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"I cannot live without books." —Thomas Jefferson

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“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” —Cicero

Featured Books

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Stanislaw Lem

The Cyberiad

$20.00
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Friedrich Nietzsche

On the Genealogy of Morals (Penguin Classics)

MSRP: $15.00

$10.00
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Eric Kaplan

Does Santa Exist? A Philosophical Investigation

MSRP: $20.00

$16.00
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Diana Secker Tesdell

Christmas Stories

MSRP: $16.00

$13.00

Newly Added Books

Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus lived from 10 B. C. to 54 A. D. Despise as a weakling and dismissed as an idiot because of his physical infirmities, Claudius survived the intrigues and poisonings that marked the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and the mad Caligula to become Emperor of Rome in 41 A. D. I, Claudius, the first part of Robert Graves’s two-part account of the life of Tiberius Claudius, is written in the form of Claudius’s autobiography and stands as one of the modern classics of historical fiction. — Quick view Add to Cart

Robert Graves

I, Claudius

MSRP: $17.95

$11.00

The setting is Alexandria in the early 1960s where six characters, all made exiles by circumstances, are brought together in the decayed elegance of the Pension Miramar. The central figure is Zohra, the beautiful peasant girl, whose relationship with the other five characters symbolically reflects the most basic political and social realities of the period.

Naguib Mahfouz is Egypt's most famous novelist and his leading role in Arabic literature remains assured. He is now the author of no fewer than thirty novels and more than a hundred short stories; in Egypt each new publication is regarded as a major cultural event and his name is inevitably among the first mentioned in any literary discussion from Gibraltar to the Gulf. If only because of his impact on the Arab world, Mahfouz must be considered an author of international importance. — Quick view Add to Cart

Naguib Mahfouz

Miramar

$15.00

Based on a true story that stunned the world, and inspired by Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, M. Butterfly was an immediate sensation when it premiered in 1988. It opens in the cramped prison cell where diplomat Rene Gallimard is being held captive by the French government—and by his own illusions. He recalls a time when Song Liling, the beautiful Chinese diva, touched him with a love as vivid, as seductive—and as elusive—as a butterfly.

How could he have known that his true love was, in fact, a spy for the Chinese government—and a man disguised as a woman? The diplomat relives the twenty-year affair from the temptation to the seduction, from its consummation to the scandal that ultimately consumed them both.

M. Butterfly is one of the most compelling, explosive, and slyly humorous dramas ever to light the Broadway stage, a work of unrivaled brilliance, illuminating the conflict between men and women, the differences between East and West, racial stereotypes—and the shadows we cast around our most cherished illusions.

With an Afterword by the Playwright — Quick view Add to Cart

David Henry Hwang

M. Butterfly (Plume Book Edition)

$6.00

First published in 1933, Miss Lonelyhearts remains one of the most shocking works of 20th century American literature, as unnerving as a glob of black bile vomited up at a church social: empty, blasphemous, and horrific. Set in New York during the Depression and probably West's most powerful work, Miss Lonelyhearts concerns a nameless man assigned to produce a newspaper advice column ― but as time passes he begins to break under the endless misery of those who write in, begging him for advice. Unable to find answers, and with his shaky Christianity ridiculed to razor-edged shards by his poisonous editor, he tumbles into alcoholism and a madness fueled by his own spiritual emptiness.

During his years in Hollywood West wrote The Day of the Locust, a study of the fragility of illusion. Many critics consider it with F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished masterpiece The Last Tycoon (1941) among the best novels written about Hollywood. Set in Hollywood during the Depression, the narrator, Tod Hackett, comes to California in the hope of a career as a painter for movie backdrops but soon joins the disenchanted second-rate actors, technicians, laborers and other characters living on the fringes of the movie industry. Tod tries to seduce Faye Greener; she is seventeen. Her protector is an old man named Homer Simpson. Tod finds work on a film called prophetically “The Burning of Los Angeles,” and the dark comic tale ends in an apocalyptic mob riot outside a Hollywood premiere, as the system runs out of control. — Quick view Add to Cart

Nathanael West

Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust

$12.00

A masterpiece of the English Puritan tradition, The Pilgrim's Progress is rich in its imaginative power and its vivid and heartfelt language. It recounts the story of Christian, who appears to the author in a dream, and his journey to Heaven through the trials and tribulations of life. He meets many like-minded pilgrims on his way, such as Faithful and Hopeful, but before they attain their goal they encounter the Giant Despair and the River of Death itself. Translated into more than one hundred languages, The Pilgrim's Progress continues to have an immeasurable influence on English literature.

