The
private story of the world's most famous jockey. Lester Piggott, by the world's
most famous writer of racing thrillers. The inside story of the figure that
racegoers have cheered for thirty-seven years, yet hardly know. The unpublished
facts behind the punishments for rough riding in his youth, and the truth about
the accusations of stealing other jockey's mounts. Lester has never defended
himself against untrue press reports, and because of his reticence, been much
misunderstood. This book sets the record straight. Views: 103
A classic mystery from Dick Francis, the champion of English storytellers. Gene Hawkins is a fixer for his boss Mr Keeble: if Keeble has a problem, Gene goes and fixes it. It's that simple. Sometimes it requires the Luger he carries - mostly it doesn't. Now Keeble has summoned Gene back from a long-overdue holiday. It seems that a very expensive stallion has been taken in Kentucky. It's the third high-value kidnapping in a few years. Keeble wants his horse back. Gene is asked to go out there and find it. But what Gene doesn't know is that he's about to get involved with blackmailers and murderers. Looks like that Lugar will see some use... Praise for Dick Francis: 'As a jockey, Dick Francis was unbeatable when he got into his stride. The same is true of his crime writing' Daily Mirror 'Dick Francis's... Views: 103
COSIMO GRAZIANO ROSSELLI. A Mafia assassin who prides himself on his humanity: his victims feel nothing as they die; they simply cease to exist.When newly promoted Detective Sergeant Jennifer Cotton's close friend Detective Superintendent Trisha McVie disappears in mysterious circumstances, a huge search throughout the UK's East Midlands proves fruitless and frustrating.Little does Jennifer realise that the person behind her friend's disappearance is far closer to home than she imagines.Little does she realise that an elderly man she sees sitting with his placid pug dog in a pub in central Nottingham is the enigmatic assassin Cosimo Graziano Rosselli.Little does she realise that Cosimo Graziano Rosselli is planning how and when to kill her."It will be instant, amore. One moment she will be alive, the next her soul will be on its way to heaven while her body crumples to a lifeless shell." The Cambroni Vendetta was previously published... Views: 103
A fascinating survey of Victorian literature from one of England’s greatest minds
Dishing out his signature brand of harsh wit, G. K. Chesterton casts a critical eye on the poets and novelists that defined the Victorian age in English literature. “Her imagination was sometimes superhuman—always inhuman,” he writes of Emily Brontë. “Wuthering Heights might have been written by an eagle.” Ranging from sharp denunciation to genuine admiration, Chesterton critiques the works of Tennyson, Ruskin, Eliot, Byron, and Shelley, among many others. He explores the influence of religion on the world of art and expounds upon the gridlock he believes to be permeating England in the early twentieth century.
Conversational in style but exacting in its commentary, The Victorian Age in Literature is an indispensable account of this influential era in literary history.
This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
**About the Author
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was a prolific English journalist and author best known for his mystery series featuring the priest-detective Father Brown and for the metaphysical thriller The Man Who Was Thursday. Baptized into the Church of England, Chesterton underwent a crisis of faith as a young man and became fascinated with the occult. He eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and published some of Christianity’s most influential apologetics, including Heretics and Orthodoxy. Views: 102
On the day she turned seventy-seven, internationally acclaimed mystery writer P. D. James embarked on an endeavor unlike any other in her distinguished career: she decided to write a personal memoir in the form of a diary. Over the course of a year she set down not only the events and impressions of her extraordinarily active life, but also the memories, joys, discoveries, and crises of a lifetime. This enchantingly original volume is the result.Time to Be in Earnest offers an intimate portrait of one of most accomplished women of our time. Here are vivid, revealing accounts of her school days in Cambridge in the 1920s and '30s, her happy marriage and the tragedy of her husband's mental illness, and the thrill of publishing her first novel, Cover Her Face, in 1962. As she recounts the decades of her exceptional life, James holds forth with wit and candor on such diverse subjects as the evolution of the detective novel, her deep love of the English countryside, her views of author tours and television adaptations, and her life-long obsession with Jane Austen. Wise and frank, engaging and graceful, this "fragment of autobiography" will delight and surprise P. D. James's admirers the world over.Amazon.com Review"At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest," wrote Samuel Johnson, and bestselling crime writer P.D. James took this maxim as a challenge, setting out to record "one year that otherwise might be lost." The result is a fascinating and reflective account, part diary and part memoir, of one very full year of Baroness James's life, interspersed with her memories and intelligent analysis of "what it was like to be born two years after the end of the First World War and to live for seventy-eight years in this tumultuous century." P.D. James grew up in Cambridge, England, between the wars and worked in the home office of the forensic and criminal justice departments, which sparked her interest in that area, though she did not become a published novelist until 1962 with Cover Her Face. She began to write full-time after her "retirement" in 1979, and along the way became a governor of the BBC before taking a seat in the House of Lords in 1991. Time to Be in Earnest is a lucid and penetrative work by one of the most influential figures currently involved with the arts in Britain. James reveals her vast scope for enjoyment, interest, and simply getting on with life (her husband, Connor White, died at the age of 44 in 1964 after years of mental illness), whether it be spending time with her children and grandchildren, musing on the hideous British architectural mistakes of the 1960s, or giving her view of the controversies continually surrounding the running of the BBC. At an age when many people would be considering slowing down, James seems constantly on the move, recording her day-to-day existence and her past with an alert and judicious eye. "I am sustained by the magnificent irrationality of faith," she states. "I inhabit a different body, but I can reach back over nearly 70 years and recognise her as myself. Then I walked in hope--and I do so still." --Catherine Taylor, Amazon.co.ukFrom Publishers WeeklyJames's fans will eagerly devour every word of this insightful and witty account of a year in the life of the master