Apparently naive but subtly impertinent letters to Generals, Politicians, Journalists, Wingnuts and Chickenhawks.Disgracefully rude letters to Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, Christopher Hitchens, Noam Chomsky, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, General Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and many more. Views: 557
When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating H.M. Stanley's famous expedition - but travelling alone.
Despite warnings that his plan was 'suicidal', Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vessels including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of characters from UN aid workers to a campaigning pygmy, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers.
Butcher's journey was a remarkable feat, but the story of the Congo, told expertly and vividly in this book, is more remarkable still. Views: 557
A landmark D. H. Lawrence novel, considered to be among the best writing about Australia.After the Great War, Richard Lovat Somers, a writer, and Harriet, his wife, leave disillusioned Europe for Australia. Almost immediately, Somers comes into the orbit of the charismatic 'Kangaroo', who leads a shadowy political movement in Sydney. With its astonishing descriptions of the bush 'biding its time with a terrible ageless watchfulness', and its free-form narrative, Kangaroo captivates and provokes. First published in 1923, D. H. Lawrence's semi-autobiographical novel is among the most significant works in Australian literature.In Nicolas Rothwell's new introduction to Kangaroo, he writes: 'Everyone who seeks to find words that match the Australian landscape is...an inheritor of Lawrence. He made the bush a serious subject for literary endeavour.'D. H. Lawrence, born in England in 1885, is one of the key figures in literary... Views: 556
The Fool's Progress, the "fat masterpiece" as Edward Abbey labeled it, is his most important piece of writing: it reveals the complete Ed Abbey, from the green grass of his memory as a child in Appalachia to his approaching death in Tuscon at age sixty two. When his third wife abandons him in Tucson, boozing, misanthropic anarchist Henry Holyoak Lightcap shoots his refrigerator and sets off in a battered pick-up truck for his ancestral home in West Virginia. Accompanied only by his dying dog and his memories, the irascible warhorse (a stand-in for the "real" Abbey) begins a bizarre cross-country odyssey—determined to make peace with his past—and to wage one last war against the ravages of "progress.""A profane, wildly funny, brash, overbearing, exquisite tour de force." — The Chicago Tribune Views: 555
Sent to Serbia to investigate the murder of a colleague, a British secret agent is caught in a life-and-death struggle between the Communists and a band of underground Royalists called the White Eagles. A 1950s spy novel from the author of The Alexandria Quartet. Views: 550
The fourth of Trollope\'s Palliser novels, Phineas Redux is one of his most spellbinding achievements. Trollope shows a remarkably prescient sense of the importance of intrigue, bribery, and sexual scandal, and the power of the press to make or break a political career. He is equally skilled in portraying the complex nature of Phineas\'s romantic entanglements with three powerful women: the mysterious Madame Max, the devoted Laura Kennedy, and the irrepressible Lady Glencora (now Duchess of Omnium). In his introduction, John Bowen highlights the weaving of public events and private passions in the book, the strength of the female characters, and the analogies, both subtle and comic, between the different kinds of action (politics, hunting, romance) that the book contains. An appendix outlines the internal chronology of the series, providing a unique understanding of the six novels as a linked narrative. In addition, the book features a compact biography of Trollope and a chronology charts his life against the major historical events of the period. Numerous notes explain political, cultural, and social allusions. Views: 550
This short story originally appeared in the New York periodical "The Spirit of the Times" on December 20, 1879, as "The Magic Spectacles."
This early work by Wilkie Collins was originally published in 1879. Born in Marylebone, London in 1824, Collins' family enrolled him at the Maida Hill Academy in 1835, but then took him to France and Italy with them between 1836 and 1838. Returning to England, Collins attended Cole's boarding school, and completed his education in 1841, after which he was apprenticed to the tea merchants Antrobus & Co. in the Strand. In 1846, Collins became a law student at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1851, although he never practiced. It was in 1848, a year after the death of his father, that he published his first book, The Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A., to good reviews. The 1860s saw Collins' creative high-point, and it was during this decade that he achieved fame and critical acclaim, with his four major novels, The Woman in White (1860), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868). The Moonstone, meanwhile is seen by many as the first true detective novel - T. S. Eliot called it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels...in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe." Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions. Views: 549
One of the finest living writers in the English language, V. S. Naipaul gives us a tale as wholly un-
expected as it is affecting, his first novel since the exultantly acclaimed A Way in the World, published seven years ago.
Half a Life is the story of Willie Chandran, whose father, heeding the call of Mahatma Gandhi, turned
his back on his brahmin heritage and married a woman of low caste--a disastrous union he would live to regret, as he would the children that issued from it. When Willie reaches manhood, his flight from the travails of his mixed birth takes him from India to London, where, in the shabby haunts of immigrants and literary bohemians of the 1950s, he contrives a new identity. This is what happens as he tries to defeat self-doubt in sexual adventures and in the struggle to become a writer--strivings that bring him to the brink of exhaustion, from which he is rescued, to his amazement, only by the love of a good woman. And this is what happens when he returns with her--carried along, really--to her home in Africa, to live, until the last doomed days of colonialism, yet another life not his own.
In a luminous narrative that takes us across three continents, Naipaul explores his great theme of inheritance with an intimacy and directness unsurpassed in his extraordinary body of work. And even as he lays bare the bitter comical ironies of assumed identities, he gives us a poignant spectacle of the enervation peculiar to a borrowed life. In one man's determined refusal of what he has been given to be, Naipaul reveals the way of all our experience. As Willie comes to see, Everything goes on a bias. The world should stop, but it goes on. A masterpiece of economy and emotional nuance, Half a Life is an indelible feat of the imagination. From the Hardcover edition. Views: 545
Kassandra is disappointed in love, and then meets a strange Englishman on a Greek island.Kassandra is disappointed in love, but is happy enough living the single life. Then on holiday, she meets a strange Englishman named James on a Greek island. Views: 542
When the life you wanted has crumbled beneath your fingers, there’s nothing left to do but pick up the pieces and soldier on. You’ve done this before. But what happens when you no longer feel like yourself anymore? When fires spontaneously start-up around you, when you hear growling coming from underneath your bed, and you no longer recognize your face in the mirror. What happens then? Ghost-hunter Perry Palomino doesn’t have much time to find out. Now, the evil she used to hunt is a lot closer to home. It’s inside of her, taking over her life bit-by-terrifying bit, and there’s only one person who can help her. If part of her doesn’t kill him first. Views: 539
The greatest gift he could give her?A family...After losing her baby, and sacrificing her pediatric career, Emma spends every Christmas as an emergency locum—and this year she'll be covering A&E consultant Max Cunningham. Their one kiss years ago was unforgettable, and now that this ex-playboy is daddy to three orphaned children, he's dangerously tempting! But as Max welcomes Emma into his home, she soon wishes her family for Christmas could be forever..."I read this in one sitting. This was such a heart-felt story. I loved the characters. The author really did a fantastic job.... I highly recommend this story to anyone. It was a real treat to read."—Goodreads on Pregnant with Her Best Friend's Baby"This book is Alison Roberts at the top of her game: a deeply emotional romance.... I'm not particularly generous with five-stars for romances...the book has to be exceptional. I thought this one... Views: 536
