The first voice we hear in Gina B. Nahai's second novel is that of Lili, the grown daughter of a miraculous mother. When Lili was 5 and living in the Jewish ghetto of Tehran, her mother, Roxanna, "had grown wings, one night when the darkness was the color of her dreams, and flown into the star-studded night of Iran that claimed her." Thirteen years would pass, Lili informs us, before she would find her mother again. This short introduction serves as a framing device for the story of Roxanna's life, a life begun as a "bad-luck" child. According to her sister, Miriam the Moon, she "had been a runaway before she ever became a wife or a mother, before she came into existence or was even conceived."

A bestseller in 1933, and subsequently adapted into two beloved and controversial films, Imitation of Life has played a vital role in ongoing conversations about race, femininity, and the American Dream. Bea Pullman, a white single mother, and her African American maid, Delilah Johnston, also a single mother, rear their daughters together and become business partners. Combining Bea’s business savvy with Delilah’s irresistible southern recipes, they build an Aunt Jemima-like waffle business and an international restaurant empire. Yet their public success brings them little happiness. Bea is torn between her responsibilities as a businesswoman and those of a mother; Delilah is devastated when her light-skinned daughter, Peola, moves away to pass as white. Imitation of Life struck a chord in the 1930s, and it continues to resonate powerfully today. The author of numerous bestselling novels, a masterful short story writer, and an outspoken social activist, Fannie Hurst was a major celebrity in the first half of the twentieth century. Daniel Itzkovitz’s introduction situates Imitation of Life in its literary, biographical, and cultural contexts, addressing such topics as the debates over the novel and films, the role of Hurst’s one-time secretary and great friend Zora Neale Hurston in the novel’s development, and the response to the novel by Hurst’s friend Langston Hughes, whose one-act satire, “Limitations of Life” (which reverses the races of Bea and Delilah), played to a raucous Harlem crowd in the late 1930s. This edition brings a classic of popular American literature back into print.

"From its beginnings in Twilight fan-fiction to its record-breaking sales as an e-book and paperback, the story of the erotic romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels is both unusual and fascinating. Having sold over seventy million copies worldwide since 2011, E. L. James’s lurid series about a sexual ingénue and the powerful young entrepreneur who introduces her to BDSM sex has ingrained itself in our collective consciousness. But why have these particular novels—poorly written and formulaic as they are—become so popular, especially among women over thirty? In this concise, engaging book, Eva Illouz subjects the Fifty Shades cultural phenomenon to the serious scrutiny it has been begging for. After placing the trilogy in the context of best-seller publishing, she delves into its remarkable appeal, seeking to understand the intense reading pleasure it provides and how that resonates with the structure of relationships between men and women today. Fifty Shades, Illouz argues, is a gothic romance adapted to modern times in which sexuality is both a source of division between men and women and a site to orchestrate their reconciliation. As for the novels’ notorious depictions of bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism, Illouz shows that these are as much a cultural fantasy as a sexual one, serving as a guide to a happier romantic life. The Fifty Shades trilogy merges romantic fantasy with self-help guide—two of the most popular genres for female readers. Offering a provocative explanation for the success and popularity of the Fifty Shades of Grey novels, Hard-Core Romance is an insightful look at modern relationships and contemporary women’s literature"--Publisher's website.

An NYRB Classics Original Emmanuel Bove was one of the most original writers to come out of twentieth-century France and a popular success in his day. Discovered by Colette, who arranged for the publication of his first novel, My Friends , Bove enjoyed a busy literary career, until the German occupation silenced him. During his lifetime, his novels and stories were admired by Rilke, the surrealists, Camus, and Beckett, who said of him that “more than anyone else he has an instinct for the essential detail.” Henry Duchemin and His Shadows is the ideal introduction to Bove’s world, with its cast of stubborn isolatoes who call to mind Melville’s Bartleby, Walser’s “little men,” and Rhys’s lost women. Henri Duchemin, the protagonist of the collection’s first story, “Night Crime,” is ambivalent, afraid of appearing ridiculous, desperate for money: in other words, the perfect prey. Criminals, beautiful women, and profiteers threaten the sad young men of Bove’s stories, but worse yet are the interior voices and paranoia that propel them to their fates. The poet of the flophouse and the dive, the park bench and the pigeon’s crumb, Bove is also a deeply empathetic writer for whom no defeat is so great as to silence desire.

This book does for retail what Goldratt's International best-seller did for manufacturing. A breakthrough solution is exposed when some unexpected events force Caroline and Paul, a married couple working for their family's retail business, to make a few small changes in the way things are done. A solution that propels the family's regional chain of stores into a very profitable, rapidly growing, international enterprise. If there is a hint of Jonah, from THE GOAL, reappearing in this novel, it is Henry, the soon-to-retire president and majority owner of the company who logically states that, if you do not deal directly with the core problem, don't expect significant improvement. Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints is woven throughout this book but answers are not handed to you. The reader, along with the characters in the book, work through the process together to discover solutions.

