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It was tragic. There was no other word for it. Eleri ap Vaughan, sixty years old and still Keith Vine's best dealer, had turned for her supplies to other drug wholesalers: she had to die. For the threat of invasion by rival syndicates from other cities cannot be ignored, particularly as rumors reach Keith that an elegantly dressed spy from London, nicknamed Lovely Mover, is in the area. Eleri's death must serve as a warning to others to stay loyal. It's at times like these that Vine's new partner, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Harpur, will prove invaluable - for example, in sweeping the murder scene for incriminating evidence. Harpur, however, is playing a dangerous undercover game, and he now finds himself in the precarious position of both covering up a murder and investigating it. Only one person suspects what Harpur is up to - his sneering superior, ACC Desmond Iles. And Iles is not always someone he dares trust. "Bill James's Harpur and Iles books are deliciously unsavoury: a brilliant combination of almost Jacobean savagery and sexual betrayal with a tart comedy of contemporary manners." - John Harvey, "The Crime Writer's Crime Writer," Guardian

Patrick O'Brian's outstanding biography of Picasso is here available in paperback for the first time. It is the most comprehensive yet written, and the only biography fully to appreciate the distinctly Mediterranean origins of Picasso's character and art.Everything about Picasso, except his physical stature, was on an enormous scale. No painter of the first rank has been so awe-inspiringly productive. No painter of any rank has made so much money. A few painters have rivaled his life span of ninety years, but none has attracted so avid, so insatiable, a public interest.Patrick O'Brian knew Picasso sufficiently well to have a strong sense of his personality. The man that emerges from this scholarly, passionate, and brilliantly written biography is one of many contradictions: hard and tender, mean and generous, affectionate and cold, private despite the relish of his fame. In his later years he professed communism, yet in O'Brian's view retained to the end of his life a residual Catholic outlook.Not that such matters were allowed to interfere with his vigorous sensuality. Sex and money, eating and drinking, friends and quarrels, comedies and tragedies, suicides and wars tumble one another in the vast chaos of his experience. he was "a man almost as lonely as the sun, but one who glowed with much the same fierce, burning life." It is with that impression of its subject that this book leaves its readers.

Roy Medvedev demonstrates, in engrossing and sharp detail, how the vast gulf between Marxist-Leninist principles and official Soviet attitudes and procedures turned vital theory into hollow dogma. Focusing on the rigidities of official ideology, he makes brilliantly clear the ways in which an excessively centralized and cumbersome bureaucratic structure was disastrous for the economic, intellectual, and moral development of Soviet society-keeping it dangerously insular in an era of increasing internationalism.

A portrait of the head of the Soviet Union whose rule followed Stalin's identifies his impact on the country and the rest of the world, tracing his efforts to reform communism and ease the cold war.

The Rings of Saturn, with its curious archive of photographs, records a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things that cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics. Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson", the natural history of the herring, Borges, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, Sir Thomas Browne's skull, recession-hit seaside towns, Joseph Conrad, the once-thriving silk industry of Norwich, Swinburne, the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the massive bombings of WWII.Mesmerized by the mutability of all things, the narrator catalogs the transmigration of whole worlds: "On every new thing, there lies already the shadow of annihilation."

Cyberspace may seem an unlikely gateway for the soul, but as science commentator Wertheim argues in this "wonderfully provocative" ("Kirkus Reviews") book, cyberspace has in recent years become a repository for immense spiritual yearning. 37 illustrations.

Bitten by one of the snakes she is studying, Virginia Lee, an accomplished herpetologist, drives herself to the hospital, carrying a decaying antidote and using her pantyhose as a tourniquet to slow the poison's path in her bloodstream. Through the hideous traffic of L.A., she must reach her lover Terry McKechnie, who works as an emergency-room physician. Her hope and faith is in him, even as it has been withdrawn from her husband, Terry's college friend. After her arrival, Virginia desperately needs transfusions of her rare blood type-and only an explosive criminal-at-large with whom Terry has already clashed can save her life. In this "absolutely bewitching" (Jonathan Harr) novel, Craig Nova brings us into the moral morass of contemporary America, gripping us with the beauty of his exacting prose and the suspense of his riveting emotional drama. "I wouldn't delay reading a novel of Nova's, not even to complete one of my own."-John Irving "Craig Nova is a fine writer, one of our best, and if you haven't read him, the loss is yours."-Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World (1997 Critic's Choice) "As skilled a piece of storytelling as Mr. Nova has yet pulled off."-Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

