Concentration

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

The story of a poor Indiana girl Elnora Comstock who lives with her emotionally abusive mother, a stern heartless widow, at the edge of the Limberlost Swamp. Elnora attends school against her mother's wishes, fighting every inch of the way for her dream of an education, and collects and sells moths and other rare biological specimens from the swamp to pay for her schooling, books...

Bombs Away by John Steinbeck

A magnificent volume of short novels and an essential World War II report from one of America's great twentieth-century writers. A nonfiction account of Steinbeck's experiences with U.S. Army Air Force bomber crews during World War II.

Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado

It surprises no one that the charming but wayward Vadinho dos Guimaraes - a gambler notorious for never winning - dies during Carnival. His long suffering widow Dona Flor devotes herself to her cooking school and her friends, who urge her to remarry. She is soon drawn to a kind pharmacist who is everything Vadinho was not, and is altogether happy to marry him. But after her wedding...

I Am the Chosen King by Helen Hollick

England, 1044. Harold Godwineson, a young, respected Earl, falls in love with an ordinary but beautiful woman. He marries Edyth despite her lack of pedigree, pitting him against his turbulent family and his selfish King, Edward. In France, William, the bastard son of a duke, falls in love with power. Brutal and dangerously smart, William sets his sights on England, finding ambition a...

Leave it to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse

The plot is a typical Wodehouse romance, with Psmith inveigling himself into the idyllic castle, where there are the usual crop of girls to woo, crooks to foil, imposters to unmask, haughty aunts to baffle and valuable necklaces to steal. Among the players is Psmith's good friend Mike, married to Phyllis and in dire need of some financial help; the ever-suspicious Rupert Baxter is on...

My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl

Showcasing this lesser-known side of Dahl's celebrated genius, My Uncle Oswald is the unapologetically racy memoir of Oswald Hendryks Cornelius - bon vivant, collector of spiders, and undoubtedly the greatest fornicator of all time.

No Small Bills by Aaron Rosenberg

DuckBob Spinowitz has a problem. It isn't the fact that he has the head of a duck - the abduction was years ago and he's learned to live with it. But now those same aliens are back, and they claim they need his help! Apparently creatures from another reality are invading the universe, and only DuckBob can reset the device that maintains the barrier between dimensions. He reluctantly...

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

Palace Walk introduces us to tyrannical patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad's gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons - the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. The family's trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two world...

Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear

novelette about a black college professor who is doing research on an ancient and little known sea creature, the shoggoth (a creature gleaned from H. P. Lovecraft's work), off the coast of Maine. The story is set in 1938, against the backdrop of intensifying terror in Nazi Germany and a looming world war.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental...

The Razor's Edge by Andrew Muir

While most of rock's elder statesmen rarely venture far from home, the ultimate rock icon Bob Dylan has spent practically all of his life since 1986 touring the globe-including a gig at a military academy, a private concert for Japanese businessmen and a special performance for Pope John Paul II: Why? Respected Dylan expert, Muir documents the ups and downs of this unprecedented...

Under Their Skin by Dinah Lee Küng

The Geneva laser clinic of Dr. Roman Micheli is as discreet as a Swiss bank - no matter who the patient, Roman is the dispassionate professional. His wife Isabel, a WHO leprologist, is even more dedicated to her work than Roman. But their technically perfect partnership unravels when an American violinist strides onto a concert stage and weaves the audience into her musical spell...