Books that read like rain from the stars.
Discover enchanting books that read like rain from the stars—a celestial collection of magical, lyrical, and dreamy reads to transport you to otherworldly realms.
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The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile comes the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death. “As absorbing a piece of popular history as one will ever hope to find.” —San Francisco Chronicle Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction. Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake. The Devil in the White City draws the reader into the enchantment of the Guilded Age, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
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Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
The famous novel about a European intellectual in America, whose obsessive desire to possess his step-daughter destroys the lives of those around him.
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Franny and Zooey
by J.D. Salinger
Two children of the Glass family appear in separate stories set in twentieth-century New York.
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Man and His Symbols
by Carl G. Jung
Man and His Symbols owes its existence to one of Jung's own dreams. The great psychologist dreamed that his work was understood by a wide public, rather than just by psychiatrists, and therefore he agreed to write and edit this fascinating book. Here, Jung examines the full world of the unconscious, whose language he believed to be the symbols constantly revealed in dreams. Convinced that dreams offer practical advice, sent from the unconscious to the conscious self, Jung felt that self-understanding would lead to a full and productive life. Thus, the reader will gain new insights into himself from this thoughtful volume, which also illustrates symbols throughout history. Completed just before his death by Jung and his associates, it is clearly addressed to the general reader. Praise for Man and His Symbols "This book, which was the last piece of work undertaken by Jung before his death in 1961, provides a unique opportunity to assess his contribution to the life and thought of our time, for it was also his firsat attempt to present his life-work in psychology to a non-technical public. . . . What emerges with great clarity from the book is that Jung has done immense service both to psychology as a science and to our general understanding of man in society, by insisting that imaginative life must be taken seriously in its own right, as the most distinctive characteristic of human beings."--Guardian "Straighforward to read and rich in suggestion."--John Barkham, Saturday Review Syndicate "This book will be a resounding success for those who read it."--Galveston News-Tribune "A magnificent achievement."--Main Currents "Factual and revealing."--Atlanta Times
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Chaos
by James Gleick
James Gleick explains the theories behind the fascinating new science called chaos. Alongside relativity and quantum mechanics, it is being hailed as the twentieth century's third revolution. 8 pages of photos.
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Disgrace
by J. M. Coetzee
In a novel set in post-apartheid South Africa, a fifty-two-year-old college professor who has lost his job for sleeping with a student tries to relate to his daughter, Lucy, who works with an ambitious African farmer.
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Two Novels
by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Jealousy: "In a tropical jungle overlooking a banana plantation, a jealous husband is obsessed by his suspicion of adultery between his wife and his neighbor. Robbe-Grillet's handling of the devastating effect on the tormented husband and his subsequent violence gives us one of the most disturbing treatment of jealousy in contemporary fiction."--Publisher description
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Paroles
by Jacques Prevert
In the years immediately following World War II, Jacques Prevert spoke directly to and for the French who had come of age during the German Occupation. First published in 1946 by Les Editions de Minuit, a press with its origins in the Underground...
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Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume—that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs—is a valuable and fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or satirical bite.
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The Battle for Spain
by Antony Beevor
A fresh and acclaimed account of the Spanish Civil War by the bestselling author of Stalingrad and The Battle of Arnhem To mark the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War's outbreak, Antony Beevor has written a completely updated and revised account of one of the most bitter and hard-fought wars of the twentieth century. With new material gleaned from the Russian archives and numerous other sources, this brisk and accessible book (Spain's #1 bestseller for twelve weeks), provides a balanced and penetrating perspective, explaining the tensions that led to this terrible overture to World War II and affording new insights into the war-its causes, course, and consequences.
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town.
