Bücher veröffentlicht von Harper Perennial

Passionate and brilliantly rendered, Small Wars questions how honor can exist amid cruelty and asks what becomes of intimacy in the grinding gears of empire.A major in the British Army, Hal Treherne is a dedicated soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. He is eager to lead his men into combat; his wife, Clara, however, is relieved when they are posted instead to seemingly peaceful sun-kissed Cyprus. But war erupts over unification with Greece, the island is consumed by violence?and Hal discovers that his military training cannot help him navigate the minefields of moral compromise that lie beneath every battle he fights. Clara grows fearful of her increasingly distant husband. When she needs him most, she finds the once-tender Hal a changed man?a betrayal that is only part of the shocking personal crisis to come.

One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything--home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone--never to get them back.William Boyd's electrifying follow-up to the Costa Award-winning Restless, Ordinary Thunderstorms is a profound and gripping novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the seamy underbelly of every city.

Who killed Dr. Harvey Burdell in his opulent Manhattan town house?At once a gripping mystery and a richly detailed excavation of a lost age, 31 Bond Street is a spellbinding tale of murder, sex, greed, and politics in 1857 New York. Author Ellen Horan interweaves fact and fiction?reimagining the sensational nineteenth-century crime that rocked the city a few short years before the Civil War ripped through the fabric of the nation, while transporting readers back to a time that eerily echoes our own.Though there are no clues to the brutal slaying of wealthy Dr. Burdell, suspicion quickly falls on Emma Cunningham, the refined, pale-skinned widow who managed his house and servants. An ambitious district attorney seeks a swift conviction, but defense attorney Henry Clinton is a formidable obstacle?a man firmly committed to justice and the law, and to the cause of a frightened, vulnerable woman desperately trying to save herself from the gallows.

In this riveting mystery from New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs is hired to unravel a case of wartime love and death, an investigation that leads her to a doomed affair between a young cartographer and a mysterious nurse.August 1914. As Michael Clifton is mapping land he has just purchased in California's beautiful Santa Ynez Valley, war is declared in Europe--and duty-bound to his father's native country, the young cartographer soon sets sail for England to serve in the British army. Three years later, he is listed as missing in action.April 1932. After Michael's remains are unearthed in France, his parents retain London psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs, hoping she can find the unnamed nurse whose love letters were among their late son's belongings. It is a quest that leads Maisie back to her own bittersweet wartime love--and to the stunning discovery that Michael Clifton was murdered in his dugout. Suddenly an exposed web of intrigue and violence threatens to ensnare the dead soldier's family and even Maisie herself as she attempts to cope with the impending loss of her mentor and the unsettling awareness that she is once again falling in love.

From Terry Castle, the brilliant cultural commentator whom Susan Sontag called "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today," comes a long-awaited collection of captivating personal essays. The title piece at the heart of the anthology?Castle's candid, wry, and rueful retelling of her romantic involvement with a female professor during graduate school?is a pitch-perfect recollection of the fiascoes of youth. Here, also, are classic Castle short works, including "Desperately Seeking Susan," a droll and bittersweet account of her friendship with Sontag; "My Heroin Christmas," a darkly humorous examination of addiction, her family and stepsiblings, and the late, great saxophonist Art Pepper; and the picaresque "Travels with My Mother," a rollicking tour through lesbianism, art, and the difficult yet transcendent paintings of Agnes Martin.The Professor is Terry Castle at her best: utterly distinctive, wise, frank, and fearless.

"Devotion's biggest triumph is its voice: funny and unpretentious, concrete and earthy--appealing to skeptics and believers alike. This is a gripping, beautiful story." -- Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep"I was immensely moved by this elegant book." -- Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, LoveDani Shapiro, the acclaimed author of the novel Black and White and the bestselling memoir Slow Motion, is back with Devotion: a searching and timeless new memoir that examines the fundamental questions that wake women in the middle of the night, and grapples with the ways faith, prayer, and devotion affect everyday life. Devotion is sure to appeal to all those dealing with the trials and tribulations of what Carl Jung called "the afternoon of life."

Buried in info? Cross-eyed over technology? From the bottom of a pile of paper, disks, books, e-books, and scattered thumb drives comes a cry of hope: Make way for the librarians--they can help!Those who predicted the death of libraries forgot to consider that, in the automated maze of contemporary life, none of us--expert and hopelessly baffled alike--can get along without human help. And not just any help: we need librarians, the only ones who can save us from being buried by the digital age. This Book Is Overdue! is a romp through the ranks of information professionals--from the blunt and obscenely funny bloggers to the quiet, law-abiding librarians gagged by the FBI. These are the pragmatic idealists who fuse the tools of the digital age with their love for the written word and the enduring values of free speech, open access, and scout-badge-quality assistance to anyone in need.

