A matchmaker finds love for a would-be rabbi; a shopkeeper dies because he cannot afford a doctor; a little girl steals candy; an angel visits a grieving tailor. Through Malamud's great gifts as a writer - humour and profound concern for the matter of human life - he transmutes the particular struggles of everyday sufferers into a strange poetry. Views: 26
This e-book only edition brings together the three novels of Philip K. Dick's VALIS trilogy.VALISWhat is VALIS? This question is at the heart of Philip K. Dick's groundbreaking novel, the first book in his defining trilogy. When a beam of pink light begins giving a schizophrenic man named Horselover Fat (who just might also be known as Philip K. Dick) visions of an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire still reigns, he must decide whether he is crazy, or whether a godlike entity is showing him the true nature of the world.The Divine InvasionGod is not dead, he has merely been exiled to an extraterrestrial planet. And it is on this planet that God meets Herb Asher and convinces him to help retake Earth from the demonic Belial. As the middlie novel of Dick's VALIS trilogy, The Divine Invasion plays a pivotal role in answering the questions raised by the first novel, expanding that world while exploring just how much anyone can really know —... Views: 26
Anita Brookner is justly famous for her elegant, almost Jamesian character studies of women poised on the threshold of life. But in Lewis Percy, she performs a remarkable leap of imaginative empathy in her portrayal of a man torn between the reassuring cloister of the library and the alluring but terrifying world of the senses, a world populated by women who persist in bewildering him. Views: 26
Inspector Angel Cardenas has seen murdered corpses like George Anderson's, but never a case like this. The victim's ID doesn't match his DNA, Anderson's wife and preteen daughter, Katla, are missing, their home has been turned into a time bomb-and mobs from three continents are all hunting Katla. Relying on his training as a nearly telepathic intuit, Cardenas embarks on a search for clues that leads him from the Strip's sex parlors and stimstick clubs, where kids are deadly and music can kill, to an undersea hideout where computer crimes are committed by criminal computers. Yet the closer Cardenas gets to the girl, the closer assassins are getting to them both...From Publishers WeeklyBestseller Foster (The Dig; Interlopers; etc.) elevates this well-paced, hard-boiled SF police procedural through the use of a highly imaginative setting the sprawling Montezuma Strip, which stretches along the old U.S.-Mexican border and constitutes "the western hemisphere's largest concentration of industry, commerce, assemblage, cutting-edge technology, and trouble." When police inspector Angel Cardenas investigates the case of a male corpse found with most of its internal organs missing ("They'd left the heart. Not much of a demand for hearts these days. Not with good, cheap artificial models flooding the market"), the victim turns out to have had two identities one as a local executive, the other as a Texas businessman. The plot thickens when the victim's booby-trapped house nearly kills Cardenas and his partner. After a few more near escapes, they establish that the corpse's "wife and daughter" are actually Surtsey and Katla Mockerkin, the ex-wife and 12-year-old daughter of crime lord Cleator Mockerkin, who wants them back in (literally) the worst way. By now Cardenas is sufficiently determined to follow them to Central America, aided by his training as an almost telepathic intuit. The amazingly versatile author plays with a full deck of futuristic elements notably, sapient apes led by gorillas and intelligent rogue computers that commit computer crimes. An ambiguous but nonetheless satisfying ending leaves open the possibility of another story about Inspector Cardenas. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalProlific author of perennial best sellers (e.g., The Dig), Foster offers an entertaining cross between the police procedural and sf genres. Angel Cardenas of the Namerican States Federales is a police inspector whose beat is the Strip, a megalopolis that encompasses Mexico and part of what used to be the United States. A routine investigation of what appears to be a mugging death soon leads to something unlike anything Cardenas has ever encountered, and he needs all of his considerable skills to track down the body and penetrate the wake of death that surrounds the victim's wife, Surtsey, and her daughter, Katla. Several parties are criminally intent on harming the women; Cardenas wants to find out why and how to protect them. Cardenas is an appealing character, and his antagonists are as colorful as they are imaginatively deadly. The only stiff character is 12-year-old Katla, who, even accounting for her renowned precociousness, comes across flat. But Foster makes up for that with a richly envisioned future of high-tech urban sprawl that calls to mind a less dystopian Blade Runner. For general fiction and sf collections.- Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 26
He was just seventeen when he came to Portmantle, a runaway like the rest of us...At Portmantle, a gated refuge for artists on the Turkish island of Heybeliada, the residents are given new names. In the seclusion of the grounds, a curious assembly of once-famous painters, writers, architects, and musicians strive to restore their faded talents.Elspeth 'Knell' Conroy is a celebrated mural painter who has lost faith in her art. She has found three kindred spirits at the refuge: MacKinney, a playwright wrangling with the dramas of her past; Pettifer, a jaded architect refining sketches for a vast cathedral; and Quickman, a novelist hiding in the shadow of his only masterpiece.But when a downbeat teenager named Fullerton is admitted, he disrupts their established routines. The boy is plagued by a recurring nightmare that steers him into danger, and Knell is left to pick apart the mystery. What is 'The Ecliptic' and how does it connect to their abandoned lives in London? Views: 26
The man every woman wants...wants her There are flings, and then there's real life. Minka Gerald, assistant to one of the country's top financiers, is too smart to confuse the two. But a business trip to Miami is the perfect place for a workaholic to let loose, and Oliver--brother to her boss's fiancée--is the ideal partner-in-pleasure. And with his heartbreaker reputation, that's as much as she expects. A ladies' man doesn't become a one-woman guy overnight. But once property developer Oliver Bauer has a taste of real connection, he wants more. Outwardly reserved but full of fire, Minka could hold his heart forever. Can he make her believe in him, before an old enemy's quest for revenge puts her safety and their sizzling new love in jeopardy? Views: 26
Olivia Grace Clarisse Mignonette Harrison is a completely average twelve-year-old: average height, average weight, average brown hair of average length, average brown skin and average hazel eyes. The only things about her that aren't average are her name (too long and princess themed), her ability to draw animals (useful for her future career as a wildlife illustrator), and the fact that she is a half-orphan who has never met her father and is forced to live with her aunt and uncle (who treat her almost like their own kids, so she doesn't want to complain).Then one completely average day, everything goes wrong: the most popular girl in school, Annabelle Jenkins, threatens to beat her up, the principal gives her a demerit, and she's knocked down at the bus stop . . .Until a limo containing Princess Mia Thermopolis of Genovia pulls up to invite her to New York to finally meet her father, who promptly invites her to come live with him, Mia, Grandmère and her... Views: 26
This thrilling conclusion to the Ozark Mountain Trilogy stirs heartfelt insights about the consequences of moral compromise even as it keeps readers riveted until the final page. Views: 26
