Best of
Fiction

1947

Every Man Dies Alone


Hans Fallada - 1947
    This Penguin Classics edition contains an afterword by Geoff Wilkes, as well as facsimiles of the original Gestapo file which inspired the novel. Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm and the unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel. Then the Quangels receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France. Shocked out of their quiet existence, they begin a silent campaign of defiance, and a deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich. When petty criminals Kluge and Borkhausen also become involved, deception, betrayal and murder ensue, tightening the noose around the Quangels' necks ... If you enjoyed Alone in Berlin, you might like John Steinbeck's The Moon is Down, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'One of the most extraordinary and compelling novels written about World War II. Ever' Alan Furst 'Terrific ... a fast-moving, important and astutely deadpan thriller' Irish Times 'An unrivalled and vivid portrait of life in wartime Berlin' Philip Kerr 'To read Fallada's testament to the darkest years of the 20th century is to be accompanied by a wise, somber ghost who grips your shoulder and whispers into your ear: "This is how it was. This is what happened"' The New York Times

Fortress Besieged


Qian Zhongshu - 1947
    On the French liner home, he meets two Chinese beauties, Miss Su and Miss Pao. Qian writes, "With Miss Pao it wasn't a matter of heart or soul. She hadn't any change of heart, since she didn't have a heart." In a sort of painful comedy, Fang obtains a teaching post at a newly established university where the effete pseudo-intellectuals he encounters in academia become the butt of Qian's merciless satire. Soon Fang is trapped into a marriage of Nabokovian proportions of distress and absurdity. Recalling Fielding's Tom Jones in its farcical litany of misadventures and Flaubert's "style indirect libre," Fortress Besieged is its own unique feast of delights.

Mrs. Mike


Benedict Freedman - 1947
    Mike is a classic tale that has enchanted millions of readers worldwide. It brings the fierce, stunning landscape of the Great North to life—and tenderly evokes the love that blossoms between Sergeant Mike Flannigan and beautiful young Katherine Mary O'Fallon.

No Exit


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1947
    It is the source of Sartre's especially famous and often misinterpreted quotation "L'enfer, c'est les autres" or "Hell is other people", a reference to Sartre's ideas about the Look and the perpetual ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object in the world of another consciousness.

Of Mice and Men/Cannery Row


John Steinbeck - 1947
    

The Portable Dante


Dante Alighieri - 1947
    The scope and fire of Dante's genius in a single volume.Includes "The Divine Comedy," "The New Life," and other selected poems, prose, and letters accompanied by biographical and introductory sections.

The Portable Chekhov


Anton Chekhov - 1947
    But his literary stature and popularity have grown steadily with the years, and he is accounted the single most important influence on the development of the modern short story.Edited and with an introduction by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Portable Chekhov presents twenty-eight of Chekhov's best stories, chosen as particularly representative of his many-sided portrayal of the human comedy--including "The Kiss," "The Darling," and "In the Ravine"--as well as two complete plays; The Boor, an example of Chekhov's earlier dramatic work, and The Cherry Orchard, his last and finest play. In addition, this volume includes a selection of letters, candidly revealing of Chekhov's impassioned convictions on life and art, his high aspirations, his marriage, and his omnipresent compassion.

Prince of Foxes


Samuel Shellabarger - 1947
    When first published in mid-20th century, Orson Welles was cast as Borgia in the film version. Tyrone Power as Orsini.

Doctor Faustus


Thomas Mann - 1947
    Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul - and the ability to love his fellow man.Leverkühn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and its nihilism. It is also Mann's most profound meditation on the German genius - both national and individual - and the terrible responsibilities of the truly great artist.

In a Lonely Place


Dorothy B. Hughes - 1947
    The suggestively named Dix Steele, a cynical vet with a chip on his shoulder about the opposite sex, is the LAPD's top suspect. Dix knows enough to watch his step, especially since his best friend is on the force, but when he meets the luscious Laurel Gray—a femme fatale with brains—something begins to crack. The basis for extraordinary performances by Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame in the 1950 film version of the book, In a Lonely Place tightens the suspense with taut, hard-boiled prose and stunningly undoes the conventional noir plot.

No Exit and Three Other Plays


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1947
    NO EXIT is an unforgettable portrayal of hell. THE FLIES is a modern reworking of the Electra-Orestes story. DIRTY HANDS is about a young intellectual torn between theory and praxis. THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE is an attack on American racism.

The Melendy Family


Elizabeth Enright - 1947
    This book is a collection of three novels about the Melendy Family: The Saturdays, The Four Story Mistake, and And Then There Were Five.

Exercises in Style


Raymond Queneau - 1947
    However, this anecdote is told ninety-nine more times, each in a radically different style, as a sonnet, an opera, in slang, and with many more permutations. This virtuoso set of variations is a linguistic rust-remover, and a guide to literary forms.

