A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family—these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness.~penguin.com

    Over beers and a sea of freely spoken words, the conversation flows between two individuals, Santiago and Ambrosia, who talk of their tormented lives and of the overall degradation and frustration that has slowly taken over their town. Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and moral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it. More than a historic analysis, Conversation in The Cathedral is a groundbreaking novel that tackles identity as well as the role of a citizen and how a lack of personal freedom can forever scar a people and a nation.

    This extraordinarily sensitive and insightful portrait of religious life centers on Philippa Talbot, a highly successful professional woman who leaves her life among the London elite to join a cloistered Benedictine community.

    This book chronicles their adventures across turnip fields, through barns and into bushes.

    The title comes from Asimov's breakthrough short story.CONTENTS:Nightfall - Astounding, Sept 1941Green Patches - Galaxy, Nov 1950Hostess - Galaxy, May 1951Breeds There a Man . . . ? - Astounding, June 1951C-Chute - Galaxy, Oct 1951In a Good Cause - "New Tales of Space & Time", 1951What If--- - Fantastic, Summer 1952Sally - Fantastic, June 1953Flies - F&SF, June 1953Nobody Here But--- - Star SF #1, 1953It's Such a Beautiful Day - Star SF #3, 1954Strikebreaker - Original SF Stories, Jan 1957Insert Knob A in Hole B - F&SF, Dec 1957The Up-to-Date Sorcerer - F&SF, July 1958Unto the Fourth Generation - F&SF, April 1959What is this Thing Called Love? - Amazing, March 1961The Machine That Won the War - F&SF, Oct 1961My Son, the Physicist - Scientific American, Feb 1962Eyes Do More Than See - F&SF, April 1965Segregationist - Abbottempo, Book 4, 1967

    This book is both a satire of the civil rights problems in the United States in the late 60s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of black militancy.

    Very poignantly written, this is arguably Zahir Raihan’s best novel and certainly one of the milestones of contemporary Bangla literature.

    Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken.Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who simply would not be defeated.

    The Apprenticeship was a bestseller and, as her biographer Benjamin Moser writes, "This accessible love story surprised many readers. When it came out, an interviewer said: 'I thought The Book of Pleasures was much easier to read than any of your other books. Do you think there’s any basis for that?' Clarice answered: 'There is. I humanized myself, the book reflects that.'”

    . . by far Shaw's best work . . . it's all fascinating". Don't forget to stock up on this six-million-copy bestseller.

    It embraces a wide range of social milieux, from the miseries of the tenements to the cultivated, bourgeois Bradshaws. It introduces a memorable cast of characters: the main protagonist, Fitz, a model of the hard-working, loyal and abused trade unionist; the isolated, well-meaning and ineffectual Fr O'Connor; the wretched and destitute Rashers Tierney. In the background hovers the enormous shadow of Jim Larkin, Plunkett's real-life hero.Strumpet City's popularity derives from its realism and its naturalistic presentation of traumatic historical events. There are clear heroes and villians. The book is informed by a sense of moral outrage at the treatment of the locked-out trade unionists, the indifference and evasion of the city's clergy and middle class and the squalor and degradation of the tenement slums.

    Ada, or Ardor is no less than the superb work of an imagination at white heat.This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.

    His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

    Sprague de Camp · in 15 · The Curse of the Monolith [“Conan and the Cenotaph”] · L. Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter · ss Worlds of Fantasy #1 ’68 33 · The Bloodstained God · L. Sprague de Camp & Robert E. Howard · nv Tales of Conan, Gnome, 1955 53 · The Frost-Giant’s Daughter [revised from “Gods of the North”, The Fantasy Fan, Mar ’34] · Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp · ss Fantasy Fiction Aug ’53 64 · The Lair of the Ice Worms · L. Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter · ss * 82 · Queen of the Black Coast · L. Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter · ss * 119 · The Vale of Lost Women · Robert E. Howard · ss Magazine of Horror Spr ’67 140 · The Castle of Terror · L. Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter · nv * 161 · The Snout in the Dark · L. Sprague de Camp, Robert E. Howard & Lin Carter · ss *

    Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

    The trouble starts because Alexandra is interested in baby chicks - tiny, fluffy, yellow chichk that say "Peep!" as they come out of their shells. Fletcher's water dish is empty. He hasn't had his ears scratched in days. "She's forgotten me," he decides, and mournfully he shuffles off to the park at the edge of town. Here Fletcher's good friends, Beaver and Otter, have the idea. Fletcher must hatch! Of course, Beaver is a master builder, and it's no trouble at all to build an egg around Fletcher.The egg is large and pink and speckled with brown, and it poses somewhat of a problem for the school principal, not to mention the science teacher. But young readers will delight in the hilarious climax, along with a little girl named Alexandra.

