Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor both professionally and personally, and to amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors--some real, some spectral--that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.
In exposing the jumble of motivations that drive Arrowby and the other characters, Iris Murdoch lays bare "the truth of untruth"--the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Charles's confrontation with the tidal rips of love and forgiveness is one of Murdoch's most moving and powerful novels. Views: 194
ReviewManvell and Fraenkel have produced...biographies of Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, and the men who tried to kill Hitler in 1944....To the best of my knowledge there are no better biographies in existence. (_The New York Review of Books_ ) Product DescriptionJoseph Goebbels was possibly the most dangerous and intelligent member of the Nazi hierarchy, not excluding Hitler himself. Without Goebbels’ flair for propaganda and spectacular organization the Fuehrer might never have come to power. If Hitler was the Nazi genius of destructive evil, Goebbels was its constructive genius, for it was through his practical and intuitive understanding of the instruments of ‘public enlightenment’ that the dictatorship was built and maintained. As the founder of the Reich Chamber of Culture, the Gauleiter of Berlin and the architect of the complex machinery of modern totalitarian propaganda, Goebbels can be considered one of the most significantly evil and portentous figures of the twentieth century. A remarkable picture emerges of Goebbels’ mind as a schoolboy, student, lover, unsuccessful author and apprentice in political agitation. Interviews with his friends and family shed light on his character as a young man. This book charts the full trajectory of Goebbels’ career, showing him at the apex of his power, a master of oratory, a brilliant and cynical showman and a ruthless administrator. Doctor Goebbels also portrays the man at the end, in the Berlin Bunker, the most devoted of the Fuehrer’s henchmen, committing the last gesture of propaganda of which he was capable: the sacrifice of his life and that of his wife and six children. Views: 191
“My favorite Leonard book….He writes the way Hammett and Chandler might write today, if they sharpened their senses of ironic humor and grew better ears for dialogue.”
—Dallas Morning News
“The best writer of crime fiction alive.”
—Newsweek
Dangerously eccentric characters, razor-sharp black humor, brilliant dialog, and suspense all rolled into one tight package—that’s The Switch, Elmore Leonard’s classic tale of a kidnapping gone wrong…or terribly right, depending on how you look at it. The Grand Master whom the New York Times Book Review calls, “the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever,” has written a wry and twisting tale that any of the other all-time greats—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, James M. Cain, Robert Parker…every noir author who ever walked a detective, cop, or criminal into a shadowy alley—would be thrilled to call their own. Leonard, the man who has given us U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (currently starring in TV’s Justified) is at his storytelling best, as a spurned wife decides to take a rightful—and profitable—revenge on her deceiving hubby by teaming up with the two thugs he hired to abduct her. Views: 186
Here, Jemima Shore, investigator and TV personality, arrives at Inverness Station for a Highland holiday. The sun is shining. Paradise, she thinks. But at that moment, she hears a voice: "All this way for a funeral."
So begins an adventure far removed from Jemima's visions of heather-covered hills, crystal-clear streams, romantic men in kilts, fairy-tale castles....Instead, she is plunged into the strange world of the aristocratic Beauregard family with its tensions, its jealousies, and its violence, in many ways a primitive world dominated by the land and its possessing. The setting is the Wild Island itself, sometimes enchanting, but too often frighteningly remote; the streams, not silvery, but brown and sinister; her holiday home, with its disturbing, sometimes terrifying, influences; the people--the dashing war hero Colonel Henry and his sons, the forthright old priest Father Flanagan, Bridie the family servant, Clementina the wayward heiress...none of them quite what they seem.
And then there is the specter of the Scottish "freedom fighters," in the shape of the self-styled army of the Red Rose.
It all adds up to a brilliantly told story of mystery and intrigue on the Wild Island. Views: 172
An elderly caretaker at a large outdoor exhibition, called Art in Nature, finds that a couple have lingered on to bicker about the value of a picture; he has a surprising suggestion that will resolve both their row and his own ambivalence about the art market. A draughtsman's obsession with drawing locomotives provides a dark twist to a love story. A cartoonist takes over the work of a colleague who has suffered a nervous breakdown only to discover that his own sanity is in danger. In these witty, sharp, often disquieting stories, Tove Jansson reveals the fault-lines in our relationship with art, both as artists and as consumers. Obsession, ambition, and the discouragement of critics are all brought into focus in these wise and cautionary tales. Translated into English for the first time by Thomas Teal. Views: 171
Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us." Views: 150
Epub‘I was born in Peckham over the Falcon Billiard Saloon On a wet Monday morning, which may account for a lot of things, says Patrick Alexander. It does not, however, account for his insight into the workings of the Secret Service, or his knowledge and expertise on the use and misuse of firearms. What he doesn’t know about those subjects could be written on the nose of a boat-tailed bullet. Perhaps his subsequent career as reporter and television writer and his travels in Russia and Europe writing special features explains his lately revealed talent as a master story-teller.The jungle was all around him.The jungle is all around you wherever you are, his mother used to tell him when he was small.They were living in Ruislip then and he would look out of the window half-expecting a tiger to spring out of the sweet peas at the bottom of the garden.He wished he were in Ruislip now. A childish wish, as childish as the tears he wept over Kirote, who had been dead since dawn and was beginning to smellMechanically he brushed the flies away from the body with one hand and his own tears with the other. He wept partly from grief and partly from self-pity, but mostly from physical weakness. He had been underfed, overworked and sporadically maltreated for two years. Kirote was the only friend he made in that time. He had shared a cell with him and six other Africans - five thieves and a simple-minded rapistHe would have liked to bury him, but there was no time for niceties. Leave him to the hyenas and vultures and whatever else scavenged that part of the rain-forest He took the knife they had taken from the dead guard and, sniffing back his tears, moved on through the bush, following narrow paths and animal tracks, always beading west, taking a bearing from the sun whenever he glimpsed it through the perpetual gloom.His feet were tender, his legs ached, he was thirsty. But he kept on at a rhythmic pace.They had been in the rain-forest six days, living off wild bananas and forest snails and yams stolen from the occasional plantation. Now he was alone and frightened. Views: 133
ALL SYSTEMS SNAFU!!!If anything could go wrong aboard the scoutship Dark Star, sooner or later it would. Now in the 20th year of their mission—destroying unstable planets—the ship and its crew were falling apart . . .After 20 years in space, isolation and loneliness have left their mark. The four surviving crew members are bored beyond relief. Only an occasional bomb run or another or the inevitable malfunctions aboard ship upsets the monotony.Then, Bomb #20 is primed, armed, and set to detonate—suddenly life on the Dark Star becomes frantic . . . Views: 127
In Galaxies Like Grains of Sand, Brian W. Aldiss tells the tale of mankind's future over the course of forty million years. Each of these nine connected short stories highlights a different millennia in which man has adapted to new environments and hardships.This ebook includes a new introduction from the author. Views: 122
The towering modern classic of passion and ambition that forever changed the way we see the courageous immigrants who came to America's shores -- the story of Anna Friedman transfixes us with the turbulent emotions of a woman and her family touched by war, tragedy, and the devastating secrets of one forbidden love... bittersweet and evergreen.From the Paperback edition. Views: 118
