In the grand manner of Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice's new novel moves across time and the continents, from nineteenth-century Vienna to a St. Charles Greek Revival mansion in present-day New Orleans to the dazzling capitals of the modern-day world, telling a story of two charismatic figures bound to each other by a passionate commitment to music as a means of rapture, seduction, and liberation. At the novel's center: a uniquely fascinating woman, Triana — who once dreamed of becoming a great musician — and the demonic fiddler Stefan, tormented ghost of a Russian aristocrat, who begins to prey upon her, using his magic violin first to enchant, then to dominate and draw her into a state of madness through the music she loves. But Triana understands the power of the music perhaps even more than does Stefan — and she sets out to resist Stefan and to fight not only for her sanity but for her life. The struggle draws them both into a terrifying supernatural realm where they find themselves surrounded by memories, by horrors, and by overwhelming truths. Battling desperately, they are at last propelled towards the novel's astonishing and unforgettable climax. Violin is crowded with the history, the drama, the invention, and the romantic intensity that have become synonymous with Anne Rice at her incomparable best.

«The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels. So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they «dream on» in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Son of the Circus and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Like Garp, [THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE] is a startlingly original family saga that combines macabre humor with Dickensian sentiment and outrage at cruelty, dogmatism and injustice.»

«Adrian Mole faces the same agonies which life sets before most adolescents: troubles with girls, school, parents, and an uncaring world. The difference, though, between young Master Mole and his peers is that this British lad keeps a diary — an earnest chronicle of longing and disaster that has convulsed more than five million readers since its two-volume initial publication. From teenage Adrian's obsession with intellectuality after understanding «nearly every word» of a Malcolm Muggeridge broadcast to his anguished adoration of a lovely, mercurial schoolmate, from his view of his parents' constantly creaking relationship to his heartfelt but hilarious attempts at cathartic verse, here is an outrageous triumph of deadpan and deadly accurate, satire. ABBA, Princess Di's wedding, street punks, Monty Python, the Falklands campaign — all the cultural pageantry of a keenly observed era marches past the unique perspective of Sue Townsend's creation: A. Mole, the unforgettable lad whose self-absorption only gets funnier as his life becomes more desperate.»

Once an aristocrat in the heady days of pre-revolutionary France, now Lestat is a rockstar in the demonic, shimmering 1980s. He rushes through the centuries in search of others like him, seeking answers to the mystery of his terrifying exsitence. His story, the second volume in Anne Rice's best-selling Vampire Chronicles, is mesmerizing, passionate, and thrilling. Frightening, sensual.

Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force-a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

Introduction by Simon Franklin; Translation by Michael Glenny.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's extraordinary career as a novelist ended abruptly and unhappily, but it began with one of the most brilliant first novels in the history of American literature. Published when its author was just twenty-three, This Side of Paradise is about the education of a youth, and to this universal story Fitzgerald brought the promise of everything that was new in the vigorous, restless America during the years following World War I. Amory Blaine-egoistic, versatile, callow, and imaginative-inhabits a book that is interwoven with songs, poems, playscripts, and questions and answers. His growth from self-absorption to sexual awareness and personhood is described by means of a continuous improvisatory energy and delight. Far from being distracting, Fitzgerald's formal inventiveness and verve only heighten our sense that the world being described is our own modern world. A profound coherence informs This Side of Paradise — a coherence born of its author's uncanny ability to revel in the fragmented surfaces of human life while exploring and comprehending its serene depths.

Africa belongs to the Africans; the sooner they take it back the better. But — a country also belongs to those who feel at home in it. Perhaps it may be that love of Africa the country will be strong enough to link people who hate each other now. Perhaps... Going Home is Doris Lessing's account of her first journey back to Africa, the land in which she grew up and in which so much of her emotion and her concern are still invested. Returning to Southern Rhodesia in 1956, she found that her love of Africa had remained as strong as her hatred of the idea of white supremacy espoused by its ruling class. Going Home evokes brilliantly the experience of thepeople, black and white, who have shaped and will shape a beloved country.

The first encyclopedic illustrated guide to the world of Middle Earth and the Undying Lands, this book brings together every important aspect of Tolkien's vast cosmology. More than five hundred alphabetical entries cover five major subject areas: history, geography, sociology, natural history and biography. The maps, genealogies and time-charts, together with the illustrations of characters, places adn events, reveal to the reader the full dramatic sweep and splendor of Tolkien's world.

«Murder is hardly the best way for Lord Peter and his bride, the famous mystery writer Harriet Vane, to start their honeymoon. It all begins when the former owner of their newly acquired estate is found quite nastily dead in the cellar. All too quickly, what Lord Peter had hoped would be a very private and romantic stay in the country has turned into a most baffling case, with a misspelled «notise» to the milkman at its center and a dead man who's been discovered in a most intriguing condition: with not a spot of blood on his smashed skull and not a penny less than six hundred pounds in his pocket.»

These Previously uncollected stories and letters are essential to the understanding of Babel's life and works.