    Evie Teale had finally accepted that her husband wouldn’t be coming home. Now she and the children were alone in an untamed country where the elements, Indians, and thieves made it far easier to die than to live.Miles away, another solitary soul battled for survival. Conagher was a lean, dark-eyed drifter who wasn’t about to let a gang of rustlers push him around. While searching the isolated canyons for missing cattle, he found notes tied to tumbleweeds rolling with the wind. The bleak, spare words echoed Conagher’s own whispered prayers for companionship. Who was this mysterious woman on the other side of the wind? For Conagher, staying alive long enough to find her wasn’t going to be easy.

    His story is told in the gut-level language of the homosexual underworld--an unforgettable testament of life lived on the margins of a racist and predatory urban hell.

    But no ghosts appeared - until the day Lucy and her brother Jamie stood in the garden and watched two pale figures, a girl and a boy, coming toward them.That was the beginning of a strange and dangerous friendship between Lucy and Jamie and two children who had died a century before.The ghost children desperately needed their help. But would Lucy and Jamie have the courage to venture into the past - and change the terrible events that had led to murder?

    Blue-eyed, light-haired and white-skinned, White Folks was a successful con man, a hustler in the jungle of Southside Chicago where only the sharpest survived.

    Meanwhile—after a heated first encounter that nearly comes to a duel—Aubrey and a brilliant but down-on-his-luck physician, Stephen Maturin, strike up an unlikely rapport. On a whim, Aubrey invites Maturin to join his crew as the Sophie’s surgeon. And so begins the legendary friendship that anchors this beloved saga set against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.Through every ensuing adventure on which Aubrey and Maturin embark, from the witty parley of their lovers and enemies to the roar of broadsides as great ships close in battle around them, O’Brian “provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises—comic, grim, farcical and tragic.… [A] whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit” (A. S. Byatt).

    All he knew for certain was that someone wanted him dead—and that he had better learn why. But everywhere he turned there seemed to be more questions—or people too willing to hide the truth behind a smoke screen of lies. He had only the name he had been told was his own, his mysterious skill with a gun, and a link to a half million dollars’ worth of buried gold as evidence of his past life. Was the treasure his? Was he a thief? A killer? He didn’t have the answers, but he needed them soon. Because what he still didn’t know about himself, others did—and if he didn’t unlock the secret of his past, he wasn’t going to have much of a future.

    Join Flashman in his adventures as he survives fearful ordeals and outlandish perils across the four corners of the world.Can a man be all bad? When Harry Flashman’s adventures as the reluctant secret agent in Afghanistan lead him to join the exclusive company of Lord Cardigan’s Hussars and play a part in the disastrous Retreat from Kabul, it culminates in the rascal’s finest – and most dishonest – turn.

    In fact, she couldn't be more different: no swooning, getting saved from dragons, or being whisked off by handsome princes. She knows what she wants and just how to get it.

    The purpose of these demonstrations was to create an event that people could think about and learn a lesson from. In 1969, Idries Shah, author of over thirty books on Sufi teaching and learning, used modern methods of mass communication to create a teaching-event for the modern world. "The Book of the Book", first published in that year and now in its seventh printing, transmits a 700-year-old narrative on the theme of "do not mistake the container for the content". But it projects this lesson in a highly unconventional way. Reactions to "The Book of the Book" ran the gamut. Some people were infuriated. One "expert" at the British Museum said it was "not a book at all". Others either thought the cover price was too high for a "book that was not a book", or simply bought it for novelty value and kept it on hand to mystify their friends. In time, the pendulum began to swing in the other direction. Readers and reviewers now understand that unlike any other literary product ever published, "The Book of the Book" offers the opportunity to participate in a major Sufi teaching-event ... for the price of a book. Expect the impact of "The Book of the Book" to continue to ripple through the literary marketplace for decades to come.

    Tired of everyday life ashore, Farley Mowat would find a sturdy boat in Newfoundland and roam the salt sea over, free as a bird. What he found was the worst boat in the world, and she nearly drove him mad. The Happy Adventure, despite all that Farley and his Newfoundland helpers could do, leaked like a sieve. Her engine only worked when she felt like it. Typically, on her maiden voyage, with the engine stuck in reverse, she backed out of the harbour under full sail. And she sank, regularly.How Farley and a varied crew, including the intrepid lady who married him, coaxed the boat from Newfoundland to Lake Ontario is a marvellous story. The encounters with sharks, rum-runners, rum and a host of unforgettable characters on land and sea make this a very funny book for readers of all ages.

