Bone, an illegitimate child in a family of social outcasts, sees her mother's happiness with her new husband and will not tell when the stepfather begins abusing her in the 1950s.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this classic book is generally regarded as the finest novel ever written on American politics. It describes the career of Willie Stark, a back-country lawyer whose idealism is overcome by his lust for power.

In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artifact that--if he can find it--would redefine history. Traveling in one of Europe's earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this strange treasure. Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds himself at the center of a mystery of his own and drawn into the consequences...

The story of land-surveyor K's obsessive attempts to reach the castle, illustrating man's struggle against bureaucracy.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) produced a huge collection of novels, novellas and short stories, earning him recognition as a great master of the novel, as well as one of the creators of literary realism. He collected and arranged his works under the name "La Comédie humaine", which he then divided into eight major topics. "Eugénie Grandet" was placed in the section titled, "Scenes from Provincial Life". The story takes place in the French town of...

Former police officer Gilrein of Massachusetts searches for the killer of his wife, also a police officer. He discovers she was investigating police corruption involving a chief. By the author of The Skin Palace.

Twenty-year-old Bethany Schrock is restless. Her love life has derailed, her faith hangs by a thread, and she's spending the hot summer days wading through a lifetime's accumulation of junk at the home of five ancient Amish sisters. About the only thing that holds her interest is the spirited and dangerously handsome Jimmy Fisher, and he seems bent on irritating her to no end. When the sly old sisters and a guest at the Inn get Bethany involved in...

Cousin Bette (1846) is considered to be Balzac's last great novel, and a key work in his Human Comedy. Set in the Paris of the 1830s and 1840s, it is a complex tale of the devastating effect of violent jealousy and sexual passion. Against a meticulously detailed backdrop of a post-Napoleonic France struggling with massive industrial and economic change, Balzac's characters span many classes of society, from impoverished workers and wealthy courtesans...

Aleph marks a return to the author's beginnings. In a frank and surprising personal story, one of the world's most beloved authors embarks on a remarkable and transformative journey of self discovery. Facing a grave crisis of faith, and seeking a path of spiritual renewal and growth, he decides to start over: to travel, to experiment, to reconnect with people and the world. On this journey through Europe, Africa, and Asia, he will again meet Hilal,...

The only authorized translation of the bestselling masterpiece by one of the greatest authors of our time, "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. "Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all...