Bücher veröffentlicht von Houghton Mifflin

When dinosaur fossils were first discovered in the Wild West, they sparked one of the greatest scientific battles in American history. Over the past century it has been known by many names -- the Bone War, the Fossil Feud -- but the tragic story of the competition for fame and natural treasure between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, two leading paleontologists of the Gilded Age, remains prophetic of the conquest of the West as well as a watershed event in science. With a historian's eye and a novelist's skill, David Rains Wallace charts in fascinating detail the unrestrained rivalry between Cope and Marsh and their obsession to become the first to make available to the world the abundant, unknown fossils of the western badlands. This story will surely fascinate anyone who has had to confront the myriad facets of professional jealousy, its sterile brooding, and how it leads to an emotional abyss.

Set in the beautiful mountains of Kingdom County, THE FALL OF THE YEAR is Howard Frank Mosher's brilliant autobiographical novel about love in all its forms, from friendship to the most passionate romance, in a place where family, community, vocation, and the natural world still matter profoundly. Here are the lively stories of the eccentric inhabitants of Kingdom County, including Louvia the Fortuneteller; Foster Boy Dufresne, the local bottle picker; and the daredevil tomboy Molly Murphy, who risks her life to fulfill her dream of running away with the Greatest Little Show on Earth. Mosher's kingdom is "timeless. It existed well before man, has survived his spell upon it, and will do so long after the curtain has fallen" (Washington Post Book World).

In this "heartwarming tale of brotherly love" (WALL STREET JOURNAL), John Vernon "lifts us high, confronting basic questions about the nature of existence itself and the peculiar objects that sustain this transient life" (Jay Parini). When his reclusive brother Paul died, Vernon came face to face with a life he had never suspected. He found his brother's house in a state of squalid disrepair: piled high with a lifetime of trash, littered with animal corpses and excrement, unheated and decrepit. An assembly worker in the electronics industry and an amateur inventor, Paul had managed to keep his private world hidden from his family and acquaintances.The love between brothers is an unconditional love -- unearned, and realized almost always from a distance. Who really was this man that writer and teacher John Vernon loved? How could a childhood so full of promise turn wrong? Why do we collect things; what use do they have? How do we make and understand our world? In search of answers, this "superb writer" (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE) leaps from one odd, individual life to all our lives and the things that clutter them, with excursions through the history of science, anatomy, and mythology. The result is revelatory, a brilliant account of the extraordinary source of everyday things."An artful lamentation of two remarkable worlds" (VILLAGE VOICE), A BOOK OF REASONS is John Vernon's devastatingly tender memoir about coming to terms with the fact that the people we love most are often the people we know the least about. It is also a daring exploration of loss and self-discovery.

Here is a practical guide to writing short stories that explains all the essential techniques of fiction - from character and plot to flashback and foreshadowing - in a way that is both understandable and useful to the beginning writer. Long considered a classic in the field, WRITING IN GENERAL is the product of a lifetime of reflection by one of our best literary minds.

The acclaimed poet and story writer David Huddle weaves a masterly portrait of two couples and their shared histories, desires, and secrets. Marcy, Allen, Uta, Jimmy -- each becomes the hero of his or her own story, as all mine the past for evidence of goodness. David Huddle moves with remarkable agility from the imagination of a precocious adolescent girl, to the fears of a man in midlife, to the longings of a wife whose reserve cloaks aching depths. Each of these convincing voices asks the questions central to all our lives: What stories are so important that you'd never reveal them to another person in a million years? How do secrets come to define us, for better or for worse? Honest, accomplished, and wonderfully subtle, THE STORY OF A MILLION YEARS portrays the basic human desire to love and be loved unconditionally.

Emily and Eugene need to cheer up their friend Carruthers. Carruthers is sick, sneezing, and miserable ? he sure is one hard-to-please patient! When hot tea, throat lozenges, card games, and warm blankets don't help, Eugene spins a yarn that is just the cure for cranky Carruthers.

When Dido Twite sets foot back on English soil, more mischief awaits. As her friend Captain Hughes recovers from a carriage accident, Dido stays at the Dogkennel Cottages and meets the odd inhabitants of Tegleaze Manor: strange old Lady Tegleaze, her nephew, Tobit, and his wizened, witchy nurse, Sannie. Soon suspicious things happen. A priceless miniature is stolen. Tobit is framed and then kidnapped. A twin sister is found. And when Dido catches a glimpse of her rascally father in Petworth, she is sure she’s in the midst of another Hanoverian plot. Can she get to London to warn the king and save St. Paul's Cathedral from sliding into the Thames?

