Bøger udgivet af Harper Perennial

With economic uncertainty reaching unprecedented levels, Aaron W. Smith's accessible nine-step plan to take control of your financial future will resonate whether you're just starting out or finding yourself midlife with concerns about your retirement. In The Black will transform your retirement plans, regardless of income, by offering concrete advice on what opportunities are available and using real-life examples to illustrate how anyone can achieve their financial dreams be they middle- aged and facing debt or actively saving since their early twenties. In clear, easy-to-follow steps, readers will learn how to:Overcome historical resistance to investingSave for retirement while keeping kinship ties intactUse faith as a motivator for saving and strengthening financial disciplineBreak through denial about changes in Social Security and pension plans. . . and much more.

In this unique biography of Thomas Jefferson, leading journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens offers a startlingly new and provocative interpretation of our Founding Father?a man conflicted by power who wrote the Declaration of Independence and acted as ambassador to France yet yearned for a quieter career in the Virginia legislature. A masterly writer, Jefferson was an awkward public speaker. A professed proponent of emancipation, he elided the issue of slavery from the Declaration of Independence and continued to own human property. A reluctant candidate, he left an indelible presidential legacy. With intelligence, insight, eloquence, and wit, Hitchens gives us an artful portrait of a complex, formative figure and his turbulent era.

It was a crime that shocked the nation: the brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals--too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were apprehended, state's attorney Robert Crowe was certain that no defense could save the ruthless killers from the gallows. But the families of the confessed murderers hired Clarence Darrow, entrusting the lives of their sons to the most famous lawyer in America in what would be one of the most sensational criminal trials in the history of American justice.Set against the backdrop of the 1920s--a time of prosperity, self-indulgence, and hedonistic excess in a lawless city on the brink of anarchy--For the Thrill of It draws the reader into a world of speakeasies and flappers, of gangsters and gin parties, with a spellbinding narrative of Jazz Age murder and mystery.

A new collection of unusually intimate poems by the highly acclaimed poet Frieda Hughes, Daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

"As exciting and readable an account as you could wish." -- The Guardian "Fascinating." - Bill Bryson The Black Death vividly and comprehensively brings to light the full horror of this uniquely catastrophic event that hastened the disintegration of an age.A series of natural disasters in the Orient during the fourteenth century brought about the most devastating period of death and destruction in European history. The epidemic killed one-third of Europe's people over a period of three years, and the resulting social and economic upheaval was on a scale unparalleled in all of recorded history. Synthesizing the records of contemporary chroniclers and the work of later historians, Philip Ziegler offers a critically acclaimed overview of this crucial epoch in a single masterly volume.

"Wit, emotion and undiminished boldness. . . . This is a book which celebrates life and warms the heart." --Tulsa WorldA timeless American classic, this beloved family saga of the heartland is "deeply felt . . . dramatic . . . constantly alive" (Harper's Magazine)On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy's fate will be the family's greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive--and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.This moving novel brings to life the rhythms and the mood of Midwestern rural life through its endearing characters and their secrets, fears, heartache, and pleasures. Jetta Carleton's only work of fiction remains an utterly compelling story told with perceptive humor and a deep compassion.

Tennis has been Willy Novinsky's one love ever since she first picked up a racquet at the age of four. A middle-ranked pro at twenty-three, she's met her match in Eric Oberdorf, a low-ranked, untested Princeton grad who also intends to make his mark on the international tennis circuit. Eric becomes Willy's first passion off the court, and eventually they marry. But while wedded life begins well, full-tilt competition soon puts a strain on their relationship?and an unexpected accident sends driven and gifted Willy sliding irrevocably toward resentment, tragedy, and despair. From acclaimed author Lionel Shriver comes a brilliant and unflinching novel about the devastating cost of prizing achievement over love.

