When the world’s ace secret agents crash a party in Spain, they’re onto something monstrous—an ominous threat to world peace. It looked like a Convention of Secret Agents, thought the famous columnist Quentin Jones. Not one of them had been invited to the party of the distinguished Hungarian scientist. The Hungarian was known for advocating World Government—and for grafting a second head on a dog—but Quentin Jones suspected him of far more chilling experiments. Quentin runs up against former Nazi war criminals, and a series of weird murders that lead straight to… him. Views: 70
In this illuminating and thoughtful book, Will and Ariel Durant have succeeded in distilling for the reader the accumulated store of knowledge and experience from their four decades of work on the ten monumental volumes of The Story of Civilization. The result is a survey of human history, full of dazzling insights into the nature of human experience, the evolution of civilization, the culture of man. With the completion of their life's work they look back and ask what history has to say about the nature, the conduct and the prospects of man, seeking in the great lives, the great ideas, the great events of the past for the meaning of man's long journey through war, conquest and creation — and for the great themes that can help us to understand our own era.To the Durants, history is "not merely a warning reminder of man's follies and crimes, but also an encouraging remembrance of generative souls...a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints,... Views: 70
The Game is a lush and disturbing novel portraying a sibling rivalry which compels the reader to reconsider the uses and misuses of imagination. when they were little girls, Cassandra and Julia played a game in which they entered an alternate world modeled on the landscapes of Arthurian romance. Now the sisters are grown, and hostile strangers--until a figure from their past, a man they once both loved and suffered over, reenters their lives.From Publishers WeeklyVintage continues to reprint works by Byatt, the acclaimed author of Possession : this season brings a novel about two estranged sisters, The Game , and the collection Sugar and Other Stories . Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review''Byatt is a gifted observer, able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being.'' --New York Times Book Review''Byatt is the most formidably equipped of contemporary novelists . . .The great merit of [her] writing . . . is that it continually engages the reader's mind.'' --Daily Telegraph (London)''Nadia May's expert narration adds to the drama of this complex and satisfying work. Recommended.'' --Library Journal Views: 70
Neugeboren's second novel is the story of Harry Meyers—New York schoolteacher, alienated Jew, aging widower resigned to lonely retirement—and of what happens to him when his uneasy peace is shattered by violence.It is a taut, powerful story, quick with suspense, and original in approach. Neugeboren captures the brutality, the comic madness, the very texture of existence seething with the West Side's rooming-house ghetto. Views: 70
"What exactly was the curse?" asked Jenny. Her hands were so cold that they looked like white porcelain. Her aunt spoke slowly. Sarah pledged that every generation of the Brucker family would contain a child haunted-a child possessed. This child would seek the wolfbane, would howl at the full moon, and find a craving for blood. A werewolf? That's
silly. But she did not feel much like laughing. That night Sarah's father died
strangely. He grabbed at his own neck, as if struggling against someone
or something
invisible. He drew his own blood
but he died. Jenny's eyes strayed to the red volumes of demonic lore. Was this really the answer to Freya's strange spells? Impossible though it seemed
could the child really be a werewolf? Views: 70
Adaptation of the TV movie. Views: 70
Famous American cancer specialist Dr. Alex Cousins is sent by the President of the United States to Russia to prolong the life of the Secretary General of the Politburo. While in Russia, Cousins learns that the Soviets plan to attack China. In an attempt to silence him, the Soviets send Cousins home via the Trans-Siberian Express, the world’s longest and most exotic train ride. A beautiful KGB Agent has been ordered to keep him under surveillance until the trip is over. Soon Cousins and the Soviet agent transcend their political differences and fall desperately in love. This powerful love story, full of intrigue, will keep the reader transfixed and absorbed as the Trans-Siberian Express speeds its way across the vastness of Siberia. Views: 70
From the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The all time classic. An airliner crashes in the polar ice-cap. In temperatures 40 degrees below zero, six men and four women survive. But for the members of a remote scientific research station who rescue them, there are some sinister questions to answer ? the first one being, who shot the pilot before the crash? Views: 70