    He chased mice so well that he was given the job of Hotel Cat. Tired of always spending time in the cellar Tom ventured upstairs and met the gentle Mrs. Wilkins, a longtime hotel resident who had the ability to communicate with cats. She encouraged Tom to keep an open mind about the hotel guests.One night, during the winter of New York City's Big Freeze, Tom detected three cats in one of the rooms. It turned out that due to a boiler breakdown in his house, Captain Tinker had brought Jenny Linsky and her brothers Edward and Checkers to stay at the hotel until the boiler was fixed. Other homes experienced boiler breakdowns too and soon other members of the Cat Club could be found staying in rooms at the Royal Hotel. Before long, plans were underway for the Cat Club Stardust Ball, with the help of Tom, who had proved himself helpful and considerate after all. Soon he became a "friend for ever" of Jenny and her pals.

    Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast set of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Ray Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Lincoln out of the grave—and meet another who puts him back. An amazing Electrical Grandmother may come to live with a grieving family. An old parrot may have learned over long evenings to imitate the voice of Ernest Hemingway, and became the last link to the great man. A priest on Mars may confront his fondest dream: to meet the Messiah. Each of these magnificent creations has something to tell us about our humanity—and all of their fates await you in this new trade edition of twenty-eight classic Bradbury stories and one luscious poem. Travel on an unpredictable and unforgettable literary journey—safe in the hands of one of the century's great men of imagination.

    On the way he bestows upon angels, fellow passengers, and the world at large a magnificent monologue on alcohol, politics, society, alcohol, philosophy, the pains of love, and, of course, alcohol.

    Green calls himself a “stove-up old cowboy,” and readers of this book will learn soon enough where the broken bones came from. Green tells of his adventures with wild steers, sharing with readers the years he worked in thorny brush and canyon country delivering those animals that were too wily or too wild for the normal roundup. Finding them was hard, even dangerous, work. Few cowboys looked for such chores. Green declares, “I got real good at it, but of course in those days I didn’t know any better.”

    The rest is darkness and dismay." Finally, though, The Iron Tonic could be seen as Edward Gorey's version of a winter afternoon in one of the great Russian novels of the nineteenth century.

    It tells the story of two young boxers out of Stockton, California: Ernie Munger and Billy Tully, one in his late teens, the other just turning thirty, whose seemingly parallel lives intersect for a time. Set in an ambiance of glittering dreams and drab realities, it tells of the two fighters' struggles to escape the confinements of their existence, and of the men and women in their world. Fat City is a novel about the sporting life like no other ever written: without melodrama or false heroics, written with a truthfulness that is at once painful and beautiful.Denis Johnson: "Between the ages of 19 and 25 I studied Leonard Gardner’s book so closely that I began to fear I’d never be able to write anything but imitations of it, so I swore it off(...)When I was about 34 (the same age Gardner was when he published his), my first novel came out. About a year later I borrowed Fat City from the library and read it. I could see immediately that ten years’ exile hadn’t saved me from the influence of its perfection — I’d taught myself to write in Gardner’s style, though not as well. And now, many years later, it’s still true: Leonard Gardner has something to say in every word I write."Joan Didion: "Leonard Gardner's Fat City affected me more than any new fiction I have read in a long while, and I do not think it affected me only because I come from Fat City, or somewhere near it. He has got it exactly right--the hanging around gas stations, the field dust, the relentless oppressiveness of the weather, the bleak liaisons sealed on the levees and Greyhound buses--but he has done more than just get it down, he has made it a metaphor for the joyless in heart."David Wagoner: "The people he writes about are alive and three-dimensional, and have that meaty, sweaty immediacy I admire in novels and find so seldom. It's an odd, interesting world he explores here--as tense and vivid as the prose."Ivan Gold: "Gardner writes with power, with an insider's knowledge, and with a vividness and love for his characters which redeem them even when they're lost and beaten."Harry Mark Petrakis: "A man of real talent. He makes the savage world he writes of come alive to the point where the reader can smell the sweat, and feel the anguish of unremitting failure."Ross Macdonald: "In his pity and art Gardner moves beyond race, beyond guilt and punishment, as Twain and Melville did, into a tragic forgiveness. I have seldom read a novel as beautiful and individual as this one."Originally published in 1969, Fat City is an American classic whose stature has increased over the years. Made into an acclaimed film by John Huston, the book is set in and around Stockton, California.

