A series of acid-throwing attacks on young lovers has everyone mystified. Is it the work of young hooligans, or are there more sinister forces at play? Roger 'Handsome' West of Scotland Yard must solve the case, and quickly. However, there are many obstacles in his way as he tries to uncover a thread and he finds he has to deal with bigoted parents, a psychiatric hospital full of perverts, a somewhat suspicious social club, and many others, not to mention robbery and murder along the way. Views: 648
Letters Home represents Sylvia Plath's correspondence from her time at Smith College in the early fifties, through her meeting with, and subsequent marriage to, the poet Ted Hughes, up to her death in February 1963. The letters are addressed mainly to her mother, with whom she had an extremely close and confiding relationship, but there are also some to her brother Warren and her benefactress Mrs Prouty. Plath's energy, enthusiasm and her passionate tackling of life burst onto these pages, providing us with a vivid and intimate portrait of a woman who has come to be regarded as one of the greatest of twentieth-century poets. In addition to her capacity for domestic and writerly happiness, however, these letters also hint at Plath's potential for deep despair, which reached its crisis when she holed up in a London flat for the terrible winter of 1963. Views: 648
Violence shatters the workshops of the renowned English pottery of Shentall’s when a body is found in a closed tank of liquid clay. Nicholson, a detective investigating industrial espionage at the pottery, is now drawn into the tense web of intrigue surrounding the staff at the workshops. The complex emotions linking the artisans with one another and the management provide a fascinating, and grim, background to Nicholson’s sleuthing. Views: 648
THE HAND OF KWLL AND THE EYE OF RHYNN IN EXCHANGE FOR THE HEART OF AIRIOCH
There were Gods abroad in those days. It was their whim to wipe clean the slate of history, to destroy the old races, the Vadhagh, the Nhadragh, the remnants of still more ancient peoples. Mankind, the contemptible Mabden, was ther instrument, washcloth of the Gods. But the Gods themselves fell out, and Chaos gained the advantage over Law.
The stage was set for heroes.
One such was the Vadhagh Prince Corum. Driven mad for revenge by the callous slaughter of his family and race, and by his own grotesque multilation at the hands of the Mabden, he agreed to accept from the treacherous sorcerer Shool the Eye of Rhynn and the Hand of Kwll in exchange for a lien on his soul.
Thus armed he set out upon a personal crusade against the Sword Rulers, Lords of Chaos, puppetmasters to Man. And first of these was the loathsome Arioch, Knight of the Swords, master of five of the fifteen planes of reality. From Arioch, Prince Corum required his heart. Views: 648
Described as "Bradley's best novel" by Locus, THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR, longest and most intricate of the Darkover books, is a brilliant epic of the pivotal event in the strange love-hate relationship between the Terran worlds and the semi-alien offspring of forgotten peoples.
This is the novel of the Hastur tradition and of the showdown between those who would bargain away their world for the glories of star-borne science and those who would preserve the special "matrix" power that was at once the prize and the burden of ruddy-sunned Darkover.
A Note From the Author:
To the faithful followers of the chronicles of Darkover, whose greatest delight seems to be discovering even the most minute inconsistencies from book to book:
This book tells a story which a great many of the friends of Darkover have asked me to tell - the story of the early life of Regis Hastur, and of the Sharra rising, and of Lew Alton's first encounter with Marjorie Scott and the man who called himself Kadarin.
The faithful followers mentioned above will discover a very few minute inconsistencies between the account herein, and the story as Lew Alton told it later. I make no apologies for these. The only explanation I can make is that in the years which elapsed between the events in this book, and the later novel dealing with the final destruction of the Sharra matrix, Lew's memories of these events may have altered his perceptions. Or, as I myself believe, the telepaths of the Arilinn Tower may have mercifully blurred his memories, to save his reason.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY Views: 647
'Flower and plant have no conscious will. They are shameless, exposing their genitals. And so in a sense are Proust's men and women . . . shameless. There is no question of right and wrong. Homosexuality . . . is as devoid of moral implications as the mode of fecundation of the Primula veris or the Lythrum salicoria.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SAMUEL BECKETT
The theme of Sodom and Gomorrah is sexual ambiguity. In the opening scene, the narrator secretly observes a sexual encounter between two men that is played out 'as though in obedience to the laws of an occult art' The book unfolds on matters of 'vice,' 'inversion,' mystery, desire, love, longing, and illusion.
