In A Taste of the Classics Series, Dr. Kenneth Boa encapsulates and discusses the classic works that helped shape Western civilization: books like The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer and The Love of God by Bernard of Clairvaux, giving you a synthesis of the key things you will want to know: The life and times of the author The timeless contribution of the book Key quotations from the book that reveal the power of the book and illustrate its underlying worldview Brief insights after each of the key quotations Compelling applications for our lives

Of the Standard of Taste is a book by the philosopher David Hume. It argues for a standard measure of taste regarding art; while remembering the importance of subjectiveness.

WILD TO POSSESSLew Brookbank is running from his grief. His wife had left him for another man, and he had discovered them together--murdered. Drowning himself in gin, one night he stumbles across a parked car where a man and a woman are plotting the kidnapping and murder of the man's wife. At first he thinks he should turn them in, but there is some real money involved here, and he makes the liquor-fueled decision to follow them and work a double-cross of his own. But Lew doesn't figure on Clarkson, brother of his dead wife's lover. Clarkson wants to bring him back to pay for the death of his brother. But there's no turning back on the plan now--Lew has got to see this one through to the end.A TASTE FOR SINJim Phalen is obsessed with Felice. He can't get enough of her wild ways, her wicked charms. She is hot like no woman he has ever met before. They're quite a pair. Unfortunately, Felice is married to bank manager George Anderson. But Felice has a plan--to kill her husband one night while he works at the bank and steal all the money. Jim thinks the idea is crazy. But the more he figures it, the more he thinks that it just might work. He knows he had to have Felice. Just the thought of her drives him nuts. But can he create the perfect plan to possess her, and steal the money, too? It's crazy alright--but it just might work.

Lionel Trilling, regarded at the time of his death in 1975 as America's preeminent literary critic, is today often seen as a relic of a vanished era. His was an age when literary criticism and ideas seemed to matter profoundly in the intellectual life of the country. In this eloquent book, Adam Kirsch shows that Trilling, far from being obsolete, is essential to understanding our current crisis of literary confidence--and to overcoming it.By reading Trilling primarily as a writer and thinker, Kirsch demonstrates how Trilling's original and moving work continues to provide an inspiring example of a mind creating itself through its encounters with texts. "Why Trilling Matters" introduces all of Trilling's major writings and situates him in the intellectual landscape of his century, from Communism in the 1930s to neoconservatism in the 1970s. But Kirsch goes deeper, addressing today's concerns about the decline of literature, reading, and even the book itself, and finds that Trilling has more to teach us now than ever before. As Kirsch writes, "Trilling's essays are not exactly literary criticism" but, like all literature, "ends in themselves."

For fans of Jenny Han, Jane Austen, and The Great British Baking Show, A Taste for Love, is a delicious rom com about first love, familial expectations, and making the perfect bao. To her friends, high school senior Liza Yang is nearly perfect. Smart, kind, and pretty, she dreams big and never shies away from a challenge. But to her mom, Liza is anything but. Compared to her older sister Jeannie, Liza is stubborn, rebellious, and worst of all, determined to push back against all of Mrs. Yang's traditional values, especially when it comes to dating. The one thing mother and daughter do agree on is their love of baking. Mrs. Yang is the owner of Houston's popular Yin & Yang Bakery. With college just around the corner, Liza agrees to help out at the bakery's annual junior competition to prove to her mom that she's more than her rebellious tendencies once and for all. But when Liza arrives on the first day of the bake-off, she realizes there's a catch: all of the contestants are young Asian American men her mother has handpicked for Liza to date. The bachelorette situation Liza has found herself in is made even worse when she happens to be grudgingly attracted to one of the contestants; the stoic, impenetrable, annoyingly hot James Wong. As she battles against her feelings for James, and for her mother's approval, Liza begins to realize there's no tried and true recipe for love.

"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," declares French author Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in one of the aphorisms that introduces this 1825 masterpiece on the subject of cooking as an art and eating as a pleasure. Humorous, satirical, and convivial, this extended paean to the joys of food and drink has earned an enduring place in the world's literature. Brillat-Savarin found his true passion in gastronomy, asserting that "the discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a new star." In his sparkling anecdotal style, he offers witty meditations on the senses, the science of gastronomy, the erotic virtue of truffles, hunting wild turkeys in America, Parisian restaurants, the history of cooking, corpulence, diets, the best ways of making coffee and chocolate, and a hundred other engaging topics. He also shares some of his best recipes, including tunny omelette, pheasant, and Swiss fondue. No cook, chef, gourmet, or lover of fine food should miss this landmark in the gastronomic literature, a timeless work that has charmed and informed two centuries of epicures.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From one the most virtuosic authors in the English language: a powerful novel, written with urgency and moral force, that explores life—and love—among the Nazi bureaucrats of Auschwitz. "A masterpiece.... Profound, powerful and morally urgent.... A benchmark for what serious literature can achieve." —San Francisco Chronicle Martin Amis first tackled the Holocaust in 1991 with his bestselling novel Time's Arrow. He returns again to the Shoah with this astonishing portrayal of life in "the zone of interest," or "kat zet"—the Nazis' euphemism for Auschwitz. The narrative rotates among three main characters: Paul Doll, the crass, drunken camp commandant; Thomsen, nephew of Hitler's private secretary, in love with Doll's wife; and Szmul, one of the Jewish prisoners charged with disposing of the bodies. Through these three narrative threads, Amis summons a searing, profound, darkly funny portrait of the most infamous place in history. An epilogue by the author elucidates Amis's reasons and method for undertaking this extraordinary project.