Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, the literary skill, and-yes-the audacity to conceive of a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A.C. Grayling has done by creating a non-religious Bible, drawn from the wealth of secular literature and philosophy in both Western and Eastern traditions, using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic religions. The Good Book consciously takes its design and presentation from the Bible, in its beauty of language and arrangement into short chapters and verses for ease of reading and quotability, offering to the non-religious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of secular humanist traditions that are older, far richer and more various than Christianity. Organized in 12 main sections——Genesis, Histories, Widsom, The Sages, Parables,...

After Worlds Collide (1934) was a sequel to the 1933 science fiction novel, When Worlds Collide, both of which were co-written by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer. After Worlds Collide first appeared as a six-part monthly serial (November 1933–April 1934) in Blue Book magazine. Much shorter and less florid than the original novel, this one tells the story of the survivors' progress on their new world, Bronson Beta, after the destruction of the Earth, as two ships carrying American colonists, as well as two colonizing ships made up of German, Russian, and Japanese survivors, all explore a new and dangerous landscape.

One day Sophie comes home from school to find two questions in her mail: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" Before she knows it she is enrolled in a correspondence course with a mysterious philosopher. Thus begins Jostein Gaarder's unique novel, which is not only a mystery, but also a complete and entertaining history of philosophy.

The bastard-offspring of They Live and The Day the Earth Stood Still, as told by Jean Paul Sartre.Shape-changing aliens may have landed on the Whitehouse lawn and subsequently integrated into human society, but humanity is still full of self-centered and self-absorbed individuals. Laura's just scraping by on her art teacher's salary. Donald, a bestselling author and UFOlogist who provided counseling to abductees, has tried to distance himself from the saucer landings and is looking to move on with his life.But everything changes when Shelly, an alien enrolled in Laura's art class, mysteriously switches places with Laura. Life begins to unravel. Laura then realizes this isn't the first time Shelly has moved into another person's body, and fragments of other people's memories have jumped with her, including those of Donald's wife. Laura begins to grasp that reality, or at least humanity's perception of it, may be more flexible than anyone wants to admit. And though she...

The trial and death of Socrates (469-399 BCE) have almost as central a place in Western consciousness as the trial and death of Jesus. In four superb dialogues, Plato provides the classic account.

Gaspard Winckler, master forger, is trapped in a basement studio on the outskirts of Paris, with his paymaster's blood on his hands. The motive for this murder? A perversion of artistic ambition. After a lifetime lived in the shadows, he has strayed too close to the sun.Fittingly for such an enigmatic writer, Portrait of a Man is both Perec's first novel and his last. Frustrated in his efforts to find a publisher, he put it aside, telling a friend: 'I'll go back to it in ten years when it'll turn into a masterpiece, or else I'll wait in my grave until one of my faithful exegetes comes across it in an old trunk.'An apt coda to one of the brightest literary careers of the twentieth century, it is—in the words of David Bellos, the 'faithful exegete' who brought it to light—'connected by a hundred threads to every part of the literary universe that Perec went on to create—but it's not like anything else that he wrote.

An epic tale of adventure that features Aaricia; a young woman having being betrayed by a loved one, lost her family and her home, must find a way to raise an elite army to help reclaim all she’s lost.