    In it author Unica Zurn traces the roots of her obsessions: The exotic father she idealized, the "impure" mother she detested, the masochistic fantasies and onanistic rituals which she said described "the erotic life of a little girl based on my own childhood." Dark Spring is the story of a young girl's simultaneous introduction to sexuality and mental illness, revealing a different aspect of the "mad love" so romanticized by the (predominantly male) Surrealists. Unica Zurn (1916-1970) emigrated in 1953 from her native Berlin to Paris in order to live with the artist Hans Bellmer. There she exhibited drawings as a member of the Surrealist group and collaborated with Bellmer on a series of notorious photographs of her nude torso bound with string. In 1957, a fateful encounter with the poet and painter Henri Michaux led to the first of what would become a series of mental crises, some of which she documented in her writings. She committed suicide in 1970--an act foretold in this, her last completed work.

     In an interstellar romp that proves science and sorcery can mix, only hard-headed realist Rod Gallowglass can save the people of Gramarye from their doom by becoming--The Warlock in Spite of Himself--if only he believed in magic.

    But first she had to choose a human partner—male or female—to share her exhilarating escapades in space!Her life was to be rich and rewarding . . . resplendent with daring adventures and endless excitement, beyond the wildest dreams of mere mortals.Gifted with the voice of an angel and being virtually indestructible, Helva XH-834 anticipated a sublime immortality.Then one day she fell in love!

    Living in a well-ordered world that's beginning to lose its equilibrium, Taylor's fascinating characters struggle to come to terms with the constricting circumstances into which they were born. Delicately interweaving the joys and pains of these families, Peter Taylor goes beyond regionalism to the simple truths recognizable to people everywhere.

    This new English translation reveals it as one of Thailand's most entertaining and enduring modern novels, and one of the few portrayals of the immigrant Chinese experience in urban Thailand.Letters from Thailand is the story of Tan Suang U, a young man who leaves China to make his fortune in Thailand at the close of World War II, and ends up marrying, raising a family, and operating a successful business. The novel unfolds through his letters to his beloved mother in China.In Tan Suang U's lively account of his daily life in Bangkok's bustling Chinatown, larger and deeper themes emerge: his determination to succeed at business in this strange new culture; his hopes for his family; his resentment at how easily his children embrace urban Thai culture at the expense of the Chinese heritage which he holds dear; his inability to understand or adopt Thai ways; and his growing alienation from a society that is changing too fast for him.

    The gift of the Magi --A cosmopolite in a café --The skylight room --Man about town --The cop and the anthem --The love-philtre of Ikey Schoenstein --Mammon and the archer --Springtime à la carte --From the cabby's seat --An unfinished story --The romance of a busy broker --After twenty years --The furnished room --Hearts and crosses --The ransom of Mack --Telemachus, friend --The handbook of Hymen --Hygeia at the Solito --The hand that riles the world --The exact science of matrimony --Conscience in art --Roads of destiny --The enchanted profile --The passing of Black Eagle --A retrieved reformation --Friends in San Rosario --The renaissance at Charleroi --Whistling Dick's Christmas stocking --The lotus and the bottle --Shoes --Ships --Masters of arts --"The Rose of Dixie" --A poor rule --The last of the troubadours --Makes the whole world kin --Jimmy Hayes and Muriel --The adventures of Shamrock Jolnes --The friendly call --Sound and fury --The theory and the hound --The ransom of Red Chief --The whirligig of life --A blackjack bargainer --One dollar's worth --A lickpenny lover --Doughterty's eye-opener --The defeat of the city --The shocks of doom --Squaring the circle --The memento --The trimmed lamp --Two Thanksgiving day gentlemen --The making of a New Yorker --A Harlem tragedy --The last leaf --The count and the wedding guest --The robe of peace --A ramble in Aphasia --A night in New Arabia --Proof of the pudding --Hearts and hands

    Here the reader is offered a glimpse of Mark Twain's sustained creative process, in what many critics consider the finest fiction of his later years. Begun in 1897 and revised first in 1902 and then 1908, the third version was the only manuscript titled The Mysterious Stranger. These texts offer a rare opportunity to observe Mark Twain's sustained literary struggle with a central theme.

    Christmas is coming and she is bursting with excitement. She is absolutely sure that something special is going to happen this year. What will she find in her stocking? Will the Three Wise Men visit as she has always hoped? Who knows what may happen at this special time of year? She leaves her bedroom window open on Christmas Eve, just in case the Wise Men decide to come visit. When she wakes up on Christmas morning, more than one miracle seems to have taken place. In the event, this Christmas isn't like any she has ever known, especially when three ships sail into the harbour.

