“Another gem from one of the world’s justly celebrated historians specializing in unusual and always fascinating subjects and people.” — Booklist (starred review)

The revered New York Times bestselling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement—precision—in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.

The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider.

Simon Winchester takes us back to the origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today’s cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia.

As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?

THE NAIL-BITING NEW STORY FROM THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

"Is this the best crime writer in the world today? If you're looking for a mystery to get lost in during lockdown..."―The Times, UK

"A world-class crime writer...One of the most astonishing plots of modern crime fiction"―Sunday Times, UK

"It is nothing less than a landmark in modern crime fiction." ―The Times, UK

From Ragnar Jónasson, the award-winning author of the international bestselling Ari Thór series, The Girl Who Died is a standalone thriller about a young woman seeking a new start in a secluded village where a small community is desperate to protect its secrets.

Teacher Wanted At the Edge of the World

Una wants nothing more than to teach, but she has been unable to secure steady employment in Reykjavík. Her savings are depleted, her love life is nonexistent, and she cannot face another winter staring at the four walls of her shabby apartment. Celebrating Christmas and ringing in 1986 in the remote fishing hamlet of Skálar seems like a small price to pay for a chance to earn some teaching credentials and get her life back on track.

But Skálar isn’t just one of Iceland’s most isolated villages, it is home to just ten people. Una’s only students are two girls aged seven and nine. Teaching them only occupies so many hours in a day and the few adults she interacts with are civil but distant. She only seems to connect with Thór, a man she shares an attraction with but who is determined to keep her at arm’s length.

As darkness descends throughout the bleak winter, Una finds herself more often than not in her rented attic space―the site of a local legendary haunting―drinking her loneliness away. She is plagued by nightmares of a little girl in a white dress singing a lullaby. And when a sudden tragedy echoes an event long buried in Skálar’s past, the villagers become even more guarded, leaving a suspicious Una seeking to uncover a shocking truth that’s been kept secret for generations.

"The most thoughtful and judicious one-volume history of the war and the American political leaders who presided over the difficult and painful decisions that shaped this history. The book will stand for the foreseeable future as the best study of the tragic mistakes that led to so much suffering."—Robert Dallek

Many books have been written on the tragic decisions regarding Vietnam made by the young stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet despite millions of words of analysis and reflection, no historian has been able to explain why such decent, brilliant, and previously successful men stumbled so badly.

That changes with Road to Disaster. Historian Brian VanDeMark draws upon decades of archival research, his own interviews with many of those involved, and a wealth of previously unheard recordings by Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford, who served as Defense Secretaries for Kennedy and Johnson. Yet beyond that, Road to Disaster is also the first history of the war to look at the cataclysmic decisions of those in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations through the prism of recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and organizational theory to explain why the "Best and the Brightest" became trapped in situations that suffocated creative thinking and willingness to dissent, why they found change so hard, and why they were so blind to their own errors.

An epic history of America’s march to quagmire, Road to Disaster is a landmark in scholarship and a book of immense importance.

In 2009, the CIA's Kabul Station fell for a source who promised to lead it to Bin Laden, but instead he blew himself up, taking the station's most senior officers with him. Now, more than two years later, the station is still floundering, agents are dying, and at Langley the CIA's chiefs wonder if the unthinkable has happened, if somehow the Taliban has infiltrated the station.

When they ask John Wells to investigate, he reluctantly agrees to return to the country where his career as an undercover operative began. But there, he finds a vipers' nest of hostility and mistrust-and clues that hint at a drug-trafficking operation involving the Agency, the military, and the Taliban. Americans are dying, and an American is responsible. And only John Wells stands in his way . . . for now.

Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson: New Women in Search of Love and Power by Susan Hertog

Born in the 1890s on opposite sides of the Atlantic, friends for more than forty years, Dorothy Thompson and Rebecca West lived strikingly parallel lives that placed them at the center of the social and historical upheavals of the twentieth century. In Dangerous Ambition, Susan Hertog chronicles the separate but intertwined journeys of these two remarkable women writers, who achieved unprecedented fame and influence at tremendous personal cost.
 
