In 1728 a stranger handed a letter to Governor Yue calling on him to lead a rebellion against the Manchu rulers of China. Feigning agreement, he learnt the details of the plot and immediately informed the Emperor, Yongzheng. The ringleaders were captured with ease, forced to recant and, to the confusion and outrage of the public, spared. Drawing on an enormous wealth of documentary evidence - over a hundred and fifty secret documents between the Emperor and his agents are stored in Chinese archives - Jonathan Spence has recreated this revolt of the scholars in fascinating and chilling detail. It is a story of unwordly dreams of a better world and the facts of bureaucratic power, of the mind of an Emperor and of the uses of his mercy.

When Muslim terrorists infiltrate the Navy Chaplain Corps, Lieutenant Zack Brewer, just three years out of law school, is pitted against the world's greatest defense attorney in the court-martial of the century.

Hédi Kaddour’s poetry arises from observation, from situations both ordinary and emblematic—of contemporary life, of human stubbornness, human invention, or human cruelty. With Treason, the award-winning poet and translator Marilyn Hacker presents an English-speaking audience with the first selected volume of his work. The poetries of several languages and literary traditions are lively and constant presences in the work of Hédi Kaddour, a Parisian as well as a Germanist and an Arabist. A walker’s, a watcher’s, and a listener’s poems, his sonnet-shaped vignettes often include a line or two of dialogue that turns his observations and each poem itself into a kind of miniature theater piece. Favoring compact, classical models over long verse forms, Kaddour questions the structures of syntax and the limits of poetic form, combining elements of both international modernism and postmodernism with great sophistication. Capturing Kaddour’s full range of diction, as well as his speed, momentum, and tone, Marilyn Hacker’s translations brilliantly bring these poems alive.

1899, Sand Island, Wisconsin. Bridget Lederle resides in the lighthouse she’s tended since her father died. Here, on the rocky shore of Lake Suprior, she’s alone with the bitter ignominy of her birth, the shame of her love child’s death, and the ghost of a mother she never really knew... That all changes on the wintry night she rescues a mysterious, charismatic stranger whose boat is nearly dashed upon the rocks. After she’s nursed him back to health, he tells her a fantastical tale...of another world, where somehow only she can save the beleaguered Empress from sorcerous plottings to usurp the throne. His tale is wildly fanciful, yet Bridget feels somehow drawn to his world, to the empire of Isavalta. Kalami, her handsome, charming patient, transports her with him from Lake Superior to a dazzling world that seems like a dream... But if Isavalta is a dream, Bridget’s new life is a nightmare. Caught in a magical crossfire between the powerful Dowager Empress, her daughter-in-law, an the sorcerers who serve their mistresses and other more subtle ends, she doesn’t know whom to trust, whom to beware...With the fate of an empire at stake and her heart torn by conflicting desires, she becomes a reluctant player in a deadly game of politics and magic with rules as hard to untangle as the knots in a silken tassel or the threads of a woven rug. As she attempts to see beyond the masks of power and discover truth in a world where magical spells can take almost any form, each hour she spends in the luxury of Isavalta’s court bunds her more tightly in the seductive embrace of secrets from her own past and of unfulfilled yearnings she can’t deny. A stranger in this bedazzling place, she must find a path to salvation - for herself and for her new, otherworldly home - but that path seems rockier than the Lake Superior shore she left behind.

When the First Lady is kidnapped, a rescue specialist discovers her secrets—and a deadly conspiracy—in a thriller by the New York Times bestselling author. First Lady Anna Darmond’s penchant for late night parties in South East D.C. is a harmless open secret—until she’s kidnapped out from under the noses of her Secret Service agents in a bloody gunfight. It's an unthinkable crime that, if revealed, could cause public panic. That’s why hostage rescue specialist Jonathan Grave and his team must operate in absolute secrecy. But Grave soon realizes that, extraordinary as it is, the mission is not all it seems. There are shadows in Mrs. Darmond's past, cracks in the presidential marriage—and leaks in the country's critical shields of security. As Grave tracks the missing First Lady through a labyrinth of lies and murder, he confronts a traitor at the highest level of Washington power—and a devastating scheme to bring a nation to its knees.

Will Montague is a page to Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII. As the King's favourite, Will gains many enemies in Court. His enemies convince the King that Will's father has committed treason and he is thrown into Newgate Prison. Will flees Hampton Court and goes into hiding in the back streets of London. Lost and in mortal danger, he is rescued by a poor boy, Nick Drew. Together they must brave imprisonment and death as they embark on a great adventure to set Will's father free.

Gregory Rabassa's influence as a translator is incalculable. His translations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch have helped make these some of the most widely read and respected works in world literature. (Garcia Marquez was known to say that the English translation of One Hundred Years was better than the Spanish original.) In If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents Rabassa offers a cool-headed and humorous defense of translation, laying out his views on the art of the craft. Anecdotal, and always illuminating, If This Be Treason traces Rabassa's career, from his boyhood on a New Hampshire farm, his school days "collecting" languages, the two-and-a-half years he spent overseas during WWII, his travels, until one day "I signed a contract to do my first translation of a long work [Cortazar's Hopscotch] for a commercial publisher." Rabassa concludes with his "rap sheet," a consideration of the various authors and the over 40 works he has translated. This long-awaited memoir is a joy to read, an instrumental guide to translating, and a look at the life of one of its great practitioners.