Once upon a time in Manhattan . . .. . . there stood a pair of fine old brick townhouses on West Tenth Street. One had a blue door with a tarnished brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin. The other was empty. Behind the blue door lived Sadie, the widow of a famous British rocker who died of an overdose, and two of her children, Hamish and Deen.The children manage to muddle along as best they can with a loving but distracted mother. But their whole world changes when the house next door gets a new owner--a mysterious Southerner who quickly endears himself to his new neighbors, taking them--and their friends--under his protective wing. In doing so, he transforms everything.Magical, lively, lovely, and unique, The Ballad of West Tenth Street is a contemporary urban fairy tale that delightfully reimagines real life.

Lewis Aldridge is just 10 years old when he loses his mother. Neglected by his distant father and new stepmother, he can't help but let the grief inside him grow. When he is 17, that pain explodes in an incendiary act of destruction. After serving two years in prison, Lewis returns to a family that does not know how to face him and a town that wishes he would have stayed away. On the outskirts of post-war London, Waterford seems the perfect hamlet. But beneath its polished surface fester cruelty and violence. Lewis is determined to redeem himself, but his efforts are stymied. His stepmother's attempt to make amends goes dangerously awry, and his relationship with his new boss's daughters reveals unimaginable secrets. In this brilliant debut Sadie Jones tells the story of a boy who refuses to accept the polite lies of a tightly knit community that rejects love in favor of appearances. Written with nail-biting suspense and cinematic pacing, The Outcast is an emotionally powerful evocation of post-war provincial English society, and a remarkably uplifting testament to the redemptive powers of love and understanding.

By turns uproarious and touching, the memoir of a young woman's search for an orgasm--and for the elusive connections between sex and loveTwenty-six-year-old Mara Altman wanted to know what all the screaming was about. She'd lost her virginity at seventeen; grown up in southern California with sexually free parents; had lovers in India, Burma, and Peru; and spent a year in Bangkok observing all manner of depravity. And yet she was an attractive, successful, single woman in New York who'd never had an orgasm.And so she embarked on a wildly funny, emotionally resonant odyssey--a journey both inside and outside herself--only to discover that, for Mara, orgasm was connected to a part of her that no vibrator could reach. Thanks for Coming is one woman's look at our obsession with and anxiety over the female orgasm. Her quest to get her own yields poignant results that will surprise even the sexually awakened among us. From sex shows to sex conventions, from a therapist's couch to her own couch, from the bedroom to the bar, Mara Altman proves to be a guide as hilarious as she is investigative.

One of our most acclaimed poets brings the work of the great Persian mystic and poet, Hafez, to a new audience. There is no poet in our tradition who carries the amount of admiration and devotion that the Persians have for Hafez. Children learn to sing Hafez poems in the third grade, and almost every family has a copy of the collected Hafez on the dining room table. Robert Bly and the great Islamic scholar Leonard Lewisohn have worked for 15 years on this book of Hafez, the first that carries into English his nimbleness, his outrageous humor, his defenses of the private life in the face of the fundamentalists, and the joy of his love poems. He writes in the ghazal form, one of the greatest inventions in the history of poetry. This is Rumi's wild younger brother, now brought into an English that makes his genius visible.

A young woman recently relocated to a tiny Vermont logging town, Lillian is menaced by a mysterious stalker named Blackway. This one man--who kills her cat, forces her boyfriend to flee the state in terror, and silently threatens her very existence--is a force little understood by the local figures to whom she turns for help. Yet, in this spare and powerful tale, Lillian enlists the powerful brute Nate and the curmudgeonly Lester to take the fight to her tormenter as a raggedy quartet of town elders ponders her likely fate. With simple strength and extraordinary force, Go with Me is a riveting modern fable of good provoked to resist evil.

Symmetry is all around us. Of fundamental significance to the way we interpret the world, this unique, pervasive phenomenon indicates a dynamic relationship between objects. Combining a rich historical narrative with his own personal journey as a mathematician, Marcus du Sautoy takes a unique look into the mathematical mind as he explores deep conjectures about symmetry and brings us face-to-face with the oddball mathematicians, both past and present, who have battled to understand symmetry's elusive qualities.

