Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein when she was only eighteen. At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.Frankenstein, an instant bestseller and an important ancestor of both the horror and science fiction genres, not only tells a terrifying story, but also raises profound, disturbing questions about the very nature of life and the place of humankind within the cosmos: What does it mean to be human? What responsibilities do we have to each other? How far can we go in tampering with Nature? In our age, filled with news of organ donation genetic engineering, and bio-terrorism, these questions are more relevant than ever.

En ce dimanche de Pâques et sous le feu encore brûlant de l’actualité concernant l’incendie de « Notre-Dame de Paris », ce magnifique témoin de la capitale qui a connu les flammes dans la soirée du 15 avril 2019, un édifice dont Victor Hugo avait écrit un ouvrage, voici le moment venu d’en parler un peu, malgré les nombreuses critiques élogieuses déjà publiées. Je me bornerai donc à une petite participation pour apporter mon obole.Pendant que toutes les cloches de ma ville (et d’ailleurs) carillonnent avec celles venues de Rome pour l’occasion, c’est à ce fabuleux roman que je pense, un grand classique de la littérature française que Victor Hugo a écrit en six mois sous la pression de son éditeur. Pour ce faire, il n’est pas sorti de chez lui afin de satisfaire la demande. L’émission hebdomadaire de « La Grande Librairie » du 19 avril dernier s’est faite dans l’urgence et a « chamboulé » son programme pour évoquer « Notre-Dame de Paris » : Ken Follett avait fait spécialement le déplacement – François Cheng était venu également ainsi que d’autres écrivains (dont un dessinateur talentueux qui a, entre autres, dessiné une Esmeralda qui survolait la cathédrale) - sans parler d’artistes qui ont lu des textes.Pour ma part, je dois reconnaître que ce livre est un livre très ancien – je l’ai lu et relu de très nombreuses fois – il est resté présent à mon esprit car il fait partie des chefs-d’œuvre que l’on ne peut pas oublier.Les personnages principaux y sont : bien sûr la belle Esmeralda (une danseuse bohémienne qui vit dans la Cour des Miracles - elle représente la vie libre, fantasque, elle est le charme, la beauté et sa chèvre, Djali l’accompagne)) – Quasimodo (le bossu, le sonneur de cloches, terriblement laid mais amoureux de Esmeralda) – le superbe Phoebus (un archer qui intervient pour tenter de sauver la belle) – l’archidiacre Frollo (lui aussi amoureux fou de Esmeralda) – le pauvre Gringoire (qui se retrouve en pleine Cour des Miracles, conduit devant le roi des Thunes et qui doit mourir à moins qu’une femme veuille bien l’épouser ; c’est Esmeralda qui le prend en pitié et devient sa femme platonique).De cet ouvrage tombé dans le domaine public mais qui resurgit avec le sinistre effroyable survenu dans ce monument qui se dresse avec majesté depuis huit siècles à Paris, mais qui, meurtri, reste debout, je dois avouer que je l’ai trouvé passionnant. J’ai revu toutes les gargouilles – tout ce que l’on pouvait visiter quand j’y suis allée – la magnificence et la colossale structure avec ses beffrois…« Notre-Dame de Paris », tu as été grièvement blessée mais tu as gardé bien des trésors et, des cendres, vont renaître d’autres éléments à ta gloire.Il y a, heureusement, de beaux restes avec le travail de « Viollet-le-Duc, l’architecte qui réinventa Notre-Dame » au XIXe siècle en se référant au Moyen-Âge. La superbe flèche est tombée ? On en reconstruira une autre. Tu as également été bien utile à notre Sylvain Tesson qui t’a escaladée de nombreuses fois et qui dit que tu lui a sauvé la vie…De ce bel ouvrage qu’est « Notre-Dame de Paris » de Victor Hugo, qui a traversé bien de nombreuses années et que l’on consulte tant de fois car il est inoubliable, c’est avec un grand plaisir que l’on s’y plonge car il est tout simplement envoûtant – non seulement par le touchant roman d’amour – mais aussi par la folie – un peu d’humour qu’a glissé l’auteur avec, par exemple, les femmes habillées en bourgeoises et décrivant leurs tenues vestimentaires.« Notre-Dame de Paris » a été et restera un beau roman historique ainsi que romanesque – un classique parmi les classiques dont a été tirée une jolie comédie musicale ainsi qu’une belle chanson (qui me trotte dans la tête) – une œuvre d’un génie qui l’a écrite à l’âge de vingt-neuf ans….Que dire de plus et qui n’a pas été déjà dit ? C’est bien difficile. Une histoire où se succèdent tant d’événements, de catastrophes – une fin tragique…J’ajouterai seulement que c’est un récit bouleversant malgré son âge (et dire que je n’aime pas les histoires d’amour mais ici elle est bien particulière) et que les cloches continuent à sonner pour la saluer à sa juste valeur. Un autre trait particulier est que ce récit a été immédiatement associé à La Esmeralda (qui en espagnol signifie « émeraude ».)Pour moi cela reste une perle bien précieuse.Mais je parlais d’une certaine chanson, celle de la comédie musicale, chantée par Garou  : « Quand les années auront passé / On retrouvera sous terre / Nos squelettes enlacés / Pour dire à l'univers / Combien Quasimodo aimait / Esméralda la zingara / Lui qui Dieu avait fait si laid /Pour l'aider à porter sa croix / Mangez mon corps, buvez mon sang / Vautours de Montfaucon / Que la mort au-delà du temps / Unisse nos deux noms / Laissez mon âme s'envoler / Loin des misères de la terre / Laisser mon amour se mêler / A la lumière de l'Univers / Danse mon Esméralda / (…) / Laisse moi partir avec toi / Mourir pour oit n'est pas mourir / Danse mon Esmeralda / Chante mon Esmeralda ... »En conclusion ultime, je m’aperçois que j’ai non seulement un peu parlé de l’ouvrage mais aussi de la cathédrale parmi les cathédrales, qui, telle un Phénix va renaître de ses cendres et je lui ai, ainsi, rendu un petit hommage.

Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ...Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to humankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh...

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s  most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters' breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.

A deeply human story, Fentanyl, Inc. is the first deep-dive investigation of a hazardous and illicit industry that has created a worldwide epidemic, ravaging communities and overwhelming and confounding government agencies that are challenged to combat it. "A whole new crop of chemicals is radically changing the recreational drug landscape," writes Ben Westhoff. "These are known as Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and they include replacements for known drugs like heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and marijuana. They are synthetic, made in a laboratory, and are much more potent than traditional drugs"--and all-too-often tragically lethal. Drugs like fentanyl, K2, and Spice--and those with arcane acronyms like 25i-NBOMe-- were all originally conceived in legitimate laboratories for proper scientific and medicinal purposes. Their formulas were then hijacked and manufactured by rogue chemists, largely in China, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, making the drugs' effects impossible to predict. Westhoff has infiltrated this shadowy world, becoming the first journalist to report from inside an illicit Chinese fentanyls lab and providing startling and original reporting on how China's vast chemical industry operates, and how the Chinese government subsidizes it. He tracks down the little-known scientists who invented these drugs and inadvertently killed thousands, as well as a mysterious drug baron who turned the law upside down in his home country of New Zealand. Poignantly, Westhoff chronicles the lives of addicted users and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug awareness organizers in the U.S. and Europe. Together they represent the shocking and riveting full anatomy of a calamity we are just beginning to understand. From its depths, as Westhoff relates, are emerging new strategies that may provide essential long-term solutions to the drug crisis that has affected so many.

By age 25, Heather Anderson had hiked what is known as the "Triple Crown" of backpacking: the Appalachian Trail (AT), Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), and Continental Divide Trail (CDT)—a combined distance of 7,900 miles with a vertical gain of more than one million feet. A few years later, she left her job, her marriage, and a dissatisfied life and walked back into those mountains.In her new memoir, Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home, Heather, whose trail name is "Anish," conveys not only her athleticism and wilderness adventures, but also shares her distinct message of courage--her willingness to turn away from the predictability of a more traditional life in an effort to seek out what most fulfills her. Amid the rigors of the trail--pain, fear, loneliness, and dangers--she discovers the greater rewards of community and of self, conquering her doubts and building confidence. Ultimately, she realizes that records are merely a catalyst, giving her purpose, focus, and a goal to strive toward. (Mountaineers Books)

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants -- and the equally powerful taboosOf all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: people around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. We don't usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So then what is a drug? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime?In THIS IS YOUR MIND ON PLANTS, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs -- opium, caffeine, and mescaline -- and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos with which we surround them. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and such fraught feelings?A unique blend of history, science, memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively -- as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that's one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay written more than 25 years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.

A memoir of heartbreak, thousand-mile races, the endless Alaskan wilderness and many, many dogs from one of only a handful of women to have completed both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod.\
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In 2009, after a crippling divorce that left her heartbroken and directionless, Kristin decided to accept an offer to live at a friend's cabin outside of Denali National Park in Alaska for a few months. In exchange for housing, she would take care of her friend's eight sled dogs. That winter, she learned that she was tougher than she ever knew. She learned how to survive in one of the most remote places on earth and she learned she was strong enough to be alone. She fell in love twice: first with running sled dogs, and then with Andy, a gentle man who had himself moved to Alaska to heal a broken heart. Kristin and Andy married and started a sled dog kennel. While this work was enormously satisfying, Kristin became determined to complete the Iditarod -- the 1,000-mile dogsled race from Anchorage, in south central Alaska, to Nome on the western Bering Sea coast.THIS MUCH COUNTRY is the story of renewal and transformation. It's about journeying across a wild and unpredictable landscape and finding inner peace, courage and a true home. It's about pushing boundaries and overcoming paralyzing fears.

From the world-famous couple who lived alongside a three-generation wolf pack, this book of inspiration, drawn from the wild, will fascinate animal and nature lovers alike.For six years Jim and Jamie Dutcher lived intimately with a pack of wolves, gaining their trust as no one has before. In this book the Dutchers reflect on the virtues they observed in wolf society and behavior. Each chapter exemplifies a principle, such as kindness, teamwork, playfulness, respect, curiosity, and compassion. Their heartfelt stories combine into a thought-provoking meditation on the values shared between the human and the animal world. Occasional photographs bring the wolves and their behaviors into absorbing focus.

In Four Fish, award-winning writer and lifelong fisherman Paul Greenberg takes us on a culinary journey, exploring the history of the fish that dominate our menus — salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna — and investigating where each stands at this critical moment in time. He visits Norwegian megafarms that use genetic techniques once pioneered on sheep to grow millions of pounds of salmon a year. He travels to the ancestral river of the Yupik Eskimos to see the only Fair Trade–certified fishing company in the world. He makes clear how PCBs and mercury find their way into seafood; discovers how Mediterranean sea bass went global; challenges the author of Cod to taste the difference between a farmed and a wild cod; and almost sinks to the bottom of the South Pacific while searching for an alternative to endangered bluefin tuna.Fish, Greenberg reveals, are the last truly wild food — for now. By examining the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, he shows how we can start to heal the oceans and fight for a world where healthy and sustainable seafood is the rule rather than the exception.

Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found hereIn 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight", For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it ﬁrst appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting inﬂuence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.

Scottish-born American naturalist and author (1838-1914)

An American classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, A Separate Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.--jacket flap

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