In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

THE COMPLETE ROBOT is the definitive anthology of Asimov's stunning visions of a robotic future… In these stories, Isaac Asimov creates the Three Laws of Robotics and ushers in the Robot Age: when Earth is ruled by master-machines and when robots are more human than mankind. As well as TN-3 (Tony), AL-76 and other robots, the stories feature the staff of US Robots and Mechanical Men Inc. , and in particular the chief robot-psychologist, the steely Dr Susan Calvin who is in many ways more robot-like than her subjects. THE COMPLETE ROBOT is the ultimate collection of timeless, amazing and amusing robot stories from the greatest science fiction writer of all time, offering golden insights into robot thought processes. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics were programmed into real computers thirty years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - with surprising results. Readers of today still have many surprises in store. . .

Next to Nature, Art is the fourth novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively. Run by Toby and Paula, the centre offers ordinary people a chance to learn from professional artists skilled in poetry, sculpture, ceramics, and the like. Artists like Greg, the New England poet, whose works are strangely absent; or Bob the lascivious potter who sells his Toby jugs to department stores. As the latest group of students arrives, tensions begin to run high and artistic temperaments are much on display. In fact much more is learnt about expressing oneself than was ever suggested on the prospectus. 'Delightful . . . complex and exquisite. Penelope Lively's prose is beautiful and spare and she is a master of understatement' Daily Telegraph 'Her economy and wit are apparent on every page . . . it all leads to a splendid climax . . . wonderful, sensible, funny Penelope Lively' Evening Standard Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra's Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year's Honours List, and DBE in 2012. Penelope Lively lives in London.

Trouble is brewing in Alkyra. While the kingdom’s noblemen squabble, on their borders an ancient enemy, the Lithmern, raises an army. As the head of the Noble House of Brenn attempts to organize an alliance, the princess Alethia celebrates her twentieth birthday. She is a remarkable woman: quick-witted, beautiful, and handy with a throwing knife. But on the next night, she passes through a dark corridor on her way to the banquet hall, and never emerges from the shadows. The Lithmern have kidnapped the princess. When Alethia regains consciousness, an evil Lithmern with a face made of shadows is carrying her through the forest. These are magic woods, home to fabled creatures whose existence she has always doubted. To find her way home, Alethia will have to learn to trust in the old tales, whose legends of magic and daring hold the only hope of saving her kingdom.

In the dead of night, Quentin, a young acolyte, is unexpectedly summoned when a mortally wounded knight stumbles into the temple of Ariel. Determined to save the realm of the Dragon King, the dying knight makes a desperate plea for someone to continue his quest. Now Quentin must choose—a life of ease or a dangerous, unknown path.

Emily is stuck with crybaby Jill Simon as her "secret Pal" to be kind to for the whole month of December. From the Trade Paperback edition.

In a sweeping saga of music and vengeance, the acclaimed author of The Vampire Chronicles draws readers into eighteenth-century Italy, bringing to life the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. This is the story of the castrati, the exquisite and otherworldly sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices win the adulation of royal courts and grand opera houses throughout Europe. These men are revered as idols—and, at the same time, scorned for all they are not. ** ** **Praise for Anne Rice and *Cry to Heaven*** ** * * ** “Daring and imaginative . . . [Anne] Rice seems like nothing less than a magician: It is a pure and uncanny talent that can give a voice to monsters and angels both.”**—*The New York Times Book Review*** “To read Anne Rice is to become giddy as if spinnning through the mind of time.”**—*San Francisco Chronicle*** “If you surrender and go with her . . . you have surrendered to enchantment, as in a voluptuous dream.”**—*The Boston Globe*** “Rice is eerily good at making the impossible seem self-evident.”**—*Time*** *From the Trade Paperback edition.*

Here, in this compelling assembly of writings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard explores the world of natural facts and human meanings.

The calamity-prone residents of 28 Barbary Lane are at it again in this deliciously dark novel of romance and betrayal. While Anna Madrigal imprisons an anchorwoman in her basement, Michael Tolliver looks for love at the National Gay Rodeo, DeDe Halcyon Day and Mary Ann Singleton track a charismatic psychopath across Alaska, and society columnist Prue Giroux loses her heart to a derelict living in San Francisco park.

Nobel prize winner Samuel Beckett is one of the most profoundly original writers of our century. He gives expression to the anguish and isolation of the individual consciousness with a purity and minimalism that have altered the shape of world literature. A tremendously influential poet and dramatist, Beckett spoke of his prose fiction as the "important writing, " the medium in which his ideas are most powerfully distilled. Here, for the first time, his short prose is gathered in a definitive, complete volume by leading Beckett scholar S. E. Gontarski. In the introduction, Gontarski discusses Beckett's creative roots in the tradition of Irish storytelling and the perpetual evolution of his writing as he "pushed beyond recognizable external reality and discrete, recognizable literary characters, replacing them with something like naked consciousness or pure being." From the 1929 "Assumption, " published in transition magazine when Beckett was twenty-three, to the aptly named "Stirrings Still, " written whe he was eighty-two, and including a new translation of "The Image" as well as the newly translated and previously unpublished "The Cliff, " Gontarski has arranged Beckett's work into a smooth chronology that suggests, as he puts it, "Beckett's own view of his art, that it is all part of a continuous process, a series."

In this intense and brilliant book Bowles focuses on Morocco, condensing experience, emotion, and the whole history of a people into a series of short, insightful vignettes. He distills for us the very essence of Moroccan culture. With extraordinary immediacy, he takes the reader on a journey through the Moroccan centuries, pausing at points along the way to create resonant images of the country, it's landscapes, and the beliefs and characteristics of its inhabitants.

A HEART TORMENTED Erienne's father had given her hand to the richest suitor. She was now Lady Saxton, mistress of a great manor all but ruined by fire, wife to a man whose mysteriously shrouded form aroused fear and pity. Yet even as she fell in love with her adoring husband, Erienne despaired of freeing her heart from the dashingly handsome Yankee who couldn't forget her. The beautiful Erienne, once filled with young dreams of romance, was now a wife and woman ... torn between the two men she loved.

"In an unusually convincing blend of the supernatural and the real, twelve-year-old Laura tries to prevent her parents' impending divorce by seeking the help of an older woman who may be a witch...."-Horn Book It is the middle of the night and suddenly Laura is awake, trembling with fear. Just beneath her bedroom window, a strange-looking old woman is standing in the moonlight. A big black crow is perched on her shoulder and she is looking up - staring back at Laura. Her name is Maude, and people say she is a witch. The old woman claims she was a friend of Laura's grandmother and wants to do something nice for Laura. If Laura visits her and brings the three things she needs to cast a spell, Laura's fondest wish will come true. With her heart pounding, Laura follows the dark path to a ramshackle old cabin deep in the woods. Little does she know she is beginning the most terrifying journey of her life...

Return to the sun-drenched settings of The Shell Seekers and the rich emotion of Coming Home, as Rosamunde Pilcher takes you on an unforgettable journey of the heart. It is the passage of a young woman from a relationship that has become too tame and predictable to the excitement of a new life brimming with possibilities and the thrilling promise of love. And along the way, all the hopes, secrets, and desires that enrich us unite a joyous carousel of life that only Rosamunde Pilcher can create.