The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone , first published in 1979, is one of Matt Cohen's four novels that came to be known as the Salem quartet--stories set in the fictional town of Salem in eastern Ontario, somewhere north of Kingston in the rugged farmland and forest of the Canadian Shield. These are the novels that first brought Matt Cohen to national attention. The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone , a story about the pleasure of love that comes late in life, centres on the lives of two time-worn characters whose pursuit of happiness is strangely rewarded. With The Disinherited , another of the Salem novels, this is considered among the author's best works.

Mary Ellen Mark fell in love with the Indian circus in 1969, during her first trip to India. As she watched a huge hippopotamus walk around the ring with its mouth wide open, wearing a pink tutu, she was struck by the beauty and innocence of the show. She returned to India many times, and in 1989 and 1990 she devoted six months to photographing eighteen circuses, following them around the continent by train, plane, van, and auto-rickshaw. Secretive, highly competitive, and each a closed, self-sufficient society, the circuses embody what Mark calls "a poetry and a craziness that are still uncorrupted, and honest, and pure." Beautifully printed in tritone, this remarkable collection of photographs captures the texture of circus life outside of the ring - exhausting, humorous, poignant, and often bizarre - as well as the affection and devotion that the performers have for each other and their animals. Indian Circus is documentary photography at its finest. The photographs are not only compelling portraits of the performers, but also eloquent and poetic narratives about life in the Indian circus.

What does it mean to trust in God? How can man love God? If timidity is unwholesome, why does Scripture speak of the fear of God? When should a lie be told? What ought to be our attitude to warfare? Of what relevance is the ideal of holiness to men and women of this age? How can pride be conquered? Can a man love his neighbor as himself? In Jewish Values , these and many other ethical and religious questions are considered in the light of Jewish teachings. It is the author's thesis that a gap exists between traditional views as presented in the classic sources of Judaism and their application in the lives of our contemporaries, but he is convinced that this gap can be bridged. This book is a contribution to the building of such a bridge or, at least, as the author suggests, it is a surveyor's plan of part of the work to be done.

Romance, Contemporary: Private investigator Jeff Haley doesn't believe in love, especially when it involves a wacky blonde blackjack dealer named Casey Madison. But when scandalous photos from Jeff's latest case fall into -- then out of -- Casey's hands, Jeff and Casey embark on a tri-state chase for the photos...and love.

My Less Than Secret Life is the companion volume to Jonathan Ames's first memoirish endeavor, "the mildly perverted and wildly amusing" (Vanity Fair) What's Not to Love? This collection of the cult author's fiction and essays includes Ames's public diary, the bi-weekly columns he penned for the New York Press. The entries of this diary are a record of his mad adventures: his ill-fated debut as an amateur boxer fighting as ‘The Herring Wonder', a faltering liaison with a Cuban prostitute, his public outing of George Plimpton as a Jew, his discussion with Eve Ensler about his dear friend The Mangina, a renegade mission as a Jew into the heart of Waspy Maine, and other such harrowing escapades. Whether trying to round up a partner for an orgy, politely assisting in an animal sacrifice, or scamming tickets to the WWF's Royal Rumble for his son, Jonathan Ames proves himself a ballsier Everyman whose transgressions and compassionate meditations will satisfy the voyeur and encourage the halfhearted. But be warned. As Jonathan says, "I don't like to be a bad influence. It's bad enough that I have influence over myself." "...Ames has always been one of my favorite contemporary writers ... for his ... fearless commitment to the most demanding psychosexual comedies."—Rick Moody

To be an unbending adherent in a world of stony realities, ' Herbert had remarked, 'is to ask for trouble. Not because of ones allegiance, but because such an ally will be forced to conform or be squashed, trampled on or in the end annihilated by the crude laughter of fate. 'The Hollow Tree is a tale of love and loyalty in a time of war. Sometime..

Czech writer Ivan Klima masterfully recounts, first, what it was like for him as a Jewish child confronting with his family the inhumanities of the Theresienstadt concentration camp situated at the edge of their hometown, Prague. Then, more fully, he painstakingly recalls what it was like for him and his countrymen after the Nazi thugs were driven out by the Soviet Army and replaced for four decades by the Communist thugs. Includes an appendix of essays on topics ranging from social history and political thinking to love and liberty.