Apocalypse and Other Poems by Nicaragua's revolutionist poet-priest, Ernesto Cardenal, is the author's second book, the first of poetry, to be published by New Directions. The editors of this volume, Robert Pring-Mill and Donald D. Walsh, have chosen a representative selection of Cardenal's shorter protest poems, epigrams, religious, and Amerindian verse. Also included are two of Cardenal's most impressive longer works: the haunting and melodic elegy, "Coplas on the Death of Merton," and the title poem, "Apocalypse," in which the theme of an ever-threatening nuclear holocaust is the core of a modern rendering of the Book of Revelations. At Our Lady of Solentiname, his religious community on an island in Lake Nicaragua, living and working in the manner of the early Christians, Father Cardenal embodies what he professes: "Now in Latin America, to practice religion is to make revolution." An informative introduction has been contributed by Robert Pring-Mill of Oxford University. The translations are by Thomas Merton, Robert Pring-Mill, Kenneth Rexroth and Mireya Jaimes-Freyre, and Donald D. Walsh, who also translated In Cuba, Cardenal's assessment of Fidel Castro's revolutionary society, published by New Directions in 1974.

A novel that interweaves the mysticism of the Jewish occult and the court intrigue of 17th-century Prague, its protagonist is Rochel, a bastard seamstress who escapes poverty through an arranged marriage but falls in love with the Golem created by Rabbi Loew to protect the Jewish community.

Ethereal and sensual, these intensely vivid poems capture the sights and textures of new places, people, and landscapes as experienced with a poet's fresh eye.

From a marketplace in Bangkok to the fields of New Hampshire, from recollections of her own childhood to celebrations of an infant grandson, Kumin stakes her far-flung claims with authority in her tenth book of poetry.

The earlier chapters recapitulate in condensed form the principles laid down in his Theory of Harmony; the later chapters break entirely new ground, for they analyze the system of key relationships within the structure of whole movements and affirm the principle of "monotonality," showing how all modulations within a movement are merely deviations from, and not negations of, its main tonality.Schoenberg's argument is supported by music examples, which range from entire development sections of classical symphonies to analyses of the experimental harmonic progressions of Strauss, Debussy, Reger, and Schoenberg's own early music. The final chapter, "Apollonian Evaluation of a Dionysian Epoch," discusses the music of our time, with particular reference to the possibility of new methods of harmonic analysis.Structural Functions of Harmony is a standard work on its subject and provides an invaluable key to the development of musical structure during the last two hundred and fifty years. This new edition, with corrections, a new preface, and an index of subject headings, has been prepared under the editorial supervision of Leonard Stein.

This outstanding book treating the three most beloved composers of the Vienna School is basic to any study of Classical-era music. Drawing on his rich experience and intimate familiarity with the works of these giants, Charles Rosen presents his keen insights in clear and persuasive language. For this expanded edition, now available in paperback for the first time, Rosen has provided a new, 64-page chapter on the later years of Beethoven and the musical conventions he inherited from Haydn and Mozart. The author has also written an extensive new preface in which he responds to other writers who have commented on his ideas.

All Patrick O'Brian's strengths are on parade in this novel of action and intrigue, set partly in Malta, partly in the treacherous, pirate-infested waters of the Red Sea. While Captain Aubrey worries about repairs to his ship, Stephen Maturin assumes the center stage for the dockyards and salons of Malta are alive with Napoleon's agents, and the admiralty's intelligence network is compromised. Maturin's cunning is the sole bulwark against sabotage of Aubrey's daring mission.

Kay Boyle's Fifty Stories is an eloquent testament to the possibility of living and writing with passion and honor. In Paris in the twenties, in Austria before and after the Anschluss, in New York, in occupied Germany, in California, Boyle has been an inspiration both as an exquisite stylist and as a chronicler of the nuances of human experience. Now in her ninetieth year, Kay Boyle dares us, in this most comprehensive collection of her stories, to explore the themes that have preoccupied her for a lifetime: "the inviolate integrity of the human soul, the impact of external events on the most intimate of feelings, our fractured experience of love versus duty, self-respect versus hubris, social convention versus personal ethic...She is still unquestionably modern" (Ann Hornaday, The New York Times Book Review). Acclaimed novelist Louise Erdrich has provided a very personal appreciation of Boyle's power and grace. As she comments in the Introduction: "Kay is a citizen whose life and art are intertwined, one morally dependent on the other, both inexhaustible."

