As Far As You Can Go

When Cassie sees a job advertised for a couple to run a remote Australian farm, she thinks it will be the perfect escape for her and Graham. But trapped under the baking sun of the outback, paranoia sets in. There's no radio and they send but never receive any letters. Their enigmatic and unusually forgiving boss Larry and his wife Mara have secrets, sedatives, and some very odd habits: a result of their isolated lifestyle or something more sinister? And there's always the sensation, in the stark brush of the red desert, that eyes are watching them ...

As Far As You Can Go was Julian Mitchell's third novel, first published in 1963. Its protagonist is Harold Barlow, a young stockbroker, on his way up in the world - but easily bored, desiring adventure. He accepts a commission to travel to America; and the further west he goes, the more he discovers in the way of wide open spaces and freedoms. There is, however, a limit. In an introduction written especially for this edition, Julian Mitchell describes his interest in writing 'a reverse Henry James novel, about a European discovering America rather than vice-versa.' 'Like Nabokov, but without his cynicism, Mr Mitchell sets the geography of the United States in motion.' Anthony Burgess, Observer 'This raid on the American psyche, so hilarious, yet so horrific in its implications, proves Mr Mitchell a first-rate satirist.' Telegraph

Homespun humor about the way we live, from the pleasant futility of salmon fishing and the joys of Halloween, to quiet afternoons with soap opera families and endless nights in pursuit of trivia Tom Bodett, humorist, radio star, and pitchman for Motel 6, lives and writes in Homer, Alaska, the little town in the blue Northwest where America stops, carwise. "If you got into your car in New York," he says, "and wanted to take a nice long drive, I mean the longest drive you could without turning around or running into a foreign language, this is where you'd wind up." It's a place of moose and salmon and spectacular sunsets, but, Bodett insists, it's also small-town America, a place not all that different from the Michigan town of his youth. That's why he's made it his home: it perfectly suits his contrary appetites for the extreme and the everyday, for the rigors of the outdoor life and the mundane joys of the family circle. As Far As You Can Go Without a Passport, Bodett's first collection of casual essays, contains pieces on everything from trapping, tree cutting, and halibut fishing, to soap operas, lost socks, and sleeping in. It's guaranteed to please both the renegade and the homebody in every reader.

A perennial favorite, Dr. Seuss’s wonderfully wise graduation speech is the perfect send-off for children starting out in the world, be they nursery school, high school, or college grads! From soaring to high heights and seeing great sights to being left in a Lurch on a prickle-ly perch, Dr. Seuss addresses life’s ups and downs with his trademark humorous verse and illustrations, while encouraging readers to find the success that lies within. In a starred review, Booklist notes: “Seuss’s message is simple but never sappy: life may be a ‘Great Balancing Act,’ but through it all ‘There’s fun to be done.’” This Read & Listen edition contains audio narration.

"Polly, Dennis, Angela, Adrian and the rest are bound to lose their spiritual innocence as well as their virginities on the journey between university in the 1950s and the marriages, families, careers and deaths that follow. On the one hand there's Sex and then the Pill, on the other there is the traditional Catholic Church. In this razor-sharp novel, David Lodge exposes the pressures that assailed Catholics everywhere within a more permissive society, and voices their eternal question: how far can you go?" -- Provided by publisher.

This book is a compilation of stories and lifetime experiences over a seventy-one year period in the author’s life. From World War II through the Space Age: from childhood innocence through the adventures of adulthood. All of this, motivated by her desire for her children, grandchildren, and subsequent generations to see what she has seen, and know her as a person. “I’ve always wished I had asked my grandmothers more questions about their lives. I don’t think I’m unique in that respect,” she says. Its filled with humor, history, and simply the joy of living while striving to become the person you think you were meant to be.

"A sweetly charming love story that leaves the reader with a lasting sense of hope.” —Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star "The perfect novel to snuggle up with.” —Emily Henry, New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read A heartwarming and thoughtful enemies-to-lovers rom-com about two teens—one trying to save his family's failing pinball arcade, the other working for her tech genius dad who wants to take it over—who get trapped together in a snowstorm. Adam Stillwater is in over his head. But the pinball arcade is the only piece of his dad that Adam has left, and he’s determined to protect it from Philadelphia’s newest tech mogul, who wants to turn it into another one of his cold, lifeless gaming cafés. Whitney Mitchell doesn’t know how she got here. Her parents split up. Her boyfriend dumped her. And now she’s spending her senior year running social media for her dad’s chain of super successful gaming cafés—which mostly consists of trading insults with that decrepit old pinball arcade across town. But when a huge snowstorm hits, Adam and Whitney find themselves trapped inside the arcade. Cut off from their families, their worlds, and their responsibilities, the tension between them seems to melt away, leaving something else in its place. But what happens when the storm ends?

The ups, downs, and exploits of a group of British Catholics--for whom the sexual revolution came a little later than it did for everybody else... In this bracing satire, a group of university students make their way through the fifties and into the turbulent sixties and seventies. We first meet Dennis, Michael, Ruth, Polly, and the others at the altar rail of Our Lady and St. Jude, but soon enough they get caught up in the alternately hilarious and poignant preoccupations of work, marriage, sex, and babies--not always in that order. A satirical comedy in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh, Souls and Bodies take an unblinking look at the sexual revolution and the contemporaneous upheavals in the Catholic Church. The result is as unsettlingly true as it is funny.