The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take readers from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties-metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts-and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of his characters contend with tremendous hardship; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the mysteries of the universe outside themselves. Views: 192
John Hicks is an English trained vet who has spent much of his working life in rural New Zealand. On one level A Wander in Vetland is an insider's look at his changing profession. Hicks's entertaining anecdotes mark a fond farewell to "Herriotism": the dated public image of life as a rural vet, so lovingly depicted in the novels of James Herriot.But this memoir has a far broader scope. In a lively, literary style John Hicks links his tales with some of the more curious aspects of history - particularly veterinary and medical history. Hemlock poisoning leads to a discourse on Socrates' death; brain surgery on a ram poses the question of how Neolithic man performed similar operations. There are insights into the nature of bladder stones in animals and how these relate to the suffering of Samuel Pepys in the seventeenth century; and if you ever wondered how Italian women seduced their lovers or about the use of goose quills by eunuchs in Eastern seraglios, the answers are... Views: 192
The Peace War is quintessential hard-science adventure. The Peace Authority conquered the world with a weapon that never should have been a weapon--the "bobble," a spherical force-field impenetrable by any force known to mankind. Encasing governmental installations and military bases in bobbles, the Authority becomes virtually omnipotent. But they've never caught Paul Hoehler, the maverick who invented the technology, and who has been working quietly for decades to develop a way to defeat the Authority. With the help of an underground network of determined, independent scientists and a teenager who may be the apprentice genius he's needed for so long, he will shake the world, in the fast-paced hard-science thriller that garnered Vinge the first of his four Hugo nominations for best novel. Views: 191
Cosmos, the widely acclaimed book and television series by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, was about where we are in the vastness of space and time. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is an exploration of who we are. How were we shaped by life's adventure on this planet, by a mysterious past that we are only just beginning to piece together? "We humans are like a newborn baby left on a doorstep, " they write, "with no note explaining who it is, where it came from, what hereditary cargo of attributes and disabilities it might be carrying, or who its antecedents might be." This book is one version of the orphan's file. Sagan and Druyan take us back to the birth of the Sun and its planets and the first stirrings of life; to the origins of traits central to our current predicament: sex and violence, love and altruism, hierarchy, consciousness, language, technology, and morality. Many thoughtful people fear that our problems have become too big for us, that we are for reasons at the heart of human nature unable to deal with them, that we have lost our way. How did we get into this mess? How can we get out? Why are we so quick to mistrust those different from ourselves, so given to unquestioning obedience to authority? What is male and female? Why are we so anxious to distance ourselves from the other animals? What obligations, if any, do we owe to them? Is there something within us that condemns us to selfishness and violence? When Sagan and Druyan first undertook this exploration it was "almost with a sense of dread. We found instead reason for hope." This book presents important ideas with the clarity for which the authors are famous. Daring, passionate, with a breathtaking sweep. Shadows is a quest for a new perspective - one that integrates the insights of science into a vision of where we came from, who we are, and what our fate might be. Views: 189
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. Views: 189
As young boys both Jacques Rebière and Thomas Midwinter become fascinated with trying to understand the human mind. As psychiatrists, their quest takes them from the squalor of the Victorian lunatic asylum to the crowded lecture halls of the renowned Professor Charcot in Paris; from the heights of the Sierra Madre in California to the plains of unexplored Africa.
As the concerns of the old century fade and the First World War divides Europe, the two men's volatile relationship develops and changes, but is always tempered by one exceptional woman; Thomas's sister Sonia.
Moving and challenging in equal measure, Human Traces explores the question of what kind of beings men and women really are. Views: 189
In this intimate collection, the beloved author of the The Poisonwood Bible and more than a dozen other New York Times bestsellers, winner or finalist for the Pulitzer and countless other prizes, now trains her eye on the everyday and the metaphysical in poems that are smartly crafted, emotionally rich, and luminous. In her second poetry collection, Barbara Kingsolver offers reflections on the practical, the spiritual, and the wild. She begins with "how to" poems addressing everyday matters such as being hopeful, married, divorced; shearing a sheep; praying to unreliable gods; doing nothing at all; and of course, flying. Next come rafts of poems about making peace (or not) with the complicated bonds of friendship and family, and making peace (or not) with death, in the many ways it finds us. Some poems reflect on the redemptive powers of art and poetry itself; others consider where everything begins.Closing the book are poems that celebrate natural... Views: 188
Annie Dillard -- "one of the most distinctive voices in American letters today" (Boston Globe) -- collects her favorite selections from her own writings in this compact volume. A perfect introduction to one of America's most acclaimed and bestselling authors. Views: 188
Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the great modern writers presented in attractive, accessible paperback editions.
