When John Harkless, a decent optimist and the new owner and editor of the local newspaper, arrives in Plattville, Indiana, in 1889, he discovers that the tiny, dying town has long been represented in Congress by a corrupt political machine. In spite of threats to his life, Harkless--who bears a resemblance to Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington--is determined to take on the bad guys and restore justice and pride to a community long in

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"Set in early twentieth-century London and inspired by an actual attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, The Secret Agent is a complex exploration of motivation and morality. The title character, Adolf Verloc, is obviously no James Bond. In fact, he and his circle of misfit saboteurs are not spies but terrorists, driven less by political ideals than by their unruly emotions and irrational hatreds. Verloc has settled into an apparent marriage...

A sanitorium in the Swiss Alps reflects the societal ills of pre-twentieth-century Europe, and a young marine engineer rises from his life of anonymity to become a pivotal character in a story about how a human's environment affects self identity. In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness, as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting...

Mother tries to save her son from consequences of a taint she suspects he inherited from his father.

A Jesuit priest, unable to find plausible explanations for an eleven-year-old's strange behavior, begins to suspect demonic possession.

In 1969 in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment.

Hercule Poirot soon realizes that what he at first thought was a clever hoax, is very real--there is a dead body by the swimming pool, accompanied by a hysterical woman--and that this will be one his toughest cases to crack--Novelist.

Roland, the last gunslinger, and his band of followers escape one world only to slip into the next where Roland reflects upon past adventures and about his one true love.

When calamity stalks every step of the preparations for the Tappletons' Thanksgiving dinner, they realize that there is more to Thanksgiving than turkey and trimmings.

"The Thomas Berryman Number begins with three terrifying murders in the South. It ends with a relentless and unforgettable manhunt in the North. In between is the riveting story of a chilling assassin, the woman he loves, and the beloved leader he is hired to kill with extreme prejudice."