American Dorothy Thompson was the first female head of a European news bureau, a columnist and commentator with a tremendous following whom Time magazine once ranked alongside Eleanor Roosevelt as the most influential woman in America. Rebecca West, an Englishwoman at home wherever genius was spoken, blazed a trail for herself as a journalist, literary critic, novelist, and historian. In a prefeminist era when speaking truth to power could get anyone—of either gender—ostracized, blacklisted, or worse, these two smart, self-made women were among the first to warn the world about the dangers posed by fascism, communism, and appeasement.
 
But there was a price to be paid, Hertog shows, for any woman aspiring to such greatness. As much as they sought voice and power in the public forum of opinion and ideas, and the independence of mind and money that came with them, Thompson and West craved the comforts of marriage and home. Torn between convention and the opportunities of the new postwar global world, they were drawn to men who were as ambitious and hungry for love as themselves: Thompson to the brilliant, volatile, and alcoholic Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis; West to her longtime lover H. G. Wells, the lusty literary eminence whose sexual and emotional demands doomed any chance they may have had at love. Tragically, both arrangements produced troubled sons, whose anger and jealousy at their mothers’ iconic fame eroded their sense of personal success.
 
Brimming with fresh insights obtained from previously sealed archives, this penetrating dual biography is a story of twinned lives caught up in the crosscurrents of world events and affairs of the heart—and of the unique trans-Atlantic friendship forged by two of the most creative and complex women of their time.

5.0 out of 5 stars grinds like a miller

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2012

Henry Miller wrote this when he was all but broke in France and in such dire states he wrote for 50 francs a page and he did so at around the time he was involved with Anaias Nin. Every single page (almost) that you open the book at will contain language that will blow you away (bad pun), even those who profess no imagination at all will be fired up with the content and it is perhaps the most explicit and for me the best written book of its genre and I include Nins the Delta of Venus in that group.--rabigyin

In 1978, racing fans witnessed a rivalry for the ages when a horse hailing from Harbor View Farm named Affirmed and an eighteen-year-old jockey dubbed “Stevie Wonder” faced off against the celebrated Alydar and emerged victorious in each leg of the Triple Crown---by a combined margin of less than two lengths. In this long-overdue biography of Affirmed, veteran sportswriter Lou Sahadi captures the life and spirit of this indomitable horse who twice earned Horse of the Year honors and placed #12 on the Blood-Horse list of “Top 100 Racehorses of the 20th Century.”

     The descendent of Man o’ War and War Admiral, Affirmed possessed an unrivaled combination of speed and heart. Sahadi chronicles how the initially docile chestnut colt began his stellar rise in 1977, winning seven times and placing twice in nine races. Entering the 1978 season, many experts speculated that Alydar, the latest prize product from the storied Calumet Farm, would prove himself the better horse on longer distances, as he had done in the Champagne Stakes the previous October. Trainer Laz Barrera opted to run Affirmed in three races in California—away from Alydar—in the lead-up to the Kentucky Derby, a strategy that paid off as Affirmed, under reigning Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year jockey Stevie Cauthen, bested his rival in three races that fascinated even the most casual of sports fans.

     Affirmed also delivers fascinating subplots including that of jockey Louis Pincay Jr., who took over for Cauthen in the winter of 1979 and rode Affirmed to victory in the horse’s final seven races; and owner Louis Wolfson, the Wall Street financier who found redemption in Harbor View Farm with Affirmed after Wolfson served one year in a federal prison, his conviction having led to the resignation of Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas.

     Sahadi draws on interviews with Cauthen, some members of the Wolfson family, and many more to tell the story of how Affirmed emerged from one of the most exciting showdowns in sports history to capture imaginations across America. Telling a story that transcended the Thoroughbred racing world, Affirmed finally gives this courageous horse his due.