Knock on Any Door


Willard Motley - 1947
    Knock on Any Door dramatizes young immigrant Nick Romano's struggle to survive when his father's business folds, leaving his family with no choice but to move to a poor neighborhood across town. A series of petty crimes land the former Catholic altar boy in reform school, where forceful "rehabilitation" only creates a hardened and resistant spirit among the inmates. Once released, Nick returns to Chicago, where family conflicts and a brief, tragic marriage spiral him further downward, culminating in his arrest for the murder of a police officer. The whole city watches the thrilling legal battle unfold as Nick takes the stand to fight for his life. Motley researched his novel on the streets of his native Chicago, talking to immigrants about their experiences and visiting juveniles in Illinois's youth detention centers. In Knock on Any Door, Motley creates a painfully vivid picture of poverty, the struggle for ethnic identity, and the flaws of the penal system in urban America.

House at the Corner (Mystery & Adventure)


Enid Blyton - 1947
    Life in the House-at-the-Corner is much like any other place, until waspish Aunt Grace comes to stay. She is very sharp-tongued with a habit of interfering in other people's affairs - particularly the children's.Adventures soon start to happen thick and fast and life in the house is never the same again!

The Slaves of Solitude


Patrick Hamilton - 1947
    Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even shorter. Overwhelmed by the terrors and rigors of the Blitz, middle-aged Miss Roach has retreated to the relative safety and stupefying boredom of the suburban town of Thames Lockdon, where she rents a room in a boarding house run by Mrs. Payne. There the savvy, sensible, decent, but all-too-meek Miss Roach endures the dinner-table interrogations of Mr. Thwaites and seeks to relieve her solitude by going out drinking and necking with a wayward American lieutenant. Life is almost bearable until Vicki Kugelmann, a seeming friend, moves into the adjacent room. That’s when Miss Roach’s troubles really start to begin.Recounting an epic battle of wills in the claustrophobic confines of the boarding house, Patrick Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude, with a delightfully improbable heroine, is one of the finest and funniest books ever written about the trials of a lonely heart.

Misty of Chincoteague


Marguerite Henry - 1947
    "That horse is fast as the wind. She's escaped from every roundup on the island!"But Paul and Maureen want the beautiful wild mare for their very own."I'm going to capture her myself," says Paul.When Paul finally overtakes the Phantom, he makes a surprising discovery. Running at her side is a brand-new, silvery-gray colt - Misty!

Tales of the South Pacific


James A. Michener - 1947
    The young Marine who falls madly in love with a beautiful Tonkinese girl. Nurse Nellie and her French planter, Emile De Becque. The soldiers, sailors, and nurses playing at war and waiting for love in a tropic paradise.

Dark Carnival


Ray Bradbury - 1947
    Dark Carnival - With Signed Bookplate. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1947. First edition, limited to 3000 copies. Octavo. 313 pages. "The author's first book and his most representative story collection. Similar but not identical to the later collection The October Country" (Chalker 30).

Miracle on 34th Street


Valentine Davies - 1947
    Millions of copies of this award-winning story have sold since its first publication in 1947, delighting readers of all ages. A facsimile edition of the book is now faithfully re-created, offering a new generation--and fans of the original--the beauty of the classic 1940s design. Details of how the book came to be written, and made into a beloved film, are included in a brief historical note.

The Portable James Joyce


James Joyce - 1947
    • Four complete works: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Collected Poems (including Chamber Music) and Exiles, James Joyce's only drama• A generous sampling from Ulysses • Selections from Finnegans Wake (including the famous "Anna Livia Plurabelle" episode)• “A volume that makes Joyce easily available, in compact form, to peripatetic Joyceans”—Leon Edel

The Living Wood: A Novel about Saint Helena and the Emperor Constantine


Louis de Wohl - 1947
    This historical novel tells the story of the quest for the True Cross through fifty years of the most exciting events in Roman and Christian history.The narrative begins when the Tribune Constantius, a Roman officer stationed in Britain, meets and wins Helena, only daughter of the mystical and oracular King Coel of Britain. Through the course of their early lives together, and during their ten-year separation when Constantius returns to Britain as a conquering Caesar and Helena has become a rejected wife, devoted mother, and militant Christian, there is a sure and convincing portrayal of character growth and personal conflict. Helena's fierce determination to raise Constantine as a warrior son and her gradual discovery and dramatic acceptance of Christianity prepare her for the final miracle of her life discovery of the True Cross, the Living Wood on Calvary. The Living Wood is a chapter from the turbulent half-forgotten pages of early Christian history and legend in which the religious conflicts and problems are handled with moving simplicity. It is also an action-packed novel of those times--with a lesson for us today--that captures with equal skill and tumult and the shouting of the battlefield and the devious plots and counter-plots of the court.

