Gordon Comstock refuses to be corrupted by the world around him and chooses a low paying job and a life of poverty over prosperity and family responsibilities; however, the more he struggles against the money god, the more he realizes that it is a futile journey.

In the year 999, when Ben Attar, a Moroccan Jewish merchant, takes a second wife, he commits an act whose unforeseen consequences will forever alter his family, his relationships, his business-his life. In an attempt to forestall conflict and advance his business interests at the same time, Ben Attar undertakes his annual journey to Europe with both his first wife and his new wife. The trip is the beginning of a profound human drama whose moral conflicts...

Upon landing at an interplanetary station, Kris Kelvin discovers that an advanced power has taken over. The first of Lem's novels to be published in America and now considered a classic, "Solaris" raises a question: Can one truly understand the universe without first understanding what lies within?

On July 21, 1861, near a stream called Bull Run, the Union and Confederate forces fought from early morning until after dark in the first great battle of the Civil War. America would never be quite the same. The first Battle of Bull Run introduced citizens of this country to the draft, the effects of heavy artillery, and the emotional violence of fighting your neighbor for an uncertain cause. It tested the character of men who would later dominate...

From the award-winning, bestselling author of "The Weight of Water" and "Eden Close" comes a haunting novel of love lost and found. Three decades after their childhood affair, an unhappily married man and his first love strike up a correspondence that leads to a rendezvous.

Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world's most entertaining books.