Evelyn Waugh was already famous when Brideshead Revisited was published in 1945. The chronicle of a household, a family, and a journey of religious faith?an elegy for a vanishing world?Waugh's masterwork was a tribute and testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier. The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric, and fascinating as their fictional Brideshead counterparts, their story just as compelling, filled with secrets and betrayals, scandals and unwavering love.Mad World is Paula Byrne's innovative and engrossing biography of Evelyn Waugh, recalling the loves and obsessions that shaped his world and his writing, capturing Waugh through the friendships that mattered most to him, and exploring how he encoded the defining experiences of his adult life in his greatest literary work.

In nineteenth-century industrial America, while Carnegie provided the steel, Rockefeller the oil, Morgan the money, and Vanderbilt the railroads, Pulitzer ushered in the modern mass media. James McGrath Morris chronicles the epic story of Joseph Pulitzer, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant who amassed great wealth and extraordinary power during his remarkable rise through American politics and journalism. Based on years of research and newly discovered documents, Pulitzer is a classic, magisterial biography. It is a gripping portrait of the media baron who transformed American journalism into a medium of mass consumption and immense influence, and of the grueling legal battles he endured for freedom of the press that changed the landscape of American newspapers and politics.

Angela Clark is in love?with the most fabulous city in the world! When Angela catches her boyfriend with another woman at her best friend's wedding, she's heartbroken and desperate to run away. With little more than a crumpled bridesmaid dress, a pair of Louboutins, and her passport in hand, Angela decides to jump on a plane for . . . NYC!Settling into a cute hotel and quickly bonding with benevolent concierge Jenny?a chatterbox Oprah wannabe with room for a new best friend?Angela heads out for a New York makeover, some serious retail therapy, and a whirlwind tour of the city. Before she knows it, she's dating two sexy guys and blogging about her Big Apple escapades for a real fashion magazine. But while it's one thing telling readers about your romantic dilemmas, it's another working them out for yourself. Angela has fallen head over heels for the city that never sleeps, but does she heart New York more than home?

"The trouble with trying to read passages from the Adrian Mole Diaries aloud is that you find yourself laughing so hard you can't go on. It's that kind of book." --Kansas City Star "As sad and devastating as it is laugh-out-loud funny. A delight!" --New York Times The agonizingly funny, captivatingly poignant journals of England's bespotted everyboy are now available again. An international phenomenon and perennial favorite since their initial publication made a splash in Thatcher's Britain more than twenty years ago, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Age 13 3/4 is now side-by-side with its hilarious sequel The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole in this collected single volume.

America's greatest idea factory isn't Bell Labs, Silicon Valley, or MIT's Media Lab. It's the secretive, Pentagon-led agency known as DARPA. Founded by Eisenhower in response to Sputnik and the Soviet space program, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) mixes military officers with sneaker-wearing scientists, seeking paradigm-shifting ideas in varied fields?from energy, robotics, and rockets to doctorless operating rooms, driverless cars, and planes that can fly halfway around the world in just a few hours. Michael Belfiore was given unpre-cedented access to write this first-ever popular account of DARPA. The Department of Mad Scientists contains material that has barely been reported in the general media?in fact, only 2 percent of Americans know much of anything about the agency. But as this fascinating read demonstrates, DARPA isn't so much frightening as it is inspiring?it is our future.

So, what do you get an atheist for Christmas? This collection of smart, funny essays, of course--short works by 42 resolutely secular-minded geniuses about how to survive (and even enjoy) the holiday season...without feeling the Christmas Spirit move you. Editors Robin Harvie and Stephanie Meyers have gathered writers, celebrities, comedians, and scientists to deliver essays ranging from the hilarious to the reflective to the charmingly absurd in The Atheist's Guide to Christmas, a perfect gift for the Pastafarian who has everything, the Scrooge who wants nothing, and anyone else interested in the diverse meanings that Christmas can hold.

Loyalty, loss, and the ties that bind: These are the ingredients of The Recipe Club, a "novel cookbook" that combines an authentic story of friendship with more than eighty delicious recipes.Lifelong friends Lilly and Val are united as much by their differences as by their similarities. In childhood, "LillyPad" and "ValPal" form an exclusive two-person club, writing intimate letters in which they share hopes, fears, deepest secrets . . . and recipes?from Lilly's "Lovelorn Lasagna" to Valerie's "Forgiveness Tapenade." The Recipe Club sustains Lilly and Val's bond across the decades: through the challenges of independence, the joys and heartbreaks of first love, and the emotional complexities of family relationships, identity, mortality, and goals deferred?until the fateful day when an act of kindness becomes an unforgivable betrayal.