Readers who have followed Dido Twite’s escapades in BLACK HEARTS IN BATTERSEA and NIGHTBIRDS ON NANTUCKET will welcome her return in her wildest adventure yet. Now back in print, THE CUCKOO TREE and THE STOLEN LAKE continue the Wolves Chronicles, the exhilarating and imaginative series that stemmed from Joan Aiken’s classic THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE. A dazzling piece of dramatic, snowballing adventure, THE STOLEN LAKE is full of fantastical details: revolving palaces, witches who are also court dressmakers, an apocalyptic volcanic eruption, and an infernal country with a noticeable lack of female children. On her way back to London aboard the British man-of-war Thrush, twelve-year-old Dido Twite finds herself and the crew summoned to the aid of the tyrannical queen of New Cumbria. A neighboring king has stolen the queen’s lake and is holding it for ransom, and it’s up to Dido and the crew to face fire, flood, execution, and wild beasts to get the lake back — or else.

The poems in this volume were selected by Glyn Maxwell from TALE OF THE MAYOR'S SON (published in 1990, when he was twenty-eight), OUT OF THE RAIN (shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize), and REST FOR THE WICKED. Maxwell “is a formalist,” wrote Robert McIlwaine about his first book, “but . . . he is an outspoken anti-elitist social poet. His strenuous well-wrought poems . . . come from an English tradition of technical virtuosity with plain speech.” The Boys at Twilight shows, sometimes comically, men at war, boys at play, boys grown up, men overreaching and reverting. Other concerns are the dangers of authority and mob psychology, the absurdities of stardom and consumerism, the heroism of the decent, and the wisdom of doubt. His subjects range from biblical stories to the “Tale of the Chocolate Egg,” which is a long, “pitch-perfect description of a bored young man’s growing obsession with a new kind of candy” (Adam Kirsch, New Republic). Always in his work, “Maxwell knows that to see into is not necessarily to see through . . . His virtuosity has a ballast of sobriety” (Poetry Book Society).

In this single absorbing volume, the noted historian and religious scholar Roland Bainton offers a comprehensive, critical portrait of Christianity from its beginnings two thousand years ago to the modern day. From Christ's lowly birth in a stable to the rise of cathedrals and kings, from Roman soliders to Fanciscan monks to Puritans fleeing persecution to a new world across the sea, Bainton paints a rich history of a vast and varied people united by a singular belief. Illustrated with fifty black-and-white photographs, CHRISTIANITY is a perfect introduction for lay readers and a classic in its field.

Best-selling author Alan Lightman selects the year’s finest nonfiction as this acclaimed series celebrates its fifteenth year. He has chosen a diverse, very personal collection that celebrates the essay as an independent genre unlike any other. This year’s pieces embrace stylistic freedom and strong opinions and afford the reader a fascinating view of the writer’s mind as it struggles with truth, memory, and experience. Featured writers include Jamaica Kincaid, Edward Hoagland, Cynthia Ozick, Mary Gordon, Edwidge Danticat, and others.

As its tenth birthday approaches, THE BEST AMERICAN SPORTS WRITING is at the top of its game. In the past decade, it has been hailed as “a must for any sports fan” and “a venerable institution” and has showcased promising new talents along with Pulitzer Prize winners such as David Halberstam, Richard Ford, and John McPhee. With the 2000 edition, best-selling author and Emmy Award–winning sports journalist Dick Schaap continues this tradition of excellence by bringing together the finest sports writing to appear in the past year. These pieces will delight fans of all athletic endeavors, from football to fishing, from basketball to birdwatching. From more than 350 publications, Schaap has chosen essays that reach beyond the scores to the people and emotions behind the game.

Jack Dempsey was perfectly suited to the time in which he fought, the time when the United States first felt the throb of its own overwhelming power. For eight years and two months after World War I, Dempsey, with his fierce good looks and matchless dedication to the kill, was heavyweight champion of the world. A Flame of Pure Fire is the extraordinary story of a man and a country growing to maturity in a blaze of strength and exuberance that nearly burned them to ash. Hobo, roughneck, fighter, lover, millionaire, movie star, and, finally, a gentleman of rare generosity and sincerity, Dempsey embodied an America grappling with the confusing demands of preeminence. Dempsey lived a life that touched every part of the American experience in the first half of the twentieth century. Roger Kahn, one of our preeminent writers about the human side of sport, has found in Dempsey a subject that matches his own manifold talents. A friend of Dempsey's and an insightful observer of the ways in which sport can measure a society's evolution, Kahn reaches a new and exciting stage in his acclaimed career with this book. In the story of a man John Lardner called "a flame of pure fire, at last a hero," Roger Kahn finds the heart of America.