    Each story has been selected by the author himself, and each has an introduction specifically written for this collection by Dr. Asimov. Together the two volumes showcase Isaac Asimov's story-telling talent.Nightfall --Green patches --Hostess --Breeds there a man --C-chase

    Her father, however, was a stern backwoodsman who stood foursquare against religion of any sort.Lucy's lifelong spiritual quest is set against a back drop of two difficult marriages that included broken promises, sickness, numerous infant deaths, alcoholism, tragic accidents, and poverty. From the unspeakable joy of learning to know Christ as her Saviour, Lucy stumbled through years of spiritual ignorance, doubt, disappointment, and despair until she eventually found peace again in Christ. This true account reflects the goodness of God patiently leading those who are thirsty to the fountain of living water. Readers who have know personal tragedy will be blessed with fresh courage by reading this book.

    Jane can choose the doll she wants.Will she choose Bella Ballerina, the doll who can dance on her toes? Hairiette, who can change the way she wears her hair? Tillie Talkie? Irene-and-Her-Sewing-Machine?What about that forgotten doll, sitting high on a shelf with the left-over Christmas tree balls? She can't do anything. She doesn't even have a name. Jane wouldn't want that doll -- would she?

    Set far from Moscow in the remote Kazakhstan capital of Alma-Ata, The Keeper of Antiquities begins with a leisurely, almost scholarly air - like a devious story by Borges. But very soon we find ourselves watching with horror as professional rivalry between the keeper of the town's museum and the chief librarian turns into a deadly struggle for control over the meaning of the past - and therefore over the present.While Dombrovsky does not have the wit, the suave cynicism of Bulgakov, he is-or was-immensely drawn to the tragi-comic potential of the bureaucratic flap, endemically Russian. Water boils drearily for tea in noisily peopled conferences; lank-jawed, heavily smoking females whine and bark in outrage; minor officials threaten and soothe; mass grievances are unburdened. The narrator is an open-hearted, straightforward young man with the title of Keeper of Antiquities in the archaeological section of a museum in rural Soviet Central Asia. The Keeper is moderately happy in his eyrie of catalogues and modest displays, sharing varieties of pickling alcohol with an earthy old carpenter and enjoying a secret hoard of carnival views of ""Beauties of the World"" in their natural state. His aim is to go quietly on his way ""without interfering with anybody."" But ""Your business is history"" to prove and demonstrate, and there is no escape. An attempt to improve the local library by a critical comment; the friendship with a collective brigade leader whose brother was shot (unjustly?) as a traitor; the defense of a young archaeologist fired by the library-all forbode disaster. The keeper of pristine truths unsullied by expedient exploitation thinks of flight, but in the end simply waits for the closing in of ""history,"" party style. A spirited, often anguished, indictment of mindless officialdom wherever it appears.

    He was born in New York City to Jewish parents; his father was born in Poland. He went to college and earned his B.A. from New York University and went on to acquire an M.A. as well as a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Michigan, before spending most of his adult life in Berkeley, California.Going Places, his first book of short stories, made his reputation as one of the most brilliant of that era's fiction writers; the stories are urban, funny, and written in a private, hectic diction that gives them a remarkable edge. The follow-up, coming six years later (Michaels was perhaps not prolific enough to build a widely popular career), was I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, a collection as strong as the first.

    These 31 stories of the supernatural explore the furthest reaches of the macabre and at the same time parallel de Maupassant's own descent into madness and death. Includes a Foreword by modern master horror writer Ramsey Campbell.The Horla --The Devil --Two friends --Fear --The hand --Coco --The mannerism --The madwoman --Mohammed-Fripouille --The blind man --At sea --Apparition --Saint-Antoine --The wolf --Terror --The diary of a madman --A vendetta --The smile of Schopenhauer --On the river --He? --Old Milon --The head of hair --The inn --Mother Savage --Was he mad? --The dead girl --Mademoiselle Cocotte --A night in Paris --The case of Louise Roque --The drowned man --Who knows?

    Not only has he lost the race, but also his licence, as the Jockey Club suspends him - believing he threw the race.Only he knows that the problem lay with the horse's performance, not his own. Suspecting he was framed, Kelly sets about finding out how it was done, and then who might have done it.But the closer he gets to the perpetrators, the more danger he finds himself in. Now there's more than his reputation and career at stake. There's also his life . . .Packed with intrigue and hair-raising suspense, Enquiry is just one of the many blockbuster thrillers from legendary crime writer Dick Francis.

    Growing up in 20s Austria, the tomboy daughter of a forester struggles to comprehend the overwhelming adult world while the impending advent of Nazism threatens to eclipse the traditional life in her family's mountain village.