The final volume of a new, definitive text of A la recherche du temps perdu was published by the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade in 1989. For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new French editions. Views: 647
Once the city of Carrig stood supreme on this planet that had been settled by space refugees in the distant, forgotten past. From every corner of this primitive lost world caravans came to trade - and to view the great King-Hunt, the gruesome test by which the people of Carrig chose their rulers. Then from space came new arrivals. And with them came their invincible death guns and their ruthless, all-powerful tyranny. Now there would be no King-Hunt in Carrig, or hope for the planet-unless a fool-hardy high-born named Saikmar and a beautiful Earthling space-spy named Maddalena, could do the impossible . . . (First published 1969) Views: 647
THE TALE OF MR. JEREMY FISHER
The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, like Peter Rabbit, began life as an illustrated letter to a young child. It was written when Beatrix Potter was on holiday in Scotland where her father and his friends enjoyed fishing expeditions. Mr. Jeremy has a day full of the worst fisherman's mishaps when he sets out to catch minnows for his dinner. Views: 647
To some, the postage stamps were colored bits of paper, worth mere pennies. Other people coveted them, preserved them, spent thousands of dollars to acquire them. One person in New York City was driven to commit murder.... Max Adrian was the rare stamp broker everyone in the know avoided — and those unfortunate enough to do business with him harbored grudges. It never mattered to the shifty broker, until someone demanded a refund at the point of a gun. Soon, Adrian's rival Larry Storm plays amateur detective for the benefit of a dishy dame, searching for a hidden cache of priceless stamps. Storm is one step ahead of the tenacious Inspector Luke Bradley, who's one step behind a cold-blooded killer — and Storm had better start running....Cancelled in Red was the $1,000 Red Badge Prize Mystery winner. It walked away with the $10,000 prize for the 1939 Dodd Mead Mystery Contest. Dodd, Mead & Company issued the story in paperback and hardcover that same year.Hugh Pentecost was the pen... Views: 646
The predecessor to Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, T. H. White’s nature writing classic, The Goshawk, asks the age-old question: what is it that binds human beings to other animals? White, the author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham’s Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence—”the bird reverted to a feral state”—seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, “A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word ‘feral’ has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, ‘ferocious’ and ‘free.’” Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love.
White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos—at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature’s most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness—as it exists both within us and without. Views: 646
"The Mafia made one hell of a mistake when they killed that man's wife and son."—Senator Thomas Cotton, Jr.Robert Briganti is the Assassin. Ruthless, indifferent to his own survival, he lives only to destroy the Mafia. With a handpicked arsenal of superweapons he stalks his enemy, kills without mercy and moves on to his next target. He knows the Mafia will get him sooner or later. He hopes it will be much later—there is always more killing to be done. Views: 646
Victoria Holt demonstrates her mastery once again in her most exciting novel set in turn-of-the-century England where a young woman grows up in the shadow of the great estate - and privileged way of life - that was once her family's birthright. But a unique inheritance compels Jessica Clavering to marry the owner of a fabled opal mine and leads her to faraway Australia. There she will discover the mysteries - and evil - surrounding the greatest opal ever found. There she must confront the danger that lust for the stone has aroused even in her own husband - and there she must find love. Views: 646
"I am confiding this manuscript to space, not with the intention of saving myself, but to help, perhaps, to avert the appalling scourge that is menacing the human race. Lord have pity on us!"
With these words, Pierre Boulle hurtles teh reader onto the Planet of the Apes. In this simian world, civilization is turned upside down: apes are men and men are apes; apes rule and men run wild; apes think, speak, produce, wear clothes, and men are speechless, naked, exhibited at fairs, used for biological research. On the planet of the apes, man, having reached to apotheosis of his genius, has become inert.
To this planet come a journalist and a scientist. The scientist is put into a zoo, the journalist into a laboratory. Only the journalist retains the spiritual strength and creative intelligence to try to save himself, to fight the appalling scourge, to remain a man.
Out of this situation, Pierre Boulle has woven a tale as harrowing, bizarre, and meaningful as any in the brilliant roster of this master storyteller. With his cutomary wit, irony, and disciplined intellect and style, the author of The Bridge Over the River Kwai tells a swiftly moving story dealing with man's conflicts, and takes the reader into a suspenseful and strangely fascinating orbit. Views: 646
