Tim Kendall is 23 - a shy loner working in a department store outside London. The two most significant relationships in his life involve a young autistic boy, and the sinister Harold, with whom Tim plays role-playing games. Views: 58
Hugo Best Novella nominee (1990) Nebula Best Novella nominee (1990) Views: 58
THE HUMANS ARE DEADBut their history survives. The inspiring saga of a race that dared the stars—and the darkness between. The Rift is the River Darkness between the arms of the galactic spiral, a standing wave of nothingness, a region filled only with visions and voices, innocent terror and mortal atrocity, sacrifice, tragedy, victims.. .and heroes.A teenager finds an intimate friend in the utter void.A space hermit reunites with the lost love of his youth—twice.Explorers cross impassable chasms of language, biology, and hallucination to prevent a new age of war.Adventures of passion and courage are the seeds of this epic of humanity's conquest of the galactic frontier. And the epic becomes a whisper, echoing down the rays of starlight, shimmering up through time.... Views: 57
I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind," writes Ursula Le Guin in her introduction to Dancing at the Edge of the World. But she has, and here is the record of that change in the decade since the publication of her last nonfiction collection, The Language of the Night. And what a mind — strong, supple, disciplined, playful, ranging over the whole field of its concerns, from modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos, with an eloquence, wit, and precision that makes for exhilarating reading.|I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind," writes Ursula Le Guin in her introduction to Dancing at the Edge of the World. But she has, and here is the record of that change in the decade since the publication of her last nonfiction collection, The Language of the Night. And what a mind — strong, supple, disciplined, playful, ranging over the whole field of its concerns, from modern... Views: 57
Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Poul Anderson tells a breathtaking tale of Earth. Immortal humans take to the skies to travel to the stars and galaxies in a great space adventure.
Nominated for the Nebula Award in 1989. Nominated for the Hugo Award in 1990. Views: 57
In her ravishing and moving second novel, the bestselling author of In the Cut tells the story of Mamie Clarke, who sets out to lose herself in New York City.Having only previously known the fragile, magical world of her childhood on the lush Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, Mamie leaves college to visit her sophisticated aunt in New York. With her beautiful and self-destructive younger sister Claire in tow, Mamie must learn to make her way in a world of money, power, sex, and drugs. Moore’s sharp and witty book captures an unforgettable time and place—the Manhattan of the early 80s— and the powerful feelings engendered there.From Publishers WeeklyReturning to the Hawaiian setting of her highly praised first novel, My Old Sweetheart , Moore here evokes also the fashionably decadent milieu of the idle rich in 1980s Manhattan. Mamie Clarke grows up on the island of Kauai, desperately seeking the attention of her remote, "benignly distracted" mother. When she is 12, Mamie is sexually fondled by a trusted servant, a traumatizing event for which she feels she is to blame, and which leads her to despise her body and her femininity. Socially inexperienced and naive, at 21 she goes to New York to live with her scatty Aunt Alysse, one of a group of free-spending, indolent, vacuous, boozy and much-married womenall of them out to snare yet another man. Mamie is able to resist Alysse's meretricious values, but her younger sister Claire, who has reacted to their upbringing by becoming as irresponsible as Mamie is preternaturally guilty and responsible, eagerly enters into Alysse's sophisticated circle, where she falls prey to the drug culture. While Moore's spare but lyrical prose is compellingespecially when she describes the rhythms of island lifeher psychological portrait of Mamie eventually takes on an overwrought and rather hysterical tinge. Nonetheless, this is an engrossing novel, profoundly disturbing in its message of feminine guilt, yet satisfying in Mamie's eventual recognition of how to "purify" her soul. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalIn this coming-of-age novel by the author of My Old Sweetheart ( LJ 10/15/82), 20-year-old Mamie Clarke moves from Maui to New York, hoping to exorcize childhood ghosts that have left her emotionally numb. She achieves peace after a series of alternately amusing and sordid adventures with assorted urban cosmopolites. Unfortunately, few of the potentially interesting characters are fully realized; Moore's justly praised spare prose style here serves her ill as the dry vocalizations of an omniscient narrator. Repeatedly, the reader is told about rather than shown the characters' inner lives. When Mamie and her companions do speak for themselves, they command attention, as do vivid descriptions of Hawaii, but these moments are all too few. Not an essential purchase. Starr E. Smith, Georgetown Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 56
Sophie Corby thought every man was like her father and brothers—crazy for fox-hunting. Brought to London for a season, she was astonished to meet Sir Tony Farnham, who loved town, was indifferent to fox-hunting, and was possessed of polish and grace. Unfortunately, Sophie’s father had found a more acceptable (to him) candidate for her hand… Regency Romance by Patricia Wynn; originally published by Harlequin Regency Romance Views: 56
A ground-breaking page turner in the realm of speculative science fiction by Crawford Kilian.