    But he was not always a hero - as he was not always a king. He grew towards both under the shadow of a still greater hero - William Wallace - in that terrible forcing-ground of heroism and treachery alike, the Wars of Independence which, from 1296 to 1314, hammered Scotland into the very dust until only the enduring idea of freedom remained in her.Edward Longshanks, King of England, was the Hammer of the Scots, a great man gone wrong, a magnificent soldier flawed by consuming hatred and lust for power.These two fought out their desperate, appalling duel, with Scotland as prize - should any of Scotland survive.Not only these. To John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, head of the most powerful house in Scotland and nephew of the deposed and discredited King John Baliol, Bruce was as spark to tinder. Their friction blazed to flame that shocking day when blood soaked the high altar at Dumfries, and a new Bruce was born.But this tremendous story is not all blood and fire. Elizabeth de Burgh saw to that. Humour and laughter are here too, colour and beauty, faith and love.This enormous and ambitious theme of Bruce the hero king is no light challenge for a writer. Nigel Tranter has waited through nearly thirty years of novel-writing to tackle it. In this, the first of a trilogy, he ends that long apprenticeship and takes up the challenge.

    Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, he is sent to an obscure village with one week's ration of canned meat and orders to guard a downed plane. Apparently forgotten by his unit, Chonkin resumes his life as a peasant and passes the war tending the village postmistress's garden. Just after the German invasion, the secret police discover this mysterious soldier lurking behind the front line. Their pursuit of Chonkin and his determined resistance lead to wild skirmishes and slapstick encounters.

    More than just a clever piece of black humour, in Joko's Anniversary Topo urges the reader to a very serious consideration of the potential degredation of any individual by society.

    The novel spans a total of 126 chapters and was written between 1966 and February 1969. The story is about a pair of twin brothers who were separated from each other at birth and raised under different circumstances. The twins first see each other as enemies but gradually become friends and eventually acknowledge each other as brothers.

    Then, at the office Christmas party, he gave in to the demands of the vivacious Betty Ray, and the scandal that followed not only split his family but ruined his career.

    The anti-climatic ending to this story pokes gentle fun at the childhood encounter with butterfly metamorphosis.

    First published in 1969, its 12 stories depict a vast cast of characters drawn from Orkney’s past and present, offering a range of emotions and incidents. They are elemental tales of the fishermen, crofters and farmers of the island and of the harsh, beautiful landscape in which they live.

    

    Here, they are collected along with 19 other stories in a beautifully redesigned collection that represents the best short work of an American master.As Warner Berthoff writes in his introduction to this volume, "It is hard to think of a major novelist or storyteller who is not also a first-rate entertainer . . . a master, according to choice, of high comedy, of one or another robust species of expressive humour, or of some special variety of the preposterous, the grotesque, the absurd. And Melville, certainly, is no exception. A kind of vigorous supervisory humour is his natural idiom as a writer, and one particular attraction of his shorter work is the fresh further display it offers of this prime element in his literary character."The town-ho's story --Bartleby, the scrivener : a story of Wall-Street --Cock-a-doodle-doo! or, The crowing of the noble cock Beneventano --The encantadas or Enchanted Isles --The two temples --Poor man's pudding and rich man's crumbs --The happy failure : a story of the river Hudson --The lightning-rod man --The fiddler --The paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids --The bell-tower --Benito Cereno --Jimmy Rose --I and my chimney --The 'Gees --The apple-tree table, or Original spiritual manifestations --The piazza --The Marquis de Grandvin --Three "Jack Gentian sketches" --John Marr --Daniel Orme --Billy Budd, sailor.

    But the path from quarter horse of good stock to cutting horse of skill and finesse is strewn with obstacles, unforgettable characters and the kind of earthy humor Paul St. Pierre's writing is known for.

    Life in Deep Pond is pleasant but unexciting for the animal inhabitants until Jeremy Mouse comes to town.

    The stories representing each author might be said to function like a mobile: considered separately, they are unique and interesting pieces of art, while together they form a recognizable pattern and give an impression of the author's imaginative world. The anthology as a whole then becomes a collection of such literary mobiles, a vivid exhibition that testifies to the high level of brilliance achieved by contemporary Spanish-American fiction. CINCO MAESTROS is designed for use in the third semester of study and beyond. The stories in this anthology are made more readily accessible to students by the addition of notes and vocabulary.

    When Annabella was seven, she thought the world a delightful place to live in, and only occasionally wondered why her parents never took her beyond the gates of their magnificent country estate. When she was ten she decided that the seclusion didn't really matter because when she grew up she would marry her handsome cousin Stephen and never be lonely again.But when she was eighteen, Annabella learned the circumstances of her birth—and her entire world crashed around her...