A prime-time thriller. . . suspense on the order of Silence of the Lambs. --Denver Post

Haunted by a disturbing childhood incident, Dr. Claire Waters is drawn to those "untreatable" patients who seem to have no conscience or fear. In a holding cell at Rikers Island, where the young forensic psychiatrist meets with a dangerous inmate whose boyish looks mask a sordid history of violence, her daring methods reveal a key to her own dark past. And when the case propels her into the mind of a homicidal maniac watching her every move, the only way to stop a killer from killing again is to go beyond the edge of reason…

"A psychological thriller of the first order."--David Baldacci

"A high-octane, intricate thriller, delivered with skill." --Publishers Weekly

"A startling, intense suspense novel that will have readers staying up at night--with the light on." --Suspense Magazine

"A masterful thriller. Highly recommended." --Douglas Preston

"A non-stop thrill ride." --Michael Palmer

"Riveting psychological suspense." --Gayle Lynds

"A masterful thriller. Highly recommended." --Douglas Preston

"Exciting, fast-paced, filled with twists." --The Mystery Gazette

"Keeps the reader engrossed and guessing." --Bookreporter.com

"Suspenseful." --Booklist

"A fast-paced, gritty crime thriller." --Christopher Meloni

"Will keep you on the edge of your seat. " --Ice-T

"An end you’ll never see coming." --Mariska Hargitay

“Dazzling . . . A profound novel about the claims of identity, history, family, and the burdens of a broken world.” ―Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s “Fresh Air”

In the book of Genesis, when God calls out, “Abraham!” before ordering him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, Abraham responds, “Here I am.” Later, when Isaac calls out, “My father!” before asking him why there is no animal to slaughter, Abraham responds, “Here I am.”

How do we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult? Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others’? These are the questions at the heart of Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel in eleven years―a work of extraordinary scope and heartbreaking intimacy.

Unfolding over four tumultuous weeks in present-day Washington, D.C., Here I Am is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As Jacob and Julia Bloch and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living, a catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East. At stake is the meaning of home―and the fundamental question of how much aliveness one can bear.

Showcasing the same high-energy inventiveness, hilarious irreverence, and emotional urgency that readers loved in his earlier work, Here I Am is Foer’s most searching, hard-hitting, and grandly entertaining novel yet. It not only confirms Foer’s stature as a dazzling literary talent but reveals a novelist who has fully come into his own as one of our most important writers.

If you've ever lost a game to a master chess player, then you have probably asked yourself why, playing with the same pieces and the same board, he was able to spot situations you didn't even see.  This book is "creative" in that the author shows you how to create brilliant moves in ordinary chess situations and how to turn them to your advantage.  Mr. Reinfeld says that if 10,000 players were faced with the ordinary situations and positions shown in this book, only five would have the native ability to recognize in them the opportunities to win.

With a boss threatening to exile him to driving a bookmobile in Amish Country and a headstrong wife whose erotic pop-up books fail to revive the couples lost intimacy, Alexander retreats to a world of private annotation. Enter Henry James Jesson III, a collector with an improbably literary name, who shares a number of Alexanders unconventional interests. Soon, Jesson hires Alexander for some after-hours research. As his search advances, the librarian realizes there are many more secrets in Jessons life than the ones found in his dazzling Manhattan salon.

Book Club hardcover with dustjacket, 1985. Published the same month as the paperback edition. Collection of stories, both fantasy and science-fiction, including some in his "Draco's Tavern" series.

“This thriller is rich in brilliant discourses on religion, fanaticism, the meaning of ancient cave art, the speculative future, and love.”—Library Journal

Sena Jeter Naslund, the New York Times bestselling author of Ahab’s Wife, Four Spirits, and Abundance explores both the dark nature of fundamentalism and the brightness of true faith in her dazzling novel, Adam & Eve. A provocative, eloquent, and deeply compelling story of a woman caught between two warring worlds—science and religion—Adam & Eve raises timely questions about identity, innocence, and sin, and represents a new literary high-water  mark for New York Times Notable author and Harper Lee Award-winner Naslund.

An important, timely book on the morality of armed conflicts in the twenty-first century.

