J. P. Donleavy has been writing now for forty-five years and, as he admits, an answer to the question why is ' difficult to dig out of a long past'. Yet over these pages he author's query is largely answered for him: he has written so much for so long because he writes so very well. From the banks of the Seine to the streets of the Bronx, from the stables of the Dublin Horse Show to cocktails at Claridge's, we are transported by these collected short pieces into the singular and spirited world of J. P. Donleavy. Bringing an uncommonly objective yet affectionate eye to his writings on his own birthplace, America, balancing unabashed adoration with good-humoured bewilderment in his depiction of his heart's home, Ireland, the author presents us with a fresh, engaging vista that could only be his own. Whether reviewing a book on sexual exercises for women or paying homage to Yeats, the impress is unmistakably Donleavy's. The initial publication of these pieces in various newspapers and... Views: 46
The dead should never be woken
Still grieving after the death of their young daughter Alice in a frenzied dog attack, Patrick and Louise Daley leave the city to try and find some peace in the Irish countryside, and the village of Wake Wood seems like the perfect place to start again.
But the residents are guarding a terrifying secret: they can resurrect the dead. However, the rules are strict, they will bring Alice back only if she has been dead for less than a year; and, after three days, she must be buried.
Desperate to see their daughter again, even for just three days, the Daleys agree to everything. But they have been lying from the start. And by the time the villagers realise, it's too late. Alice is alive and she does not want to go back... Views: 46
Unhappy in his simple life of work and more work, Hiram Oversher decides it’s time to find a bride and make a new life for himself. When he passes through the gateway he’s been warned about since childhood not to enter, his body awakens to a sensual calling and energy he cannot understand. He sees visions of a beautiful maiden, nude and in need of him. Inside the keep of Lord Beorolf, waking dreams and those during sleep reveal a secret Hiram longs to uncover and know. Views: 46
The bestselling author of SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN returns with a Buchan-esque thriller. “Tell you what, Leader, do you want to double your money?” “Double or quits?” “Of course double or quits. I’m having lunch at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford tomorrow with my uncle. If you can join us by one o’clock sharp tomorrow, I’ll tear up this cheque and write you another for six thousand pounds” It is a bet Richard Gaunt cannot resist - all he has to do is walk from London to Oxford in under twelve hours. As an ex-soldier he is up to the challenge. But what starts as a harmless bet turns into something altogether different when Richard is taken hostage by a mysterious stranger, Mr Khan, who makes him a highly unusual proposal. What he offers in return could transform Richard’s life. Traumatised by a tour of duty in Iraq, Richard feels he has nothing to lose. The love of his life won’t speak to him, he has lost every job he ever had and his friends have vanished. He therefore decides to accept Khan’s strange request - never imagining the places it will take him. Views: 46
What if you could predict your future – which political party you will vote for, what kind of person you will marry, which disease will end your life, whether your blue mood will fester into something more troubling, even debilitating. Would you want to know? Taking a uniquely intimate and cheeky approach to the personal genomics revolution, internationally acclaimed science writer Lone Frank swabs up her genetic code to explore who any of us are in the days when a catalogue of your full six billion DNA building blocks is available for $10,000 and the local Walgreens offers genetic screening tests to anyone. She challenges the august Nobel Prize winners and the hyperactive business mavericks who are pushing to map and decipher every fetus's genome within the next decade. She tests the potential to detect diseases early, as well as our capacity to develop chronic anxieties when our DNA is seen as a death sentence. She ponders whether personality, including her own... Views: 46
The Letter Killers Club is a secret society of self-described "conceivers" who, to preserve the purity of their conceptions, will commit nothing to paper. (What, after all, is your run-of-the-mill scribbler of stories if not an accomplished corruptor of conceptions?) The logic of the club is strict and uncompromising. Every Saturday, members meet in a firelit room filled with empty black bookshelves where they strive to top one another by developing ever unlikelier, ever more perfect conceptions: a rehearsal of Hamlet hijacked by an actor who vanishes with the role; the double life of a merry medieval cleric derailed by a costume change; a machine-run world that imprisons men's minds while conscripting their bodies; a dead Roman scribe stranded this side of the River Acheron. But in this book set in an ominous Soviet Moscow of the 1920s, the members of the club are strangely mistrustful of one another, while all are under the spell of its despotic President, and there is... Views: 46
About the AuthorMatthew Glass lives in the UK. Ultimatum, his first novel, was published by Atlantic Books in 2009. Views: 46
