mountweazels before the work is digitized. She also has to contend with threatening phone calls from an anonymous caller. Is the change in the definition of marriage really that upsetting? And does the caller really intend for the Swansby's staff to 'burn in hell'?As these two narratives combine, both Winceworth and Mallory discover how they might negotiate the complexities of the often nonsensical, relentless, untrustworthy, hoax-strewn, and undefinable path we call life. An exhilarating debut novel from a formidably brilliant young writer, The Liar's Dictionary celebrates the rigidity, fragility, absurdity, and joy of language.

    As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the reader into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor.In its immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, buddenbrooks surpasses all other modern family chronicles. With remarkable fidelity to the original German text, this superb translation emphasizes the magnificent scale of Mann’s achievement in this riveting, tragic novel.

    The wagon trains, Indian attacks, a lone survivor, and her tale of life among the Kumeyaay. Parts of this story are factual: the trail blazing Butterfield Overland Mail, the unfolding conflicts in California over the issue of slavery, and the looming Civil War. Woven into this historical fabric are the stories of Abby, a young girl raised by Indians; John Jay Butterfield, scion of the founder of the Overland Mail; Waterman Ormsby, reporter for the New York Herald; and many other compelling personages drawn from fact and fiction. Join author Marian Sepulveda as she guides you through this unique chapter in early California lore.

    However, it will take time before America can commit ground troops to the battle. Col. John Randal and the men in the American Volunteer Group who have been serving with Raiding Forces are back in US Army uniform serving under their own flag. Raiding Forces is being expanded into a joint US/UK outfit. As it is, reorganizing events in remote parts of the world require Col. Randal and a team of his Raiders to carry out a pair of long range operations of national strategic importance. Meanwhile, there is a mole in Middle East Command HQ that Rommel calls his “Good Source” and the German 621 Radio Intercept Company is providing the Desert Fox with the Allied Order of Battle that have become serious threats. Lady Jane is under suspicion of being the mole and Raiding Forces has been ordered to track down and kill the 621st’s Nazi commander. The action is nonstop.

     Deneys Reitz was an unusual soldier. Having fought against the British in the Boer War, in 1917 he decided to go to London, in order to join the British Army. Presenting himself at a recruiting office in Chelsea, he enlisted as a private soldier. Shortly afterwards he was commissioned, and was sent to the Western Front in September 1917. Whilst on the Western Front, he witnessed the German spring offensive in 1918, and the allied counter-attack which followed. He was wounded twice as well as being gassed. Reitz experienced more than his fair share of the difficulties of trench warfare, from finding himself living in a trench whose sides were built out of sandbag-covered corpses, to being stretchered into a Casualty Clearing Station with serious wounds.

    When he is finally ready to turn a new page in life, he shoots for the moon and moves to the town of Moville to work in mining. Feeling like he is one step closer to his dream, little did he know that the life of a miner is more fraught with peril and disappointment than he'd imagined. The moment he discovers that a vicious killer is out there, taking the lives of innocent miners for no apparent reason, he is willing to risk it all to track him down. Will Jack manage to find the answer behind the enigma of the horrible murders? Or will the truth behind them remain forever hidden, haunting the small town?While trying to connect all dots and solve the intriguing mystery, Jack meets Charlotte Campbell, the town's head schoolteacher. Although they get off to a rocky start, he will soon realize that he's not alone in the battle against the town's enemies. Together they will fight the forces that wreak havoc in Moville, a lifetime adventure that will bring them closer. Even though their attraction is impossible to deny, their affection cannot be expressed as long as a criminal is out there. Will they finally have a chance at love, or will their romance be doomed to be lost forever?As the days go by and the murderers continue to bring chaos to what was once a thriving town, Jack feels like his dream is being shattered into a million pieces. Will his valor and wit win out in the end, leading him to the life he has been eagerly waiting for? Or will the cruel felon stop him from riding down the trail to happiness?"A Town of Lawlessness" is a historical adventure novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.

    His mason anxiously advises against it, for the old cathedral was built without foundations. Nevertheless, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, until the stone pillars shriek and the ground beneath it swims. Its shadow falls ever darker on the world below, and on Dean Jocelin in particular.From the author of Lord of the Flies, The Spire is a dark and powerful portrait of one man's will, and the folly that he creates.

    G. Wells was an international phenomenon, the only writer of his time who could command an audience with both Roosevelt and Stalin. His circle of friends included George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, G. K. Chesterton, Somerset Maugham and, of course, the young Rebecca West, with whom he had a long-term affair — perhaps the most tempestuous and sparkling literary liaison of the century. Equally illustrious was his circle of enemies, including the indomitable Hilaire Belloc, who destroyed Wells in a vicious and public argument. Unlike any previous biographer, Michael Coren shows that while many have considered Wells to be on the side of the angels, he was in fact invariably on the wrong side in the major political and literary debates of the age. Drawing on eye-opening new material, The Invisible Man delves deep into the paradoxes that characterized Wells — the utopian visionary and staunch advocate of women’s suffrage who was also a misogynistic womanizer; the epitome of liberal tolerance who was also a social engineer and thoroughgoing anti-Semite. Wells has hitherto remained untouched by charges of anti-Semitism, but Coren reveals for the first time his disturbing views on ‘the Jewish problem’ (for instance, he called Jews ‘termites in the civilized world’), views he defended vehemently even through the 1930s. The avuncular author of Kipps and The Time Machine is depicted, shockingly, as one who advocated concentration camps, racial eugenics and the incarceration or execution of those who did not ‘fit in’. The Invisible Man is one of those iconoclastic biographies that change our perception of their subjects for ever. Praise for Michael Coren: ‘An elegantly written biography’ The Times Michael Coren is a journalist and author, who wrote the highly acclaimed Gilbert: The Man Who Was G. K. Chesterton and a biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

    The author not only reminds you about the essential features of each great book but gives you a practical, real-world reason why revisiting it in adulthood is not only enjoyable but useful.

