John Truck was to outward appearances just another lowlife spaceship captain. He peddled drugs when they were available, carried cargo when they weren't. But he was also the last of the Centaurans - or at least, half of him was - which meant that he was the only person who could operate the Centauri Device, a sentient bomb which might hold the key to settling a vicious space war. Cover illustration: Chris Moore Views: 36
Follow the world's greatest detectiveon a trail of money, mayhem, and murder in three cases of capital crime. The trailof bodies begins with the death of a self-made millionairre, a fortune in uranium, and the perfect weapon... wich no longer exists. Then it's on to a rural lodge to teach two arrogant billionaires, a foreign ambassador, and a famousdiplomat that murder is bad for business. FInally, it's a case of politics making the strangest of bedfellows when a fake millionaire becomes a real corpse in the state capital and the evidence has Nero and Arche in the hot seat. Views: 36
In The Easter Parade, first published in 1976, we meet sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes when they are still the children of divorced parents. We observe the sisters over four decades, watching them grow into two very different women. Sarah is stable and stalwart, settling into an unhappy marriage. Emily is precocious and independent, struggling with one unsatisfactory love affair after another. Richard Yates's classic novel is about how both women struggle to overcome their tarnished family's past, and how both finally reach for some semblance of renewal.Reviews:"Yates writes powerfully and enters completely and effortlessly into the lives of his characters . . . A spare yet wrenching tale."—The New York Times Book Review"An elegant, moving novel, quietly poignant."—Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post "Invigorating and even gripping. The dialogue is artful enough to sound natural. In his descriptive prose every word works quietly to inspire the illusion that things are happening by themselves . . . A literary achievement."—Paul Gray, Time "Exact, indisputable, and moving."—Richard Todd, The Atlantic "Extraordinarily good . . . Written with the force and simplicity of absolute truth."—The San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle "The effect is at once cruel and sweet, heartbreaking and brutal . . . The Easter Parade has an astonishing sweep and weight."—Stuart O'Nan, The Boston Book Review Views: 36
Over twelve generations the descendents of a space crash on a world completely covered in water had managed to adapt to their marine culture. Living in villages built on giant clumps of sea plants, they survived on the flora and fauna of the sea. But they have always been at the mercy of the kragen - gigantic squid-like monsters that prey on their fish flocks, and on them. The biggest of these is King Kragen, with whom the colonists can communicate, who has to be appeased. But one man has had enough of a life of slavery and sacrifice. But how can he convince his fellow men that King Kragen must be killed? And how can that be achieved in a world without weapons? Views: 36
Review"Trust Miss Read to brew up the gentlest of trivia into a cup of fictional Bovril tha will warm the hearts of her fans." (_New York times Book Review (Feb 11, 1973)_ ) "This affectionate tale of English village life will delight all Miss Read's fans and charm those nostalgia-hunters in search of the simple life." (_Publishers Weekly_ ) Product DescriptionOpen the gate to Fairacre, America’s favorite English village. The two-hundred-year-old cottages known as Tyler’s Row, with charming leaded-glass windows and an arched thorn hedge over the gateway, are supposed to provide a haven of peace for their new owners, Peter and Diana Hale. They plan to convert the middle two cottages into one, to create their own rural refuge. But beset by carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and bills, as well as their neighboring tenants, the redoubtable Sergeant Barnaby and the sour Mrs. Fowler, both longtime residents of Tyler's Row, the couple soon have cause to ponder their decision. Fairacre is not the utopia they expect, and the Hales must adapt to ordinary life in a village full of extraordinary quirks. Views: 36
Jerome K Jerome struggled against poverty and obscurity, not to mention his improbable name, for many years before “Three Men in a Boat” made him a celebrity and the friend of other celebrities. A man of deep human sympathies and principles, he lived through and engaged with, a time — like our own — of unprecedented changes and inventions, most of which are commonplace now. Much of his writing, especially for the theatre, has now been forgotten, but a year before his death in 1927, he published his autobiography in the popular style he pioneered — still in daily use by journalists. Views: 36
