The Wooden Shepherdess is the sequel to The Fox in the Attic, and the second volume of Richard Hughes’s monumental historical fiction, “The Human Predicament.” It opens with Hughes’s hero Augustine in prohibition era America, where he is a bemused onlooker and an increasingly fascinated participant in a country intoxicated with sex, violence, and booze. In brilliant cinematic style, the book then moves to Germany, where the Nazi Party is gradually gaining in power; to the slums, mining towns, parliamentary back rooms, and great houses of a Britain teetering on the verge of class war; and to the wilds of the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The novel ends with a terrifying account of the Night of the Long Knives, as Hitler ruthlessly secures his hold upon Germany. This new edition of the The Wooden Shepherdess concludes with the twelve chapters that Hughes completed of the planned third volume of “The Human Predicament,” here published for the first time in America. Views: 74
A brutal murder with a golf club and an ingenious plot bursting with snobbery, suspicion , adultery and secrets --" to say nothing of the dreadful crime of catricide--¦The lives of the inhabitants of Swevenings are disrupted only by a fierce competition to catch the Old Un, a monster trout known to dwell in a beautiful stream which winds past their homes.Then one of their small community is found brutally murdered; beside him is the freshly killed trout. Both died by violence --" but Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn--™s murder investigation seems to be much more interested in the fish--¦ Views: 74
In Osaka in the years immediately before World War II, four aristocratic women try to preserve a way of life that is vanishing. As told by Junichiro Tanizaki, the story of the Makioka sisters forms what is arguably the greatest Japanese novel of the twentieth century, a poignant yet unsparing portrait of a family–and an entire society–sliding into the abyss of modernity.Tsuruko, the eldest sister, clings obstinately to the prestige of her family name even as her husband prepares to move their household to Tokyo, where that name means nothing. Sachiko compromises valiantly to secure the future of her younger sisters. The unmarried Yukiko is a hostage to her family’s exacting standards, while the spirited Taeko rebels by flinging herself into scandalous romantic alliances. Filled with vignettes of upper-class Japanese life and capturing both the decorum and the heartache of its protagonist, The Makioka Sisters is a classic of international literature.From the Hardcover edition.Amazon.com ReviewThe four Makioka sisters lead very complicated, strenuous lives, although on the surface nothing much ever happens to them. Part of a fading Japanese aristocracy in the years leading up to World War II, they cannot escape the wide net of the family name--something always brings them back to the reality of "being a Makioka." Running out of money, living in falling-apart houses, growing older beneath the sunlight of the modern world, they do their best to preserve the rituals of the past. The two older sisters work diligently to arrange a marriage for the third sister, Yukiko. Desperate to find someone to take care of her, they keep lowering their standards. One night they find themselves out with a drunk, selfish crackpot who has no money, but who is supposed to be related to a man who works for an important utility company. The fact that he is even a candidate for their sister's hand is a sign of how far they have fallen.There are other signs in this remarkable, utterly compelling Japanese epic. At one point, a flood overwhelms their small town of Osaka. The youngest sister, Taeko, is having tea at the impeccably decorated home where her sewing teacher, Mrs. Tamaki, lives with her son Hiroshi. When the rain first appears beneath the door, the three were still rather enjoying themselves, shouting at each other in the best of spirits. They all had a good laugh when Hiroshi, reaching to grab the briefcase in which he had brought home his school books, bumped his head on the bobbing radio. But after perhaps a half hour, there came a moment when the three fell silent. Almost immediately, Taeko remembered afterwards, the water was above her waist. As she clutched at a curtain, a picture fell from over her head; the curtain had probably brushed against it. It was a picture Mrs. Tamaki was especially fond of.Junichiro Tanizaki wrestled throughout his career with the idea of a country where tribes of aristocrats live as relics, grasping at the past through gestures, manners, small and intricate private laws. The narrative suspense of The Makioka Sisters is rooted in this single-minded nostalgia, this strict attention to the details of domestic life as the outer world becomes more and more incomprehensible. Pages are devoted to musing about whether Yukiko should "risk" meeting a potential husband when there is a spot above her eye--maybe she should play it safe and go to the doctor about it; maybe the potential husband will interpret it as bad luck. Tanizaki manages to make the struggle over this small, dark spot wildly compelling. I could not sleep until I discovered its fate.If epic literature is based in the dramatic and forward-moving narrative of a male hero's journey, The Makioka Sisters is a female epic of inaction--trying to figure out what to wear, crying for no reason at the same time every afternoon. With each perilous, pathetic step, the sisters are heroes setting out for the new world. They're like Odysseus, except without the ship and without the sea. --Emily WhiteReviewPraise for Junichiro Tanizaki's *The Makioka Sisters“A masterpiece of great beauty and quality.” –Chicago Tribune*“Skillfully and subtly, Tanizaki brushes in a delicate picture of a gentle world that no longer exists.” –San Francisco ChronicleFrom the Hardcover edition. Views: 73
Investigating the bizarre will of late multimillionaire Noel Hawthorne--who left the bulk of his estate to his mistress and nearly nothing to his three sisters--astute sleuth Nero Wolfe stumbles upon a legacy of murder. Views: 73
He had forgotten his real name, so they called him "Spingarn" after the last role he had played. He was the man the directors of the Frames regarded as their major headache - for he was guilty of two unforgivable arrogances. He had programmed himself into every one of the vast world-staged dramas he had directed - and he had reactivated the forbidden Frames of the pre-human planet of Talisker.
