Planser

This isn't real life. This isn't even cheese mongering. It's opera - where the music matters, and where an opera house is being terrorised by a man in evening dress with a white mask, lurking in the shadows, occasionally killing people, and, most worryingly, sending little notes, writing maniacal laughter with five exclamation marks. Opera can do that to a man. In such circumstances, life has obviously reached that desperate point where the wrong thing to do has to be the right thing to do.

Buried deep within the consciousness of Sergeant Raymond Shaw is the mechanism of an assassin, a time bomb ticking toward explosion, controlled by the delicate skill of its Communist masters. Shaw returns from the Korean War to an idolizing and unsuspecting country. What follows is at once a spy story, a love story, and a sobering, yet outrageously funny satire on demagoguery in American politics.

A remarkable history of one man, Zeno, his psychoanalysis, smoking addiction, philandering, love, hate, meanness, business life, family, and more told candidly and not-so-candidly by himself in a unique novel set in Europe in pre-World War I and during World War I.

Growing up in Bay View City, Connor just wants to survive high school and avoid the dangerous world of metas. But when he finds himself with a new set of metabands, he must embrace his destiny as the meta known as Omni. With the guidance of Midnight, a mysterious vigilante, Connor sets out on a thrilling journey to unlock the secrets of his powers and uncover the truth about The Battle that changed the world forever.

In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck’s attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature—to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.”

NSA director Theodore Anders has a simple goal: collect every phone call, email, and keystroke tapped on the Internet. He knows unlimited surveillance is the only way to keep America safe. Evelyn Gallagher doesn't care much about any of that. She just wants to keep her head down and manage the NSA's camera network and facial recognition program so she can afford private school for her deaf son, Dash.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (commonly known as The Pickwick Papers) is the first novel by Charles Dickens. The book became the first real publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books and other merchandise.

Stationed in France in 1917, Lamar Jimmerson comes across a little book crammed with Atlantean puzzles, Egyptian riddles, and extended alchemical metaphors. It's the Codex Pappus - the sacred Gnomon text. Soon he is basking in the lore of lost Atlantis, convinced that his mission on earth is to extend the ranks of this noble brotherhood. He forms the Gnomon Society, an international fraternal order dedicated to preserving that lost city's arcane wisdom.

An American literary treasure, Charles Portis penned the Western classic True Grit. Set in the 1960s, Norwood is a picaresque romp taking audiences on a journey from Texas to New York and back again. An ex-marine, troubadour Norwood Pratt is on a mission to recover money he once loaned to a buddy in the service. Along the way, he gets into all manner of trouble involving stolen cars, beautiful women, and a chicken with a college education.