The last two years have been monstrously unpleasant for high-society journalist Gus Bailey. When he falls for a fake story and implicates a powerful congressman in some rather nasty business on a radio program, Gus becomes embroiled in a slander suit. The stress makes it difficult for him to focus on his next novel, which is based on the suspicious death of billionaire Konstantin Zacharias. The convicted murderer is behind bars, but Gus is not convinced that justice was served. There are too many unanswered questions, and Konstantin's hot-tempered widow will do anything to conceal the truth.
Featuring favorite characters and the affluent world Dunne first introduced in People Like Us, Too Much Money is a mischievous, compulsively readable tale by the most brilliant society chronicler of our time--the man who knew all the secrets and wasn't afraid to share them.

Beneath the unassuming surface of a progressive women's college lurks a world of intellectual pride and pomposity awaiting devastation by the pens of two brilliant and appalling wits. Randall Jarrell's classic novel was originally published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 1954, forging a new standard for campus satire--and instantly yielding comparisons to Dorothy Parker's razor-sharp barbs. Like his fictional nemesis, Jarrell cuts through the earnest conversations at Benton College--mischievously, but with mischief nowhere more wicked than when crusading against the vitriolic heroine herself.

"A most literate account of a group of most literate people by a writer of power. . . . A delight of true understanding."--Wallace Stevens

"I'm greatly impressed by the real fun, the incisive satire, the closeness of observation, and in the end by a kind of sympathy and human warmth. It's a remarkable book."--Robert Penn Warren

"Move over Dorothy Parker. "Pictures ." . . is less a novel than a series of poisonous portraits, set pieces, and endlessly quotable put-downs. Read it less for plot than sharp satire, Jarrell's forte."--Mary Welp

"One of the wittiest books of modern times."--"New York Times"

" T]he father of the modern campus novel, and the wittiest of them all. Extraordinary to think that 'political correctness' was so deliciously dissected 50 years ago."--Noel Malcolm, "Sunday Telegraph"

"A sustained exhibition of wit in the great tradition. . . . Immensely and very devastatingly shrewd."--Edmund Fuller, "Saturday Review"

" A] work of fiction, and a dizzying and brilliant work of social and literary criticism. Not only 'a unique and serious joke-book, ' as Lowell called it, but also a meditation made up of epigrams."--Michael Wood

"My work has been motivated," Wendell Berry has written, "by a desire to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place." In "Home Economics," a collection of fourteen essays, Berry explores this process and continues to discuss what it means to make oneself "responsibly at home." His title reminds us that the very root of economics is stewardship, household management. To paraphrase Confucius, a healthy planet is made up of healthy nations that are simply healthy communities sharing common ground, and communities are gatherings of households. A measure of the health of the planet is economics--the health of its households. Any process of destruction or healing must begin at home. Berry speaks of the necessary coherence of the "Great Economy," as he argues for clarity in our lives, our conceptions, and our communications. To live is not to pass time, but to "spend "time.Whether as critic or as champion, Wendell Berry offers careful insights into our personal and national situation in a prose that is ringing and clear.

Die bekende skrywer en akademikus, en direkteur van die ATKV-skryfskool aan die PUK, Hans du Plessis, ploeg sy liefde vir kennis van en jare lange navorsing oor die Afrikaans van die Griekwas kreatief terug in hierdie unieke bundel Bybelse Griekwagedigte.

The lost colours of the Chameleon is set on the fictitious island of Bangula in the Indian Ocean - an island populated by an indigenous community that coexists uneasily with Creoles, mainly descendants of ancient Portuguese colonizers. The half-a-million inhabitants live under the twin shadows of an impending cyclone and an outbreak of the blood plague. The novel follows the story of the Colonel Gondo, a patriarch who is the father of the newly reformed nation of Bangula, and the biological father of three sons (one legitimate and two illegitimate). Following their father's death, the Colonel's three sons become embroiled in a bitter succession struggle. Abioseh succeeds the Colonel, but has to contend with the Colonel's love-child, a boy called Zebulon. Zebulon grows up embittered and poverty-stricken, with an aim of avenging his mother, Madu, who died of official neglect. Zebulon, Abioseh's half-brother, is popular among the people for the simple reason that he has made it his life's mission to comfort the bereaved, even strangers. Abioseh also has to contend with the Colonel's third son, Hieronymus Jerome, his childhood friend, who rises in the police ranks and becomes his head of security. However, Hieronymus also has ambitions of power - not so much to wield it conspicuously as to control the wielders of power, an eminence grise - who liaises with an undertaker to topple Abioseh and install Zebulon as leader of the island. This struggle for power is fuelled by the varying and personal motives of the Colonel's three sons, and reveals the fundamental divisions tearing apart the fragile nation.

