October Arrivals

The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms of the 1930s and 1940s, The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience. The novel has many threads and a series of events that follow one another at a breathtaking pace. As everything comes together, readers will discover that the story Atwood is telling is not only what it seems to be—but, in fact, much more. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood $26.00 (hc, October 2000)

September Arrivals

In this heroic, passionate story, Alexandra Lapierre vividly imagines the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, the brilliant painter of 17th century Rome, when the artists were the celebrities of the day. Her talent was such that she overturned the prejudices of her time, winning the admiration of wealthy patrons, kings, and queens; but her struggles to maintain her beliefs brought public scandal and alienation from her father – and mentor – Orazio Gentileschi. Lapierre sweeps her audience through the streets once frequented by Caravaggio, Velasquez, and Van Dyck and the studios of artists who used their daggers as efficiently as their brushes. "This is one of the most vivid biographies ever written about an artist. It is also a lively portrait of Rome during the epoque of the Cenci and Caravaggio, and of Venice and Naples and London in the throes of Baroque excess. Above all, Artemisia is a fascinating, if often frightening, study of the relationship of a brilliant father and daughter and their tortured by endlessly colorful lives." – Nicholas Fox Weber, author of Balthus: A Biography

Artemisia: A Novel by Alexandra Lapierre $27.00 (hc, August 2000)

August Arrivals
A grand gothic novel of the outer reaches of passion – of the body and of the mind – Properties of Light is a mesmerizing tale of consuming love and murderous professional envy that carries the reader into the very heart of a physics problem so huge and perplexing it thwarted even Einstein: the nature of light. Caught in the entanglements of erotic and intellectual passion are three physicists – all three are working together to solve some of the deepest and most controversial problems in quantum mechanics, problems that challenge our understanding of the "real world" and of the nature of time. – from the book jacket "A marvelous book, full of light of its own. Bridging the chasm between fiction and physics, it comes up with a single engrossing reality as radical as a unified field theory. In this eloquent work, physics is the necessary preliminary to life and life, ultimately, the noble expression of physics. Properties of Light is at once the most logical and most ecstastic ficition of our age" – Andrew Solomon, author of A Stone Boat	Properties of Light: a Novel of Love, Betrayal, and Quantum Physics by Rebecca Goldstein $21.95 (hc, June 2000)
In a magical blending of historical fact and visionary fiction, Israel Rosenfield serves up for our scrutiny and sheer delight Freud's long-lost last "manuscript." The key to Freud's legacy; a mysterious woman claiming to be the daughter of his illegitimate child; a conspiracy of silence surrounding the torture of war-torn soldiers; a modern scientist's lust to construct the ultimate robot, the Marilyn machine -- these are just some of the intrigues that propel the narrative of this brilliant new novel. With a surprising twist on history and a playful challenge to today's enduring Freud debate, Israel Rosenfield reveals a Freud who in reflecting upon his life's work realizes that he has gotten it all wrong! Having realized that he has been a victim of his own self-delusion, Freud goes about setting the record straight with a preposterously seductive new theory of human behavior: it is not drives that define us but rather our boundless capacity to deceive ourselves. Such are the explosive contents of his last manuscript, Megalomania. Its discovery years later prompts a postmortem that effectively puts the icon to rest, resurrects the man, and exposes the naivete of Freud's disciples and the megalomaniacal tendencies of his detractors. Freud's Megalomania is a pure work of the imagination in which a fictional Freud is allowed to reinvent himself -- and, oddly enough, is only then able to lay claim to his indisputable place in history.	Freud's Megalomania by Israel Rosenfield $21.95 (hc, June 2000)

July Arrivals

"We all need to sign up for this one, the last great postmodern fin de millennium road trip, a cosmic whodunit and an everlastingly unforgettable pilgrimage, Driving Mr. Albert is a dazzling dense lump of miracles and genius thanks in no small part to chief detective Michael Paterniti, a literary wizard whose multidimensional prose is quite a match for his subject's brilliance."--Bob Shacochis, author of Easy in the Islands and The Immaculate Invasion Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, and part meditation, Driving Mr. Albert is one of the most unique road trips in modern literature -- the story of Paterniti and Dr. Thomas Harvey journey to return Albert Einstein's thought to be lost brain to his granddaughter. With the brain as both cargo and talisman, Paterniti perceives every motel, truck-stop diner, and roadside attraction as a weigh station for the American dream in the wake of the scientist's mind-blowing legacy. Finally, inspired by the man who gave a skeptical world a glimpse of its cosmic origins, theis extraordianry writer weaves his own unified field theory of time, love, and the power to believe, once again, in eternity.

