At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

    Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatch'd pair—one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic—from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.

    Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him.And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.

    Bukowski's last journals candidly and humorously reveal the events in the writer's life as death draws inexorably nearer, thereby illuminating our own lives and natures, and to give new meaning to what was once only familiar. Crumb has illustrated the text with 12 full-page drawings and a portrait of Bukowski.

    The novel follows a young man, living in Manhattan as if he owned it, through nightclubs, fashion shows, editorial offices, and loft parties as he attempts to outstrip mortality and the recurring approach of dawn. With nothing but goodwill, controlled substances, and wit to sustain him in this anti-quest, he runs until he reaches his reckoning point, where he is forced to acknowledge loss and, possibly, to rediscover his better instincts. This remarkable novel of youth and New York remains one of the most beloved, imitated, and iconic novels in America.

    Living in a large Vermont house, her days are spent idly reading and playing music. But all of this is to change when two candidates for her affection arrive on the scene. The first is thirty years her senior, a philosopher named Edwin with whom she enjoys an enriching intellectual friendship. The second, Jared, is twenty years her junior: a handsome scientist, he attracts Edith in mind and body. But even if Jared shares her passion, does he have enough life experience to know whether such a union is in his best interests? In this exquisite and probing examination of desire, contrasting passions come to a head.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.

    He must fight for his place against the bullies in his Depression-shadowed Bronx neighborhood and his own frail health. As a young man, he must start anew and define his own path of personal belief that diverges sharply with his devout father and everything he has been taught...

    Meanwhile—after a heated first encounter that nearly comes to a duel—Aubrey and a brilliant but down-on-his-luck physician, Stephen Maturin, strike up an unlikely rapport. On a whim, Aubrey invites Maturin to join his crew as the Sophie’s surgeon. And so begins the legendary friendship that anchors this beloved saga set against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.Through every ensuing adventure on which Aubrey and Maturin embark, from the witty parley of their lovers and enemies to the roar of broadsides as great ships close in battle around them, O’Brian “provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises—comic, grim, farcical and tragic.… [A] whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit” (A. S. Byatt).

    But upon entering the sleepy, isolated little hamlet, Ted is distraught to find that the place bears no resemblance to the one he left behind—and never did. He also discovers that in this Millgate Ted Barton died of scarlet fever when he was nine years old. Perhaps even more troubling is the fact that it is literally impossible to escape. Unable to leave, Ted struggles to find the reason for such disturbing incongruities, but before long, he finds himself in the midst of a struggle between good and evil that stretches far beyond the confines of the valley.Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    The Homesman is a devastating story of early pioneers in 1850s American West. It celebrates the ones we hear nothing of: the brave women whose hearts and minds were broken by a life of bitter hardship. A spokesman; must be found to escort a handful of them back East to a sanitarium. When none of the countys men steps up, the job falls to Mary Bee Cuddy& ex-teacher, spinster, indomitable and resourceful. Brave as she is, Mary Bee knows she cannot succeed alone. The only companion she can find is the low-life claim jumper George Briggs. Thus begins a trek east, against the tide of colonization, against hardship, Indian attacks, ice storms, and loneliness; a timeless classic told in a series of tough, fast-paced adventures. In an unprecedented sweep, Glendon Swarthouts novel won both the Western Writers of America's Spur Award and the Western Heritage Wrangler Award. A new afterword by the author's son Miles Swarthout tells of his parents Glendon and Kathryn's discovery of and research into the lives of the often forgotten frontier women who make The Homesman as moving and believable as it is unforgettable.

    After accidentally becoming the star of University of Alabama's football team, Forrest goes on to become a Vietnam War hero, a world-class Ping-Pong player, a villainous wrestler, and a business tycoon -- as he wonders with childlike wisdom at the insanity all around him. In between misadventures, he manages to compare battle scars with Lyndon Johnson, discover the truth about Richard Nixon, and survive the ups and downs of remaining true to his only love, Jenny, on an extraordinary journey through three decades of the American cultural landscape. Forrest Gump has one heck of a story to tell -- and you've got to read it to believe it...

    Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him all the Rings of Power; the means by which he intends to rule Middle-earth. All he lacks in his plans for dominion is the One Ring -- the ring that rules them all -- which has fallen into the hands of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as the Ring is entrusted to his care. He must leave his home and make a perilous journey across the realms of Middle-earth to the Crack of Doom, deep inside the territories of the Dark Lord. There he must destroy the Ring forever and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose. Discover the incredible epic journey of Frodo in a celebratory seven-volume boxed set of fantasy classic, The Lord of the Rings.

    With their entire livelihood pegged on the chance of a wet year or a dry year, drought has the ability to crush their whole enterprise, to determine who stands and who falls, and to take food out of the mouths of the workers and their families. To Charlie Flagg, an honest, decent, and cantankerous rancher, the drought of the early 1950s is a foe that he must fight on his own grounds. Refusing the questionable "help" of federal aid programs, Charlie and his family struggle to make the ranch survive until the time it rains again-if it ever rains again.

    It chronicles one day in the life of Todd Andrews, a day on which he makes a very important decision. It was Barth's first novel.

    Miller, turns out as exacting, sponging, evil, cunning and ungrateful a guest as can be found in contemporary literature.