When an heiress moves to a villa on Italy’s Lake Nemi, a houseguest plots to take it—and more—in this novel by a prizewinning master of dark comedy.
When American heiress Maggie Radcliffe relocates to enchanting Lake Nemi, just south of Rome, she is determined to live in tune with ancient pagan rhythms of art and nature. At her new home—one of three that she owns—she is constantly surrounded by a cast of quirky characters, and her latest guest is old friend Hubert Mallindaine, an unrepentant grifter who claims to be a direct descendant of the goddess Diana, whose spirit is said to rest at Nemi.
As soon as Mallindaine arrives, Radcliffe’s vast material wealth begins to slip quietly out the door. Desperate to regain it, Radcliffe attempts to evict Mallindaine from her home, but a host of new problems threaten to destroy all that she has.
From the PEN Award–winning author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Driver’s Seat, and other modern classics, The Takeover is a suspenseful, acidic comedy about the clash between the conventions of old wealth and the inevitable tide of modernity. It is a testament to the mind and work of “the most sharply original fictional imagination of our time” (Sunday Times).
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland. Views: 1 164
This final classic collection of stories reveals Somerset Maugham's unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships. Brilliant tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice, the stories range from 'The Lotus Eater' in which a man has a vision of a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of 'The Outstation' and 'The Back of Beyond' in Malaya and South East Asia. Largely set in favourite Maugham country, this colourful collection brilliantly evokes the numbered days of the British Empire. Views: 1 164
Horrific tragedy becomes disturbingly ordinary in The Black House, a masterful collection of short stories, written during a particularly dark time in Patricia Highsmith's life. As readers will discover, the work eerily evokes the warm familiarities of suburban life: the manicured lawns, the white picket fences, and the local pubs, each providing the backbone for her chilling portraits. Seemingly small indiscretions and infidelities—along with love affairs and murder—consume the characters that commit them. Cycles of destructive jealousy overwhelm the cheating protagonists of "Blow It" and "When In Rome," and the title story explores small-town male camaraderie and the destructive secret it masks. This enthralling collection of eleven stories presents Highsmith at her finest: melancholy, suspenseful, and sizzling with a powerful awareness of human emotion. Views: 1 158
Driven by deep frustration, anger, and sorrow in the wake of yet another violent assault upon a First Nations woman in November 2014, dozens of acclaimed writers and artists have come together to add their voices to a call for action addressing the deep-rooted and horrific crimes that continue to fester in our country.
Kwe means woman in Ojibwe. More specifically, kwe means life-giver or life-carrier in Anishinaabemowin, the Ojibwe language. It is a pure word, one that speaks powerfully of women’s place at the heart of all our First Nations.
These women who bring light and life to our world are in peril. Aboriginal women in our country are three times more likely to face violent attack and murder than any other of their gender. We must take concrete steps to stop this and we must do it now.
A nation is only as good, is only as strong, as how it treats its most vulnerable and those of us in danger. This book is a call to action. It’s sometimes a whisper, sometimes a scream, but we speak our words as one when we demand justice for our more than 1200 murdered and missing Indigenous women. After all, they are our mothers, our daughters, our nieces, our aunties, our sisters, our friends. Views: 1 155
Selected and translated by the distinguished scholar Denys Johnson-Daivies, these stories have all the celebrated and distinctive characters and qualities found in Mahfouz's novels: The denizens of the dark, narrow alleyways of Cairo, who struggle to survive the poverty; melancholy ruminations on death; experiments with the supernatural; and witty excursions into Cairene middle-class life. Views: 1 152
Someone is hunting down the people she's promised to protect, but Ava's taste for battle is slowly disappearing. She's losing the people in her life, one by one, and without them, her inner light can only weaken. But the British Vampire Association has decided to take over Ireland, too, and to give the entire country a fighting chance, Ava must work with the Council and their secret weapons, and let the world see her true face. A sea of blood can't wash away the deaths that will come, but Ava will make sure everyone gets what they deserve... Views: 1 151
Have you ever wanted something so badly you would kill for it? Identified only by the hastily—and clumsily—chosen alias Charles Brockden, the narrator of this story finds a bookstore that instantly piques his desire. He must call it his own; he must add it to his already-extensive collection of bookstores. But surely the owner of such a fine shop wouldn't easily part with it. Brockden forms a plan to acquire the store in such a way that no one would ever suspect foul play: untraceable murder. And he knows he will be successful—because he has done it before. Views: 1 150
The final book in the Ava Delaney series.
When Ava first saved Carl from a vampire, she had no idea what would happen next. Thrust into a world of magic, secrets, and betrayal, she’s barely managed to survive. All of the choices she’s made have led her deeper into trouble, and now, a year later, it’s time to grab some control again.
Her enemies are making allies while Ava’s struggling to keep her friends. But even as the larger battles are fought, there’s another enemy creeping underneath, ready to plant distractions and take advantage of the aftermath.
