In one swift moment, a fall wiped away his memory. All he knew for certain was that someone wanted him dead—and that he had better learn why. But everywhere he turned there seemed to be more questions—or people too willing to hide the truth behind a smoke screen of lies. He had only the name he had been told was his own, his mysterious skill with a gun, and a link to a half million dollars’ worth of buried gold as evidence of his past life. Was the treasure his? Was he a thief? A killer? He didn’t have the answers, but he needed them soon. Because what he still didn’t know about himself, others did—and if he didn’t unlock the secret of his past, he wasn’t going to have much of a future.

Subtle and haunting, Noon is the story of Rehan Tabassum, a young man who has seen a childhood of uncertainty, and whose vulnerability has rendered him a gaze so keen that it divines easily the shifts around him: his mother and her new husband, the emergence of a dazzling new India, the retreat of the old, muted order of dust and shortages, and the swell of a suppressed people. In this uncompromising yet unexpectedly tender third book, Aatish Taseer maps a difficult period in India and Pakistan, a period of deep upheavals, whose true direction is elusive. By presenting Rehan's journey through lands of sudden wealth and hidden violence, in an atmosphere of political quicksand and moral danger, Taseer brings us into closer contact with a world experiencing convulsive change. Stark, brave, and absolutely compelling, Noon confirms Aatish Taseer as a writer of emotional acuity and great intellectual gift.

Long out of print, Shirley Hazzard's classic novel of love and memory A young Englishwoman working in Naples, Jenny comes to Italy fleeing a history that threatened to undo her. Alone in the fabulously ruined city, she idly follows up a letter of introduction from an acquaintance and thus changes her life forever. Through the letter, she meets Giocanda, a beautiful and gifted writer, and Gianni, a famous Roman film director and Giocanda's lover. At work she encounters Justin, a Scotsman whose inscrutability Jenny finds mysteriously attractive. As she becomes increasingly involved in the lives of these three, she discovers that the past--and the patterns of a lifetime--are not easily discarded.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Searchers, the revelatory story behind the classic movie High Noon and the toxic political climate in which it was created. It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon was shot on a lean budget over just thirty-two days but achieved instant box-office and critical success. It won four Academy Awards in 1953, including a best actor win for Cooper. And it became a cultural touchstone, often cited by politicians as a favorite film, celebrating moral fortitude. Yet what has been often overlooked is that High Noon was made during the height of the Hollywood blacklist, a time of political inquisition and personal betrayal. In the middle of the film shoot, screenwriter Carl Foreman was forced to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his former membership in the Communist Party. Refusing to name names, he was eventually blacklisted and fled the United States. (His co-authored screenplay for another classic, The Bridge on the River Kwai, went uncredited in 1957.) Examined in light of Foreman's testimony, High Noon's emphasis on courage and loyalty takes on deeper meaning and importance. In this book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Frankel tells the story of the making of a great American Western, exploring how Carl Foreman's concept of High Noon evolved from idea to first draft to final script, taking on allegorical weight. Both the classic film and its turbulent political times emerge newly illuminated.

A heartwarming tale about one man's willingness to reach out and touch the life of his neglected, elderly neighbor. Mass paper

Homer defends a crazed poet accused of using an eclipse as cover for murder For all her life, poet Kitty Clark has waited to see a total eclipse of the sun. News of an impending eclipse thrills her until she learns it will be visible only from Nantucket, where one year ago her ex-lover Joe Green moved with his new wife. Unable to resist the astronomical lure, she flies in from Boston, and makes her way to an isolated lighthouse, hoping to avoid seeing Joe. The eclipse itself is overwhelming; Kitty screams when the sun vanishes behind the dark blot of the moon. When the sun returns a few minutes later, Kitty stands over the bloodied body of Mrs. Joe Green, claiming “the moon did it.” Transcendentalist scholar and former detective Homer Kelly agrees to defend the troubled young poet, but the more Kitty insists she is innocent, the crazier she appears. To clear her name he must discover who set her up, and what happened during the two minutes when the Nantucket sun disappeared.