John King Fairbank was the West's doyen on China, and this book is the full and final expression of his lifelong engagement with this vast ancient civilization. It remains a masterwork without parallel. The distinguished historian Merle Goldman brings the book up to date, covering reforms in the post-Mao period through the early years of the twenty-first century, including the leadership of Hu Jintao. She also provides an epilogue discussing the changes in contemporary China that will shape the nation in the years to come.

Spanning the different phases of the English Reformation from William Tyndale's 1525 translation of the Bible to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, John King's magisterial anthology brings together a range of texts inaccessible in standard collections of early modern works. The readings demonstrate how Reformation ideas and concerns pervade well-known writings by Spenser, Shakespeare, Sidney, and Marlowe and help foreground such issues as the relationship between church and state, the status of women, and resistance to unjust authority.

Plays, dialogues, and satires in which clever laypersons outwit ignorant clerics counterbalance texts documenting the controversy over the permissibility of theatrical performance. Moving biographical and autobiographical narratives from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs and other sources document the experience of Protestants such as Anne Askew and Hugh Latimer, both burned at the stake, of recusants, Jesuit missionaries, and many others. In this splendid collection, the voices ring forth from a unique moment when the course of British history was altered by the fate and religious convictions of the five queens: Catherine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I, Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I.

"...the face of the man in the black suit grows ever clearer, ever closer, and I remember every word he said. I don't want to think of him, but I can't help it, and sometimes at night my old heart beats so hard and so fast I think it will tear itself right clear of my chest."

A haunting recollection of a mysterious boyhood event, The Man in Black Suit read by John Cullum leads off this masterful collection from Stephen King.

Other dark tales include: All That You Love Will Be Carried Away read by Peter Gerety, in which a man checks into a Lincoln, Nebraska Motel 6 to find the meaning in his life; That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French read by Becky Ann Baker presents the ultimate case of déejàa vu; and The Death of Jack Hamilton read by Arliss Howard -- a blistering tale of Depression-era outlaws on the run.

Whether writing about encounters with the dead, the near dead, or about the mundane dreads of life, Stephen King's The Man In The Black Suit: Four Dark Tales is intense, eerie and instantly compelling.