Oakton

Oakton

B. Chen

Art / Nonfiction / Sociology

Rural Nebraska teens battle for their lives against a band of resurrected Pawnee Warriors seeking to remove them from their sacred lands.Oakton is the fictional story of a group of teens from rural Nebraska. Set in the near future (March, 2029), these three best friends find themselves trapped in their tiny home town during historic river flooding and powerful thunderstorms which unleashes the spirits of numerous Pawnee warriors wanting to reclaim their sacred lands. Past town conflicts have created an environment where the adults refuse to speak but the teens are secretly best friends. Now they must battle together using the resources at hand to fight for their lives and protect their families, while their parents refuse to believe something could really be wrong in town.The teens may be outnumbered but they have at their disposal: two rifles, one crossbow, a dog and a horse, robotic spiders, and a strong friendship.
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The Weekend Spark

The Weekend Spark

Diane Barry

Art / Nonfiction / Self Help

The McKenzies are trying to overcome different obstacles. A marriage of twenty years is almost coming to an end thanks to the eminent threat of divorce. In an attempt to save their marriage Daniel McKenzie schedules a romantic weekend at the Royal Hotel. Will this marriage resist? Witness every moment of this romantic weekend and find the answer to this question.Speaking about the content of this e-book, it all happens in a weekend, it is a short fictional story about a two-decade marriage. Like many other marriages around the world, there are some factors that can lead to divorce (and we can see the statistics increasing year after year). The threat of divorce is imminent; serious measures need to be taken to prevent this sort of outcome, Daniel, the husband, decides to take his wife, Dora, to a romantic hotel. This will probably create that spark the marriage needs in order to work for both. Meanwhile, in Paris, Sophie, the only daughter of Daniel and Dora, is struggling to make her relationship with Peter work. During the course of the book, you will see that some obstacles will affect both couples, and the question is: “Will the weekend spark make both relationships work?” You are about to find out!This e-book can also be considered a source of inspiration, for every marriage or relationship based on love and union. This kind of relationships will be always facing obstacles; the trick is overcoming them, together. If you are facing some trouble in your marriage or relationship of any kind, have a look at this book and find inspiration and strength to battle for you and the person you love. If you are not currently facing problems, good, read this book and let yourself be delighted with a story of which you could be the protagonist. Enjoy it!
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The Hotah

The Hotah

Taylor Craft

Art / Religion / Theology

My Mother warned me about the monsters in the woods; I should have listened.After her parents were brutally murdered, Hailey tries to live a normal life like a normal teenager; only she doesn't want to be noticed. She was content with hiding in the shadows not being seen by lurking eyes. Until one day things randomly start to change when she gets noticed. When Hailey met Robert she knew there was something more than just 'boy meets girl.' They had something mysteriously hidden between them and neither of them knew what it was. With Robert's help, Hailey tries to find out who killed her parents. She ends up getting herself in a bit of trouble. There is no way out. Find out how Hailey and Robert meet their end.
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The Peeper Keeper

The Peeper Keeper

Tim Thompson

Art / Nonfiction / Culture

Halloween is coming and that means The Peeper Keeper is active again. Set in Lexington, Kentucky, the supernatural is at work and it’s driving a man to his breaking point. This fast-paced thriller pulls you in and features an ending that will have you checking to make sure your doors and windows are locked. Read at your own risk.Halloween is coming and that means The Peeper Keeper is active again. Set in Lexington, Kentucky, the supernatural is at work and it’s driving a man to his breaking point. Crimes from the past are resurfacing and this time regular Joe, John Roberts, may not be able to escape with his life. This fast-paced thriller pulls you in and features an ending that will have you checking to make sure your doors and windows are locked. Read at your own risk.
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  • 540
The Mind's Storm

The Mind's Storm

jason barzilay

Art / Nonfiction / Culture

A collection of poems about the uncertainties of life.Every day, thousands of people board an airplane without a second thought. Their minds are full of where they’ve been and their destination. However, sometimes, life has different plans.Flight 437 is such a story. On a flight from Paris, France to New York City, the crew and passengers find themselves trapped on a flight none of them expected. As events unfold, they soon realize they are no longer on the planned flight, but are now, in fact, headed to an unknown destination.
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  • 263
The Final Heist

