In Honored by the Glory of Islam Marc David Baer proposes a novel approach to the historical record of Islamic conversions during the Ottoman age and gathers fresh insights concerning the nature of religious conversion itself. Rather than explaining Ottoman Islamization in terms of the converts' motives, Baer instead concentrates on the proselytizers -- in this case, none other than the sultan himself. Mehmed IV (1648-87) is remembered as an aloof ruler whose ineffectual governing led to the disastrous siege of Vienna. Through an integrated reading of previously unexamined Ottoman archival and literary texts, Baer reexamines Mehmed IV's failings as a ruler by underscoring the sultan's zeal for bringing converts to Islam. As an expression of his dedication to Islam, Mehmed actively sought to establish his reputation as a convert-maker, convincing or compelling Christian and Jewish subjects to be "honored by the glory of Islam" and Muslims subjects to turn to Islamic piety. Revising the conventional portrayal of a ruler so distracted by his passion for hunting that he neglected affairs of state, Baer shows that Mehmed IV saw conversion as central to his role as sultan. He traces an ever-widening range of enforced piety, conversion, and conquest expanding outward from the heart of Mehmed IV's empire. This account is the first to correlate the conversion of people and space in the mature Ottoman Empire, to investigate conversion from the perspective of changing Ottoman ideology, and to depict the sultan as an interventionist convert-maker. The resulting insights promise to rework our understandings of the reign of a forgotten ruler, a largely neglected period in Ottoman history, the changing nature of Islam and its history in Europe, relations between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Europe, the practice of jihad, and religious architecture in urban history.

" What do a chamber pot, a famous poet, a family feud, and a long-ago suitor all have in common? In this delicious laugh-out-loud new novel of love and loss, rivalry and reconciliation, treasure and trash, by acclaimed author Mameve Medwed (Mail, The End of an Error), we see what happens when past and present collide. . . ." Elizabeth Barrett Browning might have written about the length and breadth of love, but Abby Randolph has given up on all that, preferring to spend her time between her cluttered "needs work" apartment and the overcrowded antiques mart -- the optimistically named Objects of Desire. Yet Abby can't help but wonder what happened to her earlier passionate self who rejected the path set out for her, dropping out of Harvard and falling headfirst into an ill-fated love affair. . . . Then the "Antiques Roadshow" comes to town, and Abby turns up at the crack of dawn, artifact in hand, standing alongside thousands of Boston's hopefuls. But there, among the carousel horses, pipe sets, potbellied stoves, and bedraggled stuffed animals, it is Abby's rather ordinary -- and squalid -- piece of porcelain that gets the star treatment. Abby is barely able to enjoy her good news, for the moment the show airs, life comes back at her at full force. Everything changes: friendship, finances, family, love affairs, career, her view of others, and the way she sees herself. With this, her fourth novel, Medwed once again returns to Cambridge and, in her "sardonic, funny voice" ("Chicago Tribune"), "homes in on the rarified self-important atmosphere of our Ivy League institutions -- and the reflected snobbishness of the people who serve them" ("New York Times Book Review"). This novel is a gift to anyone who goes to a flea market or watches "Antiques Roadshow," anyone who has ever defied expectations, or, especially, anyone who has never been able to extinguish an old flame.

"Set at the height of Vietnam protests, Jimi Hendrix and LSD, Wet Goddess is a story of strange encounters, awkward misadventures, and ultimately, love. Stoked on cheap pot and reports that dolphins possess near-human intelligence, liberal arts major Zachary Zimmerman couldn’t have been more thrilled about his first pro photography job. The project: shoot a book about the stars of Florida Funland’s struggling dolphin show – while turning a blind eye to the writer’s affair with a trainer. But the writer isn’t the only one at Florida Funland looking for forbidden love. Ruby, a solo performer in the show, slowly edges her way inside Zach’s slightly foggy mind, drawing him deeper and deeper into her wet, wild realm of sensual abandon and unexpected violence. Previously excerpted in Penthouse and the classic Project Jonah anthology Mind in the Waters, this is the only authorized print edition of the long-awaited novel." -- From back of book