Max Zajack's life is cheap rooms, dead-end jobs, and suicidal fantasies until he meets the alluring and mysterious Olivia Aphrodite, and everything goes to hell.Max is a struggling musician and wannabe writer. His life is in a rut until one night, while playing a gig at a local club, he gazes out into the crowd and sees Olivia. Before long, they are sharing a bed and host of dark vices that begin to consume them. Their love turns toxic, sending them spiraling downward toward the inevitable. Violently romantic, viscerally honest, Hating Olivia is the story of two loners whose obsessive love brings them to the edge of destruction.

In The Making of the President 1972, the fourth volume of narrative history of American politics in action, Theodore H. White brings his defining quartet of campaign narratives to a surprising and riveting close. The consummate journalist, White chronicles both the Democratic and the Republican parties as they jockeyed for position toward the end of Richard M. Nixon's turbulent first term. He illuminates the cinematic moments that shaped the campaign?the attempt on George Wallace's life, Edmund Muskie crying in the snow in New Hampshire, the swift rise and fall of Tom Eagleton, and the ongoing anguish of Vietnam?leading inexorably to a second chaotic collapse among the Democrats and a landslide victory for Nixon. Yet even as the president's highest ambitions were confirmed, White watches aghast as the ?new Nixon? of 1968 is eclipsed by the corrupt Nixon of old?a Shakespearean conclusion to an astonishing political epoch.

In The Making of the President 1968, the third volume of the groundbreaking series that revolutionized American political journalism, Theodore H. White offers a compelling account of one of the most turbulent presidential campaigns in history: the 1968 election that put Richard M. Nixon in the White House. Viewing the electoral process from an insider's perspective?capturing both the vast scope and the intimate, behind-the-scenes details?White chronicles a campaign that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, was marked by protest and violence in the streets of Chicago, and that came down to a neck-and-neck finish between the tenacious but ill-starred Hubert H. Humphrey and the most fascinating politician of the modern age: the finally, unexpectedly, victorious Richard Nixon.

Ever been betrayed by a pretty cover and a pair of alluring blurbs?Rest assured: Read This Next will never hurt you. The 500 book recommendations contained within these pages have all been carefullyvetted and approved by two literary professionals with discerning taste and witty wit. Arranged into delightful thematic lists, thesesuggestions cover the best of literature high and low, from page-turning classics to mind-expanding fluff; from murder mysteries and post-apocalyptic visions to historical fiction and bathroom books. Each book is paired with deeply insightful, deeply hilarious discussionquestions, perfect for book groups or for readers who just enjoy talking to themselves.In a world where so many books disappoint? robbing you of your time and money, promising more than they can deliver?Read This Next is the wickedly smart, faithful, and attractive partner you've alwaysdreamed would bring you true and lasting reading happiness.

There are people out there, millions of them, who act as if they still believe everything their mothers told them in the first six months of their life?that they're the nicest, most beautiful, and most promising and intelligent bags of flesh ever to walk the earth. We call these people shmucks. In How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck), bestselling author Michael Wex offers a wise and witty guide to being a good human being, regardless of your religion or beliefs. Referencing pop culture, current events, and Jewish tradition with equal ease, Wex explores the strategies developed by an oppressed people to pursue happiness with their dignity?and sense of humor?intact.

"A splendid book for journalists (new or old), fiction writers, essayists, and critics. But it could also be of great use to the intelligent common reader, the man or woman who wonders why it's impossible to finish reading certain stories and why others carry the reader in a vivid rush to the end."--Pete Hamill, author of A Drinking Life In the spirit of Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style, comes The Elements of Story, by Francis Flaherty, longtime story editor at The New York Times. A brilliant blend of memoir and how-to, The Elements of Story offers more than 50 principles that emphasize storytelling aspects rather than simply the mechanics of writing--a relentlessly entertaining, totally accessible writing guide for the novice and the professional alike.

An intimate look at the founders?George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison?and thewomen who played essential roles in their livesWith his usual storytelling flair and unparalleled research, notedhistorian Thomas Fleming examines the relationships between theFounding Fathers and the women who were at the center of theirlives. They were the mothers who powerfully shaped their sons'visions of domestic life, from hot-tempered Mary Ball Washington to promiscuous Rachel Lavien, Hamilton's mother. Lovers and wives played even more critical roles. We learn of the youthful Washington's tortured love for the coquettish Sarah Fairfax, a close friend's wife; of Franklin's two ?wives,? one in London and one in Philadelphia; of how lonely, deeply unhappy Abigail kept home and family togetherfor years on end during Adams's long absences; of Hamilton's adulterous betrayal of his wife and their eventual reconciliation; of how the brilliant Madison, jilted by a flirtatious fifteen-year-old, went on to marry the effervescent Dolley, who helped make this shy man into a popular president. Jefferson's controversial relationshipwith Sally Hemings is also examined, reinterpreting where his heart truly lay.

