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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them the truth. After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true? Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God. |
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Edited by critically acclaimed, best-selling author Tom Perrotta, the stories in this year's collection serve as a provacative literary antenna for what is going on in the world ( Chicago Tribune). The collection boasts great variety from famous to first-timers, sifted from major magazines and little reviews, grand and little worlds ( St. Louis Post-Dispatch), ensuring yet another rewarding, eduring edition of the oldest and best-selling Best American. |
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Shortly before his death, Philip K. Dick expanded his novella The Unteleported Man into Lies, Inc., a hallucinatory novel that explores Dicks hallmark themes of conspiracy, totalitarianism, and the thin line between illusion and reality. When catastrophic overpopulation threatens Earth, a company begins offering teleportation to Whales Mouth, an allegedly pristine new home for migrs. The only catch is that the trip is one way. But when one man discovers that the images of happy settlers have been faked, he sets out on an eighteen-year trip to see if anyone wants to come back. |
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In a crumbling apartment building in post-Soviet Russia, there's a ghost who won't keep quiet. Mircha fell from the roof and was never properly buried, so he sticks around to heckle the living: his wife, Azade; Olga, a disillusioned translator/censor for a military newspaper; Yuri, an army veteran who always wears an aviator's helmet; and Tanya, a student of hope, words, and color. Tanya carries a notebook wherever she goes, recording her dreams of finding love and escaping her job at the All-Russia All-Cosmopolitan Museum, a place that holds a fantastic and terrible collection of art knockoffs created with the materials at hand, from foam to chewing gum, Popsicle sticks to tomato juice. When the museum's director hears of an American group seeking to fund art in Russia, it looks as if Tanya might get her chance at a better life, if she can only convince them of the collection's worth. Enlisting the help of her neighbors, Tanya scrambles to save her dreams, and along the way discovers that love may have been waiting in her own courtyard all along. |
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This favorite Green Light Reader that retells the story of Humpty Dumpty is now in a bilingual edition. Includes a note from the translators. Full color. |
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Huge claws Great big teeth But one little dinosaur doesn't hide — she knows her gargantuan grandpa is the sweetest dinosaur of all. |
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There are six eggs in Mother Hen's nest, but — Chip Chip Chip Chip Chip — only five eggs hatch. The sixth egg goes on a high-rolling adventure across the barnyard, past the pig and the tomato patch, and, finally, into Mother Hen's waiting wings. What a wild ride Lisa Campbell Ernst's bold, energetic illustrations transform a short trip across the barnyard into a rollicking good time. |
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Daniel finds an egg. What kind of animal will this mystery egg hatch? Imaginations run wild as the kids in Daniel's class guess what sort of surprise the egg has in store. |
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Daniel loves his new pet. But what will happen when it hatches a surprise? |
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Digger Pig finds the most beautiful turnip in the garden — one that's perfect for baking. Who will help Digger Pig make her turnip pie, and who will help her eat it? |
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Rabbit and Turtle repeat their famous race — this time on their way to school. Rabbit runs; Turtle takes the bus. Who will win? Includes a note from the translators. |
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All of Gil's friends forgot his birthday. Or did they? |
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Scientology, created in 1954 by a prolific sci-fi writer named L. Ron Hubbard, claims to be the world's fastest growing religion, with millions of members around the world and huge financial holdings. Its celebrity believers keep its profile high, and its teams of volunteer ministers offer aid at disaster sites such as Haiti and the World Trade Center. But Scientology is also a notably closed faith, harassing journalists and others through litigation and intimidation, even infiltrating the highest levels of the government to further its goals. Its attacks on psychiatry and its requirement that believers pay as much as tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars for salvation have drawn scrutiny and skepticism. And ex-members use the Internet to share stories of harassment and abuse. Now Janet Reitman offers the first full journalistic history of the Church of Scientology, in an evenhanded account that at last establishes the astonishing truth about the controversial religion. She traces Scientology's development from the birth of Dianetics to today, following its metamorphosis from a pseudoscientific self-help group to a worldwide spiritual corporation with profound control over its followers and even ex-followers. Based on five years of research, unprecedented access to Church officials, confidential documents, and extensive interviews with current and former Scientologists, this is the defining book about a little-known world. |
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The cat will never get your tongue once you have The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. This book defines nearly 10,000 idioms — expressions consisting of two or more words whose combined meaning is different from the literal meaning of the individual words. Each entry has both a definition and a sentence showing the idiom used in context. Most entries offer an explanation of the idiom's origin and indicate when the expression first appeared in English. |
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Young Gav can remember the page of a book after seeing it once, and, inexplicably, he sometimes remembers things that are going to happen in the future. As a loyal slave, he must keep these powers secret, but when a terrible tragedy occurs, Gav, blinded by grief, flees the only world he has ever known. And in what becomes a treacherous journey for freedom, Gav's greatest test of all is facing his powers so that he can come to understand himself and finally find a true home. Includes maps. |
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Karen Wynn Fonstad's THE ATLAS OF MIDDLE-EARTH is an essential volume that will enchant all Tolkien fans. Here is the definitive guide to the geography of Middle-earth, from its founding in the Elder Days through the Third Age, including the journeys of Bilbo, Frodo, and the Fellowship of the Ring. Authentic and updated — nearly one third of the maps are new, and the text is fully revised — the atlas illuminates the enchanted world created in THE SILMARILLION, THE HOBBIT, and THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Hundreds of two-color maps and diagrams survey the journeys of the principal characters day by day — including all the battles and key locations of the First, Second, and Third Ages. Plans and descriptions of castles, buildings, and distinctive landforms are given, along with thematic maps describing the climate, vegetation, languages, and population distribution of Middle-earth throughout its history. An extensive appendix and an index help readers correlate the maps with Tolkien's novels. |
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CliffsNotes Quick Review guides give you a clear, concise, easy-to-use review of the basics. Introducing each topic, defining key terms, and carefully walking you through sample problems, this guide helps you grasp and understand the important concepts needed to succeed. |
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Explore the imagination — and share the murderous action — of Dostoevsky's chief Crime and Punishment character, Raskolnikov. Gain a grasp of how this impoverished young man expected to enrich humanity by rising to a level above the law. The CliffsNotes perspective on a masterpiece of Russian literature delivers insight into the people, plots, language, and history woven into the book's text, as well as information on the author's personal background and careers within the nineteenth-century movement toward realism in writing. CliffsNotes on Crime and Punishment is the real deal in reliable resources for making your classroom experience richly rewarding! |
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Who is John Galt? This famous rhetorical question rings through Ayn Rand's best-selling novel as the people's anthem of despair in depressed economic times. Set in the future, the novel follows capitalist magnates as they battle looters, strikers, and the impending ruin of the United States' economy. The romantic and intellectual relationship between Dagny Taggart, the heroine, and John Galt, whose identity as the leader of the strike is eventually revealed, carries the novel to its climax. This novel, controversial when it first appeared in 1957, purports Rand's objectivist philosophy that the individual is free to pursue his or her own happiness without bowing to God or society. Objectivism in action upholds full laissez-faire capitalism as the only philosophy that can protect humankind's freedom to think, to be inventive, and to live productively. |
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A flock of hapless sheep drive through the country in this rhyming picture book. This Read-Along Book and CD Favorite includes a paperback edition of the book and a compact disc in a newly designed reusable package. |
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