Every society and every period of history has had to face the reality of war. War inevitably yields situations in which the normal ethical rules of society have to be overridden. The Just War tradition has evolved over the centuries as a careful endeavour to impose moral discipline and humanity on resort to war and in its waging, and the tradition deserves our attention now as much as ever.
Just War traces the origin and nature of the tradition from its roots in Christian thinking and provides a clear summary of its principles, which are accessible to all beliefs. As the circumstances and necessities of war have changed over time, so too have the practical interpretations of the tradition. Drawing examples from Kosovo, Afghanistan and the wars in Iraq, Charles Guthrie and Michael Quinlan look at the key concepts in relation to modern armed conflict.

The tradition sets rational limits and respects the adversary's humanity amid the chaos of war, and provides systematic questions which governments and armed forces must ask themselves before they engage in war. This short but powerful book is a timely re-examination of its tenets and their relevance in the twenty-first century, setting out the case for a workable and credible moral framework for modern war before, while and after it is waged.

Twenty-three new poems, from the first of which the volume draws its title, make up the first two sections of this new collection. The poems range from Conrad Aiken's latest work to an example of his earliest - 'The Tinsel Circuit,' a cycle of poems about vaudeville performers and performances, written but not published in 1916 and re-created by the author in 1961. 

In the poems of the last several years, the lyric alternates with the dramatic dialogue, combining to form a new kind of poetic statement, certain aspects of which culminate in the title poem, where the reader will find a mature, rich, and complex analysis of the function and experience of the poet. 

Georgia-born poet and novelist Conrad Potter Aiken (1889-1973) wrote poetry, short stories, novels and an autobiography. He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1930, and served as Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress from 1950 to 1952.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year 

Spanning the era between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, and constantly moving between locations across the globe (and to a few places not strictly speaking on the map at all), Against the Day unfolds with a phantasmagoria of characters that includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, drug enthusiasts, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, spies, and hired guns. As an era of uncertainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it’s their lives that pursue them.

In this long season of searing political attacks and angry partisan passions, Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column has been must reading for thoughtful liberals and conservatives alike.

Now she issues an urgent, heartfelt call for all Americans to see each other anew, realize what time it is, and come together to support the next President—whoever he is. Because it is not the threats and challenges we face, but how we face them that defines us as a nation.

The terrible events of 9/11 brought us together in a way not seen since World War II. But the stresses and divisions of the Bush years have driven us apart to a point that is unhealthy and destructive.

Today, Noonan argues, the national mood is for a change in our politics and it is well past time for politicians to catch up. Americans are tired of the old partisan divisions and the campaign tricks that seek to widen and exploit them. We long for leaders who can summon us to greatness and unity, as they did in the long struggles against fascism and communism.

In this timely little book, written in the pamphleteering tradition of Tom Paine's Common Sense, Noonan reminds us that we must face our common challenges together—not by rising above partisanship, but by reaffirming what it means to be American.

The legendary Bill Cosby, America’s most well-known comic, wants food lovers and over indulgers everywhere to know that they are not alone. Yes, just like the rest of us -- he is frightened -- especially if we've paid any attention lately to the front-page headlines and daily reports on the nightly news:

• Cholesterol Kills!"
• Cookies Clog Arteries!"
• Meatball Sandwiches Cause God Knows What"
• Repent and Exercise -- or Else!"

In this original collection of humorous musings and digressions about our obsessions, the incomparable Doctor of Comedy is right on target as he reflects back on his own sixty-five years of dining at the banquet of life -- from the hoagies to the stogies to every death-defying delicacy in between. Who better than the man who made an international hero out of a boy named Fat Albert, to aim his great wit, wisdom, and observational talent at our national obsession with food and our never-ending quest for a healthy lifestyle.

Bill Cosby is stepping up to the plate -- literally -- in this hilarious new book about his own lifelong cravings and snack attacks ... as well as his hopes that one day, sooner rather than later, pizza will be found to be a cure for heart disease and high cholesterol.

An "unauthorized biography" of the comedienne's free-living childhood friend, this intimate profile discloses Heidi's deepest, darkest secrets and includes the condensed version of Heidi's unpublished best seller, "How to Make Love to Anything Anywhere"

The #1 New York Times and #1 USA Today bestseller.