From Louis Ferrante, a one-time mafia thug and federal prison inmate, comes this remarkable and moving memoir of his journey from a life of crime to that of a promising writerUp until his incarceration, Louis Ferrante led the life of a mobster. As a young ruffian, he made his reputation by leading a street gang and shooting a neighborhood bully. Later, he became connected with John Gotti Jr. and the Gambino crime family. During his time with the mob, Ferrante committed the most lucrative robberies in US history, many of which are still unsolved. But soon enough, the law caught up to him. Indictments came from the Secret Service, the Nassau County Organized Crime Force, and the FBI (twice) and Louis found himself behind bars.In jail, Louis read his first book and a new world was opened up to him. During the course of his 8 years he read everything from Caesar's Gallic Wars to Danielle Steele and everything in between. With only what he could teach himself, Louis successfully appealed his own conviction, a landmark case that now appears in textbooks. In addition to law, Ferrante studied the three major faiths, including Buddhism. He eventually chose to become an Orthodox Jew.Free from prison, Ferrante's memoir retells his meteoric rise to the upper-echelon of the mafia hierarchy, his time in prison, and the astonishing turn around his life has made. After spending most of his life involved with crime or in jail, Louis Ferrante has reinvented himself as a writer. With a crisp yet harsh writing style similar to Charles Bukowski, Ferrante's stories of crime with the mob and his time spent in prison are sure to captivate audiences.--Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy and Casino

"Fire to Fire should solidify Doty's position as a star of contemporary American poetry. . . . The poems combine close attention to the fragile, contingent things of the world with the constant, almost unavoidable chance of transcendence." -- Publishers WeeklyA landmark collection of new and published works by one of our finest poets that is a testament to the clarity and thoughtful lyricism of his poemsFire to Fire collects the best works from seven books of poetry by Mark Doty, acclaimed poet and New York Times bestselling author of two memoirs, Firebird and Dog Years.Doty's subjects--our mortal situation, the evanescent beauty of the world, desire's transformative power, and art's ability to give shape to human lives--echo and develop across twenty years of poems. His signature style encompasses both the plainspoken and the artfully wrought; here one of contemporary American poetry's most lauded, recognizable voices speaks to the crises and possibilities of our times.

The intensely moving memoir of Patrick Maguire, one of the 'Maguire Seven', wrongly imprisoned as a teenager for making bombs for the IRA. On the night of October 5 1974, an IRA unit left bombs in two Guildford pubs: five people were killed. On the night of December 3 1974, on the strength of fabricated testimony extracted under duress from Paul Hill and Gerard Conlon (whom the police mistakenly believed had planted the Guildford bombs), Anne and Paddy Maguire, two of their four children, Vincent and Patrick, plus other family members and friends, a total of seven in all, were arrested at their home in West London. On 22 October 1975, the Guildford Four were wrongfully convicted of bombing the two pubs in Guildford. On 4 March 1976, the Maguire Seven, as they had become known, were found guilty of possession of the nitro-glycerine used in those bombings. On 19 October 1989, the verdicts on the Guildford Four were quashed. On 26 June 1991, the convictions against the Maguire Seven of handling explosives were quashed and just over a year later, Sir John May, after producing a report on the Maguire Seven case, described it as the worst miscarriage of justice he had ever seen. Behind these dates lie human stories ? 'My Father's Watch' tells that of Patrick, who was the youngest of the accused, at fourteen years old. He was sentenced to four years and when he came out he had no home and no family, as both of his parents were still in jail. This book takes us through Patrick's entire life, from his working-class childhood in West London to the difficult life he has led since prison, the roots of which go back to the wrongful convictions and the destruction of the family that followed. Patrick Maguire and the novelist Carlo Gébler have written 'My Father's Watch' jointly. It is not a ghosted work ? told in Patrick's own voice, it is a lucid and inspiring account of one individual's experience of an appalling injustice, as well as a reminder, as the war against terror ratchets up, of just how much harm a state can do to its own innocent citizens in the name of security.

