Top Literary & Poetry eBooks

Atlas Shrugged eBook by Rand, Ayn

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

The year 2005 marks Ayn Rand's Centennial Year. The astounding story of a man that said that he would stop the motor of the world-and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is unlike any other book you have ever read. "A writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly."-The New York Times

Cliges eBook by de Troyes, Chretien

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

IT is six hundred and fifty years since Chretien de Troyes wrote his Cliges. And yet he is wonderfully near us, whereas he is separated by a great gulf from the rude trouveres of the Chansons de Gestes and from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was still dragging out its weary length in his early days. Chretien is as refined, as civilised, as composite as we are ourselves; his ladies are as full of whims, impulses, sudden reserves, self-debate as M.

Cannery Row eBook by Steinbeck, John

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

Cannery Row

Cry, the Beloved Country eBook by Paton, Alan

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

"Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s. The book is written with such keen empathy and understanding that to read it is to share fully in the gravity of the characters' situations. It both touches your heart deeply and inspires a renewed faith in the dignity of mankind. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic tale, passionately African, timeless and universal, and beyond all, selfless."

A Farewell to Arms eBook by Hemingway, Ernest

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially." The greatest American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms cemented Ernest Hemingway's reputation as one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century. Drawn largely from Hemingway's own experiences, it is the story of a volunteer ambulance driver wounded on the Italian front, the beautiful British nurse with whom he falls in love, and their journey to find some small sanctuary in a world gone mad with war. By turns beautiful and tragic, tender and harsh and realistic, A Farewell to Arms is one of the supreme literary achievements of our time.

Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition, The eBook by Coelho, Paulo

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

Customer Review: Reading The Alchemist was like opening my mind to what was infront of me. Like having a viel be lifted from my eyes and having them adjust to new light. I enjoyed Paulo Coehlo's creative use of fictional charactes to convey a very real picture of our lives. Art imitates life or in this case art shapes life. Sometimes we think what we are searching for is complex but in fact it's painfully simple. Thanks Paulo.

Betting on the Muse eBook by Bukowski, Charles

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

Description information pending

Atonement eBook by McEwan, Ian

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

Ian McEwan's symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment's flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia's childhood friend. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives -- together with her precocious literary gifts -- brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.Atonement is Ian McEwan's finest achievement. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, the novel is at its center a profound -- and profoundly moving -- exploration of shame and forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution.<HR>"A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<A HREF="/author.cgi/1414">JOHN UPDIKE</A>, THE NEW YORKER"Flat-out brilliant.... Lush, detailed, vibrantly colored and intense." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE"A tour de force.... Every bit as affecting as it is gripping." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES"Luminous.... Atonement is brilliant and like nothing he's ever written before." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEWSWEEK"No one now writing fiction in the English language surpasses Ian McEwan." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD"Brilliant.... McEwan could be the most psychologically astute writer working today, our era's Jane Austen." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ESQUIRE"His most complete and passionate book to date." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW"In the seriousness of its intentions and the dazzle of its language, Atonement made me starry-eyed all over again on behalf of literature's humanizing possibilities." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;DAPHNE MERKIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES"Resplendent.... Graceful.... Magisterial.... Gloriously realized." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE"McEwan is technically at the height of his powers." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS"Astonishing.... [with] one of the most remarkable erotic scenes in modern fiction.... [It] is something you will never forget." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CHICAGO TRIBUNE"Enthralling.... With psychological insight and a command of sensual and historical detail, Mr. McEwan creates an absorbing fictional world." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE WALL STREET JOURNAL"It is rare for a critic to feel justified in using the word "masterpiece," but Ian McEwan's new book really deserves to be called one... Atonement is a work of astonishing depth and humanity... This novel really is worthy of the Booker." &nbs

CliffsNotes To Kill a Mockingbird eBook by Castleman, Tamara

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

Customer Review: At times it can get slow, but I read this book for school and we really got in depth about motifs and the meaning/messages.

Aspects of the Novel eBook by Forster, E. M.

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

Certain people pretend to tell us what birth and death are like: a mother, for instance, has her point of view about birth; a doctor, a religious, have their points of view about both. But it is all from the outside, and the two entities who might enlighten us, the baby and the corpse, cannot do so, because their apparatus for communicating their experiences is not attuned to our apparatus for reception.

Cryptonomicon: A Novel eBook by Stephenson, Neal

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to Detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces. Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia - a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702, linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn. A breathtaking tour de force and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought, and creative daring; the product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.

A Thousand Splendid Suns eBook by Hosseini, Khaled

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.

Deaf Sentence eBook by Lodge, David

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

The subject of enthusiastic and widespread reviews, David Lodge's fourteenth work of fiction displays the humor and shrewd observations that have made him a much-loved icon. Deaf Sentence tells the story of Desmond Bates, a recently retired linguistics professor in his mid-sixties. Vexed by his encroaching deafness and at loose ends in his personal life, Desmond inadvertently gets involved with a seemingly personable young American female student who seeks his support in matters academic and not so academic, who finally threatens to destabilize his life completely with her unpredictable''and wayward''behavior. What emerges is a funny, moving account of one man's effort to come to terms with aging and mortality''a classic meditation on modern middle age that fans of David Lodge will love.

