Pier Francesco Paolini Books

"A SON OF THE CIRCUS IS COMIC GENIUS....GET READY FOR IRVING'S MOST RAUCOUS NOVEL TO DATE." --The Boston Globe "Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, reared in Bombay by maverick foes of tradition, educated in Vienna, married to an Austrian and long a resident of Toronto, is a 59-year-old without a country, culture or religion to call his own....The novel may not be 'about' India, but Irving's imagined India, which Daruwalla visits periodically, is a remarkable achievement--a pandemonium of servants and clubmen, dwarf clowns and transvestite whores, missionaries and movie stars. This is a land of energetic colliding egos, of modern media clashing with ancient cultures, of broken sexual boundaries." --New York Newsday "HIS MOST DARING AND MOST VIBRANT NOVEL...The story of circus-as-India is told with gusto and delightful irreverence." --Bharati Mukherjee The Washington Post Book World "Ringmaster Irving introduces act after act, until three (or more) rings are awhirl at a lunatic pace....[He] spills characters from his imagination as agilely as improbable numbers of clowns pile out of a tiny car....His Bombay and his Indian characters are vibrant and convincing." --The Wall Street Journal "IRRESISTIBLE...POWERFUL...Irving's gift for dialogue shines." --Chicago Tribune

Mr Noon is a sardonic tale about the amorous adventures of Gilbert Noon, a young schoolmaster in Lawrence's home county of Nottinghamshire who gets entangled with a girl, loses his job, and decides to leave the country to escape the narrow provincial middle-class morality. It was first known as a long story posthumously published in A Modern Lover (1934) and collected in the volume called Phoenix II (1968). Lawrence in fact wrote a long continuation of the novel, but the manuscript disappeared for many years. The Cambridge edition brought the two parts together for the first time. It is like a sequel to Sons and Lovers, but much more straightforwardly autobiographical. The publication of the complete work added a new work of major importance to the canon of a great writer, and was widely hailed as a major literary event.

Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of friends, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.

ENTER THE SORCERESS! Back from the abyss, Castaneda encounter his greatest test on the journey towards impeccability and freedom: to outwit and overpower the sorcery of Doña Soledad, herself transformed from a defeated and meaningless life to a warrior, a hunter and a "stalker of power." Now the combat will begin. Now the journey will continue. Till the last danger is faced...the final paradox embraced.

When a ten-year-old boy finds an old book of magic in a bookshop in Ireland, the forces of good and evil gather to do battle over it.

ALL'INIZIO... ... era F.lli Arnold (1905), il Grande Magazzino. Era la casa dei niomi, come si chiamano loro stessi, che avevano abbandonato la vita di campagna e si erano stabiliti sotto i pavimenti dell'umanità. Non che avessero niente a che fare con gli umani. Gli umani sono grossi, lenti e stupidi. I niomi vivono rapidamente. Per loro dieci anni sono come un secolo. Dato che vivevano nel Grande Magazzino da più di ottant'anni, si erano dimenticati che c'erano cose come il Sole, la Pioggia o il Vento. C'era solo l'Emporio, fondato dal leggendario F.lli Arnold (dal 1905) perché i niomi vi abitassero. Le loro piccole, rapide vite erano regolate dall'orario di chiusura e apertura. Le stagioni dell'anno erano i Saldi Invernali, le Collezioni Primavera, le Occasioni Estive e il Natale. E nell'Emporio arrivarono un giorno gli ultimi niomi che vivevano fuori. Loro sapevano che cos'erano il vento e la pioggia. Lo sapevano bene. Per questo cercavano di non averci più niente a che fare... Narratore appassionante, grande umorista, lucido osservatore delle contraddizioni del consumismo e della vita moderna, Terry Pratchett sarà una rivelazione per i lettori di tutte le età.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, "marks an advance over This Side of Paradise," Edmund Wilson wrote. "The style is more nearly mature and the subject more nearly unified, and there are scenes that are more convincing than any in his previous fiction." Published in 1922, it chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux rich and New York's nightlife, of reckless ambition and squandered talent.

The complete edition of a timeless classic, includes the recently rediscovered Part Four and 'Last Words' by Richard Bach.Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the most celebrated inspirational fable of our time, tells the story of a bird determined to be more than ordinary.

"Una straordinaria meditazione sulla morte e un'amara riflessione sulla perdita di tradizioni e valori antichissimi, nel racconto di un grande rappresentante della letteratura contemporanea." [dalla pagina web di Bompiani]

The story of friendship between four African American women who lean on each other while "waiting to exhale": waiting for that man who will take their breath away.

John le Carré 's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him unprecedented worldwide acclaim. At a small British trade fair in Moscow, a message of global importance is made up of three very fragile human links: a Soviet physicist (code name Bluebird) burdened with a secret knowledge; a beautiful young Russian woman to whom the papers are entrusted; and Barley Blair, a bewildered English publisher pressed into service by British Intelligence to ferret out the source of the document. A magnificent story of love, betrayal, and courage, "The Russia House" catches history in the act.

Gill Gamesh, John Baal, Rupert Mundys: If you've never heard of them, it's because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory. This novel turns baseball's status as national passtime and myth into an occasion for unfettered picturesque heroism and perfidy, and ebullient wordplay.

Corde, a Professor of Journalism and Dean at a Chicago university, faces a life-altering experience while accompanying his wife Minna, an esteemed astronomer, to Eastern Europe. Minna's mother has suffered a stroke and is hospitalized, prompting them to navigate an unfamiliar bureaucracy and adapt to life in her small apartment. As Corde supports Minna, he receives troubling news from Chicago: a student has been murdered, and family members pressure him to abandon his investigation. Additionally, articles he's writing for a magazine offend influential Chicagoans he once considered friends. A childhood companion, now a television pundit, reveals unexpected facets of Corde's character, forcing him to confront his own beliefs and values. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes evident that this trip is not merely a temporary escape but a pivotal moment that will irrevocably alter Corde's life. Blending Bellow's signature wit and erudition with a new sense of urgency and tension, the story captivates readers, offering a fresh perspective while maintaining the rich language and depth characteristic of his previous works.

In 1941, Henry Miller, the author of Tropic of Cancer, was commissioned by a Los Angeles bookseller to write an erotic novel for a dollar a page. Under the Roofs of Paris (originally published as Opus Pistorum) is that book. Here one finds Miller’s characteristic candor, wit, self-mockery, and celebration of the good life. From Marcelle to Tania, to Alexandra, to Anna, and from the Left Bank to Pigalle, Miller sweeps us up in his odyssey in search of the perfect job, the perfect woman, and the perfect experience.

A darkly comic and ambitious sequel to the American classic Catch-22 . In Closing Time, Joseph Heller returns to the characters of Catch-22, now coming to the end of their lives and the century, as is the entire generation that fought in World War II: Yossarian and Milo Minderbinder, the chaplain, and such newcomers as little Sammy Singer and giant Lew, all linked, in an uneasy peace and old age, fighting not the Germans this time, but The End. Closing Time deftly satirizes the realities and the myths of America in the half century since WWII: the absurdity of our politics, the decline of our society and our great cities, the greed and hypocrisy of our business and culture -- with the same ferocious humor as Catch-22. Closing Time is outrageously funny and totally serious, and as brilliant and successful as Catch-22 itself, a fun-house mirror that captures, at once grotesquely and accurately, the truth about ourselves.