Title Search Results

As a citizen, Nicholas Payne is not in the least solid. As a boyfriend, he is nothing short of disastrous, and his latest flame, the patrician Ann Fitzgerald, has done a wise thing by dropping him. But Ann isn't counting on Nicholas's wild persistence, or on the slapstick lyricism of Thomas McGuane, who in The Bushwhacked Piano sends his hero from Michigan to Montana on a demented mission of courtship whose highlights include a ride on a homicidal bronco and apprenticeship to the inventor of the world's first highrise for bats. The result is a tour de force of American Dubious.

Sunny Jim Whitelaw, a descendent of pioneers and owner of a large bottling plant, may have died, but he has no intention of relinquishing control: his will specifies that no one gets a cent unless his daughter Evelyn reconciles with her estranged husband, Paul. But Evelyn is a strong-willed woman, fiercely attached to the land, whose horses transport her to a West she feels is disappearing, while Paul is a suave manipulator, without scruples, intent on living well. As played out on the majestic stage of Montana cattle country, the ensuing drama involves blood, money, sex, vengeance, and a cross-dressing rancher. The Cadence of Grass is renewed evidence that McGuane is one of the finest writers we have, capable of simultaneously burnishing and demolishing the mythology of the West while doing rope tricks with the English language.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection   “Errol Healy was going sailing to evade custody in one of the several institutions recommended for his care.” Haunted by memories of his best friend’s death and the witch, Miss Florence Ewing, Errol sets forth from Key West alone aboard the Czarina. Alcohol-drenched and steeped in excruciating loneliness, Errol faces the harshest conditions of climate in the Gulf.   “The Refugee” is the magisterial, penultimate story from Gallatin Canyon by Thomas McGuane, called the “Flannery O’Connor of the New West.”   An ebook Short.

Two old friends strike up an old feud filled with dangerous games on the vast preserve of their hunting club in this rollicking story of boyhood rivalries pushed to the limit.

The Lukassers seem to be an ordinary Austrian family. Dr. Robert Weiss had passed through their village years ago, a stranger. He rented a room from them for the night. Niki Lukasser was a baby then, fighting the fever of appendicitis. Dr. Weiss saved Niki's life that night, and accepted no payment. It was just what you did for another human being.Years later, Dr. Weiss appears again at the door. It is 1943, and he is asking to be hidden from the Germans. This also, it now appears to Niki, is just what you do for another human being.Mr. Lukasser walls Dr. Weiss into the barn loft. Then begins, beneath the quiet surface of Sankt Vero, a chain of powerful transformations.

In award-winning author Thomas Mullen’s evocative and spirited novel, we follow the Depression-era adventures of Jason and Whit Fireson—bank robbers known as the Firefly Brothers by an adoring public that worships their acts as heroic counterpunches thrown at a broken system. Late one night in August 1934, following a yearlong crime spree across the Midwest, the Firefly Brothers are forced into a police shootout and die in a hail of bullets. Or do they? Jason and Whit’s girlfriends—Darcy, a wealthy socialite, and Veronica, a hardened survivor—struggle between grief and an unyielding belief that the Firesons are alive. Wild rumors spread that the bandits are still at large. Through it all, the Firefly Brothers remain as charismatic, unflappable, and as mythical as the American dream itself, racing to find the women they love and to make sense of a world in which all has come unmoored.Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more. RandomHouseReadersCircle.com

"Pamphleteer, poet, story-teller, satirist, scholar, moralist and jester . . ."Thomas Nashe, a contemporary of Shakespeare, was writing in the 1590s, the zenith of the English Renaissance. Rebellious in spirit, conservative in philosophy, Nashe's brilliant and comic invective earned him a reputation as the "English Juvenal" who "carried the deadly stockado in his pen." In its mingling of the devout and bawdy, scholarship and slang, its brutality and its constant awareness of the imminence of death, his work epitomizes the ambivalence of the Elizabethans. Above all, Nashe was a great entertainer, "his stories are told for pleasure in telling, his jokes are cracked for the fun of them, and his whole style speaks of a relish for living."In addition to The Unfortunate Traveller, this volume contains Pierce Penniless, The Terrors of the Night,Lenten Stuff and The Choice of Valentines, and extracts from Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, The Anatomy of Absurdity, and other works.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Now that they are in power, there are no more checks and balances. The Conglomerates, and their mysterious party chairman, have taken over everything and everyone. There is no one left to stop them.Forty years in the future, in a world where Big Brother runs amok, a powerful political party known as the Conglomerates has emerged, vowing to enforce economic martial law at any cost. Dr. Christine Salter, director of genetic development at a New York medical center, is in charge of “genetic contouring,” the much-in-demand science of producing the ideal child. But Christine is increasingly troubled by odd events, including the strange disappearance of Gabriel Cruz, a co-worker for whom she has a developing affection, and the fact that her latest assignment–making the Conglomerate chairman more youthful through genetic engineering–is an especially dangerous task.As mandated by the Family Relief Act, Christine’s grandparents are relocated to a government-designed community in the American Southwest, along with other Coots (the official term given to the elderly), who are considered an economic and social burden to family and society. But even in this cold, cruel age, the Conglomerates can only control so much. In his enthralling debut, Thomas Nevins thrillingly chronicles a brave new world where one family struggles to survive by keeping alive feelings of mercy, loyalty, and love. Praise for The Age of the Conglomerates:“Smart and exhilarating . . . a highly original debut novel, told in an exciting voice, that casts shades of Asimov.”–Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Charlemagne Pursuit

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year     Spanning the era between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, and constantly moving between locations across the globe (and to a few places not strictly speaking on the map at all), Against the Day unfolds with a phantasmagoria of characters that includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, drug enthusiasts, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, spies, and hired guns. As an era of uncertainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it’s their lives that pursue them.

When her ex-lover, wealthy real-estate tycoon Pierce Inverarity dies and designates her the co-executor of his estate, California housewife Oedipa Mass is thrust into a paranoid mystery of metaphors, symbols, and the United States Postal Service. Traveling across Southern California, she meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not-inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge.