Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino, a young man with a gift for languages and a talent for lying, narrates the story of his life, from his meeting with and adoption by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, his education in Paris, his and his companions' search for the legendary priest-king Prester John, and his arrival in Constantinople dur...more
A protagonist, known only as K., strives to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle that governs the village where K. has arrived to work as a land surveyor. Dark and at times surreal, "The Castle" is about alienation, bureaucracy, and the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system. "Metamorphosis" wa...more
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Sophie’s World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print.One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each:...more
Tolkien's masterpiece, and arguably the greatest fantasy work in Western literature, is a massive and complex epic simultaneously about the history of the imaginary kingdom of Middle Earth and the difficult quest of a group of adventurers as they strike out against the dark forces of Sauron, the Dark Lord.
This Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire. Arrakis is the sole source of Melange, the "spice of spices". Melange is necessary for interstellar travel and also grants psychic powers and longevity, so whoever controls it w...more
The author of the runaway "New York Times" bestseller "The Notebook" pens a tale of self-discovery, renewal, and the courage it takes to love again. When a 36-year-old single mother finds a love letter in a half-buried bottle while jogging along the shores of Cape Cod, she decides to take a dramatic leap that will forever change her life.
A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover--these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, ...more
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary history.