Magic is what lures people like anthropology student Theodora to the exotic, dangerous world of Ivory, where everything is for sale and magic really works. But cut off from her companions, Theodora finds what began as a pleasure trip becoming a terrifying odyssey into her own gift for magic.

"The author explores this tradition in depth and defines it with a breadth of vision, a dynamic vigor and freedom rarely paralleled today....His method, flexible, generous, humane in the best sense of the word, eschews pedantry, dogma, useless theorizing and scholastic argumentation."--The New York Times Book Review. "I wish to make it clear that The Gates of Horn represents an outstanding critical accomplishment."--Saturday Review. In the Odyssey, Homer describes two gates of the imagination: one of ivory through which fictitious dreams pass, and the other of horn, through which nothing but the truth may pass. Realism is the type of literature that passes through the horn, and in this significant study of the genre Levin examines a major form of Realism--the French novel--and focuses on five of its masters--Stendahl, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Proust. Now available in paperback, Levin's study is a veritable reconstruction of the artistic and intellectual life of a nation.

A debut novel by the 1987 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, about an artist on a journey of self-discovery—navigating a family secret, racism, and the conflict between marriage and career. “Skillfully evokes the mood of a decade when social change seemed not only possible but imminent.” —Washington Post Book World When a woman returns to her Midwestern hometown as an artist-in-residence to teach puppetry to schoolchildren, her homecoming also means grappling with artistic ambition, memories of rejected love, and shocking truths about her family.

Several years ago, Christian Huxley's father, George, obsessively documented the strange phenomena emanating from Ryhope Wood at the edge of their property. He watched the ancient heroes emerge, shouting both incomprehensible warnings and unmistakable invitations. Recklessly, George followed them inot the mysterious sylvan shadows that changed him forever. Christian himself was not untouched by these living dreams. A childhood encounter with a phantom from another time draws him to the Wood as an adult. Deep in Ryhope, Christian uncovers the lie that permeates his worst nightmares. And like his father, he will be consumed with the mythagoes of Ryhope, especially a young Celtic warrior called Guiwenneth. She is the key to the mystery of the universe, an ancient heroine caught in a timeless tale of bravery and sacrifice. Now, together with a band of crusaders from a world long gone, Christian and Guiwenneth become part of the unfolding stories both remembered and forgotten. They meet sorcerers in battle and giants who can travel miles in one step. And they discover the meaning of the two gates, Ivory and Horn - one the lie, the other the truth.

A woman tries to uncover the mysterious fate of a friend in Cambodia in this “very smart” and suspenseful novel (The New York Times Book Review). Liz Headleand is one of London’s best-known and most prominent psychiatrists. One day she arrives at work to find a mysterious package, postmarked from Cambodia. Inside, she finds various scraps of paper, a laundry bill from a Bangkok hotel, old newspaper clippings—and pieces of human finger bones. Shocked but intrigued, she realizes the papers belong to her old friend Stephen Cox, a playwright who moved to Cambodia to work on a script about the Khmer Rouge. Convinced Stephen is trying to send her some sort of message, Liz follows the clues in the box to the jungles of Cambodia, risking her life to find her friend. In this thrilling novel, Margaret Drabble continues the trilogy she began in The Radiant Way and A Natural Curiosity, taking us far from the civilized, familiar streets of London, and painting an “urgent, brilliant” portrait of the tumultuous, terror-ridden landscape of Cambodia in the late twentieth century (The Boston Globe). “A tour de force.” —Calgary Herald “Unputdownable . . . A sojourn within The Gates of Ivory is not something one soon forgets.” —Edmonton Journal

In a fragile alliance, the natives are stirring uneasily under their foreign rulers. Rebellion is brewing, and at the heart of the conflict lies the bloody and powerful cult of the god Aoun, whose followers will stop at nothing to rid their land of alien domination. So civil servant Renille vo Chaumelle, scion of a proud, conquering line mingled with native blood, is conscripted as a spy and ordered to penetrate the fortress-temple known as the Fastness of the Gods. There he is to discover the secrets of the priests of Aoun and - if the chance presents itself - assassinate the lead priest, named in legend as the god's own son. But in the holiest depths of the temple, Renille finds there is more to the cult than his superiors suspect - far more than they will ever believe. What he learns leads him to the beautiful princess Jathondi, daughter of the native ruler, who is fated to be the crux of a violent confrontation between the fanatic followers of a flesh-hungry god and their arrogant overlords. Together, Jathondi and Renille must brave a whirlwind of revolution and apocalyptic magic that could shatter a nation, and open the long-sealed portal between heaven and earth.

Tony Kovacs, seventeen, realizes that he is the only one who can stop a bloodthirsty succubus from increasing her powers

This novel goes back through the lives of three women, a psychoanalyst, an art historian and a good woman who all met at Cambridge in the 1950s.

Monumental epic poem tells the heroic story of Aeneas, a Trojan who escaped the burning ruins of Troy to found Lavinium, the parent city of Rome, in the west.

“With descriptions and dialect so real you feel as if you might be turning pages while sitting deep in the bush, and a skillful narrative that teaches while it thrills, this novel is a win for any animal lover or reader with a conservationist’s heart.”—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Spark of Light INTERNATIONAL THRILLER WRITERS AWARD FINALIST • In a blockbuster debut thriller brimming with majestic wildlife, village politics, and international intrigue, a chilling quadruple homicide raises the stakes in the battle to save Africa’s elephants. Still grieving over the tragic death of her fiancé, American wildlife biologist Catherine Sohon leaves South Africa and drives to a remote outpost in northeast Namibia, where she plans to face off against the shadowy forces of corruption and relentless human greed in the fight against elephant poaching. Undercover as a census pilot tracking the local elephant population, she’ll really be collecting evidence on the ruthless ivory traffickers. But before she even reaches her destination, Catherine stumbles onto a scene of horrifying carnage: three people shot dead in their car, and a fourth nearby—with his brain removed. The slaughter appears to be the handiwork of a Zambian smuggler known as “the witchdoctor,” a figure reviled by activists and poachers alike. Forced to play nice with local officials, Catherine finds herself drawn to the prickly but charismatic Jon Baggs, head of the Ministry of Conservation, whose blustery exterior belies his deep investment in the poaching wars. Torn between her developing feelings and her unofficial investigation, she takes to the air, only to be grounded by a vicious turf war between competing factions of a black-market operation that reaches far beyond the borders of Africa. With the mortality rate—both human and animal—skyrocketing, Catherine races to intercept a valuable shipment. Now she’s flying blind, and a cunning killer is on the move.