In those days of an overcrowded colonized cosmos, a thousand years from now, the Frames were the major means of diversion. Historical re-creations and fictional dramas played out with planets as stages and while populations as actors - the Frame directors and their robot assistants had become the masters of all life.
They could not destroy Spingarn, THE PROBABILITY MAN, but they could sentence him to undo the damage he had done. So he was sent to the mad Frames of Talisker to unravel the secret of their origin a billion years before the universe Views: 73
Hinshaw... Worthy... Morales — names with ghostly echoes from Mack Bolans military past. Add an abandoned combat training center in the Arizona wasteland, a kinky U.S. Senator, a badly soiled "businessman", a self-exiled Mafia chieftain with new territorial ambitions, and a cadre of combat veterans... and it means war in the desert for the Executioner. Views: 73
You've heard, I'm sure, about the two Martians who went into a bar, saw a jukebox flashing and glittering, and said to it, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a joint like this?" Well, here's one about two Capellans and a slot-machine.... Views: 73
Immortality, Inc. is a 1958 science fiction novella by Robert Sheckley, about a fictional process whereby a human's consciousness may be transferred into a brain-dead body. The serialised form (published under the title Time Killer in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1958-1959) was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Originally published in shorter form as Immortality, Delivered in 1958. It was filmed in 1992 as Freejack , starring Emilio Estevez, Mick Jagger, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins. Views: 73
It was eight years since Patrick had vanished leaving his pitiful note, 'I'm sorry but I can't bear it any longer. Don't be angry with me, Patrick. Now it seemed, he had returned — just in time to claim the family inheritance. But if Patrick really had committed suicide, who was this mysterious young man claiming to be him and calling himself Brat Farrar? Views: 73
One of the classics of American social fiction, somewhat similar in that way to Orwell's "1984". If you read "1984" – this book is a must read. Views: 73
In this classic country noir, featuring a new introduction by Daniel Woodrell, a small town farmer takes a job at a roadhouse, where unbridled greed leads to a brutal murder Jack McDonald is barely a farmer. Boll weevils have devoured his cotton crop, his chickens have stopped laying eggs, and everything he owns is mortgaged—even his cow. He has no money, no prospects, and nothing to do but hang around filling stations, wondering where his next drink will come from. As far as hooch goes, there’s no place like Smut Milligan’s, where Breath of Spring moonshine sells for a dollar a pint.A bootlegger with an entrepreneurial spirit, Milligan has plans to open a roadhouse, and he asks Jack to run the till. The music will be hot, the liquor cheap, and the clientele rough. But the only thing stronger than Milligan’s hooch is his greed, and Jack is slowly drawn into the middle of Smut’s dalliances with a married woman, the machinations of corrupt town officials—and a savage act of murder.About the AuthorJames Ross (1911–1990) was born in North Carolina, where he worked as a reporter for the Daily News (Greensboro) for many years. He wrote his first and only novel, They Don’t Dance Much, in 1940. The book, considered “country noir,” was praised by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Flannery O’Connor. During the decade that followed, Ross published several short stories in literary journals such as Partisan Review, the Sewanee Review, Collier’s, and Argosy while he worked on another novel, In The Red, which was never published. Views: 73