MACKINLAY KANTOR Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Andersonville The Twenty-Third Precinct of the New York City Police Department includes within its boundaries exalted penthouses and reeking slums. The story concerns three men in blue, their loves, their ambitions, their contentions-the cruelty they encounter, the courage they offer, the pity and aid they are able to give. It speeds through the reader's consciousness like a patrol car wailing in midnight traffic. In 1948 the Acting Commissioner of Police, the late Tom Mulligan, authorized MacKinlay Kantor to proceed on all police activities, accompanying the patrolmen in their work. Kantor learned the life of a policeman through first-hand experience. Such privilege had never been granted to a civilian before. But this civilian happened to be the author of Long Remember, The Voice of Bugle Ann, and many other famous books, as well as the original story of the great motion picture, "The Best Years of Our Lives." Thunder of feet on sagging stairways; a yell from behind a locked door; tears and oaths and-worse- the stony agony of women who stare in silence... The radio voice of CB declares flatly: "Two-Three Precinct. The address...on the roof...proceed with caution..." Is it rape, suicide, assault? Or merely a kitten crying from its trap in a drainpipe? Or do we meet the glare of a razor, the stab of gunfire in a hall? Our fingers squeeze the siren button. This is a Signal Thirty-two... A novel by MacKinlay Kantor Author of Arouse and Beware and Glory for Me

MACKINLAY KANTOR Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Andersonville VALLEY FORGE Poignant, tender, and powerful, VALLEY FORGE brings into sharp new focus one of the most tensely dramatic episodes of the American Revolution. With warmth and wit, compassion and sensitivity, MacKinlay Kantor evokes the flavor, pulse and texture of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, transporting the reader into the houses and workshops, kitchens and stables, parlors and bedrooms of ordinary citizens. Here are not only the soldiers of Valley Forge, but the panorama of the Revolution itself. George Washington, lamenting the remoteness and lack of valor in the Congress, anticipating new battle; the sprightly, good-humored Martha, always loyal and loving to a fault; the Marquis de Lafayette, whose poise and dignity belied his youth; Baron von Steuben whose halting English made the soldiers laugh, but whose fierce devotion won their respect. And the multitude-young Mum, a sixteen-year-old deserter savagely trampled by Tarleton's Raiders; Malachi Lennan whose gift of a horse gained him entry into Mad Anthony Wayne's Drovers; Billy, the turncoat, wailing for his mother as he was dragged to the gallows. Sons of farmers and tradesmen, trappers and teachers-some too young to fight, and some too old-surge through these pages, giving life, breath, scope and humanity to the American Revolution and the winter at Valley Forge. MacKINLAY KANTOR was born in Webster City, Iowa in 1904. He began to write seriously at sixteen, became a newspaper reporter at seventeen, and an author at twenty-three. Since his first-published novel in 1928, more than forty books have appeared in print, including verse, short stories, novellas, histories, and books for children. His best-selling, and Pulitzer Prize- winning Andersonville was published in 1955. MacKinlay Kantor's other than book accomplishments range from Hollywood screenwriting to police patrolling (N. Y. P. D.), to combat experience (RAF and U.SAF) in two wars. VALLEY FORGE is grandly conceived, but the quality is equal to the concept. The climate of the war, its taste and smell and the harsh texture of its life, are evoked with mystery. Neither souped-up nor toned-down under fashionable pressures, this is an extraordinarily honest and human book. I am greatly impressed.-MARY RENAULT