Hyperdream is a major new novel by celebrated French author Hélène Cixous. It is a literary tour de force, returning anew to challenge necessity itself, the most implacable of human certainties: you die in the end -- and thatʹs the end. For you, for me. But what if? What if death did not inevitably spell the end of life? Hyperdream invests this fragile, tentative suspension of disbelief with the sheer force of its poetic audacity, inventing a sort of magic telephone: a wireless lifeline against all the odds to the dearly departed. It is a book about time, age, love and the greatest loss. A book which turns on death: on the question or the moment of death, depending on it, expecting it, living off it, taking place at once before and after, but at the same time turning against it, contesting it, outwriting it hopefully, desperately, performatively, as an interruptible interruption. -- Back cover.

This Modern Library collection presents seven novellas that brilliantly showcase the range and depth of the talent of Hortense Calisher, a writer hailed by the Saturday Review as "among the most literate practitioners of modern American fiction, a stylist wholly committed to the exploitation of language." Featured is "Women Men Don't Talk About," a new story, published here for the first time. The novellas are characterized by their unfailing intelligence and by the technical sure-handedness and acuity of the writing. Each has a strong sense of place--New York City, the Hudson Valley, Saratoga Springs--and an eclectic cast of characters who inhabit regions where our most acute hopes, fears, and anxieties coexist. The respectable lawyer of "Tale for the Mirror" attempts to oust an unconventional Hindu healer from his community, only to wonder whether the doctor's trickery is any different from his own. In "The Railway Police," a journey by train occasions a social worker's sudden break with past pretenses and her kafkaesque rebirth as a vagabond. And in "Saratoga, Hot," a sharply observed tale set amid the fabled world of horse racing, a man and woman discover new strength in a love touched by tragedy. Included as well are "Extreme Magic," "The Man Who Spat Silver," and "The Last Trolley Ride." "Calisher hits at her targets at a point more vital than the usual marksman knows to exist," wrote novelist and critic Angus Wilson. And The New York Times Book Review commented, "Seen through her eyes the real world is not prosaic. Placed in lyrical, poetic spaces, it is thick and rich with implication." The Novellas of Hortense Calisher, an edition exclusive to the Modern Library, is a major collection from one of America's finest literary voices. The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of liter-ature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.

After King Kong Fell by Philip Jose Farmer When Petals Fall by Sydney J. Van Scyoc Paleontology: An Experimental Science by Robert R. Olsen The Women Men Don't See by James Tiptree Jr. Listen With Big Brother by Brian W. Aldiss The Rise of Airstrip One by Clive James Owing To Circumstances Beyond Our Control 1984 Has Been Unavoidably Detained by Alan Coren Lost and Found by Thomas Baum The Four-Hour Fugue by Alfred Bester The Scream by Kate Wilhelm The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter by Angela Carter After Weightlessness by Lawrence Sail A Picture by Klee by Lawrence Sail Backward, Into Beasts Evolving by Dick Allen Science Fiction Story by Duane Ackerson DNA by Duane Ackerson Songs of War by Kit Reed Time Deer by Craig Strete A Typical Day by Doris Piserchia Programmed Love Story by Ian Watson

"Powerful . . . Fiction of a very high order . . . Frederick Busch at his best." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review "[These] provocative tales center around relationships gone awry, families grappling with loss, and lonely men and women struggling with remnants of love . . . . What Busch ultimately serves is a heady and rewarding brew made up of people as real as ourselves, groping for and sometimes even discovering the comforts of love." -- USA Today "Memorable . . . [The] stories leap off the page with astonishing resilience and vigor. . . . Busch is a chronicler of domestic manners whose insights into family hierarchies transcend the factual to attain poetry and truth." -- The Boston Globe

Elaine Feinstein is a poet of lyrical directness who writes with tenderness about an ageing father, a child on a swing, old films, a flowering cactus, and with insight about love, loss, jealousy, and the fear of abandonment. The poems in this expansive collection are drawn from 11 volumes published over 30 years.

Elaine Feinstein's voice is clear, passionate and subtle. She writes about love, loss, jealousy and the pressures of living as mother and wife, drawing coherent shapes out of her own inner uncertainties. This collection is drawn from 14 volumes of poems and translations published over 30 years.

Each of us is confronted in life with visceral, personal, human questions: Why am I here? What is my life's purpose? For the reflective person of faith, life is an ongoing quest to respond to still further questions: Where is wisdom? What does the Lord require of me? The Life Worth Living provides answers to such questions - culled from Byron Sherwin's many years of religious wisdom and experience. / Sherwin's rich and lovely book lays out the path to abundant, fulfilled living - by cultivating religious virtues such as love, wisdom, gratitude, and humility. It demonstrates how living in partnership with God can provide all of us with the means to craft our lives into unique and "exquisite" works of art. Very accessibly written, The Life Worth Living will resonate with a wide spectrum of thoughtful readers - believers and seekers alike.

