Set on a fictional Caribbean island in the town of Paradise, Cereus Blooms at Night unveils the mystery surrounding Mala Ramchandin and the tempestuous history of her family. At the heart of this bold and seductive novel is an alleged crime committed many years before the story opens. Mala is the reclusive old woman suspected of murder who is deliv...more

With the same stunning blend of prophecy and social satire she brought to her classic The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood gives us a keenly prescient novel about the future of humanity—and its present. Humanity here equals Snowman, and in Snowman’s recollections Atwood re-creates a time much like our own, when a boy named Jimmy loved an elus...more

A preeminent scientist -- and the world's most prominent atheist -- asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celest...more

Jill Ciment’s writing has been called “luminous . . . sad, affecting” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times) and “rich in observation and insight” (Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times). Now in her new novel, her third, Jill Ciment turns her eye to a painter’s world in the early years of the twentieth century and tells the story of an America...more

The book Amy Goodman hailed as "classic muckraking at its best."When asked which single issue most affected their vote in the last presidential election, more than one in five Americans said "moral values"—and 78 percent of these voters chose to reelect President Bush. Indeed, Christian fundamentalists made up close to 40 percent of the president...more