Originally published in Dearest father: stories and other writings. Schocken Books, 1954.

Using language like an artist's palette, the Blue Notebooks captures the special moments of everyday being.

Liane de Pougy, known as Paris's most beautiful and notorious courtesan, was a Folies-Bergère dancer who became a princess and died a nun. Between 1919 and 1941 she wrote her intimate memoir, My Blue Notebooks. Making modern tell-alls seem downright tepid by comparison, this long-out-of-print classic is a fascinating look into the mind of an audacious woman of great intelligence and humor. In My Blue Notebooks, de Pougy describes hosting the likes of Jean Cocteau and the poet Max Jacob, her best friend ("Never again. Never more than one writer at a time"). She shares her literary critiques of her "friend" Colette ("I look down on her with a grimace of disgust"), recalls the funeral of Nicholas I (she happened to be in St. Petersburg at the time), and reports the sad early death of her acquaintance Marcel Proust. She writes graphically of her many sexual liaisons with both men and women, including her complex marriage to the "too handsome" Prince Georges Ghika of Romania and her difficult relationship with Nathalie Clifford Barney, perhaps the real love of her life. Here is a voyeuristic feast of high society living during the first decades of the twentieth century.

BONUS: This edition contains a The Blue Notebook discussion guide and an excerpt from James A. Levine's Bingo's Run. An unforgettable, deeply affecting debut novel, The Blue Notebook tells the story of Batuk, a precocious fifteen-year-old girl from rural India who is sold into sexual slavery by her father. As she navigates the grim realities of Mumbai’s Common Street, Batuk manages to put pen to paper, recording her private thoughts and writing fantastic tales that help her transcend her daily existence. Beautifully crafted, surprisingly hopeful, and filled with both tragedy and humor, The Blue Notebook shows how even in the most difficult situations, people use storytelling to make sense of and give meaning to their lives.

The Busy Blue Jay: True Bird Stories from My Notebooks by Olive Thorne Miller. A story about a blue jay named Jakie. This chapters focuses on his mischevious behavior. Harriet Mann Miller was a naturalist, ornithologist and children's writer. She was the wife of Watts Todd Miller and sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Olive Thorne Miller.

Two men on the train, at different times, become obsessed with a beautiful woman who they only caught a glimpse of while passing her apartment. One, a lounge lizard, meets her in a very forward manner. At first amused by him, she then falls for the other more darkly romantic one. Then his journal appears mysteriously in her mailbox. She is shocked to find out how he had obsessed about her. It turns out the two men were friends. Now rivals, they are about to make a serious mess of each other's lives, leading to an ill-fated death. A deftly executed milestone, in full-colour .

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna resolves to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook. Doris Lessing's best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.

There could be no better introduction to Wittgenstein's thought than the Blue Book, whose simplicity and forthrightness must make an instant appeal. The progressive complications of the Brown Book make a natural bridge to the still more subtle, but often confusing, exposition of the Investigations.

This is the first English translation of Liane de Pougy’s 1901 novel A Woman’s Affair (Idylle Saphique) which shocked French readers with its lesbian lover story, and is based on Liane de Pougy’s affair with Natalie Barney. Despite her beauty and her riches, Annhine de Lys, one of the most notorious courtesans of 1890s Paris, is bored and restless. Into her life bursts Flossie, a young American woman, and everything changes. The love she offers Annhine is dangerous, perverse and hard to resist. Ignoring the warnings of her best friend, Annhine encourages the affair. Yet she cannot commit: she advances, retreats, becomes bewildered, ill. After a tragic incident at a masked ball, Annhine leaves Paris to make a long tour through Europe. But the attempt to put time and distance between them comes to nothing and the fateful relationship must run its course. 'A Woman’s Affair is melodrama at full pelt... Beneath the melodrama is something more interesting: a straightforward acceptance of same-sex love that in 1901 could perhaps only have been expressed in Paris... It is worth noting that (A Woman's Affair) was nearly thirty years before Radclyffe Hall’s much milder allusion (to lesbian love) prompted a British court to brand The Well of Loneliness (1928) obscene...The more thoughtful feminism glimpsed beneath (the frou-frou and silliness in A Woman’s Affair) is illuminating on the choices facing women in the early 1900s, and on the dangers of sex work. Anderson does justice to both registers – silly and serious – in a lively translation that captures Pougy’s effervescence as well as her uneven style.’ Miranda France in The Times Literary Supplement

Intricately plotted and surprisingly moving, THE BLUE HOUR is T. Jefferson Parker’s most compelling—and satisfying—thriller yet, from the NYT bestselling author and three-time Edgar Award winner. Tim Hess is a semi-retired homicide cop staring at his own death sentence—lung cancer. Time is running out. Thrice divorced and childless, Hess is the classic loner cop—so he’s happy to accept the difficult job offered to him: find and stop a serial killer who’s been abducting beautiful young women in Orange County. His new partner, and boss, is the brash, ambitious Merci Rayborn. She’s unpopular and unloved by her fellow cops, but she’s also relentless, smart and principled. Hess, challenged by the investigation and by his own disease, isn't happy about taking orders from Merci, and he certainly isn't planning for her to fall in love with him… “What distinguishes this moving book are the finely defined characters, the author’s accomplished style (which sketches his Orange County turf and surf in vivid strokes) and the tale’s unexpected twists.” —Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal “The crimes are sickening, the killer is a monster, and the gadgets of destruction are truly bizarre. Solid police work, beefed up with some ingenious devices from Parker’s bottomless bag of tricks, makes it all come out right—but not before the wondrously weird characters have taken this lurid plot to its outer limits.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Unpredictable and dynamic… far more gripping than your average serial-killer thriller … Sure-handed thriller writer Parker proves ever-surprising.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A richly metaphoric and suspenseful ride to the end … Ah, Parker in top form.” —Kirkus Reviews “Parker pulls off a rare juggling act in The Blue Hour. He combines the fast pacing and titillating elements of a bestseller with the more meaningful searchings of a John Updike novel. Parker is often compared to Michael Connelly because both men write tautly crafted police procedurals. But Parker has only one rival—Thomas Harris—when it comes to averting the clichés of the serial killer book by characterization… . If you’re seeking a thinking man’s bestseller, T. Jefferson Parker is the writer for you.” —Katy Munger, Washington Post Book World “A man much praised doesn’t need more encomiums; but T. Jefferson Parker deserves all he gets. The Blue Hour adds one more chilling thriller to a long, grim, and scary list: ingenious, intricate, complicated yet credible, a real page-turner.” —Eugen Weber, Los Angeles Times “Parker’s best work.” —Edvins Beitiks, San Francisco Examiner “Has enough chills and twists to keep the pages turning, but the real story here is the surprising love match Parker manages to pull off with realistic characters and true emotion. This will be another hit for Parker’s fans and will appeal to Michael Connelly’s as well.” —Rececca House, Library Journal “Takes you where you’ve been and it seems like the first time.” —Richard Fuller, Philadelphia Inquirer