Two men are classmates and friends at Harvard, though never all that close: Max, a brilliant student with a touch of the aesthete's affectations about him, and Charlie, some years older, having served in the Korean War. As Max sees it, Charlie excels in a single scull, soaks up martinis, and enjoys the favors of a particularly glamorous Radcliffe girl. Twenty years later, not having seen each other since college, the two men meet unexpectedly as guests at a villa on the shore of Lake Como. Max is now a law professor, circumspect and slightly sorry for himself - a man to whom relationships do not stick. Charlie has become a celebrated architect, the most successful member of their class. Beautiful when a young man, he has ripened into a foul-mouthed, golden-tongued giant: a demigod and a bully. In his imperious way, he proclaims that Max will henceforth be one of his chosen intimates. Charlie is right. Max's life becomes increasingly intertwined with Charlie's, and with that of Toby, Charlie's adolescent companion. When Toby is stricken by a devastating illness, Charlie performs an act of coolly calculated self-sacrifice, the only gesture he thinks will make a difference. Max bears witness, and learns a lesson that may at last complete his sentimental education. With all the force and elegance of his earlier work, Louis Begley's masterful new novel tells a gripping story of friendship and mortality.

A Nick Hoffman / Academic Mystery, Book 8 -Successful professor Nick Hoffman finds his secure, happy, college-town life changed forever after a nightmarish encounter with police. The idea that someone can accuse you of a crime, and a SWAT team shows up at your door and drags you away? But even when that horrible night is over, tension and paranoia build in ways that are far too plausible. Someone is clearly out to destroy him. Nick and his partner Stefan Borowski face an escalating series of threats that lead to a brutal and stunning confrontation. A novel of suspense, Assault with a Deadly Lie probes the disturbing psychological impact of slander, harassment, stalking, police brutality, and the loss of personal safety within the academic world. In this eighth novel in the series, Lev Raphael, Lambda Award winner, takes us on an especially topical voyage into politics and college freedoms. Included in this new edition, a foreword by Carole B. Shmurak (Susan Lombardi mysteries) as well as a new introduction by the author. "A riveting great read for mystery/suspense fans, Lev Raphael once again documents his impressive gifts, holding the reader's rapt attention from beginning to end with unexpected plot twists and surprise twists." - Midwest Book Review "In Assault with a Deadly Lie, the ivory tower topples under a barrage of guns and violence. Nick Hoffman and his partner find that literature and an idyllic domestic life are no match for a deranged character's revenge conspiracy." - Lynn C. Miller "A splendidly written story of innocence, intrigue, and invisible enemies, Assault with a Deadly Lie waltzes beautifully between poignancy and terror. But better still is the question that will haunt readers long after the book is put down: Could this happen to me?" - P.J. Parrish

Hollis lives in an area not too far from where he graduated from college. His friends do, too. They all sleep late, talk about jobs they might get, girls they might date, money their parents might send them. In other words, their lives are seemingly on hold. Everything is going to happen. But despite this day-to-day boredom, Hollis has something to bolster him: Another reality is constantly running through his head, and it's one that leads him to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, it's time to get serious. Lev Grossman has written a lucid and immediate novel of what and where a twenty-something's mind is when it isn't even made up yet.

"A thief and a nobleman, both down on their luck, cross paths on a bitter winter's day in 1701. One, known locally as "The Fowl-Filcher," is fleeing the gallows; the other, the callow Christian von Tornefeld, has escaped execution to fight for his Swedish king. Neither will reach his destination. Sent with a message to secure aid for von Tornefeld, the thief falls in love with his companion's secret fiance;e. He resolves to win her love for himself, and through a clever stratagem, exchanges his fate for the other man's. Risking everything to attain the woman and station of his dreams, he becomes the Swedish cavalier, staying one step ahead of exposure. Later, he sacrifices everything so that is daughter won't learn of his secret past. In this book he considered is masterpiece, Leo Perutz has created a picaresque world of barons and brigands, swashbuckling dragoons and spurned lovers, gentleman farmers and masked robbers, and lucky parchments, magic spells, and mystical visions. Part adventure, part historical novel of war-ravaged Europe, The Sweddish Cavalier is also a moral tale of deceit, betrayal, and redemption. "--

