The second volume in the acclaimed The Wind from the Plain trilogy Turkey's greatest novelist, Yashar Kemal was an unsurpassed storyteller who brought to life a world of staggering violence and hallucinatory beauty. Kemal's books delve deeply into the entrenched social and historical conflicts that scar the Middle East. The Wind from the Plains trilogy is widely seen as his masterpiece, alongside the legendary Memed My Hawk.After a particularly bad season, a group of poor cotton-pickers are unable to pay their creditor, shopkeeper Adil Effendi. Overwhelmed with shame and guilt, they wait in terror for Adil to come and demand retribution. But when he inexplicably fails to appear, Adil begins to represent an irrational and tyrannical force, growing in their minds until they become sick with apprehension and obsessed with the terrible disaster that is sure to come upon them.In their despair they turn to Tashbash, a brave, decent and... Views: 83
One of Ngaio Marsh's most popular novels, this time featuring one of her best creations -- Lucy Lockett, the crime-solving cat.When the exuberant president of Ng'ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old school mate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to persuade him otherwise.Consequently, on the night of the embassy's reception the house and grounds are stiff with police. Nevertheless, an assassin does strike, and Alleyn finds he has no shortage of help, from Special Branch to a tribal court -- and a small black cat named Lucy Lockett who out-detects them all... Views: 83
V.S. Pritchett's Englishness – the dependable Englishness of shabby, bumptious businessmen, shy wives, puritanical suburbanites and vinegar-tongued grandmothers – often came out in surprising ways. Though comfortably set in the dirty brick factories south of the river or the dreary commuter villages on the outskirts of London, a story will show a Russian sense of passing time or a French pertness, glow poetically like a Bruno Schulz, or wound with the terrible detail of a Danilo Kis. The innate knowledge of the insider is registered with the outsider's shocked vividness.The fourteen stories of It May Never Happen show Pritchett's distinctive mastery. A fearful sailor falls into temptation ashore. An evangelist of the Church of the Last Purification arrives in a provincial town to demonstrate the non-existence of evil. A party of cyclists mistakes a private house for a pub. Two business partners fall out over money and a typist called Miss Croft with a 'small waist'... Views: 82
May 1949. In Shanghai the rich and influential of Old China wait anxiously for an opportunity to escape Mao's advancing Communist forces ..
To Shanghai comes Henry Wan who has stolen two tons of gold bullion from his bank and wants it retrieved from its hiding place up the Yangtze River. With him are his wife and bodyguard, whose plans for the gold differ greatly from his own. Unknown to them all, others have discovered the gold's existence, and will stop at nothing to secure it ..
But only one man - 'Mad' Harry Lord, owner of the powerful motor launch JACARANDA - has the cunning and the sheer nerve to snatch the bullion from under the noses of both Communist and Nationalist forces- by way of the notorious 'Yangtze Run! ...
Climaxing in a desperate chase down the Yangtze Kiang to the sea,
THE YANGTZE RUN is a taut and exciting adventure in the tradition of Alistair MacLean and Desmond Bagley.
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Kevin and Sadie just want to be together, but it's not that simple. Things are bad in Belfast. Soldiers walk the streets and the city is divided. No Catholic boy and Protestant girl can go out together - not without dangerous consequences . . .The second of Joan Lingard's ground-breaking Kevin and Sadie books Views: 79
Manchild in the Promised Land is indeed one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time. This thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown's childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s. When the book was first published in 1965, it was praised for its realistic portrayal of Harlem -- the children, young people, hardworking parents; the hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes, and numbers runners; the police; the violence, sex, and humor. The book continues to resonate generations later, not only because of its fierce and dignified anger, not only because the struggles of urban youth are as deeply felt today as they were in Brown's time, but also because the book is affirmative and inspiring. Here is the story about the one who "made it," the boy who kept... Views: 79
Felix Brooke, the orphaned son of an English soldier and an aristocratic Spanish mother, has been raised in the strict, loveless household of his grandfather in Villaverde, Spain. When Felix gains possession of a letter that contains a clue to the whereabouts of his father's family, he gladly runs away form home to pursue the trail. His journey from Spain to far-off England begins the adventure of a lifetime. Views: 78
Nile's thoughts blunced in shock as she saw the beings below her in the trees.Parahuans....She stared at the bulky amphibious creatures. The bluish-gray torsos and powerful arms were enclosed by webbings of straps, holding tools and weapons. The bulging eyes on the big round heads were double-lensed....Some seventy years ago the Parahuans had come out of space to launch simultaneous attacks against a dozen worlds of the Hub. They'd done considerable damage, but in the end their forces were pulled back; and it was believed that only insignificant remnants had survived to return to their undiscovered home worlds.And we became careless, Nile thought. We felt we were so big no one would dare attack again. . .. Views: 78
The towns at the end of the cattle trails north from Texas called for a special type of lawman. None of the peace officers available struck the Governor of Kansas as suitable to clean out the worst, most corrupt town of all. Yet it must be done before Kansas was plunged into the bloodiest strife since the end of the Civil War. So the Governor called on five Texans who had already brought law to two tough towns. Led by the Rio Hondo gun wizard, Dusty Fog, Mark Counter, the Ysabel Kid, Waco and Doc Leroy pinned on their badges in Trail End. Then they went to work in the face of opposition from corrupt civic officials and crooked businessmen, risking their lives to tame the town. Views: 77
‘I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.’ It was with these words, written in the 1630s, that Pierre de Fermat intrigued and infuriated the mathematics community. For over 350 years, proving Fermat’s Last Theorem was the most notorious unsolved mathematical problem, a puzzle whose basics most children could grasp but whose solution eluded the greatest minds in the world. In 1993, after years of secret toil, Englishman Andrew Wiles announced to an astounded audience that he had cracked Fermat’s Last Theorem. He had no idea of the nightmare that lay ahead. In ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’ Simon Singh has crafted a remarkable tale of intellectual endeavour spanning three centuries, and a moving testament to the obsession, sacrifice and extraordinary determination of Andrew Wiles: one man against all the odds. Views: 77
Hailed as a remarkable literary discovery, The Passenger is a lost novel of heart-stopping intensity and harrowing absurdity about flight and persecution in 1930s Germany. Written on the eve of World War II, Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz's story captures one of the darkest moments in human history—and creates a lasting legacy for a talented author whose life ended tragically all too soon.Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman who fought for Germany in the Great War, is forced to sneak out the back of his own home. Turned away from establishments he had long patronized, and fearful of being exposed as a Jew despite his Aryan looks, he boards a train.And then another. And another...until his flight becomes a frantic odyssey across Germany, as he searches first for information, then for help, and finally for escape. His... Views: 76