The dark days are coming, quicker than expected. It’s time for Ava to prove herself for the last time, but her final deal will prove the most costly. Views: 1 150
*The Last Tycoon,* edited by the renowned literary critic Edmund Wilson, was first published a year after Fitzgerald's death and includes the author's notes and outline for his unfinished literary masterpiece. It is the story of the young Hollywood mogul Monroe Stahr, a character inspired by the life of boy-genius Irving Thalberg, and is an exposé of the studio system in its heyday. Views: 1 149
A definitive edition of stories by the master of supernatural fiction
Howard Phillips Lovecraft's unique contribution to American literature was a melding of traditional supernaturalism (derived chiefly from Edgar Allan Poe) with the genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1920s. This Penguin Classics edition brings together a dozen of the master's tales-from his early short stories "Under the Pyramids" (originally ghostwritten for Harry Houdini) and "The Music of Erich Zann" (which Lovecraft ranked second among his own favorites) through his more fully developed works, "The Dunwich Horror," The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and At the Mountains of Madness.
** The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories* * presents the definitive corrected texts of these works, along with Lovecraft critic and biographer S. T. Joshi's illuminating introduction and notes to each story.
Contains the following tales:
- The Tomb
- Beyond the Wall of Sleep
- The White Ship
- The Temple
- The Quest of Iranon
- The Music of Erich Zann
- Imprisoned with the Pharaohs aka Under the Pyramids
- Pickman's Model
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
- The Dunwich Horror
- At the Mountains of Madness
- The Thing on the Doorstep Views: 1 149
Montague Rhodes James (1862 - 1936), who wrote as M. R. James, was an English medieval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905-1918), and of Eton College (1918-1936). He is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are regarded as among the best in the genre. James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic cliches of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, James's protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story." This volume collects 27 of his classic tales, including:
CANON ALBERIC'S SCRAP-BOOK
LOST HEARTS
THE MEZZOTINT
THE ASH-TREE
NUMBER 13
COUNT MAGNUS
QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT
THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS
PART 2: THE FIVE JARS
THE DISCOVERY
THE FIRST JAR
THE SECOND JAR
THE SMALL PEOPLE
DANGER TO THE JARS
THE CAT, WAG, SLIM AND OTHERS
THE BAT-BALL
WAG AT HOME
PART 3: MORE GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY
CASTING THE RUNES
THE ROSE GARDEN
THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH
THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER CATHEDRAL
MARTIN'S CLOSE
MR HUMPHREYS AND HIS INHERITANCE
PART 4: A THIN GHOST AND OTHERS
THE RESIDENCE AT WHITMINSTER
THE DIARY OF MR. POYNTER
AN EPISODE OF CATHEDRAL HISTORY
THE STORY OF A DISAPPEARANCE AND AN APPEARANCE
TWO DOCTORS
And don't forget to search this ebook store for "Wildside Megapack" to see all the entries in the Megapack series -- including volumes of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, westerns, and much, much more!
This is version 2.0 of this ebook release, correcting several typos from version 1.0. Views: 1 143
An acclaimed novelist reflects on his violent past and a lifestyle that threatened to destroy him - until he was saved by writing.
After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. He was on a fast track to getting killed - or killing someone else. He signed on as a boxer.
Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays. The clash of worlds couldn't have been more stark - or more difficult for a son to communicate to a father. Only by becoming a writer himself could Andre begin to bridge the abyss and save himself. His memoir is a riveting, visceral, profound meditation on physical violence and the failures and triumphs of love. Views: 1 140
From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart—a long-awaited memoir of coming of age in a fragile new nation, and its destruction in a tragic civil war
For more than forty years, Chinua Achebe maintained a considered silence on the events of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Decades in the making, There Was a Country is a towering account of one of modern Africa’s most disastrous events, from a writer whose words and courage left an enduring stamp on world literature. A marriage of history and memoir, vivid firsthand observation and decades of research and reflection, There Was a Country is a work whose wisdom and compassion remind us of Chinua Achebe’s place as one of the great literary and moral voices of our age.
** Views: 1 137
The weird fiction short stories of H.P. Lovecraft from 1917-1935. Excludes collaborations.
The eBook’s table of contents is listed below. It includes the year each story was written.
The Tomb (1917)
Dagon (1917)
Polaris (1918)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)
Memory (1919)
Old Bugs (1919)
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919)
The White Ship (1919)
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919)
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)
The Terrible Old Man (1920)
The Tree (1920)
The Cats of Ulthar (1920)
The Temple (1920)
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920)
The Street (1920)
Celephaïs (1920)
From Beyond (1920)
Nyarlathotep (1920)
The Picture in the House (1920)
Ex Oblivione (1921)
The Nameless City (1921)
The Quest of Iranon (1921)
The Moon-Bog (1921)
The Outsider (1921)
The Other Gods (1921)
The Music of Erich Zann (1921)
Herbert West — Reanimator (1922)
Hypnos (1922)
What the Moon Brings (1922)
Azathoth (1922)
The Hound (1922)
The Lurking Fear (1922)
The Rats in the Walls (1923)
The Unnamable (1923)
The Festival (1923)
The Shunned House (1924)
The Horror at Red Hook (1925)
He (1925)
In the Vault (1925)
The Descendant (1926)
Cool Air (1926)
The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Pickman’s Model (1926)
The Silver Key (1926)
The Strange High House in the Mist (1926)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927)
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
The Very Old Folk (1927)
The Thing in the Moonlight (1927)
The History of the Necronomicon (1927)
Ibid (1928)
The Dunwich Horror (1928)
The Whisperer in Darkness (1930)
At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931)
The Dreams in the Witch House (1932)
The Thing on the Doorstep (1933)
The Evil Clergyman (1933)
The Book (1933)
The Shadow out of Time (1934)
The Haunter of the Dark (1935) Views: 1 134
