An in-depth guide to life in medieval England, including class, housing, spirituality, fashion, grooming, food, commerce, jobs, health, law, war, and more. Imagine you were transported back in time to Medieval England and had to start a new life there. Without mobile phones, ipads, internet, and social media networks, when transport means walking or, if you're fortunate, horseback, how will you know where you are or what to do? Where will you live?...

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Steinbeck's brilliant short novels
Collected here for the first time in a deluxe paperback volume are six of John Steinbeck's most widely read and beloved novels. From the tale of commitment, loneliness and hope in Of Mice and Men, to the tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society in Cannery Row, to The Pearl's examination of the fallacy of the American dream, Steinbeck stories of...

From the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, a collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful.
In the title story, the head of security at a factory is shocked, first when the hansomest worker on the floor proposes marriage to his homely adopted daughter, and again when his new son-in-law is...

In these short stories it's the ordinary things that turn out to be most extraordinary: the history of a length of fabric or a forgotten jacket. Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance and a new baby; a child awake in the night explores the familiar rooms of her home, made strange by the darkness; a housekeeper caring for a helpless old man uncovers secrets from his past. The first steps into a turning point and a new life are made so easily and carelessly:...

A true-life novel about Lily Casey Smith (the author's grandmother) who at age six helped her father break horses, at age fifteen left home to teach in a frontier town, and later as a wife and mother runs a vast ranch in Arizona where she survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy--but despite a life of hardscrabble drudgery still remains a woman of indomitable spirit. Half Broke Horses...

"A Palestinian family celebrates the stories of their homeland in this moving autobiographical picture book debut by Hannah Moushabeck. With heartfelt illustrations by Reem Madooh, Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine is a love letter to home, to family, and to the persisting hope of people, which transcends borders"-- Provided by publisher.

Set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, the mesmerizing stories in After the Quake are as haunting as dreams and as potent as oracles.
An electronics salesman who has been deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package— and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who views himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may be his human father. A mild-mannered collection agent receives...

Tells the lives of five people who come together in post-9/11 Afghanistan. Marcus, an English doctor whose progressive, outspoken Afghani wife was murdered by the Taliban, opens his home--itself an eerily beautiful monument to his losses--to the others: Lara, from St. Petersburg, looking for evidence of her soldier brother who disappeared decades before during the Soviet invasion; David, an American, a former spy who has seen his ideals turned inside...