Outstanding novels with insights and shades of politics

Character study of a Southern demagogue whose career follows in some respects as that of Huey Long. ...

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In the near future, corporations rule the world and the one who defies them is pursued relentlessly. ...

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Extremely funny . . . inspired lunacy . . . [and] over much too soon.”—The Washington Post Book World SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES • Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien. After that, things get much, much worse. With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages. And the book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . . which helpfully has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover. Douglas Adams’s mega-selling pop-culture classic sends logic into orbit, plays havoc with both time and physics, offers up pithy commentary on such things as ballpoint pens, potted plants, and digital watches . . . and, most important, reveals the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. Now, if you could only figure out the question. . . . ...

Working as an interpreter for British Intelligence, Bruno Salvador, the abandoned son of an Irish father and Congolese mother, is sent to a mysterious island to interpret a secret conference among Central African warlords. ...

Don't Miss the Original Series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Starring John Krasinski! THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING JACK RYAN NOVEL “A harrowing tale…Clancy keeps you riveted with political intrigue and military maneuvering [and] sends you rushing headlong to the book’s stunning conclusion.”—USA Today Bestselling author Tom Clancy takes a bold, incisive look at what our nation’s leaders are calling “the new world order.” The time and place: a world at peace, where yesterday’s enemies are tomorrow’s allies. The players: Jack Ryan as the new U.S. President’s National Security Advisor, and his CIA colleagues, John Clark and Domingo Chavez. The crisis: a shocking chain of events in which the wages of peace are as fully complex—and devastating—as those of war. “[Debt of Honor] traces the financial, political, military, and personal machinations that drive America into the next major global war…A SHOCKER.”—Entertainment Weekly ...

"Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars."--P. [3] of cover. ...

The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more -- except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala -- and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight. ...

The uncut version of Upton Sinclair's classic 1906 novel about the shocking working conditions endured by immigrants in early twentieth-century Chicago stockyards and packinghouses. ...

When a presidential candidate wins the election through sympathy votes two weeks after a terrorist attack kills his wife, CIA operative Mitch Rapp investigates dangerous allegations about the attack's hidden agenda, a case that threatens the government's stability. By the author of Consent to Kill. 500,000 first printing. ...

A landmark of journalism and the art form of comics. Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s, this is a major work of political and historical nonfiction. Prior to Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995―Joe Sacco's breakthrough novel of graphic journalism―the acclaimed author was best known for Palestine, a two-volume graphic novel that won an American Book Award in 1996. Fantagraphics Books is pleased to present the first single-volume collection of this landmark of journalism and the art form of comics. Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, whose name has since become synonymous with this graphic form of New Journalism. Like Safe Area Gorazde, Palestine has been favorably compared to Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus for its ability to brilliantly navigate such socially and politically sensitive subject matter within the confines of the comic book medium. Sacco has often been called the first comic book journalist, and he is certainly the best. This edition of Palestine also features an introduction from renowned author, critic, and historian Edward Said (Peace and Its Discontents and The Question of Palestine), one of the world's most respected authorities on the Middle Eastern conflict. ...

With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize—winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing. Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past–a story propelled by a riveting mystery. Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka’s landscape and ancient civilization, Anil’s Ghost is a literary spellbinder–Michael Ondaatje’s most powerful novel yet. ...