Despite the turmoil of Arab nationalism and fundamentalism, Middle Eastern wars, and oil crises, the history of the Arab world has been little known and poorly understood in the West. One reason may be that, for more than half a century, there has been no up-to-date single-volume work that chronicles the story of Arab civilization-until now. Albert Hourani, distinguished historian and interpreter, has written a masterwork, a panoramic view encompassing...

This heroic fantasy is set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace that is a dark mirror of our own. A spellbinding tale of good versus evil, it features one of Stephen King's most powerful creations--The Gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages from ancient myth to frontier western legend. His pursuit of The Man in Black, his liaison with the sexually ravenous Alice, his friendship with...

Neal Page (Martin) wants to fly home to spend Thanksgiving with his family. Del Griffith (Candy) leads Page on a hilarious, cross-country, wild goose chase that keeps him from tasting his turkey.

A simple game of hide-and-seek turns into a thrilling and dangerous adventure, as four English schoolchildren step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia--a land enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion Aslan signals a great change.

[This book] chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under-- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche...

Based on the Beardsley family of Northern California, this comedy tells the story of a widower and father of ten who marries a widow with eight of her own.

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.' A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl.

The very first collection of superb short stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings? First there was the mystery of the film star and the diamond? then came the ?suicide? that was murder? the mystery of the absurdly cheap flat? a suspicious death in a locked gun-room? a million dollar bond robbery? the curse of a pharaoh?s tomb? a jewel robbery by the sea? the abduction of a Prime Minister? the disappearance of a banker? a phone call...

"Jane Austen's final novel is her most mature and wickedly satirical. It follows the story of Anne Elliott, a teenager engaged to a seemingly ideal man, Frederick Wentworth. But after being persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that he is too poor to be a suitable match, Anne ends their engagement. When they are reacquainted eight years later, their circumstances are transformed: Frederick is returning triumphantly from the Napoleonic War, while Anne's...

In 1845 Thoreau, disdainful of America's commercialism and industrialism, left his home town in Massachusetts to begin a new life alone, in a hut on the north-west shore of Walden Pond. This is his account of this experiment in solitary living.