Bücher veröffentlicht von W W Norton & Co Ltd

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Sacred Hunger, "a vivid, sinuous, profound, and entirely beguiling venture." -Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times. Set in the beautiful landscape and rich history of Umbria, Italy, Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth has written a witty and illuminating work of contemporary manners and morals. The region where Hannibal defeated the Romans is now prey to a different type of invasion: outsiders buying villas with innocent and not so innocent dreams. Among those clustered along one hillside road are the Greens, a retired American couple seeking serenity; the Chapmans, whose dispute over a wall escalates into a feud of operatic proportions; and Fabio and Arturo, a gay couple who, searching for peace and self-sufficiency, find treachery instead. Add to this mix a wily and corrupt British "building expert," and a lawyer who practices subterfuge and plans his client's actions like military strategy, and you have a sharp, entertaining, and satisfyingly bittersweet work.

We often hear about the richness of the English language, how many more words it contains than French or German. And yet modern desk dictionaries are the result of a paring away of that glory, so that merely standard, functional, current words remain. The price we pay for such convenience is the thousands of delightful words we never see or hear.This book is an effort to save some of those words applicable to everyday life and countless word games from extinction. The resultant treasure trove of exotic verbal creatures is an indispensable resource for every lover of language.A selection:egrutten: having a face swollen from weepingnumquid: an inquisitive personsardoodledum: drama that is contrived, stagy, or unrealisticmimp: to purse one's lips

Frederick R. Karl's magisterial biography of George Eliot proves her to be one of the most fascinating and iconic individuals of her time. Born in 1819 as Mary Anne Evans, she grew up near rural Coventry when the pastoral life was being destroyed by the rapid rise of industrialism. Her father, Robert Evans, took care of an estate, where the family lived. Eliot, his youngest child, absorbed the world around her, its beauty and its delicate sense of stability, which was about to be thoroughly disrupted. Eliot thrived on learning while she stayed home, taking care of her aging father. Upon his death, she began her long process of emergence and change. Her unusual intelligence and literary capacity brought her to the attention of John Chapman, who enlisted her to work on the intellectual Westminster Review in London. While there she met some of the leading thinkers of her era, including Herbert Spencer. Karl focuses on her relationships with these men in a way earlier biographers have been unable, using many letters and documents previously unavailable.

This is the first volume to collect Freud's writing about women. Chronologically arranged, it shows clearly how his views arose, then were refined, systematized, and revised. Certain theories stayed constant such as the notion of universal bisexuality while others changed.

Jean Rhys was one of the twentieth century's foremost writers, a literary artist who made exqusite use of the raw material of her own often turbulent life to create fiction of memorable resonance and poignancy. Here for the first time in one volume are her complete stories.

When thirteen-year-old drug runner Mandy Walsh is killed in a shootout between rival drug gangs, the police at first think she was accidentally caught in the crossfire. But soon they learn that someone shot her intentionally, and as Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur looks deeper the case only gets more dangerous. For Chief Constable Mark Lane, a man almost paralyzed by the collapse of civilization he sees in the relentless drug wars, the only solution to the evil is for someone to infiltrate the gangs. His sardonic assistant chief, Desmond Iles, has another solution: let the gangland police itself, in return for a few favors. Meanwhile, Mansel Shale, drug kingpin, would-be top banana, is looking for--and may have found--a working arrangement with someone on the police force. A relentless chain of events, starting with Mandy's death, comes to an exciting and unexpected conclusion.

Back in print-Antonia Fraser's third Jemima Shore mystery, in which the intrepid and glamorous detective confronts sinister doings in a Bloomsbury penthouse. Everyone loved Chloe Fontaine. Tiny and exquisitely pretty, her fragile looks hid a considerable talent as a novelist. She had had a series of admirers, lovers, and husbands ever since her arrival in literary London. Her friends sometimes remarked on the odd contrast of her disorderly private life and the careful formality of her work, yet it hardly seemed to matter when even the critics doted on her. When Chloe strangely and suddenly disappears one hot summer day, Jemima Shore, who is left in charge of her flat, must find out why before it is too late.

Over the past decade a rich chorus of women's voices has emerged from the West. The Stories That Shape Us is an extraordinary anthology of twenty-six personal essays by contemporary women writers, many being published here for the first time. Ranging widely across the cultures and the regions of the West, these women relate stories of family and community, of race and gender, of commitment and displacement, of grief and repair, of spirituality and connection to the earth. Against the story of the Winning of the West, of men in (and against) the natural world, these writers propose a revised narrative, one more appropriate to a world facing stark limits and ecological disaster. Their stories are not new, but until recently we have been unable to hear them. The voices in The Stories That Shape Us have been shaped by their particular regions and cultures, but they speak to the nation, and they demand attention because they tell us what we need in order to survive. The contributors to The Stories That Shape Us are as diverse as the regions they speak from. Some of them are well-established, even best-selling authors; others are new voices soon to be heard on the national scene. All are united by their passion to tell the truth about their land and their lives - to tell the stories that have shaped them and that can help shape us all.