Mafeking Road: and Other Stories


Herman Charles Bosman - 1947
    Like our own Mark Twain, Herman Charles Bosman wields a laughing intolerance of foolishness and prejudice, a dazzling use of wit and clear- sighted judgment. Spun by the plainclothes local visionary and storyteller Oom Shalk Lourens, these moving and satirical glimpses of lethargic herdsmen, ambitious concertina players, legendary leopards and mambas, and love-struck dreamers lay bare immense emotions, contradictions, and mysteries within the smallest movements and unadorned talk of the Groot Marico District. Leading oral tradition by the hand into a territory all his own, Bosman maps a world at once lucid and layered, distant yet powerfully familiar.

House Divided


Ben Ames Williams - 1947
    In the first hard pinch of the Civil War, five siblings of an established Confederate Virginia family learn that their father is the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. The family's story, and the story of their descendants, is presented in this tale that includes both soldiers and civilians—complete with their boasting, ambition, and arrogance, but also their patience, valor, and shrewdness. The grandnephew of General James Longstreet, the author brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in history, and details war as it really is—a disease from which, win or lose, no nation ever completely recovers.

The Plague


Albert Camus - 1947
    In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.

The Chequer Board


Nevil Shute - 1947
    He decides to use his remaining time in search of three very different men he met in the hospital during the war, each of them in trouble of some kind: a pilot whose wife had betrayed him, a young corporal charged with killing a civilian in a brawl, and a black G.I. wrongly accused of the attempted rape of a white English girl. As Turner discovers where these men have landed on the checkerboard of life, he learns about compassion, tolerance, and second chances, and overcomes his fear of death.

His Name was Death


Rafael Bernal - 1947
    His neighbors, a clan of the Lacodón tribe of Chiapas, however, see something more in him than he does himself (dubbing him Wise Owl): when he falls deathly ill, a shaman named Black Ant saves his life—and, almost by chance, in driving out his fever, she exorcises the demon of alcoholism as well. Slowly recovering, weak in his hammock, our antihero discovers a curious thing about the mosquitoes’ buzzing, “which to human ears seemed so irritating and pointless.” Perhaps, in fact, it constituted a language he might learn—and with the help of a flute and a homemade dictionary—even speak. Slowly, he masters Mosquil, with astonishing consequences… Will he harness the mosquitoes’ global might? And will his new powers enable him to take over the world that’s rejected him? A book far ahead of its time, His Name Was Death looks down the double-barreled shotgun of ecological disaster and colonial exploitation—and cackles a graveyard laugh.

The Harder They Fall


Budd Schulberg - 1947
    Crowded with unforgettable characters, it is a relentless expose of the fight racket. A modern Samson in the form of a simple Argentine peasant is ballyhooed by an unscrupulous fight promoter and his press agent and then betrayed and destroyed by connivers. Mr. Schulberg creates a wonderfully authentic atmosphere for this book that many critics hailed as even better than What Makes Sammy Run? "The quintessential novel of boxing and corruption."-USA Today "The book will stand not only as the novel about boxing but also as a book that indirectly tells more about civilization than do most books about civilization itself."-Arthur Miller. "Brilliant, witty, and amusing-the best book on fighting that I have read."-Gene Tunney.

Lydia Bailey


Kenneth Roberts - 1947
    This 1947 outing features Albion Hamlin, who comes to Boston in 1800 to defend a man accused of violating the Alien and Sedition Act. In a whirlwind of action, Hamlin is jailed, then escapes to Haiti in search of his client's daughter, Lydia Bailey, with whom he has fallen in love simply by gazing at her portrait. Roberts is known for his historical accuracy, so this should please fans of the genre.

The Dolls' House


Rumer Godden - 1947
    The doll family are owned by two sisters, Emily and Charlotte, and are very happy, except for one thing: they long for a proper home.

The Big Sky


A.B. Guthrie Jr. - 1947
    B. Guthrie Jr.'s epic adventure novels set in the American West. Here he introduces Boone Caudill, Jim Deakins, and Dick Summers: traveling the Missouri River from St. Louis to the Rockies, these frontiersmen live as trappers, traders, guides, and explorers. The story centers on Caudill, a young Kentuckian driven by a raging hunger for life and a longing for the blue sky and brown earth of big, wild places. Caught up in the freedom and savagery of the wilderness, Caudill becomes an untamed mountain man, whom only the beautiful daughter of a Blackfoot chief dares to love.

One Fine Day


Mollie Panter-Downes - 1947
    The English village of Wealding is no longer troubled by distant sirens, yet the rustling coils of barbed wire are a reminder that something, some quality of life, has evaporated. Together again after years of separation, Laura and Stephen Marshall and their daughter Victoria are forced to manage without "those anonymous caps and aprons who lived out of sight and pulled the strings." Their rambling garden refuses to be tamed, the house seems perceptibly to crumble. But alone on a hillside, as evening falls, Laura comes to see what it would have meant if the war had been lost, and looks to the future with a new hope and optimism. First published in 1947, this subtle, finely wrought novel presents a memorable portrait of the aftermath of war, its effect upon a marriage, and the gradual but significant change in the nature of English middle-class life.

