"Brunner was a giant of sf, dealing at his best with lived-in futures combining extrapolative exhilaration & the nightmare of future shock. 'Stand on Zanzibar' ('68) with its focus on overpopulation was his recognized blockbuster. It slightly overshadows its companion volumes 'The Jagged Orbit' ('69), 'The Sheep Look Up' ('72)--a scarifying polemic against pollution which ends with the stench of all America burning--& 'The Shockwave Rider' ('75), prophetically mapping problems of information overload, computer viruses, rampant hacking & the net. John Brunner was cursed by sanity & a hatred of superstition & cant combined with wide-ranging erudition. His peace-activism & left-leaning political views were perhaps factors in his sometimes disappointing US sales."--Dave Langford.
"There are two particularly identifiable phases in his writing career. In the 50s & early 60s, he was turning out numerous competent space adventures. In the late 60s & early 70s, he was writing near-future socially-oriented fiction, referred to as dystopias. Many of these books are written under the shadow of the VietNam war."--Dani Zweig.
"The girl walked naked out of nowhere on a winter night & to psychiatrist Paul Fidler it was as if one of his own obsessive visions of disaster took human form, bringing nightmares to life. Tiny, appearing harmless, she had half killed a man who tried to assault her. Piquantly lovely, she belonged to no known racial type. Of high intelligence, she spoke a language no one could be found to understand. Most remarkable of all, commonplace objects like clothing & cars were a mystery to her. They called her "Urchin." Himself haunted by visions of unrealized disaster, irrationally terrified by things he might have done wrong but escaped by chance, threatened by the failure of his marriage & with it his career, Paul sees in her a victim of his own fears made real. Has she truly wandered out of her own familiar world & been cast adrift--the loneliest of all lonely people--in another branch of the universe? Inexorably, as he scrapes at the barriers of secrecy that surround Urchin, he finds his fate becoming linked to hers. His life collapses about him until at last he has nothing left but Urchin herself & the vision she has given him of a world far better than any he has ever known. But does he really have either? Quicksand is a novel of today about a lone man facing a fantastic crisis. It will move you to pity & sadness." Views: 1 032
A story, based on real events, about a boy and a half-Arabian mare who enter the Palio, an annual race in Siena, Italy, with all the pageantry of a medieval contest. Views: 1 032
Darrell Rivers begins her happy life at Malory Towers two terms later than the other girls, but she soon makes firm friends with Sally, the steady one, and the adoring Mary Lou. Views: 1 032
Violence and unrest are sweeping through Roman Britain. Justin and Flavius find themselves caught up in the middle of it all when they discover a plot to overthrow the Emperor. In fear for their lives, they gather together a tattered band of men and lead them into the thick of battle, to defend the honor of Rome. But will they be in time to save the Emperor . . . Views: 1 031
Paul Mathry, a student about to graduate and embark upon a teaching career, finds out that his father was convicted for murder, a secret that his mother had hidden from him since his childhood.
Driven by an intense desire to see his father, Paul sets out to visit him in prison, only to find out that visitors are never allowed there.
From there, he meets the primary witnesses in the case that convicted his father, not all of whom are supportive to Paul's cause. He encounters several dead ends but he persists, with the help of a store girl named Lena and a news reporter.
His persistent campaign finally bears fruit. Rees Mathry, Paul's father, goes on appeal and is vindicated. The novel ends with Paul's father, a hardened, cynical man, seeing a fleeting hope for self-renewal and a purposeful life. Views: 1 031
In the wake of a demoralizing infiltration by a Soviet double agent, Smiley has been made ringmaster of the Circus (aka the British Secret Service). Determined to restore the organization's health and reputation, and bent on revenge, Smiley thrusts his own handpicked operative into action. Jerry Westerby, "The Honourable Schoolboy," is dispatched to the Far East. A burial ground of French, British, and American colonial cultures, the region is a fabled testing ground of patriotic allegiances?and a new showdown is about to begin. Views: 1 030
When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle. Views: 1 030
In 'Happy Days, ' Beckett pursues his relentless search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the universe, to time past and time present. Views: 1 030
It is likely that these journals will be regarded as one of Kafka's] major literary works; his life and personality were perfectly suited to the diary form, and in these pages he reveals what he customarily hidfrom the world." -- New Yorker
"What seems to hold the diaries] together is a kind of ruthless honesty and self-awareness." -- New York Times
Though Franz Kafka is one of the greatest and most widely read and discussed authors of the twentieth century, and continues to be a tremendous influence on artists of our time, he remains an elusive figure, his life and work open toendless interpretation.
