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Showing 101 - 120 of 16222 items
By W. Somerset Maugham. 1951
24 stories from the master: THE VESSEL OF WRATH, THE FORCE OF CIRCUMSTANCE, FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, THE ALIEN CORN, THE…
CREATIVE IMPULSE, VIRTUE, THE MAN WITH THE SCAR, THE CLOSED SHOP, THE BUM, THE DREAM, THE TREASURE, THE COLONEL'S LADY, LORD MOUNTDRAGO, THE SOCIAL SENSE, THE VERGER, IN A STRANGE LAND, THE TAIPAN, THE CONSUL, A FRIEND IN NEED, THE ROUND DOZEN, THE HUMAN ELEMENT, JANE, FOOTPRINTS IN THE JUNGLE, THE DOOR OF OPPORTUNITYBy Derek Robinson. 2010
North Africa, 1942. Dust, heat, thirst, flies. A good clean fight, for those who like that sort of thing, and…
some do. From an advanced landing field, striking hard and escaping fast, our old friends from Hornet Squadron (Piece of Cake) play Russian roulette, flying their clapped-out Tomahawks on ground-strafing forays. Meanwhile, on the ground, the men of Captain Lampard's S.A.S. patrol drive hundreds of miles behind enemy lines to plant bombs on German aircraft. This is the story of a war of no glamor and few heroes, in a setting often more lethal than the enemy.By O. R. Melling. 2013
Olwen Mellory is called away from her life as a writer of fairy tales to take part in a week-long…
retreat on a remote Scottish island The Great Journey promises to be full of magical wisdom and visionary experiences It s an invitation she can t resist But within hours of arriving at the imposing Dunesfort House and meeting her companions in the circle Olwen s adventure takes an unexpected turn Before long her daytime explorations of mystical practices are paired with night-time dreams and phantasms that blur the line between the real and the imaginary As the enigmatic but vaguely sinister course director asserts his authority in a bid to create an act of modern alchemy Olwen begins to wonder in whom she can trust After a shocking event in the circle Olwen flees across the moors to the Callanish Stones only to find herself caught in an ancient moon rite Will this final calling free her from her personal demons forever or will it be the beginning of a new nightmareBy Brock Thoene. 2002
In this bestselling series Bodie and Brock Thoene have thrilled readers with an epic tale chronicling the struggle for the…
world's holiest and most turbulent city. As Jerusalem's Hope opens, strategist Moshe Sachar remains hidden in a secret tunnel beneath the Temple Mount, safely removed from the chaos of Israel's 1948 war of independence, while the funeral of an elder rabbi proceeds above him. Using the instructions the rabbi gave him before his death, Moshe opens another sacred scroll and is once again transported to the dramatic biblical story of a charismatic but mysterious prophet. As word of the miracles performed by this seer spreads, bloody violence erupts, threatening the future of the Roman state and revealing the prophet's surprising identity. .By W. Somerset Maugham. 2007
In 1897, after spending five years at St Thomas's Hospital I passed the examinations which enabled me to practise medicine.…
While still a medical student I had published a novel called Liza of Lambeth which caused a mild sensation, and on the strength of that I rashly decided to abandon doctoring and earn my living as a writer; so, as soon as I was 'qualified', I set out for Spain and spent the best part of a year in Seville. I amused myself hugely and wrote a bad novel. Then I returned to London and, with a friend of my own age, took and furnished a small flat near Victoria Station. A maid of all work cooked for us and kept the flat neat and tidy. My friend was at the Bar, and so I had the day (and the flat) to myself and my work. During the next six years I wrote several novels and a number of plays. Only one of these novels had any success, but even that failed to make the stir that my first one had made. I could get no manager to take my plays. At last, in desperation, I sent one, which I called A Man of Honour, to the Stage Society, which gave two performances, one on Sunday night, another on Monday afternoon, of plays which, unsuitable for the commercial theatre, were considered of sufficient merit to please an intellectual audience.By Adam Mansbach. 2013
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Go the F*** to Sleep, a rollicking, frenetic and hilarious jaunt”…
(San Francisco Chronicle) Raised in the shadow of two graffi ti legends from New York’s golden era” of subway bombing, Dondi Vance is less than thrilled to learn his father, Billy Rage, is back aft er sixteen years on the lam. But the transit cop who ruined Billy’s life and shattered his crew is running for mayorand must be brought down. Welcome to the Great American Graffi ti Novel. .By Karen Mack. 2013
His theories would change the worldand tear hers apart. A page-turning novel inspired by the true-life love affair…
