He was my best friend before he was my enemy. I'm a nobody at Black Falls High. When the school's mean queen forces me to my knees in front of the student body, everything changes. Now, I'm back on my former best friend's radar. And this time, he has his new crew and "no" isn't part of their vocabulary. When a night out puts me in a compromising position, I'm at their mercy. If they don't keep my secret, it could destroy more than my friendship. They own me. And my former best friend is making it his mission to ruin me. But not if I ruin them first. In Ruins is a #whychoose romance with four hot-as-fire guys. Due to dark content, this book is recommended for eighteen and older.

This stunning companion to Kate Atkinson's #1 bestseller Life After Life, "one of the best novels I've read this century" (Gillian Flynn), follows Ursula's brother Teddy as he navigates an unknown future after a perilous war. "He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future." Kate Atkinson's dazzling Life After Life explored the possibility of infinite chances and the power of choices, following Ursula Todd as she lived through the turbulent events of the last century over and over again. A God in Ruins tells the dramatic story of the 20th Century through Ursula's beloved younger brother Teddy -- would-be poet, heroic pilot, husband, father, and grandfather -- as he navigates the perils and progress of a rapidly changing world. After all that Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge is living in a future he never expected to have. An ingenious and moving exploration of one ordinary man's path through extraordinary times, A God in Ruins proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the finest novelists of our age.

Tracing the roots of the modern American University in German philosophy and in the work of British thinkers such as Newman and Arnold, Bill Readings argues that the integrity of the modern University has been linked to the nation-state, which it has served by promoting and protecting the idea of a national culture. But now the nation-state is in decline, and national culture no longer needs to be either promoted or protected.

She wanted to start again. To be someone--anyone--different . . . Freedom. When Carleigh Stanger thought of college, that was the word that came to mind. Freedom from her unhappy home life. Freedom from high school mistakes. Freedom from the memory of that terrible morning. Only instead of bringing a sweet escape, Carleigh's first campus party traps her in the scornful gaze of the last person she wants to see, Tucker Green. It wasn't long ago that being close to Carleigh was everything Tucker wanted. But that was before he realized she was just another scheming girl who'd do whatever it took to get her way. Even lie to the guy she claimed to love. Unfortunately while Tucker's brain remembers the pain Carleigh caused, his body only remembers the pleasure . . .

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine in "the best horror novel of the new century" (Stephen King). Also a major motion picture! Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation—sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site ... and the terrifying presence that lurks there. "The Ruins does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches.” —Entertainment Weekly “Smith’s nail-biting tension is a pleasure all its own.... This stuff isn’t for the faint of heart.” —New York Post “A story so scary you may never want to go on vacation, or dig around in your garden, again.” —USA Today

DIVDIV“A great adventure . . . So outrageous and so real, one is left speechless.” —Chicago Sun Times/divDIV/divDIVIn Walker Percy’s future America, the country is on the brink of disaster. With citizens violently polarized along racial, political, and social lines, and a fifteen-year war still raging abroad, America is crumbling quickly into ruin. The country’s one remaining hope is Dr. Thomas More, whose “lapsometer” is capable of diagnosing the spiritual afflictions—anxiety, depression, alienation—driving everyone’s destructive and disastrous behavior./divDIV /divDIVBut such a potent machine has its pitfalls. As Dr. More soon learns, in the wrong hands, the powerful lapsometer could lead to open warfare, pushing America into anarchy at full-speed./div /div

In this enchanting meditation on ruins, Christopher Woodward takes us on a thousand-year journey from the plains of Troy to the monuments of ancient Rome, from the crumbling palaces of Sicily, Cuba, and Zanzibar to the rubble of the London Blitz. With an exquisite sense of romantic melancholy, we encounter the teenage Byron in the moldering Newstead Abbey, Flaubert watching the buzzards on the pyramids, Henry James in the Colosseum, and Freud at Pompeii. We travel the Appian Way with Dickens and behold the Baths of Caracalla with Shelley. An exhilarating tour, at once elegant and stimulating, In Ruins casts an exalting spell as it explores the bewitching power of architectural remains and their persistent hold on the imagination.