In Ferrante's fourth and final Neapolitan novel, she reunites Elena, the accomplished writer, with Lila, the indomitable spirit, in their Southern Italian city as they confront maturity and old age, death, and the meaning of life. The two friends face the chaos of a corrupt and decaying Naples while the lives of the people closest to them-plagued by abandonment, imprisonment, murder, and betrayal-spiral out of control. "Where is it written that lives should have a meaning?" Lila asks Elena, disparaging her friend's career choice in the process. Readers will need the accompanying index of characters to keep track as Ferrante resolves the themes and events from earlier titles (My Brilliant Friend; The Story of a New Name; Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay) with a force and ferocity recalling the devastating earthquake of 1980 and Vesuvius's volcanic eruptions, which themselves provide the unsettling background to the narrative. Ferrante's precise foreshadowing is such that an early incident of a lost doll in book one mirrors the lost child in book four right down to their shared first name-and "The Blue Fairy," the story Lila scribbled in a childhood notebook that Elena threw in the Arno, resurfaces in this installment's final pages. Throughout, there's the sense of the circle completing: near the end, Elena pens a short novel entitled "A Friendship" (a metafictional nod to Ferrante's series as a whole), inspired by her half-century relationship with Lila. The novel is Elena's final work and permanently ties Elena and Lila together, for better and worse. This stunning conclusion further solidifies the Neapolitan novels as Ferrante's masterpiece and guarantees that this reclusive author will remain far from obscure for years to come. (Sept.)

The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women- the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up-a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city's obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable.

The Story of a New Name, the second book of the Neapolitan Quartet, picks up the story where My Brilliant Friend left off. Lila has recently married and made her entree into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighbourhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life's challenges. In the Neapolitan Quartet, Elena Ferrante gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.

From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, as their friendship, beautifully and meticulously rendered, becomes a not always perfect shelter from hardship. Ferrante has created a memorable portrait of two women, but My Brilliant Friend is also the story of a nation. Through the lives of Elena and Lila, Ferrante gives her readers the story of a city and a country undergoing momentous change.

A modern masterpiece from one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante's inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila. Ferrante is the author of three previous works of critically acclaimed fiction: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. With this novel, the first in a tetralogy, she proves herself to be one of Italy's great storytellers. She has given her readers a masterfully plotted page-turner, abundant and generous in its narrative details and characterizations, that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight her many fans and win new readers to her fiction.

A spectacular collection of four much-loved modern classics from the multi award-winning, internationally best-selling picture book creator, Oliver Jeffers, along with a captivating behind-the-scenes look at the making of each in four fascinating sketchbook sections. Contains the following stories: How to Catch a Star Lost and Found The Way Back Home Up and Down Also within the pages of this exquisite collection is a special letter from Oliver Jeffers and more than 100 wonderfully distinctive sketches, notes and ideas, carefully chosen from his archives and revealed here for the first time. Watch as the boy and his friends spring to life on the sketchbook pages. See the real-life starfish that appears in How to Catch a Star, learn the true story of the boy and the penguin who inspired Lost and Found and find out what the Martian's dad looks like! With all these things, and more, this incredible volume gives a unique insight into the life story of the iconic books - loved by readers the world over - and celebrates the incredible work of one of today's most popular and highly regarded picture book creators.

Surpassing the rapturous storytelling of the previous titles in the Neapolitan Novels (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name), Ferrante here reunites Elena and Lila, two childhood friends, who dissect subjects as complicated as their own relationship, including feminism and class, men and women, mothers and children, sex and violence, and origin and destiny. As the narrative unfolds in the late 1960s and early '70s, the fiery Lila stays in Naples, having escaped an abusive marriage, and lives platonically with a man from the neighborhood, along with her young, possibly illegitimate son. The feisty Elena leaves town, graduates from a university in Pisa, publishes a successful book, marries an upper-class professor, and moves to Florence, where she gives birth to two daughters. Against the backdrop of student revolution and right-wing reaction, the two women's tumultuous friendship seesaws up and down as each tries to outdo the other. "You wanted to write novels," Lila tells Elena. "I created a novel with real people, with real blood, in reality." Are the two women less opposites than parts of a whole? The book concludes not with a duality but with a surprising new triangle involving Nino, another homegrown intellectual, who loves both women. (Sept.)

