In this boisterous story collection, mischief abounds in the quiet corners of the British Empire on which the sun never setsAs the overseer of the kitchen at the British embassy in Vulgaria, De Mandeville has begun to abuse his power. He subjects the King's guests to a blistering Madras curry, a French onion soup served without spoons, and a table so loaded with vegetation that the party can hardly see the food. But worst of all, he has begun to cook with garlic, that fragrant bulb so beloved by diplomats that it must be banned, lest foul breath cripple the Empire. De Mandeville is due for comeuppance, and no breath mint can save him now."If Garlic Be the Food of Love" is only the first story in this invaluable peek at life in British diplomatic circles. After the ninth, the reader will wonder not how the British Empire came apart, but how De Mandeville, Polk-Mowbray, and the King's other dips ever got it started in the first place. Views: 710
The bestselling author of the American humor classic The Egg and I continues the adventure with this collection of tales about life on the fringe of the Western wilderness. Writing in the 1950s, Betty MacDonald, sophisticated and urbane, captivated readers with her observations about raising a family on an island in Puget Sound. As usual, humorist MacDonald is her own favorite target. She manages to get herself into scrapes with washing machines set adrift in rowboats, used cars, and a $25 Turkey Squasher. And then there's the scariest aspect of island life -- teenaged children. Views: 710
Thirteen-year-old Simon Renier has no idea when he boards the M.S. Orion with his cousin Forsyth Phair that their journey to Venezuela will be a dangerous one. His original plan—to return a family heirloom, a portrait of Simon Bolivar, to its rightful place—is sidetracked when cousin Forsyth is found murdered. When the portrait is stolen, all passengers and crew are suspects. Simon's newfound friends, Poly and Charles O'Keefe, and their scientist father help Simon try to find his painting, and his cousin's murderer. But will they succeed before they land? Or will the murderer and thief escape into the jungles of Venezuela? Views: 709
The Undiscovered Chekhov gives us, in rich abundance, a new Chekhov. Peter Constantine's historic collection presents 38 new stories and with them a fresh interpretation of the Russian master. In contrast to the brooding representative of a dying century we have seen over and over, here is Chekhov's work from the 1880s, when Chekhov was in his twenties and his writing was sharp, witty and innovative.
Many of the stories in The Undiscovered Chekhov reveal Chekhov as a keen modernist. Emphasizing impressions and the juxtaposition of incongruent elements, instead of the straight narrative his readers were used to, these stories upturned many of the assumptions of storytelling of the period.
Here is "Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town," written as a series of telegrams, beginning with "Have been drinking to Sarah's health all week! Enchanting! She actually dies standing up!..." In "Confession...," a thirty-nine year old bachelor recounts some of the fifteen times chance foiled his marriage plans. In "How I Came to be Lawfully Wed," a couple reminisces about the day they vowed to resist their parents' plans that they should marry. And in the more familiarly Chekhovian "Autumn," an alcoholic landowner fallen low and a peasant from his village meet far from home in a sad and haunting reunion in which the action of the story is far less important than the powerful impression it leaves with the reader that each man must live his life and has his reasons. Views: 709
A pleasure seeking prince, a selfish giant, and more: Wilde's fairy tales, first published in 1888, for childlike people from eighteen to eighty." Views: 709
Nancy, Bess and George visit Emerson for the university’s summer festivities. The girls are guests in a historic mansion on Pine Hill. Upon arriving, their host tells about the phantom haunting the mansion’s library. He also relates his family’s decades old saga of a lost French wedding gown and valuable gifts that went to the bottom of a nearby cove in the sinking of the Lucy Belle. Is there connection between the phantom and the old ship disaster? Nancy and her friends work diligently to solve the mystery of Pine Hill and to find the long-lost wedding treasures. This book is the original text. A revised text does not exist. Views: 708
Museums and Women gathers twenty-nine short stories from the 1960s and early 1970s. It is John Updike’s most various collection, a book as full of departures and surprises as the historical period that produced them. Some stories, such as the title piece, have the tone and personality of essays. Others objectify the chimeras of middle-class life, especially life in a fictional New England enclave called Tarbox. The illustrated jeux d’esprit in the section called “Other Modes” place Updike somewhere between Robert Benchley and Donald Barthelme as a toymaker in prose. Crowning the collection are five scenes from the marriage of Richard and Joan Maple, a story sequence with the narrative interest and cumulative power of a novel. Views: 708
A scintillating novel of fate, accidents, and moral dilemmas
Set in the time of the Vietnam War, this story concerns the plight of a young American, happily installed in a perfect job in England, engaged to a wonderful girl, who is suddenly drafted to a war he disapproves of.