FROM #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR SYLVIA DAY 

Gideon Cross. Falling in love with him was the easiest thing I've ever done. It happened instantly. Completely. Irrevocably.

Marrying him was a dream come true. Staying married to him is the fight of my life. Love transforms. Ours is both a refuge from the storm and the most violent of tempests. Two damaged souls entwined as one.

We have bared our deepest, ugliest secrets to one another. Gideon is the mirror that reflects all my flaws ... and all the beauty I couldn't see. He has given me everything. Now, I must prove I can be the rock, the shelter for him that he is for me. Together, we could stand against those who work so viciously to come between us.

But our greatest battle may lie within the very vows that give us strength. Committing to love was only the beginning. Fighting for it will either set us free ... or break us apart.

Heartbreakingly and seductively poignant, One with You is the breathlessly awaited finale to the Crossfire saga, the searing love story that has captivated millions of readers worldwide.

About a quarter century ago, a previously unknown writer named William Least Heat-Moon wrote a book called Blue Highways. Acclaimed as a classic, it was a travel book like no other. Quirky, discursive, endlessly curious, Heat-Moon had embarked on an American journey off the beaten path. Sticking to the small places via the small roads--those colored blue on maps--he uncovered a nation deep in character, story, and charm. 

Now, for the first time since Blue Highways, Heat-Moon is back on the backroads. ROADS TO QUOZ is his lyrical, funny, and touching account of a series of American journeys into small-town America.

A Novel of a Young Evangelist Who Becomes a Medical Missionary

Benson Ware- physician, missionary, one-time faith healer- would never forget the poverty and misery that had enveloped him as a boy. The son of sharecroppers, Ben had grown up in the Florida scrublands, where the people literally lived on the edge of starvation. He believed that his escape from those dread surroundings was an act of mercy, a gift he sought to acknowledge by living a life of self-sacrifice. his biggest sacrifice was for Ellen A Maynard, the wealthy, sickly girl he married, for it was Rana Norton he truly loved- the beautiful and desirable Rana who was his for only one night. The path of selflessness he chose led him to turn the other cheek when his wife's brother, who had fiercely opposed their marriage, used all the treachery and cunning of his twisted mind to thwart Ben's success. Even the threat of death did not stop Dr. Ware from performing the operation that saved Richard Maynard's life.

“Shriver is one of the sharpest talents around.” —USA Today

Acclaimed author Lionel Shriver—author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That, The Post-Birthday World, and the vivid psychological novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, now a major motion picture—probes the mystery of charisma in a razor-sharp new novel that teases out the intimate relationship between terrorism and cults of personality, explores what makes certain people so magnetic, and reveals the deep frustrations of feeling overshadowed by a life-of-the-party who may not even be present.

“Shriver is a master of the misanthrope. . . . [A] viciously smart writer.” —Time

Ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. A disgruntled New York corporate lawyer, he's more than ready to leave his lucrative career for the excitement and uncertainty of journalism. When he's offered the post of foreign correspondent in a Portuguese backwater that has sprouted a homegrown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes the disappeared larger-than-life reporter he's been sent to replace, Barrington Saddler, as exactly the outsize character he longs to emulate. Infuriatingly, all his fellow journalists cannot stop talking about their beloved "Bear," who is no longer lighting up their work lives.

Yet all is not as it appears. Os Soldados Ousados de Barba—"The Daring Soldiers of Barba"—have been blowing up the rest of the world for years in order to win independence for a province so dismal, backward, and windblown that you couldn't give the rat hole away. So why, with Barrington vanished, do terrorist incidents claimed by the "SOB" suddenly dry up?

A droll, playful novel, The New Republic addresses weighty issues like terrorism with the deft, tongue-in-cheek touch that is vintage Shriver. It also presses the more intimate question: What makes particular people so magnetic, while the rest of us inspire a shrug? What's their secret? And in the end, who has the better life—the admired, or the admirer?