The Portable Conrad


Joseph Conrad - 1947
    This revised edition of The Portable Conrad features the best known and most enduring of Conrad's works, including The Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness, and The Nigger of the "Narcissus," as well as shorter tales like "Amy Forster" and "The Secret Sharer," a selection of letters, and his observations on the sinking of the Titanic.

Adopted Jane


Helen F. Daringer - 1947
    Reliable and sensible, she has watched other children find families of their own, but never once has any family wanted to adopt Jane. Then one magical summer, Jane gets not one -- but two-- invitations for a month each to live with a real family in a real house. If only the summer could last forever.

Rufous Redtail


Helen Garrett - 1947
    While he is a juvenile his t tail feathers are brown but when he grows up he knows he'll have red feathers, earning him the name of Redtail Hawk.He makes friends with the other birds: Jerry Goldfinch, Vario Sapsucker, Luco (a bald eagle) Pandion (a fish hawk) and Buzzy. His mother teaches him how to find his way in the world, how to read the signs from nature, who to trust and not trust, and how to avoid the dangerous men. He is pleased to see when he returns home after a year of migrating that his tail feathers are red and he is finally an adult. It's a gentle story that introduces young readers to nature and the habits of birds.

Blood Brother


Elliott Arnold - 1947
    The author has translated matter-of-fact historical incidents into thrilling episodes, following the adventures of Cochise, noted chief of the Chiricahua Apaches, and Tom Jeffords, famous peace maker and Indian agent, with great detail.."-Library Journal "Elliott Arnold has written a historical novel about the Apache Indians.with a knowledge truly astonishing for its comprehensiveness. . . . [It is] authentic history, presented, however, with fictional vividness."-New York Sun "Blood Brother is dramatic, fast-moving fiction. It is superb history. It is excellent biography. It takes place with the major works on the American Indian."-Chicago Tribune

Of Love and Hunger


Julian Maclaren-Ross - 1947
    The key literary figure in the pubs of post-war Fitzrovia, Maclaren-Ross pulled together his dispersed energies to write two great books: the posthumously published Memoirs of the Forties and this spectacular novel of the Depression, Of Love and Hunger - harsh, vivid, louche, and slangy, it deserves a permanent place alongside 'Coming Up for Air' and 'Hangover Square'.

Zoo Babies


Vera Chaplina - 1947
    There are black and white photos throughout. A touching and fascinating vintage book on the care of zoo animals.

With Folded Hands...


Jack Williamson - 1947
    But at what cost? "With Folded Hands" follows Mr. Underhill, as the Humanoids threaten his household, destroy his android business and take control of the town in order to "Serve and Obey, and Guard Men from Harm."A precursor to Williamson's novel THE HUMANOIDS, which Damon Knight called "without a doubt, one of the most important science-fantasy books of its decade."

One Basket


Edna Ferber - 1947
    You passed her on the street with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at-in her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length mink coat in our town, and Ganz's shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. Hers were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women. Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round Christmastime, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set with flashy imitation stones-or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in the cost of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it and paid in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She owned the House with the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot-did Blanche Devine.

The Unfortunate Fursey


Mervyn Wall - 1947
    They are a blend of satire, comedy and fantasy set in the 10th century where Fursey encounters sorcery, demons, witches, Vikings and the wealthy Festus Wisenuts.

Nearby


Elizabeth Yates - 1947
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

A Streetcar Named Desire


Tennessee Williams - 1947
    The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the ’40s and ’50s.

The Trial of Sören Qvist


Janet Lewis - 1947
    And in the introduction to this new edition, Swallow Press executive editor and author Kevin Haworth calls attention to the contemporary feeling of the story—despite its having been written more than fifty years ago and set several hundred years in the past. As in Lewis’s best-known novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre, the plot derives from Samuel March Phillips’s nineteenth-century study, Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence, in which this British legal historian considered the trial of Pastor Sören Qvist to be the most striking case.

Chatterton Square


E.H. Young - 1947
     They knew too much.  As free as unmarried women, they were fully armed; this was an unfair advantage, and when it was combined with beauty, an air of well-being, a gaiety which, in a woman over forty had an unsuitable hit of mischief in it, he felt that . . . all manhood was insulted . . . But he knew how to protect himself." Fastidious Mr. Blackett rules his home in Upper Radstowe with a gloomy and niggardly spirit, and his wife Bertha and their three daughters succumb to his dictates unquestioningly -- until the arrival next door of the Fraser family 'with no apparent male chieftain at the head of it'. The delightful, unconventional Rosamund presides over this unruly household with shocking tolerance and good humour, and Herbert Blackett is both fascinated and repelled by his sensuous and 'unprincipled' neighbour. But whilst he struts in the background, allegiances form between Rosamund and Bertha and their children, bringing changes to Chatterton Square which, in the months leading up to the Second World War, are intensified by the certainty that nothing can be taken for granted.