These diaries reveal the essential Kafka behind the enigmatic artist. Covering the period from 1910 to 1923, the year before Kafka's death at the age of forty, they provide apenetrating look into Kafka's world -- notes on life in Prague, accounts of his dreams, his feelings for the father he worshipped and for the woman he could not bring himself to marry, his sense of guilt and of being anoutcast, and his struggles and triumphs in expressing himself as a writer.
Now, for the first time in this country, the complete diaries of Franz Kafka are available in one volume. They are not onlyindispensable to an understanding of Kafka the man and the artist, but are a compulsively readable, haunting account of a life of almost unbearable intensity. "From the Trade Paperback edition." Views: 1 030
Someday the town of Hambledon might forget the lies they told about their brilliant young doctor. But they could never forgive the truths he told about them.
From this compelling story of a doctor at war with the world he has been taught to heal, Taylor Caldwell has fashioned a novel of an unforgettable, angry idealist -- a novel in which the drama of new medical frontiers becomes part of a sweeping chronicle of love, death, desire, and redemption. Views: 1 030
Boa-Constrictors, paradoxical frogs, hoatzins, bush babies and tucotucos - they're all part of what Gerald Durrell casually calls his 'big family'. Each animal in his menagerie exhibits such curious habits and eccentricities. There was Cholmondely the chimpanzee, for example, who was 'king' of the collection, liked a good cigarette and his tea not too hot, but had a horror of snakes! Cuthbert the curassow loved to collapse across people's feet when they weren't looking.
Gerald Durrell describes not only the capture of these rare and exotic animals in Africa and South America, but also the problems of caging and feeding them. Footle, the moustached monkey, insisted on nose-diving into his milk, while the Kusimanses - nicknamed the Bandits - found Durrell's toes the most delectable thing in camp! Views: 1 029
Published in the bicentenary year of Frederick Douglass’s birth and in a Black Lives Matter era, this edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass presents new research into his life as an activist and an author. A revolutionary reformer who traveled in Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales as well as the US, Douglass published many foreign-language editions of his Narrative. While there have been many Douglasses over the decades and even centuries, the Frederick Douglass we need now is no iconic, mythic, or legendary self-made man but a fallible, mortal, and human individual: a husband, father, brother, and son. His rallying cry inspires today’s activism: “Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!”
Recognizing that Douglass was bought and sold on the northern abolitionist podium no less than on the southern auction block, this edition introduces readers to Douglass’s multiple declarations of independence. The Narrative appears alongside his private correspondence as well as the early speeches and writings in which he did justice to the “grim horrors of slavery.” This volume also traces Douglass’s activism and authorship in the context of the reformist work of his wife, Anna Murray, and of his daughters and sons. Views: 1 029
Only Lord Peter has the wit to find the solution to these twelve baffling mysteries
Some aristocrats spend their lives shooting, but Lord Peter Wimsey is a hunter of a different kind: a bloodhound with a nose for murder. Before he became Britain’s most famous detective, Lord Peter contented himself with solving the crimes he came across by chance. In this volume of short stories, he confronts a stolen stomach, a man with copper fingers, and a deadly adventure at Ali Baba’s cave, among other conundrums. These mysteries tax not just his intellect, but his humor, knowledge of metallurgy, and taste for fine wines. It’s not easy being a gentleman sleuth, but Lord Peter is the man for the job. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dorothy L. Sayers including rare images from the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. Views: 1 029
Five of Stefan Zweig's most compelling novellas are presented together in this powerful volume. Fantastic Night is the story of one transforming evening in the life of a rich and bored young man. He spends a day at the races and an evening in the seedy but thrilling company of the dregs of society. His experiences jolt him out of his languor and give him a newfound relish for life, which is then cut short by the Great War. Fantastic Night is joined by The Invisible Collection and Buchmendel, two of Zweig's most powerful works, which explore lives led in the single minded pursuit of art and literature against a backdrop of poverty and corruption. And finally, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Zweig's poignant and heartbreaking tale of the strength and madness of unrequited love, and The Fowler Snared complete the collection. Views: 1 028
This is the collection that true fans of horror fiction have been waiting for: sixteen of H.P. Lovecraft's most horrifying visions, including Lovecraft's masterpiece, THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME--the shocking revelation of the mysterious forces that hold all mankind in their fearsome grip. Views: 1 028