"To all those who have for several years sought to discredit the new American literature, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has just dealt a most powerful blow," wrote French critic Pierre Lepape in 1961 when Her was published in France as La Quatrième Personne du Singulier. Calling it "a masterpiece of the young American novel," Lepape declared it was "the confirmation of a great American writer who, in the hall of American literary glories, takes the place left vacant by the death of Hemingway." Lepape went on to speak of the "incredible verbal virtuosity" by which the reader is led through this "laby-rêve," and it is this image of the "labyrinth-dream" which relates Her to the anti-novels of the young French school of Robbe-Grillet and Butor. Being thus very far from the kind of novels produced by Ferlinghetti's immediate contemporaries (whether Beat or academic) this book has met with little but bafflement among American critics. With well over 50,000 now in print Her nevertheless continues to make its own way.

Back in Print After Fifty Years Clark Gifford? A cipher. A disaffected, vaguely idealistic politician in a nameless media-driven modern state where representative politics has dwindled to the corrupt transaction of business as usual and a new foreign war is always breaking out. One night Gifford and his followers seize some radio stations and broadcast a call for freedom—a rebellion that is immediately put down by the government and whose motive will remain forever obscure. Even so, it leads to twenty years of war. A paranoid tour de force of political noir, Clark Gifford’s Body skips back and forth in time, interspersing newspaper clippings and court transcripts with the reactions and reminiscences of the politicians, generals, businessmen, journalists, waiters, and soldiers who double as the actors and the chorus in a drama over which, finally, they have no control. Who here is leading? Who is being led? Fearing’s novel is a pseudo-documentary of a world given over to pseudo-politics and pseudo-events, a prophetic glimpse of the future as a poisonous fog. “I have not developed the habit of reading thrillers, but I have read enough of them to know that from now on Mr. Fearing is my man.”– The New Yorker

A novel of love, sadness, wasted youth, and literary and intellectual ambition-"a wincingly funny debut" ("Vogue") Keith Gessen is a Brave and trenchant new literary voice. Known as an award-winning translator of Russian and a book reviewer for publications including "The New Yorker" and "The New York Times," Gessen makes his debut with this critically acclaimed novel, a charming yet scathing portrait of young adulthood at the opening of the twenty-first century. The novel charts the lives of Sam, Mark, and Keith as they overthink their college years, underthink their love lives, and struggle to find a semblance of maturity, responsibility, and even literary fame.

Her mother makes love to strangers and chooses the worst kind of friends. Her classmates talk of going to college, but Madeleine, with a scholarship waiting at an Ivy League school, knows that escape is unlikely. For Maddy's life revolves around one thing: her jealous, raging, promiscuous mother. And now that Maddy has a lover of her own, now that her mother's delusion-filled, grudge-filled, lover-filled life is crashing down around them, now that Maddy knows leaving would be the deadliest blow of all, there is only one way out: through a terrifying, disastrous moment that will change everything forever.... In her explosive novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Judith Rossner issued a chilling wake-up call to a generation intoxicated by sexual freedom. Now the New York Times bestselling author explores another fatal love: in this unforgettable novel of mother-daughter love gone torturously, tragically wrong.

From the woman who brought us Scruples , Dazzle , and Spring Collection comes a provocative new novel, a deeply moving mother-daughter tale set amid the elegance of a famed New York auction house and the glamour of Hollywood. A mother's secret... Tessa Kent, exquisite and precocious, gave birth to an illegitimate daughter when she was only fourteen. Her parents raised the infant, Maggie, as their own child, as Tessa went on to become an international movie star. Maggie lives for her glamorous "sister's" infrequent whirlwind visits. But when she accidentally learns the truth, eighteen-year-old Maggie breaks all ties with Tessa and starts to work at the famed Manhattan auction house of Scott & Scott. A daughter's fury... Five years later, a life-altering crisis makes Tessa passionately determined to end this estrangement. There's only one way Tessa can reach out to her daughter: a high-stakes auction of the immensely valuable collection of famed jewels lavished on her by her late husband. Tessa promises Scott & Scott the auction on the condition that Maggie and she work closely together on the sale. Tessa's whole future hangs in the balance--for she knows her happiness depends on what may be an impossible reconciliation....

