From Robert Silverberg’s “Earthmen and Strangers” anthology, 1966:
Eric Frank Russell is a towering Englishman whose first science-fiction stories were published in 1937. In the decades since then he has written dozens of notable short stones and such classic novels as Sinister Barrier and Three to Conquer . Cheerfully irreverent in person, Russell as a writer is usually breezy and hard-boiled, a teller of tough, fast-paced tales. He has dealt often and excellently with the theme of Earthman versus Alien, generally against a backdrop of an intergalactic war, and his sly spies were performing slick tricks long before James Bond first saw print. But there is nothing breezy, hard-boiled, tough, military, or sly about Dear Devil . Seldom has a being from another world been portrayed in science fiction with such warmth and compassion. Readers are grateful to Eric Frank Russell for his lively stories of action and adventure, but they will cherish him forever for the unique and wonderful Martian “devil” of this unforgettable story. Views: 34
L.J. Davis's 1971 novel, "A Meaningful Life," is a blistering black comedy about the American quest for redemption through real estate and a gritty picture of New York City incollapse. Just out of college, Lowell Lake, the Western-born hero of Davis's novel, heads to New York, where he plans to make it big as a writer. Instead he finds a job as a technical editor, at which he toilsaway while passion leaks out of his marriage to a nice Jewish girl. Then Lowell discovers a beautiful crumbling mansion in a crime-ridden section of Brooklyn, and against all advice, not to mention his wife'swill, sinks his every penny into buying it. He quits his job, moves in, and spends day and night on demolition and construction. At last he has a mission: he will dig up the lost history of his house; he will restore itto its past grandeur. He will make good on everything that's gone wrong with his life, and he will even murder to do it. "From the Trade Paperback edition." Views: 34
Do you dare step through the red door? Spencer Grant had no idea what drew him to the bar with the red door. He thought he would just sit down, have a slow beer or two, and talk to a stranger. He couldn’t know that it would lead to a narrow escape from a bungalow targeted by a SWAT team. Or that it would leave him a wanted man. Now he is on the run from mysterious and ruthless men. He is in love with a woman he knows next to nothing about. And he is hiding from a past he can’t fully remember. On his trail is a shadowy security agency that answers to no one — including the U.S. government — and a man who considers himself a compassionate Angel of Death. But worst of all, Spencer Grant is on a collision course with inner demons he thought he’d buried years ago — inner demons that could destroy him if his enemies don’t first. Views: 34
From the moment Mary Poppins arrives at Number Seventeen Cherry-Tree Lane, everyday life at the Banks house is forever changed. This classic series tells the story of the world's most beloved nanny, who brings enchantment and excitement with her everywhere she goes. Featuring the charming original cover art by Mary Shepard, these new editions are sure to delight readers of all ages.Only the incomparable Mary Poppins can lead the Banks children on one marvelous adventure after another. Together they meet the Goosegirl and the Swineherd, argue with talking cats on a distant planet, make the acquaintance of the folks who live under dandelions, and celebrate a birthday by dancing with their own shadows. And that’s just for starters!Review"As good as ever, and that's very good."--Providence Sunday-JournalReview"As good as ever, and that's very good."--Providence Sunday-Journal Views: 33
A Mike Hammer Novel. In this scintillating tale, Spillane's quick-fisted herohunts for the brutal killer of a red-head who got her kicks in all the wrong ways. 2 cassettes. Views: 33
Edith Wharton’s lacerating satire on marriage and materialism in turn-of-the-century New York features her most selfish, ruthless, and irresistibly outrageous female character.Undine Spragg is an exquisitely beautiful but ferociously acquisitive young woman from the Midwest who comes to New York to seek her fortune. She achieves her social ambitions—but only at the highest cost to her family, her admirers, and her several husbands. Wharton lavished on Undine an imaginative energy that suggests she was as fascinated as she was appalled by the alluring monster she had created. It is the complexity of her attitude that makes The Custom of the Country—with its rich social and emotional detail and its headlong narrative power—one of the most fully realized and resonant of her works.Review"Edith Wharton's finest achievement."--Elizabeth Hardwick About the AuthorEdith Wharton (1862-1937) was born into high society in New York City. After divorcing her husband in 1913 she took up permanent residence in France. Her many stories and novels were critical successes as well as bestsellers and she won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence in 1921. Views: 33
