The third book in the Elric series introduces the reader to Moonglum, Elric's longtime companion. Much of the second novel moved away from the events of the first, and concentrated Elric's character on other adventures. The Weird of the White Wolf brings Elric back to Melniboné along with Moonglum, their friend Smiorgan Baldhead, and an army of raiders bent on overthrowing Yyrkoon, who stole the throne when Elric left Melnibonл for a year to travel the world. For those wondering, whether you've read the book or not: the “weird” of the title is an archaic definition of the term, given by Merriam Webster as “One's assigned lot or fortune, especially when evil.” And when he finds it, he's not all that happy about it. But that's to be expected when one's antihero has a crisis of conscience. Certainly not a slow book by any means, nor a weak one in the context of the series. And it's definitely a necessity as a prelude to what comes after it. Views: 23
Adrian Sherd is a teenage boy in Melbourne of the 1950s, the last years before television and the family car changed suburbia forever.Earnest and isolated, tormented by his hormones and his religious devotion, Adrian dreams of elaborate orgies with American film stars, and of marrying his sweetheart and fathering eleven children by her. He even dreams a history of the world as a chronicle of sexual frustration.A Lifetime on Clouds is funny, honest and sweetly told: a less ribald, Catholic Australian Portnoy's Complaint.Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. His first novel, Tamarisk Row, was published in 1974. It was followed by A Lifetime on Clouds, The Plains and five other works of fiction, the most recent of which is A History of Books. In 1999 he won the Patrick White Award. Ten years later he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature.textpublishing.com.au'Unquestionably one of the... Views: 23
MONSTER ON THE LOOSE
Sam Slade didn’t believe in Gorgo until he saw the monster’s hideous scaly face, its slimy green talons and the massive mouth that could swallow a killer whale.
Sam didn’t believe in love, either, until he met virginal Moira McCartin and helped her to discover the deep passions slumbering within her.
Moira taught him to love and Gorgo taught him to fear. Spewn from some sub-oceanic cavern, the monster catapulted from the sea, threatening death for all who challenged it.
Captured, it presented even more of a problem, for deep in the bowels of the sea was a larger, more vicious monster, even now rising from the depths to rescue its offspring and to destroy everything in its path—battleships, tanks and half of London! Views: 23
Selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Off to the Side is the tale of one of America's most beloved writers. Jim Harrison traces his upbringing in Michigan amid the austerities of the Depression and the Second World War, and the seemingly greater austerities of his starchy Swedish forebears. He chronicles his coming-of-age, from a boy drunk with books to a young man making his way among fellow writers he deeply admires including Peter Matthiessen, Robert Lowell, W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Allen Ginsberg. Harrison discusses forthrightly the life-changing experience of becoming a father, and the minor cognitive dissonance that ensued when this boy from the "heartland" somehow ended up a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter. He gives free rein to his "seven obsessions" alcohol, food, stripping, hunting and fishing (and the dogs who have accompanied him in both), religion, the road, and our place in the natural world which he... Views: 23
Jack Tawlin was a living legend in a land where gunmen die young. Now he wanted to be peaceable, never to see the inside of a jailhouse again. But Taw was marked for violence-by his fellow men, his brother, and the sheriff. So Taw agreed to go along with a daring holdup scheme, even though he'd been warned by his brother's wife: "You're the man they'll put the blame on!" Views: 23
-an amazon reviewer:Includes a Sector General Short Story and most of the others are set in the same universe. 'Countercharm' concerns Dr.
Conway's encounter with one of the hazards of his profession. Doctors at Sector
General get their xenomedical knowledge from 'Educator Tapes' the recorded minds
of ET physicians. The catch is you don't just get their medical knowledge but
*everything* including their sex drive - which can lead to embarrassing and
distracting consequences. In 'Kill or Cure' a Navy rescue team discovers their
wreck is 'not of this world'. They do their best to help the injured, sluglike
beings inside but do they dare let them contact their friends? An alien species
is deliberately formenting military tensions on Earth in 'Red Alert'. Is this a
preliminary to invasion? Or is something else going on? In 'Tableau' Earth's
first contact with another species results in war. Then an Earth soldier and one
of the alien Orligians find themselves trapped together in the wreckage of their
ships and discover it's all due to a horrible misunderstanding. In
'Conspirators' the laboratory animals aboard the the first intersteller explorer
plan their escape with the help of the ship's cat and a pet canary. In 'The
Scavengers' a Terran taskforce is assigned to 'clean up' those aliens who
survived the initial attack. And finally 'Occupation: Warrior' not only provides
the missing half to the first Sector General story in 'Hospital Station' but
gives the unexpected background of Fleet Commander Dermod. Contents
Countercharm
To Kill or Cure
Red Alert
Tableau
The Conspirators
The Scavengers
Occupation: Warrior
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Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinary impact--political, demographic, ecological, and psychological--of disease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the history of humankind. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter has been added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his new introduction to this updated editon.Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening. "A brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews), it is essential reading, offering a new perspective on human history.Amazon.com ReviewNo small themes for historian William McNeill: he is a writer of big, sweeping books, from The Rise of the West to The History of the World. Plagues and Peoples considers the influence of infectious diseases on the course of history, and McNeill pays special attention to the Black Death of the 13th and 14th centuries, which killed millions across Europe and Asia. (At one point, writes McNeill, 10,000 people in Constantinople alone were dying each day from the plague.) With the new crop of plagues and epidemics in our own time, McNeill's quiet assertion that "in any effort to understand what lies ahead the role of infectious disease cannot properly be left out of consideration" takes on new significance. From the PublisherMcNeill's highly acclaimed work is a brilliant and challenging account of the effects of disease on human history. His sophisticated analysis and detailed grasp of the subject make this book fascinating reading. By the author of The Rise Of The West. Views: 23
“Savages, they’re nothing but savages!”“They must be caught and punished!”“They must be taught their place!”“They must be obliterated like the plague!”
So began the reign of terror. Humans, already enslaved, were now to be exterminated. The Dragoons, a band of vicious apes, swore to drive the humans from their land, burn their huts, murder their children, and imprison the last sorry survivors in the Forbidden Zone.
Only Galen, Virdon and Burke stood between the doomed humans and their terrible fate. Only they could expose the Dragoons and their dangerous secret. Only they could keep the apes from destroying an entire race and every remnant of their dead civilization.
But in this desert of brutality, small flames of reason and kindness still flickered. An ape doctor and a frightened blind female become the unwitting aides of human salvation . . .
“The Surgeon,” based on the teleplay by Barry Oringer“The Deception,” based on the teleplay by Anthony Lawrence & Joe Ruby & Ken Spears Views: 23
“… only a madman would give a loaded revolver to an idiot. ” Views: 23
Survival has been the Sledge way since Reuben Sledge’s father first moved to Des Moines. Yet the family seems cursed, and one by one the Sledges are slipping away. Reuben’s oldest brother is hanged for the murder of his wife. Then another brother is committed to an asylum for spying on the woman he loves. But it’s the rape and disgrace of his beloved sister Nellie that drives Reuben into a deep despair. Into the depths of this depression wanders Tabor, lovely and vulnerable, who sets Reuben alive with the promise of her love. When Reuben learns that Tabor has descended into the City, he determines, in a moment of panic, to enter and bring her out. Thus begins the novel's second act, a harrowing journey through the horrors of the City and among a ghastly assemblage of dwellers who've crafted new lives for themselves in the underworld. Views: 23
