**Washington Post Best Books of 2013** The celebrated TRANSYLVANIAN TRILOGY by Count Miklós Bánffy is a stunning historical epic set in the lost world of the Hungarian aristocracy just before World War I. Written in the 1930s and first discovered by the English-speaking world after the fall of communism in Hungary, Bánffy’s novels were translated in the late 1990s to critical acclaim and appear here for the first time in hardcover. They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided, the second and third novels in the trilogy, continue the story of the two aristocratic cousins introduced in They Were Counted as they navigate a dissolute society teetering on the brink of catastrophe. Count Balint Abády, a liberal politician who defends his homeland’s downtrodden Romanian peasants, loses his beautiful lover, Adrienne, who is married to a sinister and dangerously insane man, while his cousin László loses himself in reckless and self-destructive addictions. Meanwhile, no one seems to notice the gathering clouds that are threatening the Austro-Hungarian Empire and that will soon lead to the brutal dismemberment of their country. Set amid magnificent scenery of wild forests, snowcapped mountains, and ancient castles, THE TRANSYLVANIAN TRILOGY combines a Proustian nostalgia for a lost world, insight into a collapsing empire reminiscent of the work of Joseph Roth, and the drama and epic sweep of Tolstoy.

"Perfect late night reading" JAN MORRIS "Banffy is a born storyteller" PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR "Totally absorbing" MARTHA KEARNEY "So evocative" SIMON JENKINS An extraordinary portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, this epic story is told through the eyes of two cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy. Shooting parties in great country houses, turbulent scenes in parliament and the luxury life in Budapest provide the backdrop for this gripping, prescient novel, forming a chilling indictment of upper-class frivolity and political folly in which good manners cloak indifference and brutality. Abady becomes aware of the plight of a group of Romanian mountain peasants and champions their cause, while Gyeroffy dissipates his resources at the gaming tables, mirroring the decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire itself. This is the first volume Banffy's trilogy, which continues with They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided. It was rediscovered for an international readership after the fall of communism in Hungary. With a Foreword by Patrick Leigh-Fermor and translated from Hungarian by Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Banffy-Jelen WINNER OF THE WEIDENFELD TRANSLATION PRIZE

A Story of Love, Desperation, and Hope During a Great Biblical Epoch Sold into slavery by her father and forsaken by the man she was supposed to marry, young Egyptian Kiya must serve a mistress who takes pleasure in her humiliation. When terrifying plagues strike Egypt, Kiya is in the middle of it all. To save her older brother and escape the bonds of slavery, Kiya flees with the Hebrews during the Great Exodus. She finds herself utterly dependent on a fearsome God she's only just beginning to learn about, and in love with a man who despises her people. With everything she's ever known swept away, will Kiya turn back toward Egypt or surrender her life and her future to Yahweh?

"Perfect late night reading" JAN MORRIS "Banffy is a born storyteller" PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR "Totally absorbing" MARTHA KEARNEY "So evocative" SIMON JENKINS An extraordinary portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, this epic story is told through the eyes of two cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy. Shooting parties in great country houses, turbulent scenes in parliament and the luxury life in Budapest provide the backdrop for this gripping, prescient novel, forming a chilling indictment of upper-class frivolity and political folly in which good manners cloak indifference and brutality. Abady becomes aware of the plight of a group of Romanian mountain peasants and champions their cause, while Gyeroffy dissipates his resources at the gaming tables, mirroring the decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire itself. This is the first volume Banffy's trilogy, which continues with They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided. It was rediscovered for an international readership after the fall of communism in Hungary. With a Foreword by Patrick Leigh-Fermor and translated from Hungarian by Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Banffy-Jelen WINNER OF THE WEIDENFELD TRANSLATION PRIZE

If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...

Over the past two decades, historians have successfully disputed the notion that American women remained wholly outside the realm of politics until the early twentieth century. Still, a consensus has prevailed that, unlike their Northern counterparts, women of the antebellum South were largely excluded from public life. With this book, Elizabeth Varon effectively challenges such historical assumptions. Using a wide array of sources, she demonstrates that throughout the antebellum period, white Southern women of the slaveholding class were important actors in the public drama of politics. Through their voluntary associations, legislative petitions, presence at political meetings and rallies, and published appeals, Virginia's elite white women lent their support to such controversial reform enterprises as the temperance movement and the American Colonization Society, to the electoral campaigns of the Whig and Democratic Parties, to the literary defense of slavery, and to the causes of Unionism and secession. Against the backdrop of increasing sectional tension, Varon argues, these women struggled to fulfill a paradoxical mandate: to act both as partisans who boldly expressed their political views and as mediators who infused public life with the "feminine" virtues of compassion and harmony.

"NOBODY KIDS THEMSELVES INTO BELIEVING THAT THEY CAN SOLVE THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS. WE'RE JUST TRYING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, TO CHANGE THINGS FOR THE BETTER WHEREVER WE CAN. AND IF IT TAKES A LONG PUSH, THEN WE'RE IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL. A LOT OF TIMES THIS ISN'T ABOUT THE GENIUS OF THE MOMENT. IT'S ABOUT PERSISTENCE. IT'S ABOUT BEING IN THERE AND STAYING IN THERE." Since the early sixties, musicians have put themselves on the line for the causes they believed in, raising public awareness about important issues through songs, rallies, and benefit events. For more than thirty years, musician David Crosby has been one of rock 'n' roll's most outspoken voices for social change. in Stand and Be Counted, he and coauthor David Bender recount the stories of the artists who made a difference and the passionate convictions that moved them. Crosby's personal participation and his friendships with many of the artists involved give readers a behind-the-scenes look at events from the civil rights marches and antiwar moratoriums of the sixties, to the antinuclear events of the seventies, to Live Aid and the Amnesty International events of the eighties--right up to the Tibetan Freedom concerts of today. This compelling story includes new interviews with such diverse artists as Harry Belafonte, Whoopi Goldberg, Adam Yauch, Phil Collins, Robin Williams, Eddie Vedder, Joan Baez, and Jimmy Buffett. Poignant and inspirational, Stand and Be Counted is an unforgettable document of the history of activism in late twentieth-century America.