"Joseph Anton demonstrates Mr. Rushdie's ability as a stylist and storyteller. It also serves as an important moral balance sheet."

-- The Wall Street Journal

 

The much-anticipated and timely memoir of Salman Rushdie is now available!

 

On February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been "sentenced to death" by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being "against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran."
 
So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov - Joseph Anton.
 
How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech. He talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom.
 
It is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and of vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.

 

This biography is a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

 

 

"What Catherine the Great offers is a great story in the hands of a master storyteller."

--The Wall Street Journal  

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history.

  

Catherine's family, friends, ministers, generals, lovers, and enemies-all are here, vividly described. These included her ambitious, perpetually scheming mother; her weak, bullying husband, Peter (who left her lying untouched beside him for nine years after their marriage); her unhappy son and heir, Paul; her beloved grandchildren; and her "favorites" - the parade of young men from whom she sought companionship and the recapture of youth as well as sex. Here, too, is the giant figure of Gregory Potemkin, her most significant lover and possible husband, with whom she shared a passionate correspondence of love and separation, followed by seventeen years of unparalleled mutual achievement.

 

 

This is a gorgeous two-volume ribbon-bookmarked hardcover boxed set from Library of America, a publisher which offer high quality editions of what they consider "America's best and most significant writing." These books are for the adult reader; without illustrations, Wilder's prose stands alone and can be seen for exactly what it is - a triumph of the American plain style.

 

In the Little House books, Laura Ingalls Wilder created both a much-loved masterwork of children's literature and a vivid firsthand narrative of an epoch in the settling of America. This set celebrates Wilder as a distinctive and vital voice in the canon of American literature.

 

Originally published from 1932 to 1943, the eight Little House novels - Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, and These Happy Golden Years - are brilliant narratives of the early life of Laura Ingalls and her family as they grow up with the country in the woods and on the plains of the advancing American frontier. They are joined here by the posthumous novella The First Four Years, which recounts the early years of the author's marriage to Almanzo Wilder and, as a special feature, four rare autobiographical pieces that address the need for historical accuracy in children's literature, reveal real-life events not included in the novels, and answer the inevitable question: what happened next?

 

"For all its deep-seated sorrows, this is a hopeful book ... illuminating the humanity of these fully realized characters."

--The New York Times Book Review  

 

 

The Concord Center provides Adult Day Health and Alzheimer Day Care Services to frail elders and disabled adults who reside in Concord and surrounding communities.