“It is Dr. Sacks’s gift that he has found a way to enlarge our experience and understanding of what the human is.” —*The Wall Street Journal
Dubbed “the poet laureate of medicine” by The New York Times,* Oliver Sacks is a practicing neurologist and a mesmerizing storyteller. His empathetic accounts of his patients’s lives—and wrily observed narratives of his own—convey both the extreme borderlands of human experience and the miracles of ordinary seeing, speaking, hearing, thinking, and feeling.
Vintage Sacks includes the introduction and case study “Rose R.” from Awakenings (the book that inspired the Oscar-nominated movie), as well as “A Deaf World” from Seeing Voices; “The Visions of Hildegard” from Migraine; excerpts from “Island Hopping” and “Pingelap” from The Island of the Colorblind; “A Surgeon’s Life” from An Anthropologist on Mars; and two chapters from Sacks’s acclaimed memoir Uncle Tungsten.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 187
He writes gunfights and ticking time bombs. But when he's kidnapped and forced to plan a real-world crime, every plot twist will be explosive... Dylan Taggart channels his demons through the keyboard. Knocked around by a father who believed weakness was failure, the bestselling suspense author grabs a measure of peace in his gorgeous girlfriend's arms. But he sees fiction come horrifyingly to life when masked fanatics break in demanding he put his brilliant mind to work and help them steal a secret military super-weapon. Dylan tries to refuse, but his resolve shatters when they leave his lover for dead and punish him mercilessly. Torn between terror and grief, he starts writing the heist scheme as ordered...while feverishly building a cunningly disguised sabotage. Can this tortured artist use his own ingenious plotting skills to prevent the death of millions? Plot/Counterplot is a fast-paced standalone... Views: 186
The new full-tilt, razor-sharp, unstoppably hilarious and entertaining novel from the best-selling author of Bad Monkey, Star Island, Nature Girl, et al.
When Lane Coolman's car is bashed from behind on the road to the Florida Keys, what appears to be an ordinary accident is anything but (this is Hiaasen!). Behind the wheel of the other car is Merry Mansfield--the eponymous Razor Girl--and the crash scam is only the beginning of events that spiral crazily out of control while unleashing some of the wildest characters Hiaasen has ever set loose on the page. There's Trebeaux, the owner of Sedimental Journeys--a company that steals sand from one beach to restore erosion on another . . . Dominick "Big Noogie" Aeola, a NYC mafia capo with a taste for tropic-wear . . . Buck Nance, a Wisconsin accordionist who has rebranded himself as the star of a redneck reality show called Bayou Brethren . . . a street psycho known as Blister who's more Buck Nance than Buck could ever be . . . Brock Richardson, a Miami product-liability lawyer who's getting dangerously--and deformingly--hooked on the very E.D. product he's litigating against . . . and Andrew Yancy--formerly Detective Yancy, busted down to the Key West roach patrol after accosting his then-lover's husband with a Dust Buster. Yancy believes that if he can singlehandedly solve a high-profile murder, he'll get his detective badge back. That the Razor Girl may be the key to Yancy's future will be as surprising as anything else he encounters along the way--including the giant Gambian rats that are livening up his restaurant inspections. Views: 186
The next official Minecraft novel from Max Brooks! The New York Times bestselling author of Minecraft: The Island chronicles the story of a stranded hero who ventures into an unforgiving tundra to find something entirely unexpected: another castaway. Wandering a vast, icy tundra, the explorer has never felt more alone. Is there anything out here? Did I do the right thing by leaving the safety of my island? Should I give up and go back? So many questions, and no time to ponder—not when dark is falling and dangerous mobs are on the horizon. Gurgling zombies and snarling wolves lurk in the night, and they’re closing in. With nowhere to hide, the lone traveler flees up a mountain, trapped and out of options . . . until a mysterious figure arrives, fighting off the horde single-handedly. The unexpected savior is Summer, a fellow castaway and master of survival in these frozen wastes. Excited to find... Views: 185
Time Out of Joint is Philip K. Dick’s classic depiction of the disorienting disparity between the world as we think it is and the world as it actually is. The year is 1998, although Ragle Gumm doesn’t know that. He thinks it’s 1959. He also thinks that he served in World War II, that he lives in a quiet little community, and that he really is the world’s long-standing champion of newspaper puzzle contests. It is only after a series of troubling hallucinations that he begins to suspect otherwise. And once he pursues his suspicions, he begins to see how he is the center of a universe gone terribly awry.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 185
A ravishing, luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt, drawn from her entire career. Mirrors shatter at the hairdressers when a middle-aged client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the warm body of a princess, honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real. Medusa's Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets, and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and color. From ancient myth to a British candy factory, from a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, from a Turkish bazaar to a fairy-tale palace, Byatt transports her readers beyond the veneer of the ordinary—even beyond the gloss of the fantastical—to a place rich and strange and wholly unforgettable. Views: 185
