The classical study of human nature depicts the degeneration of a group of schoolboys who are marooned on a tropical island after a plane crash.

"From A to Z, the Penguin Drop Caps series collects 26 unique hardcovers-featuring cover art by Jessica Hische. It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by...

Vividly depicts the colorful, sometimes disreputable, inhabitants of a run-down area in Monterey, California.

When four brothers and sisters discover a Psammead, or sand-fairy, in the gravel pit near the country house where they are staying, they have no way of knowing all the adventures its wish-granting will bring them.

A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author's works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written. Barcelona, 1945-just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child,...

V is for Voltaire. Voltaire's masterpiece belongs in the hands of every reader pondering our assumptions about human behavior and our place in the world. Voltaire tells of the ludicrous adventures and reversals of fortune of the naive Candide, who doggedly believes that "all is for the best" even when faced with injustice, suffering, and despair. A satirical challenge to the empty optimism prevalent in Voltaire's eighteenth-century society is both...

"A bestseller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 was inspired by a news account of the discovery of the body of a beautiful young woman washed up on a Long Island beach. Was it an accident, a murder, a suicide? The circumstances of her death were never resolved, but O'Hara seized upon the tragedy to imagine the woman's down-and-out life in New York City in the early 1930s."--Page 4 of cover.

A missing will and an extra corpse buried with an elderly Greek art dealer and collector bring Ellery Queen and his father, Inspector Queen to investigate what may turn out to have been murder.

In 1958, notified that her husband, a doctor in the Chinese army has been killed in action in Tibet, Shu Wen joins the army, determined to go to Tibet to uncover the truth, only to find herself alone in Tibet, embarking on a thirty-year nomadic odyssey in a novel based on a true story.

"Set in 14th century Norway, the first volume of Undset's medieval trilogy begins the life story of Kristin Lavransdatter. Starting with Kristin's childhood and continuing through her romance with Erlend, a dangerously charming and impetuous man, Undset recreates the historical backdrop in vivid detail, immersing readers in the day to day life, social conventions and political undercurrents of the period. But the story she tells is a modern one, brought...