between Sigmund Freud and his sister-in-law. It is fin-de-siècle Vienna and Minna Bernays, an overeducated lady’s companion with a sharp, wry wit, is abruptly fired, yet again, from her position. She finds herself out on the street and out of options. In 1895, the city may be aswirl with avant-garde artists and revolutionary ideas, yet a woman’s only hope for security is still marriage. But Minna is unwilling to settle. Out of desperation, she turns to her sister, Martha, for help. Martha has her own problemssix young children and an absent, disinterested husband who happens to be Sigmund Freud. At this time, Freud is a struggling professor, all but shunned by his peers and under attack for his theories, most of which center around sexual impulses. And while Martha is shocked and repulsed by her husband’s pornographic” work, Minna is fascinated. Minna is everything Martha is notintellectually curious, engaging, and passionate. She and Freud embark on what is at first simply an intellectual courtship, yet something deeper is brewing beneath the surface, something Minna cannot escape. In this sweeping tale of love, loyalty, and betrayalbetween a husband and a wife, between sistersfact and fiction seamlessly blend together, creating a compelling portrait of an unforgettable woman and her struggle to reconcile her love for her sister with her obsessive desire for her sister’s husband, the mythic father of psychoanalysis. .By Rilla Askew. 1997
Few first novels garner the kind of powerful praise awarded this epic story that takes place on the dusty, remorseless…
Oklahoma frontier, where two brothers are deadlocked in a furious rivalry. Fayette is an enterprising schemer hoping to cash in on his brother's talents as a gunsmith. John, determined not to repeat the crime that forced both families to flee their Kentucky homes, doggedly follows his tenacious brother west, while he watches his own family disintegrate. Wondrously told through the wary eyes of John's ten-year-old daughter, Mattie, whose gift of premonition proves to be both a blessing and a curse, The Mercy Seat resounds with the rhythms of the Old Testament even as it explores the mysteries of the Native American spirit world. Sharing Faulkner's understanding of the inescapable pull of family and history, and Cormac McCarthy's appreciation of the stark beauty of the American wilderness, Rilla Askew imbues this momentous work with her tremendous energy and emotional range. It is an extraordinary novel from a prodigious new talent. Strange Business, a collection of linked stories that won the 1993 Oklahoma Book Award, is available from Penguin. .By Herman Melville. 2007
Melvilles continuing adventures in the South Seasnow for the first time in Penguin Classics Following the commercial and critical success…
of Typee, Herman Melville continued his series of South Sea adventure-romances with Omoo. Named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island, Omoo chronicles the tumultuous events aboard a South Sea whaling vessel and is based on Melvilles personal experiences as a crew member on a ship sailing the Pacific. From recruiting among the natives for sailors to handling deserters and even mutiny, Melville gives a first-person account of life as a sailor during the nineteenth century filled with colorful characters and vivid descriptions of the far-flung locales of Polynesia. .By John Steinbeck. 2002
Steinbeck's tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, dependant on one another for both physical and…
emotional survival Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, including longtime friend Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Dora, Mack and his boys, Lee Chong, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of his most humorous and poignant works. In her introduction, Susan Shillinglaw shows how the novel expresses, both in style and theme, much that is essentially Steinbeck: "scientific detachment, empathy toward the lonely and depressed...and, at the darkest level...the terror of isolation and nothingness."For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.From the Trade Paperback edition.By Edith Wharton.
By Kim Edwards. 1997
Young, fiery and bright, Eshlaini has her whole future ahead of her - until her father condemns her to a…
life of spinsterhood. Joyce has settled into Malaysian life after thirty years as an ex-pat wife - or so she thinks, until a newcomer arrives and reveals just how little of her home she knows. Jade Moon wants the best for her family - but, surrounded by Americans who reject her Korean traditions, she must first work out what 'the best' means. Though cultures and distances separate them, their experiences reflect our universal fears and desires. From a breathtaking island off Singapore to upstate New York and France, Kim Edwards takes in the world, compassionately and gracefully exploring the obstacles of time, place and circumstance in all of our quests for love, happiness and acceptance.By Sheila Kohler. 2012
An erotic tale of passion and power and their dangerous consequences In 1978, Dawit, a young, beautiful, and educated Ethiopian…
refugee, roams the streets of Paris. By chance, he spots the famous French author M., who at sixty is at the height of her fame. Seduced by Dawit's grace and his moving story, M. invites him to live with her. He makes himself indispensable, or so he thinks. When M. brings him to her Sardinian villa, beside the Bay of Foxes, Dawit finds love and temptation—and perfects the art of deception.By Washington Irving. 2012
By Jerome K. Jerome.
