Lad, a courageous and dignified 80-pound collie, lived in The Place. The Place was thick with woods, abounding with squirrels to chase, and a cool lake in which to plunge — a beautiful kingdom — and Lad was its undisputed king. Lad's loyalty to his chosen Master and Mistress knew no bounds. The stories in this book are all about Lad. Some will make you laugh out loud, some will make you cry. And when the book comes to its conclusion, you will know one thing for sure — that Lad was a dog with a soul . . .

A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life by Pat Conroy is a new nonfiction collection of letters, interviews, and magazine articles spanning Conroy's long literary career, supplemented by touching pieces from the beloved author's many friends. A Lowcountry Heart collects some of Conroy's most charming pieces of short nonfiction, many of them addressed directly to his readers with his habitual greeting, "Hey, Out There." Ranging across diverse subjects such as favorite recent reads, the challenge of getting motivated to exercise, and processing the loss of dearly missed friends, Conroy's lighthearted and eminently memorable pieces offer a unique window into the life of a true titan of Southern writing. In addition, A Lowcountry Heart also includes some of Conroy's most beloved speeches and interviews, a touching letter to his grandson, and a beautiful introduction from his widow, the novelist Cassandra King. Finally, the collection turns to...

David Foster Wallace has made an art of taking readers into places no other writer ever gets near. In the pages of his novels INFINITE JEST and THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM and the collections GIRL WITH CURIOUS HAIR and A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I'LL NEVER DO AGAIN, he had created as unique a voice and vies as any writer at work today, rendering a dazzling array of interior states with delicious insight and humor. In this new collection, the author extends his range and craft in twenty-two stories that intertwine hilarity with an escalating disquiet to create almos unbearable tensions. Three stories venture inside minds and landscapes that are at once recognizable and utterly strange: a boy paralyzed by fear atop a high diving board ("Forever Overhead"), a poet lounging contented beside his pool ("Death Is Not the End"), a young couple experiencing sexual uncertainties ("Adult World"), a depressed woman soliciting comfort from her threadbare support network ("The Depressed Person", chosen for Prize Stories 1999: The O. Henry Awards). The series of stories from which the book takes its title is a tour de force sequence of imagined interviews with men on the subject of their relations with women. These portraits of men at thier most self-justifying, loquacious, and benighted explore poignantly and hilariously the agonies of sexual connection. BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN gives us men and women, celebrity and bitter loneliness, sexual posturing and naked honesty, erudition and apeman babble - a world whose emotional complexity and outright comedy closely resemble our own. In these remarkable stories, David Foster Wallace reaffirms his reputation a a "passionate and deeply serious wrtier" (San Francisco Chronicle) who again expands our ideas of the pleasures of fiction can afford.

'The majestic beauty of Van Diemen's Land as well as its tendency to foster grotesque violence is effectively captured in this narrative of notorious convict Alexander Pearce.' Sydney Morning HeraldFor the convicts transported from their homeland, Van Diemen's Land was a feared and dreaded penal settlement at the end of the earth. The worst prisoners were sent to the isolated Sarah Island, accessed through a treacherous channel that the convicts named 'Hell's Gates', a reference to the gates of hell in Dante's Inferno: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'.In 1822, eight convicts escaped in a fateful bid for freedom. This band of escapees with little food or equipment, in a place these immigrants knew little about, battled a merciless enemy - an unforgiving, hostile land - that led to starvation and, ultimately, cannibalism.In Hell's Gates,Paul Collins has fashioned an utterly riveting narrative of physical hardship and pathological behaviour.

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"From the Trade Paperback edition.

RetailThis ebook compendium includes the entire text for three of Carl Hiaasen's most acclaimed books for young readers: Hoot, Flush, and Scat.

The third installment in Martin Walker's delightful, internationally acclaimed series featuring Chief of Police Bruno.Something dangerous is afoot in St. Denis. In the space of a few weeks, the normally sleepy village sees attacks on Vietnamese vendors, arson at a local Asian restaurant, subpar truffles from China smuggled into outgoing shipments at a nearby market--all of it threatening the Dordogne's truffle trade, worth millions of dollars each year, and all of it spelling trouble for Benoît "Bruno" Courrèges, master chef, devoted oenophile, and, most important, beloved chief of police. When one of his hunting partners, a noted truffle expert, is murdered, Bruno's investigation into the murky events unfolding around St. Denis becomes infinitely more complicated. His friend wasn't just a connoisseur of French delicacies, he was a former high-profile intelligence agent--and someone wanted him dead.As the strange crimes continue, Bruno's detective work...

The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer (who Mark Twain met during his brief tenure as a California newspaper reporter), told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist on the loose in mid-nineteenth century San Francisco. When 28-year-old San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer at San Francisco's steam baths in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. As Twain steamed, played cards, and drank beer with Sawyer (a Volunteer firefighter, Customs Inspector, and local hero responsible for having saved ninety lives at sea), he had second thoughts about Shirley Tempest, his proposed book about a local girl firefighter, and began to envision a novel of wider scope. Twain learned that a dozen years earlier the eighteen-year-old New York-born Sawyer had been a "Torch Boy," one of the young men who raced ahead of the volunteer firemen's hand-drawn...

Witness the frightening transformation of a loving husband into a hardened terrorist: his disapproval of modern conveniences, including electricity and medicine; his strategies for toughening up his sons by taking them into the desert without food or water; and his decision to move his wives and children from an orderly life to one of extreme uncertainty. With unprecedented access and insight, bestselling author Jean Sasson takes us inside the secret world of Osama bin Laden.Osama bin Laden is the western world's most wanted terrorist. Intent on secrecy at all costs, his personal life has been shrouded in mystery – until now. For the first time, Osama's first wife and fourth son break the silence to reveal the truth about the character and life of a man both feared and revered around the globe. Osama married his first cousin Najwa when he was just 17. Here she describes the quiet, serious young man she fell in love with, who would take her from a life of extraordinary...