The "magnificent spinster" is Jane Reid, a teacher who became not only a revered role model but a dear friend to Cam, the narrator of this novel within a novel. After Jane's death, the accidental discovery of poems written by Cam in her youth to Jane prompts a flood of recollections-and frees Cam to imagine in fiction Jane's passionately vibrant life.

Poems deal with childhood, color, censorship, freedom, greed, loneliness, love, pain, and mortality.

President of Yale University from 1978 to 1986 and before that professor of English at Yale, A. Bartlett Giamatti was one of the voices that most clearly articulated the role of the university in the modern world. In twenty-four essays here, Mr. Giamatti explores the relationship of the university to government, industry, and the private sector. He defines the essence of liberal education, rooted in freedom, dedicated to learning for its own sake. He exposes menace of ideologues of any stripe who would impose on the university a limiting political, religious, or social agenda. Throughout, Giamatti sets forth his commitment to an education that "will constantly test rather than impose the values it cherishes."

Imperfect Paradise, published in 1988, is Linda Pastan's 4th collection and was a nominee for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Poems deal with birds, the past, children, beauty, rituals, myths, the moon, vacations, aging, death, family life, and hope.

Before Elvis Presley and rock-'n'-roll, another King ruled the roost of American popular music. His name was Benny Goodman and his domain, the gilded age of Swing. Benny's concerts, records, and radio shows catapulted the hot and controversial sounds of jazz into the hearts and homes of a hungry public. Swing, Swing, Swing at once illustrates Goodman's enormous impact on American music and culture, reflects the rich textures of the times in which he lived, and evokes the very private life of a complicated, difficult man. Raised in a tenement in Chicago's Maxwell Street ghetto, he grew up to become the symbol of glamorous high-society living. Benny's undeniable position as social groundbreaker -his were the nation's first racially integrated bands-was characteristically downplayed by the man himself: he simply wanted the finest musicians he could find. Here are the sounds and stories that define the remarkable life of the world's most demanding and idiosyncratic band leader. The violent clashes between his smiling public persona and his intensely private nature; the infamous "Goodman Ray" (no musician who played with Benny escaped its wrath); the conflicting stories of Goodman's parsimony and his largess-these stories and many more paint a vibrant portrait of a truly original, undeniably American artist.

The lectures upon which this book is based were first given for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and are published with their kind permission. The collection of much of the material used in the broadcasts was made possible by a generous grant from the Carnegie Foundation.

Tom Iremonger, self-proclaimed Greatest Resource of Ireland, returns home for Christmas after blowing his grandfather's legacy abroad, only to find himself fighting for his spot atop Dublin's trendy new elite, and trying to win back the beautiful daughter of a supermarket magnate.

The authors have put the top 15 baseball teams of the 20th century through a statistical analysis in their quest to discover which was the greatest team in the history of baseball. They offer anecdotes, facts and statistics to back their results.

This "devastating rebuttal to Fatal Vision" (Boston Phoenix) demonstrates that the jury was not privy to crucial evidence in the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret Captain convicted of the murders of his wife and two young daughters.

Richard Bausch gets deep inside of people's lives. Richard Bausch gets deep inside of people's lives. He speaks eloquently for and to all of us about the intricacies of relationships-their fragility and their inherent possibility for explosion. His work has been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, and the Atlantic Monthly; two of the stories in this collection were chosen for Best American Short Stories.

In Volume III, Russia's geographical position as both a European and an Asian power and her twin aims of promoting world revolution and establishing normal relations with capitalist governments led to severe stresses in Soviet foreign policy. This volume analyzes these strains and their domestic and international ramifications.

These narratives are set against a variety of backdrops - from the teeming banks of the Ganges to a homeless shelter in New York. In "Ate/Menos" or "The Miracle", a young man takes advantage of a woman who mistakes him for someone else. In "The Siege", a wealthy recluse falls in love.

The authors conclude that in the games of hierarchical respect, no class can emerge the victor; and that true egalitarianism can be achieved only by rediscovering diverse concepts of human dignity. Examining personal feelings in terms of a totality of human relations, and looking beyond the struggle for economic survival, The Hidden Injuries of Class takes an important step forward in the sociological critique of everyday life.

In Excellence, Mr. Gardner discusses the strengths and failings of our educational system, our confusion over the idea of equality, and the nature of leadership in a free society.

This introductory history of Sparta gives readers a welcome overview of the intense and brilliant history of the great Greek city state.

What did it mean for Germany, and the world, to have William II on the throne for the First World War? In The Kaiser and His Times, Michael Balfour analyzes the social, constitutional, and economic forces at work in imperial Germany, and sets the complex and disputed character of the Kaiser, who occupied such a central position in the three decades before 1918, in the context of his family background and the history of Germany.

Addressing both physical and emotional concerns, this guidebook discusses the full spectrum of adolescent issues. It also features a comprehensive reference section that details the typical health problems teenagers experience and how parents can deal with them.

May Sarton's eagerly awaited journals have recorded her life as a single, woman writer--and, in later years, as a woman confronting old age. This chronicle of her pilgrimage through her 82nd year was completed a few months before she died in 1995. Illustrations.

The last month or so of the life of novelist Iris Murdoch, the wife of the author, provides the framework for this biography. Within this structure the author enters into extensive memories of the past.