HMH ebook specials

Best Contemporary Women’s Fiction

admin — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 21:34:31 +0000

Best Contemporary Women’s Fiction: Six Novels includes works by some of the finest novelists of today.

Almost by Elizabeth Benedict chronicles the attempt of writer Sophy Chase to come to terms with the death of her almost ex-husband — who may have committed suicide on the New England resort island where she left him just months before.

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum follows Trudy, a professor of German history, as she investigates her mother’s past and the truth surrounding her life in Germany during WWII. Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.

The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss is a heartwarming, greatly satisfying story of a young woman with the rare talent of “gentling” wild horses and the unexpected and profound connections between people and animals.

The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones takes readers inside the hidden world of elite cuisine in modern China through the story of an American food writer in Beijing. When recently widowed Maggie McElroy is called to China to settle a claim against her late husband’s estate, she is blindsided by the discovery that he may have led a double life.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell is a gothic, intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth that will haunt you long past its final page.

The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett tells the story of a secretive magician’s death that sets in motion his partner’s journey of self-discovery.

Final Jeopardy

admin — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 21:25:45 +0000

Get the eBook version of Stephen Baker’s Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything a month before the epic February 2011 event— A nationally-televised face-off between Jeopardy! all-time winners Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, and an IBM-engineered computer named Watson. The eBook’s final chapter will divulge the winner and analyze the match, and will be available to readers as a free update directly after the event finale airs.

What if there were a computer that could answer virtually any question? IBM engineers are developing such a machine, teaching it to compete on the quiz show Jeopardy. In February 2011, it will face off in a nationally televised game against two of the game’s greatest all-time winners, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Final Jeopardy tells the riveting story behind the match.

Final Jeopardy carries readers on a captivating journey from the IBM lab to the podium. The story features brilliant Ph.D.s, Hollywood moguls, knowledge-obsessed Jeopardy masters — and a very special collection of silicon and circuitry named Watson. It is a classic match of Man vs. Machine, not seen since Deep Blue bested chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. But Watson will need to do more than churn through chess moves or find a relevant web page. It will have to understand language, including puns and irony, and master everything from history and literature to science, arts, and entertainment.

At its heart, Final Jeopardy is about the future of knowledge. What can we teach machines? What will Watson’s heirs be capable of in ten or twenty years? And where does that leave humans? As fast and fun as the game itself, Final Jeopardy shows how smart machines will fit into our world — and how they’ll disrupt it.

The Collected Novels of José Saramago

admin — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 21:11:47 +0000

This collection, available exclusively in e-book form, brings together the twelve novels (and one novella) of the great Portuguese writer José Saramago, with an introductory essay by Ursula Le Guin. From Saramago’s early work, like the enchanting Baltasar & Blimunda and the controversial Gospel According to Jesus Christ, through his masterpiece Blindness and its sequel Seeing, to his later fables of politics, chance, history, and love, like All the Names and Death with Interruptions, this volume showcases the range and depth of Saramago’s career, his inimitable narrative voice, and his vast reserves of invention, humor, and understanding.

The list of included titles:

Baltasar & Blimunda (1987)
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1991)
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1994)
The Stone Raft (1995)
The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1997)
Blindness (1998)
The Tale of the Unknown Island (1999)
All the Names (2000)
The Cave (2002)
The Double (2004)
Seeing (2006)
Death with Interruptions (2008)
The Elephant’s Journey (2010)

“Saramago is the most tender of writers…with a clear-eyed and compassionate acknowledgment of things as they are, and a quality that can only be termed wisdom. We should be grateful when it is handed to us in such generous measure.” —New York Times

“He has the power to throw a dazzling flash of lightning on his subjects, an eerily and impossibly prolonged moment of clarity that illuminates details beyond the power of sunshine to reveal.” —Chicago Tribune

“Reading the Portuguese writer José Saramago, one quickly senses the presence of a master.” —Christian Science Monitor

“Our impression is of a writer, like Faulkner, so confident of his resources and ultimate destination that he can bring any impossibility to life by hurling words at it.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

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