Long considered one of Mordecai Richler’s most beloved and acclaimed novels, St. Urbain’s Horseman has now been adapted into a high-profile two-part CBC drama. The attention this star-studded and heavily promoted mini-series will receive will renew interest in the book among Richler fans and introduce many new readers to this modern classic, now available in this attractive tie-in edition.
St. Urbain’s Horseman is a complex, moving, and wonderfully comic evocation of a generation consumed with guilt – guilt at not joining every battle, at not healing every wound. Thirty-seven-year-old Jake Hersh is a film director of modest success, a faithful husband, and a man in disgrace. His alter ego is his cousin Joey, a legend in their childhood neighbourhood in Montreal. Nazi-hunter, adventurer, and hero of the Spanish Civil War, Joey is the avenging horseman of Jake’s impotent dreams. When Jake becomes embroiled in a scandalous trial in London, England, he puts his own unadventurous life on trial as well, finding it desperately wanting as he steadfastly longs for the Horseman’s glorious return. Irreverent, deeply felt, as scathing in its critique of social mores as it is uproariously funny, St. Urbain’s Horseman confirms Mordecai Richler’s reputation as a pre-eminent observer of the hypocrisies and absurdities of modern life. Views: 280
This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works. Views: 280
Salaambo is a historical novel by Gustave Flaubert, whose vivid plot bursts with exoticism, high drama and bloody violence. We join war-torn Carthage in the third century B.C., as the city is on the cusp of the Mercenaries\' Revolt. Uncertainty pervades the once-great capital, whose finances are in disarray as a result of the lengthy Punic Wars. As it cannot pay or fulfill the promises made to mercenaries it hired, many of these mercenaries turn on the city, with the intention of claiming their dues by force. The main character is Matho, a Libyan mercenary who leads his own company in an assault against the city of Carthage. He has his eyes set not merely on gold but on a strikingly beautiful woman named Salaambo, who is the daughter of Hamilcar, one of the city\'s leading generals. However, Salaambo proves more than just a mere beauty. She seeks to confound Matho, whose wits are blinded with lust, by stealing back the Zaïmph - a sacred, jewel-encrusted veil said to protect Carthage and its people. The Zaïmph carries immense importance both patriotic and religious, however it is also foreboding; it is said all who touch it will shortly die... Written by Flaubert immediately after he finished the realistic novel Madame Bovary, Salammbo is an enthusiastic departure from gritty realism into the entirely different genre of historical exoticism. The author invested much time into painstakingly researching the surviving accounts and most authoritative histories of Carthage, which to this day is one of the less fictionalized powers of ancient times. Views: 280
Rupert Hughes (January 31, 1872 – September 9, 1956) was an American novelist, film director, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, military officer, and music composer. He was the brother of Howard R. Hughes, Sr. and uncle of billionaire Howard R. Hughes, Jr. His three volume scholarly biography of George Washington broke new ground in demythologizing Washington and was well received by historians. A staunch anti-Communist, in the 1940s he served as president of the American Writers Association, a group of anti-Communist writers. Views: 280
Ten magnificent full-color plates complement Stevenson\'s action-packed sequel to Kidnapped, as David Balfour struggles to exonerate James Stewart, becomes a captive, and romances Catriona Drummond. Views: 279
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them. Views: 279
Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction, by Joseph Conrad, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
Biographies of the authors
Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
Footnotes and endnotes
Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
Comments by other famous authors
Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
Bibliographies for further reading
Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
One of the most haunting stories ever written, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness follows Marlow, a riverboat captain, on a voyage into the African Congo at the height of European colonialism. Astounded by the brutal depravity he witnesses, Marlow becomes obsessed with meeting Kurtz, a famously idealistic and able man stationed farther along the river. What he finally discovers, however, is a horror beyond imagining. Heart of Darkness is widely regarded as a masterpiece for its vivid study of human nature and the greed and ruthlessness of imperialism.
This collection also includes three of Conrad’s finest short stories: “Youth,” the author’s largely autobiographical tale of a young man’s ill-fated sea voyage, in which Marlow makes his first appearance, “The Secret Sharer,” and “Amy Forster.”
Features a map of the Congo Free State.
A. Michael Matin is a professor in the English Department of Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He has published articles on various twentieth-century British and postcolonial writers.
** Views: 279
Sometimes, you don't need romance…
Sir Brynn of Lochland has a serious problem. He's been captured by an evil vampire queen who wants to use him as her newest blood slave. But Brynn doesn't have a submissive bone in his body, and he intends to fight her every step of the way.
