Penguin USA. 08/01/2000. 105 pgs. One of Shakespeare's early plays, written in 1598 or 1599, AS YOU LIKE IT is in many ways a typical Elizabethan romantic comedy, but it is also a satire in which Shakespeare ridicules many of the courtly-love conventions that were still current in his day: love as a disease, for example, and the lover as slave to his imperious mistress. In AS YOU LIKE IT, when these notions rear their heads, they are presented as silly absurdities. Orlando is in thrall to Rosalind, the simple shepherd Silvius is put through mental tortures by Phoebe--but ridiculing such formulaic excesses ("Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love") and keeping the play grounded in reality, Shakespeare reminds his audience that true love can bring happiness and is a force for good. In Jaques's famously acerbic soliloquy on the stages of a man's life (which end in a second childhood followed by oblivion), he speaks of the naturalness and inevitability of change--and as the characters in AS YOU LIKE IT enter the Forest of Arden, they undergo changes that will ultimately lead to a transformation in their attitudes. Embittered men are reunited with the brothers they loathed, the rightful Duke is returned to his throne, and four absurdly warring couples are reconciled. The forest provides--as it does in many plays of the period--a pastoral interval in which the characters come to their senses and return to the city better people. In the course of the play, despite its light-hearted tone, Shakespeare does tackle some difficult questions involving love, aging, nature, and the coming of death. Originally published at $5.00 You save 80% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 02/01/2000. New. 92 pgs. The eponymous "two gentlemen" in question--Valentine and Proteus--are in love with, respectively, Silvia and Julia. Despite the promise of constancy made to Julia by Proteus, while he is away assisting his friend Valentine he also falls for Silvia. Thwarting their elopement plans, Proteus attempts to manipulate the circumstances to win the girl, losing the friendship of Valentine in the process. True to the conventions of comedy, though, all is set right between the friends and the lovers before the curtain falls. One of Shakespeare's first forays into comedy, TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA is not among his most accomplished works, although his later skill in drawing comic portraits is foreshadowed here. Shakespeare found precedent in the friendship between Valentine and Proteus in Boccaccio's DECAMERON, in the popular verse circulating in England at the time. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA has been held up as Shakespeare's first composition, but there is no proof, other than the immaturity of his voice, to confirm this assertion. In any case, it was certainly written prior to 1598, when it was mentioned in a list of works. Originally published at $5.95 You save 75% off the cover price!

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St Martins Pr. 04/01/2002. Reprint. 242 pgs. In Jane Alison's version of the last years of the Roman poet Ovid, he is exiled from Rome by the Emperor Augustus because of his liaison with a young women who is a practitioner of witchcraft. Originally published at $13.00 You save 92% off the cover price!

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Trafalgar Square. 01/01/2002. 384 pgs. Originally published at $9.99 You save 83% off the cover price!

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Ballantine Books. 01/01/1981. Illustrated. 280 pgs.

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Farrar Straus & Giroux. 12/01/2002. Illustrated. 336 pgs. Napoleon's exile on Elba in 1815 is the subject of this unusual historical novel, which places the fallen hero in the midst of a troubled hierarchical society, many of whose inhabitants are both in awe of Napoleon and resentful of his privilege and his whiteness. Only one teenage girl befriends him, and is able to understand him. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003. Originally published at $24.00 You save 92% off the cover price!

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Harpercollins. 03/01/2003. Reprint. 320 pgs. Writer Crowley has gained a solid reputation for his erudite and compelling novels that mix elements of fantasy with plotlines that might be familiar to readers of Updike and Cheever. In this departure from his fantasy roots, Crowley focuses on the events that led to the Cuban missile crisis. Kit and her brother, Ben, have lived an itinerant life in a military family. Tracking the epic sweep of the two siblings lives as Ben joins the Green Berets and Kit engages in a complex relationship with an exiled Russian poet, Crowley delves into the Cold Ward paranoia and fear that turn the burners up on Kit and Falin as the government begins to watch them. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002. Originally published at $12.95 You save 85% off the cover price!

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Rosen Pub Group. 04/01/1992. Originally published at $21.25 You save 95% off the cover price!

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Pub Group West. 09/01/1990. 288 pgs. Originally published at $11.95 You save 92% off the cover price!

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Bilingual Review Pr. 05/01/2001. Illustrated. 353 pgs. In Herrera's novel of family life, three generations struggle to make good lives for themselves both in Cuba and in the States. Originally published at $27.00 You save 93% off the cover price!

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Lightning Source Inc. 10/01/1994. 222 pgs. The narrator of this tale, a Russian aristocrat, recalls her childhood in exile in Biarritz before World War I. Originally published at $12.95 You save 85% off the cover price!

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Pub Group West. 08/01/2003. 224 pgs. A composer living in the Tuscany countryside with his dog (the eponymous Timoleon) allows a handsome but mysterious Bosnian (or maybe not Bosnian, actually) to become his live-in lover. But he and Timoleon don't get along, and the dog soon finds himself adrift in the back alleys of Rome--but always, like Lassie in LASSIE COME HOME, on the road back to where he belongs. Originally published at $23.00 You save 96% off the cover price!

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Tor Books. 05/02/2005. Reprint. 333 pgs. This fictionalized biography is the story of Thomas Meagher, an Irish rebel who was exiled to Australia after being convicted of treason in 1849. He escaped from the penal colony there and ended up in America, where he came to prominence in the Irish community in New York City as a Tammany Hall politician. In the American Civil War, Meagher led the Irish Brigade, which fought in several of the major battles (and sustained enormous losses). His colorful and controversial life ended--or seemed to--in 1867, when he mysteriously vanished and was never heard from again. Originally published at $5.99 You save 67% off the cover price!

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