These mad immortal stories, now surfaced from the literary underground, have addicted legions of American readers, even though the high literary establishment continues to ignore them. In Europe, however (particularly in Germany, Italy, and France where he is published by the great publishing houses), he is critically recognized as one of America's greatest living realist writers.Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany in 1920 and brought to America at the age of two. Eighteen or twenty books of prose and poetry, Bukowski, after publishing prose in Story and Portfolio, stopped writing for ten years. He arrived in the charity ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital, hemorrhaging as a climax to a ten year drinking bout. Some say he didn't die. After leaving the hospital he got a typewriter and began writing again—this time, poetry. He later returned to prose and gained some fame with his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man. After 14 years in the Post Office he resigned at age 50, he says, to keep from going insane. He now claims to be unemployable and eats typewriter ribbons. Views: 36
Serge Maisky has a record as long as your arm. In and out of jail all his life, he has dreamed for years of the Big Steal, that would set him up good. He recruits four professional accomplices and bribes one of the girls who works in the underground vaults of the Paradise City casino - for the take is going to be real heavy. No one is going to stand in his way, including the punk of a guard who appears at the time of the robbery. And it is just the tough luck of one of his partners-in-crime, if he gets shot in the belly, by the girl he was trying to rape. Or another partner, who is shot down by the cops. In fact, the lesser the number of partners, the more the share for Maisky. So when lovely, but sluttish Sheila and her unassuming husband, unwittingly take off with Maisky’s loot and bury it in their own garden, Maisky gets mad. Real mad…. Views: 36
A radio broadcaster and journalist for Edward R. Murrow at CBS, William Shirer was new to the world of broadcast journalism when he began keeping a diary while in Europe during the 1930s. It was in 1940, still a virtual unknown, that Shirer wondered whether his reminiscences of the collapse of the world around Nazi Germany could be of any interest or value as a book.Shirer's Berlin Diary, which is considered the first full record of what was happening in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich, first appeared in 1941. The book was an instant success. But how did Shirer get such a valuable firsthand account? He had anonymous sources willing to speak with him, provided their identity remained protected and disguised so as to avoid retaliation from the Gestapo. Shirer recorded his and others' eyewitness views to the horror that Hitler was inflicting on his people in his effort to conquer Europe. Shirer continued his job as a foreign correspondent and radio reporter for CBS unti... Views: 36
ReviewNabokov writes prose the only way it should be written—that is, ecstatically. (_John Updike_ ) Product DescriptionThe classic novel from the author of Lolita, brilliantly portraying one man's ruin through love and betrayal. "Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster." Thus begins Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark; this, the author tells us, is the whole story—except that he starts from here, with his characteristic dazzling skill and irony, and brilliantly turns a fable into a chilling, original novel of folly and destruction. Amidst a Weimar-era milieu of silent film stars, artists, and aspirants, Nabokov creates a merciless masterpiece as Albinus, an aging critic, falls prey to his own desires, to his teenage mistress, and to Axel Rex, the scheming rival for her affections who finds his greatest joy in the downfall of others. Published first in Russian as Kamera Obskura in 1932, this book appeared in Nabokov's own English translation six years later. This New Directions edition, based on the text as Nabokov revised it in 1960, features a new introduction by Booker Prize-winner John Banville.
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This is the job they have all been waiting for. The job that will set them up for life. A million dollars split five ways, who wouldn’t be interested? The only catch is that it’s the very definition of impossible…or is it? Armed with a brilliant plan, the four men and one woman think they can crack it. But as tensions in the group begin to mount and things start to go wrong, the million dollars feels more out of reach than ever. Even though it is right with them… FB2Library.Elements.CiteItem Views: 36
DID HE REALLY LOVE ANOTHER?Upon meeting Dr. Crispin van Sibbelt, Araminta Shaw found him to be bad tempered and, she had to admit, rather attractive! Staying in Holland to nurse a sick relative provided the perfect opportunity for her to fall in love with him. But even though Crispin talked of marriage, Araminta discovered there was someone else close to his heart. What was she to do? Views: 35
