Bücher veröffentlicht von Harper Perennial

Winner of the Friends of American Writers Award for FictionAs seamstresses, the young sisters Emília and Luzia dos Santos know how to cut, mend, and conceal--useful skills in the lawless backcountry of Brazil, where ruthless land barons feud with bands of outlaw cangaceiros, trapping innocent residents in the crossfire. Emília, a naive romantic, dreams of falling in love with a gentleman and escaping to a big city. Quick-tempered Luzia also longs for escape, finding it in her craft and secret prayers to the saints she believes once saved her life. But when Luzia is abducted by cangaceiros led by the infamous Hawk and Emília stumbles into a marriage with the son of a wealthy and politically powerful doctor, the sisters' quiet lives diverge in ways they never would have imagined.

Alaa Al Aswany has won resounding critical acclaim for his deft and moving portrayals of the lives of contemporary Egyptians who constantly examine their relationship with Egypt's history, religion, class, and gender distinctions. In Friendly Fire he once again demonstrates an extraordinary empathy for lost and searching souls as he focuses on the exquisite emotions of everyday life.In "The Kitchen Boy" and "Dearest Sister Makarim," Al Aswany explores the hypocrisy of the class divide. The brief and tender "Izzat Amin Iskandar" is a heartrending view of youthful hope. And in the unforgettable novella "The Isam Abd el-Ati Papers," the narrator carries us along a troubling journey through his painful relationships with his artist father and his self-centered mother, en route to a devastating collision of temptation and morality.Here are stories of generational conflict, love, repression, and the clash of Western and Arab ideals, all beautifully rendered by a true modern master.

Mitchell, widely known for his original and definitive translations of spiritual writings and poetry, has taken the work of Neruda (1904-1973), whose poems are passionate, humorous and exceptionally accessible, and brought them to life for a whole new generation of readers. Mitchell has selected nearly 50 poems for this collection, which focuses on Neruda's mature period, beginning with Elemental Odes, published when he was 50 years old, and ending with "Full Powers, " published when he was 58. The volume is bilingual, with Neruda's original Spanish text facing Mitchell's English translation. Excerpt from "Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon": Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon, thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light, what obscure brilliance opens between your columns? What ancient night does a man touch with his senses? Loving is a journey with water and with stars, with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour: Loving is a clash of lightning-bolts and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.

While working the weekend night shift, Caroline Mabry, a weary Spokane police detective, encounters a seemingly unstable but charming derelict who tells her, "I'd like to confess." But he insists on writing out his statement in longhand. In the forty-eight hours that follow, the stranger confesses to not just a crime but an entire life?spinning a wry and haunting tale of youth and adulthood, of obsession and revenge, and of two men's intertwined lives.Fiendishly clever and darkly funny, Land of the Blind speaks to the bonds and compromises we make as children?and to the fatal errors we can make at any time.

Shortly before his death at a tragically young age, author Thomas Wolfe presented his editor with an epic masterwork that was subsequently published as three separate novels: You Can't Go Home Again, The Hills Beyond, and The Web and the Rock.The Web and the Root features the three initial sections of the The Web and the Rock, widely considered to be the book's strongest material. A prequel to You Can't Go Home Again, it is the story of George Webber's momentous journey from Libya Falls, North Carolina, to the Golden City of the North--offering vivid, sometimes cutting depictions of rural pleasures and small-town clannishness while exploring boundless urban possibility and the complex, violent undercurrents of the metropolis.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes an astonishing investigation of how America lost its way and the nation's daily struggle to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. Tracking down historic revelations and improbable hope from the Beltway to the farthest corners of the globe, Suskind delivers a stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world.

The cruel fate of the Princes in the Tower is one of the most fascinating--and most troubling--of all England's historical murder mysteries. But what was the truth behind the deaths of the young Edward V and his brother, Dickon, taken from their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, King Edward IV's beautiful widow, and their guardian, Anthony Woodville? And what about the man who would become King Richard III?In a brilliant feat of historical daring, the acclaimed author of The Mathematics of Love reimagines the tragedy of the youngest victims of the Wars of the Roses. Through the voices of Elizabeth, Anthony, and Una--a historian who herself knows grief, betrayal, and secret love--Emma Darwin re-creates the lethal power struggles into which the boys were born, their heart-wrenching imprisonment, and the ultimate betrayal of their innocence.