"Summer in London-the sun is finally shining, the flowers are in bloom, and life is humming merrily along for book editor Samantha Clair, off to lunch with her old friend, art-dealer Aidan Merriam. Humming merrily until she learns that his partner has just been found dead in their gallery, slumped over his desk with a gun in his hand. Could anything be worse? Oh yes, the police investigation is being led by Inspector Jake Field, who just happens to be Sam's new boyfriend. And Aidan, who just happens to be Sam's ex-boyfriend, wants Sam's help. Finding herself drawn into another investigation, Sam does the only sensible thing and calls her mother. Before long, Sam finds her loyalties stretched to the limit as she herself is threatened. Armed with nothing more than her trusty weapons of satire, cynicism and a stock of irrelevant information culled from novels, Sam races to find a killer who is determined to find her first in the newest fast-paced, uproarious novel in the critically acclaimed series from New York Times bestselling author Judith Flanders"--

"Zoltan Beck is dying. His devoted but long-suffering sons, Ben and Frank, are trying to prepare themselves and their families for Zoltan's eventual departure...but they can't quite bring themselves to believe that the end is really at hand, and neither can Zoltan himself. The head of a family marked by war and tragedy for decades, he "can't stand to be in a room with a miserable person" and has done his best to keep the pain of his refugee past from his beloved children. But as he faces the end of his life, he discovers a heartbreaking secret from the War that will ultimately bring the family together - or irrevocably disrupt it. Set in both mid-20th century Hungary and contemporary Toronto, this is a deeply moving novel that revels in the energy of its extraordinary characters. It is the story of lost love and newfound connections, of a father and his sons desperately reaching out to bridge an ever-widening gap...even as their time together ebbs away."--Provided by publisher.

The acclaimed author of "The Land of Laughs" presents an astoundingly imaginative novel that traverses the fine line between our world and an invisible world of magic, in the story of a prize-winning architiect who is hired by a wealthy sultana to build a billion-dollar dog museum.

Cult favorite Jonathan Carroll has surpassed himself with his first mainstreamnovel. After Silence is an electrifying, unforgettable novel that unfolds with the logic of a Greek tragedy. Carroll writes with uncompromising honesty about how secrets gnaw and kill when truth is just as devastating.

Written by Jonathan Ames Art and cover by Dean Haspiel "Hysterically funny and gut-wrenchingly dramatic...graphic lit at it's best." - WIZARD MAGAZINE "Painfully honest, shockingly revealing and totally riveting." - Blair Butler, G4TV "An engaging graphic novel . . . Unflinching . . . Powerful." - THE NEW YORK TIMES "Tender, funny and heartbreaking." - PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Jonathan A. is a boozed-up, coked-out, sexually confused, hopelessly romantic and, of course, entirely fictional novelist who bears only a coincidental resemblance to real-life writer Jonathan Ames, critically acclaimed author of Wake Up, Sir!, The Extra Man and What's Not to Love? For the fictional Jonathan, writing and drinking come easy. The hard parts of life are love and hope. From a touching relationship between Jonathan and his aging great aunt, to an inebriated evening with an amorous, octogenarian dwarf, Ames's first original graphic novel, with gritty, poignant art by Dean Haspiel (THE QUITTER), tells a story about how our lives fall to pieces and the enduring human struggle to put things back together again. Advance-solicited; on sale September 16 - 136 pg, 6.875" x 9", B&W, $14.99 US - MATURE READERS

Full Length, Drama Characters: 3 male, 2 female 2 Interior Sets Isaac Geldhart, the imperious scion of a family owned publishing house, is under siege. A takeover is being engineered by his son Aaron, who sees the firm's profitability steadily declining and wants to publish a trashy novel to bring in the bucks. Isaac plans to go on publishing scholarly works such as a multi volume history of Nazi medical experiments. Aaron has the necessary yen from Japanese backers but he ne