From evil vampires to a mysterious pack of wolves, new threats of danger and vengeance test Bella and Edward's romance in the second book of the irresistible Twilight saga. For Bella Swan, there is one thing more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning. Bella and Edward face a devastating separation, the mysterious appearance of dangerous wolves roaming the forest in Forks, a terrifying threat of revenge from a female vampire and a deliciously sinister encounter with Italy's reigning royal family of vampires, the Volturi. Passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality. It's here! #1 bestselling author Stephenie Meyer makes a triumphant return to the world of Twilight with the highly anticipated companion, Midnight Sun: the iconic love story of Bella and Edward told from the vampire's point of view. People do not want to just read Meyer's books; they want to climb inside them and live there. -- Time A literary phenomenon. -- The New York Times

It s a mission that could bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. Now time is running out. It starts with a high-stakes theft: weapons-grade plutonium is stolen from Russia. The Russian army is about to attack Chechnya to get it back. But U.S. intelligence discovers that the stolen shipment is actually on a rogue Russian freighter in the Black Sea. It turns into a global nightmare: a secret mission gone awry; an American submarine commander arrested and hauled before a military tribunal in Moscow; and a game of brinksmanship so dangerous that war might be its only possible conclusion. As the U.S. Navy searches for weapons-grade plutonium that has been smuggled out of Russia by terrorists, a submarine mishap escalates the international crisis. With the world watching, JAG Officer Zack Brewer is called to Moscow to defend submarine skipper Pete Miranda and his entire crew. It is a heart-stopping race against the clock. With Russian missiles activated and programmed for American cities, Brewer stalls for time as the U.S. Navy frantically searches the high seas for a floating hydrogen bomb that could threaten New York Harbor."

A "superior thriller"(Oakland Press) about a man, a dog, and a terrifying threat that could only have come from the imagination of #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz-nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. On his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever who will let him go no further into the dark woods. That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life. What he finds is a dog of alarming intelligence that soon leads him into a relentless storm of mankind's darkest creation...

From spying to swapping, from two (or more) partners to multiple climaxes, from girl-on-girl pasion to the raunchiest role play, from torrid wedding nights to sweet afternoon delights, Letters to Penthouse has taken sexuality to its most electrifying heights - until now! With this new exotic volume in this ever-popular series, prepare to enter the next - and most erotic - secual frontier. Here nothing is censored and taboo...except your inhibitions. You'll cheer a football coach with a secret weapon to motivate his team - his sexy wife. You'll get down with a hunky rock musician who'll perform a dirty duet with his best friend's girl. You'll peek in on a husband eager to boost his wife's self-esteem...with the help of two virile strangers. From wedding halls to frat houses, campgrounsd to rock bars, truck stops to strip clubs, you can share in these ultimate escapades. There's nothing more hardcore than XXX!

Based on his own experiences as an addict and sidesman to diverse music acts, Tony O'Neill's 'Digging the Vein' explores LA's drug sub-culture - a slice of life that few tourists will ever get to see.

Multi-million copy and international bestselling author Jean Plaidy paints an incredibly vivid portrait of one of history's most controversial - and terrifying - monarchs... Readers of Philippa Gregory will not be disappointed. 'Plaidy excels at blending history with romance and drama' -- New York Times 'Full-blooded, dramatic, exciting.' - Observer 'Outstanding' - Vanity Fair 'Compulsive reading' -- ***** Reader review 'I was gripped and want more!' -- ***** Reader review 'Found this book hard to put down and didn't want it to finish' -- ***** Reader review 'Brilliant stuff!!!' -- ***** Reader review ***************************************************************************** The untimely death of Richard the Lionheart left his nephew Arthur and his younger brother John in contest for the throne of England. Reluctantly the barons chose John, and so began years of rule by a ruthless and greedy tyrant. Yet despite his reputation, John, still manages to seduce the young and beautiful Isabella of Angouleme. But in taking her as his bride he makes an enemy for life. And in the tempestuous years that follow many men come to believe that the House of Anjou was tainted by the Devil's blood, the loathsome monarch was himself Evil Incarnate, the very Prince of Darkness...