The Final Heist

Brittany Wright

Art / Photography

Things begin to go hilariously wrong for seasoned heist sisters Olivia and Samantha when they run into their biggest competition on what they hope to be the last heist of their career. Olivia and Samantha have to get creative to make sure they walk away with the biggest payday of their careers, and out of a life of crime for good.Olivia and Samantha have been making their living in crime for as long as they can remember. They’ve planned their final heist to be the biggest yet and have planned every moment down to the second. What they didn’t plan for was the appearance of Alex and Paolo; a set of brothers who frequently track their every move, ready to try and snatch their hard-earned prizes from under their noses. As the sisters sift through a never-ending trove of junk for their ultimate treasure, Alex and Paolo throw a wrench in their plans and almost cost them the entire heist, and their chance to escape the crime life forever.
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  • 607
Naomi and the Horse-Flavored T-Shirt

Naomi and the Horse-Flavored T-Shirt

Dan Boehl

Poetry / Art

Naomi and the Horse-Flavored T-Shirt is a science fiction novel for middle school readers set in a future without gasoline that follows fourteen-year-old Naomi, who, along with her farmer friend, Sammy, searches the paste factory for her father and the town’s missing horses.Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by way of 1984 with a little Coraline mixed in.Endless Ranches is a town like any other town in Texas. Everybody works for the paste company, eats paste for breakpaste, plunch, and dinner, and walks to work. But things were different before the factory came to town and all of the horses disappeared.Fourteen-year-old Naomi knows something is not right, but nobody talks about it. Naomi’s mom changes the subject when Naomi asks about her missing father and one of her teachers disappears after he tells the class about the town’s past. But on her birthday, Naomi’s mother gives her an amazing gift that unlocks the truth about Endless Ranches: her father’s horse-flavored T-shirt. Accompanied by Sammy, a teenaged farmer forced to steal paste so he can feed his brothers and sisters, Naomi uncovers a devious Paste Company plot to subdue the townspeople and raise an army of mindless white people.
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  • 357
The Battle to Confession

The Battle to Confession

Thomas Rowe

Art / Children's

Claws and whiskers! A spirit of uncertainty and unrest has settled upon the Cougar village. Cheshire Cougar, the brave and noble Marquis of Cougars, has been brought back from the Battle of Eastern Pass on a travois. The leader of the Cougar clan has lost his ability to smell out those enslaved to the dragon and the Council is scared.Claws and whiskers! A spirit of uncertainty and unrest has settled upon the Cougar village. Cheshire Cougar, the brave and noble Marquis of Cougars, has been brought back from the Battle of Eastern Pass on a travois. The leader of the Cougar clan has lost his ability to smell out those enslaved to the dragon and the Council is scared. Just as the residents of the forest valley are adjusting to the return of the Marquis of Cougars, Cheshire turns the social world upside down by appointing Nurse Leana Longclaw to be his assistant and second in command. Will Cheshire be able to battle his inner demons? Will Leana be able to face her fears? Or will an accidental trip to the human realm make them lose the battle to confession?
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Beyond the Strandline

Beyond the Strandline

ToClark

Art / Nonfiction / History

This novel is an accompaniment to my ebook 'Tipping Point' which charts our current situation and the impending peril of climate change. It is intended to put a human face on the potentially cataclysmic events which are already starting to unfold before us that we might understand what the future holds for us all as members of the human race.This novel is an accompaniment to my ebook 'Tipping Point' which charts our current situation and the impending peril of climate change. It is intended to put a human face on the potentially cataclysmic events which are already starting to unfold before us that we might understand what the future holds for us all as members of the human race. Since beginning to write it, at least one of its more dire predictions has become apparent - the rate of rise of CO2 in the atmosphere is itself increasing.Part 1 brings us into the near future. Part 2 is not yet written but its title is 'Meltdown.
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Summertime

Summertime

JT Therrien

Christian / Art / Romance

Eugenia is dying. Her late husband Zach waits for her as an old Lucy episode plays in the background.Rooh-e-Sadiq is about English poems. The poems are inspired from common and everyday life people. They cover topics of love, motherhood, religion, souls, and many more.
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Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline

