The masterpiece of one of the greatest modern Catholic writers A novel told in the form of a confessional letter, this is the story of Monsieur Louis, an embittered, aging lawyer who has spread his misery to his entire estranged family. Louis writes to explain to them, and to himself, why his soul has been deformed, why his heart seems like a foul nest of twisted serpents. Mauriac's novel masterfully explores the corruption caused by pride, avarice, and hatred, and its opposite—the divine grace that remains available to each of us until the very moment of our deaths. It is the unforgettable tale of the battle for one man's soul.

During Operation Desert Storm, Captain Keith Rosenkranz piloted his F-16 "Viper" in 30 combat missions. Here he recounts these experiences in searing, "you-are-there" detail, giving readers one of the most riveting depictions ever written of man and machine at war.

"Vipers' Tangle begins as a man's letter to his estranged wife, explaining his hatred for her and their children, and is transformed under Mauirac's masterful pen into a diary of spiritual and psychological battles against God, family, and self. With remarkable subtlety and sensitivity, Mauriac relates the transformation of Monsieur Louis by the sublime workings of grace. Vipers' Tangle's superb arc and unflinching examination of the human heart makes it easily one of the greatest novels--Catholic or otherwise--of all time. This edition of Vipers' Tangle features an insightful introduction and detailed notes from Timothy O'Malley that together serve to deepen one's appreciation of Mauriac's masterpiece"--Page 4 of cover

NOMINATED FOR THE PHILIP K. DICK AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL * Dazzling space battles, intergalactic politics, and rogue AI collide in Velocity Weapon, the first book in this epic space opera trilogy by award-winning author Megan O'Keefe. Sanda and Biran Greeve were siblings destined for greatness. A high-flying sergeant, Sanda has the skills to take down any enemy combatant. Biran is a savvy politician who aims to use his new political position to prevent conflict from escalating to total destruction. However, on a routine maneuver, Sanda loses consciousness when her gunship is blown out of the sky. Instead of finding herself in friendly hands, she awakens 230 years later on a deserted enemy warship controlled by an AI who calls himself Bero. The war is lost. The star system is dead. Ada Prime and its rival Icarion have wiped each other from the universe. Now, separated by time and space, Sanda and Biran must fight to put things right. The ProtectorateVelocity Weapon

Explore the alphabet and animals in a playful and delightfully unusual way - through their collective nouns.

"The Life of Jesus is Nobel Prize-winning author François Mauriac's character study of Jesus Christ. As a novelist, Mauriac is aptly suited to accomplish his mission: to show the meaning of Christ for an ordinary Christian, strongly bound up with the things of the world. In his other writings, Mauriac depicted the sadness and suffering of ordinary human existence; here, he shows the light that illuminates the darkness--the light that is the Christ, the Son of God. Pairing the solid foundation of Scripture with his distinctive visceral style, Mauriac leads the reader through Christ's early years, his public ministry and miracles, and his passion, death, and resurrection. The episodic structure of the book makes it a powerful aid for meditation, especially during Holy Week."--from back cover.

The first literary phase in the brilliant and protean career of Conor Cruise O'Brien was his work as critic for Dublin literary magazine The Bell, which begat this collection of essays first published in 1952 (under the pseudonym 'Donat O'Donnell', as O'Brien was then a working civil servant.) In it, O'Brien set himself to a study of 'the patterns of several exceptionally vivid imaginations which are permeated by Catholicism' - from Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh to Francois Mauriac and Paul Claudel - and to analyse 'what those patterns might share'. The originality and flair of Maria Cross won O'Brien many vocal admirers, among them Dag Hammarskjold, cerebral Secretary-General of the United Nations. 'A most interesting and at times brilliant book, admirably and wittily written.' New Statesman 'One of the most acute and stimulating books of literary criticism to be published for some years.' Spectator

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The British Museum is Falling Down is a brilliant comic satire of academia, religion and human entanglements. First published in 1965, it tells the story of hapless, scooter-riding young research student Adam Appleby, who is trying to write his thesis but is constantly distracted - not least by the fact that, as Catholics in the 1960s, he and his wife must rely on 'Vatican roulette' to avoid a fourth child.