This board book set features two favorite Beatrix Potter tales, told in simplified form for prereaders and illustrated with vivid reproductions of the original artwork. In The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the naughty little bunny sneaks into Mr. McGregor's garden and is very nearly caught. The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck sees our heroine looking for a safe place to make a nest and lay her eggs-and who should she meet but a charming fox, who offers her a cozy spot in his woodshed.

Glen Runciter is dead. Or is he? Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss. And the world around them is warping and regressing in ways which suggest that their own time is running out. If it hasn't already.

«Everyone who's in business, works for a business, or even just gives others the business is amazed: Scott Adams never lacks for yet another way to lampoon the corporate world. It's not that Adams is anti-business. He's more anti-bad boss than anything. But poor management practices, the effects of bad decisions, and what it all means for the average worker add up to more comedic material than even the man who created Dilbert can tame. Since Dilbert was first syndicated in 1989, Adams has built a following that would be the envy of any corporate sales and marketing team. His work not only generates howls from readers as they rush to plaster it on lunch-room refrigerators and scan it into interoffice e-mails, it has those same fans reading about «their» workplaces every Sunday in a multiple-panel, color format. And that's what this treasury, The Collected Dilbert Sundays, provides. This collection offers yet another glimpse into the zany life of Dilbert, Dogbert, Ratbert, and the rest of the crazy cube crew through the masterpiece Sunday comics. Here's even more of the great Adams's irony, sarcasm, and satire that so many have come to depend upon to cope with the corporate workplace. The Collected Dilbert Sundays humorously continues the tradition of poking fun at the world of business from which we all seek to temporarily escape.»

In this book, based on a series of talks that he gave at a Tibetan Buddhist center in Delhi during the 1990s, the Dalai Lama examines the nature of the human mind and emphasizes the need for each of us to transform ourselves if we wish to lead more fulfilling lives. In his disarmingly personal style, he discusses suffering, happiness, love, and truth, and offers practical wisdom on issues ranging from religious tolerance to the world economy. Stressing the need for compassion and non-violence, the Dalai Lama reiterates the essential goodness of the human heart and teaches us how to live and die well, reminding us constantly of the responsibility of our actions and thoughts.

«This study of Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets reveals a style-derived from the idealized view of nature in the early Italian Renaissance-steeped in mythology and literary allusion and very popular today with lovers of romantic art and poetry. 125 illustrations, 95 in full color, 5 x 7»

«In this charming sequel to the classic «Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs», Kate and Henry eagerly await Grandpa's return from a vacation that his postcard says has been one of the best and most unusual ever. Thinking about that postcard Kate drifts off to sleep that night and... «With Henry as my co-pilot...» she visits the strange land of Chewandswallow — a land characterized by massive amounts of food, immense carrots, leafy jungles of lettuce, and tuna fish sandwiches so gigantic they have to be moved by helicopter. What the people of Chewandswallow are doing with all that food is most intriguing of all. Fans of «Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs» will applaud this return trip with its underlying message of generosity and a world community.»

«The Kitchen Planner» takes the confusion out of kitchen redesign and puts the fun back in. Filled with advice and suggestions for everything from the quick touch-up to a complete makeover, this innovative guide covers it all. The uniquely designed section of tri-split pages allows for effortless mixing and matching of wall colors, cabinetry, and floors. The reusable stickers and layout grid make it simple to experiment with a variety of floor plans. And the informational charts written specifically for singles, couples, families, and people with special needs can help anyone design the perfect kitchen for their particular lifestyle. Packed with color photographs, resourceful text, and countless expert suggestions, «The Kitchen Planner» is a practical, convenient, and necessary tool for any kitchen remodeling project.»

A retelling of classic children's tales by The Brothers Grimm, including Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, Ashputtel (Cinderella) and Little Red-cap. This interpretation by Carol Ann Duffy seeks to remove the sugariness of contemporary versions and return to the orginal, darker mould.

The ever increasing art historical attention being paid to the School of Leonardo lies at the root of this volume published almost sixty years after Suida's classic treatment of the subject. This is the first time since then that Lombard art of Leonardesque inspiration has been the object of a systematic analysis embracing a period of around half a century starting from 1490. The essays opening the volume provide an overview dealing with the environment, the organisation and the working practices of Leonardo's atelier and the problems faced by historians, whilst each artist is discussed in a critical profile that, taking into account the most recent academic research, acts a brief but up-to-date monograph.

Substance D — otherwise known as Death — is the most dangerous drug ever to find its way on to the black market. It destroys the links between the brain's two hemispheres, leading first to disorentation and then to complete and irreversible brain damage. Bob Arctor, undercover narcotics agent, is trying to find a lead to the source of supply, but to pass as an addict he must become a user, and soon, without knowing what is happening to him, he is as dependent as any of the addicts he is monitoring.