Driving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti $18.95 (hc, 2000)

June Arrivals
Emotionally Weird takes place on a weather-beaten island off the coast of Scotland where Effie and her mother, Nora, take refuge in the large, mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. But as mother and daughter spin their tales, strange things are happening around them. Why is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog? In a brilliant comic narrative which explores the nonsensical power of language and meaning, Kate Atkinson has created another magical masterpiece. Also by Kate Atkinson: Human Croquet and Behind the Scenes at the Museum	Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson $25.00 (hc, 2000)
Under the Skin by Michel Faber $23.00 (hc, 2000) Under The Skin is a surreal representation of contemporary society run amok, set in the very real beauty of the Scottish Highlands through the eyes of a strange protagonist obsessed with muscle-bound hitchhikers. Michel Faber's work has been described as a combination of Roald Dahl and Franz Kafka, as Somerset Maugham shacking up with Ian McEwan. At once humane and horrifying, Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory-our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion. A grotesque and comical allegory announcing the arrival of an exciting talent, rich and assured.
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg $22.95 (hc, 2000) Myla Goldberg's Bee Season is a thrill ride for serious intellectuals, for word-o-philes (lexiphiles), lexicographers, ex-spelling bee contestants, Scrabble players, crossword puzzle-addicts, kleptomaniacs, kabbalists, and Hare Krishnas. Read to understand the mystical search for God in the extraordinary.
Not actually fiction, Experience is the memoir of novelist Martin Amis. In reflecting on his remarkable life, he observes the changing literary scene in Britain and the United States, while providing the reader with a glimpse of "the geography of the writer's mind." The result is a fascinating work of autobiography -- profound, witty, and ruthlessly honest. As a writer's self-portrait, it is destined to become a classic of its own kind. Martin Amis is the author of several books, including London Fields, Money, The Information, and, most recently, Heavy Water.	Experience by Martin Amis $23.95 (hc, 2000)

May Arrivals The life of Coleman Silk, an aging classics professor at a small New England college, becomes an escalation of secrets and public accusations. Set in 1990s America, where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciation and rituals of purification, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth's eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives that are as tragically determined by the nation's fate as by the "human stain" that so ineradicably marks human nature. This harrowing, compassionate novel is a magnificent successor to his Vietnam-era novel, American Pastoral, and his McCarthy-era novel, I Married a Communist.

Human Stain by Philip Roth $26.00 (hc, 2000)

White Teeth by Zadie Smith $24.95 (hc, 2000) "Zadie Smith's fizzing first novel is about how we all got here -- from the Caribbean, from the Indian subcontinent, from thirteenth place in a long ago Olympic bicycle race -- and about what 'here' turned out to be. It's an astonishly assured debut, funny and serious, and the voice has real writerly idiosyncrasy. I was delighted by White Teeth and often impressed. It has...bite." -- Salman Rushdie

April Arrivals

In his latest work, Ravelstein, Saul Bellow uses the form and liberties of the novel to pay tribute to his late friend Allan Bloom. The novel itself is the fictional memoir of Abe Ravelstein as told by his biographer and friend Chick. Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent Midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. When he puts forth a book of his convictions about the ideas which sustain humankind, or kill it, much to Ravelstein's own surprise he becomes a celebrity. From there, Chick continues to record his brilliant life, but more accurately recounts the two friends' fascinating conversations on mortality, philosophy and history, loves and friends old and new, old suits, and vaudeville routines from the remote past. Deeply insightful and always moving, Saul Bellow's new novel is a journey through love and memory. It is brave, dark, and bleakly funny; an elegy to friendship and lives

Ravelstein by Saul Bellow $24.95 (hc, 2000)