How the Light Gets In

Author	Honoré de Balzac
ISBN	0375759077

Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense. Already deeply resentful of their wealth, when Bette learns that the...

Author	Ursula Hegi
ISBN	0743255992

The bestselling author of Stones from the River delivers her most ambitious and dramatic novel yet -- the unforgettable story of an endearing, but also flawed, Italian American family. In December 1953 Anthony Amedeo's world is nested in his Bronx neighborhood, his parents' Studebaker, the Paradise...

Author	Clive King
ISBN	0140364501

This book surprised me. I was expecting it to be a simple, fun, mildly enjoyable read, which I would have better appreciated had I read it at 9 years old (which is when everyone else seemed to read it). Instead, I was wowed by the levels of humour and social commentary and astute observation and depth within...

Author	Theodore Dreiser
ISBN	0393960420

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.'

The tale of Carrie Meeber's rise to stardom in the theatre and George Hurstwood's slow decline...

Author	Tim Guest
ISBN	1862077207

At the age of six, Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The Bhagwan preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy, and sexual freedom, and enjoyed inhaling laughing gas, preaching from a dentist's...

Author

Gore Vidal

Like his National Book Award—winning United States, Gore Vidal’s scintillating ninth collection, The Last Empire, affirms his reputation as our most provocative critic and observer of the modern American scene. In the essays collected here, Vidal brings his keen intellect, experience, and...

Author	Céleste Albaret
ISBN	1590170598

Céleste Albaret was Marcel Proust's housekeeper in his last years, when he retreated from the world to devote himself to In Search of Lost Time. She could imitate his voice to perfection, and Proust himself said to her, "You know everything about me." Her reminiscences of her employer present an intimate...

Author	James N. McKean
ISBN	0385721307

Matt O’Brien, an assistant curator and art restorer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has always been passionate about the Italian Renaissance. But when he discovers a long-neglected portrait of a beautiful woman among the museum’s miles of storage bins, he becomes obsessed--and not only because...

Author	Virginia Holman
ISBN	0743255496

A startling memoir of a daughter's harrowing sojourn in the prison of her mother's mind and a moving portrait of a young woman defined by her mother's illness -- until at last she rekindles a family love that had lost its way.

"1974 was a bad year to go crazy," Virginia Holman writes in this astonishing,...

Author	Greg Critser
ISBN	0141015403

In this astonishing expose, journalist Greg Critser looks beyond the sensational headlines to reveal why nearly 60 percent of Americans are now overweight. Critser's sharp-eyed reportage and sharp-tongued analysis make for a disarmingly funny and truly alarming book. Critser investigates the...

Author	Ron Suskind
ISBN	0743255461

Updated with a new afterword and including a selection of key documents, this is the explosive account of how the Bush administration makes policy on war, taxes, and politics -- its true agenda exposed by a member of the Bush cabinet.

This vivid, unfolding narrative is like no other book that...

Author	Tony Vigorito
ISBN	0156031221

"Just a Couple of Days may be the most unusual, the most original novel I have ever read." —TOM ROBBINS

"A lyrical, thoughtful, viral meme of a book. Read it!"
—CHRISTOPHER MOORE

Join cult favorite Tony Vigorito in his award-winning underground hit chronicling the party...

Author	Lisa Tucker
ISBN	0743497007

Sure, we were a small family, but it wasn't lonely. We had the endless stream of my sister's customers and, of course, the music. Every day, all day, our stereo would play and Mary Beth would talk about the lyrics, what they really meant.
Leeann lives with her beautiful older sister -- the world's first...