Pulitzer Prize-winning "New York Times" reporter Charlie LeDuff gives his incomparable take on the city and its denizens-the bars, the workingmen, the gamblers, the eccentrics, the lonesome, and the wise. "Work and Other Sins" is filled to burst with stories of the fascinating, one-of-a-kind characters who populate the modern metropolis. In these pages we meet a Long Island used-car salesman; a professional Santa; the men who change the light bulbs atop the Empire State Building; a Sinatra imitator; a retired Harlem chorus-line girl; a lighthouse keeper; a saloon priest; Latin lovers; a host of barroom regulars; and myriad others-all of whom present their take on working, drinking, gambling, dying, and countless other facts of life. Charlie LeDuff takes us to the watering holes, prisons, veterans' hospitals, firehouses, apartment buildings, baseball fields, and graveyards that make up the landscape of modern life. Also included is LeDuff's acclaimed series of articles on Squad One, the Brooklyn firehouse that suffered devastating losses on September 11, as well as his Pulitzer Prize-winning piece on workers in a North Carolina slaughterhouse. LeDuff captures the spirit of the people and places he profiles with a dead-on feel for character and idiom and his signature wry wit. But more than that, LeDuff lets his characters speak for themselves. What results is at turns riotous, dirt-under-the-nails, contemplative, salty, joyous, whiskey tinged-an utterly unique vision of life in the Big Apple and beyond.

Malice that cannot speak its name, cold-blooded but secret hostility, impotent desire, hidden rancor and spite--all cluster at the center of envy. Envy clouds thought, writes Joseph Epstein, clobbers generosity, precludes any hope of serenity, and ends in shriveling the heart. Of the seven deadly sins, he concludes, only envy is no fun at all.Writing in a conversational, erudite, self-deprecating style that wears its learning lightly, Epstein takes us on a stimulating tour of the many faces of envy. He considers what great thinkers--such as John Rawls, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche--have written about envy; distinguishes between envy, yearning, jealousy, resentment, and schadenfreude ("a hardy perennial in the weedy garden of sour emotions"); and catalogs the many things that are enviable, including wealth, beauty, power, talent, knowledge and wisdom, extraordinary good luck, and youth (or as the title of Epstein's chapter on youth has it, "The Young, God Damn Them"). He looks at resentment in academia, where envy is mixed with snobbery, stirred by impotence, and played out against a background of cosmic injustice; and he offers a brilliant reading of Othello as a play more driven by Iago's envy than Othello's jealousy. He reveals that envy has a strong touch of malice behind it--the envious want to destroy the happiness of others. He suggests that envy of the astonishing success of Jews in Germany and Austria may have lurked behind the virulent anti-Semitism of the Nazis.As he proved in his best-selling Snobbery, Joseph Epstein has an unmatched ability to highlight our failings in a way that is thoughtful, provocative, and entertaining. If envy is no fun, Epstein's Envy is truly a joy to read.

From the author of the international bestseller Only Time Will Tell, Jeffrey Archer picks up the sweeping story of the Clifton Chronicles with The Sins of the Father. Only days before Britain declares war on Germany, Harry Clifton, hoping to escape the consequences of long-buried family secrets, and forced to accept that his desire to marry Emma Barrington will never be fulfilled, has joined the Merchant Navy. But his ship is sunk in the Atlantic by a German U-boat, drowning almost the entire crew. An American cruise liner, the SS Kansas Star, rescues a handful of sailors, among them Harry and the third officer, an American named Tom Bradshaw. When Bradshaw dies in the night, Harry seizes on the chance to escape his tangled past and assumes his identity. But on landing in America, he quickly learns the mistake he has made, when he discovers what is awaiting Bradshaw in New York. Without any way of proving his true identity, Harry Clifton is now chained to a past that could be far worse than the one he had hoped to escape.

