It began four million years ago when a gleaming black monolith cast its shadow on the stark African savanna *an inexplicable apparition that ignited the spark of human consciousness, transforming ape into man.

It continued at the dawn of the 21st century when an identical black monolith was excavated on the moon *propelling Dave Bowman and his deputy Frank Poole on a mission to Jupiter that ended in the mutiny of the supercomputer HAL.

Only Dave Bowman would survive to encounter a third, and far more massive monolith on Jupiter's moon Europa *and be forever transformed into the star child.

It is the world of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And now, the odyssey enters its perilous ultimate stage. In 3001, the human race, incredibly, has survived, yet lives in baffled fear of the trio of monoliths that dominate the solar system—until a ray of light beams forth from a totally unexpected source. The body of Frank Poole, believed dead for a thousand years, is recovered from the frozen reaches of the galaxy, restored to conscious life, and readied to resume the voyage that HAL abruptly terminated a thousand years back. He knows he cannot proceed until he reestablishes contact with Dave Bowman. But first he must fathom the terrifying truth of what Bowman *and HAL *have become inside the monolith.

In 3001: The Final Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke brings the greatest and most successful science fiction series of all time to its magnificent, stunningly unforeseen conclusion. As we hurtle toward the new millennium in real time, Clarke brilliantly, daringly leaps one thousand years into the future to reveal a truth we are only now capable of comprehending. An epic masterpiece at once dazzlingly imaginative and grounded in scientific actuality, 3001 is a story that only Arthur C. Clarke could tell.

Offering a thrilling introduction to the underworld of stolen art, this investigation reveals the little-known story of modern art theft and shows how the legitimate art market, with its hyped auctions and landmark sales, has ignited criminal interest in these high-end pieces. The photographs, illustrations, and case studies give a fascinating and detailed behind-the-scenes account of the major thefts during the past hundred years—ranging from Edvard Munch’s The Scream and looting during World War II and the Iraq wars to a brazen and bizarre theft of a two-ton bronze Henry Moore sculpture. A gallery lists the estimated value of each stolen piece, painting an overview of the cultural, historical, and economic losses.

SEVENTH PRINTING. April 1983-1987 Del Rey mass market paperback, Larry Niven (Ringworld). A science fiction collection by Larry Niven, collecting thirteen short stories published between 1964 and 1975 along with several essays by Niven and a chronology.

In this novel, Niven presents a fully-fleshed culture of evolved humans who live without gravity in the gas cloud surrounding a neutron star. In this Smoke Ring, free-floating life forms flourish, and all of them, from fish to fowl, can fly...

“Nobody does it better than Niven and Pournelle. I loved it!”—Tom Clancy

They first appear as a series of dots on astronomical plates, heading from Saturn directly toward Earth. Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star.

The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first contact is hostile: the invaders blast a Soviet space station, seize the survivors, and then destroy every dam and installation on Earth with a hail of asteroids.

Now the conquerors are descending on the American heartland, demanding servile surrender—or death for all humans.

Praise for Footfall

“Rousing . . . The best of the genre.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Fast-paced.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

The united 'Second Empire of Man' spans vast distances, due to the Alderson Drive which has enabled humans to travel easily between the stars. After an alien probe is discovered, the Navy dispatches two ships to determine whether the aliens pose a threat... Called by Robert A. Heinlein: "Possibly the greatest science fiction novel ever written," this magnificent exploration of first contact and a truly alien society is a "must read" for science fiction fans. "As science fiction, one of the most important novels ever published." - San Francisco Chronicle "Possibly the greatest science fiction novel I have ever read." - Robert A. Heinlein "A superlatively fine novel...no writer has ever come up with a more appealing, intriguing, and workable concept of aliens." - Columbus Dispatch "A spellbinder, a swashbuckler...And, best of all, it has a brilliant new approach to that fascinating problem — first contact with aliens." - Frank Herbert "One of the most engrossing tales I've read in year...fascinating." - Theodore Sturgeon "Intriguing and suspenseful...the scenes in which the humans and aliens examine one another are unforgettable." - Minneapolis Tribune "Nobody does it better than Niven and Pournelle" - Tom Clancy "The team of Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven is one of the best in science fiction." - The Washington Times "Few writers have a better pedigree" - Los Angeles Times

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card a winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Orson Scott Card is the bestselling author best known for the classic Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow and other novels in the Ender universe.

Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other—if only he can come out of the war alive.
"The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first trank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Hawkeye, a scout, leads a small band of Americans fleeing from the British and their Indian allies in the French and Indian War

Literary Novel, Fictional Novel, Adventure

The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dream
 
Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room.

"By common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the American theater." —Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times

"So simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it." —Time

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

The Proud Tower, the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Guns of August, and The Zimmerman Telegram comprise Barbara W. Tuchman’s classic histories of the First World War era

In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players, Tuchman’s magnum opus is a classic for the ages.
 
Praise for The Guns of August
 
“A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—Newsweek
 
“More dramatic than fiction . . . a magnificent narrative—beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“A fine demonstration that with sufficient art rather specialized history can be raised to the level of literature.”—The New York Times
 
“[The Guns of August] has a vitality that transcends its narrative virtues, which are considerable, and its feel for characterizations, which is excellent.”—The Wall Street Journal

Flamboyant and controversial, Oscar Wilde was a dazzling personality, a master of wit, and a dramatic genius whose sparkling comedies contain some of the most brilliant dialogue ever written for the English stage. Here in one volume are his immensely popular novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray; his last literary work, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” a product of his own prison experience; and four complete plays: Lady Windermere’s Fan, his first dramatic success, An Ideal Husband, which pokes fun at conventional morality, The Importance of Being Earnest, his finest comedy, and Salomé, a portrait of uncontrollable love originally written in French and faithfully translated by Richard Ellmann.

Every selection appears in its entirety–a marvelous collection of outstanding works by the incomparable Oscar Wilde, who’s been aptly called “a lord of language” by Max Beerbohm.