As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T.H. White's tortured masterpiece, "The Goshawk," which de…
A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman’s unlikely friendship with a wild hare.
One of Pushkin's most popular and chilling stories, 'The Queen of Spades' tells of a young man who develops a dangerous obsession in pursuit of the wealth he craves.
Willa Cather's best known novel is an epic--almost mythic--story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the A…
When Laura Willowes’s beloved father dies, she is absorbed in the household of her brother and his family. There, she leaves behind “Laura” and enters into the state of “Aunt Lolly,” a genteel spinste…
The stark naked body was lying in the tub. Not unusual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder -- especially with a pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before the sightless eyes. Wh…
The American is a novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1876-77 and then as a book in 1877. Christopher Newman, a ‘self-made’ American millionaire in France…
Rick Dockery was the third-string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. In the AFC Championship game against Denver, to the surprise and dismay of virtually everyone, Rick actually got into the game. …
Although most of the action of The Mezzanine occurs on the escalator of an office building, where its narrator is returning to work after buying shoelaces, this startlingly inventive and witty novel t…
A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges…
The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in TheNew Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical re…
The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to …
There was an eighth son of an eighth son. He was, quite naturally, a wizard. And there it should have ended. However (for reasons we'd better not go into), he had seven sons. And then he had an eighth…
G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece is a psychological thriller that centers on seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the names of the days of the week. Chesterton e…
Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, hims…
And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the lan…