Can Brynn's willpower remain intact when pitted against Sorla's superior vampire strength, seductive skills, and underhanded cruelty, or will she ultimately take possession of both his mind…and body?
CONTENT WARNING: This is a VERY graphic erotic horror/fantasy novella. Expect blood, sex, some M/M content, and bad, bad words. Views: 279
Towards the close of the last century the Baron de Beaurepaire lived in the chateau of that name in Brittany. His family was of prodigious antiquity; seven successive barons had already flourished on this spot when a younger son of the house accompanied his neighbor the Duke of Normandy in his descent on England, and was rewarded by a grant of English land, on which he dug a mote and built a chateau, and called it Beaurepaire (the worthy Saxons turned this into Borreper without delay). Since that day more than twenty gentlemen of the same lineage had held in turn the original chateau and lands, and handed them down to their present lord. Views: 279
Set in a Greek village in 1942, and purportedly written from his imagination by a Danish man before he was picked up by the Gestapo and not seen again, here is Ariel Dorfman's haunting and universal parable of individual courage in the face of political oppression. Widows forms a testament to the disappeared--those living under totalitarian regimes the world over, who are taken away for "questioning" and never return.One by one, the bodies of men wash up on the shore of the river, where they are claimed by the women of the local town as husbands and fathers, even though the faces of the dead men are unrecognizable. A tug-of-war ensues between the local police, who insist that the women couldn't possibly recognize their loved ones, and the women demanding the right to bury their beloveds. As it evolves, the stand-off reveals itself to be a power struggle between love, dignity and honor, and the lesser god of brute force. A lesson in how power really works, and how it can be... Views: 279
The Norsemen in the West; Or America before Columbus. The Curtain Rises and the Play Begins. One fine autumn evening, between eight and nine hundred years ago, two large hairy creatures, bearing some resemblance to polar bears, might have been seen creeping slowly, and with much caution, toward the summit of a ridge that formed a spur to one of the ice-clad mountains of Greenland. The creatures went on all-fours. They had long bodies, short legs, shorter tails, and large round heads. Having gained the top of the ridge they peeped over and beheld a hamlet nestled at the foot of a frowning cliff; and at the head of a smiling inlet. We use these terms advisedly, because the cliff, being in deep shadow, looked unusually black and forbidding, while the inlet, besides being under the influence of a profound calm, was lit up on all its dimples by the rays of the setting sun. The hamlet consisted of one large cottage and half a dozen small cots, besides several sheds and enclosures wherein were a few sleepy-looking sheep, some lean cattle, and several half-starved horses. There was active life there also. Smoke issued from the chimneys; fresh-looking women busied themselves about household work; rosy children tumbled in and out at the doors, while men in rough garments and with ruddy countenances mended nets or repaired boats on the shore. On a bench in front of the principal cottage sat a sturdy man, scarcely middle-aged, with shaggy fair and flowing locks. His right foot served as a horse to a rapturous little boy, whose locks and looks were so like to those of the man that their kinship was obvious—only the man was rugged and rough in exterior; the boy was round and smooth. Tow typified the hair of the man; floss silk that of the boy. Everything in and around the hamlet bore evidence of peace and thrift. It was a settlement of Norsemen—the first Greenland settlement, established by Eric the Red of Iceland about the year 986—nearly twenty years before the date of the opening of our tale—and the hairy creatures above referred to had gone there to look at it. Having gazed very intently over the ridge for a considerable time, they crept backwards with extreme caution, and, on getting sufficiently far down the hill-side to be safe from observation, rose on their hind-legs and began to talk; from which circumstance it may be concluded that they were human beings. After talking, grinning, and glaring at each other for a few minutes, with gestures to correspond, as though on the point of engaging in mortal combat, they suddenly wheeled about and walked off at a rapid pace in the direction of a gorge in the mountains, the head of which was shut in by and filled up with cliffs and masses and fields of ice that overtopped the everlasting hills, and rested like a white crest on the blue sky. Vast though it seemed, this was merely a tongue of those great glaciers of the mysterious North which have done, and are still doing, so much to modify the earth’s economy and puzzle antiquarian philosophy; which form the fountain-head of influences that promote the circulation of the great deep, and constitute the cradle of those ponderous icebergs that cover the arctic seas.... Views: 279
A rediscovered masterwork from the famed Hungarian novelist Sándor Márai, Portraits of a Marriage is in fact a startling exploration of a triangle of entanglement.
