• Home
  • Books older 1977

The Lifted Veil

Horror was my familiar. Published the same year as her first novel, Adam Bede, this overlooked work displays the gifts for which George Eliot would become famous—gritty realism, psychological insight, and idealistic moralizing. It is unique from all her other writing, however, in that it represents the only time she ever used a first-person narrator, and it is the only time she wrote about the supernatural. The tale of a man who is incapacitated by visions of the future and the cacophony of overheard thoughts, and yet who can’t help trying to subvert his vividly glimpsed destiny, it is easy to read The Lifted Veil as being autobiographically revealing—of Eliot’s sensitivity to public opinion and her awareness that her days concealed behind a pseudonym were doomed to a tragic unveiling (as indeed came to pass soon after this novella’s publication). But it is easier still to read the story as the exciting and genuine precursor of a moody new form, as well as an absorbing early masterpiece of suspense. **The Art of The Novella Series **Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.
Views: 449

The Dollmaker

Strong-willed, self-reliant Gertie Nevels's peaceful life in the Kentucky hills is devastated by the brutal winds of change. Uprooted from her backwoods home, she and her family are thrust into the confusion and chaos of wartime Detroit. And in a pitiless world of unendurable poverty, Gertie will battle fiercely and relentlessly to protect those things she holds most dear -- her children, her heritage . . . and her triumphant ability to create beauty in the suffocating shadow of ugliness and despair.
Views: 449

Turn Left on Thursday

My conversionNice collection of short stories includes: “The Martian in the Attic” first appeared in If Magazine, © 1960 Galaxy, as follows:  “Mars by Moonlight,” “The Seven Deadly Virtues,” “Third Offense” “I Plinglot, Who You?” all © 1958 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation; “The Richest Man in Levittown” (published as “The Bitterest Pill”) © 1959 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation.
Views: 449

To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not is the dramatic story of Harry Morgan, an honest man who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who throng the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair. Harshly realistic, yet with one of the most subtle and moving relationships in the Hemingway oeuvre, To Have and Have Not is literary high adventure at its finest.
Views: 449

No Entry

Thomas Hambledon quicksteps from the Western Zone of Germany to the Eastern to locate the missing son of a man most important in atomic defense. His plottings are paralleled by the adventures of young Micklejohn who, escaping his Russian captors, is hidden by an underground group. Hambledon impersonates a Russian agent, and, across the frontier, picks up Micklejohn's trail but can they race back to safety?
Views: 447

Riotous Assembly

When Miss Hazelstone of Jacaranda Park kills her Zulu cook in a sensational crime passionel, the gallant members of the South African police force are soon on the scene: Kommandant van Heerden, whose secret longing for the heart of an English gentleman leads to the most memorable transplant operation yet recorded; Luitenant Verkramp of the Security Branch, ever active in the pursuit of Communist cells; Konstabel Els, with his propensity for shooting first and not thinking later - and also for forcing himself upon African women in a manner legally reserved for male members of their own race. In the course of the strange events which follow, we encounter some very esoteric perversions when the Kommandant is held captive in Miss Hazelstone's remarkable rubber room; and some even more amazing perversions of justice when Miss Hazelstone's brother, the Bishop of Barotseland, is sentenced to be hanged on the ancient gallows in the local prison. Not a 'political' novel in any previously imagined sense, Riotous Assembly provided a completely fresh approach to the South African scene - an approach startling in its deadpan savagery and yet also outrageously funny.
Views: 447

Flowering Judas and Other Stories: A Library of America eBook Classic

The Library of America presents an exclusive e-book edition of the astonishing 1930 collection that introduced a major new voice in American literature. “If Katherine Anne Porter had written nothing but these short narratives," observed the New York Times, "she would be among the most distinguished masters of her craft in this country.”
Views: 447

The Bull and the Spear

Fantasy. "Corum Jhaelen Irsei, hero of the legendary battle with the Sword Rulers. In an age before time began when the old Gods were abroad in the Earth, Corum of the Scarlet Robe defeated the agents of chaos and cruelty and made history possible. Now a new age requires a hero. There are new lords who would be gods - Odin and Thor and Freya and Loki. And there are the descendants of Corum's Vadagh people, now called Elf-folk. There is a portent - a great black bull sometimes seen on the horizon. The bull must be ridden by the one who possesses the Spear of Llaw Ereint. And the one who will come to possess the spear will be one who has a silver hand - it is the hand of Corum."
Views: 447

Lie Down in Darkness

William Styron traces the betrayals and infidelities—the heritage of spite and endlessly disappointed love—that afflict the members of a Southern family and that culminate in the suicide of the beautiful Peyton Loftis.
Views: 447

Quest Through Space And Time

EDITORIAL REVIEW:Rhodan and his associates journey through time, using one of the machines left behind by the rulers of the Planet of Eternal Life, to visit a long-dead Arkonide that visited the Vega System many years ago.  Perry Rhodan and a hand-picked number of his Mutant Corps use their special abilities to uncover the secret that the long-dead Arkonide holds for them.  We are also informally introduced to a character that will play a crucial role what is to come, in this, the...QUEST THROUGH TIME AND SPACE!
Views: 446

The Witling

This second novel by multiple award-winner Vernor Vinge, from 1976, is a fast-paced adventure where galactic policies collide and different cultures clash as two scientists and their faith in technology are pitted against an elusive race of telekinetic beings. Marooned on a distant world and slowly dying of food poisoning, two anthropologists are caught between warring alien factions engaged in a battle that will affect the future of the world's inhabitants and their deadly telekinetic powers. If the anthropologists can't help resolve the conflict between the feuding alien factions, no one will survive. This edition features sixteen full-page illustrations by Doug Beekman.
Views: 445

The Tower of the Winds

When her sister died, leaving an orphaned baby son, Charity was determined to take charge of the baby, and she immediately went to Greece to sort the matter out. But the child's paternal uncle, the masterful Greek Loukos Papandreous, was equally determined that the child was going to remain in Greece - with him. And in Greece the rights of a male relative would have very much more precedence than those of a mere female!
Views: 445