Francis Saxover and Diana Brackley, two scientists investigating a rare lichen, discover it has a remarkable property: it retards the aging process. Francis, realising the implications for the world of an ever-youthful, wealthy elite, wants to keep it secret, but Diana sees an opportunity to overturn the male status quo by using the lichen to inspire a feminist revolution.
As each scientist wrestles with the implications and practicalities of exploiting the discovery, the world comes ever closer to learning the truth . . .
Trouble With Lichen is a scintillating story of the power wielded by science in our lives and asks how much trust should we place in those we appoint to be its guardians? Views: 1 093
In "Death in the Afternoon", Hemingway shares the sights, the sounds, the excitement, and above all, the knowledge which fuelled his passion for Spain and the bullfight. This remarkable book contains some of his finest writing, inspired by the intense life, as well as the inevitable death, of those hot, violent afternoons. Views: 1 093
Independent and spirited, Miss Annis Wychwood gives little thought to finding herself a suitable husband, thus dashing the dreams of many hopeful suitors. When she becomes embroiled in the affairs of the runaway heiress Lucilla, though, she encounters the beautiful fugitive's guardian - as rakish and uncivil a rogue she has ever met. Although chafing a bit at the restrictions of Regency society in Bath, Annis does have to admit that Oliver Carleton, at least, is never boring.
Showing all the skills that won her a devoted worldwide readership, Georgette Heyer's Lady of Quality is a dashing romance by the undisputed queen of the romantic novel. Views: 1 093
“A century after its publication, it seems as relevant as ever.” –The Guardian
Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.
Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).
Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby. Views: 1 091
Monty Bodkin's pursuit of Gertude Butterwick is temporarily interrupted by his encounter with silver-screen siren Miss Lotus Blossom, who sees in him a means of restoring relations with her idol, the novelist Ambrose Tennyson. But Monty is not the only one with problems. Ambrose's brother Reggie has money troubles and Ikey Llewellyn is struggling with difficulties which would tax anyone's ingenuity, let alone his limited brain power. When the paths of these men collide, the ensuing plot complications produce a vintage Wodehouse farce involving London, New York, Hollywood and translatlantic liners. A delicious period piece from 1935. Views: 1 091
Jules Verne, the most translated novelist in the world and best known for books such as Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas and Around the World in Eighty Days, was also a prolific playwright. Journey Through the Impossible, a play of fantasy and science fiction, ran for 97 performances in Paris in 1882 and 1883. In the three acts, the characters go first to the center of the Earth, then under the sea, and finally to the planet "Altor." Characters from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, From the Earth to the Moon, Doctor Ox, and Journey to the Center of the Earth appear again in Journey through the Impossible, including Captain Nemo, President Barbican, Michel Ardan, Doctor Ox, and Professor Lidenbrock.
Verne wrote this play in the middle of his life, between his optimistic (science helps humanity and is good) and pessimistic (science is dangerous and bad) works; the play is a vehicle for Verne to ask himself and his readers whether science, technology, and the pursuit of knowledge are good or bad. He used the play to pose questions about life and wisdom that are still important in our time.
The script of the play was lost to Verne scholars for almost a century, until the text was discovered in 1978 in the Archives of the Censorship Office of the Third French Republic and was published in French in 1981. The play had many reviews in 1882 and two of them are included here to give the reader insight into how the play was staged in Paris in the second half of the 19th century. Also included are many wonderful illustrations showing set designs for the original play, a page from a lost scene, the original frontispiece, and other interesting details.
This is the first complete edition and the first English translation of a surprising work by a popular French novelist whose works continue to delight readers and audiences to this day. Views: 1 090
The chilling thriller from an international bestselling phenomenon.
It is Christmas Eve, 1957. Flying home, on leave from Germany, he is alone in the cockpit of the Vampire. Sixty-six minutes of flying time, with the descent and landing - destination Lakenheath. No problem, all routine procedures.