Fiction / Historical Fiction / Art

Christina Baker Kline’s Orphan Train is an unforgettable story of friendship and second chances that highlights a little-known but historically significant movement in America’s past—and it includes a special PS section for book clubs featuring insights, interviews, and more. Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to “aging out” out of the foster care system. A community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance. Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life—answers that will ultimately free them both. Rich in detail and epic in scope, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of unexpected friendship, and of the secrets we carry that keep us from finding out who we are.
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The Portable Blake

The Portable Blake

William Blake

Poetry / Art

The Portable Blake contains the hermetic genius's most important works: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in their entirety; selections from his "prophetic books"--including The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Visions of the Daughters of Abion, America, The Book of Urizen, and The Four Zoas--and from other works of poetry and prose, as well as the complete drawings for The Book of Job.
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The Complete Poems

The Complete Poems

William Blake

Poetry / Art

One of the great English Romantic poets, William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist, poet, mystic and visionary. His work ranges from the deceptively simple and lyrical Songs of Innocence and their counterpoint Experience - which juxtapose poems such as 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger', and 'The Blossom' and 'The Sick Rose' - to highly elaborate, apocalyptic works, such as The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. Throughout his life Blake drew on a rich heritage of philosophy, religion and myth, to create a poetic worlds illuminated by his spiritual and revolutionary beliefs that have fascinated, intrigued and enchanted readers for generations.
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The Portable Nietzsche

The Portable Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy / Psychology / Art

The works of Friedrich Nietzsche have fascinated readers around the world ever since the publication of his first book more than a hundred years ago. As Walter Kaufmann, one of the world's leading authorities on Nietzsche, notes in his introduction, "Few writers in any age were so full of ideas," and few writers have been so consistently misinterpreted. The Portable Nietzsche includes Kaufmann's definitive translations of the complete and unabridged texts of Nietzsche's four major works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche Contra Wagner and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In addition, Kaufmann brings together selections from his other books, notes, and letters, to give a full picture of Nietzsche's development, versatility, and inexhaustibility. "In this volume, one may very conveniently have a rich review of one of the most sensitive, passionate, and misunderstood writers in Western, or any, literature." --Newsweek
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Why I Am So Clever

Why I Am So Clever

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy / Psychology / Art

'Why do I know a few more things? Why am I so clever altogether?' Self-celebrating and self-mocking autobiographical writings from Ecce Homo, the last work iconoclastic German philosopher Nietzsche wrote before his descent into madness. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.
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Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ

Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy / Psychology / Art

In 1888, the last sane year of his life Nietsche produced these two brief but devastating books. Twilight of the Idols, 'a grand declaration of war' on all the prevalent ideas of his time, offers a lightning tour of his whole philosophy. It also prepares the way for The Anti-Christ, a final assault on institutional Christianity. Yet although Nietzsche makes a compelling case for the 'Dionysian' artist and celebrates magnificently two of his great heroes, Goethe and Cesare Borgia, he also gives a moving, almost ecstatic portrait of his only worthy opponent: Christ. Both works show Nietsche lashing out at self-deception, astounded at how often morality is based on vengefulness and resentment. Both combine utterly unfair attacks on individuals with amazingly acute surveys of the whole contemporary cultural scene. Both reveal a profound understanding of human mean-spiritedness which still cannot destroy the underlying optimism of Nietzsche, the supreme affirmer among the great philosophers.
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Aphorisms on Love and Hate

Aphorisms on Love and Hate

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy / Psychology / Art

'We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from our earliest youth ... Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater' This volume contains a selection of Nietzsche's brilliant and challenging aphorisms, examining the pleasures of revenge, the falsity of pity, and the incompatibility of marriage with the philosophical life. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Nietzsche's works available in Penguin Classics are A Nietzsche Reader, Beyond Good and Evil, Ecce Homo, Human, All Too Human, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Birth of Tragedy, The Portable Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of Idols and Anti-Christ.
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Sweet Water

