With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps–a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an “ordinary young man” who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas.
Acclaimed translator John E. Woods has given us the definitive English version of Mann’s masterpiece. A monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, The Magic Mountain is an enduring classic.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Views: 1 147
Matthew Flamen, the last of the networks' spoolpigeons, is desperate for a big story. He needs it to keep his audience and his job. And there is no shortage of possibilities: the Gottschalk cartel is fomenting trouble among the knees in order to sell their latest armaments to the blanks; which ties in nicely with the fact that something big is brewing with the X Patriots; and it looks as if the inconceivable is about to happen and that one of Britain's most dangerous revolutionaries is going to be given a visa to enter America. And then there's the story that just falls into his lap. The one that suggests that the respected Director of the New York State Mental Hospital is a charlatan... John Brunner's brilliant and scathing vision of a society disintegrating under the impact of violence, drugs, high-level corruption and the casual institutionalization of the 'insane' was a powerful and important statement in 1969. It remains a compelling and chilling tour de force three decades on. Views: 1 146
The fourth book in Arthur Ransome's classic series for children, Winter Holiday takes intrepid explorers John, Susan, Titty, and Roger Walker, and fearsome Amazon pirates Nancy and Peggy Blackett to the North Pole. Joined by budding novelist Dorethes Callum and her scientist brother Dick, the children plan an "Arctic" expedition. But unforseen events separate the travelers and disaster nearly strikes in the exciting climax of their race to the Pole. Views: 1 146
Get to know the lives and longings of animals in a city zoo in this time-honored tale from the author of Bambi.
The animals of the city zoo miss their homes. While they appreciate the company of one another, they have a fierce longing to be free of the daily visitors, the city sounds—and most of all, the bars to their cages.
Vasta the mouse is the only animal who is not behind bars. She uses her freedom to travel from cage to cage, visiting Yppa the orangutan and her young son Tikki, Hella the proud lioness and her two cubs, Mino the crazy fox, Pardinos the friendly elephant, and Hallo the tame wolf.
The zookeepers and visitors have no idea what life is really like in this city jungle, but Felix Salten’s depiction of these animals’ stories is brought vividly to life in this beautiful repackage. Views: 1 145
A stunning novel about mothers and daughters, about vengeance, and an aging, still beautiful woman on trial for shooting her lover.
In a French courtroom, the trial of a woman is taking place. Gladys Eysenach is no longer young, but she remains striking, elegant, cold. She is accused of shooting dead her much-younger lover. As the witnesses take the stand and the case unfolds, Gladys relives fragments of her past: her childhood, her absent father, her marriage, her turbulent relationship with her daughter, her decline, and then the final irrevocable act. With the depth of insight and pitiless compassion we have come to expect from the acclaimed author of Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky shows us the soul of a desperate woman obsessed with her lost youth. Views: 1 144
Always, since she was quite small, Maria had been extremely confused between what she had imagined and what was real, so much so that she had learned to keep quiet about a good many things in case they turned out... to be part of the imaginings... Perhaps this is why she doesn't tell anyone about the mysterious noises she hears in the old, rented holiday house, the shrill barking of an invisible dog, the non-existent swing which creaks in the garden. But then she discovers a sampler, stitched by a girl who lived in the house over a hundred years ago, and Maria finds herself increasingly drawn into the life of the Victorian girl as past and present merge in a dramatic climax. Views: 1 144
Five original stories with the flavor of classic folk literature focus on the themes of love, truth, fear, and kindness. Views: 1 144
This is the story of two modern people—a young American who, both as a scientist and as a man, faced some of the biggest problems of our times; and the girl who gave him all her heart and brain.
When Jane met Dr. Mark Bradley in London she was only eighteen. She and her mother were both attracted by "Brad," and the situation thus engendered proved fateful, since it led to Brad's association with a great Viennese physicist and to his involvement in a tragic drama. But there was another drama, larger and less personal, that drew him into its widening orbit, a drama that became a secret and later an obsession.
Probing yet protective, Jane's love makes the strong thread in a pattern of deeply moving and significant events—strange events, too—and yet, to quote Daniel Webster, there is often "nothing so strange" as the truth.