"[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction." --Bret Easton EllisInternationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now--in stories--with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper's taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.

March 1934. Revered mystery writer Josephine Tey is traveling from Scotland to London for the final week of her play Richard of Bordeaux, the surprise hit of the season, with pacifist themes that resonate in a world still haunted by war. But joy turns to horror when her arrival coincides with the murder of a young woman she had befriended on the train ride--and Tey is plunged into a mystery as puzzling as any in her own works. Detective Inspector Archie Penrose is convinced that the killing is connected to the play, and that Tey herself is in danger of becoming a victim of her own success. In the aftermath of a second murder, the writer and the policeman must join together to stop a ruthless killer who will apparently stop at nothing.

New York Times Bestseller"Dolnick brilliantly re-creates the circumstances that made possible one of the most audacious frauds of the 20th century. And in doing so Dolnick plumbs the nature of fraud itself . . . an incomparable page turner." --Boston GlobeAs riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of one of the most beloved and admired artists who ever lived. As Edward Dolnick reveals, his true genius lay in psychological manipulation, and he came within inches of fooling the world. Instead, he landed in an Amsterdam court on trial for his life. The Forger's Spell is the gripping, true tale of this almost perfect crime.

One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America delivers an extraordinary novel?a sweeping chronicle of contemporary Los Angeles that is bold, exhilarating, and utterly original. Dozens of characters pass through the reader's sight lines?some never to be seen again?but James Frey lingers on a handful of LA's lost souls and captures the dramatic narrative of their lives. A dazzling tour de force, Bright Shiny Morning illuminates the joys, horrors, and unexpected fortunes of life and death in Los Angeles.

In this unique biography of Thomas Jefferson, leading journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens offers a startlingly new and provocative interpretation of our Founding Father?a man conflicted by power who wrote the Declaration of Independence and acted as ambassador to France yet yearned for a quieter career in the Virginia legislature. A masterly writer, Jefferson was an awkward public speaker. A professed proponent of emancipation, he elided the issue of slavery from the Declaration of Independence and continued to own human property. A reluctant candidate, he left an indelible presidential legacy. With intelligence, insight, eloquence, and wit, Hitchens gives us an artful portrait of a complex, formative figure and his turbulent era.

It was a crime that shocked the nation: the brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals--too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were apprehended, state's attorney Robert Crowe was certain that no defense could save the ruthless killers from the gallows. But the families of the confessed murderers hired Clarence Darrow, entrusting the lives of their sons to the most famous lawyer in America in what would be one of the most sensational criminal trials in the history of American justice.Set against the backdrop of the 1920s--a time of prosperity, self-indulgence, and hedonistic excess in a lawless city on the brink of anarchy--For the Thrill of It draws the reader into a world of speakeasies and flappers, of gangsters and gin parties, with a spellbinding narrative of Jazz Age murder and mystery.

A new collection of unusually intimate poems by the highly acclaimed poet Frieda Hughes, Daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

"As exciting and readable an account as you could wish." -- The Guardian "Fascinating." - Bill Bryson The Black Death vividly and comprehensively brings to light the full horror of this uniquely catastrophic event that hastened the disintegration of an age.A series of natural disasters in the Orient during the fourteenth century brought about the most devastating period of death and destruction in European history. The epidemic killed one-third of Europe's people over a period of three years, and the resulting social and economic upheaval was on a scale unparalleled in all of recorded history. Synthesizing the records of contemporary chroniclers and the work of later historians, Philip Ziegler offers a critically acclaimed overview of this crucial epoch in a single masterly volume.

"Wit, emotion and undiminished boldness. . . . This is a book which celebrates life and warms the heart." --Tulsa WorldA timeless American classic, this beloved family saga of the heartland is "deeply felt . . . dramatic . . . constantly alive" (Harper's Magazine)On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy's fate will be the family's greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive--and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.This moving novel brings to life the rhythms and the mood of Midwestern rural life through its endearing characters and their secrets, fears, heartache, and pleasures. Jetta Carleton's only work of fiction remains an utterly compelling story told with perceptive humor and a deep compassion.

