The controversy provoked by Babbitt was influential in the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Lewis in 1930.

    Kait Whittier has built her magazine column into a hugely respected read followed by fans across the country. She loves her work and adores her grown children, treasuring the time they spend together. But after two marriages, she prefers to avoid the complications and uncertainties of a new love. Then, after a chance meeting with Zack Winter, a television producer visiting Manhattan from Los Angeles, everything changes. Inspired by the true story of her own indomitable grandmother, Kait creates the storyline for a TV series. And when she shares her work with Zack, he is impressed and decides to make this his next big-budget project. Within weeks, Kait is plunged into a colorful world of actors and industry pros who will bring her vision to life. A cool, competent director. An eccentric young screenwriter. A world-famous actress coping with private tragedy. A reclusive grande dame from Hollywood’s Golden Age. A sizzling starlet whose ego outstrips her abilities. L.A.’s latest “bad boy” actor, whose affairs are setting the city on fire. An unknown ingénue with outsized talent. And a rugged, legendary leading man. As secrets are shared, the cast becomes a second family for Kait. But in the midst of this charmed year, she is suddenly forced to confront the greatest challenge a mother could ever know. The strength of women—across generations and among friends, colleagues, and family—takes center stage in this irresistible novel, as all-too-real people find the courage to persevere in life’s drama of heartbreak and joy.

    Some of them have appeared in magazines but the majority have not been published before. The characters and backgrounds are widely varied. "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is about an old Spanish Beggar. "Homage to Switzerland" concerns various conversations at a Swiss railway-station restaurant. "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" is laid in the accident ward of a hospital in Western United States, and so on. Ernest Hemingway made his literary start as a short-story writer. He has always excelled in that medium, and this volume reveals him at his best.

    In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post—World War II America–a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Vonnegut explores the relationship between science’s pursuit of truth and the state’s need to control it in “The Petrified Ants,” a darkly whimsical story about two Soviet researchers who stumble upon an amazing discovery, only to learn that natural history is also written by the hand that wields the power. “The Petrified Ants” and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut’s unique voice had been stilled forever–and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.Other stories from Look at the Birdie available as single-story e-books:On sale August 25, 2009"Hello, Red"On sale October 20, 2009:"Confido""FUBAR""Shout About It from the Housetops""Ed Luby's Key Club""A Song for Selma""Hall of Mirrors""The Nice Little People""Little Drops of Water""The Honor of a Newsboy""Look at the Birdie" (Short Story)"King and Queen of the Universe""The Good Explainer"

    A close-knit group of friends draws closer, and then apart, when scandal and tragedy erupt among them.

    I went down into the underworld of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of the underworld. That which made for more life, for physical and spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life, which hurt, and dwarfed, and distorted life, was bad."

    Thompson, The Rum Diary is a tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. The narrator, freelance journalist Paul Kemp, irresistibly drawn to a sexy, mysterious woman, is soon thrust into a world where corruption and get-rich-quick schemes rule and anything (including murder) is permissible.

    In this powerful and beautiful story, we follow a group of people in a small town during this dramatic and harrowing time, the era that was a forebear of the Tiananmen Square uprising.Morning dawns on the provincial city of Muddy River. A young woman, Gu Shan, a bold spirit and a follower of Chairman Mao, has renounced her faith in Communism. Now a political prisoner, she is to be executed for her dissent. Her distraught mother, determined to follow the custom of burning her only child’s clothing to ease her journey into the next world, is about to make another bold decision. Shan’s father, Teacher Gu, who has already, in his heart and mind, buried his rebellious daughter, begins to retreat into memories. Neither of them imagines that their daughter’s death will have profound and far-reaching effects, in Muddy River and beyond.In luminous prose, Yiyun Li weaves together the lives of these and other unforgettable characters, including a serious seven-year-old boy, Tong; a crippled girl named Nini; the sinister idler Bashi; and Kai, a beautiful radio news announcer who is married to a man from a powerful family. Life in a world of oppression and pain is portrayed through stories of resilience, sacrifice, perversion, courage, and belief. We read of delicate moments and acts of violence by mothers, sons, husbands, neighbors, wives, lovers, and more, as Gu Shan’s execution spurs a brutal government reaction.Writing with profound emotion, and in the superb tradition of fiction by such writers as Orhan Pamuk and J. M. Coetzee, Yiyun Li gives us a stunning novel that is at once a picture of life in a special part of the world during a historic period, a universal portrait of human frailty and courage, and a mesmerizing work of art.