A wealthy couple in bourgeois society, Peter and Ilonka appear to enjoy a fine union. Their home is tastefully decorated; their clothes are well tailored; they move in important circles. And yet, to hypersensitive Ilonka, her choice in décor is never good enough, and her looks are never fair enough to fully win the love of her husband, who has carried with him a secret that has long tormented him: Peter is in love with Judit, a peasant and servant in his childhood home. For Judit, however, even Peter’s affection cannot transcend that which she loves most—the prospect of her own freedom and a future without the constraints of the society that has ensnared all three in a vortex of love and loss.
Set against the backdrop of Hungary between the wars, Portraits of a Marriage offers further “posthumous evidence of [Márai’s] neglected brilliance” (Chicago Tribune) and his exquisite, acutely observed evocations of sacrifice and longing.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 279
The Blue Dragon / A Tale of Recent Adventure in China by Kirk Munroe : (full image Illustrated)The Blue Dragon, chosen as a title for this story, is the national emblem of China, adopted as such by a desire to flatter and propitiate that spirit of evil considered to be the most powerful. As the dragon is believed to be big enough and strong enough to overcome and devour all the other wicked genii who continually vex Chinese life, the wise men of the "Black-haired People" thought it best to have him on their side, and consequently accorded him the highest honor in their power to bestow. As we of America chose the eagle, strongest of visible air spirits, for our national emblem, so the Chinese chose the most powerful of invisible spirits in whose existence they believe as firmly as we do in the existence of things that we can see, hear, or feel.In the story thus entitled, I have endeavored to give an idea of what China has been, is, and may become through education and development, how she is regarded, and how her people are being treated by other nations, and what causes she has for resentment against those who are taking advantage of her feebleness to despoil her.While travelling in China, and trying to gain the Chinese point of view, I met so many charming people, so many men of intelligence and liberal education, honorable, broad-minded, and devoted to the uplifting of their unhappy country, that I became exceedingly interested in their cause, and anxious to aid it. With this object in view I am striving, through the medium of a story, to present it to those young Americans who, in the near future, will be called upon to decide the ultimate fate of the great Middle Kingdom. With them, more than with any other people, even including the Chinese themselves, will rest the decision, whether China shall remain a nation, open to the unobstructed commerce of the world, or become a series of petty colonial possessions devoted only to the interests of their several ruling powers. That my young readers may be guided to a wise and just solution of this great problem, is the sincere hope of their friend,Kirk Munroe.Biscayne Bay, Florida,January, 1904.CONTENTS1. A Stranger in a Strange Land2. America\'s Unfriendly Welcome3. Rob to the Rescue4. A Triumph for Jo\'s Enemies5. Threatened Violence6. The Sheriff Takes Prompt Measures7. The Sentence of the Court8. Jo\'s Enemies Prepare a Trap9. Jo Finds that He is Some One Else10. What Happened on the Way to China11. Accept a Kindness and Pass It Along12. From the Golden Gate to the Pearl River13. In the World\'s Most Marvellous City14. A Turn of Fortune\'s Tide15. In the Heart of Unknown China16. "Fists of Righteous Harmony"17. Leaping into Unknown Blackness18. A Supper of Sacred Eels19. An Exhibition of the Rain-God\'s Anger20. Rob Makes a Startling Discovery21. The Refugees of Cheng-Ting-Fu22. A Charge and a Race for Life23. Stealing a Locomotive24. The Timely Explosion of a Boiler25. In China\'s Capital City26. War Clouds27. China Defies the World28. Fighting Sixty Feet Above Ground29. Jo Heaps Coals of Fire30. The Capture of PekinILLUSTRATIONS"A HORSEMAN FLED BEFORE THEM"MAP SHOWING ROUTE FOLLOWED BY AUTHOR"AS POOR JO LOST HIS FOOTING AND FELL, ROB DASHED INTO THE MÊLÉE""HIS MADLY YELLING PURSUERS WERE NOW CLOSE UPON HIM""THE FUGITIVES MADE A CAUTIOUS ENTRY INTO THE SACRED PRECINCTS""HE WAS ABLE TO GAZE CALMLY AT HER WHEN THEY ONCE MORE WERE ESCORTED PAST THE CATHEDRAL""SO THEY DROVE ON, MILE AFTER MILE""THE SAVAGES FLED IN DISMAY BEFORE THAT CHARGE OF YELLING AMERICANS" Views: 279
