Edoardo Ballerini

"A richly imagined and stunningly inventive story of love, art, and betrayal in Paris of the 20's, 30's, and 40's"-- Paris in the 1920s shimmers with excitement, dissipation, and freedom. It is a place of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing...

"Paolo the dachshund is trapped. Though he lives in Rome, a city filled with history and adventure, he is confined to a hair salon. Paolo dreams of the sweet life--la dolce vita--in the Eternal City. And then, one day, he escapes! Paolo throws himself into the city, finding adventure at every turn. Join our hero as he discovers the wonders of Rome: the ruins, the food, the art, the opera, and--of course--the cats" --

In this book the author transports readers to the dawn of the Renaissance and chronicles the life of an intrepid book lover who rescued the Roman philosophical text On the Nature of Things from certain oblivion. In this work he has crafted both a work of history and a story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred...

One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence,...

Stephen OConnor's profound and original exploration of the many ways that the institution of slavery warped the human soul, as seen through the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. OConnors protagonists are rendered via scrupulously researched scenes of their lives in Paris and at Monticello that alternate with a harrowing memoir written by Hemings after Jeffersons death, as well as with dreamlike sequences in which Jefferson watches a movie...

"Hear No Evil. For Detective Sam Porter, the words "Father, forgive me" conjure memories long forgotten; a past intentionally buried. For Anson Bishop, these three words connect a childhood to the present as he unleashes a truth concealed for decades. See No Evil. Found written on cardboard near each body, these words link multiple victims to a single killer--discovered within minutes of each other in both Chicago and South Carolina--clearly connected...

Sent to a Portuguese backwater where a homegrown terrorist movement has recently emerged, foreign correspondent Edgar Kellogg hopes to make a name for himself, but soon discovers that things are not what they seem.

"In 1945, Jewish refugees by the thousands set out for Palestine. Those who made it relied on the underground to shelter them; taking false names, they blended with the population, joining the wildly different factions fighting for independence. "City of Secrets" follows one survivor, Brand, as he tries to regain himself after losing everyone he's ever loved. Now driving a taxi provided--like his new identity--by the underground, he navigates the...

Chosen as one of the New York Times's ten best books in the year of its original publication, this collection immediately won a cherished place among lovers of the tale and vaulted Calvino into the ranks of the great folklorists.

"A new collection of essays on literary and cinematic themes"-- Andř Aciman returns to the essay form in Homo Irrealis to explore what the present tense means to artists who cannot grasp the here and now. Irrealis is not about the present, or the past, or the future, but about what might have been but never wasbut could in theory still happen.