Sweet Water

Christina Baker Kline

Fiction / Historical Fiction / Art

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train, and the critically acclaimed author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be, comes a novel about buried secrets and the redemptive power of forgiveness—includes a special PS section featuring insights, interviews, and more. Cassie Simon is a struggling artist living in New York City.  When she receives a call from a magistrate in Sweetwater, TN, telling her she has inherited sixty acres of land from her grandfather, whom she never knew, she takes it as a sign: it’s time for a change.  She moves into the house where her mother, Ellen, was born—and where she died tragically when Cassie was three. From the moment she arrives in Sweetwater, Cassie is overwhelmed by the indelible mark her mother’s memory had left behind.  As she delves into the thicket of mystery that surrounds her mother’s death, Cassie begins to understand the desperate measures the human heart is capable of.
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A Piece of the World

A Piece of the World

Christina Baker Kline

Fiction / Historical Fiction / Art

"A Piece of the World is a graceful, moving and powerful demonstration of what can happen when a fearless literary imagination combines with an inexhaustible curiosity about the past and the human heart: a feat of time travel, a bravura improvisation on the theme of art history, a wonderful story that seems to have been waiting, all this time, for Christina Baker Kline to come along and tell it." —Michael Chabon, New York Times bestselling author of MoonglowFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the smash bestseller Orphan Train, a stunning and atmospheric novel of friendship, passion, and art, inspired by Andrew Wyeth's mysterious and iconic painting Christina's World. "Later he told me that he'd been afraid to show me the painting. He thought I wouldn't like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and...
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Bird in Hand

Bird in Hand

Christina Baker Kline

Fiction / Historical Fiction / Art

Alison and Charlie, Claire and Ben seem like two picture-perfect couples. Alison and Charlie have a beautiful family and a home in the suburbs, while Claire and Ben's marriage revolves around their careers and city-based lives. Despite their differences, the two couples have remained close friends for ten years. But one terrifying moment in the dead of a New Jersey night will quickly—and unexpectedly—expose the fractures and stresses that lie beneath the surface. Alison and Claire, best friends since childhood, are now worlds apart. And as each of them tries to find a way forward, all four will be forced to examine the choices they have made and the lives they have built, and ultimately to ask themselves: What is happiness? Does true human nature lie in our wanting or in how deeply we allow our desires to consume us? Four people, two marriages, one lifelong friendship: Everything is about to change.
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  • 450
Desire Lines

Desire Lines

Christina Baker Kline

Fiction / Historical Fiction / Art

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train, and the critically acclaimed author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be, comes a novel about friendship and the memories that haunt us—includes a special PS section featuring insights, interviews, and more. On the night of her high school graduation, Kathryn Campbell sits around a bonfire with her four closest friends, including the beautiful but erratic Jennifer.  “I’ll be fine,” Jennifer says, as she walks away from the dying embers and towards the darkness of the woods. She never came back. Ten years later, Kathryn has tried to build a life for herself, with a marriage and a career as a journalist, but she still feels the conspicuous void of Jennifer’s disappearance. When her divorce sends her reeling back to the Maine town where she grew up, she finds herself plunged into a sea of memories. With nothing left to lose, she is determined to answer one simple question: What ever happened to Jennifer Pelletier?
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The Dream of Scipio

The Dream of Scipio

Iain Pears

Fiction / Art / Mystery

Three narratives, set in the fifth, fourteenth, and twentieth centuries, all revolving around an ancient text and each with a love story at its center, are the elements of this ingenious novel, a follow-up to the bestselling, An Instance Of The Fingerpost. "May well be the best historical mystery ever written," proclaimed The Sunday Boston Globe about Iain Pears's An Instance of the Fingerpost, while Booklist called its publication "a major literary event." Iain Pears's international bestseller was greeted with front-page reviews ("A crafty, utterly mesmerizing intellectual thriller"--The Washington Post Book World), named a New York Times Notable Book, and hailed as a Book to Remember by the New York Public Library. Now he returns with a greatly anticipated novel that is so brilliantly constructed, the author himself describes it as "a complexity." The centuries are the fifth (the final days of the Roman Empire); the fourteenth (the years of the Black Death); and the twentieth (World War II). The setting for each is the same--Provence--and each has at its heart a love story. The narratives intertwine seamlessly, but what joins them thematically is an ancient text--"The Dream of Scipio"--a work of neo-Platonism that poses timeless philosophical questions. What is the obligation of the individual in a society under siege? What is the role of learning when civilization itself is threatened, whether by acts of man or nature? Does virtue lie more in engagement or in neutrality? "Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless," warns one of Pears's characters.
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Stone's Fall

