New Releases by PAUL THEROUX

In an intriguing memoir of friendship, the best-selling novelist, travel writer, and author of The Great Railway Bazaar recounts his experiences and memories as he journeyed around the world with renowned writer V. S. Naipaul. Reprint.

In this “moody thriller,” a family business is targeted for takeover as control of Hong Kong shifts from the British to the Chinese (The New York Times). Ninety-nine years of colonial rule are ending as the British prepare to hand over Hong Kong to China. Betty Mullard and her son, Bunt, have lived here for years, mostly keeping apart from their foreign surroundings, except for some indulgence in the local food, or in Bunt’s case, the local girls. The handover is not a concern for them—until the mysterious Mr. Hung from the mainland offers them a large sum for their family business. They refuse. But they fail to realize that Mr. Hung is unlike the other Chinese people they’ve known: he will accept no refusals. When a young female employee whom Bunt has been dating vanishes, he is forced to make important decisions for the first time in his life—but his good intentions are pitted against the will of Mr. Hung, and the threat of the ultimate betrayal. “A compact, provocative gem of a novel” (The Boston Globe), from an award-winning author acclaimed for both his fiction and his travel memoirs—including Deep South, The Great Railway Bazaar, and The Mosquito Coast—Kowloon Tong was praised by Bette Bao Lord in The Washington Post Book World as “a taut, illuminating story that transcends its timely subject.”

A fictionalized autobiography of a travel writer. There are descriptions of his experiences as a teacher of English in an African village, his meeting with the writer, Anthony Burgess, and his encounter with Queen Elizabeth of England.

"DAZZLING." --Time "[THEROUX''S] WORK IS DISTINGUISHED BY A SPLENDID EYE FOR DETAIL AND THE TELLING GESTURE; a storyteller''s sense of pacing and gift for granting closure to the most subtle progression of events; and the graceful use of language. . . . We are delighted, along with Theroux, by the politeness of the Turks, amazed by the mountainous highlands in Syria, touched by the gesture of an Albanian waitress who will not let him pay for his modest meal. . . . The Pillars of Hercules [is] engrossing and enlightening from start (a damning account of tourists annoying the apes of Gibraltar) to finish (an utterly captivating visit with Paul Bowles in Tangier, worth the price of the book all by itself)." --Chicago Tribune "ENTERTAINING READING . . . WHEN YOU READ THEROUX, YOU''RE TRULY ON A TRIP." --The Boston Sunday Globe "HIS PICARESQUE NARRATIVE IS STUDDED WITH SCENES THAT STICK IN THE MIND. He looks at strangers with a novelist''s eye, and his portraits are pleasantly tinged with malice." --The Washington Post Book World "THEROUX AT HIS BEST . . . An armchair trip with Theroux is sometimes dark, but always a delight." --Playboy "AS SATISFYING AS A GLASS OF COOL WINE ON A DUSTY CALABRIAN AFTERNOON . . . With his effortless writing style, observant eye, and take-no-prisoners approach, Theroux is in top form chronicling this 18-month circuit of the Mediterranean." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Brilliant...Wonderful...Millroy''s magic pops out at the reader from the first page." --John Updike The New Yorker "PICARESQUE...ENCHANTING...Theroux is a gifted and versatile tale spinner." --Time Fourteen-year-old Jilly Farina was mesmerized by Millroy the Magician at the Barnstable County Fair. After all, he once turned a girl from the audience into a glass of milk and drank her. But when Jilly stepped into the wickerwork coffin during a performance, she had no idea he would transform her dreary life into something truly magical, and a touch bizarre. For Millroy was no ordinary magician. He could smell the future, and Jilly was going to be part of it. Yet not even Millroy could foresee how far determination and a dream could take him, as he and his new young assistant hit the road--and the airwaves--to save America''s unhealthy appetite and floundering soul.... "MAGICAL...[A] funny, dark satire of America''s obsessions." --The New York Times Book Review "AMAZING...[A] STARTLINGLY ORIGINAL TALE OF PURE MAGIC... that amuses, unnerves, and captivates the reader in a spell of bewilderment, danger and awe....The reader [will] be enthralled." --The Boston Sunday Herald

"Possibly his best travel book...an observant and frequently hilarious account of a trip that took him to 51 Pacific Islands." TIME Renowned travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux has been many places in his life and tried almost everything. But this trip in and around the lands of the Pacific may be his boldest, most fascinating yet. From New Zealand''s rain forests, to crocodile-infested New Guinea, over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors, daring weather and coastlines, he travels by Kayak wherever the winds take him--and what he discovers is the world to explore and try to understand. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