"Darkly funny, surprisingly tender . . . witheringly dead-on." -- Los Angeles TimesNamed one of the year's best novels by: Time - Salon.com - Los Angeles Times - NPR/Fresh Air - New West - Kansas City Star - St. Louis Post-DispatchA comic and heartfelt novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and Cold Millions about how we get to the edge of ruin--and how we begin to make our way back.What happens when small-time reporter Matthew Prior quits his job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse?Before long, he wakes up to find himself jobless, hobbled with debt, spying on his wife's online flirtation, and six days away from losing his home. . . . Until, one night on a desperate two a.m. run to 7-Eleven, he falls in with some local stoners, and they end up hatching the biggest--and most misbegotten--plan yet.

Surgeons have long been known for their allergy to doubt, an unsurprising trait in professionals who must play God, routinely risking someone else's life to do their job. But in this illuminating memoir, Gabriel Weston reveals the emotions, passions, and doubts normally hidden behind a surgeon's mask.Interweaving her own story with those of her patients, old and young, Weston evokes both the humor and the heartbreak that come from medicine's daily confrontation with the ultimate unknowability of the human body. With prose that does not flinch from the raw, graphic realities of a surgeon's day, Weston confronts life, death, and the unique difficulties of being a female surgeon in a heavily male-dominated profession.

Her canvases were the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; the Great Terror; America at the time of Washington and Jefferson; Paris under the Directoire and then under Napoleon; Regency London; the battle of Waterloo; and, for the last years of her life, the Italian ducal courts. She witnessed firsthand the demise of the French monarchy, the wave of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and the precipitous rise and fall of Napoleon. Lucie Dillon?a daughter of French and British nobility known in France by her married name, Lucie de la Tour du Pin?was the chronicler of her age. In this compelling biography, Caroline Moorehead illuminates the extraordinary life and remarkable achievements of this strong, witty, elegant, opinionated, and dynamic woman who survived personal tragedy and the devastation wrought by momentous historic events.

"Diary of a Very Bad Year is a rarity: a book on modern finance that's both extraordinarily thoughtful and enormously entertaining."-- James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds "A great read. . . . HFM offers a brilliant financial professional's view of the economic situation in real time, from September 2007, when problems in financial markets began to surface, until late summer 2009."-- Booklist "n+1 is the rightful heir to Partisan Review and the New York Review of Books. It is rigorous, curious and provocative." -- Malcolm Gladwell A profoundly candid and captivating account of the economic crisis and subprime mortgage collapse, from an anonymous hedge fund manager, as told to the editors of New York literary magazine n+1.

Selected from the range of Cooper's essays and reportage in Artforum, Bookforum, Detour, Interview, LA Weekly, Spin, and the Village Voice, among other publications, Smothered in Hugs presents the best nonfiction of one of America's greatest writers. Cooper has written on grave social issues, producing touchstone pieces for a generation of readers. His obituaries for Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, and William S. Burroughs offer portraits that are both crystallizing and appropriately indefinite. His reckonings of contemporary writers are astute and unsparing. And, of course, he serves as witness to the work and play of an illustrious roster of cultural personalities?and does so with an acuity and fairness missing from most pop culture criticism.

Exhausted and disillusioned with the world of theater in May 1935, Josephine Tey has traveled to Cornwall to spend the summer with her friends the Motleys at their run-down but beautiful country estate. Ready to begin work on her second mystery novel, Tey finds much to inspire her in the landscape and its legends. Meanwhile, the Motleys have become involved in an amateur production at the nearby Minack Theater.Detective Inspector Archie Penrose has returned to his roots in Cornwall to attend the funeral of a family friend, a young estate worker who died in a tragic riding accident. Penrose has a few questions about the circumstances surrounding the fatal occurrence. And when the Minack Theater proves to be the stage for a real-life tragedy, Penrose and Tey together must investigate an audacious murder and confront an evil suggesting that there are darker things than death.

"Fascinating....Bessel does an excellent job of evoking the blasted landscape of a conquered Germany."--The New Yorker"A sober yet powerful account."--New York Times Book ReviewAuthoritative and dramatic, Germany 1945 by distinguished British historian Richard Bessel is groundbreaking history that brilliantly explores the devastation and remarkable rebirth of Germany at the end of World War II. Called "a masterly account by a first rate historian," by Ian Kershaw (Hitler), Germany 1945 is sure to become the definitive work on the subject.

"A brilliant, complicated man is the centre of Jill Dawson's The Great Lover, and while she draws extensively on historical records of Brooke and his contemporaries, it is her decisions as a novelist that make this account of his life fascinating as well as faithful. . . . . The story that emerges is strong, satisfying, and memorable." -- The Times (London)An imaginative, fascinating novel about one of the most enduringly popular and romantic figures of the First World War--the radical, handsome young poet Rupert Brooke.