Stone's Fall

Iain Pears

Fiction / Art / Mystery

At his London home, John Stone falls out of a window to his death. A financier and arms dealer, Stone was a man so wealthy that he was able to manipulate markets, industries, and indeed entire countries and continents. Did he jump, was he pushed, or was it merely a tragic accident? His alluring and enigmatic widow hires a young crime reporter to investigate. The story moves backward in time—from London in 1909 to Paris in 1890 and finally to Venice in 1867—and the attempts to uncover the truth play out against the backdrop of the evolution of high-stakes international finance, Europe’s first great age of espionage, and the start of the twentieth century’s arms race. Stone’s Fall is a tale of love and frailty, as much as it is of high finance and skulduggery. The mixture, then, as now, is an often fatal combination.
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Arcadia

Arcadia

Iain Pears

Fiction / Art / Mystery

Henry Lytten — a spy turned academic and writer — sits at his desk in Oxford in 1962, dreaming of other worlds. He embarks on the story of Jay, an eleven-year-old boy who has grown up within the embrace of his family in a rural, peaceful world — a kind of Arcadia. But when a supernatural vision causes Jay to question the rules of his world, he is launched on a life-changing journey. Lytten also imagines a different society, highly regulated and dominated by technology, which is trying to master the science of time travel. Meanwhile — in the real world — one of Lytten's former intelligence colleagues tracks him down for one last assignment. As he and his characters struggle with questions of free will, love, duty and the power of the imagination, Lytten discovers he is not sure how he wants his stories to end, nor even who is imaginary…
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The Immaculate Deception

The Immaculate Deception

Iain Pears

Fiction / Art / Mystery

Our Review When in Rome A stolen masterpiece with arcane allegorical significance; a decades-old political kidnapping and murder; and, of course, a tantalizing artwork of unknown provenance -- in his seventh Jonathan Argyll art mystery, The Immaculate Deception, English art historian Iain Pears returns with a virtuosic display of ingenious plotting and literary trompe l'oeil. Pears's clever and effortlessly erudite art mysteries have found a select readership on both sides of the Atlantic. But the phenomenal success of Pears's 1998 literary thriller, An Instance of the Fingerpost -- a multifaceted Restoration whodunit on a par with Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose -- has dramatically increased stateside interest in the author's earlier work. The Immaculate Deception once again centers on the exploits of the affable and perpetually distracted English art dealer Jonathan Argyll; the beautiful and formidable Flavia di Stefano of the Italian Art Theft Squad; and her erstwhile boss, General Taddeo Bottando, along with several of the series' usual -- or, more appropriately -- unusual supporting cast of suspects. When a masterpiece on loan for the opening of an international exhibition is stolen in a manner calculated to embarrass the Italian government, Flavia di Stefano is ordered by the newly installed prime minister to recover the painting at all costs. Her deceptively simple mandate quickly reveals itself to be a politically fraught, no-win situation. If is she meets the thief's ransom demands, she'll almost certainly be disgraced -- and perhaps go to jail; if she refuses the order, she'll be summarily removed from her post. With Jonathan jaunting through the Tuscan countryside on the trail of an interesting art collection, Flavia turns to her old friend and confidant General Bottando for advice. As a seasoned survivor of the Roman political arena himself, he suggests that she follow the time-honored convention and do as other Romans: "When faced with deviousness, you must be devious yourself." Working together, Flavia and Bottando devise a plan to recover the painting. But no sooner has the ransom been paid than the art-napper -- a former '60s radical turned bourgeois performance artist -- is found dead under highly suspicious circumstances. Worse, Bottando himself has disappeared without a trace, leaving Flavia to face her first major crisis as head of the Art Squad alone. Risking official censure and hounded by a sinister journalist, Flavia explores the tenuous connection between a decades-old act of terrorism and recent events, only to discover a secret conspiracy that could topple the government -- or cost her her life. Like Michael Dibdin's award-winning Aurelio Zen novels, Pears's Jonathan Argyll mysteries go beyond genre fundamentals to immerse readers in every aspect of contemporary Italian culture -- from its legendary art and cuisine to the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the political and criminal justice systems to candid, unexpectedly breathtaking portrayals of everyday life. The Immaculate Deception is a splendid addition to a mystery series of the first order, and an exuberant confirmation of Iain Pears as a modern master of the form. --Greg Marrs
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The Portrait

