The stories within SECOND VARIETY were written between 1952 and 1955,
while America was in the grip of McCarthyism. The concerns of the time
are reflected in stories such as "Second Variety", which tells of an
endless war fought by ever more cunning and sophisticated robots, or "Imposter" where a man accused of being an alien spy finds his whole
identity called into question. Using his marvellously varied, quirky
and idiosyncratic style, Dick speaks up for ordinary people against
militarism, paranoia and xenophobia. Stories In This VolumeThe Cookie LadyBeyond the DoorSecond VarietyJon's WorldThe Cosmic PoachersProgenySome Kinds of LifeMartians Come in CloudsThe CommuterThe World She WantedA Surface RaidProject: EarthThe Trouble with BubblesBreakfast at TwilightA Present for PatThe Hood MakerOf Withered ApplesHuman IsAdjustment TeamThe Impossible PlanetImposterJames P. CrowPlanet for TransientsSmall TownSouvenirSurvey TeamProminent Author Views: 59
From one of England's greatest living writers comes a new collection of exquisitely formed stories set in life's great playground.Relationships -- clandestine and legitimate -- are the theme: boorish chaps and their stalwart women ululate and hum; marriages and infidelities tick-tock and tick over; Fitzrovian passion flares; strong men turn to drink. Love, sex, loss, are captured in Mr Sillitoe's inimitable style.As well as the general theme of the union of the sexes, we have inspired insights into birth, boyhood, bereavement and aloneness in a collection of perfectly narrated observations, in which the reader participates in each extraordinary experience. Views: 59
The most ingenious criminal in the world came up with his most spectacular exploit. He hires for his team — a top weapons expert, who could steal and use the newest, most secret military equipment. — the best cat burgular, who could scale any heights. — a man whose extraordinary strength and ingenuity could conquer any obstacle. Faced with this audacious crime of the century, the world's politicians could only trust to UNACO and its team. Views: 59
A three-year-old unsolved murder could prove fatal for Thomas Pitt—and his familyWhen Thomas Pitt is required to reopen an unsolved murder case in exclusive Hanover Close, he doesn't know how dangerous it will be for his family—and himself. Three years before, Robert York, an important member of the British Foreign Office, was murdered. Pitt believes a mysterious woman may hold the key to the York's death, and his suspicion deepens when a York housemaid dies suddenly after a revealing talk with Pitt. Charlotte, meanwhile, goes undercover as a friend's country cousin to snoop around the drawing rooms of Hanover Close. Disaster hits home when Pitt himself is accused of murdering the woman he'd been seeking and is thrown in prison. Only Charlotte and her recently widowed sister, Emily, Lady Ashworth, stand between Pitt and the gallows. Ignoring the danger, Charlotte advances her charade, diving deeper into the confidences of the York family and their friends,... Views: 59
Now complete in one volume, two of Joe Lansdale's works: The Magic Wagon and Written With a Razor. The Magic Wagon:When the Magic Wagon comes to town, folks get a genuine medicine show that includes a wrestling ape, fancy shooting, and a peek at the petrified body of Wild Bill Hickok himself. They also get bottles of a whiskey-laced elixir to drown their aches and pains. Old Albert drives the wagon, a rawboned youngster named Buster Fogg does the odd jobs, and "champion" trick shooter and fast talker Billy Bob Daniels owns the show.Billy Bob claims to be the illegitimate son of Wild Bill himself. As storms hover in their wake, our intrepid trio (and one ape) make their way to a Godforsaken hole named Mud Creek, an East Texas town where the dark cloud of fate hovers and violence looms in the shadows... Written With a Razor:A long time ago, in this very galaxy, Joe R. Lansdale created a character named The God of the Razor. The God lives in another dimension, most of the time. Certain symbols, certain acts of bloodletting and violence, certain blades - one razor in particular - can open those doors. In this volume you will find a screenplay based on Joe R. Lansdale's novel NIGHTRUNNERS. The screenplay is written with Neal Barrett Jr., and though it was bought for Master of Terror - the series was canceled, and the movie was never filmed. Still - there is the screenplay - written in a style intended to play like a movie in your head.Along with that screenplay, you'll find three short stories with intros by the author, explaining bits and pieces of the evolution of The God of the Razor...you'll never look at a razor blade the same way again... Views: 59
Set in a thinly disguised but richly described Perth during the Depression, acclaimed Australian author Katharine Susannah Prichard's Intimate Strangers focuses on the difficult marriage between Elodie and her troubled war veteran husband, Greg.As Prichard's biographer Nathan Hobby writes, 'The characters' ponderings on how to find happiness and satisfaction in life and particularly marriage are themes which resonate today as well...'Intimate Strangers was first published in 1937 and adapted for television in 1981. Nathan Hobby's biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard, The Red Witch, will be released in May, 2022, by Melbourne University Press.Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883–1969) was a journalist, short story writer, playwright, pamphleteer, writer of children's books, and a novelist. Her best known novels include The Pioneers (1915) which won the Hodder and Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize for Australasia, Working... Views: 59
The story of how I, Julian Carter, and my precious two-year old son, Stephen, left Atlanta Georgia and found ourselves on a white sailboat, tossed about like a cork on a raging sea off of Australia's northern tip in 1963, is harrowing. From deep in the impenetrable jungles where New York Times bestselling author Ted Dekker was born and raised, comes OUTLAW, an epic adventure of two worlds that perhaps only he could write. Full of harrowing twists, sweeping violence, and wild love, Outlaw takes us beyond the skin of this world to another unseen.
But it pales in comparison to what happened deep in the jungle where I was taken as a slave by a savage tribe unknown to the world. Some places dwell in darkness so deep that even God seems to stay away.
