Not Taken

Jennifer Weiner's talent shines like never before in this collection of short stories, following the tender, often hilarious, progress of love and relationships over the course of a lifetime.We meet Marlie Davidow, home alone with her new baby late one night, when she wanders onto her ex's online wedding registry and wonders what if she had wound up with the guy not taken. We find Jessica Norton listing her beloved river-view apartment in the hope of winning her broker's heart. And we follow an unlikely friendship between two very different new mothers, and the choices that bring them together -- and pull them apart.The Guy Not Taken demonstrates Weiner's amazing ability to create characters who "feel like they could be your best friend" (Janet Maslin) and to find hope and humor, longing and love in the hidden corners of our common experiences.

John Taylor just discovered his long-gone mother created the Nightside--the dark heart of London--and intends to destroy it. To save his birthplace, he will have to travel back through a very distant--and probably deadly--past.

After one botched assassination attempt leads to the discovery of another high profile murder-for-hire in the works, Agent Sydney Bristow goes undercover to untangle a twisted plot of betrayal, terror, and revenge. Thrown into the midst of a dysfunctional yet extremely powerful family, Sydney must determine who is trustworthy and who is out for blood. Luckily, she has some experience in this field.With time running out and political alliances hanging in the balance, the APO operatives work together to infiltrate the family and determine the target of an impending deadly attack. Unfortunately, the intended victim could be anyone -- a world leader, an adulterous wife, a group of innocent civilians, even a fellow agent -- and the clock is ticking.

The best-loved poems from one of American literature's most towering figuresNo poet is more emblematically American than Robert Frost. From "The Road Not Taken" to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," he refined and even defined our sense of what poetry is and what it can do. T. S. Eliot judged him "the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet now living," and he is the only writer in history to have been awarded four Pulitzer Prizes.Henry Holt is proud to announce the republication of four editions of Frost's most beloved work for a new generation of poets and readers.In this brilliant selection of Frost's classic poems, students and scholars alike will encounter a body of work central to American culture.

"This is an outstanding book that I hope and expect will make a major contribution to the current debate on cities and suburbs." --Robert Fishman, author of American Planning Tradition: Culture and Policy and Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia Do cities work anymore? How did they get to be such sprawling conglomerations of lookalike subdivisions, megafreeways, and "big box" superstores surrounded by acres of parking lots? And why, most of all, don't they feel like real communities? These are the questions that Alex Marshall tackles in this hard-hitting, highly readable look at what makes cities work. Marshall argues that urban life has broken down because of our basic ignorance of the real forces that shape cities-transportation systems, industry and business, and political decision making. He explores how these forces have built four very different urban environments-the decentralized sprawl of California's Silicon Valley, the crowded streets of New York City's Jackson Heights neighborhood, the controlled growth of Portland, Oregon, and the stage-set facades of Disney's planned community, Celebration, Florida. To build better cities, Marshall asserts, we must understand and intelligently direct the forces that shape them. Without prescribing any one solution, he defines the key issues facing all concerned citizens who are trying to control urban sprawl and build real communities. His timely book will be important reading for a wide public and professional audience.

A treasury of Frost’s most expressive verse. "An Old Man’s Winter Night," "In the Home Stretch," "Meeting and Passing," "Putting in the Seed," many more.

In Jesus and the Metaphors of God, Bernard Lee continues his retrieval of Christianity's Jewish roots, taking measure of the varied metaphors that mediate the New Testament experience of God, presuming that when God-meanings change so also the Christological meanings of Jesus.

Alternate History: The What-If? fiction that has finally come into its own! Shedding light on the past by exploring what could have happened, this bold genre tantalizes your imagination and challenges your perceptions with thrilling reinventions of humanity's most climactic events. Enter worlds that are at once fanciful and familiar, where fact and fiction meld in a provocative landscape of infinite possibilities. . . ."An Ink from the New Moon" by A. A. Attanasio"We Could Do Worse" by Gregory Benford"The West Is Red" by Greg Costikyan"The Forest of Time" by Michael F. Flynn"Southpaw" by Bruce McAllister"Over There" by Mike Resnick"An Outpost of the Empire" by Robert Silverberg"Aristotle and the Gun" by L. Sprague de Camp"Must and Shall" by Harry Turtledove"How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion" by Gene WolfeWith these dazzling stories, discover just how different things might have been!

Although none of the stories in this anthology take place in the future, they qualify as science fiction (or perhaps speculative fiction would be more accurate) because at the heart of each one lies the question "What if...?" Only in this case, instead of a question like "What if we had faster-than-light travel?" all the questions revolve around alternative historical events. What if the Chinese had colonized America before the Europeans? What if Joseph McCarthy had become president? As in science fiction, the question is the seed from which the author extrapolates a future and a narrative. The stories in this anthology cover a wide range of other pasts and presents. Highlights include "Must and Shall" by Harry Turtledove, the modern master of alternative history. His fictional present stems from an alternative Civil War, one that the North still won, but in a very different manner. Gene Wolfe presents a timeline in which World War II is settled by an automobile race, and Robert Silverberg looks at a modern-day world in which the Roman Empire never fell. This anthology will definitely appeal to those who enjoy the curious mental frisson that comes from exploring worlds that are in many ways similar to our own, but also quite different. --Brooks Peck