Product Description: In this taut psychological thriller, a couple and their houseguest find themselves caught in a deadly web of secrets, obsession, and revenge. It is summer, 2012. Charlie, a wealthy banker with an uneasy conscience, invites his troubled cousin Matthew to visit him and his wife in their idyllic mountaintop house...read more

A generous selection that shows the poet James Lasdun at his lyrically inventive best Two men grapple with jumper cables, trying "to make a stand // in this last corner of our realm; machinery . . ." A man on his way to see his therapist encounters a female police officer in an elevator and feels himself regressing to "the original essence, the masculine / criminal salt." A teenager is tricked into eating a spoonful of lime pickle by his girlfriend's father. An Englishman in the Catskills ponders the nature of exile, is chased by yellow jackets, gets a haircut. James Lasdun's subjects are often quotidian but his treatment of them never is. Under his transformative gaze, the familiar becomes strange, the local becomes foreign, and the minor becomes epic. Lasdun has been winning acclaim since his first collection, 1988's "A Jump Start" Helen Vendler has lauded his ability to give "brisk shape to contemporary and classical events"; "The New York Times" has praised the "sharp, slicing imagery" of his work. Now, in "Bluestone," which selects from all three of his previous collections and includes poems from his fourth, "Water Sessions," previously available only in the U.K., readers will be able to appreciate the full sweep of this capacious talent: his delicate wit, his gift for invention, his keen observational eye. It is a gathering that affirms Lasdun's position as, to quote Anthony Hecht, one of "the most gifted, vivid, and deft poets now writing in English.""

Product Description: A TRUE STORY OF OBSESSIVE LOVE TURNING TO OBSESSIVE HATE IN THE CRUCIBLE OF THE DIGITAL AGEGive Me Everything You Have chronicles author James Lasdun's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled "verbal terrorist," who began trying, in her words, to "ruin him...read more

Product Description: A TRUE STORY OF OBSESSIVE LOVE TURNING TO OBSESSIVE HATE IN THE CRUCIBLE OF THE DIGITAL AGEGive Me Everything You Have chronicles author James Lasdun's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled "verbal terrorist," who began trying, in her words, to "ruin him...read more

Product Description: THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY BEST BOOKS OF 2009THE WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST FICTION OF 2009LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOKS OF 2009FAVORITE FICTION OF 2009 FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMESJames Lasdun's great gift is his instinct for the vertiginous moments when the essence of a life discloses itself...read more

The stories in this remarkable collection are vibrant, gripping and intricately worked, but they are more than simply small masterpieces of narrative art. James Lasdun's other great gift is his unfailing psychological instinct for the vertiginous moments when the essence of a life discloses itself. With forensic skill he exposes his characters' hidden desires and fears, drawing back the folds of their familiar self-delusions, their images of themselves, their habits and routines, to reveal them to themselves - and us - with brilliant clarity. In sharply evoked settings that range from the wilds of Northern Greece to the beaches of Cape Cod, these intensely dramatic tales chart the metamorphoses of their characters as they fall prey to the gamut of human passions.The lives in them seethe with love, hate, desire, fear, tender corruption and cruel idealism. They rise to unexpected heights of decency, stumble into comic or tragic folly, they throw themselves open to lust, longing, paranoia - but they are always recognisably, illuminatingly, our lives. As James Wood, the celebrated critic, has noted, 'James Lasdun seems to me to be one of the secret gardens of English writing...when we read him we know what language is for'. This collection of haunting, richly humane pieces - including the first winner of the National Short Story Award, 'An Anxious Man' - is further proof of the powers of enormously inventive writer.

Product Description: Foodie authors James Lasdun and Pia Davis offer forty walks through the extraordinary landscape of Provence, each specially designed to combine natural beauty, historical interest and, of course, world-class local cuisine. James and Pia offer a wide array of itineraries, from multi-day adventures that are linked by train to short half-day excursions...read more

Dreaming of a life of glory and freedom in America, East German youth Stefan Vogel engages in a series of increasingly dangerous adventures to attain his goal, which involves his marriage to the woman of his dreams and an escape from dark secrets hidden behind the Berlin Wall. By the author of The Horned Man. Reprint.

Offers a wide variety of half-day and full-day walks, incorporating the scenery and culture of the Italian regions of Tuscany and Umbria, and includes information about local food and wine, overnight itineraries, easy-to-follow maps, the best restaurants and accommodations, transportation, and more. Original. (view table of contents)

Framed for murder, Lawrence Miller--an expatriate British professor--combs the streets of Manhattan and its neighboring suburbs in a nightmarish pursuit of the perpetrators.

The poet-author of Besieged explores the themes of exile, belonging, and the human relationship with the natural world in a collection of poetry inspired by the author's own life in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Reprint. (view table of contents)

Product Description: James Lasdun's two collections of short stories, Delirium Eclipse and Three Evenings, have won him outstanding praise as one of the most distinctive British writers of his generation, both as a stylist and as a storyteller. His work has been described by the New York Times Book Review as an "elegant pathology report on the modern soul," and the Village Voice calls his prose "art that burrows into troubling new territory even as it glides by like a dream...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Alluding to events both ancient and modern, the poet confirms his reputation for formal virtuosity and emotional power with a second collection of work, which explores love, myth, sex, and politics in vivid locales from Tuscany to New Jersey. Reprint.

Offers forty half-day and full-day walks, incorporating the scenery and culture of these Italian regions, and includes information about food and busing

Major contemporary poets--including Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Amy Clampitt, Charles Simic, and others--contribute their own idiomatic renditions of the great myths of Ovid's ancient Roman classic Metamorphoses. Reprint.

A collection of new short stories by the author of Delirium Eclipse deals with deception, misunderstanding, and the destructive power of one human being over another. By the author of A Jump Start.

Poems deal with marriage, love, music, travel, mortality, myth, nature, and the past

Nine stories deal with an arrogant foreign aid administrator, a young radical who deserts his ailing leader, a college professor lost in the Paris Metro, a boy fascinated with his grandmother's jewels, and a greedy child's efforts to prevent his mother'sremarriage