The Dry Heart


Natalia Ginzburg - 1947
    Stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality, Natalia Ginzburg’s writing here is white-hot, tempered by rage. She transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don’t more wives kill their husbands?

Kingsblood Royal


Sinclair Lewis - 1947
    When Neil Kingsblood, a typical middle-American banker with a comfortable life, makes the shocking discovery that he has African blood, the odyssey that ensues creates an unforgettable portrayal of two Americas, one black, one white. As timely as when it was first published in 1947, one need only open today's newspaper to see the same issues passionately being discussed between blacks and whites that we find in Kingsblood Royal, says Charles Johnson. Perhaps only now can we fully appreciate Sinclair Lewis's astonishing achievement.

Fishy Said the Admiral


Elizabeth Cadell - 1947
    Ellison makes a valiant effort to prevent her brother, the Admiral, from visiting her while her children are at home for the Easter holidays. The Admiral, however, overrides all her objections. Unable to cope single-handed with a testy brother, a convalescent elder son and two younger children, Henry and Sue, Mrs. Ellison enlists the aid of a homeless refuge, Miss Eider, and the charming, but faintly mysterious girl from Scotland, Ellice Brook. To add to the numbers comes Aunt Adeline, who proves a staunch support to Mrs. Ellison in her attempts to smooth the tangles of her son Charles’s romance with Ellice. The young Henry and Sue do their share towards bringing the affair to a successful conclusion.

Country Place


Ann Petry - 1947
    They had been married just a year when he left Lennox, Connecticut, where both their families live and work. In his taxi ride home, Johnnie receives foreboding hints that all has not been well in his absence. Eager to mend his fraying marriage, Johnnie attempts to cajole Glory to recommit to their life together. But something sinister has taken place during the intervening years—an infidelity that has not gone unnoticed in the superficially placid New England town.Accompanied by a new foreword from Farah Jasmine Griffin on the enduring legacy of Petry’s oeuvre, Country Place complicates and builds on the legacy of a literary celebrity and one of the foremost African American writers of her time.

Space Jockey; The Green Hills of Earth


Robert A. Heinlein - 1947
    "The green hills of Earth" is the fascinating tale of the Blind Singer of the Spaceways, a legend from Marsopolis to the Jovian asteroids. Jake Pemberton is a "Space jockey" on the regular run from Earth to the moon-- when disaster strikes, it takes guts to ride his ship home safely.~~~Warner Audio Publishing : 2145.Duration: 70 mins.Reader: Colin Fox.

The Years of the Locust


Loula Grace Erdman - 1947
    for three days, time and memory were something they held in their hands.

Sir Pagan


Henry J Colyton - 1947
    Colyton (pseudonym of Sara Zimmerman)from the dust jacket --"At the end of the First Crusade, when Baldwin was King of Jerusalem and Sir Pagan de Beaugency -- the bastard son of Count Stephen de Blois -- received his first fief, love was serious, if you knew what love was."Love -- Love was the Countess Adelize, the most haughty, beautiful, desired woman in Jerusalem. But she was married. 'Maybe something will happen to your husband,' said Pagan slowly, 'and then you could marry me.' 'O, no,' said Adelize quickly. 'When you put the marriage ring about the neck of Messire Love, he flies away.'"But then came Sibilla, so beautiful, so wise-but-naive, so virginal, fleeing from a husband no girl could be expected to love. It was Sir Pagan's enviable task to catch her and return her to her husband. And it was from Sibilla that he at last learned about love."All this takes place in the 12th century, at the end of the only crusade that took Jerusalem, when many a knight (including Sir Pagan) had only recently won his spurs. The half million knights and peasants that had started from Clermont as the 11th century was ending, on the first crusade to free the Holy Sepulchre from the Saracens, had dwindled to less than forty thousand by the time Jerusalem was theirs. The hardy survivors rose from villenage with unprecedented speed; the knighthood had never been more democratic. Was it any wonder that a few fledgling knights (including Sir Pagan) had had no leisure for love?"

The Dear Old Briar-Patch


Thornton W. Burgess - 1947
    Rabbit and their many friends and neighbors in the Briar-patch and beyond.

The Drinking Well


Neil M. Gunn - 1947
    However, his self-sacrificing mother has other plans for him. A position in an Edinburgh legal firm is secured for Iain and he is forced to leave the countryside he loves. The city is alluring and sophisticated but, ultimately, events force him to return to Torglas and to face up to his family and long-time companion, Mary Cameron. This work contains beautiful characterization and evocative description of early 20th-century Edinburgh.

Quality


Cid Ricketts Sumner - 1947
    A doctor, red-headed, brilliant, handsome. A nurse, fair-skinned, soft-eyed, beautiful. And Wednesday was a good day for a wedding. Today was Wednesday.But today these two young lovers are a thousand miles apart. There will be no wedding. Because, you see, somebody has stuck a label on the girl - the label, "Negro"."Quality" is the stirring story of a Negro girl, who once passed for white, who chose honor above passion, and found glory in her struggle for a greater life, a greater love.[Filmed as "Pinky" in 1949 by 20th Century Fox]

The Setting Sun


Osamu Dazai - 1947
    Osamu Dazai’s The Setting Sun takes this milieu as its background to tell the story of the decline of a minor aristocratic family.The story is told through the eyes of Kazuko, the unmarried daughter of a widowed aristocrat. Her search for self meaning in a society devoid of use for her forms the crux of Dazai’s novel. It is a sad story, and structurally is a novel very much within the confines of the Japanese take on the novel in a way reminiscent of authors such as Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata – the social interactions are peripheral and understated, nuances must be drawn, and for readers more used to Western novelistic forms this comes across as being rather wishy-washy.Kazuko’s mother falls ill, and due to their financial circumstances they are forced to take a cottage in the countryside. Her brother, who became addicted to opium during the war is missing. When he returns, Kazuko attempts to form a liaison with the novelist Uehara. This romantic displacement only furthers to deepen her alienation from society.

The Circus in the Attic and Other Stories


Robert Penn Warren - 1947
    A collection of Penn Warren’s best short fiction: two novelettes and twelve stories that skillfully handle a variety of themes and styles.”Worth reading for their craftsmanship and variety” (Charles Poore, New York Times).

Treasure of the Sierra Madre [Screenplay]


Robert Rossen - 1947
    

The Works of Sir Thomas Malory Vol 1 (English Texts)


Thomas Malory - 1947
    In addition to the new changes, the volumeoffers the standard format of the previous two editions, including a definitive biography and literary interpretation of Malory, an essay describing the texts on which the edition was established, the Caxton printing, a lucid and highly readable introduction, full critical apparatus, and numerousrelevant quotes from unpublished sources.

The Quarry


Mildred Walker - 1947
    Lyman Converse is too young to fight in the Civil War, but he lives to see his own son enlist in World War I. Through all the years his closest friend is Easy, an escaped black slave who took refuge in his father’s house. Everything Converse values most is gradually lost to time, including the family-owned soapstone quarry. The Quarry invites readers to escape into private lives worth caring about—and to feel the national history that they could not escape.

The Dark Tower


Louis MacNeice - 1947
    Louis MacNeice’s play delves into the trauma of war and the poet’s personal shadows, and was an inspired collaboration with Benjamin Britten.

The Gallery


John Horne Burns - 1947
    However, Burns's early death at the age of 36 led to the subsequent neglect of this searching book, which captures the shock the war dealt to the preconceptions and ideals of the victorious Americans.Set in occupied Naples in 1944, The Gallery takes its name from the Galleria Umberto, a bombed-out arcade where everybody in town comes together in pursuit of food, drink, sex, money, and oblivion. A daring and enduring novel—one of the first to look directly at gay life in the military—'The Gallery' poignantly conveys the mixed feelings of the men and women who fought the war that made America a superpower."The first book of real magnitude to come out of the last war." —John Dos Passos

Adept's Gambit: The Original Version


Fritz Leiber - 1947
    P. Lovecraft. The older writer was thrilled at this sprawling narrative that mixed fantasy, sorcery, and historical fiction, and wrote an enormous letter expressing his praise and pointing out possible points that needed revision. Overall, however, Lovecraft was enthusiastic: “Certainly, you have produced a remarkably fine & distinctive bit of cosmic fantasy in a vein which is . . . essentially your own. The basic element of allegory, the earthiness & closeness to human nature, & the curious blending of worldly lightness with the strange & the macabre, all harmonise adequately & seem to express a definite mood & personality. The result is an authentic work of art.” For decades, it was believed that this version—which contains small but significant references to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos—was lost. But the manuscript has recently surfaced, and it is now being published for the first time. This version differs radically from the later version published in Night’s Black Agents (1947), and represents a landmark in the development of Leiber’s fantasy career. As the first Fafhrd and Gray Mouser narrative, it will be of consuming interest to all devotees of Leiber’s work. This edition contains the complete, unabridged text of “Adept’s Gambit,” along with the complete text of Lovecraft’s letter commenting on it, as well as an introduction by S. T. Joshi providing background on the writing of the story. In all, this volume will find a cherished place among devotees of Fritz Leiber and H. P. Lovecraft.One of only 300 signed and numbered hardcover copies. Each copy is signed by the editor S. T. Joshi and hand numbered. Full color printed custom endpapers, foil stamping, and sewn binding.