“[Shriver’s] whip-smart observations—about relationships, the role of the media, the cult of personality are funny and on the mark.” —People

“In her latest novel, Lionel Shriver pays homage to Joseph Conrad—examining terrorism, media bloodlust, and the cult of personality through an unexpected lens of satire.” —Marie Claire, Four New Page-Turners to Keep Bedside

“A very funny book, but the laughs are embedded in a deeply disturbing subject.” —NPR, "Weekend Edition"

“Shriver is cursed with knowing the human animal all too well. The New Republic is satire of a Shriver kind, that is to say biting.” —Miami Herald

To Hanako Shimoda, recently divorced, Luciano Pavarotti is a god. To her daughter, Emily, this fixation on Pavarotti is a harmless fantasy, the byproduct of loneliness. Meeting Luciano is the story of what happens when Hanako acts on her fantasy and invites opera star Pavarotti to dinner in their Westchester County home.

Emily, with no real career plan, has gone back after college to work at her old summer job - waiting tables at the local Japanese steakhouse. Even worse than wearing a fake kimono and obi is that she's living at home with her mother. At first, her mom seems pretty much her old self - still reliving her Japanese childhood; still affecting the airs of a European sophisticate; still brewing espresso, cooking Italian, and singing arias from Rigoletto while she cleans; still idolizing Luciano Pavarotti.

But when Hanako hires Alex, a handsome Greek, to renovate the kitchen, Emily begins to worry. And when Alex, who seems to be getting very cozy with her mother, spills the secret that the renovation is in preparation for a visit from Pavarotti, Emily is thrown into a wonderfully familiar quandary: how to deal with a parent who might be losing it.

First-time novelist Anna Esaki-Smith has a wry, understated approach to the themes of assimilation, growing up, striking out on shaky ground, finding yourself - and loving your mother. Like a reflecting pool in a Japanese garden, Meeting Luciano gradually reveals the beauty of its subtle design.

Critically-acclaimed author Don Winslow introduces a prelude to Trevanian's classic thriller Shibumi, the story of genius, mystic and the perfect, formidable assassin Nicholai Hel.

It is the fall of 1951, and the Korean War is raging. Twenty-six-year-old Nicholai Hel has spent the last three years in solitary confinement at the hands of the Americans. Hel is a master of hoda korosu, or "naked kill," is fluent in seven languages, and has honed extraordinary "proximity sense": an extra-awareness of the presence of danger. He has the skills to be the world's most fearsome assassin and now the CIA needs him.

The Americans offer Hel freedom, money, and a neutral passport in exchange for one small service: go to Beijing and kill the Soviet Union's commissioner to China. It's almost certainly a suicide mission, but Hel accepts. Now he must survive chaos, violence, suspicion, and betrayal while trying to achieve his ultimate goal of satori: the possibility of true understanding and harmony with the world.

From Publishers Weekly

Nicholai Hel was already an accomplished assassin, a master of hoda korosu ("naked kill"), when introduced in Trevanian's 1979 Shibumi. Now Winslow (The Life and Death of Bobby Z.) dons Trevanian's mantle and cloaks Hel in a tangled series of adventures and misadventures in this exciting prequel. Hel's conditional ticket out of an American-run prison in 1951 Japan requires him to acquire a new face and identity and to carry out a probably suicidal mission to assassinate Soviet commissioner Yuri Voroshenin in China. In the guise of 26-year-old Michel Guibert, a French arms dealer, Hel enters a labyrinthine world of intrigue as various Chinese factions and foreign interests struggle for advantage. Winslow successfully fleshes out Hel's mixed heritage (aristocratic Russian mother, surrogate Japanese father and mentor), and eventually takes him to war-torn Vietnam, where Hel's expertise in applying Go strategy is as important to his survival as his physical skills. Winslow has crafted an impressive prelude to a highly esteemed classic thriller.  
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

• New sheet of (15) stamps (catalog 3136) no longer sold by USPS. Nature of America series.
• Features 15 colorful images of dinosuars in two scenes.
• Perfect for fans of dinosaurs, archaeology, paleontology.
• High quality item professionally packaged in a white Stay Flat envelope.

Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Fiction and the 2009 Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: a major literary debut that explores class, culture, power, and desire among the ruling and servant classes of Pakistan.