In 1990, David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom published the audacious New York Times best-seller The Book of J, which identified one of the earliest writers of the Bible to be a woman. Now David Rosenberg returns with The Book of David, which redefines the meaning of spirituality in our time. Our ancestors read the Bible sure of its authors, of whom King David was perhaps most beloved. The Book of David illuminates the original story of David so that it becomes, once again, our founding narrative of spiritual consciousness. Based on an exhilarating translation that uncovers the original sources, we behold a radiant writer, often called the Court Historian or Western Civilization's first novelist, who stands behind King David, creating the way we talk to and think about God. His sublime creation reinvents our idea of the spiritual warrior as well as the original language of spirituality. Seven years in the making, The Book of David starts where the conventional tales leave off, discarding the "David and Goliath" stereotype and providing a startling, mature figure of David. The Book of David will transform the way readers view themselves, their society, and their religion. It is unique in all that it contains: biography and novel, history and poetry, critique and guide, and, above all, a fountain of inspiration. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Hidden Talents is the first novel in a hit supernatural duology for young readers by award-winning author David Lubar. This hilarious coming-of-age-with-powers story starring the misfits at Edgeview Alternative School was shortlisted for the Printz Award and is now available in trade paperback. When thirteen-year-old Martin Anderson arrives at the Edgeview Alternative School, it's the end of the road. Literally. He's been expelled from every other school. Edgeview is the last stop. A warehouse for the system's rejects. Martin fits right in. Everyone has given up on Martin. Even Martin. But at Edgeview Martin falls in with a group of five outsiders who make the other Edgeview rejects appear gifted by comparison. He makes a remarkable discovery: each of his friends possesses a remarkable talent. One is telekinetic. Another is empathic. Others have psychic abilities. Martin thinks these talents make them special. They think it makes them freaks. Martin has one shot to convince them otherwise. " Hidden Talents provides us with a glimpse of David Lubar as a writer whose comic talent is matched by his ability to write with sensitivity and power about adolescents." — The Alan Review

Signet / New American Library, 1977. Paperback original novel, 1st edition. A tale of a world where children must choose the gender they are to become, and one child's decision may decide her world's fate. Nominated for the Nebula Award.

With more than 120 photos in full color and the complete screenplay, the story behind the making of the movie based on the beloved bestselling novel directed by Marc Forster ( Monster's Ball , Finding Neverland , and Stranger Than Fiction ). Based on one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, The Kite Runner is a profoundly emotional tale of friendship, family, devastating mistakes, and redeeming love. In a divided country on the verge of war, two childhood friends, Amirand Hassan, are about to be torn apart forever. One boy's fearful act of betrayal will mark their lives forever and set in motion an epic quest for redemption. Now, after 20 years of living in America, Amir returns to a perilous Afghanistan under the Taliban's iron-fisted rule to face the secrets that still haunt him and take one last daring chance to set things right. This universal human story speaks to anyone who has every yearned for a second chance to make a change and find forgiveness. This beautifully designed pictorial book includes the complete screenplay, highlighted by exquisite color photographs, behind-the-scenes stories about the production, the locations (the western Chinese desert that borders Afghanistan), the casting of the globally diverse cast and crew, and commentaries by novelist Khaled Hosseini and director Marc Forster.

Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene. Young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann’s brilliant comic novel revolves around the meeting of two colossal geniuses of the Enlightenment. Late in the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates jungles, voyages down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores and measures every cave and hill he comes across. The other, the reclusive and barely socialized mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, can prove that space is curved without leaving his home. Terrifyingly famous and wildly eccentric, these two polar opposites finally meet in Berlin in 1828, and are immediately embroiled in the turmoil of the post-Napolean world.

With Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe , Cory Doctorow established himself as one of the leading voices of next-generation SF: inventive, optimistic, and comfortable with the sheer strangeness of tomorrow. Now Doctorow returns with a novel of wrenching oddity, heartfelt technological vision, and human pity set on the streets of Toronto today. Alan is a middle-aged entrepeneur in contemporary Toronto, who has devoted himself to fixing up a house in the bohemian neighborhood of Kensington. This naturally brings him in contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings--wings, moreover, which grow back after each attempt to cut them off. Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain; his mother is a washing machine; and among his brothers are a set of Russian nesting dolls. Now two of the three nesting dolls, Edward and Frederick, are on his doorstep--well on their way to starvation, because their innermost member, George, has vanished. It appears that yet another brother, Davey, who Alan and his other siblings killed years ago, may have returned...bent on revenge. Under such circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to involve himself with a visionary scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet connectivity, a conspiracy spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who builds miracles of hardware from parts scavenged from the city's dumpsters. But Alan's past won't leave him alone--and Davey is only one of the powers gunning for him and all his friends. Wildly imaginative, constantly whipsawing us between the preposterous, the amazing, and the deeply felt, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is unlike any novel you have ever read.

