The Tale Of Raw Head And Bloody Bones

The explosive and controversial debut novel by a major new voice in fiction Meet Tristan Hart, a brilliant young man of means. The year is 1751, and at the age of twenty he leaves home to study medicine at the great hospital of St. Thomas in London. It will be a momentous year for the intellectually ambitious Mr. Hart, who, in addition to being a student of Locke and Descartes and a promising young physician, is also, alas, psychotic. He is obsessed with the nature of pain and medically preventing it, but—equally strong and much harder to control—is his obsession with causing it. Desperate to understand his deviant desires before they are his undoing, he uses the new tools of the age—reason and science and skepticism—to plumb the depths of his own dark mind. Profoundly imaginative, unexpectedly funny, and with a strange but moving love story at its heart, The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones is an oddly beautiful and daring novel about the relationship between the mind and body, sex, madness, pain, and the existence of God.

*****Young readers can meet some of the strangest beasts ever in these 15 spine-tingling folktales. A dancing corpse, a talking skull, a witch who sucks blood--these creepy denizens and others reflect the heritage of African oral traditions that has been passed down for generations.

A harrowing array of scary stories that all have one thing in common: each either begins or ends with a scream! R.L. Stine—the godfather of Goosebumps—and some of the most popular authors today bring an unrivaled mastery of all things fearsome, frightening, and fantabulous to this terrifying anthology of all-new scary short stories. Scream and Scream Again! is full of twists and turns, dark corners, and devilish revenge. Collected in conjunction with the Mystery Writers of America, this set includes works from New York Times bestselling authors telling tales of wicked ice-cream trucks, time-travelling heroes, witches and warlocks, and of course, haunted houses. Read it if you dare! With twenty never-before-published scary stories from some of the most popular authors today—including Chris Grabenstein, Wendy Corsi Staub, Heather Graham, Peter Lerangis, R.L. Stine, Bruce Hale, Emmy Laybourne, Steve Hockensmith, Lisa Morton, Ray Daniel, Beth Fantaskey, Phil Mathews, Carter Wilson, Doug Levin, Jeff Soloway, Joseph S. Walker, Alison McMahan, Daniel Palmer, Tonya Hurley, and Stephen Ross—it’s sure to leave readers screaming for more.

Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the greatest modern writers presented in attractive, accessible paperback editions. “Murakami’s bold willingness to go straight over the top is a signal indication of his genius. . . . A world-class writer who has both eyes open and takes big risks.” —The Washington Post Book World Not since Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata has a Japanese writer won the international acclaim enjoyed by Haruki Murakami. His genre-busting novels, short stories and reportage, which have been translated into 35 languages, meld the surreal and the hard-boiled, deadpan comedy and delicate introspection. Vintage Murakami includes the opening chapter of the international bestseller Norwegian Wood; “Lieutenant Mamiya’s Long Story: Parts I and II” from his monumental novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; “Shizuko Akashi” from Underground, his non-fiction book on the Toyko subway attack of 1995; and the short stories “Barn Burning,” “Honeypie.” Also included, for the first time in book form, the short story, “Ice Man.”

Based on the true story of Harriet Ann Jacobs, Letters from a Slave Girl reveals in poignant detail what thousands of African American women had to endure not long ago, sure to enlighten, anger, and never be forgotten. Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery; it's the only life she has ever known. Now, with the death of her mistress, there is a chance she will be given her freedom, and for the first time Harriet feels hopeful. But hoping can be dangerous, because disappointment is devastating. Harriet has one last hope, though: escape to the North. And as she faces numerous ordeals, this hope gives her the strength she needs to survive.

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

The Speckled Monster tells the dramatic story of two parents who dared to fight back against smallpox. After barely surviving the agony of smallpox themselves, they flouted eighteenth-century medicine by borrowing folk knowledge from African slaves and Eastern women in frantic bids to protect their children. From their heroic struggles stems the modern science of immunology as well as the vaccinations that remain our only hope should the disease ever be unleashed again. Jennifer Lee Carrell transports readers back to the early eighteenth century to tell the tales of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, two iconoclastic figures who helped save London and Boston from the deadliest disease mankind has known.