#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard’s world changes forever when Caitlin Somers chooses her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomes Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, an enchanting place where the two friends become “summer sisters.” Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin begs Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will go—because she wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer. And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friend—her summer sister—still has the power to break her heart.   Praise for *Summer Sisters  * “Compulsively readable . . . [Blume’s] powers are prodigious.”—The New York Times Book Review “As warm as a summer breeze blowing through your hair, as nostalgic as James Taylor singing ‘How Sweet It Is.’ You remember. So does Judy Blume. How sweet it was.”—Chicago Tribune *  “An exceptionally moving story that can leave the reader laughing and crying . . . sometimes at the same time . . . Blume creates a rich tapestry of characters.”—The Denver Post “Blume’s characters still tend to hover after the book is set aside. . . . She catches perfectly the well-armored love between longtime female friends.”—The Seattle Times*

Twenty-four-year-old Veronika seems to have everything -- youth and beauty, boyfriends and a loving family, a fulfilling job. But something is missing in her life. So, one cold November morning, she takes a handful of sleeping pills expecting never to wake up. But she does -- at a mental hospital where she is told that she has only days to live. Inspired by events in Coelho's own life, *Veronika Decides to Die* questions the meaning of madness and celebrates individuals who do not fit into patterns society considers to be normal. Bold and illuminating, it is a dazzling portrait of a young woman at the crossroads of despair and liberation, and a poetic, exuberant appreciation of each day as a renewed opportunity.

First there is the omen: A relentless rain stops suddenly at 3:00 am and Chester shows Harold and Howie a cat carrier, open and waiting, by the front door. Chester, who has been reading avidly about the paranormal, predicts that they will soon be traveling someplace, and chances are they are not going to like it. Indeed they are not, as the very next day, with the sun shining bright and clear, the Monroes finally leave for their vacation, dropping Chester, Harold, and Howie off at the scene of some previous harrowing experiences -- Chateau Bow-Wow, the boarding kennel that Chester so aptly had dubbed "Howliday Inn." And this visit promises to be no less harrowing than the last one. The three are greeted by a whole new group of temporary residents. There's Hamlet, the Great Dane, whose sadness grows deeper with his certainty that his beloved master Archie will never return to pick him up. And Bob and Linda, a pair of yuppie puppies from fashionable Upper Centerville who have...

Unthinkingly inviting Uberwald's undead, the Magpyrs, into Lancre to celebrate the birth of his daughter, King Verence makes a big mistake. Really big. Because once they're ensconced within the castle, these wine-drinking, garlic-eating, sun-loving modern vampires have no intention of leaving. Ever. And only an uneasy alliance between a nervous young priest and the argumentative local witches can save the country from being taken over by people with a cultivated bloodlust and bad taste in silk waistcoats. As the Lancre living are about to discover, there's only one way to fight. Go for the throat, or as the vampyres themselves say ... carpe jugulum!

With each new book, Maeve Binchy continues a remarkable progression of sales and audience growth, reaching fans of all ages and backgrounds with her matchless wit, warmth, and sheer storytelling magic. "Tara Road," her first full-length novel since "The Glass Lake," again shows her incomparable understanding of the human heart in the tale of two women, one from Ireland, one from America, who switch lives, and in doing so learn much about each other, as well as much about themselves.Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children. She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend. By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now separated from her husband. The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed. Drawn into lifestyles vastly differing from their own, at first each resents the news of how well the other is getting on. Ria seems to have become quite a hostess, entertaining half the neighborhood, which at first irritates the reserved and withdrawn Marilyn, a woman who has always guarded her privacy. Marilyn seems to have become bosom friends with Ria's children, as well as with Colm, a handsome restaurateur, whom Ria has begun to miss terribly. At the end of the summer, the women at last meet face-to-face. Having learned a great deal, about themselves and about each other, they find that they have become, firmly and forever, good friends. A moving story rendered with the deft touch of a master artisan, "Tara Road" is Maeve Binchy at her very best — utterly beautiful, hauntingly unforgettable, entirely original, and wholly enjoyable.

Booker Prize Finalist "Wickedly funny." --The New York Times Imagine an England where all the pubs are quaint,  where the Windsors behave themselves (mostly), where the cliffs of Dover are actually white, and where Robin Hood and his merry men really are merry.  This is precisely what visionary tycoon, Sir Jack Pitman, seeks to accomplish on the Isle of Wight, a "destination" where tourists can find replicas of Big Ben (half size), Princess Di's grave, and even Harrod's (conveniently located inside the tower of London). Martha Cochrane, hired as one of  Sir Jack's resident "no-people," ably assists him in realizing his dream.  But when this land of make-believe gradually gets horribly and hilariously out of hand, Martha develops her own vision of the perfect England.  Julian Barnes delights us with a novel that is at once a philosophical inquiry, a burst of mischief, and a moving elegy about authenticity and nationality. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Four years after the sudden death of his wife, forty-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is unable to write and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the Maine summerhouse he calls Sara Laughs. Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway and finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a vindictive millionaire, Max Devore, who is trying to take his three-year-old granddaughter away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie's struggle -- and begins to fall in love with her -- he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What do the forces that have been unleashed here want of Mike Noonan?

