This Week's Acquisitions

• Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver (William Morrow, 2003).  First volume of the Baroque Cycle.  (Yes, I decided to take the plunge...)
• Patrick McGrath, The Grotesque (Vintage, 1989).  Did the butler do it?
• A. S. Byatt, Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice (Vintage, 1998). Collection of Byatt's short fiction.
• Miles Franklin, All That Swagger (Sirius, 1986).  Award-winning historical novel about New South Wales, first published in 1936.  There's a brief overview of Franklin's career here.
• Timothy Mo, An Insular Possession (Picador, 1986).  Historical novel about the English in Hong Kong.
• Gertrude Reese Hudson, ed., Browning to his American Friends (Bowes and Bowes, 1965).  Correspondence between the Brownings, James Russell Lowell, and William Wetmore Story.
• Stanley Weintraub, Beardsley (Braziller, 1967).  Life of the famed 1890s illustrator.
• Harry Potter, Hanging in Judgment: Religion and the Death Penalty in England (Continuum, 1993).  Religious arguments, pro and contra, up to 1969.

Comments

[Ancarett]

That last book caught my eye, at first for the title. It seemed germane to a course I'm teaching in January. Then the author's name hit me. Poor fellow!

[Jonathan Dresner]

The book actually shows up on some Rowling-related pages....