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This is a collection of perfect yet imaginary reviews of nonexistent books. With insidious wit, the author beguiles us with a parade of delightful, disarmingly familiar inventions. "Lem is Harpo Marx and Franz Kafka and Isaac Asimov rolled up into one and down the white rabbit's hole" (Detroit News). A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

author: Stanislaw Lem asin: 0810117339 binding: Paperback list price: $14.95 USD amazon price: $11.66 USD Buy this Book

This landmark book is a loosely fictionalized account of Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, one of the nation's most astounding politicians. All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the back-room deal-makers. Though Stark quickly sheds his idealism, his right-hand man, Jack Burden -- who narrates the story -- retains it and proves to be a thorn in the new governor's side. Stark becomes a successful leader, but at a very high price, one that eventually costs him his life. The award-winning book is a play of politics, society and personal affairs, all wrapped in the cloak of history.

author: Robert Penn Warren rating: asin: 0156004801 binding: Paperback list price: $15.00 USD amazon price: $10.20 USD Buy this Book

An Instance of the Fingerpost is that rarest of all possible literary beasts--a mystery powered as much by ideas as by suspects, autopsies, and smoking guns. Hefty, intricately plotted, and intellectually ambitious, Fingerpost has drawn the inevitable comparisons to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and, for once, the comparison is apt. The year is 1663, and the setting is Oxford, England, during the height of Restoration political intrigue. When Dr.  read more »

author: Iain Pears asin: 1573227951 binding: Paperback list price: $16.00 USD amazon price: $12.00 USD Buy this Book

Felipe Montero is employed in the house of an aged widow to edit her deceased husband's memoirs. There Felipe meets her beautiful green-eyed niece, Aura. His passion for Aura and his gradual discovery of the true relationship between the young woman and her aunt propel the story to its extraordinary conclusion.

author: Carlos Fuentes asin: 0374511713 binding: Paperback list price: $13.00 USD amazon price: $10.40 USD Buy this Book

Jeff Noon's previous novels, Vurt and Pollen, have attracted a cult following with their psychedelic science fiction creation of the realm of "Vurt"--a region defined by illusion, dream and drug-induced fantasy. Noon has now decided to link up with an imaginative precursor by introducing Lewis Carroll's Alice as the protagonist in a new adventure that draws on Carroll's through-the-looking-glass inversions of reality, and adds a Jeff Noon menace and edginess absent from Carroll's Wonderland.  read more »

author: Jeff Noon asin: 0552999059 binding: Paperback list price: $13.99 USD amazon price: $11.89 USD Buy this Book

On Halloween night, following an unnerving phone call from his diabetic mother, Hale and six of his med-school classmates return to the house where his sister disappeared years ago. And while there?s no sign of his mother, something is waiting for them there, has been waiting a long time. Written as a literary film treatment littered with footnotes like breadcrumbs, Demon Theory is even parts camp and terror, combining glib dialogue, fascinating pop culture references and an intricate subtext as it pursues the events of a haunting movie trilogy too real to dismiss. When it was released in December 1996, Scream, in the words of director John Carpenter, ?recast horror for a very cynical, postmodern generation of young kids,? thus revitalizing a genre that had nearly become obsolete. Since then, movie audiences have whole-heartedly embraced the intelligent horror movies that pay homage to Scream?including The Sixth Sense, The Ring, and, most recently The Grudge?and a similar phenomenon has emerged among book readers, as evidenced by the success of House of Leaves and Neil Gaiman?s eerie graphic novels. Stephen Graham Jones? Demon Theory is a refreshing and occasionally shocking addition to this growing tradition. There are movies about books and books about movies, and there?s Demon Theory, that one finger of light from the back of the auditorium, pointing simply up. The pages are stained with popcorn, yes, but something darker too, something you can?t wash away.

author: Stephen Graham Jones asin: 1596921641 binding: Hardcover list price: $24.00 USD amazon price: $16.32 USD Buy this Book

A national bestseller, Dictionary of the Khazars was cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of the year. Written in two versions, male and female (both available in Vintage International), which are identical save for seventeen crucial lines, Dictionary is the imaginary book of knowledge of the Khazars, a people who flourished somewhere beyond Transylvania between the seventh and ninth centuries. Eschewing conventional narrative and plot, this lexicon novel combines the dictionaries of the world's three major religions with entries that leap between past and future, featuring three unruly wise men, a book printed in poison ink, suicide by mirrors, a chimerical princess, a sect of priests who can infiltrate one's dreams, romances between the living and the dead, and much more.

author: Milorad Pavic asin: 0679724613 binding: Paperback list price: $16.00 USD amazon price: $12.48 USD Buy this Book