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Night Without Stars

Half-blinded in the war, Giles Gordon has moved to the French Riviera and fallen in love with Alix, the widow of a French resistance hero. This leads him into a year of violence and murder, where he must have the courage of cope with these dangers.
Views: 743

Knulp

Die drei Geschichten aus dem Leben des Landstreichers Knulp, einem Nachfahren von Eichendorffs Taugenichts, zählen zu den reizvollsten Stücken der frühen Prosa Hermann Hesses. In der Folge seiner Werke gehören sie zum großen Zyklus seiner Gerbersau-Erzählungen, der uns das Leben in einer schwäbischen Kleinstadt um die Jahrhundertwende am Beispiel zahlreicher charakteristischer und größtenteils authentischer Einzelschicksale überliefert.
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The Rabbi

Michael Kind was a rabbi, but he was also a man. A man who couldn't help that his heart led him to Leslie, a beautiful minister's daughter. Defying parents and teachers, they dare to love one another and build a life together, in this sweeping drama of love and identity, compassion and crueltly, and a complicated world that will not accept their decisions.... "A rewarding reading experience." LOS ANGELES TIMES
Views: 742

Mystery of the Glowing Eye

When Nancy eagerly agrees to help Carson Drew solve the mystery of the glowing eye, she cannot know Ned will be kidnapped! A puzzling note in his handwriting sets Nancy, Bess and George on a hazardous search for a bizarre criminal. The young detectives follow a maze of clues to locate the kidnapper’s hideout. Nancy must not only thwart the criminal but also must contend with the high-handed methods of a woman lawyer who tries to take the glowing eye mystery away from her. This book is the original text. A revised text does not exist.
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The Clue of the Leaning Chimney

As a result of an encounter with a sinister stranger on a lonely country road, Nancy Drew and her friend Bess Marvin discover that a rare and valuable Chinese vase has been stolen from the pottery shop of Dick Milton, a cousin of Bess. Dick had borrowed the vase from his Chinese friend, elderly Mr. Soong. He is determined to repay Mr. Soong for the loss and tells Nancy that if he can find "the leaning chimney," he feels he will be on the track of a discovery which will solve his financial problems. Nancy finds the leaning chimney, but it only leads her into more puzzles. Can there be any connection between the vase theft -- one of a number of similar crimes -- and the strange disappearance of the pottery expert Eng Moy and his daughter Lei?
Views: 742

Doctor Faustus

"The thorn was in my flesh," Mann said about the genesis of Doctor Faustus, which was composed during World War II.  "I knew what I was setting out to do and what task I was imposing upon myself:  to write nothing else than the novel of my era, disguised as the story of an artist's life, a terribly imperilled and sinful artist." Adrian Leverkuhn, a former theological student who has become a composer, enters symbolically into a pact with the devil in exchange for two and a half decades of inspired work.  Narrated by Serenus Zeitblom, Leverkuhn's faithful friend, this retelling of the Faust legend turns on the composer's slow descent into syphilitic paralysis.  Densely orchestrated with musical constructions and what Mann called historical "montage", the book discourses on the tragedy of Germany, the Schonbergian twelve-tone system, Nietzche, the life of Tchaikovsky, and the introduction of syphilis into Europe.  Mann described Doctor Faustus as "difficult, weird, uncanny, sad as life."
Views: 742

Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Gonzo journalist and literary roustabout Hunter S. Thompson flies with the angels--Hell's Angels, that is. He's lived with them, he knows them and their machines, he speaks their langauge,and he reports it back to the world with all the fearsome force of a souped-up cyclone burning rubber.
Views: 741

BUtterfield 8

A bestseller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 was inspired by a news account of the discovery of the body of a beautiful young woman washed up on a Long Island beach. Was it an accident, a murder, a suicide? The circumstances of her death were never resolved, but O’Hara seized upon the tragedy to imagine the woman’s down-and-out life in New York City in the early 1930s. “O’Hara understood better than any other American writer how class can both reveal and shape character,” Fran Lebowitz writes in her Introduction. With brash honesty and a flair for the unconventional, BUtterfield 8 lays bare the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. The result is a masterpiece of American fiction.
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The Double

While his literary reputation rests mainly on such celebrated novels as *Crime and Punishment*, *The Brothers Karamazov*, and *The Idiot*, Dostoyevsky also wrote much superb short fiction. *The Double* is one of the finest of his shorter works. It appeared in 1846 (his second published work) and is by far the most significant of his early stories, not least for its successful, straight-faced treatment of a hallucinatory theme. In *The Double*, the protagonist, Golyadkin senior, is persecuted by his double, Golyadkin junior, who resembles him closely in almost every detail. The latter abuses the former with mounting scorn and brutality as the tale proceeds toward its frightening denouement. Characteristic Dostoyevskyan themes of helplessness, victimization, and scandal are beautifully handled here with an artistry that qualifies the story as a small masterpiece. Students of literature, admirers of Dostoyevsky, and general readers will all be delighted to have this classic work available in this inexpensive, high-quality edition.
Views: 740

The Convenient Marriage

When the Earl of Rule proposes marriage to her sister Lizzie, Horatia offers herself instead. Her sister is already in love with someone else, and Horatia is willing to sacrifice herself for her family's happiness. Everyone knows she's no beauty, but she'll do her best to keep out of the Earl's way and make him a good wife. And then the Earl's archenemy, Sir Robert, sets out to ruin her reputation...
Views: 739

Time and Time Again

By the author of Lost Horizons; a story of a modest 20th century hero of his times and of his story. Bright with wit and incident by a master storyteller, it mounts to a startling , but credible climax.
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Time for the Stars

This is one of the classic titles originally know as the "Heinlein Juveniles," written in the 1950 and published for the young adult market. It has since been in print for 50 years in paperback, and now returns to hardcover for a new generation. Travel to other planets is a reality, and with overpopulation stretching the resources of Earth, the necessity to find habitable worlds is growing ever more urgent. With no time to wait years for communication between slower-than-light spaceships and home, the Long Range Foundation explores an unlikely solution--human telepathy. Identical twins Tom and Pat are enlisted to be the human radios that will keep the ships in contact with Earth. The only problem is that one of them has to stay behind, and that one will grow old while the other explores the depths of space.Always a master of insight into the human consequences of future technologies, this is one of Heinlein's triumphs.
Views: 739

Mansfield Park

Tony Tanner (original Penguin Introduction by), Claire Lamont (Textual Adviser) \'We have all been more or less to blame . . . every one of us, excepting Fanny\' Taken from the poverty of her parents\' home, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with only her cousin Edmund as an ally. When Fanny\'s uncle is absent in Antigua, Mary Crawford and her brother Henry arrive in the neighbourhood, bringing with them London glamour and a reckless taste for flirtation. As her female cousins vie for Henry\'s attention, and even Edmund falls for Mary\'s dazzling charms, only Fanny remains doubtful about the Crawfords\' influence and finds herself more isolated than ever. A subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, Mansfield Park is one of Jane Austen\'s most profound works.
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Royal Highness

Royal Highness is the delightfully ironic tale of a small, decadent German duchy and its invigoration by the intellect and values of an independent-minded American woman. Peopled with a range of characters from aristocrat to artisan, Royal Highness provides a microcosmic view of Europe before the Great War.
Views: 738

The Reivers

One of Faulkner's comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucius Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family's retainers, to steal his grandfather's car and make a trip to Memphis. The Priests' black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey, for which they are all ill-equipped, that ends at Miss Reba's bordello in Memphis. From there a series of wild misadventures ensues--invoving horse smuggling, trainmen, sheriffs' deputies, and jail.
Views: 737