For the first time in English, Vladimir Nabokov’s earliest major work, written when he was only twenty-four: his only full-length play, introduced by Thomas Karshan and beautifully translated by Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy.The Tragedy of Mister Morn was written in the winter of 1923–1924, when Nabokov was completely unknown. The five-act play—the story of an incognito king whose love for the wife of a banished revolutionary brings on the chaos the king has fought to prevent—was never published in Nabokov’s lifetime and lay in manuscript until it appeared in a Russian literary journal in 1997. It is an astonishingly precocious work, in exquisite verse, touching for the first time on what would become this great writer’s major themes: intense sexual desire and jealousy, the elusiveness of happiness, the power of the imagination, and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy. The play is Nabokov’s major response to the Russian Revolution, which he had lived through, but it approaches the events of 1917 above all through the prism of Shakespearean tragedy.ReviewThe variety, force and richness of Nabokov's perceptions have not even the palest rival in modern fiction. To read him in full flight is to experience stimulation that is at once intellectual, imaginative and aesthetic, the nearest thing to pure sensual pleasure that prose can offer -- Martin Amis He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language -- Anthony Burgess The power of the imagination is not apt soon to find another champion of such vigour -- John Updike About the AuthorVladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for the United States, where he wrote some of his greatest works––Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962)––and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.Thomas Karshan is the author of Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Play and editor of Nabokov’s Selected Poems. Previously a research fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, and Queen Mary, University of London, he is now a lecturer in literature at the University of East Anglia. Anastasia Tolstoy is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oxford, where she is writing a thesis on Nabokov. She is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. Views: 28
To help an old friend with a gambling problem, Brady confronts the Boston mobDalton Lancaster could have been a lawyer, but his heart wasn't in it. He quit Yale after his first year, and used his inheritance to go into the restaurant business, where he might have had some luck if he'd spent more time selling food and less time playing blackjack. As he gambled away his savings, restaurants, and family, his lawyer, Brady Coyne, stuck by him. So when Dalt is beaten up, but not robbed, by three mobsters, Brady can't help but think his friend is gambling again. But Dalton says he has kicked his vice. The attack wasn't a message to him—it was to his son.Having inherited his father's addiction, Robert is in even deeper trouble than his dad ever was. When he fails to square things with his creditors, he's kidnapped, and Brady is forced to gamble on a long shot: that Robert Lancaster is still alive. Views: 28
Jo Ravens is 32, divorced, and stuck in a rut. She wants two things in life—a new career as a private investigator and to lose the 60 pounds she packed on after her divorce.When she crashes her bike in a construction site, she lands on a girl with a large knife in her chest. Jo enlists her sister, Pepper, and their journalist friend, Jackie, to help solve the dead girl's murder. Things become creepy for Jo when the murdered girl appears in her dreams to offer unusual clues to her death.Jo's family adds to the antics of the three women. Mama caterwauls, Jackie's two children offer sleuthing assistance, and her brother, Hank, laughs at all of them from the sidelines. Views: 28
Save money by grabbing all three Swords & Salt tales in one collection. Tale 1: A Question of Honor With less than six months until his entrance exams for the famed Nurian warrior-mage academy, Yanko is sent to his uncle's salt mine for "hardening," as his father calls it. He expects endless days of physical labor; what he doesn't expect is to have to choose one of the mine's prisoners as a sparring partner. Not wanting his uncle to think him a coward, Yanko picks a big scarred man from Turgonia, a land known for its ruthless warriors. Only after his selection does he learn that he'll be expected to kill his opponent... before his opponent kills him. A Question of Honor is a 19,000-word novella. Tale 2: Labyrinths of the Heart After months of working in his uncle's mine, Yanko longs to see his family and friends again, especially Arayevo, the woman he has adored from afar since he was a boy. When she travels two days and asks to see him, his mind dances at the possibilities. But the mines are busy: there's a political delegate to humor, a maiden in distress to help, and a wedding that must go perfectly - or else. Yanko will be lucky if he finds a chance to talk to Arayevo before she disappears from his life forever. Labyrinths of the Heart is a 21,000-word novella. Tale 3: Death from Below A visit from Yanko's older brother is interrupted when an alarm blasts through the mine. Mutilated workers have been found dead in a newly opened tunnel. Yanko has been studying to become a mage, and his brother is a soldier, so they believe they are prepared to deal with this unknown threat, but what awaits them in the subterranean depths is nothing the mine has seen in its hundreds of years of operation. Death from Below is a 13,000-word novella. Total word count for all three adventures: 53,000 words. Views: 28
The Master Chefs dominated in the kitchen as well as the bedroom... Taryn Cummings never thought she could capture the most elusive bachelor chef's heart. As sexy Errol King is in France shooting his show, Taryn is in New York where she wrestles with newfound information that could change everything. Could their love be strong enough to overcome both their demons to have that happy ever after they both crave or is there another fate in store for them? - The Master Chefs Series is a Complete Series for 18 and up - Devour Me (Master Chefs #1) Savor Me (Master Chefs #2) Consume Me (Master Chefs #3) - Spin-Off Series Coming in 2014 - Burn Into Me** Views: 28
A complex story dealing with forgeries, people turning up alive who are supposed to be dead, and literary hoaxes. Views: 28
Many of the leading writers of crime fiction are women - Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell et al - but it still comes as a surprise to many that the first full-length detective novel was by one Metta Fuller whose The Dead Letter, under the alias Seeley Regester, appeared as far back as 1866, predating Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone by two years. In fact. women writers were instrumental in developing the new genre of detective fiction. This anthology selects stories from the late Victorian and Edwardian era including one of the Violet Strange stories by Anna Katharine Green, known as the "mother of the detective novel'; one of the Loveday Brooke stories by Catherine Pirkis, featuring an early private woman detective and a story by the Australian writer Mary Fortune who had written over 500 detective novels by the time Edward VII came to the throne. . . An absorbing collection belonging on the bookshelf of any serious crime fan. Views: 28
