Fiction : Literary

Charles Webb´s The Graduate, published in 1963, was a success for the young American writer, a sly and provocative first novel that is often forgotten in the shadow of Mike Nichols´ sensational 1967 film and, more recently, an attention-grabbing stage adaptation in London with Kathleen Turner, then Jerry Hall as Mrs. Robinson. Among other things, Webb´s novel is a book of its time, written when young Americans were beginning to question, for the first time, the materialistic values that the postwar culture had taught them. Its hero is worldly yet naive, but that won´t last for long. more...

Price: $6.99

In this extraordinary thriller, rich in the atmospheres of medieval and contemporary France, the lives of two women born centuries apart are linked by a common destiny. July 2005. In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two crumbling skeletons, strange writings on the walls, and the pattern of a labyrinth; between the skeletons, a stone ring, and a small leather bag. Eight hundred years earlier, on the eve of a brutal crusade to stamp out heresy that will rip apart southern France, Alais is given a ring and a mysterious book for safekeeping by her father as he leaves to fight the crusaders. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. As crusading armies led by Church potentates and nobles of northern France gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take great sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe. In the present, another woman sees the find as a means to the political power she craves; while a man who has great power will kill to destroy all traces of the discovery and everyone who stands in his way. more...

Price: $15.00

Perry's IQ is only 76, but he's not stupid. His grandmother taught him everything he needs to know to survive: She taught him to write things down so he won't forget them. She taught him to play the lottery every week. And, most important, she taught him whom to trust. When Gram dies, Perry is left orphaned and bereft at the age of thirty-one. Then his weekly Washington State Lottery ticket wins him 12 million dollars, and he finds he has more family than he knows what to do with. Peopled with characters both wicked and heroic who leap off the pages, Lottery is a deeply satisfying, gorgeously rendered novel about trust, loyalty, and what distinguishes us as capable. more...

Price: $14.00

The Metamorphosis begins almost comically. A man wakes up to find he has turned into an insect. But the claustrophobic, dirty room and the increasingly distressed narrator soon turn this into a tale of slow horror. Most horrifying of all is his family's reaction to his metamorphosis and their final solution to the problem. more...

Price: $4.50

Nostromo is a classic anti-hero, who lives in a fictitious mining village on the coast of a fictitious South American country. Many regard the imagined setting of the novel to be some of Conrad's finest work. The characters in the novel are also more highly-developed than those of his other novels, and were inspired by a group of mental patients Conrad had met shortly before beginning the novel. more...

Price: $3.99