A Treasury of Short Stories


Bernardine Kielty - 1947
    

Home Port


Olive Higgins Prouty - 1947
    Throughout the novel the reader's attention is constantly turning from Murray Vale's psychological problem and his gradual escape from his false fears, to the events of his life as a fugitive and its unpredictable solution. Plot and problem play equally important roles.As a child Murray, shy, sensitive, but talented in his own line, becomes the victim of a brother complex, due to the fact that from childhood he had lived in the reflected glory of a brilliant older brother. Murray is convinced that he possesses none of the requisites for popularity and success, and as he grows older he is haunted by the fear that he lacks courage also. Two years after he has completed his drab and uneventful career at college a tragic catastrophe occurs, and he assumes another identity and name, escaping from the stifling effect of his conventional Boston environment and comparison with his brother. In his new setting he gradually acquires self-confidence and poise. It would be anticipating the events of the story to tell of his meeting with Nora Brock - a fearless, independent, unconventional girl, unlike any other he had ever known before. It is due to an incident in the war that his identity becomes known and his personality finally returns, victorious, to its home port.To those who are familiar with Mrs. Prouty's recent novels Murray Vale is not altogether an unknown name. The parts he played in the previous novels, however, have been as insignificant and inglorious as his early estimate of himself, but in this novel he comes into his own as the chief actor.

If You Need Healing Do These Things


Oral Roberts - 1947
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Small One: A Story for Those Who Like Christmas and Small Donkeys


Charles Tazewell - 1947
    Countless thousands who have heard this beautiful story over the radio will find in it the perfect remembrance.

Windy Foot at the County Fair


Frances Frost - 1947
    The whole family goes to the county fair where he enters his pony in a race.

Wish for a Pony


Monica Edwards - 1947
    The long excited summer which this book tells about, stretched ahead of them. At first there were only the Dunsford Dairy ponies to be ridden to the forge or old Twinkle to be fetched up from her field for the local farmer; but through an accident they meet the owner of Hillocks stables, who, in exchange for their help in grooming the ponies, cleaning the tack and carrying pails of water, lets them learn to jump, ride in a gymkhana, gallop on the sands, or swim the horses in the sea. So much happens and there is so much to do that they cannot often find time to walk with their eyes shut through the wishing gate making their usual wishes; but when school looms near again, at least one of these often repeated ones, proves not to have been in vain.

Yankee Pasha


Edison Marshall - 1947
    In colonial Salem he finds Roxanna Reil, half French and half Puritan - proud, bold, beautiful - and the talk (some would say the scandal!) of that staid salt-water town.Roxanna had survived the Reign of Terror in France only through a daring mind and an unconventional approach to the facts of life. She knows what she wants now. Her sun-struck hair makes Jason think of the Golden Fleece that another Jason searched for, and he loves her with mountain intensity and directness.When Roxana disappears at sea, Jason sets out to find her. The faint trail begins at the pirate court of Algiers, then moves further into th emysterious East. He becomes, to all appearances, another renegade from the West, willing to fight and kill in exchange for loot. Playing his part to the hilt, he covets blue-eyed Lilith, a fiery and beautiful Circassian, and she is both a solace and a problem for him.

Wind in the Sahara


Ronald Victor Courtenay Bodley - 1947
    A revealing an significant book.

Animal Hide & Seek


Dahlov Ipcar - 1947
    Gentle prose describes the animals and their habits, from deer to rabbits, from squirrels to salamanders. This book, first published in 1947, was Ipcar’s first authored title. It has now been wonderfully restored and reissued to showcase Ipcar’s crisp colors and bold lines.

The Put-Em-Rights


Enid Blyton - 1947
    Sally, Amanda, Micky, Podge, Yolande and Bobby are all eager to solve everyone's problems. But it's not always easy trying to help without getting into lots of trouble...They also find there are some things about themselves which need putting right too!

The Adventures of Tammy Troot


Lavinia Derwent - 1947
    

Take a Call, Topsy!


Elizabeth Headley - 1947
    Lights dim, the curtain rises on the enchanting story of Topsy, who had but one dream, to be a ballerina.