A propulsive, seductive new novel about friendship, exploitation and intimacy from the prize-winning author of Where Reasons End Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnes, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised - the place that Fabienne helped Agnes escape ten years ago. Now, Agnes is free to tell her story. As children in a backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves - until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnes on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss. A dark, ravishing tale winding from the rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school, to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnes can live without her past. The Book of Goose is a story of intimacy and obsession, friendship and rivalry perfect for fans of Elena Ferrante, Ottessa Moshfegh and Kamila Shamsie.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896–1940) - а famous American novelist and short story writer. F. Scott Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest twentieth century writers from the so-called "Lost Generation". He finished four novels, left a fifth unfinished, and wrote dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth, promise, age, and despair. Tender is the Night (1934), tells the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychoanalyst, and his wife, Nicole, who is also one of his patients. The early 1930s, when Fitzgerald worked on the book, were the darkest years of his life, and the novel's bleakness reflects the author’s own experiences.

Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. Though Finished can be read as a separate story, it is the third book of the trilogy after Marie and Child of Storm. It narrates, through the mouth of Allan Quatermain, the consummation of the vengeance of the wizard Zikali, alias The Opener of Roads, or "The-Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born," upon the royal Zulu House of which Senzangacona was the founder and Cetewayo, our enemy in the war of 1879, the last representative who ruled as a king.

Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. Though Finished can be read as a separate story, it is the third book of the trilogy after Marie and Child of Storm. It narrates, through the mouth of Allan Quatermain, the consummation of the vengeance of the wizard Zikali, alias The Opener of Roads, or "The-Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born," upon the royal Zulu House of which Senzangacona was the founder and Cetewayo, our enemy in the war of 1879, the last representative who ruled as a king.

Set in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay continues the story of the feisty and rebellious Lina and her lifelong friend, the brilliant and bookish Elena. Lina, after separating from her husband, is living with her young son in a new neighborhood of Naples and working at a local factory. Elena has left Naples, earned a degree from an elite college, and published a novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned and fascinating interlocutors. The era, with its dramatic changes in sexual politics and social costumes, with its seemingly limitless number of new possibilities, is rendered with breathtaking vigor. This third Neapolitan Novel is not only a moving story of friendship but also a searing portrait of a rapidly changing world. Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of today's most compelling, insightful, and stylish authors has grown. She has gained admirers among authors, artists, and critics. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, human relationships, love, family, and friendship.

On March 3rd, 1947, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous paths. Four Fergusons will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Loves and friendships and passions contrast. Each version of Ferguson's story rushes across the fractured terrain of mid-twentieth century America, in this sweeping story of birthright and possibility, of love and the fullness of life itself.

On March 3rd, 1947, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous paths. Four Fergusons will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Loves and friendships and passions contrast. Each version of Ferguson's story rushes across the fractured terrain of mid-twentieth century America, in this sweeping story of birthright and possibility, of love and the fullness of life itself.

On March 3rd, 1947, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous paths. Four Fergusons will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Loves and friendships and passions contrast. Each version of Ferguson's story rushes across the fractured terrain of mid-twentieth century America, in this sweeping story of birthright and possibility, of love and the fullness of life itself.

Roberto Saviano returns to the streets of Naples and the boy bosses who run them in Savage Kiss, the hotly anticipated follow-up to The Piranhas, the bestselling novel and major motion picture. Nicolas Fiorilla and his gang of children - his paranza - control the squares of Forcella after their rapid rise to power. But it isn't easy being at the top. Now that the Piranhas have power in the city, they must undermine the old families of the Camorra and remain united among themselves. Every paranzino has his own vendettas and dreams to pursue - dreams that might go beyond the laws of the gang. A new war may be about to break out in this city of cut-throat bargaining, ruthless betrayal, and brutal revenge. Saviano continues the story of the disillusioned boys of Forcella, the paranzini ready to give and receive kisses that leave a taste of blood. Saviano's Gomorrah was a worldwide sensation, and The Piranhas, called 'raw and shocking' by the New York Times Book Review, captured readers with its tale of raw criminal ambition, told with 'openhearted rashness' (Elena Ferrante). Savage Kiss, which again draws on the skills of translator Antony Shugaar, is a thrilling story from the brilliant Italian novelist.