Choke eBook by Palahniuk, Chuck

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

From the author of the international sensation Fight Club, here is a powerful (and hilarious) novel about love and strife between mothers and sons, the addictive power of sex, the terrors of aging, the ugly truth about historical theme parks, and much else.Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk's controversial and blazingly original debut novel, introduced a fresh and even renegade talent to American fiction, one who has retooled the classic black humor of Terry Southern and Kurt Vonnegut for the lunacy of the millennial age. In his new novel, Choke, he gives readers a vision of life and love and sex and mortality that is both chillingly brilliant and teeth-rattlingly funny.Victor Mancini, a dropout from medical school, has devised a complicated scam to pay for his mother's elder care: Pretend to be choking on a piece of food in a restaurant and the person who "saves you" will feel responsible for the rest of his life. Multiply that a couple of hundred times and you generate a healthy flow of checks, week in, week out. Between fake choking gigs, Victor works at Colonial Dunsboro with a motley group of losers and stoners trapped in 1734, cruises sex addiction groups for action ("You put twenty sexaholics around a table night after night and don't be surprised."), and visits his mother, whose anarchic streak made his childhood a mad whirl and whose Alzheimer's disease now hides what may be the startling truth about his (possibly divine?) parentage. An antihero for our deranging times, Victor's whole existence is a struggle to wrest an identity from overwhelming forces. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.<HR>"Palahniuk is one of the freshest, most intriguing voices to appear in a long time. He rearranges Vonnegut's sly humor, DeLillo's mordant social analysis, and Pynchon's antic surrealism (or is it R. Crumb's?) into a gleaming puzzle palace all his own." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; NEWSDAY"Palahniuk displays a Swiftian gift for satire, as well as a knack for crafting mesmerizing sentences that loom with stark, prickly prose and repetitive rhythms." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER"Even I can't write this well." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; THOM JONES"Palahniuk's language is urgent and tense, touched with psychopathic brilliance, his images dead-on accurate....[He] is an author who makes full use of the alchemical powers of fiction to synthesize a universe that mirrors our own fiction as a way of illuminating the world without obliterating its complexity." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; L.A. WEEKLY"Maybe our generation has found its Don DeLillo." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; BRET EASTON ELLIS<HR>

A Case of Exploding Mangoes eBook by Hanif, Mohammed

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 53:11:25 GMT

There is something about these bloody squadron leaders that makes them think that if they lock you up in a cell, put their stinking mouth to your ear, and shout something about your mother, they can find all the answers. They are generally a sad lot, these leaders without any squadrons to lead. It's their own lack of leadership qualities that stops them mid-career, nowhere for them to go except from one training institute to another, permanent seconds in command to one commander or the other. You can tell them from their belts, loose and low, straining under the weight of their paunches. Or from their berets, so carefully positioned to hide that shiny bald patch. Schemes for part-time M.B.A.'s and a new life are trying hard to keep pace with missed promotions and pension plans.

Look at the arrangement of fruit salad on my tormentor's chest, above the left pocket of his uniform shirt, and you can read his whole biography. A faded paratrooper's badge is the only thing that he had to leave his barracks to earn. The medals in the first row just came and pinned themselves to his chest. He got them because he was there. The Fortieth Independence Day medal. The Squadron Anniversary medal. Today-I-did-not-jerk-off medal. Then the second row, fruits of his own hard labour and leadership. One for organising a squash tournament, another for the great battle that was tree-plantation week. The leader with his mouth to my ear and my mother on his mind has had a freebie to Mecca and is wearing a haj medal, too.

As Obaid used to say, "God's glory. God's glory. For every monkey there is a houri."

The 2nd OIC is wasting more of his already-wasted life trying to break me down with his bad breath and his incessant shouting. Doesn't he know that I actually invented some of the bullshit that he is pouring into my ear? Hasn't he heard about the Shigri treatment? Doesn't he know that I used to get invited to other squadrons in the middle of the night to make the new arrivals cry with my three-minute routine about their mothers? Does he really think that "fuck your fucking mother," even when delivered at strength 5, still has any meaning when you are weeks away from the president's annual inspection and becoming a commissioned officer?

The theory used to be damn simple: Any good soldier learns to shut out the noise and delink such expressions from their apparent meaning. I mean, when they say that thing about your mother, they have absolutely no intention--and I am certain no desire, either--to do what they say they want to do with your mother. They say it because it comes out rapid-fire and sounds cool and requires absolutely no imagination. The last syllable of mother reverberates in your head for a while as it is delivered with their lips glued to your ear. And that is just about that. They have not even seen your poor mother.

Anybody who breaks down at the sheer volume of this should stay in his little village and tend his father's goats or should study biology and become a doctor, and then they can have all the bloody peace and quiet they want. Because as a soldier, noise is the first thing you learn to defend yourself against, and as an officer, noise is the first weapon of attack you learn to use.

Unless you are in the Silent Drill Squad.

Look at the parade square during the morning drill and see who commands it. Who rules? There are more than a thousand of us,