"Andrea Goldsmith takes a group of Melbourne graduates to Oxford in the 1980s, then revisits them 20-odd years later. Now they are in their mid to late 40s, and life has left its mark on all of them: Jack, the brilliant Islamic scholar, whose career has stalled as he pursues his obsessive and unrequited love for Ava, the brilliant novelist, whose affair with Fleur - her muse - has ended, and who fears she may never write again, despite the constant love and support of Harry, the interloper in the group, the one who caught and married the beautiful Ava, the man who collected barbed wire and knew too much about cheese, and who now holds all their lives in his hands as the director of the academic institute that has brought them all back together in Australia and completely alienated Helen, the brilliant bio-scientist dedicated to eliminating shingella disease, whose work to save lives is being put to very sinister ends by those who fund her, unlike Connie (Conrad) who has been chosen by Harry to give the keynote lecture for his institute because of his media glamour and his easy charisma - though privately Connie would much prefer to spend his time with the beautiful twenty-five-year-old Sara than consider too closely the work his academic reputation rests upon. This is engrossing, character-driven storytelling. As it reveals the excitement and frustration of academic life (from conveying the complete absorption Helen can feel at a conference of scientists to Connies queasy compromises between popularity and rigour) the tissue of friendship remains, changing now as the group reconnects for the first time in decades, dealing with the reality of their present lives and their memories of the past. None will be unchanged by this. And not all will survive ..."--Provided by publisher.

An unhappy love, marriage of convenience... and Gemma, the central character in The Wayward Wife , is drawn into an inenvitable affair before she realizes where her true feelings lie. Unsentimental, clear-sighted, dispassionately observant, this collection represent Moravia at his best.

Shunra is Aramaic for "cat." Schmetterling is German for "butterfly." In Yoel Hoffmann's new book, these and numerous other creatures, cultures, and languages meet in a magical shimmering hymn to childhood. Hoffmann traces his hero's developing consciousness of the ways-and-wonders of the world as though he were peering through a tremendous kaleidoscope: all that was perceived, all that is remembered, is rendered in fluid fragments of color and light. With remarkable delicacy and sweep, Hoffmann captures childhood from the amazed inside out, and without the backward-looking wash of grown-up sentiment. Instead, the boy's deadpan registration of the human comedy around him is offered up as strangely magical fact. Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, The Shunra & the Schmetterling is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction--a small marvel of a book, and one of the author's finest to date.

Much of the pleasure of this lively book comes from Herrick's match of style and subject as he plunges his hero through the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, civil rights skirmishes in the South, and more than several loves and losses. A rowdy book, its protagonist is a picaresque lover, Tom Jones with a lacing of Karl Marx, who moves through the 20th century at a gallop. -- Louisville Courier-Journal

Women and the Comics is the first attempt to document the careers of the hundreds of women who have created and worked in the field of comic strips, comic book and cartooning. The women whose work is showcased in this book have been long overlooked or ignored by most other histories of comics. In this volume you'll encounter the art of Rose O'Neill, whose Kewpies popularity spans over 70 years; Nell Brinkley, whose "Brinkley Girl" was just as famous in her day as Gibson's; Grace Drayton, whose lovely drawings gave the Campbell Kids life; the "flapper" artists of the 1920s; Dale Messick, creator of Brenda Starr; Martha Orr, who originated Mary Worth; the once anonymous female comic book artists of the 1940s; newspaper strip creators Marty Links (Bobby Sox), Cathy Guisewite (Cathy) and Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse); and the many women who write and draw today's most popular comic books. A special chapter surveying female cartoonists in Europe, Japan, and Australia is also included. Women and the Comics is a landmark book, the result of four years of research by Catherine Yronwode and Trina Robbins. It is a reference source designed to serve future generations interested in discovering the contributions women have made to America's most popular art form.

The setting is the present-day Hamptons, that sun drenched stretch of expensive ocean frontage where the rich and privileged while away their summers. Two attractive college girls, Amy-Joy and Amy-Beth, are looking for a good time, and think they have found it in the person of Kip, a handsome preppie who is in flight from the lavish home he shares with his divorced, domineering and bitingly sophisticated mother and her narcissistic married lover. And romance does develop, if not quite in the manner anticipated, as the triangular affair of the young people is deftly counterpointed against the vapid relationship of the older couple. But while high comedy and sharp observation prevail, the play yields a lacerating portrait of a contemporary upper-middle-class that is, sadly and humorously, bored, self-indulgent and emotionally reckless -- Publisher's description.