The Portrait

Iain Pears

Fiction / Art / Mystery

An art critic journeys to a remote island off Brittany to sit for a portrait painted by an old friend, a gifted but tormented artist living in self-imposed exile. The painter recalls their years of friendship, the gift of the critic's patronage, and his callous betrayals. As he struggles to capture the character of the man, as well as his image, on canvas, it becomes clear that there is much more than a portrait at stake...
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  • 271
An Instance of the Fingerpost

An Instance of the Fingerpost

Iain Pears

Fiction / Art / Mystery

Set in Oxford in the 1660s - a time and place of great intellectual, religious, scientific and political ferment - this remarkable novel centres around a young woman, Sarah Blundy, who stands accused of the murder of Robert Grove, a fellow of New College. Four witnesses describe the events surrounding his death: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion;Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause, determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologian and master spy; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary. Each one tells their version of what happened but only one reveals the extraordinary truth. Brilliantly written, utterly convincing, gripping from the first page to the last, An Instance of the Fingerpost is a magnificent tour de force.
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The Titian Committee

The Titian Committee

Iain Pears

Fiction / Art / Mystery

Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad and art historian Jonathan Argyll have charmed mystery readers around the world. Their latest case is baffling to the extreme, when clues from a Titian researcher's death by mugging point to murder -- and a criminal conspiracy...
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The Last Judgement

The Last Judgement

Iain Pears

Fiction / Art / Mystery

When a tacky painting in his possession is linked to a series of murders, art dealer Jonathan Argyll must investigate the dark secrets in the painting's past -- before someone with truly horrible taste decides to put him out of the picture for good...
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The Raphael Affair

The Raphael Affair

Iain Pears

Fiction / Art / Mystery

English art scholar Jonathan Argyll was amazed to find himself arrested for vagrancy-while searching for a long-lost Raphael in a tiny Roman church. Although General Bottando of the Italian National Art Theft Squad has little confidence in Jonathan's theories, Bottando's lovely assistant, Flavia di Stefano, is intrigued by the idea of a lost classic, and by Jonathan himself. But in the midst of the painting's discovery and the resultant worldwide publicity, a new chain of events is set into action. First vandalism, then murder, surround the painting. And as new facts about its true nature emerge, Bottando sends Flavia and Jonathan to investigate--little knowing that the pair will be on the run for the truth... and for their very lives.
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  • 490
The Street of Crocodiles

The Street of Crocodiles

Bruno Schulz

Fiction / Art / Short Stories

The Street of Crocodiles in the Polish city of Drogobych is a street of memories and dreams where recollections of Bruno Schulz's uncommon boyhood and of the eerie side of his merchant family's life are evoked in a startling blend of the real and the fantastic. Most memorable - and most chilling - is the portrait of the author's father, a maddened shopkeeper who imports rare birds' eggs to hatch in his attic, who believes tailors' dummies should be treated like people, and whose obsessive fear of cockroaches causes him to resemble one. Bruno Schulz, a Polish Jew killed by the Nazis in 1942, is considered by many to have been the leading Polish writer between the two world wars. Bruno Schulz's untimely death at the hands of a Nazi stands as one of the great losses to modern literature. During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership. This volume brings together his complete fiction, including three short stories and his final surviving work, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Illustrated with Schulz's original drawings, this edition beautifully showcases the distinctive surrealist vision of one of the twentieth century's most gifted and influential writers.
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Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