"A most important book that will change the way many of us look at animals--and, ultimately, at ourselves." -- Chicago TribuneSince its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"--our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals--inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them.In Animal Liberation, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures--destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.

Introducing Donald Tremaine, P.I.Once the world's number one surfer, Donald Tremaine quit at the top of his game, moved into a trailer in Malibu, and became a detective. Beautiful women don't ask for his autograph anymore. Now they ask for his help--like the stunning Nina Aldeen, who wants Tremaine to solve the murder of her uncle, advertising mogul Roger Gale, brutally slayed in his L.A. office a year earlier. The police investigation went nowhere. The suspects are many, and the victim had more secrets than anyone ever knew. But the closer Tremaine gets to the truth, the closer he comes to a killer who just might make his most complicated case his last.A novel that both honors and invigorates the classic private eye novel, Body Copy loudly heralds the arrival--with a bullet--of a major contender on the noir scene.

The authority on panic and anxiety?newly revised and expanded.Are you one of the more than nineteen million Americans who suffer from anxiety? Don't panic. Newly revised and expanded, this edition offers a straightforward and remarkably effective self-help program for overcoming panic and coping with anxious fears. With insight and compassion, Reid Wilson, Ph.D., demystifies anxiety attacks and provides indispensable advice, including:how a panic attack happens, what causes it, and how it can affect your lifehow to recognize, manage, and control the moment of panichow to control the chronic muscle tensions that increase anxietyhow to conquer fear and face problems with confidencehow to decide which medication is right for youhow to establish reachable goals and rediscover the joy of living

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an abridged edition of Saul Friedländer's definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning two-volume history of the Holocaust: Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 and The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.The book's first part, dealing with the National Socialist campaign of oppression, restores the voices of Jews who were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality following the Nazi accession to power. Friedländer also provides the accounts of the persecutors themselves--and, perhaps most telling of all, the testimonies of ordinary German citizens who, in general, stood silent and unmoved by the increasing waves of segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, and violence. The second part covers the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews--an official program that depended upon the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, the passivity of the populations, and the willingness of the victims to submit in desperate hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.A monumental, multifaceted study now contained in a single volume, Saul Friedländer's Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an essential study of a dark and complex history.

A brilliant philosopher with a talent for self-destruction, Mason Ambrose gratefully accepts an offer no starving ethicist could refuse. He must travel to a private tropical island and tutor Londa Sabacthani, a beautiful, brilliant adolescent who has lost both her memory and her moral sense in a freak accident. Londa's soul is an empty vessel--and Mason's job will be to fill it.But all is not as it seems on Isla de Sangre. Londa's reclusive mother is secretly sheltering a second child whose conscience is a blank slate. Even as the mystery deepens, Mason confronts a frightening question: What will happen when Londa, her head crammed with lofty ideals and her bank account filled to bursting, ventures out to remake our fallen world in her own image?

His name was Rob Castor. Quite possibly, you've heard of him. He became a minor cult celebrity in his mid-twenties for writing a book of darkly pitch-perfect stories set in a stupid sleepy upstate New York town. Several years later, he murdered his writer girlfriend, and then committed suicide. . . .With extraordinarily luxuriant and evocative prose, award-winning author Eli Gottlieb takes us deep into the human psyche, where the most profound of secrets are kept. Now You See Him is a wrenching and enthrallingly suspenseful story that mines the explosive terrains of love and paternity, marriage and its delicate intricacies, family secrets and how they fester over time, and ultimately the true nature of loyalty, trust, friendship, envy, deception, and manipulation.

