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Collected Short Stories Volume 4

This final classic collection of stories reveals Somerset Maugham's unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships. Brilliant tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice, the stories range from 'The Lotus Eater' in which a man has a vision of a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of 'The Outstation' and 'The Back of Beyond' in Malaya and South East Asia. Largely set in favourite Maugham country, this colourful collection brilliantly evokes the numbered days of the British Empire.
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A Question of Upbringing

The opening novel in Anthony Powell's brilliant twelve-novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time. Discover the extraordinary life of Anthony Powell – captured by acclaimed biographer Hilary Spurling in Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time
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The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead

The Wild Boys is a futuristic tale of global warfare in which a guerrilla gang of boys dedicated to freedom battles the organized armies of repressive police states. Making full use of his inimitable humor, wild imagination, and style, Burroughs creates a world that is as terrifying as it is fascinating.
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Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure

The story is set in the distant future, where humanity is at war with "Yuks," an alien life form which does not use mechanical spaceships nor constructions. Instead, it relies on life forms. The war has been going on for a long time, and humanity has not been able to come up with a solution against the life-form based ships and mines that the Yuks use. A human brain-controlled spacecraft would mean mechanical perfection. This was accomplished, and something unforeseen: a strange entity called . . . Mr. Spaceship!
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The Inheritance

Here at last is the book "Jo" wrote. Generations of fans have longed to plumb that first romance, hinted at so captivatingly on the pages of "Little Women," Alcott's autobiographical classic. Now, after nearly one hundred fifty years spent among archived family documents, Louisa May Alcott's debut novel finally reaches its eager public. Set in an English country manor, the story follows the turbulent fortunes of Edith Adelon, an impoverished Italian orphan whose loyalty and beauty win her the patronage of wealthy friends until a jealous rival contrives to rob her of her position. In the locket around her neck, she carries a deep secret about her natural birthright. But an even greater truth lies hidden in Edith's heart - her deep reverence for the kind and noble Lord Percy, the only friend who can save her from the deceitful, envious machinations of Lady Ida. Reminiscent of Jane Austen in its charms, this chaste but stirringly passionate novel affirms the conquering power of both love and courtesy.
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Mary Emma & Company

The protagonist, Mary Emma Moody, widowed mother of six, has taken her family east in 1912 to begin a new life. Her son, Ralph, then thirteen, recalls how the Moodys survive that first bleak winter in a Massachusetts town. Money and prospects are lacking, but not so faith and resourcefulness. "Mother" in Little Britches and Man of the Family, Mary Emma emerges fully as a character in this book, and Ralph, no longer called "Little Britches," comes into his own. The family’s run-ins with authority and with broken furnaces in winter are evocative of a full and warm family life. Mary Emma & Company continues the Moody saga that started in Colorado with Little Britches and runs through Man of the Family and The Home Ranch. All these titles have been reprinted as Bison Books, as has The Fields of Home, in which Ralph leaves the Massachusetts town for his grandfather's farm in Maine.
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The Secret of the Wooden Lady

Adventure abounds on the Bonny Scot in Boston Harbor as Nancy helps Captain Easterly uncover the mystery of his ghostly visitors. From the moment, the clever young detective and her friends, Bess and George, stay on the old clipper ship they are confronted with fire, theft, unseen trespassers and other dangers. Nancy faces an additional challenge: to find a clue to the clipper’s missing figurehead. The lost “wooden lady” is needed establish a clear title to the ship. Nancy wonders why the prime suspect in the recent robbery at the Marvin home is in Boston and is easily entering and leaving the Bonny Scot without being seen! This book is the revised text. The plot of the original story (©1950) is similar with minor revisions.
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The Toilers of the Sea

A new translation by Scot James Hogarth for the first unabridged English edition of the novel, which tells the story of a reculsive fisherman from the Channel Islands who must free a ship that has run aground in order to win the hand of the woman he loves, a shipowner's daughter.
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The Comedians

Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt “Papa Doc” and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American, and Jones the confidence man—these are the “comedians” of Greene’s title. Hiding behind their actors’ masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. They are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself...
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Grendel

The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in a book William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions." From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Saint Francis

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) was born in and lived in Greece most of his life. He was the author of poetry, plays, articles and novels, including The Last Temptation of Christ, Zorba the Greek and The Greek Passion.
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The Tactful Saboteur

"The Tactful Saboteur" is a novelette by the science fiction author Frank Herbert which first appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in October 1964. It is notable for establishing the setting for Herbert's ConSentiency universe.
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The Final Programme

Jerry Cornelius is a scientist, a rock star, and an assassin. He is the hippest adventurer of them all: tripping through a pop art nightmare in which kidnappings, murder, sex and drugs are a daily occurrence. Along with his savvy and ruthless partner-in-chaos, Miss Brunner, Cornelius is on a mission to control a revolutionary code for creating the ultimate human being, a modern messiah— the final programme. The first book in the Cornelius Quartet is the groundbreaking introduction to the misadventures and vendettas of Jerry Cornelius, one of modern literature’s most distinctive characters, the product of a bewildering post-modern culture, and an inspiration for generations of characters since. "Michael Moorcock, rechazando las disputas de límites que han reducido la novela a una confusión de subgéneros en conflicto, recobra en estos cuatro volúmenes una vitalidad y una amplitud proteicas que pudieran llamarse dickensianas si no pertenecieran tan por completo a nustro tiempo volátil. En verdad, ninguna obra reciente de ficción ha manejado mejor las contingencias vertiginosas de la imaginación del medio siglo que esta brava arlequinada de juegos de identidad, realidades falsificadas, historia paródica, y un pobre y ordinario apocalipsis" (W.L. Webb, The Guardian). "Moorcock ha creado una figura capaz de moverse a través de las versiones míticas de los problemas de hoy, sin intentar situarlas o situarse a sí mismo en contextos simplificados. Una ficción semejante, en un mundo de imaginación escasa, es un don necesario" (Harpers Bazaar) Michael Moorcock nació en Inglaterra, ha publicado más de 50 libros y fue animador principal de la célebre revista New Worlds, que introdujo el término "ficción especulativa"; una literatura "moderna, coherente y vital". En EL PROGRAMA FINAL, primera de una serie de cuatro novelas independientes, anticipa la herencia decepcionante y caótica de la década del 60, un dorado presente en el que todo parecía instantáneamente posible.
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Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

Suspicious events at a Middle Eastern archaeological excavation site intrigue the great Hercule Poirot as he investigates *Murder in Mesopotamia, a classic murder mystery from Agatha Christie.* Amy Leatheram has never felt the lure of the mysterious East, but when she travels to an ancient site deep in the Iraqi desert to nurse the wife of a celebrated archaeologist, events prove stranger than she could ever have imagined. Her patient's bizarre visions and nervous terror seem unfounded, but as the oppressive tension in the air thickens, events come to a terrible climax--in murder. With one spot of blood as his only clue, Hercule Poirot must embark on a journey not just across the desert, but into the darkest crevices of the human soul to unravel a mystery which taxes even his remarkable powers.
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