Step into a world where time zones are tribes and loyalty is everything. "Eastern Standard Tribe" by Cory Doctorow, once lost to the sands of time, is now brilliantly restored and republished by Alpha Editions. This captivating novel, out of print for decades, is a collector's item and a cultural treasure, meticulously revived for today's and future generations. In a near-future society where global connectivity is both a blessing and a curse, protagonist Art struggles with the chaos of his dual life as a consultant and a secret agent for the Eastern Standard Tribe. Doctorow weaves a thrilling narrative that explores the complexities of trust, identity, and the relentless pursuit of happiness in a hyper-connected world. This edition is not just a reprint; it's a beautifully restored classic that promises to engage casual readers and collectors alike. With its unique blend of humor, insight, and suspense, "Eastern Standard Tribe" is a timeless exploration of the human condition in the digital age. Don't miss your chance to own a piece of literary history that challenges the boundaries of time and technology.

This novel is considered the greatest work of fiction by the Brazilian writer the "New York Times Book Review" called "the premier Latin American woman prose writer of this century." An intense and lyrical work, it chronicles its female protagonist's journey of self-discovery and self-affirmation.

Only teens have survived a mysterious catastrophe in the first YA novel from an acclaimed film producer, director and screenwriter, Chris Weitz 'The action concludes with a suitable cliff-hanging scenario, and this will be excellent for fans of Hunger Games, Chaos Trilogy and The Faze' STEPHEN KING 'Chris Weitz has his finger on the pulse when it comes to cultural references and his fantastically diverse characters pop out of the action-packed pages' BOOKTRUST Welcome to New York, a city ruled by teens. After a mysterious Sickness wipes out the rest of the population, the young survivors assemble into tightly run tribes. Jefferson, the reluctant leader of the Washington Square tribe, and Donna, the girl he's secretly in love with, have carved out a precarious existence among the chaos. But when another tribe member discovers a clue that may hold the cure to the Sickness, five teens set out on a life-altering road trip to save humankind. The tribe exchanges gunfire with enemy gangs, escapes cults and militias, braves the wilds of the subway and Central Park . . . and discovers truths they could never have imagined.

Though a well-regarded physicist Carl Sagan (1934-1996) is best-known as a writer of popular nonfiction and science fiction and as the host of the PBS series Cosmos . Through his writings and spoken commentary, he worked to popularize interests in astronomy, the universe, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. From the beginning of his public career, when he co-wrote Intelligent Life in the Universe to the very end as he worked on the 1997 film adaptation of his novel Contact , these subjects absorbed him. This interest in space was rooted in his understanding of the smallness and vulnerability of humanity measured against the immense size and power of the universe. This profound philosophical humility, mixed with personal exuberance, comes through in Conversations with Carl Sagan . In interviews and profiles, Sagan discusses with verve a wide variety of topics--the environment, nuclear disarmament, religion, politics, extraterrestrial life, astronomy, physics, robotics. Whether he is discussing his science fiction or his well-researched nonfiction works, his voice embraces reason and skepticism. This volume shows how Sagan, a lifelong skeptic, refined his views and expressed amazement that Earth, for all his belief in extraterrestrial life, encompasses everything about which he cared. Tom Head of Jackson, Mississippi, is a writer and poet whose work includes Women and Families (Voices from the Civil War) , Possessions and Exorcisms (Fact or Fiction?) , and 1966 (The Turbulent 60s) .

Shockingly honest, richly detailed, and pulling no punches, Friends and Enemies traverses the highs and lows of Barbara Amiel's storied life in journalism and high society. From her early childhood in London during the Blitz to emigrating to North America and her rise to the top rungs of journalism; to her four husbands and other assorted beaus both famous and not; and right up to her marriage to Conrad Black and their prolific legal battles against the powerful and vengeful American justice system, Barbara Amiel's life has been as dramatic as it is glamorous. She has been called every conceivable name in the book by the media (and authors of unauthorized biographies about her), pilloried for her extravagant lifestyle and sometimes regrettable quotes to the press ("My extravagance knows no bounds," for instance, to Vogue ), not to mention her outspoken conservative political views as stated in her weekly newspaper columns around the world. It's no surprise she remains to this day a subject of utter fascination after over four decades in the public eye. But until now, very few people actually know her real story—the break-up of her family when she was a child, her bouts of debilitating depression and other chronic health issues, her thoughts on feminism and #MeToo, her travels with the international jet set and A-list celebrities, and, of course, her unvarnished views on the trial and conviction (since overturned) of Conrad Black and the iron-clad bond they have shared since they were married in 1992. Whether you are an admirer or critic of Amiel’s, you will be completely engrossed in her operatic life, one that seems ripped from the pages of a scandalous novel. She also distinguishes herself as a woman well ahead of her time—the first female editor of a national newspaper in Canada, she challenged the sexual mores of society while also angering the feminist establishment. She has certainly had many friends and enemies over the years—Henry and Nancy Kissinger, Elton John, Tom Stoppard, David Frost, Anna Wintour, Oscar de la Renta, Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, Marie Jose Kravis, to name but a few—and she brings these personalties into the spotlight in this larger-than-life memoir that is sure to cause a sensation with readers everywhere.

