In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator tries to prove his sanity after murdering an elderly man because of his "vulture eye". His growing guilt leads him to hear the old man's heart beating under the floorboards, which drives him to confess the crime to the police.

“Fascinating . . . memorable . . . revealing . . . perhaps the best of Carl Sagan’s books.”—The Washington Post Book World (front page review) In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time. Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier—space. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race. “Takes readers far beyond Cosmos . . . Sagan sees humanity’s future in the stars.”—Chicago Tribune

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times).

From the author of Courting Mr. Lincoln comes a different kind of Christmas story featuring a grown up Tiny Tim, this breathless flight through the teeming markets, shadowy passageways, and rolling brown fog of 1860s London would do Dickens proud for its surprising twists and turns, and its extraordinary heart. It's the Christmas season, and Mr. Timothy Cratchit, not the pious child the world thought he was, has just buried his father. He's also struggling to bury his past as a cripple and shed his financial ties to his benevolent "Uncle" Ebenezer by losing himself in the thick of London's underbelly. He boards at a brothel in exchange for teaching the mistress how to read and spends his nights dredging the Thames for dead bodies and the treasures in their pockets. Timothy's life takes a sharp turn when he discovers the bodies of two dead girls, each seared with the same cruel brand on the upper arm. The sight of their horror-struck faces compels Timothy to become the protector of another young girl, Philomela, from the fate the others suffered at the hands of a dangerous and powerful man.

“A miracle; an exquisite story exquisitely told . . . If you love Jane Austen, or Hamilton, or fiction—of any era—that transports and transforms in equal measure, look no further.” —A.J. Finn, bestselling author of The Woman in the Window From the prizewinning author of Mr. Timothy and The Pale Blue Eye comes Courting Mr. Lincoln, the page-turning and surprising story of a young Abraham Lincoln and the two people who loved him best: a young, marriageable Mary Todd and Lincoln’s best friend, Joshua Speed. When sparky and independent Mary Todd arrives in Springfield, Illinois, in the 1840s to live with her sister, who is determined to find Mary a husband, she is astonished to find herself drawn to an awkward, melancholic lawyer with a gift for oratory. The two share ambition, an obsession with politics—and a need to be suitably married off. Always at Lincoln’s side, however, is the charming Joshua Speed, a shopkeeper who became his mentor in society, loyal friend, roommate—and possible lover. Told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Todd and Speed, this witty, psychologically astute, and brilliantly plotted novel follows the threesome during Todd and Lincoln’s tumultuous courtship, with all the suspense and delight of the best Jane Austen novels. Historians have long speculated that Lincoln and Speed had a romantic relationship, and here Bayard explores that forbidden possibility with deep empathy. Rich with both period detail and contemporary insight, Courting Mr. Lincoln offers smart storytelling at the highest level.

On September 11, 2001, the World changed forever when ruthless Al-Qaeda terrorists launched an aerial attack on the United States of America. Oblivious to the world’s terror, Kay and Kerry Danes sat half a world away, secure in an Embassy after a terrifying 11-month hostage ordeal in communist Laos. As fear gripped the globe, Kerry an Australian Special Forces soldier, comforted his wife Kay, as they struggled to come to terms with their hellish ordeal of torture, mock executions and the helplessness of leaving behind 58 political prisoners of a long forgotten war. The couple’s hopes focused only on seeing their children again. In the years after regaining their freedom and working to re-piece together family life, Kerry returned to active duty with the Special Forces and Kay turned her dark experiences towards creating social justice, over the years becoming a leading international humanitarian. In November 2008, amidst haunting memories of her Laos ordeal, Kay faced her fears and embarked on a humanitarian aid mission to deliver life-changing opportunities and aid to people devastated in war-torn Afghanistan. In an old dusty Toyota mini-van, armed only with hope, Kay and her companions, a florist from Arizona, a nurse from Texas, a public servant from Australia and a US Marine Korean War veteran, drove the ancient Silk Road amidst kidnappings, suicide bombings, carnage and chaos. This powerful story will have you gripping your chair and holding your breath, as you travel with Kay through Taliban strongholds and the remote wastelands of Al Qaeda terrorists. Her story provides a rare glimpse of places we may never visit and the courageous Afghan people determined to persevere against overwhelming odds. Beneath the Pale Blue Burqa is a truly inspiring journey and an important contribution to the selfless efforts of all who have gone before to brave the perils of Afghanistan. Foreword - By Afghan Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.