    Includes commentary by E.B. White, Frank Sullivan, Kenneth Tynan, Marc Connelly, Dorothy Parker, Clifton Fadiman, and Peter de Vries.

    There he struggles to retain his childlike innocence and native pride while striving to support himself in the corrupt and decadent international port. He takes up with a longshoreman and soon meets a rogue's gallery of friends, mostly hustlers and down-and-outers. With his characteristic brilliance and streetwise charm, Mrabet develops the novel's ambiguous theme of the necessity of violence to retain one's innocence.

    His father murdered, his estate seized, he himself mutilated by a rival landowner.

    Written with Coward's inimitable poise and wit, the stories variously describe back-stage intrigues, Hollywood champagne breakfasts, suburban romances and gossip round the captain's table. He reveals himself as a consummate prose stylist demonstrating why, for all his success in virtually every other field of entertainment, he returned again and again to the short story.

    3 books in one. Includes: Friday The Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday The Rabbi Went Hungry, and Sunday The Rabbi Stayed Home. Meet an unorthodox sleuth, in three of his best and most baffling cases !

    He spent his early childhood in Astrakhan where his father worked as a shipping agent, but when the boy was only five years old, his father died, and he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents. This was not a happy time for the young Gorky as conditions were poor and often violent. At the age of eight, the boy's grandfather forced him to quit school and apprenticed him to several tradesmen including a shoemaker and an icon painter. Fortunately, Gorky also worked as a dishwasher on a Volga steamer where a friendly cook taught him to read, and literature soon became his passion. At the age of twelve, Gorky ran away from home and barely survived, half starving, moving from one small job to the next. He was often beaten by his employers and seldom had enough to eat. The bitterness of these early experiences led him to choose the name Maxim Gorky (which means "the bitter one") as his pseudonym.

    

    debut in this enthralling collection of fiction. Women's lives are the central preoccupation of Natalya Baranskaya: A scientist frantically juggles her professional life with her duties as wife and mother; a woman writer who regrets never marrying is finally glad of it; a delinquent girl is brought before the people's court for her "anti-social" behavior. With candor and satirical wit, Baranskaya captures perfectly everyday realities of family and society.

    Hind dropped his search when he married. Now, some years later, at the instant the novel opens, he is leaving his apartment to visit his estranged wife Sylvia and his five-year-old daughter May; he wants to live with them. But at his door is a strange old woman, and in his mailbox a note beckoning him toward the old trail. Hind’s renewed quest leads him among people in their spring and early-summer landscape – a city pier; the well-fenced office complex of a famous firm; a New England golf course and the owner’s house overlooking it; a city health club; and a city university. Yet at the end of this pentad the kidnaping of the child, Hershey Laurel, has receded to a dim corner of the book. And Hind’s late, beloved guardian, and the threatening past he summons up, grow more and more powerful, uncontrollably, as does Hind’s awareness that his search has taken possession of him.Hind realizes, too, that despite his craving to be needed, he has used people as means, abbreviated them as clues, and disposed them in his heart as exhibits. He becomes unsure whether he wants to go back to Sylvia because the fifth clue points to her or because she is a woman he loves. He revisits his friends, his clues, in the hope of "taking" them not as clues but as ends in themselves. Indeed, he endeavors to de-kidnap them.But what has been started – and only partly by Hind – can’t be stopped. The lock pursues the keys, the kidnaping pursues the memory that is trying to erase it, and a mass of old life emerges – passionate adolescence, the cruel charm of the clever, sickly girl Hind adored, the intricate commitments to childhood friends, and, in back of it all, the guardian himself, a failure, a remotely tragic hero, an interesting man. The maze of the book’s opening part has come into focus out of its dense nightmare anonymity – New York, Brooklyn Heights, terrible genealogy, the self in relation to others.

    The most efficient killer in Europe is working as a book-keeper for a small, dusty merchant. But Circumstances force Hunter to employ him for one last operation. Schneider. Cheerful, friendly, affluent Schneider with his innocent passion for model soldiers. Callan hunts again And again his tool is Lonely, the most frightened little man in the underworld.It is Lonely who gets him the gun, a Noguchi Magnum 38 calibre. A magnum for Schneider. The operation is studded with leathal booby-traps, but Callan's own inhibitions are the most dangerous.