'In her delightful sequel to My Small Country Living (Norton, 1984), McMullen tells tales about her Welsh farm and its incredible assortment of goats, sheep, dogs, horses, and people...for fans of Herriot, a new voice from the country.' --Booklist

Our world is shrinking fast: goods, money, microbes, pollution, people, and ideas are crossing borders with growing ease. National governments are ill-suited for tackling the problems that result, from climate change, to the soaring trade in limited resource commodities like timber, to the management of regional water supplies. Hilary French argues that the only long-term solution to our environmental problems is a worldwide commitment to strengthening the international treaties and institutions essential for integrating ecological considerations into the still-nascent rules of global commerce. More than two hundred international environmental treaties already exist, but few of them stipulate stringent commitments and effective enforcement; and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization continue to view environmental protection as a peripheral concern. But at the same time, new communications technologies are making it possible for nongovernmental organizations to mobilize powerful coalitions of private citizens to press for change, and some forward-thinking businesses have begun to support environmental codes of conduct and other international standards. Vanishing Borders provides people concerned about the future of the planet with a clear plan of action for ensuring environmental stability in the wake of globalization.

They are: Hugh Gough, Charles Napier, Charles Gordon, Frederick Roberts, Garnet Wolseley, Evelyn Wood, Hector Macdonald, and Herbert Kitchener.

Packard Schmidt is an appealing but seedy timeserver in the English department of a third-rate midwestern college. When his semester teaching the dismally undermotivated is done, Pack dashes off to Vegas--his favorite place on earth. There he runs into an ex-student-turned-call-girl, and his world falls apart. Author Edward Allen is an avid fan of game shows and casinos and the author of Straight Through the Night.

Open The Acorn Plan and listen to its sad, comic chorus of Southern voices, and to the story of Billy Riley, a brooding, reckless young man struggling to resolve the competing claims of love, loyalty, and ambition.

Mr. Empson sees the pastoral convention as including not only poems of shepherd life but any work "about the people but not by or for" them. Finding examples in the writing of every country and century, from Mencius to William Faulkner or Céline, he concentrates on an analysis of certain works and forms in English literature, several of them, like Alice in Wonderland, Troilus and Cressida, and proletarian novels not traditionally considered pastoral. His chapter on Milton and Bentley is a precursor of Mr. Empson's 1961 book, Milton's God. With virtuoso clarity and perception throughout he brings the student to a new awareness of hidden values in individual works and to the creative possibilities of the language.

At nineteen years old, Colin Harpur's girlfriend Denise Prior knows little about criminals, and even less about the law. When Denise drifts into the social circle of Harpur's number-one informant Jack Lamb, and one of the criminals is shot to death during a robbery, Denise's life is suddenly in danger and Harpur must solve a new crime-before it happens.

Herbert Simmons' first novel, winner of the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship in 1957, relates the violent rise and fall of 18-years-old Jake Adams, whose Buick Dynaflow, custom-made suits, and attractiveness to women are all the fruits of his job pushing dope for the Organization.

Aller Retour New York is truly vintage Henry Miller, written during his most creative period, between Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939). Miller always said that his best writing was in his letters, and this unbuttoned missive to his friend Alfred Perlès is not only his longest (nearly 80 pages!) but his best-an exuberant, rambling, episodic, humorous account of his visit to New York in 1935 and return to Europe aboard a Dutch ship. Despite its high repute among Miller devotees, Aller Retour New York has never been easy to find. It was first brought out in Paris in 1935 in a limited edition, and a second edition, "Printed for Private Circulation Only," was issued in the United States ten years later. It is now available in paperback as a Revived Modern Classic, with an introduction by George Wickes that illuminates the people and personal circumstances which inform Aller Retour New York.

Configurations was his first major collection to be published in this country, and includes in their entirety Sun Stone (1957) and Blanco (1967). Paz himself translated many of the poems from the Spanish. Some distinguished contributors to this bilingual edition include, among others, Paul Blackburn, Lysander Kemp. Denise Levertov, and Muriel Rukeyser. Paz's poems, although rooted in the mythology of South America and his native Mexico, nevertheless have an international background, transfiguring the images of the contemporary world. Powerful, angry, erotic, they voice the desires and rage of a generation.