1945, Lake Como. Mussolini and his mistress are captured and shot by local partisans. The precise circumstances of Il Duce's death remain controversial. 1992, Milan. Colonna, a depressed hack writer, is offered a fee he can't resist to ghostwrite a book. His subject: a fledgling newspaper, which happens to be financed by a powerful media magnate. As Colonna gets to know the team, he learns of the editor's paranoid theory that Mussolini's corpse was...

Bored of the parties and luxuries that come with her socialite lifestyle, Claire Boltwood longs for something more authentic in her life. Desperate for adventure, Claire and her father decide to travel from New York City to the Pacific Northwest in their automobile, a new privilege enjoyed by the rich. Though he is a clever businessman, Claire's father knows nothing about cars, so he encourages Claire to drive, challenging the gender stereotypes of...

Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...

A forerunner of psychological fiction, and considered a landmark work for its innovative use of narrative devices, Tristram Shandy was both celebrated and vilified when first published in 1759. While the narrative's endless digressions drew criticism, the novel's bawdy humor made it a cause for celebration in eighteenth-century London. Originally released in nine separate volumes, it is literature's famed "cock and bull" story, reveling in parody...

Finbar Dolan is lost and lonely. Except he doesn't know it. Despite escaping his blue-collar Boston upbringing to carve out a mildly successful career at a Madison Avenue ad agency, he's a bit of a mess and closing in on forty. He's recently called off a wedding. Now, a few days before Christmas, he's forced to cancel a long-postponed vacation in order to write, produce, and edit a Super Bowl commercial for his diaper account in record time. Fortunately,...

While they are discussing the possible illnesses they may have, Jerome, Harris, and George all realize they suffer from the same thing-working too much. Upon the realization, the three best friends decide that they must go on a vacation. After rejecting the ideas of a sea trip or country stay, because Jerome doesn't like the sea, and Harris finds the country to be dull, the men decide on a boat trip. With their bags packed and with the company of...

In the classical tale "The Satyricon", Petronius Arbiter makes a strong, yet humorous, statement about the social life of ancient Rome. Rather than telling the story of Encolpius and his companions heroically, which was the typical approach of other writings of classical antiquity, Petronius chose to show the true life and vernacular of the Roman lower and middle class through satire and comedy. Narrator Encolpius, a former gladiator, goes on adventures...

Satan comes to Soviet Moscow in this critically acclaimed translation of one of the most important and best-loved modern classics in world literature. The Master and Margarita has been captivating readers around the world ever since its first publication in 1967. Written during Stalin's time in power but suppressed in the Soviet Union for decades, Bulgakov's masterpiece is an ironic parable on power and its corruption, on good and evil, and on...