All Roads Lead to Calvary is a 1919 novel by the British writer Jerome K. Jerome. It was one of…
the last works written by Jerome, better known for his Three Men in a Boat, and shows the influence of the First World War on him. It is a Bildungsroman in which a Cambridge University educated woman Joan Allway becomes a journalist and then a wartime ambulance driver. She encounters various different people, gaining new experiences and confronting many of the moral issues of the day.By Anonymous, Patrick Hanan. 2016
First published anonymously in 1804--its author remains unknown--Mirage is set in Guangzhou (Canton), some decades before the city was overwhelmed…
by the opium trade and the Opium War. Su Jishi, the adolescent son of the head of the Chinese traders' association, the men licensed to deal with foreign merchants in the port, is suddenly burdened with responsibility for his powerful family after his father's unexpected death. More interested in sex than money, Su Jishi learns to navigate between pleasure and commerce, as rebellions erupt just outside the city.At the crossroads of two of the greatest Chinese books--the aristocratic coming-of-age novel, The Story of the Stone (The Dream of the Red Chamber) and the military epic Outlaws of the Marsh--Mirage is panorama of libertines and concubines, lecherous monks and celibate soldiers, corrupt officials and drunken scholars. As entertaining as a bestseller, it is a hectic recreation of vanished mores and customs, and the life of a Chinese city as it was beginning to discover--and deal with--the rest of the world.By Marisa Silver. 2013
Bestselling author Marisa Silver takes Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother photograph as inspiration for a story of two women--one famous and…
one forgotten--and their remarkable chance encounter. In 1936, a young mother resting by the side of the road in central California is spontaneously photographed by a woman documenting migrant laborers in search of work. Few personal details are exchanged and neither woman has any way of knowing that they have produced one of the most iconic images of the Great Depression. In present day, Walker Dodge, a professor of cultural history, stumbles upon a family secret embedded in the now-famous picture. In luminous prose, Silver creates an extraordinary tale from a brief event in history and its repercussions throughout the decades that follow--a reminder that a great photograph captures the essence of a moment yet only scratches the surface of a life.By Thomas Lawrence. 2013
The solrom a soul journey to heal within by going without Two travellers collide in the wild country…
on the island of Bracka Geeter not much more than a boy is running from the shadows cast by the death of his father Wode a gnoseer one of a sacred group possessing a deep knowledge of energy and power of the Inner Realms seeing and knowing what most cannot He is called to The Tree of Knowledge for a question of destiny his answer for one reaches into depths of karma for all But Wode has his own need of regeneration after the death of his wife The shared journey the two voyagers begin has consequences neither can have imagined What are the incredible powers that Wode s teachings begin to unleash in Geeter How can Wode move past his grief and return to his true spirit Smiling the Moon is a beautiful fable that is rich with magical encounters unexpected detours and meetings between soulsBy Janet Gleeson. 2005
She opened the shagreen box. Couched in gray silk was an emerald necklace, one he had not seen for twenty…
years. The stones were just as he recalled them: a dozen or more, baguette cut and set in gold links, with a single ruby at the center. Flashes of verdigris, orpiment, and Prussian blue sparkled in the candlelight. The form of this necklace was as disturbing as ever. It had nearly cost him his life. It is the summer of 1765. The renowned and exquisitely dressed portrait painter Joshua Pope accepts a commission to paint the wedding portrait of Herbert Bentnick and his fiancée, Sabine Mercer, to whom Bentnick has become engaged less than a year after the death of his first wife. Joshua has barely begun the portrait when a man's body is found in the conservatory. A few days later, Sabine's emerald necklace disappears, and Bentnick accuses Joshua of theft. The painter is suddenly fighting not only for his reputation but for his life. With a sure understanding of period detail and character, Janet Gleeson creates a richly nuanced tale of greed and revenge that plays out in the refined landscapes and dark streets of eighteenth-century London.By Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan. 1962
Coming down from his carefree youth and unwanted fame, Jack Kerouac undertakes a mature confrontation of some of his most…
troubling emotional issues: a burgeoning problem with alcoholism, addiction, fear, and insecurity. He dutifully records his ever-changing states of consciousness, which culminate in a powerful religious experience. Big Sur was written some time after Jack Kerouac's best-known works, following a visit to northern California and the first feelings of midlife crisis. Kerouac stayed for several weeks in a cabin in Big Sur, California, and with friends in San Francisco. Upon returning home, he wrote this account in a two-week period.