Two English brothers meet, after a long separation, in India. Oliver, the idealistic younger brother, prepares to take his final vows as a Hindu monk. Patrick, a successful publisher with a wife and children in London and a male lover in California, has publicly admired his brother's convictions while privately criticizing his choices.
First published in 1967, A Meeting by the River delicately depicts the complexity of sibling relationships -- the resentment and competitiveness as well as the love and respect. Ultimately, the brothers' exposure to each other's differences deepens their awareness of themselves. In A Meeting by the River, Christopher Isherwood dramatizes the conflict between sexuality and spirituality that inspired his late writings. Views: 1 058
Affairs of honour between bucks and blades, rakes and rascals; and affairs of the heart between heirs and orphans, beauties and bachelors; romance, intrigue, escapades and duels at dawn: all the gallantry, villainy and elegance of the age that Georgette Heyer has so triumphantly made her own are exquisitely revived in these eleven stories of the Regency.
Georgette Heyer's historical accuracy and eye for a wonderful story of romance is unequalled, and in Pistols For Two we can see the skills which won her a devoted audience that continues to this day.
Stories in the book:
Pistols for two
A Clandestine Affair
Bath Miss
Pink Domino
A Husband for Fanny
To Have the Honour
Night at the Inn
The Duel
Hazard
Snowdrift
Full Moon Views: 1 058
From a high perch Benny discovers a clue to a hidden room with contents that surprise everyone. Views: 1 057
A book that deeply influenced the young Freud and was the inspiration for many artists, The Temptation of Saint Anthony was Flaubert's lifelong work, thirty years in the making. Based on the story of the third-century saint who lived on an isolated mountaintop in the Egyptian desert, it is a fantastical rendering of one night during which Anthony is besieged by carnal temptations and philosophical doubt. Views: 1 057
While fulfilling his dead father's dream of creating a prosperous farm in California, Joseph Wayne comes to believe that a magnificent tree on the farm embodies his father's spirit. His brothers and their families share in Joseph's prosperity and the farm flourishes - until one brother, scared by Joseph's pagan belief, kills the tree and brings disease and famine on the farm. Set in familiar Steinbeck country, *To a God Unknown* is a mystical tale, exploring one man's attempt to control the forces of nature and to understand the ways of God. Views: 1 057
This book is currently out of stock with a ready about date of December 31, 1999Ngugi wa Thiong'o is world-famous for his novels from Weep Not, Child to Matigari and for the political impact of his plays, which led to his detention in Kenya. He is presently Professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University. This collection of early stories displays Ngugi's immense skill as a storyteller. He vividly portrays a world of magic and superstition which has not yet been erased by the "white strangers" and their new religion. In "The Village Priest" the rainmaker still exerts deep-rooted power, while the priest cannot deal in certainties, nor work miracles to end the drought; and "A Meeting in the Dark" sees the central character caught in moral dilemma. Christian ideals and ancient tribal customs are shown in conflict, causing tragedy. His later stories reveal an increased political disillusionment and foreshadow the novels which have made him one of Africa's leading commentators. Views: 1 057
An extraordinary history of humanity's changing vision of the universe. In this masterly synthesis, Arthur Koestler cuts through the sterile distinction between 'sciences' and 'humanities' to bring to life the whole history of cosmology from the Babylonians to Newton. He shows how the tragic split between science and religion arose and how, in particular, the modern world-view replaced the medieval world-view in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. He also provides vivid and judicious pen-portraits of a string of great scientists and makes clear the role that political bias and unconscious prejudice played in their creativity. Views: 1 057
Ed Abbey called The Monkey Wrench Gang, his 1975 novel, a "comic extravaganza." Some readers have remarked that the book is more a comic book than a real novel, and it's true that reading this incendiary call to protect the American wilderness requires more than a little of the old willing suspension of disbelief. The story centers on Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III, who returns to the desert to find his beloved canyons and rivers threatened by industrial development. On a rafting trip down the Colorado River, Hayduke joins forces with feminist saboteur Bonnie Abbzug, wilderness guide Seldom Seen Smith, and billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., and together they wander off to wage war on the big yellow machines, on dam builders and road builders and strip miners. As they do, his characters voice Abbey's concerns about wilderness preservation ("Hell of a place to lose a cow," Smith thinks to himself while roaming through the canyonlands of southern Utah. "Hell of a place to lose your heart. Hell of a place... to lose. Period"). Moving from one improbable situation to the next, packing more adventure into the space of a few weeks than most real people do in a lifetime, the motley gang puts fear into the hearts of their enemies, laughing all the while. It's comic, yes, and required reading for anyone who has come to love the desert. Views: 1 057
La villa est magnifique, l'été brûlant, la Méditerranée toute proche. Cécile a dix-sept ans. Elle ne connaît de l'amour que des baisers, des rendez-vous, des lassitudes. Pas pour longtemps. Son père, veuf, est un adepte joyeux des liaisons passagères et sans importance. Ils s'amusent, ils n'ont besoin de personne, ils sont heureux. La visite d'une femme de cœur, intelligente et calme, vient troubler ce délicieux désordre. Comment écarter la menace ? Dans la pinède embrasée, un jeu cruel se prépare.