"Nowhere is a Place recounts Paul Theroux''s and Bruce Chatwin''s impressions of this little-known windswept wilderness and reveals the powerful effect Patagonia has had on the Western literary imagination since the age of exploration. Patagonia has cast its spell on authors as diverse as Magellan, Darwin, W. H. Hudson, Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. "It has a look of antiquity, of desolation, of eternal peace. " (W. H. Hudson)" "Jeff Gnass''s spectacular full-color photographs capture Patagonia''s stark, compelling beauty: from the granite spires of Torres del Paine in Chile to sculpted icebergs at the terminus of Glaciar Moreno to great lenticular clouds gliding above Cordillera Paine in Chile. As Gnass explains in his notes, Nowhere Is a Place offers "a clear impression of one of the wildest places on earth, and also encourages understanding of this unique region and a realization of the need for such wild places where man is forever a visitor.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book is author''s choice of his best travel writing, harvested from half a dozen of his books. He has chosen his favourite people, his most vivid journeys, the landscapes that he treasures - some splendours, some miseries, all memorable.

"Riveting...CHICAGO LOOP is an icy tale brilliantly imagined." THE BOSTON GLOBE He knifes silently through the shadows of the steamy Chicago summer night, prowling for lonely souls who need his help. The desperate come to him, answering his ads with promises of romantic evenings and possibly a future, never suspecting that they are the prey, chosen to statiate a twisted sexual desire. Parker Jagoda is also a successful businessman with a wife, a child, and a house in the suburbs--respectable, health-conscious, and polite. Nobody knows about his jagged double life, his dark, hungry obsessions. He has fooled everyone except those who gasp their last dying scream. And, of course, he has not fooled himself--which may be the only glimmer of hope left inside the darkest of hearts.... "From the Paperback edition.

Describes the author''s travels by train in every province of the People''s Republic of China.

When an ambitious young archivist moves in to prepare a retrospective, flamboyant septuagenarian photographer Maude Coffin Pratt unleases a flood of supressed memories from her extraordinary life. Absolutely brilliant--The New York Times.

"Remarkable... Powerful... Mesmerizing... Lyrical." Susan Cheever Welcome to the America of the 21st century. The O-Zone is a forbidding land of nuclear waste, mutants, and aliens. Except for one place that is a beautiful oasis amidst the destruction. When two aliens are shot that look suspiciously human, Hooper Allbright, disurbed by the memories of those he once loved, goes back down into the O-Zone to try to reach the people he lost, though they may be unreachable by now.... "Smart, witty, grotesque, and brutal." THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

"Since its discovery by Magellan in 1520, Patagonia has retained its fascination as a metaphor for The Ultimate. Here Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux join forces in a literary quest for some of the instances in which these ''final capes of exile'' have affected the literary imagination. This lively and delightful curio had its origins in an entertainment the two writers gave for The Royal Geographical Society, at a time when Paul Theroux was following Bruce Chatwin''s ''In Patagonia'' with ''The Old Patagonian Express''"--Publisher''s description, p. [2] of dust jacket.

" ... Collection of decidedly opinionated articles, essays, and ruminations, spanning two decades ..."--Page 4 of cover

Chronicles an illustrated railway journey through India, from Peshawar, full of Afghan refugees, through Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, to flooded Chittagong on the Bay of Bengal.

Novel depicting IRA terrorism in London.

The narrator, an American employee of the American Embassy in London, observes the British and their endless treasure trove of eccentricities on their home ground. And the Americans in the embassy are no less curious. There is the embassy Minister who is obsessed with rage at a male employee who wears an earring, an Arab who has come to London to rob a certain tomb, a woman who cycles all the way to Yorkshire to exact a peculiar revenge, and dozens of others who nurse some secret vagary.

A collection of stories featuring a wide variety of characters and locations-- London, Paris, Africa, provincial Holland, Puerto Rico, and beyond. Most of the people are transplanted or have tried to graft themselves onto a new culture, and they struggle against the odds to maintain their humor, to write, to fall in love or keep their marriages intact.

Lost in a New England snowstorm, a family is sheltered by a mysterious old man who disappears the next morning, leaving behind a magical "Christmas card."

They arrive in an English village deep in the Dorset countryside, and almost immediately sense the haunting presence of a lovely woman neither of them can name. Tension mounts as Emma receives strange commands from the spectral woman.