Although the earlier scenes of Nothing So Strange are laid abroad, its outlook is American and its climax could only have taken place in America. It is as exciting and as human as anything Mr. Hilton has ever written. Views: 1 144
Fans of Gerald Durrell’s timeless classic My Family and Other Animals will love this hilarious tale, which finds him as an adult still charmed by his beloved animals. A Zoo in My Luggage begins with an account of Durrell’s third trip to the British Cameroons in West Africa, during which he and his wife capture animals to start their own zoo. Returning to England with a few additions to their family—Cholmondeley the chimpanzee, Bug-eye the bush baby, and others—they have nowhere to put them as they haven’t yet secured a place for their zoo. Durrell’s account of how he manages his menagerie in all sorts of places throughout England while finding a permanent home for the animals provides as much adventure as capturing them. For animal lovers of all ages, A Zoo in My Luggage is the romping true story of the boy who grew up to make a Noah’s Ark of his own. Views: 1 143
When Lloyd Alexander finished the Chronicles of Prydain, readers asked for more! So, in 1973, Mr. Alexander wrote a collection of short tales about the land of Prydain. These stories revisit familiar characters and reveal more about the history of this magical land.
Here readers will find Dallben, destined to be an enchanter; Angharad, Princess of the House of Lyr; Kadwyr, the rascal crow; and Medwyn, the mystical protector of all animals. They'll learn the grim history of the sword Dyrnwyn and even find out how Fflewdur Fflam came by his enchanted harp.
In The Foundling, Lloyd Alexander's land of fantasy and adventure lives on. Views: 1 143
The body was on the pointed rocks alongside the stream. The artist might have fallen from the cliff where he was painting, but there are too many suspicious elements - particularly the medical evidence that proves he'd been dead nearly half a day, though eyewitnesses had seen him alive a scant hour earlier. And then there are the six prime suspects - all of them artists, all of whom wished him dead. Five are red herrings, but one has created a masterpiece of murder that baffles everyone, including Lord Peter Wimsey. Views: 1 143
Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his dying so much as a passing thought. But one day, death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise, he is brought face to face with his own mortality.
How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?
This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.
A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation. Views: 1 142
With a Foreword by the author. The Sound and the Fury, selections from other novels, three novellas, nine stories, the Nobel Prize address, etc. Views: 1 142
A troubling satire of the romantic myth of stardom and the empty heart of rock and roll, more relevant than ever in our celebrity-obsessed times.
Bucky Wunderlick is a rock and roll star. Dissatisfied with a life that has brought fame and fortune, he suddenly decides he no longer wants to be a commodity. He leaves his band mid-tour and holes up in a dingy, unfurnished apartment in Great Jones Street. Unfortunately, his disappearing act only succeeds in inflaming interest. As faithful fans await messages, Bucky encounters every sort of roiling force he is trying to escape.
DeLillo’s third novel is more than a musical satire: it probes the rights of the individual, foreshadows the struggle of the artist within a capitalist world and delivers a scathing portrait of our culture’s obsession with the lives of the few.
"Brilliant…deeply shocking… Looks at rock music, nihilism, and urban decay." The New York Review of Books
"DeLillo has the force and imagination of Thomas Pynchon or John Barth, with a sense of proportion and style which these would-be giants often lack." The Irish Times Views: 1 140
Betty Smith, the beloved author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, weaves a riveting modern myth out of the experiences of her own life in this rediscovered classic. In Brooklyn's unforgiving urban jungle, Maggie Moore is torn between answering her own needs and catering to the desirous men who dominate her life. Confronted by her quarrelsome Irish immigrant father, the feckless lover who may become her husband, and others, Maggie must learn to navigate a cycle of loss, separation, and hope as she forges her own path toward happiness.
With characteristic warmth, compelling insight, and easy, conversational prose, Betty Smith's Maggie-Now poignantly illuminates one woman's struggles and successes as she grapples with timeless questions of desire, duty, self-sacrifice, and the quest for fulfillment. Maggie-Now is an unforgettable masterpiece from one of the twentieth century's greatest talents. Views: 1 139
