#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage” (The Washington Post) by the celebrated author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini Leopold Bloom King has been raised in a family shattered—and shadowed—by tragedy. Lonely and adrift, he searches for something to sustain him and finds it among a tightly knit group of outsiders. Surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, as well as Charleston, South Carolina’s dark legacy of racism and class divisions, these friends will endure until a final test forces them to face something none of them are prepared for. Spanning two turbulent decades, South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest: a masterpiece from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. Praise for South of Broad “Vintage Pat Conroy . . . a big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage.”—The Washington Post “Conroy remains a magician of the page.”—The New York Times Book Review “Richly imagined . . . These characters are gallant in the grand old-fashioned sense, devoted to one another and to home. That siren song of place has never sounded so sweet.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune “A lavish, no-holds-barred performance.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A lovely, often thrilling story.”—The Dallas Morning News “A pleasure to read . . . a must for Conroy’s fans.”—Associated Press

There are politics, politicians, and scandals, but only in Chicago can any combination of these spark the kind of fireworks they do. And no other American city has had a mayor like William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson, not in any of his political incarnations. A brilliant chameleon of a politician, Thompson could move from pro- to anti-prohibition, from opposing the Chicago Teachers Federation to opposing a superintendent hostile to it, from being anti-Catholic to winning, in huge numbers, the Catholic vote. Shape-shifter extraordinaire, Thompson stayed in power by repeatedly altering his political image. In Big Bill Thompson, Chicago, and the Politics of Image, Douglas Bukowski captures the essence of this wily urban politico as no other biographer or historian has. Using materials accessible only thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, Bukowski has fashioned an unforgettable story of a volatile Chicago leader and his era. And he does it with such grace and in such an irresistible style that readers will yearn to visit the local speakeasy and lift a glass to colorful politicians gone by. "An excellent book, written in a lively style with a contemporary resonance. A first rate meditation on the image and reality of 'Big Bill' in the context of actual and mythological Chicago political history." -- Steven P. Erie, author of Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemma of Urban Machine Politics "Written with a flair and a gentle sardonicism that makes it fun to read, Big Bill Thompson ... is a significant contribution to the literature of urban history and politics." -- Roger W. Biles, author of The South and the New Deal and Richard J. Daley: Politics, Race, and the Governing of Chicago

The dictionary contains an alphabetical listing of approximately 30,000 (thirty thousand) acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations and symbols covering approximately 2,000 fields and subfields ranging from Pelagic Ecology to Anthrax Disease, Artificial Organs to Alternative Cancer Therapies, Age-related Disorders to Auditory Brainstem Implants, Educational Web Sites to Biodefense, Biomedical Gerontology to Brain Development, Cochlear Implants to Cellular Phones, Constructed Viruses to Copper Metabolism, Drug Discovery Programs to Drug-resistant Strains, Eugenics to Epigenetics, Epilepsy Drugs to Fertility Research, Genetically Modified Foods/Crops to Futuristic Cars, Genetic Therapies to Glycobiology, Herbicide-tolerant Crops to Heritable Disorders, Human Chronobiology to Human gene Therapies, Immunization Programs to Lunar Research, Liver Transplantation to Microchip Technology, Mitochondrial Aging to Molecular Gerontology, Neurodegenerative Diseases to Neuropsychology of Aging, Neurosurgery to Next Generation Programs, Obesity Research to Prion Diseases, Quantum Cryptography to Reemerging Diseases, Retinal Degeneration to Rice Genome Research, Social Anthropology to Software Development, Synchrotron Research to Vaccine Developments, Remote Ultrasound Diagnostics to Water Protection, Entomology to Chemical Terrorism and hundreds of others, as well as abbreviations/acronyms/initialisms relating to European Community and U.S., Japanese and International Programs/Projects/Initiatives from year 2000 up to 2010 as well as World Bank Programs.

Private Pleasures describes the three-day sex, drink, and drug binge of a thirty-something newsreader in the back streets and crumbling apartments of his native Giza, that pullulating mass of humanity that, like an ugly sister, sits opposite Cairo on the Nile's west bank. Pursued by an unshakable sense of impending doom, the narrator observes, with fascinated horror, his own stumbling progress through a world of menace and wonder inhabited by philosophical prostitutes, nightmarish butchers, serene Quran-readers, pious family members, religious con-men, autistic tissue-sellers, and others.