Introduction by Anne Perry Includes newly commissioned endnotes   In 1887, a young Arthur Conan Doyle published A Study in Scarlet, creating an... international icon in the quick-witted sleuth Sherlock Holmes. In this very first Holmes mystery, the detective introduces himself to Dr. John H. Watson with the puzzling line “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,” and so begins Watson’s, and the world’s, fascination with this enigmatic character. In A Study in Scarlet, Doyle presents two equally perplexing mysteries for Holmes to solve: one a murder that takes place in the shadowy outskirts of London, in a locked room where the haunting word Rache is written upon the wall, the other a kidnapping set in the American West. Picking up the “scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life,” Holmes demonstrates his uncanny knack for finding the truth, tapping into powers of deduction that still captivate readers today.

The first of the Sherlock Holmes stories, this was also the first of Conan Doyle's books to be published. In this fascinating and exciting tale, the... two towering creations of detective fiction--Holmes, the master of the science of detection, and Watson, his faithful companion--make their auspicious debut. The two detectives are immediately in fine form as Holmes plucks the solution to the mystery from the heart of Victorian London. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

In the debut of literature's most famous sleuth, a dead man is discovered in a bloodstained room in Brixton. The only clues are a wedding ring, a gold... watch, a pocket edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, and a word scrawled in blood on the wall. With this investigation begins the partnership of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Their search for the murderer uncovers a story of love and revenge-and heralds a franchise of detective mysteries starring the formidable Holmes.

In 1468, on the final night of Carnival in Rome, Pope Paul II sat enthroned above the boisterous crowd, when a scuffle caught his eye. His guards had... intercepted a mysterious stranger trying urgently to convey a warning—conspirators were lying in wait to slay the pontiff. Twenty humanist intellectuals were quickly arrested, tortured on the rack, and imprisoned in separate cells in the damp dungeon of Castel Sant’Angelo. Anthony D’Elia offers a compelling, surprising story that reveals a Renaissance world that witnessed the rebirth of interest in the classics, a thriving homoerotic culture, the clash of Christian and pagan values, the contest between republicanism and a papal monarchy, and tensions separating Christian Europeans and Muslim Turks. Using newly discovered sources, he shows why the pope targeted the humanists, who were seen as dangerously pagan in their Epicurean morals and their Platonic beliefs about the soul and insurrectionist in their support of a more democratic Church. Their fascination with Sultan Mehmed II connected them to the Ottoman Turks, enemies of Christendom, and the love of the classical world tied them to recent rebellious attempts to replace papal rule with a republic harking back to the glorious days of Roman antiquity. From the cosmetic-wearing, parrot-loving pontiff to the Turkish sultan, savage in war but obsessed with Italian culture, D’Elia brings to life a Renaissance world full of pageantry, mayhem, and conspiracy and offers a fresh interpretation of humanism as a dynamic communal movement.

The popular appeal of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars is obvious. Who would not thrill reading about the great Julius Caesar's delight in the Senates... bestowal of the right to wear a laurel wreath on all occasions-because it covered his baldness? Or that the Divine Augustus had rotten teeth and wore special platform shoes to make himself look taller? Suetonius, however, has not always been as enthusiastically received among historians, who sometimes overlook that he intended his work as biography, not history, or that he patently aimed for prose that was not literary, but instead unadorned, clear, and concise. Such qualities of prose, however, happily make his Latin enjoyable both to teach and to read. And while Suetonius' details of the weird worlds of extraordinary men are endlessly entertaining, they are not merely that. This businesslike biographer produced an extraordinarily influential work. His Caesars is a landmark in the history of biographical writing, and remains a key source for the history of Rome, its transition from Republic to Empire, and contemporary efforts to come to terms with individual destiny, through astrology, physiognomy, dream analysis, and more. Through to the present day Suetonius has profoundly shaped modern perceptions of Roman society. Special Features * Introduction to Suetonius' life, genre, method, style, and achievement- * 527 lines of unadapted Latin text selections from each of the Lives of the Caesars and the entire Life of Horace. Selections included are: Julius Caesar 81.1-82.3; Augustus 78 and 33; Tiberius 40-44, 60, and 62.2; Caligula 19, 55, and 45-46; Claudius 41-42; Nero 20-21; Galba 2-3; Otho 2-3; Vitellius 13; Vespasian 21-22; Titus 8.3-4; Domitian 12 and 18; Life of Horace.- * Grammatical and historical notes at the back- * 1 map and 7 photographs- * Complete vocabularyFor over 30 years Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers has produced the highest quality Latin and ancient Greek books. From Dr. Seuss books in Latin to Plato's Apology, Bolchazy-Carducci's titles help readers learn about ancient Rome and Greece; the Latin and ancient Greek languages are alive and well with titles like Cicero's De Amicitia and Kaegi's Greek Grammar. We also feature a line of contemporary eastern European and WWII books. Some of the areas we publish in include: Selections From The Aeneid Latin Grammar & Pronunciation Greek Grammar & Pronunciation Texts Supporting Wheelock's Latin Classical author workbooks: Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Catullus, Cicero Vocabulary Cards For AP Selections: Vergil, Ovid, Catullus, Horace Greek Mythology Greek Lexicon Slovak Culture And History

Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find -- through love or through exacting... maternal appraisal -- a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.

Saint Thomas Aquinas is universally recognized as one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. His writings combine the two fundamental ideals of... philosophical writing: clarity and profundity. He is a master of metaphysics and technical terminology, yet so full of both theoretical and practical wisdom. He is the master of common sense. His major work, the Summa Theologica, is timeless, but particularly important today because of his synthesis of faith and reason, revelation and philosophy, and the Biblical and the classical Greco-Roman heritages. This unique book combines selected essential philosophical passages from Thomas' Summa with footnotes and explanations by Kreeft, a popular Thomist teacher and writer. Kreeft selected those passages from Thomas that are intrinsically important, non-technical enough to be intelligible to modern readers, and most likely to be used in a class or by independent readers who want to study the Summa on their own. Kreeft's detailed footnotes explain difficult or technical passages and call attention to points of particular significance for the modern reader. This book is the most intelligent, clear, and useful access to Saint Thomas in print. Includes a glossary and an index.

This compact collection of philosophical texts from the Summa Theologica—on God, creation, the soul, human acts, moral good and evil, love, habits,... virtue, and law—is presented newly translated in abridged form and cast in a modified version of the medieval quaestio. Included are only the most important objections and Aquinas’ replies; appeals to scriptural, theological, and philosophical authorities have been omitted. Unlike the ordering of the originals, questions and answers are here presented prior to objections and replies; the result is a sharp, rich, topically organized question-answer presentation of Aquinas’ major philosophical arguments within a brief compass. A general Introduction, headnotes, a glossary, an index, and a select bibliography offer expert guidance to the work of this major philosopher.

Gary Soto writes that when he was five "what I knew best was at ground level." In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his reader to a... ground-level perspective, resreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighborhood. The "things" of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha "splotched with gold," the taps of his shoes and the "engines of sparks that lived beneath my soles," his worn tennies smelling of "summer grass, asphalt, the moist sock breathing the defeat of basesall." The child's world is made up of small things--small, very important things.

A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is a moving, passionate love story set amid the turmoil and terror of Rwanda’s genocide.All manner of Kigali residents... pass their time by the pool of the Mille-Collines hotel: aid workers, Rwandan bourgeoisie, expatriates, UN peacekeepers, prostitutes. Keeping a watchful eye is Bernard Valcourt, a jaded foreign journalist, but his closest attention is devoted to Gentille, a hotel waitress with the slender, elegant build of a Tutsi. As they slip into an intense, improbable affair, the delicately balanced world around them–already devastated by AIDS–erupts in a Hutu-led genocide against the Tutsi people. Valcourt’s efforts to spirit Gentille to safety end in their separation. It will be months before he learns of his lover’s shocking fate.

Chosen for the National Poetry Series by Garrett Hongo, Susan Wood's Asunder reveals a grown woman and fully mature poet facing grief and loss, longing... and desire, and asking the questions with which we all must grapple: How does one go on living in the face of death and loss? What are the limits of knowledge in this world? To what extent can one ever know oneself and others? Wood has written an elegiac book full of ghosts, not only of old lovers, friends, and fellow poets, but of her own lost innocence.