In this stunning novel, #1 New York Times bestselling author Fern Michaels conjures an unforgettable story of love, betrayal, and redemption . . . When Reuben Tarz and Daniel Bishop met, they were hardly more than boys, brought together by their connection to beautiful, worldly Marchioness Michelene Fonsard, known to all as Madame Mickey. Twenty years later, Reuben is a Hollywood mogul and Daniel has become a renowned Washington D.C. lawyer. Life has rewarded both with riches, success, and beautiful wives, if not always contentment. Out of the blue, an urgent telephone call from Mickey summons Daniel to France to rescue Philippe, the son Reuben never knew existed, and bring him to America. Philippe’s arrival will be the catalyst that changes everything—unearthing old secrets and betrayals and forging surprising new bonds. And with each revelation comes that rarest of gifts: a chance to learn from the sins of the past and forge a path to happiness at last . . . “A tale of love and intrigue.” —Library Journal “Engaging...compelling...as polished as they come.” —Publishers Weekly

Lust, says Simon Blackburn, is furtive, headlong, always sizing up opportunities. It is a trail of clothing in the hallway, the trashy cousin of love. But be that as it may, the aim of this delightful book is to rescue lust "from the denunciations of old men of the deserts, to deliver it from the pallid and envious confessor and the stocks and pillories of the Puritans, to drag it from the category of sin to that of virtue." Blackburn, author of such popular philosophy books as Think and Being Good, here offers a sharp-edged probe into the heart of lust, blending together insight from some of the world's greatest thinkers on sex, human nature, and our common cultural foibles. Blackburn takes a wide ranging, historical approach, discussing lust as viewed by Aristophanes and Plato, lust in the light of the Stoic mistrust of emotion, and the Christian fear of the flesh that catapulted lust to the level of deadly sin. He describes how philosophical pessimists like Schopenhauer and Sartre contributed to our thinking about lust and explores the false starts in understanding lust represented by Freud, Kinsey, and modern "evolutionary psychology." But most important, Blackburn reminds us that lust is also life-affirming, invigorating, fun. He points to the work of David Hume (Blackburn's favorite philosopher) who saw lust not only as a sensual delight but also "a joy of the mind." Written by one of the most eminent living philosophers, attractively illustrated and colorfully packaged, Lust is a book that anyone would lust over.

It's had 25 years to cool off - but it's still as hot as ever! Oozing with dirt and gossip that would make anyone blush, Sins is a super-glossy tale of passion and intrigue, set in the world of haute couture that starts during WWII and ends in the early 1980s. Beautiful Helene's built the greatest magazine empire on earth, but she's vowed to repay the sins visited on her family during her childhood. Her's is the story of a daring woman with the courage to use any means to reach the peaks of money and power, and the heart to give it all up for the love of the right man.

A Bible student reference A New Testament prophecy of a falling away from truth into apostasy and lawlessness, in the final generation before Jesus Christ returns in glory, is being fulfilled now and is shortly to end. Yet Christianity has overwhelmingly moved so far from its first century roots that it could not even recognise this – or that Christ’s return is therefore now almost upon us! How and why this is the case is here explained thoroughly and logically with many examples directly from the word of God. In God’s saving plan for the world, everyone must in time make a free will choice to become part of the ‘Israel of God’ in order to access eternal life in the kingdom of God. The route to take is the “strait and narrow” way (Mat 7:13-14) that very few have so far found, and it involves the biblical new and old covenants which both apply to this Israel. Embark on this voyage only if you are willing to: be challenged about some basic Christian preconceptions, be a serious open-minded Bible student, and trust what the Bible teaches - but remember that time is short. “What the Bible has taught me I see as both vital and urgent for our eternal salvation; yet I know of no church or individual theologian who teaches what this book deals with in any substantive way” “Be prepared for major challenges to your understanding just as God has challenged me.” “In the epistles, Paul refers to two Israels whom he calls Israel after the flesh (I Cor 10:18) and the Israel of God (Gal 6:16); I focus mainly on the latter (but I also explain an unexpected but critically important connection between them)” “Dependent on the teaching, nearly all Christian denominations either teach nothing at all on it or almost the opposite of what Scripture repeatedly showed me. Looking back, I find this absolutely staggering!” “Very few [Christians] understand that the new covenant also only applies to Israel (as I will clearly show).” “I no longer believe that the NT [New Testament] can be fully understood without this extra Israel dimension” “Had I felt I could deliver this in a more light-hearted way I would have done so, but its implications are too awesome and fundamental to our eternal life prospects for that”