mystery author In the diary she began on her 77th birthday, in August 1997, James comfortably segues from daily activities into reminiscences about her childhood, early forays into writing and her career as a civil servant in Britain. She also weighs in on a variety of subjects, including the movie Titanic (the "usual Hollywood anti-British bias" irritated her), the publishing industry (promising novels are "promoted, packaged, and sold like a new perfume") and London's Millennial Dome, which inspired her "Dome Pome" (which begins, "O Dome Gigantic, Dome immense/ Built in defiance of common sense"). James reveals herself to be proper, dignified and reserved, but she doesn't reveal much more: readers expecting a traditional diary or spilled secrets are bound to be dissatisfied, though they can't say they weren't warned; in her prologue, James announces that she'll neither rehash painful memories nor record "the events of every day." The painful memories no doubt relate to her late husband's long battle with mental illness, which she mentions often but never fully explores. It's just as well she sticks to the latter promise, for while many of her activities will interest a wide range of readers, there are times when her musings do little to contradict her claim that she is simply "an elderly grandmother who writes traditional English detective fiction." 16 pages of photos not seen by PW. 50,000 first printing. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 102
In Tokyo a college student's discovery and eventual obsession with a stolen handgun awakens something dark inside him and threatens to consume not only his life but also his humanity. Nakamura's Japanese debut is a noir-spun tale that probes the violence inherent to aesthetics.On a nighttime walk along a Tokyo riverbank, a young man named Nishikawa stumbles on a dead body, beside which lies a gun. From the moment Nishikawa decides to take the gun, the world around him blurs. Knowing he possesses the weapon brings an intoxicating sense of purpose to his dull university life.But soon Nishikawa's personal entanglements become unexpectedly complicated: he finds himself romantically involved with two women while his biological father, whom he's never met, lies dying in a hospital. Through it all, he can't stop thinking about the gun--and the four bullets loaded in its chamber. As he spirals into obsession, his focus is consumed by one idea: that possessing the... Views: 102
Don Carpenter wrote about Hollywood like no one else. Hollywood Trilogy collects, for the first time, Carpenter's most significant Hollywood novels—A Couple of Comedians, The Turnaround and The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan—into a single volume. Here readers will find the jungle of B" movie Hollywood with no attempt to dress up the rawness and vulgarity of this glamorous" town. Carpenter's characters occupy every facet of Hollywood—there are naïve and shy young men trying to break into the business, one-picture wonders, comedy duos, beautiful starlets and middle-aged moguls wondering how exactly they got where they are. All are drawn with the wit, pace and above all, the authenticity that were Don Carpenter's trademarks.Following the Spring 2014 publication of Friday at Enrico's, Carpenter's forgotten" novel, finished and championed by Jonathan Lethem, interest in Carpenter's work is at an all time high. Hollywood Trilogy will... Views: 102
My name is Ted Spark. I am 12 years and 281 days old. I have seven friends.Three months ago, I solved the mystery of how my cousin Salim disappeared from a pod on the London Eye. This is the story of my second mystery. This summer, I went on holiday to New York, to visit Aunt Gloria and Salim. While I was there, a painting was stolen from the Guggenheim Museum, where Aunt Gloria works.Everyone was very worried and upset. I did not see what the problem was. I do not see the point of paintings, even if they are worth £9.8 million. Perhaps that's because of my very unusual brain, which works on a different operating system to everyone else's.But then Aunt Gloria was blamed for the theft - and Aunt Gloria is family. And I realised just how important it was to find the painting, and discover who really had taken it. Views: 101
Some mistakes can never be forgotten—or forgiven.Janie Klassyn was only fourteen years old when she made the blood pact with her friends. She could never imagine she was setting in motion the horrifying crime that would tear her peaceful prairie town apart.Twenty years later in California, school counselor Emma Grant struggles to keep her past buried. But when she finds a note on her car threatening to reveal her secret, it becomes harder to keep up the deception. Even her teenage stepdaughter suspects that Emma is hiding something. Now, with her celebrated true-crime author husband digging into a decades-old murder case for his next book, and a suspicious accident involving someone who's been following her, the perfect life Emma's built is crumbling, forcing her to take desperate steps to save it... Views: 101
A Newfoundland and Labrador Crime Thriller An elderly man is carried into the emergency department of the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, setting off a chain of events that leaves doctors mystified. He is the first of many victims suffering from severe nosebleeds and excruciating pain. Dr. Luke Gillespie and Nurse Agatha Catania investigate their symptoms but are unable to diagnose them. The only thing they have in common is Sgt. Nicholas Myra, an investigator with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. Dr. Gillespie and Sgt. Myra join forces to solve this twisted mystery. But the story takes a critical turn when Sister Pius, a nun from Mercy Convent, informs them about Wormwood: a disease she believes is created by God to kill perpetrators of the most heinous crimes. Wormwood becomes an international media storm when parish priest Father Peter Cooke holds a news conference on the steps of the Basilica of St. John the Baptist and announces that God has unleashed a plague upon... Views: 101
The dramatic, gripping new Cooper & Fry crime thriller from bestseller Stephen Booth sees the stunning Peak District backdrop prove fatal for one walking partyThey knew the danger, but they went anyway..."Almost before she'd stopped breathing, a swirl of mist snaked across her legs and settled in her hair, clutching her in its chilly embrace, hiding her body from view. It would be hours before she was found."The mountain of Kinder Scout offers the most incredible views of the Peak District, but when thick fog descends there on a walking party led by enigmatic Darius Roth, this spectacular landscape is turned into a death trap that claims a life.For DI Ben Cooper however, something about the way Faith Matthew fell to her death suggests it was no accident, and he quickly discovers more than one of the hikers may have had reason to murder their companion.To make things worse, his old colleague DS Diane Fry finds... Views: 101