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Roger Sharrock — Quick view Add to Cart

John Bunyan

The Pilgrim's Progress (Penguin Classics)

$9.00

The very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was also the first of Conan Doyle's books to be published. In this fascinating and exciting tale, the two towering creations of detective fiction—Holmes, the master of the science of detection, and Watson, his faithful companion—make their
auspicious debut. The two detectives are immediately in fine form as Holmes plucks the solution to the mystery from the heart of Victorian London. The story is harrowing in its alernating hope and despair, although Holmes himself was later to complain that the book "produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopment into the fifth proposition of Euclid." — Quick view Add to Cart

Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet

MSRP: $7.95

$6.00

This book examines some of the deepest questions in philosophy: What is involved in judging a belief, action, or feeling to be rational? What place does morality have in the kind of life it makes most sense to lead? How are we to understand claims to objectivity in moral judgments and in judgments of rationality? When we find ourselves in fundamental disagreement with whole communities, how can we understand our disagreement and cope with it?

To shed light on such issues, Allan Gibbard develops what he calls a “norm-expressivistic analysis” of rationality. He refines this analysis by drawing on evolutionary theory and experimental psychology, as well as on more traditional moral and political philosophy. What emerges is an interpretation of human normative life, with its quandaries and disputes over what is rational and irrational, morally right and morally wrong. Judgments of what it makes sense to do, to think, and to feel, Gibbard argues, are central to shaping the way we live our lives.

Gibbard does not hesitate to take up a wide variety of possible difficulties for his analysis. This sensitivity to the true complexity of the subject matter gives his treatment a special richness and depth. The fundamental importance of the issues he addresses and the freshness and suggestiveness of the account he puts forward, along with his illuminating treatment of aspects of sociobiology theory, will ensure this book a warm reception from philosophers, social scientists, and others with a serious interest in the nature of human thought and action. — Quick view Add to Cart

Allan Gibbard

Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment

$22.00

Rudolf Rassendyll is the hero of Anthony Hope's fantastic novel, The Prisoner of Zenda. After leaving his lofty life in London, Rassendyll discovers adventure in Ruritania, where he happens to bear a remarkable resemblance to the local king, Rudolf Elphberg. However, on the eve of his coronation, Elphberg is abducted and Rassendyll is called upon to pose as a political decoy. Along the way, Rassendyll finds courage, love, and duty as he negotiates the many twisting plots of Elphberg's abductors. — Quick view Add to Cart

Anthony Hope

The Prisoner of Zenda

$8.00

Join Maggie Watson in the charming town of Somerset Harbor on the coast of Maine as she unearths a treasure trove of antiques and adventure. After inheriting the Carriage House Antiques shop and Sedgwick Manor, a nineteenth-century Colonial Revival, Maggie finally understands exactly what her beloved aunt meant when she said, “antiques are filled with stories-secrets just waiting to be discovered.”

Maggie and the lively members of the historical society set out to unravel mysteries that have been tucked away for centuries in antiques, artifacts, and heirlooms are rare and unique as the tales they hold. Enjoy the thrill of the hunt with Maggie and her new friends as they reveal shocking secrets and heartwarming truths that have long been hidden in these relics of the past. — Quick view Add to Cart

Elizabeth Penney

A Slippery Slope

$18.00

1775: Another Part of the Field — Quick view Add to Cart

Ivor Noël Hume

1775: Another Part of the Field

$40.00

To be poor is bad enough; to be a poor Jew is a crime.

Frankie Alpine should have known that a Gentile should never try to help a poor Jew and he brought tragedy to the house of Morris and Ida Bober.

A novel of a writer now recognized as one of the most powerful talents on the American literary scene. — Quick view Add to Cart

Bernard Malamud

The Assistant (Penguin Books Edition)

$8.00

Ordeal and Hope, 1939-1942, covers the period between George C. Marshall becoming Chief of Staff in September 1939 and the first military successes in 1942 (Guadalcanal, El Alamein, Northwest Africa). This second volume describes how Marshall built up an army and air corps of fewer than 200,000 in 1939 with key players such as Harry Hopkins, FDR’s confidant, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, President Roosevelt and Congress.

Faced at the very outset by the overwhelming problem of safeguarding, in a world that was catching fire, the far-flung interests of his own peace-loving and undefended country, Marshall assembled helpers, exerted all his gifts of diplomacy, and labored early and late to build up this nation's defenses. As the flames of war drew nearer, Congressional opposition seemed to increase. Three months before Pearl Harbor there was a move to reduce the size of the Army.

And then, with the crippling of the Pacific Fleet, all the plans and calculations of the Chief of Staff came to grief. The way was open for Japanese expansion to the south, Hawaii was open to attack, the West Coast of the United States was vulnerable, and the means of sending aid to MacArthur in the Philippines ceased to exist.

This was the prelude to our part in World War II and to the strategy and the uneasy teamwork that brought victory to the Allies. Marshall's increasing role in the global effort is presented in vivid and colorful detail, often in his own forthright words. Caught again and again between the mercurial improvisations of Roosevelt and the granite stubbornness of Churchill, between the material requirements of England, Russia, and the Pacific and the needs of our own Army, Marshall became a touchstone of judgment and levelheadedness. He is seen here in all his public and private dealings with the other soldiers, statesmen, and politicians who shaped the course of the war. — Quick view Add to Cart

Forrest C. Pogue

George C. Marshall, Vol. 2: Ordeal and Hope, 1939-1942

$45.00