Bliss Broyard's fathers are charismatic, seductive, brilliant men who loom large in the world, and larger at home. Their daughters, hungry for attention and connection, veer wildly between naiveté and cool indifference. In this powerful collection, Broyard's unsentimental prose captures the passages of daughters as they grow into young women: their struggles with identity, desire, and familial roles. From the early lessons girls absorb through their fathers-their first audience-to the equivocal attachments of marriage to the emotions of love and mourning, the characters in My Father, Dancing chronicle the never-ending dance between fathers and their daughters, and the many awakenings of girls and women.

Culled from over one hundred prestigious writing programs around the United States and Canada, Best New American Voices 2000 offers a remarkable panoply of writing talent that showcases the literary stars of tomorrow. Included here are twenty of the finest stories to come out of such programs as Breadloaf, the Sewanee Conference, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the University of Iowa, and the PEN/Prison Writing Committee, as nominated by the directors of those programs. Represented are all facets of North American life, a diverse collection of visions and voices that will satisfy the most exacting of short-story readers. This dynamic collection is must-reading for all fans of innovative, cutting-edge new writing.

Elizabeth Graver's first novel, Unravelling, was hailed on publication as "exceptional" (The New York Times Book Review), "a pleasure" (The New Yorker), and "exquisitely poignant and sensual" (The Boston Globe). Now, in her second novel, she proves herself to be a major voice in American fiction. The summer that eleven-year-old Eva is caught shoplifting (for the fourth time), her mother, Miriam, decides the only solution is to move out of the city to a quiet town in upstate New York. There, she hopes, they can have the normal life she longs for. But Miriam is bound by a past she is trying to forget, and tensions escalate. It is only when Eva meets a reclusive beekeeper that she-and her mother-can find their way back to each other, and can begin life with renewed promise. A haunting novel of memory and desire, The Honey Thief reveals the healing power of friendship and the ineradicable bonds of mother and child.

Don Juan, the "Seducer of Seville," originated as a hero-villain of Spanish folk legend, is a famous lover and scoundrel who has made more than a thousand sexual conquests. One of Moliere's best-known plays, Don Juan was written while Tartuffe was still banned on the stages of Paris, and shared much with the outlawed play. Modern directors transform Don Juan in every new era, as each director finds something new to highlight in this timeless classic. Richard Wilbur's flawless translation will be the standard for generations to come, as have his translations of Moliere's other plays. Witty, urbane, and poetic in its prose, Don Juan is, most importantly, as funny now as it was for audiences when it was first presented."

Hugh Bawn was a modern hero, a dreamer, a man of the people who revolutionized Scotland's residential development after World War II. Now, as he lies dying in one of his own buildings, his grandson Jamie comes home to watch over him. It is Jamie who tells the story of his family, of three generations of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of political idealism. It is a tale of darkness amidst the search for Utopia. A poignant and very powerful reclamation of the past, Our Fathers is also a clearsighted and beautifully crafted look at public and personal history.

In Finding Their Stride, Sally Pont, a runner, teacher, and second-generation coach, tells of her first year coaching a co-ed cross country team to victory, both on and off the course. A surprising story of triumph, as well as an endearing tale of driven athletes, Pont shares the highlights and heartbreak of her young runners at Moravian Academy, a small, independent school near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Every page is infused with Pont's affection and respect for her runners, and as the season unfolds, we see the team beginning to find a new stride. While the boys struggle, the girls soar to new heights, going from last place to first. ?Uplifting and engaging, Finding Their Stride is "about attaining and teaching excellence, whose metaphor happens to be a high school running team" (Kirkus Reviews).

The Stones Cry Out is the story of an amateur geologist and bookseller who is collapsing under the burden of his own history. Tsuyoshi Manase learned his first geology lesson from a dying soldier in a cave at the end of World War II. The soldier, a corporal, is skeletal, his eyes swarming with maggots, but his voice is low and steady, as he tells Manase of how a small pebble contains the Earth's history in its ephemeral matter. When the war ends, Manase returns home and opens a bookstore. He marries, and becomes the father of two sons. But what consoles him the most is the collecting of stones, and he enjoys his quiet life. That is until horrible violence visits his family and Manase must face his past in order to survive the nightmares of the present. A darkly compelling tale of one man's struggle against his own memories, The Stones Cry Out is a formidable debut novel from an international writer with an unusually penetrating voice.

This major work, the result of years of careful study and analysis, places Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life and music in the context of the intellectual, political and artistic currents of eighteenth-century Europe. The result is a fresh interpretation of Mozart's genius, as Robert Gutman shows the great composer in a new light. With an informed and sensitive handling, Mozart emerges as an affectionate and generous man with family and friends, self-deprecating, witty, and winsome but also an austere moralist, incisive and purposeful. The major genres in which Mozart worked-chamber music, liturgical, theater and keyboard compositions, concertos, operas, symphonies, and oratorios-are unfolded to reveal a man of luminous intellect. Mozart is an extraordinary portrait of a man and his times and a brilliant distillation of musical thought.