There, my mind was torn in two by the gods of the earth. There, one life ended so another could begin.
Some will say I was a fool for making the choices I made. But they would have done the same. They, too, would have embraced death if they knew what I knew, and saw through my eyes. Views: 59
The brilliantly funny and heartwarming New York Times bestseller about a young woman who stumbles, then fights to build a new life after the death of her husband. 36-year-old Sophie Stanton loses her young husband to cancer. In an age where women are expected to be high-achievers, Sophie desperately wants to be a good widow?a graceful, composed Jackie Kennedy kind of widow. Alas, Sophie is more of a Jack Daniels kind. Downing cartons of ice-cream for breakfast, breaking down in the produce section of supermarkets, showing up to work in her bathrobe and bunny slippers?soon she?s not only lost her husband, but her job and her waistline as well. In a desperate attempt to reinvent her life, Sophie moves to Ashland, Oregon. But instead of the way it?s depicted in the movies, with a rugged Sam Shepherd kind of guy finding her, Sophie finds herself in the middle of Lucy-and-Ethel madcap adventures with a darkly comic edge. Still, Sophie proves that with enough humor and chutzpah, it is ... Views: 59
In this masterful and often surprising sequel to the acclaimed Duane's Depressed, the Pulitzer Prize- and Oscar-winning author of Lonesome Dove has written a haunting, elegiac, and occasionally erotic novel about one of his most beloved characters. Duane Moore first made his appearance in The Last Picture Showand, like his author, he has aged but not lost his vigor or his taste for life. Back from a two-week trip to Egypt, Duane finds he cannot readjust to life in Thalia, the small, dusty, West Texas hometown in which he has spent all of his life. In the short time he was away, it seems that everything has changed alarmingly. His office barely has a reason to exist now that his son Dickie is running the company from Wichita Falls, his lifelong friends seem to have suddenly grown old, his familiar hangout, once a good old-fashioned convenience store, has been transformed into an "Asian Wonder Deli," his daughters seem to have taken leave of their senses and moved on to new and strange lives, and his own health is at serious risk. It's as if Duane cannot find any solace or familiarity in Thalia and cannot even bring himself to revisit the house he shared for decades with his late wife, Karla, and their children and grandchildren. He spends his days aimlessly riding his bicycle (already a sign of serious eccentricity in West Texas) and living in his cabin outside town. The more he tries to get back to the rhythm of his old life, the more he realizes that he should have left Thalia long ago -- indeed everybody he cared for seems to have moved on without him, to new lives or to death.The only consolation is meeting the young, attractive geologist, Annie Cameron, whom Dickie has hired to work out of the Thalia office. Annie is brazenly seductive, yet oddly cold, young enough to be Duane's daughter, or worse, and Duane hasn't a clue how to handle her. He's also in love with his psychiatrist, Honor Carmichael, who after years of rebuffing him, has decided to undertake what she feels is Duane's very necessary sex reeducation, opening him up to some major, life-changing surprises.For the lesson of When the Light Goes is that where there's life, there is indeed hope -- Duane, widowed, displaced from whatever is left of his own life, suddenly rootless in the middle of his own hometown, and at risk of death from a heart that also doesn't seem to be doing its job, is in the end saved by sex, by love, and by his own compassionate and intense interest in other people and the surprises they reveal. At once realistic and life-loving, often hilariously funny, and always moving, though without a touch of sentimentality, Larry McMurtry has opened up a new chapter in Duane's life and, in doing so, written one of his finest and most compelling novels to date, doing for Duane what he did so triumphantly for Aurora in Terms of Endearment. Views: 59
Thomas C. Squire, creator of the hit documentary series Frankenstein Among the Arts, one-time secret agent and founder of the Society for Popular aesthetics, is attending an international media symposium in Sicily. It is here that he becomes involved with lovely, but calculating Selina Ajdina. Alongside the drama of the conference is the story of Squire’s private life—the tale of his infidelity, the horrifying circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the threatened future of his ancestral home in England. Selected by Anthony Burgess as one of the 99 best novels since 1939. Views: 59
SUMMARY:
“People who love dogs often talk about a ‘lifetime’ dog. I’d heard the phrase a dozen times before I came to recognize its significance. Lifetime dogs are dogs we love in especially powerful, sometimes inexplicable ways.”–Jon KatzIn this gripping and deeply touching book, bestselling author Jon Katz tells the story of his lifetime dog, Orson: a beautiful border collie–intense, smart, crazy, and unforgettable.From the moment Katz and Orson meet, when the dog springs from his traveling crate at Newark airport and panics the baggage claim area, their relationship is deep, stormy, and loving. At two years old, Katz’s new companion is a great herder of school buses, a scholar of refrigerators, but a dud at herding sheep. Everything Katz attempts– obedience training, herding instruction, a new name, acupuncture, herb and alternative therapies–helps a little but not enough, and not for long. “Like all border collies and many dogs,” Katz writes, “he needed work. I didn’t realize for some time I was the work Orson would find.”While Katz is trying to help his dog, Orson is helping him, shepherding him toward a new life on a two-hundred-year-old hillside farm in upstate New York. There, aided by good neighbors and a tolerant wife, hip-deep in sheep, chickens, donkeys, and more dogs, the man and his canine companion explore meadows, woods, and even stars, wade through snow, bask by a roaring wood stove, and struggle to keep faith with each other. There, with deep love, each embraces his unfolding destiny. A Good Dog is a book to savor. Just as Orson was the author’s lifetime dog, his story is a lifetime treasure–poignant, timeless, and powerful. Views: 59
