Satirist, novelist, and keen observer of the American scene, Mark Twain remains one of the world's best-loved writers. This delightful collection of Twain?s favorite and most memorable writings includes selected tales and sketches such as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once, Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn, and A True Story. It also features excerpts from his novels and travel books (including Roughing It, The Innocents Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi, among others; autobiographical and polemical writings; as well as selected letters and speeches. The collection also reprints the complete text of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, including the often omitted raftsmen passage. Views: 35
For centuries the women of Aronsdale have lived freely among the green and misted valleys. Creatures of exotic beauty and sensuality, they possess powerful skills of enchantment.and young Allegro is no different. But her life - and Aronsdale's independence - is threatened when Jazid nomads invade, carrying Allegro into the desert as a prized trophy or worse. Until an unexpected ally falls under her spell. From the moment feared Jazid warrior Markus Onyx sees the alluring beauty, he knows he has found his queen. But even the promise of love cannot quell Allegro's determination to save her homeland. Summoning her powers, she casts herself north - out of passion's grip - and into the dark heart of conflict.. Views: 35
A thrilling tale of wartime espionage by the acclaimed Alistair MacLean.During World War II, Yugoslavian rebel forces struggle to resist the German occupation, even as a three-way civil war tears the nation apart. In the mist of this terrible confusion, three compatriots set out across their besieged country to relay the German battle plan and unmask a double agent. But where do their loyalties really lie? On this dangerous journey with dangerous companions, everyone's motives are uncertain—and no one is who he seems. Views: 35
Living among the ones and zeros of California's Silicon Valley—the coders and big-bucks brainiacs—the group of lower middle-class friends in this tale are trying to fashion futures out of whatever opportunities they can find. The group includes a would-be chef, a flirtatious (and unfaithful) waitress, a single mother with a tattoo of Bart Simpson on her shoulder, and an easy-going young man who must make some hard choices. Their story is about fortune cookies, class warfare, disease-fighting neuropeptides, strawberry rhubarb pie, and what it will take to be happy. Views: 35
The Guns of Navarone and its three sequels, in which the same characters are sent on other wartime missions, together in one volume for the first time to mark the 50th anniversary of the original book . THE GUNS OF NAVARONEMallory, Miller and Andrea are united into a lethally effective team. Their mission: to silence the impregnable guns set in the tall cliffs of Navarone. On their success or failure rests one of the most critical offensives of the Second World War. FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONEAlmost before the last echoes of the famous guns have died away, the three Navarone heroes are parachuted into war-torn Yugoslavia to rescue a division of partisans and fulfil a secret mission, so deadly that it must be hidden even from their own allies. STORM FORCE FROM NAVARONEThe surviving commandos are sent on a perilous journey through the Pyrenees to disable the greatest threat to the impending D-Day landings: the 'Werwolf' U-boats. But their Basque guides declare it mission impossible -... Views: 35
What's it all about?Alfie's not really a bad guy. It's just that he has this overwhelming desire for the ladies. You might say that birds are irresistible to him, sort of second nature. There's Ruby – 'a lustbox in beautiful condition'; Clare – 'you're all lathered in sweat, Alfie'; Siddie – 'my regular Thursday night bint, a bit leggy for my fancy, but you make a married woman laugh and you're halfway home'; and Annie – but who's counting? Certainly not Alfie. Three in one evening if necessary. And necessary is the right word . . . Views: 35
In a future less than fifty years away, the world is still as we know it. Time continues to tick by. The truth is that it is ticking away. A powerful few know what lies ahead. They are preparing for it. They are trying to protect us. They are setting us on a path from which we can never return. Views: 35
Roald Dahl is known for his humor! This joke book is an ideal companion to his beloved novels.Roald Dahl's Whoppsy-Whiffling Joke Book is a collection of hundreds of great jokes would make even the Trunchbull laugh! Inspired by Roald Dahl's wonderful world, these gigglesome gags are guaranteed to raise a chuckle from human beans young and old.CONTENT NOTE: The jokes in this book may cause reader to become the embodiment of the crying-laughing emoji. Side effects include but are not limited to stomach pains, tears of joy, falling off chairs, and flailing. Views: 34
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Shipping News is a celebration of Annie Proulx's genius for storytelling and her vigorous contribution to the art of the novel.Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a "head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips," is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just deserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle's Point, in a house empty except for a few mementos of the family's unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives.Newfoundland is a country of coast and cove where the mercury rarely rises above 70 degrees, the local culinary delicacy is cod cheeks, and it's easier to travel by boat and snowmobile than on anything with wheels. In this harsh place of cruel storms, a collapsing fishery, and chronic unemployment, the aunt sets up as a yacht upholsterer in nearby Killick-Claw, and Quoyle finds a job reporting the shipping news for the local weekly, the Gammy Bird (a paper that specializes in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents).As the long winter closes its jaws of ice, each of the Quoyles confronts private demons, reels from catastrophe to minor triumph -- in the company of the obsequious Mavis Bangs; Diddy Shovel the strongman; drowned Herald Prowse; cane-twirling Beety; Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio; a demented cousin the aunt refuses to recognize; the much-zippered Alvin Yark; silent Wavey; and old Billy Pretty, with his bag of secrets. By the time of the spring storms Quoyle has learned how to gut cod, to escape from a pickle jar, and to tie a true lover's knot. Views: 34
A treasure trove of Dahl! Amazing facts - some funny, some silly - and an original chapter from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory make this a splendiferous, surprising and delicious treat from the wonderful world of Roald Dahl! Views: 34
A sociopolitical misadventure from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner Frank Dawley is a working-class escapee. After twelve years of spiritual nullification at a factory in Nottingham, five years in an alienating marriage, and two burdensome kids, Frank is finally free. He has quit his job, burned his possessions, and sold his car, and is hitching a ride to wherever the road will take him. Haunting Frank's physical and existential travels is a ubiquitous inscription painted on nearly every street corner in England: BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Who is this Bill Posters, who is so relentlessly hounded by the authorities? To Frank, Bill—or William—becomes a symbol of the servile proletariat, the "put-upon dreg" whose hollow ideologies have bombarded Frank throughout his entire life. As an act of resistance, Frank becomes determined to reject—even to kill—the William... Views: 34