Dr. Conway must deal with an unconscious patient, classification ELPH, who may be a cannibal or a demigod, or both. It came from the “other galaxy”, and the species is well known, almost infamous, to the Ians, who are also from another galaxy. It is extremely long-lived, and regularly takes complete rejuvenation treatments, including the brain and memory, to keep itself young. By doing this, it is practically immortal. It, although unconscious, appeared to have the ability to negate the most powerful drugs and resist surgery to cure its skin condition. This later turned out to be the work of the entity’s “doctor”, who is an intelligent, organized collection of microscopic, virus-type cells. Once Doctor Conway realizes this, he uses a wooden stake to make the ELPH’s doctor focus itself in one small location, at which time it is removed from the ELPH, informed regarding the physiology-problems of its patient, and put back in. The patient, whose name is Lonvellin, quickly makes a full recovery, and it leaves to do what it does best: bona fide missions that involve taking backwards planetary cultures and pulling them up “by their bootstraps”. His particular mission, this time, is to cure a diseased planet called Etla, and he recruits Dr. Conway and the “Monitor Corps” to help him. When The Empire that controls the Planet of Etla misinterprets Lonvellin’s efforts as an Act of War, the Empire declares war on the Sector General space hospital. Conway helps organise the evacuation of most of the station’s staff and patients, and following the death or injury of more senior staff, becomes the most senior surviving physician. After a brutal series of attacks, and with the hospital on the brink of defeat, a group of Federation and Empire soldiers convince Conway to help in a mutiny against the Federation commander Dermod. The Empire soldiers had been told that the Federation had attacked Etla, rather than trying to help it, but seeing the way all casualties were treated equally on the station, and in particular witnessing Conway breaking down after failing to save the life of an alien Empire soldier, convinced them that they had been lied to. Views: 70
Review“I started reading The Magic Christian and I thought I was going to go insane . . . It was an incredible influence on me.” —Hunter S. Thompson“[The Magic Christian] is at once the most profoundly satiric and wildly comic account of our life and times in years.” —Nelson Algren“Terry Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation, and in The Magic Christian he surpasses Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet, a work similarly inspired by conventional wisdom’s serene idiocy.” —Gore Vidal“Terry Southern is the illegitimate son of Mack Sennet and Edna Saint Vincent Millay.” —Kurt Vonnegut“Terry Southern was one of the first and best of the new wave of American writers, defining the cutting edge of black comedy.” —Joseph HellerProduct DescriptionIn this uproarious and wicked cult-classic, Southern skewers American greed and pomposityGuy Grand, an eccentric billionaire prankster, is rich enough to do whatever he likes. And what he likes is to carefully execute projects where he can cauterize by ridicule what the rest of the world ignores: complacency, greed, corruption, and idiocy. Determined to “make it hot for people,” Grand spends his billions staging a series of hilarious, sometimes bewildering stunts, lampooning along the way the American holy cows of money, status, power, beauty, media, and stardom. Concocting deliciously perverse mayhem, he throws a million one-hundred-dollar bills into an enormous vat of steaming offal, proving just what people will do for money, and he promotes a new silky shampoo that turns hair to wire and a deodorant that becomes a time-released stench-bomb. He inserts subliminally suggestive and perverse images into well-loved classic films, takes a howitzer on safari, and brings a panther to a kennel club dog show. His most elaborate adventure is an ultra-exclusive cruise aboard the S.S. Magic Christian, where elite passengers are treated to a series of madcap indignities.The Magic Christian is a hilarious and savagely satiric view of American commercialism, rich in Southern’s deft handling of detail, dialogue, and delightful deviancy.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Terry Southern including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate. Views: 70
Have you ever been so desperate that you would do literally anything for money? This is the tragic situation Giselda finds herself in, with no money for an operation her younger brother desperately needs to save his life, and no one to turn to. Ground down by poverty she plucks up her courage to offer the only thing she has of value – her purity. Choking back her pride and knowing that she is about to forfeit his respect, she approaches her wealthy employer, the handsome Earl of Lyndhurst, who is recovering from his injuries sustained in the Battle of Waterloo. Appalled that this frail and innocent young girl should be faced with such a terrible decision, he vows to find a way to help her without offending her dignity. He knows she would never accept his charity, and she refuses to confide in him the reasons for her family's poverty. Intrigued by the air of mystery about a girl of obvious quality reduced to the role of maidservant, the Earl decides to discover why a beautiful young woman of strong principles has been reduced to such extreme measures.Discovering her to have gentle hands and wonderful nursing skills he employs her as his private nurse and turns his sharp mind to uncovering her secrets – and learns his own lessons in love in the process. Views: 70
Like so many others before him, reluctant Sam MacGregor was sent on a pilgrimage for the Grail Vision by the Dancers: androids grown from the cells of one man, with the powers of hypnotism and illusion—androids who held the tribes of the Republic of California in thrall. But soon Sam began to doubt his own identity, for he experienced, in close succession, extra-lives in different corridors of time and space. And he could not know whom his search would destroy: the Dancers ... or himself. Views: 70