Then, out over the North sea, the fog begins to close in. Radio contact ceases and the compass goes haywire. Suddenly, out of the mist appears a World War II bomber. It is flying just below the Vampire, as of trying to make contact... Views: 1 090
When racial hatred turns to murderous menace . . . First a rocket ship loses its engines on take-off and is destroyed. On board - an important extra-terrestrial visitor. Next someone slams into the sealed vehicle used for transporting aliens around in the lethal atmosphere of Earth. Then the vital controlled environment for the Tau Cetian delegation is sabotaged. Oxygen leaks in, and the aliens are half burnt alive. Even if it means brutal murder, The Stars Are For Man League is determined to shatter the harmony between Earth and civilizations on other planets - and to keep mankind supreme among the alien life forms. Only one man can stop them - a man who unknowingly nurses a viper in his bosom . . . First published in 1965. Views: 1 090
The Miner is the most daringly experimental and least well-known novel of the great Meiji writer Natsume Soseki. An absurdist tale about the indeterminate nature of human personality, written in 1908, it was in many ways a precursor to the work of Joyce and Beckett. The result is a novel that is both absurd and comical, and a true modernist classic. Views: 1 090
Hemingway said, "A man should never write what he doesn't know." In the mid-fifties, Harlan Ellison--kicked out of college and hungry to write--went to New York to start his writing career. It was a time of street gangs, rumbles, kids with switchblades and zip guns made from car radio antennas. Ellison was barely out of his teens himself, but he took a phony name, moved into Brooklyn's dangerous Red Hook section and managed to con his way into a "bopping club." What he experienced (and the time he spent in jail as a result) was the basis for the violent story that Alfred Hitchcock filmed as the first of his hour-long TV dramas...This autobiography is a book whose message you won't be able to ignore or forget. "Harlan Ellison is the dark prince of American letters, cutting through our corrupted midnight fog with a switchblade prose. He simply must be read." --Pete Hamill "Ellison writes with sensitivity as well as guts--a rare combination." --Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint Views: 1 090
Of the 21 Conan the Barbarian tales that Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) completed in his all-too-brief lifetime, Hour of the Dragon was the only novel-length story. It may also be the very best of the series, crafted when the legendary pulp writer was working at the height of his powers. Conan is a huge swordsman fighting both natural and supernatural foes in a time-lost world known as the Hyborian Age. At this point in his bloody career, Conan is the middle-aged king of the ancient kingdom of Aquilonia. He must fight one final battle to save the known world from a resurrected sorcerer named Xaltotun. Only the fabled Heart of Ahriman can destroy Xaltotun, and Conan must embark on an epic quest to retrieve the Heart. Howard hammered out every word as if he had actually lived through it himself, and in doing so forged a crimson masterpiece of heroic fantasy. (This novel has also been published as part of the formal Conan series as Conan the Conqueror.) --Stanley Wiater Views: 1 089
At 32, Chris Martin lives a conventional life. He's married with a daughter, runs his own small business, and is working to save up money for a bigger home with his wife, Helen. He is happy and content with this staid but comfortable existence—until a late weeknight phone call turns everything upside down.
Chris hasn't always been the model family man he appears to be. And when his past catches up to him, the terror comes into his home—just where he thought he was safest. As Chris finds all that he loves under attack, he must go to heroic lengths to keep his family and his life together. Views: 1 089
Dr. Henry Mudge undergoes a striking personality change when he discovers a mathematical formula"Equation C"that defines a mysterious negative dimension. He is instantly transported to any location in the solar system by merely thinking of iteven when he doesn't want to. Views: 1 088
“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing that, only then does he take up novel writing.” —William Faulkner
Winner of the National Book Award
Forty-two stories make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Compressing an epic expanse of vision into hard and wounding narratives, Faulkner’s stories evoke the intimate textures of place, the deep strata of history and legend, and all the fear, brutality, and tenderness of the human condition. These tales are set not only in Yoknapatawpha County, but in Beverly Hills and in France during World War I. They are populated by such characters as the Faulknerian archetypes Flem Snopes and Quentin Compson, as well as by ordinary men and women who emerge so sharply and indelibly in these pages that they dwarf the protagonists of most novels.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 1 088
The popular sequel to his award-winning Lost in the Barrens, this is Farley Mowat’s suspense-filled story of how Awasin, Jamie and Peetryuk, three adventure-prone boys, stumble upon a cache of Viking relics in an ancient tomb somewhere in the north of Canada. Packed with excitement and with little-known information about the customs of Viking explorers, this story of survival portrays the bond of youthful friendship and the wonders of a virtually unexplored land.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 1 088