What is duty here, what is self-interest, what is cowardice? Austin Gibson Grey, the accidental man of the title, is accident-prone, also prone to bring disaster to his friend sand relations. He blames fate. But are we not all accidental, one of his victims asks. Fate and accidents make deep moral dilemmas for the characters in the long and complex tale. Views: 708
Rumors of a treasure hidden long ago in a city now buried under the Nevada desert lead Nancy, Bess and George to join a college sponsored archaeological dig in search of this priceless gold. Clues from an ancient stone with petroglyphs lead Nancy to the hidden treasure. Danger from a clever thief wanting this cache almost causes Nancy and Ned to lose their lives! This book is the original text. A revised text does not exist. Views: 707
In a delicious slice of sci-fi whimsy that sits cleverly alongside Verne's original tale, Phileas Fogg's epic global journey is not the product of a daft wager but, in fact, a covert mission to chase down the elusive Captain Nemo - who is none other than Professor Moriarty.
A secret alien war has raged on Earth for years and is about to culminate in this epic race.
A novel in the Wold Newton universe, in which characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Flash Gordon, Doc Savage, James Bond and Jack the Ripper are all mysteriously connected. Views: 707
A Dream of Wessex is a “story about a group of twentieth-century dreamers who create a consensus virtual-reality future. Once they enter their imaginary world they are unable to remember who they are, or where they are from.” Views: 707
When he published his first novel, Lucky Jim, in which his misbehaving hero wreaks havoc with the starchy protocols of academic life, Kingsley Amis emerged as a bad boy of British letters. Later he became famous as another kind of bad boy, an inveterate boozer, a red-faced scourge of political correctness. He was consistent throughout in being a committed enemy of any presumed “right thinking,” and it is this, no doubt, that made him one of the most consistently unconventional and exploratory writers of his day, a master of classical English prose who was at the same time altogether unafraid to apply himself to literary genres all too often dismissed by sophisticates as “low.” Science fiction, the spy story, the ghost story were all grist for Amis’s mill, and nowhere is the experimental spirit in which he worked, his will to test both reality and the reader’s imagination, more apparent than in his short stories. These “woodchips from [his] workshop”—here presented in a new selection—are anything but throwaway work. They are instead the essence of Amis, a brew that is as tonic as it is intoxicating. Views: 706
As a young newspaper reporter in 1930s New York, Joseph Mitchell interviewed fan dancers, street evangelists, voodoo conjurers, not to mention a lady boxer who also happened to be a countess. Mitchell haunted parts of the city now vanished: the fish market, burlesque houses, tenement neighborhoods, and storefront churches. Whether he wrote about a singing first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers or a nudist who does a reverse striptease, Mitchell brilliantly illuminated the humanity in the oddest New Yorkers.
These pieces, written primarily for The World-Telegram and The Herald Tribune, highlight his abundant gifts of empathy and observation, and give us the full-bodied picture of the famed New Yorker writer Mitchell would become.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 706
Life in a small German town during the great inflation in 1923. A continuation of "The Road back." Entertaining, philosophical and funny: Remarque at his best. Views: 706
Simak's "City" is a series of connected stories, a series of legends, myths, and campfire stories told by Dogs about the end of human civilization, centering on the Webster family, who, among their other accomplishments, designed the ships that took Men to the stars and gave Dogs the gift of speech and robots to be their hands.
Contents:
· City · nv Astounding May 1944
· Huddling Place · ss Astounding Jul 1944
· Census · nv Astounding Sep 1944
· Desertion · ss Astounding Nov 1944
· Paradise · ss Astounding Jun 1946
· Hobbies · nv Astounding Nov 1946
· Aesop · nv Astounding Dec 1947
· The Simple Way [The Trouble with Ants] · nv Fantastic Adventures Jan 1951
· Author’s Note · is
· Epilog · ss Astounding, ed. Harry Harrison, Random, 1973 Views: 706