Passing from the mannered drawing rooms of Pakistan’s cities to the harsh mud villages beyond, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s linked stories describe the interwoven lives of an aging feudal landowner, his servants and managers, and his extended family, industrialists who have lost touch with the land. In the spirit of Joyce’s Dubliners and Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, these stories comprehensively illuminate a world, describing members of parliament and farm workers, Islamabad society girls and desperate servant women. A hard-driven politician at the height of his powers falls critically ill and seeks to perpetuate his legacy; a girl from a declining Lahori family becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress, thinking there will be no cost; an electrician confronts a violent assailant in order to protect his most valuable possession; a maidservant who advances herself through sexual favors unexpectedly falls in love.

Together the stories in In Other Rooms, Other Wonders make up a vivid portrait of feudal Pakistan, describing the advantages and constraints of social station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. Refined, sensuous, by turn humorous, elegiac, and tragic, Mueenuddin evokes the complexities of the Pakistani feudal order as it is undermined and transformed.

"The young Afghan women in However Tall The Mountain are pioneers. Their story is one of resilience and courage. This book is a testament to the power of hope and the will to dream in a country where so many dreams have been cut short."

--Khaled Hosseini, bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

"Awista Ayub has movingly captured the indomitable spirit of Afghan women in this chronicle of brave girls who risked persecution and worse to pursue the dreams of ordinary childhood. In doing what they love most in life - playing soccer - the girls become emblems of the fight for equality and human rights under the Taliban. Their story reminds us that there is always hope and possibility for a brighter future - even in the wreckage left by war and conflict."
--Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

A ball can start a revolution.

Born in Kabul, Awista Ayub escaped with her family to Connecticut in 1981, when she was two years old, but her connection to her heritage remained strong. An athlete her whole life, she was inspired to start the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange after September 11, 2001, as a way of uniting girls of Afghanistan and giving them hope for their future. She chose soccer because little more than a ball and a field is needed to play; however, the courage it would take for girls in Afghanistan to do this would have to be tremendous--and the social change it could bring about by making a loud and clear statement for Afghan women was enough to convince Awista that it was possible, and even necessary.

Under Taliban rule, girls in Afghanistan couldn't play outside of their homes, let alone participate in a sport on a team. So, Awista brought eight girls from Afghanistan to the United States for a soccer clinic, in the hope of not only teaching them the sport, but also instilling confidence and a belief in their self-worth. They returned to Afghanistan and spread their interest in playing soccer; when Awista traveled there to host another clinic, hundreds of girls turned out to participate--and the numbers of players and teams keep growing. What began with eight young women has now exploded into something of a phenomenon. Fifteen teams now compete in the Afghanistan Football Federation, with hundreds of girls participating.

Against all odds and fear, these girls decided to come together and play a sport that has reintroduced the very traits that decades of war had cruelly stripped away from them--confidence and self-worth. In However Tall the Mountain, Awista tells both her own story and the deeply moving stories of the eight original girls, describing their daily lives back in Afghanistan, and how they found strength in each other, in teamwork, and in themselves--taking impossible risks to obtain freedoms we take for granted. This is a story about hope, about what home is, and in the end, about determination. As the Afghan proverb says, However tall the mountain, there's always a road.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

In the tradition of Tobias Wolff, James Ellroy, and Mary Karr, a stunning memoir of a mother-son relationship that is also the searing, unflinching account of a murder and its aftermath

Tombstone, Arizona, September 2001. Debbie St. Germain’s death, apparently at the hands of her fifth husband, is a passing curiosity. “A real-life old West murder mystery,” the local TV announcers intone, while barroom gossips snicker cruelly. But for her twenty-year-old son, Justin St. Germain, the tragedy marks the line that separates his world into before and after.

Distancing himself from the legendary town of his childhood, Justin makes another life a world away in San Francisco and achieves all the surface successes that would have filled his mother with pride. Yet years later he’s still sleeping with a loaded rifle under his bed. Ultimately, he is pulled back to the desert landscape of his childhood on a search to make sense of the unfathomable. What made his mother, a onetime army paratrooper, the type of woman who would stand up to any man except the men she was in love with? What led her to move from place to place, man to man, job to job, until finally she found herself in a desperate and deteriorating situation, living on an isolated patch of desert with an unstable ex-cop?