    William Dean Howells' richly humorous characterization of a self-made millionaire in Boston society provides a paradigm of American culture in the Gilded Age.After establishing a fortune in the paint business, Silas Lapham moves his family from their Vermont farm to the city of Boston, where they awkwardly attempt to break into Brahmin society.

    Recently one sold for over five million dollars. It is the book that rescued the name of William Shakespeare and half of his plays from oblivion. The Millionaire and the Bard tells the miraculous and romantic story of the making of the First Folio, and of the American industrialist whose thrilling pursuit of the book became a lifelong obsession.When Shakespeare died in 1616 half of his plays died with him. No one—not even their author—believed that his writings would last, that he was a genius, or that future generations would celebrate him as the greatest author in the history of the English language. By the time of his death his plays were rarely performed, eighteen of them had never been published, and the rest existed only in bastardized forms that did not stay true to his original language.Seven years later, in 1623, Shakespeare’s business partners, companions, and fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, gathered copies of the plays and manuscripts, edited and published thirty-six of them. This massive book, the First Folio, was intended as a memorial to their deceased friend. They could not have known that it would become one of the most important books ever published in the English language, nor that it would become a fetish object for collectors. The Millionaire and the Bard is a literary detective story, the tale of two mysterious men—a brilliant author and his obsessive collector—separated by space and time. It is a tale of two cities—Elizabethan and Jacobean London and Gilded Age New York. It is a chronicle of two worlds—of art and commerce—that unfolded an ocean and three centuries apart. And it is the thrilling tale of the luminous book that saved the name of William Shakespeare “to the last syllable of recorded time.” -

    Now, Lovett weaves another brilliantly imagined mystery featuring one of English literature’s most popular and beloved authors: Jane Austen. Book lover and Austen enthusiast Sophie Collingwood has recently taken a job at an antiquarian bookshop in London when two different customers request a copy of the same obscure book: the second edition of Little Book of Allegories by Richard Mansfield.  Their queries draw Sophie into a mystery that will cast doubt on the true authorship of Pride and Prejudice—and ultimately threaten Sophie’s life. In a dual narrative that alternates between Sophie’s quest to uncover the truth—while choosing between two suitors—and a young Jane Austen’s touching friendship with the aging cleric Richard Mansfield, Lovett weaves a romantic, suspenseful, and utterly compelling novel about love in all its forms and the joys of a life lived in books.

    This collection of unforgettable characters—including Anne Shirley, Jo March, Scarlett O’Hara, and Jane Eyre—and outstanding authors—like Jane Austen, Harper Lee, and Laura Ingalls Wilder—is an impassioned look at literature’s most compelling heroines, both on the page and off. Readers who found inspiration in books by Toni Morrison, Maud Hart Lovelace, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Alice Walker, or who were moved by literary-themed memoirs like Shelf Discovery and Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, get ready to return to the well of women’s classic literature with The Heroine's Bookshelf.

    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a unique literary character who has remained popular for over a century and is appreciated more than ever today. But what made this fictional character, dreamed up by a small-town English doctor in the 1880s, into such a lasting success, despite the author’s own attempt to escape his invention?In From Holmes to Sherlock, Swedish author and Sherlock Holmes expert Mattias Boström recreates the full story behind the legend for the first time. From a young Arthur Conan Doyle sitting in a Scottish lecture hall taking notes on his medical professor’s powers of observation to the pair of modern-day fans who brainstormed the idea behind the TV sensation Sherlock, from the publishing world’s first literary agent to the Georgian princess who showed up at the Conan Doyle estate and altered a legacy, the narrative follows the men and women who have created and perpetuated the myth. It includes tales of unexpected fortune, accidental romance, and inheritances gone awry, and tells of the actors, writers, readers, and other players who have transformed Sherlock Holmes from the gentleman amateur of the Victorian era to the odd genius of today. Told in fast-paced, novelistic prose, From Holmes to Sherlock is a singular celebration of the most famous detective in the world—a must-read for newcomers and experts alike.

    Featuring more than 200 full-color images of original catalog cards, first edition book covers, and photographs from the library's magnificent archives, this collection is a visual celebration of the rarely seen treasures in one of the world's most famous libraries and the brilliant catalog system that has kept it organized for hundreds of years. Packed with engaging facts on literary classics—from Ulysses to The Cat in the Hat to Shakespeare's First Folio to The Catcher in the Rye—this package is an ode to the enduring magic and importance of books.