The landscape is flawless, the trees majestic, the flora and the fauna are right and proper. All is picturesquely typical of rural England at its best. Sir Giles, an MP of few principles and curious tastes, plots to destroy all this by building a motorway smack through it, to line his own pocket and at the same time to dispose of his wife, the capacious Lady Maude.
But Lady Maude enlists a surprising ally in her enigmatic gardener Blott, a naturalised Englishman in whom adopted patriotism burns bright. Lady Maude's dynamism and Blott's concealed talents enable them to meet pressure with mimicry, loaded tribunals with publicity and chilli powder, and requisition orders with wickedly spiked beer.
This explosively comic novel will gladden the heart of everyone who has ever confronted a bureaucrat, and spells out in riotous detail how the forces of virtue play an exceedingly dirty game when the issue is close to home. Views: 907
When suburban Claudia Kincaid decides to run away, she knows she doesn’t just want to run from somewhere, she wants to run to somewhere — to a place that is comfortable, beautiful, and, preferably, elegant. She chooses the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Knowing her younger brother Jamie has money and thus can help her with a serious cash-flow problem, she invites him along.
Once settled into the museum, Claudia and Jamie find themselves caught up in the mystery of an angel statue that the museum purchased at auction for a bargain price of $225. The statue is possibly an early work of the Renaissance master, Michelangelo, and therefore worth millions. Is it? Or isn’t it?
Claudia is determined to find out. Her quest leads her to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the remarkable old woman who sold the statue, and to some equally remarkable discoveries about herself. Views: 907
**The science fiction masterpiece continues in the “major event,”(* Los Angeles Times*) *Children of Dune*.**
With millions of copies sold worldwide, Frank Herbert’s Dune novels stand among the major achievements of the human imagination and one of the most significant sagas in the history of literary science fiction.
The Children of Dune are twin siblings Leto and Ghanima Atreides, whose father, the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, disappeared in the deserts of Arrakis. Like their father, they possess supernormal abilities—making them valuable to their aunt Alia, who rules the Empire. If Alia can obtain the secrets of the twins’ prophetic visions, her rule will be absolute. But the twins have their own plans for their destiny. Views: 907
A Hollywood millionaire with a terror of death, whose personal physician happens to be working on a theory of longevity-these are the elements of Huxley's caustic and entertaining satire on man's desire to live indefinitely. "A highly sensational plot that will keep astonishing you to practically the final sentence." -"The New Yorker." Views: 905
The young lady had just retired to her room when sounds of a struggle ensue, and cries of "Murder!" and revolver shots ring out. When her locked door is finally broken down by her father and a servant, they find the woman on the floor, badly hurt and bleeding. No one else is in the room. There is no other exit except through a barred window. How did the attacker escape?
First published in 1907, this intriguing and baffling tale is a classic of early 20th-century detective fiction. At the heart of the novel is a perplexing mystery: How could a crime take place in a locked room which shows no sign of being entered? Nearly a century after its initial publication, Leroux's landmark tale of foul play, deception, and unbridled ambition remains a blueprint for the detective novel genre. Written by the immortal author of The Phantom of the Opera, this atmospheric thriller is still a favorite of whodunit fans everywhere.
"The finest locked room tale ever written." — John Dickson Carr, author of The Hollow Man. Views: 904
Taylor Caldwell's superb new bestseller about a glamourously wicked widow and eleven extraordinary men of God who told wonderful stories is truly a modern materpiece. Views: 904
Now she looks with disarming candor at her own life and at the early years in England and America when she was "growing up tough." Here was no idyllic childhood. She is under no illusions about her parents, especially the strong-minded little mother who insisted that young Janet, as she was christened, could do the work of any able-bodied boy. "In fact," she muses wryly, "my parents probably invented Women's Liberation." thus forcing her into a fierce self-reliance which never allowed her to play "the big female con game" of a pampered, protected housewife. Views: 904
In the far future, Earth is a worn-out backwater and humanity is spread across the galaxy on worlds that began as colonies, but now feel like home, each with its own long history of a thousand years or more, and each with its own unique culture. One of the strangest is on Borthan, where the founding settlers established the Covenant, which teaches that the self is to be despised, and forbids anyone to reveal his innermost thoughts or feelings to another. On Borthan, the filthiest obscenities imaginable are the words "I" and "me." For the heinous crime of "self-baring," apostates have always paid with exile or death, but after his eyes are opened by a visitor from Earth, Kinnall Darival, prince of Salla, risks everything to teach his people the real meaning of being human.. Views: 903
In three months from the memorable day when his solicitor had informed him that he was a free man, Mr. Vanborough possessed the wife he desired, to grace the head of his table and to push his fortunes in the world--the Legislature of Great Britain being the humble servant of his treachery, and the respectable accomplice of his crime. Views: 903
The poignant sequel to "A Song of Sixpence."
The clinic stood high on an Alpine slope. Lush meadows, studded with autumn crocus, sloped steeply down. Across the valley, above the pinewoods, the high peaks were already dusted with snow. Like a toy railway, the line to Davos twisted and turned up along the mountain side.
Laurence Carroll breathed in the pure, clear air. A wonderful place, a not-too-demanding job as resident doctor to the convalescent children flown out from England; it was a million miles from his Scottish childhood, the struggles to qualify and the grinding, poverty-stricken years as a young GP in the Welsh mining valleys. He was relaxed. Happy.
But, soon to arrive at Zurich, a woman he had once known well, now a widowed mother, was to bring with her all the turmoil and anguish of his early years, flooding back into his casually ordered life. Views: 903
Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life. Through the character of Gordon Comstock, Orwell reveals his own disaffection with the society he once himself renounced. Views: 903
A most unusual series of crimes at a student hostel intrigues Inspector Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s Hickory Dickory Dock, especially when a simple case of kleptomania paves the way to murder.****
Hercule Poirot doesn’t need all his detective skills to realize something is troubling his secretary, Miss Lemon—she has made three mistakes in a simple letter. It seems an outbreak of kleptomania at the student hostel in which her sister works is distracting his usually efficient assistant.
Deciding that desperate times call for desperate measures, the great detective agrees to investigate. Unknown to Poirot, however, desperation is a motive he shares with a killer. . . .
** Views: 902
Porterhouse College is world renowned for its gastronomic excellence, the arrogance of its Fellows, its academic mediocrity and the social cache it confers on the athletic sons of country families. Sir Godber Evans, ex-Cabinet Minister and the new Master, is determined to change all this. Spurred on by his politically angular wife, Lady Mary, he challenges the established order and provokes the wrath of the Dean, the Senior Tutor, the Bursar and, most intransigent of all, Skullion the Head Porter - with hilarious and catastrophic results. Views: 902
The ghosts of Britain need a sanctuary. Castles with central heating, bogs drained for motorways, dismal forests cleared for car parks-there are few places left for a respectable ghost to haunt. Humphrey the Horrible (actually his name is simply Humphrey-he added "the Horrible" to help himself become horrible) is a small, mostly unsuccessful ghost in a family of ghastly ghouls. His mother worries. But Humphrey has enough pluck to befriend a smart, politically aware schoolboy, Rick Henderson, who is willing to take the ghosts' cause right to the top, to number 10 Downing Street-home of the Prime Minister. Views: 902
First published in 1956, this is a powerful portrayal of a middle-class Egyptian family confronted by material, moral, and spiritual problems during World War II. Views: 902
