In late nineteenth-century Seattle, "Karen is a 'soiled dove,' a young woman on her own who is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable's high-quality bordello. Through Karen's eyes we get to know the other girls in the house--a resourceful group--and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts into her world one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, seeking sanctuary, followed by the man who holds...

"The vivid, dramatic images of distant stars and galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have come to define how we visualize the cosmos. In their immediacy and vibrancy, photographs from the Hubble show what future generations of space travelers might see should they venture beyond our solar system. But their brilliant hues and precise details are not simply products of the telescope's unprecedented orbital location and technologically advanced...

"Chevengur is a philosophical novel that is also rich in psychological, social, and sensuous detail. Although it was never publishable in the USSR, it now stands as one of the most celebrated of Soviet novels, and along with The Foundation Pit, it is themost ambitious and moving of Andrey Platonov's efforts to take the measure of a world undergoing revolutionary transformation. The full text of Chevengur is here translated into English for the first...