After an assault at her family home in Maine, Dr. Miranda Jones is determined to put the experience behind her. Distraction comes when she is summoned to Italy—to verify the authenticity of a Renaissance bronze of a Medici courtesan known as The Dark Lady.But instead of cementing Miranda’s reputation as the leading expert in the field, the job nearly destroys it when her professional judgment is called into question. Emotionally estranged from her mother, with a brother immersed in his own troubles, Miranda has no one to turn to...except Ryan Boldari, a seductive art thief whose own agenda forces them into a reluctant alliance.Now it becomes clear that the incident in Maine was not a simple mugging—and that The Dark Lady may possess as many secrets as its beautiful namesake once did. For Miranda, forced to rely on herself—and a partner who offers her both unnerving suspicion and intoxicating passion—the only way home is filled with deception, treachery, and a danger that threatens them all.

*Alternate Cover Edition can be found here. * Made into a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp, The Rum Diary—a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book—is Hunter S. Thompson’s brilliant love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent lust in the Caribbean. Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. The narrator, freelance journalist Paul Kemp, irresistibly drawn to a sexy, mysterious woman, is soon thrust into a world where corruption and get-rich-quick schemes rule and anything (including murder) is permissible. Exuberant and mad, youthful and energetic, this dazzling comedic romp provides a fictional excursion as riveting and outrageous as Thompson’s Fear and Loathing books.

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is editor of the newspaper The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life. A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel, Amsterdam is "as sheerly enjoyable a book as one is likely to pick up this year" (The Washington Post Book World). From the Trade Paperback edition.

Baltimore Sun reporter Simon spent a year tracking the homicide unit of his city's police, following the officers from crime scenes to interrogations to hospital emergency rooms. With empathy, psychological nuance, racy verbatim dialogue and razor-sharp prose, he offers a rare insider's look at the detective's tension-wracked world. Presiding over a score of sleuths is commander Gary D'Addario, "connoisseur of survival" who grapples with political intrigue, massive red tape and "red balls" (major, difficult cases). His detectives include Tom Pelligrini, obsessed with solving the rape-murder of an 11-year-old girl; Rich Garvey, whose "perfect year" is upset by a murder case that collapses in court; and black, cosmopolitan Harry Edgerton, a lone wolf, son of a jazz pianist. This hectic daily log reveals the detective's beat on Baltimore 's mean streets (234 murders in 1988) to be brutal, bureaucratic and, occasionally, mundane.

A "suspenseful" novel by the #1 "New York Times" bestselling author-now in a French flap trade edition. Nora Roberts delivers an exciting tale that takes readers to the depths of the Caribbean-and the heights of passion and suspense-as a marine archaeologist and a salvager join forces to search for a legendary treasure. 

Tarzan the Untamed is a book by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the seventh in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was originally published as two separate stories serialized in different pulp magazines; "Tarzan the Untamed" (also known as "Tarzan and the Huns") in Redbook from March to August, 1919, and "Tarzan and the Valley of Luna" in All-Story Weekly from March to April 1920. The two stories were combined under the title of the first in the first book edition, published in 1920 by A. C. McClurg. In order of writing, the book follows Jungle Tales of Tarzan, a collection of short stories about the ape-man's youth.

Can the Crystal Shard be destroyed at last? Drizzt is determined to destroy the evil Crystal Shard, and seeks out the help of the scholar-priest Cadderly. But instead, his worst fears are realized, and Crenshinibon falls into the hands of the dark elf mercenary Jarlaxle and his unlikely ally Artemis Entreri. The Silent Blade is the book that brought Drizzt back to the Realms, and was a New York Times best seller on its initial release--and has been in print every day since. Like the rest of the Legend of Drizzt(R) reissues, The Silent Blade features beautiful new cover art by award-winning illustrator Todd Lockwood.

Computer whiz Ashley Patterson is convinced she is being stalked. Coworker Toni Prescott has a penchant for Internet dating and little time for anyone else. And Alette Peters prefers quiet weekends in the arms of a beefcake artist. They know virtually nothing about each other--until the three women are linked by a murder investigation that will lead to one of the most bizarre trials of the century.