    Chesterton, Andrew Lang and Henry James, examining Dickens’ contribution to literature* includes an Adaptations section, featuring Hallie Erminie Rives’ TALES FROM DICKENS* UPDATED with improved spellings, introductions and images* this truly is the Dickensian’s perfect choice!This is the ULTIMATE edition of Dickens’ works, with every published novel, short story, novella, play, poem, letter, speech and article – fully illustrated – and featuring a treasure trove of bonus material.Contents:A DINNER AT POPLAR WALKThe NovelsTHE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUBOLIVER TWISTTHE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBYTHE OLD CURIOSITY SHOPBARNABY RUDGETHE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWITDOMBEY AND SONDAVID COPPERFIELDBLEAK HOUSEHARD TIMESLITTLE DORRITA TALE OF TWO CITIESGREAT EXPECTATIONSOUR MUTUAL FRIENDTHE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROODJOHN JASPER'S SECRET by Henry MorfordThe Christmas NovellasA CHRISTMAS CAROLTHE CHIMESTHE CRICKET ON THE HEARTHTHE BATTLE OF LIFETHE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAINThe Short StoriesLIST OF THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIESThe Short Story CollectionsSKETCHES BY BOZMASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCKREPRINTED PIECESThe Collaborative WorksTHE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERSTHE HOLLY-TREENO THOROUGHFAREMEMOIRS OF JOSEPH GRIMALDI by Thomas Egerton WilksAnd many moreThe PlaysAll the plays andSAM WELLER by W.T MoncrieffOLIVER TWIST by Charles Zachary BarnettThe PoetryLIST OF THE POETRYThe Non-FictionAMERICAN NOTESMISCELLANEOUS PAPERSAnd many moreThe AdaptationsTALES FROM DICKENS by Hallie Erminie RivesThe CriticismAPPRECIATIONS AND CRITICISMS OF THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS by G. K.

    Unlike most historical narratives from China, which are pegged to political events, Change is a representative of “people’s history,” a bottom-up rather than top-down view of a country in flux. By moving back and forth in time and focusing on small events and everyday people, Mo Yan breathes life into history by describing the effects of larger-than-life events on the average citizen.“Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.”— Nobel Committee for Literature “If China has a Kafka, it may be Mo Yan. Like Kafka, Yan has the ability to examine his society through a variety of lenses, creating fanciful, Metamorphosis-like transformations or evoking the numbing bureaucracy and casual cruelty of modern governments.” —Publishers Weekly, on Shifu: You'll Do Anything for a Laugh

    A retired English professor who began writing fiction at the age of 70, Maclean produced what is now recognized as one of the classic American stories of the twentieth century. Originally published in 1976, A River Runs through It and Other Stories now celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary, marked by this new edition that includes a foreword by Annie Proulx.Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a young man he worked many summers in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service. The two novellas and short story in this collection are based on his own experiences—the experiences of a young man who found that life was only a step from art in its structures and beauty. The beauty he found was in reality, and so he leaves a careful record of what it was like to work in the woods when it was still a world of horse and hand and foot, without power saws, "cats," or four-wheel drives. Populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, and set in the small towns and surrounding trout streams and mountains of western Montana, the stories concern themselves with the complexities of fly fishing, logging, fighting forest fires, playing cribbage, and being a husband, a son, and a father.

    Sergeant Jordan Stone and his crack forensic team are called in to examine the site, to hunt for the perpetrators of this horrific act. But the discovery of a survivor—a child of ten—will shatter all the team knows about life and death. Among the crumbling bones of dead kings, something hoary and murderous stirs out of the ancient past, lurching forward to claim vengeance on those still living.Included with this thrilling story is a sneak peek at The Blood Gospel, where the further exploits of Sergeant Stone and his team will be revealed.

    To survive, he must find a deep strength greater than all the events that surround him.Shanghai, 1941 — a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.

    He appeared to be ordinary enough but behind his rough charm lay some remarkable qualities, which were to have a great and lasting effect on the future lives of Fiona and the children. Before long Fiona and Bill are married and they embark on a life together. They adopt a child and have one of their own. But their path is never smooth, and fluctuating fortunes take them from success to failure and back again... Collected together in one volume for the first time, Catherine Cookson's first three Bill Bailey novels are richly entertaining tales of family life and relationships which touch the heart and offer much shrewd observation of the human condition.

    Yet when Legrand's conviction fails to waiver, they set off on a bizarre journey, accompanied by Jupiter, Legrand's loyal and equally skeptical servant. What follows is a strange tale of coded messages, hidden treasure, and uncanny prophecy that will both enthrall and baffle even the most perceptive readers.Part horror story, part detective fiction, The Gold Bug is an ingenious tale bearing all the hallmarks of Poe's extraordinary narrative skill. It is presented here with The Sphinx, a similarly themed and equally disturbing short story. Wonderfully versatile as an author and best known for his tales of terror and the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) holds a venerable place in the history of American literature.This edition contains the following short stories:- The Gold Bug- The Sphinx- William Wilson.