The Dry Wood


Caryll Houselander - 1947
    

A Second Book of Naughty Children


Enid Blyton - 1947
    

Adversary in the House: A Biographical Novel of Eugene V. Debs


Irving Stone - 1947
    Debs & his wife Kate, who was opposed to socialism.[1]1. Kate Debs seemed to have been so hostile to Debs's socialist activities--it threatened her sense of middle-class respectability--that novelist Irving Stone was led to call her, in the title of his fictional portrayal of the life of Debs, the Adversary in the House. (Daniel Bell, Marxian Socialism in the United States, footnote on p. 88)

Lonely Crusade


Chester Himes - 1947
    Himes undertakes to consider the everpresent subconscious terror of the black man, the political morality of American Communists, the psychology of union politics, Uncle Tomism, and the relationship between Jews and Blacks. The value of this book lies in its effort to understand the psychology of oppressed and oppressor and their relationship to each other."--James Baldwin "A better story about a young black man who become a union organizer at a west coast airplane factory during World War II. The tragedy of this particular man is a psychological one, a growing despair over being black which hamstrings him in every human relationship."--The New Yorker "Mr. Himes can write with power and effectiveness."--New York Times

The Mountain Lion


Jean Stafford - 1947
    Torn between their mother's world of genteel respectability and their grandfather's and uncle's world of cowboy masculinity, neither Molly nor Ralph can find an acceptable adult role to aspire to. As events move to their swift and inevitable conclusion, Stafford uncovers and indicts the social forces that require boys to sacrifice the feminine in order to become men and doom intelligent girls who aren't pretty.

Two Clues


Erle Stanley Gardner - 1947
    The ambitious District Attorney or the campaigning publisher of the Rockville Gazette, with their faith in fingerprints and lie-detectors, might think Bill Eldon dated, but he knows Rockville district inside out.In 'The Case of the Runaway Blonde' the body of a girl is found on a freshly ploughed strip of land. And in 'The Case of the Hungry Horse' a young woman has apparently been kicked to death in a dark stable . . .This is Bill's territory, and it is his feel for cornspun characters, cattle and crops - and not the manoeuvres of the smart lawyers and politicos - that crucial to deciphering both cases.

Noises and Mr. Flibberty-Jib


Gertrude Crampton - 1947
    

Behind the Ranges


Stephen W. Meader - 1947
    Dr. Randolph, a botanist, planned to make a collection of the flora of the region---the wildest and least-explored territory in the United States. Dick hoped to get specimens of the whistling marmot---a rare animal which lives there---for the Smithsonian Institution.But their peaceful days were abruptly changed by Dick's discovery that the valley was already inhabited by some strange sort of human being. Mounting suspense and terror contrast sharply with the quiet beauty of the setting. Stephen W. Meader has chosen a new and unusual background for this exciting story which ranks with the finest of his many outstanding books.

Education for What is Real


Earl C. Kelley - 1947
    

The First Book of the McFlannels


Helen W. Pryde - 1947
    Kind and humorous story of a family and their neighbors in Glasgow Scotland

Good Field, No Hit (Blue Sox, Book 1)


Duane Decker - 1947
    In this first book about the Blue Sox, can a player who is a great fielder be more valuable to a team than a classic power hitter?

The Bell of the Four Evangelists


Violet Needham - 1947
    The heroine, a small girl called Penelope, feels that there is some strange secret about Marvel's Folly from the moment that she goes to stay in the old house with her invalid cousin. "Queer things happen by moonlight and the owl's cry," the old gardener warned her, and as the summer passes events become more and more intriguing and very certainly queer.In the same exciting tradition as The Black Riders and The Changeling of Monte Lucio this is a book that will be enjoyed by both boys and girls.

One Against Eternity (The Weapon Makers) / The Other Side of Here


A.E. van Vogt - 1947
    Neither they not their empress foe suspected that he alone could provide the solution to their deadliest cosmic crisis.The Other Side of Here - 134 ppA flick of the wrist - and whole cities plunged into a void of lifelessness. Steve Waldron plunged to the very center of a dead city and gaped at a truth he could not believe. What could he do against so fearsome a force that threatened to engulf the whole nation?

Seven Centuries Of Verse: English &Amp; American From The Early English Lyrics To The Present Day


Arthur James Marshall Smith - 1947
    

All Over The Town


R.F. Delderfield - 1947
    

Dorothy Lamour and the Haunted Lighthouse


Matilda Bailey - 1947
    She has come to fill her new position as secretary to the lighthouse keeper - a promising author. Although the setting and succession of mysterious events had been enough to frighten away other people, Dorothy Lamour finds real friends on this desolate strip of coastline and together they solve the weird occurrences at the haunted lighthouse.

The Voices of the Children


George Ewart Evans - 1947
    A delicate and heartfelt story of the golden, ephemeral, uncertain world of childhood, this novel—set in a rural mining village in South Wales in the years leading up to the Second World War—re-creates a magical but alive world that resonates with the real and imagined memories childhood.

The Machine Stops and Other Stories


E.M. Forster - 1947
    Forster that does justice to his literary genius. This collection provides an intriguing glimpse into E.M. Forster's abiding interest in paganism and mythology , the mysteries of nature, fantasies of the afterlife, and the possibility of magical transformation.