Bruno Schulz

Fiction / Art / Short Stories

This is the second and final work of Bruno Schulz, the acclaimed Polish writer killed by the Nazis during World War II. In the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer, "What he did in his short life was enough to make him one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived." Weaving myth, fantasy, and reality, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, is, to quote Schulz, "an attempt at eliciting the history of a certain family . . . by a search for the mythical sense, the essential core of that history."
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Bento's Sketchbook

Bento's Sketchbook

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

Bento's Sketchbook is an exploration of the practice of drawing, as well as a meditation on how we perceive and seek to explore our ever-changing relationship with the world around us. From the Hardcover edition.
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  • 319
The Success and Failure of Picasso

The Success and Failure of Picasso

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

At the height of his powers, Pablo Picasso was the artist as revolutionary, breaking through the niceties of form in order to mount a direct challenge to the values of his time. At the height of his fame, he was the artist as royalty: incalculably wealthy, universally idolized−and wholly isolated.    In this stunning critical assessment, John Berger−one of this century's most insightful cultural historians−trains his penetrating gaze upon this most prodigious and enigmatic painter and on the Spanish landscape and very particular culture that shpaed his life and work. Writing with a novelist's sensuous evocation of character and detail, and drawing on an erudition that embraces history, politics, and art, Berger follows Picasso from his childhood in Malaga to the Blue Period and Cubism, from the creation of Guernica to the pained etchings of his final years. He gives us the full measure of Picasso's triumphs and an unsparing reckoning of their cost−in exile, in loneliness, and in a desolation that drove him, in his last works, into an old man's furious and desperate frenzy at the beauty of what he could no longer create.
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The Shape of a Pocket

The Shape of a Pocket

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the New World Economic Order. The people coming together are the reader, me, and those the essays are about–Rembrandt, Paleolithic cave painters, a Romanian peasant, ancient Egyptians, an expert in the loneliness of a certain hotel bedroom, dogs at dusk, a man in a radio station. And unexpectedly, our exchanges strengthen each of us in our conviction that what is happening in the world today is wrong, and that what is often said about it is a lie. I’ve never written a book with a greater sense of urgency. –John Berger
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And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

Booker Prize-winning author John Berger reveals the ties between love and absence, the ways poetry endows language with the assurance of prayer, and the tensions between the forward movement of sexuality and the steady backward tug of time. He recreates the mysterious forces at work in a Rembrandt painting, transcribes the sensorial experience of viewing lilacs at dusk, and explores the meaning of home to early man and to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in our cities today. And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos is a seamless fusion of the political and personal.
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Photocopies: Encounters

Photocopies: Encounters

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

Berger presents a collection of moments, each supremely vivid, that together make up a frieze of human history at the end of the millennium as well as a subtle and affecting self-portrait of their author. Using careful, intensely visual prose snapping frozen vignettes of life, these twenty-nine "photocopies" teach us about lying and self-invention, dignity and tenderness, charity and courage. Overflowing with the sights, sounds, and smells of life, Photocopies is a masterpiece from one of the most important chroniclers of our time. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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G.

G.

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

In this luminous novel -- winner of Britain's prestigious Booker Prize -- John Berger relates the story of "G.," a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of this century. With profound compassion, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex, to reveal the conditions of the Don Juan's success: his essential loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their moments with him. All of this Berger sets against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War, and the first flight across the Alps, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history's private moments.
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Here Is Where We Meet

Here Is Where We Meet

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

Booker Prize-winning author John Berger, one of the most widely admired writers of our time, returns us to the captivating play and narrative allure of his previous novels-G. and Pig Earth among them-with a shimmering fiction drawn from chapters of his own life. One hot afternoon in Lisbon, the narrator finds his long-dead mother seated on a park bench. "The dead don't stay where they are buried," she tells him. And so begins a remarkable odyssey, told in simple yet gorgeous prose, that carries us from the London Blitz in 1943, to a Polish market, to a Paleolithic cave, to the Ritz Hotel in Madrid. Here Is Where We Meet is a unique literary journey that moves freely through time and space but never loses its foothold in the sensuous present.
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A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor

A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

In this quietly revolutionary work of social observation and medical philosophy, Booker Prize-winning writer John Berger and the photographer Jean Mohr train their gaze on an English country doctor and find a universal man--one who has taken it upon himself to recognize his patient's humanity when illness and the fear of death have made them unrecognizable to themselves. In the impoverished rural community in which he works, John Sassall tend the maimed, the dying, and the lonely. He is not only the dispenser of cures but the repository of memories. And as Berger and Mohr follow Sassall about his rounds, they produce a book whose careful detail broadens into a meditation on the value we assign a human life. First published thirty years ago, A Fortunate Man remains moving and deeply relevant--no other book has offered such a close and passionate investigation of the roles doctors play in their society. "In contemporary letters John Berger seems to me peerless; not since Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience."--Susan Sontag
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To the Wedding

To the Wedding

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

A blind Greek peddler tells the story of the wedding between a fellow peddler and his bride in a remarkable series of vivid and telling vignettes. As the book cinematically moves from one character's perspective to another, events and characters move toward the convergence of the wedding--and a haunting dance of love and death. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Selected Essays

Selected Essays

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

The writing career of John Berger–poet, storyteller, playwright, and essayist–has yielded some of the most original and compelling examinations of art and life of the past half century. In this essential volume, Geoff Dyer has brought together a rich selection of many of Berger’s seminal essays. Berger’s insights make it impossible to look at a painting, watch a film, or even visit a zoo in quite the same way again. The vast range of subjects he addresses, the lean beauty of his prose, and the keenness of his anger against injustice move us to view the world with a new lens of awareness. Whether he is discussing the singleminded intensity of Picasso’s Guernica, the parallel violence and alienation in the art of Francis Bacon and Walt Disney, or the enigmatic silence of his own mother, what binds these pieces throughout is the depth and fury of Berger’s passion, challenging us to participate, to protest, and above all, to see. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Once in Europa

Once in Europa

John Berger

Fiction / Essays / Art

A collection of interwoven stories, this is a portrait of two worlds - a small Alpine village bound to the earth and by tradition, and the restless, future-driven culture that will invade it - at their moment of collision. The instrument of entrapment is love. Lives are lost and hearts broken.
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Album: Unpublished Correspondence and Texts

Album: Unpublished Correspondence and Texts

Roland Barthes

Literature & Fiction / Philosophy / Art

Album provides an unparalleled look into Roland Barthes's life of letters. It presents a selection of correspondence, from his adolescence in the 1930s through the height of his career and up to the last years of his life, covering such topics as friendships, intellectual adventures, politics, and aesthetics. It offers an intimate look at Barthes's thought processes and the everyday reflection behind the composition of his works, as well as a rich archive of epistolary friendships, spanning half a century, among the leading intellectuals of the day. Barthes was one of the great observers of language and culture, and Album shows him in his element, immersed in heady French intellectual culture and the daily struggles to maintain a writing life. Barthes's correspondents include Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Claude L'vi-Strauss, Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marthe Robert, and Jean Starobinski, among others. The book also features documents, letters, and postcards reproduced in facsimile; unpublished material; and notes and transcripts from his seminars. The first English-language publication of Barthes's letters, Album is a comprehensive testimony to one of the most influential critics and philosophers of the twentieth century and the world of letters in which he lived and breathed.
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Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds

Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds

Joy Adamson

Nonfiction / Outdoors & Nature / Art

There have been many accounts of the return to the wild of tame animals, but since its original publication in 1960, when the New York Times hailed it as a "fascinating and remarkable book," Born Free has stood alone in its power to move us. Joy Adamson's story of a lion cub in transition between the captivity in which she is raised and the fearsome wild to which she is returned captures the abilities of both humans and animals to cross the seemingly unbridgeable gap between their radically different worlds. Especially now, at a time when the sanctity of the wild and its inhabitants is increasingly threatened by human development and natural disaster, Adamson's remarkable tale is an idyll, and a model, to return to again and again. Illustrated with the same beautiful, evocative photographs that first enchanted the world forty years ago and updated with a new introduction by George Page, former host and executive editor of the PBS series Nature and author of *Inside the Animal Mind, * this anniversary edition introduces to a new generation one of the most heartwarming associations between man and animal.
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