Who is Brigadier Ffellowes? To quote one of his listeners at the club, "He seemed to have served in every branch of Her Majesty's forces at one time or another, including all knows forms of Intelligence." The Brigadier himself will admit only to an artillery commission, yet none of his stories has anything to do with artillery. They are however, about the unnatural, about strange gods forgotten by recent civilizations, about drums beating under the tropical moon, weird cries, and eldritch howls and rites that civilized men thought had died with the building of the pyramids. Ffellowes is a catalyst, a focal point of dark forces, a man to whom things happen. Wherever he goes, on vacation or on routine business, he enters a world most people never see, except in their darkest dreams. Monsters pursue him, humans lay traps for him, supernatural beasts seek his destruction while the kindly, urbane, bluff soldier threads his way through a labyrinth of hideous perils like a tightrope walker, his iron nerve and years of experience his only defense against the powers and beings that prowl the lost fringes of the world. Sometimes the menace is physical, but sometimes the soul itself is in danger. For Ffellowes has tackled powers beyond any physical law, powers whose aim is to obliterate the human spirit. Those to whom the retired soldier tells his stories often start by trying to scoff. But, as the tale continues, the room silences, save for the tense breathing of men who cannot believe what they are hearing, and who cannot stop listening either, until the soft voice stops. Then, slowly, the real, everyday world comes back into focus. Listen to Ffellowes and see how well you sleep afterward. Views: 33
First published in 1973, Some Sweet Day is the story of the Turnbolt family in 1944, as told by six year old Gatewood Turnbolt, the eldest son. His relationship with his father, Will Turnbolt, a volatile, sometimes violent man, is a combination of wariness and love."It is an evocative, painful and lovely book that captures the immediacy and bewilderment of a child facing harsh imponderables for the first time."—Publishers Weekly"Without wasting a well-chosen word, Mr. Woolley fills in family ties, relationships with neighbors, the tone of the country. He suggests a raison d' être for Will's bitterness if not for his brutality. And he gets it all together in a commanding novel of childhood that surges with life." —New York Times Book Review Views: 33
Цикл о Крае Времени весьма необычен. Это не фэнтези, это не научная фантастика в обычном смысле этого термина, это - нечто иное. Край Времени - это когда "дни вселенной были сочтены". Герои этого цикла - люди, хотя человеческого в них не сильно много. Они всемогущи, а если их настигает смерть, то они легко могут возродиться, а главное - они не живут, они скорее играют в жизнь. Играют в любовь, в страдания, играют во что угодно, лишь бы занять время. Беспрерывные развлечения - вот смысл их жизни. Цикл полон языковых изысков, необычных способов построения речи и сюжета, странных имен героев, но при этом читается просто отлично. Легенды Края Времени - это сборник повестей о Крае Времени, позволяющий получше узнать обитателей этого столь необычного мира. Именно эти истории вскользь упоминались в Танцорах. Среди них: история греха Вертера де Гёте, рассказ о дуэли Лорда Акулы Неизвестного и, на мой взгляд, лучшая повесть о материнской любви и сыновнем непонимании... "Танелорн: Всё о Майкле Муркоке" http://www.moorcock.narod.ru/ Views: 33
Goyen passes on traditional conventions of plot and character. The House of Breath is an address to the people and places the narrator remembers from his childhood in small Texas town, Charity. The novel is a meditation on the nature of identity and origins, memory, and time's annihilation of life. This is the restored version, going back to Goyen's originally published version from 1950 with an afterword from Reginald Gibbons, professor of English at Northwestern University and the former editor of TriQuarterly Magazine. Views: 33
The Creator is a science fiction novelette by author Clifford D. Simak . It was published in book form in 1946 by Crawford Publications in an edition of 500 copies. It had previously appeared in the September 1935 issue of the magazine Marvel Tales . Views: 33
Marianne tells the story of Marianne d'Asselnat, whose fate—by virtue of her own courageous spirit, coupled with the pull of destiny—became inexorably entangled with that of her native France during the decades when it was responding to Napoleon Bonaparte's vision of its greatness. Born and orphaned in the 1793 Reign of Terror, rescued by a priest and raised in exile in England, Marianne married, only to lose—at one stroke of fate on her wedding night—her love, her fortune, her illusions and even her security. As she flees England; as she is smuggled into Napoleon's 1809 France (at war with England) with a letter of recommendation to Napoleon's Minister of Police, Fouché; as she is placed by Fouché in the dangerous position of spy in the home of Talleyrand; and as fate, the course of historic events, and the powers of pure chemistry combine to lead Marianne into a love affair with the Master of Europe himself—Napoleon Bonaparte—the reader is treated to a magnificent picture of France in the years of her glory. Here is all the pomp of the First Empire at its peak, as well as a fascinating record of Napoleon's political maneuvers and of the strange manners of the Parisian underground. Here, too, often in their own words, are the host of colorful, talented, often eccentric characters who orbited around the Emperor. And here, finally, is Napoleon Bonaparte in one of the liveliest, most believable portraits ever drawn of him. Juliette Benzoni has in Marianne created a book that is at once historical fiction at its best and a magnificently documented portrait of a great nation in its hour of glory—and of peril. Views: 33