Averitable smorgasbord of sin, John Baxter's Carnal Knowledge is a delightfully unabashed education in sex and erotic culture. Would you ever consent to a knee-trembler at a love hotel? Would you enjoy a hot lunch while watching kinbaku? Would you consider wearing a French tickler, a merkin, a strap-on, or pasties . . . or would you rather just go commando at the Mine Shaft? From Deep Throat to Debbie Does Dallas, from the mile-high club to the Emperor's Club, John Baxter explains it all to you in this decadently definitive work on the many ins and outs of s-e-x, guaranteed to tantalize, edify, and titillate whether you're a novice or an expert in the arts of eros.

Harriet Carew is the endearing heroine of Cristina Odone's popular weekly 'Daily Telegraph' column, 'Posh But Poor'. Based on the character from the column, 'The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew' is the story of her struggle to juggle family life, work and money. Meet Harriet Carew, mother of three and juggler of work, home and family. Harriet only wants to do her best for her husband Guy, her children and herself. But while their friends flourish, and other parents look on pityingly, the Carews are struggling ? and sliding down the ladder of fortune and happiness. Guy is a writer with a starry past, a humdrum present and unrealistic optimism about the future. His starchy family still treat Harriet as a newcomer to the family. Alex (12) is lazy, Tom (10) is bullied at school and Maisie (3) just misses her mum. Harriet is torn between wanting to be at home more and the need to work longer hours to help pay the school fees. When Harriet's ex-boyfriend James turns up, super-successful and single, Harriet must make some tough decisions. Funny, witty, warm and page-turning, this is the novel that every woman will want to read.

Little is known about Ann Hathaway, the wife of England's greatest playwright; a great deal has been assumed, none of it complimentary. In Shakespeare's Wife, Germaine Greer boldly breaks new ground, reclaiming this much maligned figure from generations of scholarly neglect and misogyny. With deep insight and intelligence, she offers daring and thoughtful new theories about the farmer's daughter who married Britain's immortal Bard, painting a vivid portrait of a truly remarkable woman.

Maps and Legends is an essay collection by American author Michael Chabon that was scheduled for official release on May 1, 2008, although some copies shipped two weeks early from various online bookstores. The book is Chabon's first book-length foray into nonfiction, with 16 essays, some previously published.[1] Several of these essays are defenses of the author's work in genre literature (such as science fiction, fantasy, and comics), while others are more autobiographical, explaining how the author came to write several of his most popular works.

AS the twentieth century breathes its very last, with Britpop at its zenith, twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Steven Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through London's music industry. Blithely crisscrossing the globe in search of the next megahit--fueled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine--Stelfox freely indulges in an unending orgy of self-gratification. But the industry is changing fast and the hits are drying up, and the only way he's going to salvage his sagging career is by taking the idea of "cutthroat" to murderous new levels.

For more than twenty-five years, the antimelodic ?noise? of Sonic Youth has assaulted us, exhilarated us, inspired us. Why?Katherine Dunn says it's because they operate in the foggy world between the real and the surreal. Mary Gaitskill says that Sonic Youth caught her, years ago, when she was falling. J. Robert Lennon says it's because Sonic Youth rip it apart. Emily Maguire was hooked because once she was in love with chaos. Their sound is caustic, elemental, nihilistic?and quite unlike any other cult band ever to achieve rock godhood. In Noise, twenty-one great literary voices offer short fiction based on or inspired by songs from Sonic Youth?a raucous coupling of music and literature featuring marrow-colored goo, severed hands and abandoned babies, Patty Hearst watching the apocalypse on TV, and other unruly images of the Zeitgeist.Contributors Hiag Akmakjian • Christopher Coake • Katherine Dunn • Mary Gaitskill • Rebecca Godfrey • Laird Hunt • Shelley Jackson • J. Robert Lennon • Samuel Ligon • Emily Maguire • Tom McCarthy • Scott Mebus • Eileen Myles • Catherine O'Flynn • Emily Carter Roiphe • Kevin Sampsell • Steven Sherrill • Matt Thorne • Rachel Trezise • Jess Walter • Peter Wild