Tennis has been Willy Novinsky's one love ever since she first picked up a racquet at the age of four. A middle-ranked pro at twenty-three, she's met her match in Eric Oberdorf, a low-ranked, untested Princeton grad who also intends to make his mark on the international tennis circuit. Eric becomes Willy's first passion off the court, and eventually they marry. But while wedded life begins well, full-tilt competition soon puts a strain on their relationship?and an unexpected accident sends driven and gifted Willy sliding irrevocably toward resentment, tragedy, and despair. From acclaimed author Lionel Shriver comes a brilliant and unflinching novel about the devastating cost of prizing achievement over love.

Lewis Aldridge is just 10 years old when he loses his mother. Neglected by his distant father and new stepmother, he can't help but let the grief inside him grow. When he is 17, that pain explodes in an incendiary act of destruction. After serving two years in prison, Lewis returns to a family that does not know how to face him and a town that wishes he would have stayed away. On the outskirts of post-war London, Waterford seems the perfect hamlet. But beneath its polished surface fester cruelty and violence. Lewis is determined to redeem himself, but his efforts are stymied. His stepmother's attempt to make amends goes dangerously awry, and his relationship with his new boss's daughters reveals unimaginable secrets. In this brilliant debut Sadie Jones tells the story of a boy who refuses to accept the polite lies of a tightly knit community that rejects love in favor of appearances. Written with nail-biting suspense and cinematic pacing, The Outcast is an emotionally powerful evocation of post-war provincial English society, and a remarkably uplifting testament to the redemptive powers of love and understanding.

One of our most acclaimed poets brings the work of the great Persian mystic and poet, Hafez, to a new audience. There is no poet in our tradition who carries the amount of admiration and devotion that the Persians have for Hafez. Children learn to sing Hafez poems in the third grade, and almost every family has a copy of the collected Hafez on the dining room table. Robert Bly and the great Islamic scholar Leonard Lewisohn have worked for 15 years on this book of Hafez, the first that carries into English his nimbleness, his outrageous humor, his defenses of the private life in the face of the fundamentalists, and the joy of his love poems. He writes in the ghazal form, one of the greatest inventions in the history of poetry. This is Rumi's wild younger brother, now brought into an English that makes his genius visible.

A young woman recently relocated to a tiny Vermont logging town, Lillian is menaced by a mysterious stalker named Blackway. This one man--who kills her cat, forces her boyfriend to flee the state in terror, and silently threatens her very existence--is a force little understood by the local figures to whom she turns for help. Yet, in this spare and powerful tale, Lillian enlists the powerful brute Nate and the curmudgeonly Lester to take the fight to her tormenter as a raggedy quartet of town elders ponders her likely fate. With simple strength and extraordinary force, Go with Me is a riveting modern fable of good provoked to resist evil.

Symmetry is all around us. Of fundamental significance to the way we interpret the world, this unique, pervasive phenomenon indicates a dynamic relationship between objects. Combining a rich historical narrative with his own personal journey as a mathematician, Marcus du Sautoy takes a unique look into the mathematical mind as he explores deep conjectures about symmetry and brings us face-to-face with the oddball mathematicians, both past and present, who have battled to understand symmetry's elusive qualities.

From Louis Ferrante, a one-time mafia thug and federal prison inmate, comes this remarkable and moving memoir of his journey from a life of crime to that of a promising writerUp until his incarceration, Louis Ferrante led the life of a mobster. As a young ruffian, he made his reputation by leading a street gang and shooting a neighborhood bully. Later, he became connected with John Gotti Jr. and the Gambino crime family. During his time with the mob, Ferrante committed the most lucrative robberies in US history, many of which are still unsolved. But soon enough, the law caught up to him. Indictments came from the Secret Service, the Nassau County Organized Crime Force, and the FBI (twice) and Louis found himself behind bars.In jail, Louis read his first book and a new world was opened up to him. During the course of his 8 years he read everything from Caesar's Gallic Wars to Danielle Steele and everything in between. With only what he could teach himself, Louis successfully appealed his own conviction, a landmark case that now appears in textbooks. In addition to law, Ferrante studied the three major faiths, including Buddhism. He eventually chose to become an Orthodox Jew.Free from prison, Ferrante's memoir retells his meteoric rise to the upper-echelon of the mafia hierarchy, his time in prison, and the astonishing turn around his life has made. After spending most of his life involved with crime or in jail, Louis Ferrante has reinvented himself as a writer. With a crisp yet harsh writing style similar to Charles Bukowski, Ferrante's stories of crime with the mob and his time spent in prison are sure to captivate audiences.--Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy and Casino