What can a twenty-five-year-old with a spaceship do in a Solar System invaded by Gryphons? Freedom for Alex Macintosh was meaningless Views: 56
From Publishers WeeklyThe master of the spy novel has discovered perestroika , and the genre may never be the same again . Le Carre's latest is both brilliantly up-to-date and cheeringly hopeful in a way readers of the Smiley books could never have anticipated. Barley Blair is a down-at-heels, jazz-loving London publisher who impresses a dissident Soviet physicist during a drunken evening at a Moscow Book Fair. When the physicist attempts to have Barley publish his insider's study of the chaotic state of Soviet defense, British intelligence steps in. Barley, after extensive vetting by both MI5 and the CIA, is made the go-between for further invaluable information, and in the process becomes involved with the physicist's former lover, Katya. The portraits of American and British intelligence agents are, as always, wonderfully acute, and the plot is a dazzling creation. Le Carre's Russia is funny and touching by turns but always convincing, and the love affair between Barley and Katya, subtly understated, is by far the warmest the author has created. But the singing quality of The Russia House , written at the height of le Carre's powers, is its pervading sense of the increasing waste and irrelevance of ongoing cold-war machinations: "That is . . the tragedy of great nations. So much talent bursting to be used, so much goodness longing to come out. Yet all so miserably spoken for that sometimes we could scarcely believe it was America speaking to us at all." 350,000 first printing; BOMC main selection. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalA mysterious manuscript purporting to prove the Soviet defense system is unworkable is smuggled out of Moscow. It was intended for a flaky English publisher, a womanizing saxophone-playing boozer, but the smuggler has turned it over to British intelligence. In order to prove its authenticity, they recruit the publisher as an amateur spy and send him to Moscow to reestablish contact with the author. But the "truth" Barley Blair finds there is love and a purpose for his shambles of a life. As always with le Carre, this is a compelling spy story, a marvelous entertainment that is also as intelligent, witty, and brooding as many more self-consciously and less satisfying literary novels. It may not be the equal of The Quest for Karla trilogy or of a A Perfect Spy but it bears all the marks of a master, of the man who has both redefined and reanimated the espionage genre. BOMC main selection.- Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 56
This novel is a sequel to Damiano. Set against the turbulent backdrop of the Italian Renaissance this alternate history takes place in a world where real faith-based magic exists. Our hero is Damiano Dalstrego. He is a wizard's son, an alchemist and the heir to dark magics. Shattered by the demonic fury of his dark powers, Damiano Delstrego has forsaken his magical heritage to live as a mortal man. Accompanied only by the guidance of the Archanagel Raphael, the chidings of a brash young rogue, and the memory of a beautiful pagan witch, Damiano journeys across a plague-ridden French countryside in search of peace. But the Father of Lies reaches out once again to grasp him. And to avert the hellish destiny awaiting him, Damiano must challenge the greatest forces of darkness, armed only with the power of his love and the music of his lute. The final volume of this story is Raphael. Views: 56
The New York novel of television news, romance and sex, family and secrets, and men and women undone, Alexandra Waring, was originally published under the title West End. As Laura Van Wormer writes in the new author's note, "You may notice a different feel to the ending. That is because I have tried to restore it to something closer to the way I originally intended it, but was pushed to change." The novel is a sequel to Van Wormer's Riverside Drive, and also became a staple of women's fiction best sellers and lesbian fiction . The title character and several others go on to appear in nine more novels. "Alexandra Waring is too good to be true," wrote Harper's Bazaar about the character. "She has the well-bred good looks of Diane Sawyer, the sharp mind of Connie Chung, the cool professionalism of Mary Alice Williams—and the off-screen traumas of the late Jessica Savitch." "A terrific mix of office politics and... Views: 56
Fenton Hardy and his sons take opposite sides of the same case when a friend of Frank and Joe returns to town suspected of fronting designer watches, and the boys are forbidden by their father to come to his defense. Views: 55
In this powerful, eloquent, and elucidating essay, Marilynne Robinson has pinpointed exactly the motives and the mythology and the reality behind the destruction of our planet. The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Great Britain is a perfect metaphor for twentieth-century genocide. Not the small, insane eruptions of eradication that took place in Hitler's Germany, but rather that routine, day-to-day, thoroughly "democratic" envenomation of the planet by a current industrial magic (encouraged, or at least condoned, by almost everybody), which threatens to terminate everything on earth in the quite foreseeable future. Robinson's book is as powerful a contribution to the literature of revelation and protest as was that seminal photographic essay by W. Eugene and Aileen Smith on Minamata's disease fifteen years ago. It is as bloodcurdling as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, as thought-provoking and prophetic as the best works of people like Barry Commoner and Loren Eiseley. This is a work of great intelligence and fine investigative reporting. It is also a lucid interpretation of history, and very important in its discussions of the roots of current dilemmas. And lastly, Mother Country is courageous, and marvelous literature at its best. Views: 55
Bungling burglar John Dortmunder and his merry band of thieves are back in another classic, comic crime novel from the award-winning author of the new hardcover Baby, Would I Lie? Dortmunder and his gang plan to kidnap precocious kid Jimmy Harrington with the help of a crime novel outlining the perfect caper. Reissue. Views: 55
