Desert Islands

Walter de la Mare

Illustrated by Rex Whistler

Trade Paper, 305 pp., $14.95
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Desert Islands opens with a captivating essay on the romance of islands and castaways in literature and life. The essay leads on to over 200 pages of what De la Mare himself calls "a rambling commentary"—a commonplace book on every conceivable aspect of this teeming subject, culled from a lifetime's reading on wrecks, pirates, utopias, and (of course) Daniel Defoe.

The Discovery of Slowness

Sten Nadolny

Foreword by Carl Honoré
Translated from the German by Ralph Freedman

Trade Paper, 325 pp., $16.95
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The Discovery of Slowness—a huge commercial and critical success across Europe, where it is considered the popular author's masterpiece—recounts the life of the nineteenth-century British explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847).

Through the author's acute reading of history and his marvelous storytelling prowess, the reader follows John Franklin's development from aw . . . [read more]

The Other Side of the Mirror

Brooke Allen

Trade Paper, 240 pp., $16.95
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"[A]n old-fashioned series of traveler's impressions: observations and thoughts about a country whose reality confounded all my preconceived notions. It is very simply an attempt to recapture for the Western reader a bit of what makes Syria one of the most captivating countries I have ever visited, and certainly the most welcoming." —from The Other Side of the Mirror

To a Distant Island

James McConkey

Introduction by Jay Parini

Trade Paper, 203 pp., $10.00
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Retail: $14.95. BACKLIST SALE PRICE $10.00

In 1890 Anton Chekhov—thirty years old and already a famous writer—left his home and family in Moscow to travel 6,500 miles across Russia, over frozen land and sea, by train, ferry, and troika, to visit the island of Sakhalin, a penal colony off the coast of Siberia.

What was Chekhov seeking by un . . . [read more]