Nicholas Guy Smith

When, in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced...

'It's a gift. Not a gift I want, but it is a gift.' Days before the birth of his first son, writer and academic John M. Hull started to go blind. He would lose his sight entirely, plunged into darkness, unable to distinguish any sense of light or shadow. Isolated and claustrophobic, he sank into a deep depression. Soon, he had forgotten what his wife and daughter looked like. In Notes on Blindness, John reveals his profound sense of loss, his altered...

Johannes Cabal is a necromancer-and he's slightly infamous. Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day: And Other Tales of the Necromancer features seven of Cabal's most frightening adventures: "Exeunt Demon King,""The Ereshkigal Working,""Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day,""The House of Gears,""The Death of Me,""Ouroboros Ouzo," and " A Long Spoon."Also included is an original introduction written and read by the author.

The third novel in the acclaimed, cult-favorite series starring necromancer Johannes Cabal. Johannes Cabal and his rather inexact powers of necromancy are back once more. This time, his talents are purchased by the Fear Institute as they hunt for the phobic animus-the embodiment of fear. The three institute members, led by Cabal and his silver key, enter the Dreamlands and find themselves pursued by walking trees plagued with giant ticks, stone men...

An ongoing, episodic "prose comic" from which the pictures are summoned by the magic of words, Goon Squad is set in a version of modern-day Manchester. Its biggest divergence from the real city is that it-along with most other large urban centers-has a team of superheroes to protect it against unusual threats with which the conventional forces of law and order would have problems. Puppet Girl is now part of the Goon Squad, but her first time in the...

In this novel, a winner of both the National Jewish Book Award and the first Israeli Literature Prize, A. B. Yehoshua weaves a deeply affecting family saga and an portrait of Jewish life over the past two centuries. The story moves backward through time, unfolding over the course of five conversations. On a kibbutz in the Negev in 1982, a student describes her strange meeting with her boyfriend's father, Judge Gavriel Mani. On German-occupied Crete...