愛情的深度，如何用競爭來衡量？同時愛上兩個人，算不算一種背叛…… 我能夠勝任這王妃之位嗎？更重要的是，我真的愛王子嗎？ 從海選的35名競爭者，到如今只剩下6名菁英。這場贏得麥克森的愛、爭取妃冠的競選，正如火如荼地進行。然而，越是靠近后冠，亞美利加越不明白自己的心。與麥克森共度的每分每秒都彷彿童話故事，甜美的浪漫氛圍幾乎令她窒息。可是，每當看見皇宮衛兵艾斯本──她的初戀情人，她總會想起過去兩個人殷切企盼、一起計畫的未來…… 在此同時，亞美利加偶然讀到的一本創國者日記，讓她遭受晴天霹靂般的震撼。為何節慶、歡笑會從這個國度消失？為何階級制度會從黑暗歷史中捲土重來？亞美利加企圖揭露真相，卻讓自己候選人的地位岌岌可危，皇宮更陷入叛軍攻堅的危機！ 劇情峰迴路轉，亞美利加對麥克森與艾斯本的感情，也如同雲霄飛車般起起落落。同時愛上兩個男孩，算不算是自私的背叛？一個17歲的女孩，究竟能承擔多少責任？真正的奪妃之戰，現在才要展開──

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

Yes, the best gifts do come in small packages. When words just aren't enough, this quirky collection of puns, quips, puzzles, and verbal and visual fun does the talking. And since hearts must be handled with care, it comes with a distinctive padded cover. A little book with a big heart -- the perfect gift for Valentine's day, an anniversary, or just because.

在与世隔绝的地方，与自然亲密对话，独自寻求精神的开悟，你是不是也有过这样的想法呢？《荒野生存》借助一个年轻人在1992年抛却俗世中的一切独自闯入阿拉斯加荒凉腹地，4个月后被发现饿死其中的故事，探索人类的冒险情怀，以及在文明缺失的地方追逐纯粹灵魂的尝试。

Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?" The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people--parents, grandparents, even lovers--who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany's pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence. --R. Ellis YA. Michael Berg, 15, is on his way home from high school in post-World War II Germany when he becomes ill and is befriended by a woman who takes him home. When he recovers from hepatitis many weeks later, he dutifully takes the 40-year-old Hanna flowers in appreciation, and the two become lovers. The relationship, at first purely physical, deepens when Hanna takes an interest in the young man's education, insisting that he study hard and attend classes. Soon, meetings take on a more meaningful routine in which after lovemaking Michael reads aloud from the German classics. There are hints of Hanna's darker side: one inexplicable moment of violence over a minor misunderstanding, and the fact that the boy knows nothing of her life other than that she collects tickets on the streetcar. Content with their arrangement, Michael is only too willing to overlook Hanna's secrets. She leaves the city abruptly and mysteriously, and he does not see her again until, as a law student, he sits in on her case when she is being tried as a Nazi criminal. Only then does it become clear that Hanna is illiterate and her inability to read and her false pride have contributed to her crime and will affect her sentencing. The theme of good versus evil and the question of moral responsibility are eloquently presented in this spare coming-of-age story that's sure to inspire questions and passionate discussion.?Jackie Gropman, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. After falling ill on the street in the German town where he lives, 15-year-old Michael is helped by a woman named Hanna. When he returns to her apartment to thank her several months later, he begins a passionate love affair with her. In time, she demands that he read aloud to her before they make love, and they essay some of Germany's and the world's great literature together. One day, however, Hanna disappears without saying farewell, and Michael grieves and believes it to be his fault. He finds her again years later when, as a law student, he encounters her as the defendant in a court case. To reveal more of the plot would be unfair, but this very readable novel by German author Schlink probes the nature of love, guilt, and responsibility while painting a sympathetic portrait of Michael and an achingly complex picture of Hanna. Recommended for most collections.?Michael T. O'Pecko, Towson State Univ., Md. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. The Reader ($20.00; June 1997; 224 pp.; 0-679-44279-0): A compact portrayal of a teenaged German boy's love affair with an emotionally remote older woman, and the troubled consequence of his discovery of who she really is and why she simultaneously needed him and rejected him. Seven years after their intimacy, university student Michael Berg accidentally learns that (now) 40ish Hannah Schmitz had concealed from him a past that reaches back to Auschwitz and had burdened her with nightmares from which her young lover was powerless to awaken her. Toward its climax, the novel becomes, fitfully, frustratingly abstract, but on balance this is a gripping psychological study that moves skillfully toward its surprising and moving conclusion. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. "A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel." -- Los Angeles Times "Arresting, philosophically elegant, morally complex. . . . Mr. Schlink tells his story with marvelous directness and simplicity." -- The New York Times "Haunting. . . . What Schlink does best, what makes this novel most memorable, are the small moments of highly charged eroticism." -- Francine Prose, Elle "Moving, suggestive and ultimately hopeful. . . . [The Reader] leaps national boundaries and speaks straight to the heart." -- The New York Times Book Review "A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel." -- "Moving, suggestive and ultimately hopeful. . . . [] leaps national boundaries and speaks straight to the heart." -- "Arresting, philosophically elegant, morally complex. . . . Mr. Schlink tells his story with marvelous directness and simplicity." -- "Haunting. . . . What Schlink does best, what makes this novel most memorable, are the small moments of highly charged eroticism." --Francine Prose, -- Review "A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel." —Los Angeles Times "Moving, suggestive and ultimately hopeful. . . . [] leaps national boundaries and speaks straight to the heart." —The New York Times Book Review "Arresting, philosophically elegant, morally complex. . . . Mr. Schlink tells his story with marvelous directness and simplicity." —The New York Times "Haunting. . . . What Schlink does best, what makes this novel most memorable, are the small moments of highly charged eroticism." —Francine Prose, Elle

After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature. Krakauer, a contributing editor to Outside and Men's Journal, retraces McCandless's ill-fated antagonism toward his father, Walt, an eminent aerospace engineer. Krakauer also draws parallels to his own reckless youthful exploit in 1977 when he climbed Devils Thumb, a mountain on the Alaska-British Columbia border, partly as a symbolic act of rebellion against his autocratic father. In a moving narrative, Krakauer probes the mystery of McCandless's death, which he attributes to logistical blunders and to accidental poisoning from eating toxic seed pods. Maps. 35,000 first printing; author tour. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.