Rose and Johnny are a modern couple, a career couple. But suddenly - unexpectedly - Johnny's desire for commitment and a child brings them to an abrupt and painful crossroads. To save their relationship Rose, an ambitious photographer still struggling for recognition, reluctantly concedes - only to discover that achieving parenthood is far harder than either of them had bargained on. Unflinchingly honest, ONE LIFE is a heart-stoppingly poignant and compelling exploration of womanhood and its most basic compulsion; the desire for children.

It has been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. . . .Deliciously risque, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.

Joshua has come home.

But home is no more peaceful than it was during the "time long ago" remembered by Joshua. Violent, seemingly intractable disputes poison the very air. It falls to Joshua, retracing the path taken two millennia ago, to lead his followers to peace in this world as well as in the next. Joshua in the Holy Land will carry every reader back to where it all began.

Back to Nazareth and Bethlehem.

Back to Capernaum and Bethany.

Back to Jerusalem.

Full of resonances with the Gospels, Joshua in the Holy Land is a profoundly satisfying addition to the Joshua phenomenon.

First in the new Weather Warden series...
Joanne Baldwin is a Weather Warden. Usually, all it takes is a wave of her hand to tame the most violent weather. But now, she's trying to outrun another kind of storm: accusations of corruption and murder. So, she's resorting to the very human tactic of running for her life...
Her only hope is Lewis, the most powerful warden known. Unfortunately, he's stolen not one but three bottles of Djinn-making him the most wanted man on earth. Still, she's racing hard to find him-before the bad weather closes in fast...

Monica Ali's gorgeous first novel is the deeply moving story of one woman, Nazneen, born in a Bangladeshi village and transported to London at age eighteen to enter into an arranged marriage. Already hailed by the London "Observer" as "one of the most significant British novelists of her generation," Ali has written a stunningly accomplished debut about one outsider's quest to find her voice.

"What could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. This principle ruled her life. It was mantra, fettle, and challenge."

Nazneen's inauspicious entry into the world, an apparent stillbirth on the hard mud floor of a village hut, imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents when she is married off to Chanu, a man old enough to be her father. Nazneen moves to London and, for years, keeps house, cares for her husband, and bears children, just as a girl from the village is supposed to do. But gradually she is transformed by her experience, and begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny.

Motherhood is a catalyst -- Nazneen's daughters chafe against their father's traditions and pride -- and to her own amazement, Nazneen falls in love with a young man in the community. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters, and her new world.

While Nazneen journeys along her path of self-realization, her sister, Hasina, rushes headlong at her life, first making a "love marriage," then fleeing her violent husband. Woven through the novel, Hasina's letters from Dhaka recount a world of overwhelming adversity. Shaped, yet not bound, by their landscapes and memories, both sisters struggle to dream -- and live -- beyond the rules prescribed for them.

Vivid, profoundly humane, and beautifully rendered, "Brick Lane" captures a world at once unimaginable and achingly familiar. And it establishes Monica Ali as a thrilling new voice in fiction. As "Kirkus Reviews" said, "She is one of those dangerous writers who see everything."

Die kortverhale in Maansiek verken 'n wye register: die Rooms-Katolieke geloof, charismatiese aanbidding, Afrika-mistiek, erotiek en moederskap, konflik tussen ras en geslag en sosiale status, spanning tussen die hede en die historiese, die sienlike en die onsienlike.

As basis vir sommige verhale dien 'n nugter koerantberig of tydskrifartikel uit vervloe dekades wat binne die verhaalkonteks tegelyk humoristies en ontstellend is.

Ander is gegrond op minder bekende aspekte van bekende figure of vertellings van onbekende vroue met uiteenlopende agtergronde.

Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood's masterpiece. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer. This macabre, mordantly funny, partly auto-biographical novel reveals the gothic craziness behind the scenes in the great houses of the aristocracy, as witnessed through the unsparing eyes of an orphaned teenage girl. Great Granny Webster herself is a fabulous monster, the chilliest of matriarchs, presiding with steely self-regard over a landscape of ruined lives.

The seventh volume of what Vidal has entitled the "Narratives of Empire". In "The Golden Age", which offers a fictionalized version of American politics from 1940 to 2000, his main charge is that one of the most revered of all 20th-century presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt, provoked, and then failed to warn his commanders about, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His deception was brought about by a poll which revealed that 60 per cent of Americans were opposed to any foreign war. The author uses a series of episodes to show how the US, through its leaders and not through events, became the most influential country in the world, as he reveals (imaginary) conversations in the White House, in newspaper offices and around Washington DC.

In this mesmerizing new novel, Anne Rice demonstrates once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of myth and magic, as she weaves together two of her most compelling worlds? those of the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair witches.

Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature. William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first it seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary standards of behaviour collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them-the world of cricket and homework and adventure stories-and another world is revealed beneath, primitive and terrible. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic. "Lord of the Flies is one of my favorite books. That was a big influence on me as a teenager, I still read it every couple of years." -Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games "As exciting, relevant, and thought-provoking now as it was when Golding published it in 1954." -Stephen King

Bestselling novelist Danielle Steel takes us on a harrowing journey into the heart of America's hidden shame in a novel that explores the power of forgiveness, the dark side of childhood, and one woman's unbreakable spirit.

From her secret perch at the top of the stairs, Gabriella Harrison watches the guests arrive at her parents' lavish Manhattan townhouse.  At seven, she knows she is an intruder in her parents' party, in her parents' life.  But she can't resist the magic.  Later, she waits for the click, click, click of her mother's high heels, the angry words, and the pain that will follow.  Gabriella already knows to hide her bruises, certain she is to blame for her mother's rage--and her father's failure to protect her.  Her world is a confusing blend of terror, betrayal, and pain.  Her parents' aristocratic world is no safeguard against the abuse that knows no boundaries, respects no person, no economic lines.  Gabriella knows that, try as she might, there is no safe place for her to hide.

Even as a child, her only escape is through the stories she writes.  Only writing can dull the pain of her lonely world.  And when her parents' marriage collapses, Gabriella is given her first reprieve, as her father disappears, and then her mother abandons her to a convent.  There, Gabriella's battered body and soul begin to mend.  Amid the quiet safety and hushed rituals of the nuns, Gabriella grows into womanhood in a safe, peaceful world.  Then a young priest comes into her life.  

Father Joe Connors never questioned his vocation until Gabriella entered the confessional and shared her soul.  Confession leads to friendship.  And friendship grows dangerously into love.  Like Gabriella, Joe is haunted by the pain of his childhood, consumed by guilt over a family tragedy, for which he blames himself.  With Gabriella, Joe takes the first steps toward healing.  But their relationship leads to tragedy as Joe must choose between the priesthood and Gabriella, and life in the real world where he fears he does not belong, and cannot cope.

Exiled and disgraced, and nearly destroyed, Gabriella struggles to survive on her own in New York.  There she seeks healing and escape through her writing again, this time as an adult, and her life as a writer begins.  But just when she thinks she is beyond hurt, Gabriella is once again betrayed by someone she trusts.  Brought to the edge of despair, physically attacked beyond recognition and belief, haunted by abuse in her present and her past, she nonetheless manages to find hope again, and the courage to face the past.  On a pilgrimage destined to bring her face-to-face with those who sought to destroy her in her early life, she finds forgiveness, freedom from guilt, and healing from abuse.  When Gabriella faces what was done to her, and why, she herself is free at last.  

With profound insight, Danielle Steel has created a vivid portrait of an abused child's broken world, and the courage necessary to face it and free herself from the past.  A work of daring and compassion, a tale of healing that will shock and touch and move you to your very soul, it exposes the terror of child abuse, and opens the doors on a subject that affects us all.  The Long Road Home is more than riveting fiction.  It is an inspiration to us all.  A work of courage, hope, and love.

A collection of short stories, set among the disappeared and darkened sectors of New York City, about characters who fall prey to an increasingly bureaucratized poverty. In 1970, at the age of twenty-five, Shulamith Firestone wrote and published The Dialectic of Sex, immediately becoming a classic of second wave feminism across the world to this very day. It was one of the few books that dared to look at how radical feminism could and should shape the future; and one whose predictions (the cybernetic revolution, for example) proved startlingly prescient of issues today. Published by Semiotext(e) in 1998, Airless Spaces, Firestone's first work of fiction, is a collection of short stories written by Firestone as she found herself drifting from the professional career path she'd been on and into what she describes as a new "airless space." These deadpan stories, set among the disappeared and darkened sectors of New York City, are about losers who fall prey to an increasingly bureaucratized poverty and find themselves in an out of (mental) hospitals. But what gives characters such as SCUM-Manifesto author Valerie Solanas their depth and charge, is their the small crises that trigger an awareness that they're in trouble. Some time later, after I had moved to St. Mark's Place, I saw Valerie in the street. She asked me for a quarter, and I saw that she was begging. She had lost her apartment, and presumably her welfare. Later, a friend of mine who ran a store on St. Mark's Place said that Valerie had approached him for shelter. She was covered with sores, and wearing only a blanket to beg in. She had been out on the street approximately three months without shelter. Not long after that, she disappeared from the street entirely.