«In her latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice brings readers the story of Armand — eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel — who first appeared in his dark glory in «Interview with the Vampire». Moving through scenes of luxury, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to 19th-century Paris and toady's New Orleans, this romantic hero is forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.»

We are in Paris on the Left Bank. The time is now. David meets Pandora in a crowded café, where she recounts her vampire tale — Pandora, two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to write for him the story of her life. We see Pandora from her mortal girlhood as the daughter of aristocrats in the peaceful Rome of Caesar Augustus through her perilous journey towards the vampire Marius, who will bestow on her the Dark Gift, and the tale of their two centuries together before they are tragically lost to each other.

F. E. Halliday presents in vivid detail what we know about Shakespeare's life after three centuries of discovery, and illuminates and animates the story with illustrations of Elizabethan personalities, pages from the early folios, maps, and photographs of Stratford-upon-Avon. Much of the great playwright's biography is mysterious, but Halliday (an authority on Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, and especially on Shakespeare) documents the Bard's life and work — reassuring us, incidentally, that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon really was the author of the plays attributed to him.

In the grand manner of Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice's new novel moves across time and the continents, from nineteenth-century Vienna to a St. Charles Greek Revival mansion in present-day New Orleans to the dazzling capitals of the modern-day world, telling a story of two charismatic figures bound to each other by a passionate commitment to music as a means of rapture, seduction, and liberation. At the novel's center: a uniquely fascinating woman, Triana — who once dreamed of becoming a great musician — and the demonic fiddler Stefan, tormented ghost of a Russian aristocrat, who begins to prey upon her, using his magic violin first to enchant, then to dominate and draw her into a state of madness through the music she loves. But Triana understands the power of the music perhaps even more than does Stefan — and she sets out to resist Stefan and to fight not only for her sanity but for her life. The struggle draws them both into a terrifying supernatural realm where they find themselves surrounded by memories, by horrors, and by overwhelming truths. Battling desperately, they are at last propelled towards the novel's astonishing and unforgettable climax. Violin is crowded with the history, the drama, the invention, and the romantic intensity that have become synonymous with Anne Rice at her incomparable best.

«The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels. So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they «dream on» in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Son of the Circus and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Like Garp, [THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE] is a startlingly original family saga that combines macabre humor with Dickensian sentiment and outrage at cruelty, dogmatism and injustice.»

«Adrian Mole faces the same agonies which life sets before most adolescents: troubles with girls, school, parents, and an uncaring world. The difference, though, between young Master Mole and his peers is that this British lad keeps a diary — an earnest chronicle of longing and disaster that has convulsed more than five million readers since its two-volume initial publication. From teenage Adrian's obsession with intellectuality after understanding «nearly every word» of a Malcolm Muggeridge broadcast to his anguished adoration of a lovely, mercurial schoolmate, from his view of his parents' constantly creaking relationship to his heartfelt but hilarious attempts at cathartic verse, here is an outrageous triumph of deadpan and deadly accurate, satire. ABBA, Princess Di's wedding, street punks, Monty Python, the Falklands campaign — all the cultural pageantry of a keenly observed era marches past the unique perspective of Sue Townsend's creation: A. Mole, the unforgettable lad whose self-absorption only gets funnier as his life becomes more desperate.»

Once an aristocrat in the heady days of pre-revolutionary France, now Lestat is a rockstar in the demonic, shimmering 1980s. He rushes through the centuries in search of others like him, seeking answers to the mystery of his terrifying exsitence. His story, the second volume in Anne Rice's best-selling Vampire Chronicles, is mesmerizing, passionate, and thrilling. Frightening, sensual.

Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force-a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

Introduction by Simon Franklin; Translation by Michael Glenny.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's extraordinary career as a novelist ended abruptly and unhappily, but it began with one of the most brilliant first novels in the history of American literature. Published when its author was just twenty-three, This Side of Paradise is about the education of a youth, and to this universal story Fitzgerald brought the promise of everything that was new in the vigorous, restless America during the years following World War I. Amory Blaine-egoistic, versatile, callow, and imaginative-inhabits a book that is interwoven with songs, poems, playscripts, and questions and answers. His growth from self-absorption to sexual awareness and personhood is described by means of a continuous improvisatory energy and delight. Far from being distracting, Fitzgerald's formal inventiveness and verve only heighten our sense that the world being described is our own modern world. A profound coherence informs This Side of Paradise — a coherence born of its author's uncanny ability to revel in the fragmented surfaces of human life while exploring and comprehending its serene depths.