An unconventional woman trapped in a conventional marriage, Martha Quest struggles to maintain her dignity and her sanity through the misunderstandings, frustrations, infidelities, and degrading violence of a failing marriage. Finally, she must make the heartbreaking choice of whether to sacrifice her child as she turns her back on marriage and security. A Proper Marriage is the second novel in Doris Lessing's classic Children of Violence series of novels, each a masterpiece on its own right, and, taken together, an incisive and all-encompassing vision of our world in the twentieth century.

Meet Mr. Ash, quiet-spoken, tall, unfailingly kind — sole survivor of an ancient species, the Taltos — thriving among humankind as he has always done, now the head of a great corporate empire. As the novel opens, he is stunned to learn from an old and mysterious friend that another Taltos has been seen — in the very same Scottish glen where centuries ago, long before the coming of the Romans, Ash ruled his clan. At once he is propelled into the world of Rowan Mayfair, and into the mysteries of the Mayfair family — the New Orleans dynasty of witches forever besieged by ghosts, spirits, and the dizzying powers of his own species — a family intimately involved with the heritage of the Taltos, a family of unique, brilliant, and troubled souls struggling as they have for centuries to use both science and magic in their battle for greatness, even survival. At the heart of the novel is the Talamasca, a secular order of psychic scholars, the only organization in existence which may understand Ash, his Taltos past, and the dilemma of the Mayfair witches. The story of the Mayfair family continues, moving from London to Donnelaith, Scotland, to New Orleans, back and forth through time — from the origins of the Taltos and their mythic Lost Land to the moral crises of the present day.

«From the day her first Vampire Chronicle was published, critics and readers — readers by the hundreds of thousands — have been mesmerized by the writings of Anne Rice. And with the publication of The Witching Hour, she created for us yet another world and legend, and both the chorus of praise and the multitudes of her readers once more increased. Now, Anne Rice brings us again — even more magically — into the midst of the dynasty of witches she introduced in The Witching Hour. At the center: the brilliant an beautiful Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, and Lasher, the darkly compelling demon whom she finds irresistible and from whose evil spell and vision she must now flee. She takes with her their terrifying and exquisite child, one of «a brood of children born knowing, able to stand and talk on the first day». Rowan's attempt to escape Lasher and his pursuit of her and their child are at the heart of this extraordinary saga. It is a novel that moves around the globe, backward and forward through time, and between the human and demonic worlds. Its many voices — of women, of men, of demons and angels, present and past — haunt and enchant us. With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us through twilight paths, telling a chillingly hypnotic story of occult and spiritual aspirations and passion.»

It's very easy to get a little disheartened when your planet has been blown up, the woman you love has vanished in a misunderstanding about the nature of space-time, the spaceship you are on crashes in flames on a remote and Bob-fearing planet and all you have to fall back on are a few simple sandwich-making skills. However, instead of being disheartened, Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life a bit and, immediately, all hell breaks loose. Hell takes a number of forms: there is the usual Ford Prefect form of hell, fresh hell in the form of an all-new version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which behaves in an altogether more mysterious, sinister and airborn manner, and a totally unexpected hell that arrives in the form of a teenage girl who utterly startles Arthur Dent by being his daughter when he didn't even know he had one. Much as Arthur would love to stay in his rural sandwich-making idyll, he is forced to set off on his travels once again, this time on the back of a mysterious Perfectly Normal Beast. Can he save the Earth from total destruction throughout all dimensional probabilities? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save the Grebulons from completely myopic junked-up idiocy? Can he save his daughter Random from herself? Of course not. He never even works out what is going on, exactly. Will you? Mostly Harmless: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Part Five: The book that gives a whole new meaning to the world trilogy.

The most complete compendium of mythology ever published. 'Bulfinch's Mythology' includes the stories of: Apollo and Daphne, Pygmalion, Cupid and Psyche, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Hercules, Theseus and Daedalus, The Trojan War, Ulysses, and more...

«Interweaving past and present, Sweden and Zambia, «The Eye of the Leopard» draws on bestselling author Mankell's deep understanding of the two worlds he has inhabited for more than 20 years.»

Long considered a literary heir of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald (1915–83) infused new life into the hardboiled detective genre with psychologically complex mysteries involving his intuitive and empathetic private eye Lew Archer. This omnibus presents three of Macdonald's best Archer novels. The Ivory Grin (a.k.a. Marked for Murder) begins when a wealthy woman hires Archer to track down a maid she suspects of stealing her jewelry. The Zebra-Striped Hearse finds Archer investigating a rich man's prospective son-in-law, and in The Underground Man Archer tracks a missing child and uncovers a secret history of wayward parents and wounded offspring.

The many readers who are enthralled with the enduring legend of Camelot will be drawn to this fascinating book, which may become the definitive work in the effort to prove the historical authenticity of King Arthur.

In the unconstrained atmosphere of England in the late 1960s, Harriet and David Lovatt, an upper-middle-class couple, face a frightening vicissitude. As the days' events take a dark and ugly turn nearing apocalyptic intensity, the Lovatts' guarded contentedness and view of the world as a benign place are forever shattered by the violent birth of their fifth child: Ben, monstrous in appearance, insatiably hungry, abnormally strong, demanding, brutal.