At an inn in the Berkshire Mountains, seven former schoolmates gather to celebrate a wedding - a reunion that becomes the occasion of astonishing revelations as the friends collectively recall a long-ago night that indelibly marked each of their lives. Written with the fluent narrative artistry that distinguishes all of Anita Shreve's best-selling novels, A Wedding In December acutely probes the mysteries of the human heart and the endless allure of paths not taken.

Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit who wanted to be left alone in quiet comfort. But the wizard Gandalf came along with a band of homeless dwarves. Soon Bilbo was drawn into their quest facing evil orcs, savage wolves, giant spiders, and wose unknown dangers. Finally, it was Bilbo - alone and unaided - who had to confront the great dragon Smaug, the terror of an entire countryside!

In a memoir hailed for its searing candor and wit, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit - as she struggles for understanding ("After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes"); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through the grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom prodoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's poweerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

Emily Abbott has always been considered the Girl Most Likely to Be Nice - but lately being nice hassn't done her any food. Her parents have decided to move the family from Chicago back to their hometown of Boston in the middle of Emily's senior year. Only Emily's frst real boyfriend, Sean, is in Chicago, and so is her shot at class valedictorian and early admission to the Ivy League. What's a nice girl to do?

Then Sean dumps Emily on moving day and her father announces he's staying behind in Chicago "to tie up loose ends," and Emily decides that what a nice girl needs to do is to stop being nice.

She reconnects with her best friends in Boston, Josie and Lucy, only to discover that they too have been on the receiving end of some glaring Guy Don'ts. So when the girls have to come up with something to put in the senior class time capsule, they know exactly what to do. They'll create a not-so-nice reference guide for future generations of guys - an instruction book that teaches them the right way to treat girls.

But when her friends draft Emily to test out their tips on Luke Preston - the hottest, most popular guy in school, who just brok up with Josie by emial - Emily soon finds that Luke is the trickiest of test subjects...and that even a nice girl like Emily has a few things to learn about love.

Thought Police. Big Brother. Orwellian. These words have become part of our national vocabulary because of George Orwell's classic novel 1984, the story of one man's nightmare odyssey through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but individual thought and memory. A minor functionary named Winston Smith joins a covert brotherhood and pursues a forbidden love affair against the cold, gray backdrop of the Republic of Oceania - only to become a hunted enemy of the state...and of Big Brother.

Today, half a century after it was written, Orwell's prophetic, haunted tale of conformity and identity strikes a disturbing chord. As we follow Winston Smith through his rebellion, imprisionment, torture, and reeducation, we witness firsthand the worst crime we can inflict upon ourselves and others: the destruction of the truths and freedoms that make us who we are.

Few novels ever swept the world with such overpowering impact as Les Miserables. Within twenty-four hours of its publication in 1862. the first Paris edition was sold out. In other great cities throughout the world, it was davoured with equal relish.

Sensational, dramatic, packed with rich excitement and filled with the sweep and violence of human passions, Les Miserables is not only a superb adventure but a powerful social document. The story of how the convict Jean Valjean struggles to escape his past and reaffirm his humanity in a world brutalized by poverty and ignorance became the gospel of the poor and the oppressed. One of the greatest works in Western literature, Les Miserables is an exhilerating and deeply profound reading experience.

This powerful first novel...tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, Khaled Hosseini's privileged young narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy, just before his country's revolution and its invasion by Russian forces. But political events, even as dramatic as the ones that are presented in The Kite Runner, are only a part of this story. In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini gives us a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence - forces that continue to threaten them today.