The intensely moving memoir of Patrick Maguire, one of the 'Maguire Seven', wrongly imprisoned as a teenager for making bombs for the IRA. On the night of October 5 1974, an IRA unit left bombs in two Guildford pubs: five people were killed. On the night of December 3 1974, on the strength of fabricated testimony extracted under duress from Paul Hill and Gerard Conlon (whom the police mistakenly believed had planted the Guildford bombs), Anne and Paddy Maguire, two of their four children, Vincent and Patrick, plus other family members and friends, a total of seven in all, were arrested at their home in West London. On 22 October 1975, the Guildford Four were wrongfully convicted of bombing the two pubs in Guildford. On 4 March 1976, the Maguire Seven, as they had become known, were found guilty of possession of the nitro-glycerine used in those bombings. On 19 October 1989, the verdicts on the Guildford Four were quashed. On 26 June 1991, the convictions against the Maguire Seven of handling explosives were quashed and just over a year later, Sir John May, after producing a report on the Maguire Seven case, described it as the worst miscarriage of justice he had ever seen. Behind these dates lie human stories ? 'My Father's Watch' tells that of Patrick, who was the youngest of the accused, at fourteen years old. He was sentenced to four years and when he came out he had no home and no family, as both of his parents were still in jail. This book takes us through Patrick's entire life, from his working-class childhood in West London to the difficult life he has led since prison, the roots of which go back to the wrongful convictions and the destruction of the family that followed. Patrick Maguire and the novelist Carlo Gébler have written 'My Father's Watch' jointly. It is not a ghosted work ? told in Patrick's own voice, it is a lucid and inspiring account of one individual's experience of an appalling injustice, as well as a reminder, as the war against terror ratchets up, of just how much harm a state can do to its own innocent citizens in the name of security.

"A most important book that will change the way many of us look at animals--and, ultimately, at ourselves." -- Chicago TribuneSince its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"--our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals--inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them.In Animal Liberation, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures--destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.

The authority on panic and anxiety?newly revised and expanded.Are you one of the more than nineteen million Americans who suffer from anxiety? Don't panic. Newly revised and expanded, this edition offers a straightforward and remarkably effective self-help program for overcoming panic and coping with anxious fears. With insight and compassion, Reid Wilson, Ph.D., demystifies anxiety attacks and provides indispensable advice, including:how a panic attack happens, what causes it, and how it can affect your lifehow to recognize, manage, and control the moment of panichow to control the chronic muscle tensions that increase anxietyhow to conquer fear and face problems with confidencehow to decide which medication is right for youhow to establish reachable goals and rediscover the joy of living

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an abridged edition of Saul Friedländer's definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning two-volume history of the Holocaust: Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 and The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.The book's first part, dealing with the National Socialist campaign of oppression, restores the voices of Jews who were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality following the Nazi accession to power. Friedländer also provides the accounts of the persecutors themselves--and, perhaps most telling of all, the testimonies of ordinary German citizens who, in general, stood silent and unmoved by the increasing waves of segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, and violence. The second part covers the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews--an official program that depended upon the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, the passivity of the populations, and the willingness of the victims to submit in desperate hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.A monumental, multifaceted study now contained in a single volume, Saul Friedländer's Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an essential study of a dark and complex history.

A brilliant philosopher with a talent for self-destruction, Mason Ambrose gratefully accepts an offer no starving ethicist could refuse. He must travel to a private tropical island and tutor Londa Sabacthani, a beautiful, brilliant adolescent who has lost both her memory and her moral sense in a freak accident. Londa's soul is an empty vessel--and Mason's job will be to fill it.But all is not as it seems on Isla de Sangre. Londa's reclusive mother is secretly sheltering a second child whose conscience is a blank slate. Even as the mystery deepens, Mason confronts a frightening question: What will happen when Londa, her head crammed with lofty ideals and her bank account filled to bursting, ventures out to remake our fallen world in her own image?