C'était l'été 1954. On entendait pour la première fois la voix sèche et rapide d'un « charmant petit monstre » qui allait faire scandale. la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle commençait. Elle serait à l'image de cette adolescente déchirée entre le remords et le culte du plaisir. Views: 1 057
Aunt Fanny knows when the world will end....
Aunt Fanny has always been somewhat peculiar. No one is surprised that while the Halloran clan gathers at the crumbling old mansion for a funeral she wanders off to the secret garden. But when she reports the vision she had there, the family is engulfed in fear, violence, and madness. For Aunt Fanny's long-dead father has given her the precise date of the final cataclysm! Views: 1 057
In addition to his stellar Necroscope series, Brian Lumley is highly regarded for his short fiction, for which he has won the British Fantasy Award. Beneath the Moors and Darker Places, a companion to The Whisperer and Other Voices, collects nine of Lumley's best long short works, many of them unavailable for decades in any form.
The Cthulhu Mythos of the immortal H. P. Lovecraft provides inspiration for much of Lumley's work, including "Dagon's Bell" and "Big C," both included here. The explosive creation of a new volcanic island off Iceland in 1967 led to "Rising with Surtsey," an homage not just to Lovecraft but to the great August Derleth. "David's Worm"-which takes an interesting view of "you are what you eat"-was published in a Year's Best Horror Stories and later adapted for radio in Europe.
The collection also includes the macabre "The Second Wish," published here for the first time with the author's original, intended ending, and "The Fairground Horror," first published in The Disciples of Cthulhu twenty-five years ago and not seen since save for a small press edition.
The title tale, Beneath the Moors, a complete short novel, has been unavailable in the US since its first publication by Arkham House in the early 1970s. It is considered to be one of Lumley's strongest short works; Tor is proud to restore this and the other pieces in this volume to Lumley's growing readership. Views: 1 057
Bringing to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era, this book tells the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players--some say the originator of jazz--who was, in any case, the genius, the guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place.
In this fictionalized meditation, Bolden, an unrecorded father of Jazz, remains throughout a tantalizingly ungraspable phantom, the central mysteries of his life, his art, and his madness remaining felt but never quite pinned down. Ondaatje's prose is at times startlingly lyrical, and as he chases Bolden through documents and scenes, the novel partakes of the very best sort of modern detective novel--one where the enigma is never resolved, but allowed to manifest in its fullness. Though more 'experimental' in form than either The English Patient or In the Skin of a Lion, it is a fitting addition to the renowned Ondaatje oeuvre.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 1 056
The second novel in Robertson Davies’ critically acclaimed Deptford Trilogy, The Manticore is a fascinating exploration, by an exquisite stylist, of those regions beyond reason where monsters live. Available as an eBook for the first time.
David Staunton, the son of Percy Boyd Staunton, travels to Switzerland. As he undergoes Jungian analysis for a lifetime of unhappiness and the trauma left by the death of his father, he repeatedly encounters a manticore—a monster with the head of a man, the body of lion, and the tail of a scorpion.
“He is to say the least a mature and wise writer.” Anthony Burgess Views: 1 056
Simply written, but powerful and unforgettable, *The Man Who Planted Trees * is a parable for modern times. In the foothills of the French Alps the narrator meets a shepherd who has quietly taken on the task of planting one hundred acorns a day in an effort to reforest his desolate region. Not even two world wars can keep the shepherd from continuing his solitary work. Gradually, this gentle, persistent man's work comes to fruition: the region is transformed; life and hope return; the world is renewed. Views: 1 056
"How dared you, in disregard of all decency, call me a goose?"
This lesser-known work is perhaps the perfect distillation of Nikolai Gogol’s genius: a tale simultaneously animated by a joyful, nearly slapstick sense of humor alongside a resigned cynicism about the human condition.
In a sharp-edged translation from John Cournos, an under-appreciated early translator of Russian literature into English, How The Two Ivans Quarreled is the story of two long-time friends who have a falling out when one of them calls the other a “goose.” From there, the argument intensifies and the escalation becomes more and more ludicrous. Never losing its generous antic spirit, the story nonetheless transitions from whither a friendship, to whither humanity, as it progresses relentlessly to its moving conclusion.
**The Art of The Novella Series
**Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. Views: 1 055