First published in 1925, Anzia Yezierska's "Bread Givers" is the tale of a young Jewish-American immigrant woman and her struggle to control her own destiny in Manhattan's Lower East Side at the turn of the century. The novel is based in large part on Yezierska's own life experiences immigrating from Poland as a child and growing up in New York City in an Orthodox Jewish family. "Bread Givers" centers on the story of its main character, Sara Smolinsky, who lives with her older sisters and parents in a poor tenement in the Lower East Side. The Smolinsky family is destitute and struggles to make ends meet as the father, Reb, refuses to work and spends all his time studying the Torah and clinging to the traditions of the country he left behind. He arranges unhappy marriages for his older daughters in the hope of becoming rich himself. Sara vows to avoid her sisters' fates and takes her life into her own hands, pursuing an education and refusing to marry just because it is expected of her. "Bread Givers" is both an engaging portrait of New York at the beginning of the twentieth-century and a timeless tale of a young woman's journey of self-discovery and determination. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

A gangster comedy set in a restaurant in New York's Little Italy. The hero is Tommy Pagano, a chef who becomes involved in an FBI sting against the Mafia. A first novel by a cook, currently chef of The Supper Club in New York City.

"A breathtaking and ineffable new novel from the author of the international best sellers Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault-a novel of love and loyalty across generations, at once sweeping and intimate. 1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls-a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts with messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations of connections and consequences that ignite and re-ignite as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. Held is affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom, and compassion, a novel by a writer at the height of her powers"--

"Discovering Proust is like wandering through a totally unfamiliar land and finding it peopled with kindred spirits and sister souls and fellow countrymen . . . They speak our language, our dialect, share our blind-spots and are awkward in exactly the same way we are, just as their manner of lacing every access of sorrow with slapstick reminds us so much of how we do it when we are sad and wish to hide it, that surely we are not alone and not as strange as we feared we were. And here lies the paradox. So long as a writer tells us what he and only he can see, then surely he speaks our language." --from the preface by Andre Aciman For "The Proust Project," editor Andre Aciman asked twenty-eight writers--Shirley Hazzard, Lydia Davis, Richard Howard, Alain de Botton, Diane Johnson, Edmund White, and others--to choose a favorite passage from "In Search of Lost Time" and introduce it in a brief essay. Gathered together, along with the passages themselves (and a synopsis that guides the reader from one passage to the next), these essays form the perfect introduction to the greatest novel of the last century, and the perfect gift for any Proustian. FSG will co-publish "The Proust Project" in a deluxe edition with Turtle Point Press, Books & Co., and Helen Marx Books. Andre Aciman is the author of "Out of Egypt" and" False Papers." He is also a frequent contributor to "The New Yorker" and "The New York Review of Books." Aciman teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.For "The Proust Project," editor Andre Aciman asked twenty-eight writers--among them Shirley Hazzard, Lydia Davis, Richard Howard, Alain de Botton, Diane Johnson, Edmund White, Geoffrey O'Brien, Wayne Koestenbaum, Susan Minot, Andrew Solomon, and Louis Auchincloss--to choose a favorite passage from "In Search of Lost Time" and introduce it in a brief essay. As gathered togethered here, along with the translated passages themselves (and a synopsis that guides the reader from one passage to the next), these essays form the perfect introduction to the greatest novel of the last century. "Discovering Proust is like wandering through a totally unfamiliar land and finding it peopled with kindred spirits and sister souls and fellow countrymen . . . They speak our language, our dialect, share our blind-spots, and are awkward in exactly the same way we are, just as their manner of lacing every access of sorrow with slapstick reminds us so much of how we do it when we are sad and wish to hide it, that surely we are not alone and not as strange as we feared we were. And here lies the paradox. So long as a writer tells us what he and only he can see, then surely he speaks our language."--Andre Aciman, from his Preface "Editor Andre Aciman's introductory essays gracefully place the individual passages in the larger context of the multivolume novel with great skill. He also provides the most penetrating essay on "In Search of Lost Time" in his preface."--Barbara Fisher, "The Boston Globe"