Italian Hours

Author	Rainer Maria Rilke
ISBN	0486422453

In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), replied to the novice in this series of letters — an amazing archive of remarkable insights into the ideas behind...

Author	Michel Houellebecq
ISBN	0375727019

Brilliant, caustic, comic, and severe, The Elementary Particles is an unflinching look at a modern world plagued by consumerism, materialism, and unchecked scientific experimentation.

An international bestseller and controversial literary phenomenon that drew immediate comparison...

Author

Knut Hamsun

In a Norwegian coastal town, society's carefully woven threads begin to unravel when an unsettling stranger named Johan Nagel arrives. With an often brutal insight into human nature, Nagel draws out the townsfolk, exposing their darkest instincts and suppressed desires. At once arrogant and unassuming,...

Author	David Leavitt
ISBN	0395901286

Here are three novellas of escape and exile, touching and funny and at times calculatedly outrageous.

In "Saturn Street," a disaffected L.A. screenwriter delivers lunches to homebound AIDS patients, only to find himself falling in love with one of them.

In "The Wooden Anniversary,"...

Author	David Leavitt
ISBN	0395902444

In these nine masterly stories, David Leavitt surveys the complicated politics of human relationships in families and communities, in the present day and over the course of the last century. A "wizard at blending levity and pathos" (Chicago Tribune), Leavitt displays here his characteristic grace...