Justin’s journey takes him back to the ghost town of Wyatt Earp, to the trailers he and Debbie shared, to the string of stepfathers who were a constant, sometimes threatening presence in his life, to a harsh world on the margins full of men and women all struggling to define what family means. He decides to confront people from his past and delve into the police records in an attempt to make sense of his mother’s life and death. All the while he tries to be the type of man she would have wanted him to be.

Praise for Son of a Gun

“[A] spectacular memoir . . . calls to mind two others of the past decade: J. R. Moehringer’s Tender Bar and Nick Flynn’s Another Bull____ Night in Suck City. All three are about boys becoming men in a broken world. . . . [What] might have been . . . in the hands of a lesser writer, the book’s main point . . . [is] amplified from a tale of personal loss and grief into a parable for our time and our nation. . . . If the brilliance of Son of a Gun lies in its restraint, its importance lies in the generosity of the author’s insights.”—Alexandra Fuller, The New York Times Book Review

“[A] gritty, enthralling new memoir . . . St. Germain has created a work of austere, luminous beauty. . . . In his understated, eloquent way, St. Germain makes you feel the heat, taste the dust, see those shimmering streets. By the end of the book, you know his mother, even though you never met her. And like the author, you will mourn her forever.”—NPR

“If St. Germain had stopped at examining his mother’s psycho-social risk factors and how her murder affected him, this would still be a fine, moving memoir. But it’s his further probing—into the culture of guns, violence, and manhood that informed their lives in his hometown, Tombstone, Ariz.—that transforms the book, elevating the stakes from personal pain to larger, important questions of what ails our society.”—The Boston Globe

“A visceral, compelling portrait of [St. Germain’s] mother and the violent culture that claimed her.”—Entertainment Weekly

Struggling to focus on his graduate work while overcoming a broken heart, Mark repeatedly takes advantage of the library computer's access to free porn, while Sam endeavors to pen a Zionist epic in spite of his limited understanding of Judaism, and Seth pursues a relationship with a selfless woman who reminds him of his painful past. 25,000 first printing.

Mathematics is driven forward by the quest to solve a small number of major problems--the four most famous challenges being Fermat's Last Theorem, the Riemann Hypothesis, Poincaré's Conjecture, and the quest for the "Monster" of Symmetry. Now, in an exciting, fast-paced historical narrative ranging across two centuries, Mark Ronan takes us on an exhilarating tour of this final mathematical quest. 

Ronan describes how the quest to understand symmetry really began with the tragic young genius Evariste Galois, who died at the age of 20 in a duel. Galois, who spent the night before he died frantically scribbling his unpublished discoveries, used symmetry to understand algebraic equations, and he discovered that there were building blocks or "atoms of symmetry." Most of these building blocks fit into a table, rather like the periodic table of elements, but mathematicians have found 26 exceptions. The biggest of these was dubbed "the Monster"--a giant snowflake in 196,884 dimensions. Ronan, who personally knows the individuals now working on this problem, reveals how the Monster was only dimly seen at first. As more and more mathematicians became involved, the Monster became clearer, and it was found to be not monstrous but a beautiful form that pointed out deep connections between symmetry, string theory, and the very fabric and form of the universe. 

This story of discovery involves extraordinary characters, and Mark Ronan brings these people to life, vividly recreating the growing excitement of what became the biggest joint project ever in the field of mathematics. Vibrantly written, Symmetry and the Monster is a must-read for all fans of popular science--and especially readers of such books as Fermat's Last Theorem.

Autographed by the Author and Inscribed to Russell Simmons

Author Sahpreem King lays out the steps one must take to learn the art and craft of hip-hop production. He begins with a brief history of the genre, explains what a producer and beat-maker does, how to build a studio, assemble your production team, and promote your music. He also reveals invaluable information about how advance-against-royalty deals work. The book closes with a thorough discussion of music publishing and an exhaustive resource section.