    An incurable optimist, whose every venture ends in disaster, he is the perennial Luftmensch who never ceases to build castles in the air.The exchange of letters between Menahem-Mendl, trying his luck in the bigger cities of Czarist Russia, and his wife, who remains behind in a small town in the hinterlands, relates his hilarious, but frustrating, experiences as he seeks his fortune-first as a currency and stock speculator (who cannot speculate), as a matchmaker (who cannot arrange marriages), as an author (who cannot write), and as an agent (who buys what he cannot sell).As his hopes repeatedly rise only to vanish in smoke, as he becomes involved with rascals and rogues, rich men and poor, the reader is at once amused and astounded by the predicaments in which he becomes entangled. But no more so than his long-suffering, ever-faithful wife, Sheineh-Sheindl -- scolding and querulous, but ever ready to succor him in his most desperate moments.In re-creating a vanished way of life with warmth and considerable verve, the book reflects the eternal human condition, equally true and meaningful today. "The adventures of Menahem-Mendl" is a memorable achievement-a masterwork by an eminent figure of world literature.

    A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her. With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he�9;d overheard back in Jerusalem: 'You see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?' Mrs Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he'd ever metCROOKED HOUSEWhen Aristide Leonides dies at Three Gables, his young wife and her lover are suspects for murder.SAD CYPRESS (Hercule Poirot, Bk 20)Beautiful young Elinor Carlisle stood serenely in the dock, accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard, her rival in love. The evidence was damning: only Elinor had the motive, the opportunity and the means to administer the fatal poison. Yet, inside the hostile courtroom, only one man still presumed Elinor was innocent until proven guilty: Hercule Poirot was all that stood between Elinor and the gallows

    But there's no such thing as a sure thing.

    The police collaborate with racketeers to keep an uneasy peace, periodically broken by violent gang wars. Dido Peach comes to prominence by breaking the unwritten rules of the street. For a brief time he rules the underworld. His fall is sudden and spectacular, shaking even the callous and vicious neighbourhood in which he is trapped. This new edition is introduced by Ken Worpole, author of Dockers and Detectives (Five Leaves), which rekindled interest in Baron and many other important yet overlooked British writers of the 20th century.

    highly recommended.... This anthology of faithful translations of the classics is by far the best of its kind to come out for a long time." --Canadian Slavic Review

    The Man Who Went Up in Smoke and Roseanna.

    A woman is slain in, of all places, the cabin of an airliner in mid flight. A dozen potential witnesses, including the sharply observant Hercule Poirot, are present when the deed is done; yet nobody notices anything amiss until the victim is discovered not to be asleep, as the steward had thought, but cleverly murdered.One great point about Poirot is his ability to judge the true significance of trivia in the light of his special brand of imaginative logic. In no case of Poirot's has his gift been more valuable. Somewhere, among the trifling and apparently inconsequential actions of the passengers, or among the odd assortment of belongings that a search of their baggage reveals, is the key that will begin to make everything clear.Why didn't they ask Evans?People had fallen over cliffs before, and at first there seemed to be nothing extraordinary about the accident at Marchbolt. The man was a stranger, and presumably unaware of the perils of the cliff path.There was nothing Bobby could do except wait with him for the help that would surely arrive too late. As he waited, the dying man suddenly spoke. "Why didn't they ask Evans?"That was all he said; and the words seemed so inconsequential that Bobby did not even mention then at the inquest. Later, when he did report them to mysterious Mr. Cayman, strange and disturbing things began to happen and it began to seem that somebody had powerful reasons for wanting Bobby out of his way. In trying to discover why, Bobby and his friends find themselves involved in something very much more than a simple matter of accidental death.Murder on the Orient ExpressWith one mystery successfully concluded, Hercule Poirot is en route from Aleppo to London where his aid on another case is eagerly awaited. but on this occasion the Orient Express does not run strictly according to the international timetable.In the middle of the night, in the heart of Yugoslavia, the train comes to a halt - and next morning it is still halted. A snowdrift is blocking the line ahead; the passengers, with one exception, face the prospect of a wait which could amount to days.The exception lies dead; stabbed not once but over and over again by an apparently frenzied killer. Or was it two killers? That, like the sleeping compartment bolted from the inside, is part of the puzzle Poirot is asked to solve.

    The Interior Castle is a metaphor for an individual's soul; its different rooms, different states of the soul. In the middle of the Castle the soul is in the purest state, which equals Heaven. Lafferty uses more complex symbols to bring colorfully into life his many-sided tale of an individual's reaching towards Heaven or Truth.Take a trip thru a psychedelic reality, with seven very special people blending to create a higher form of humanity: A laughing man living alone on a mountaintop, guarding the world. The Returnees: men who live again & again, century after century. A dog-ape "Plappergeist," who can only be seen out of the corner of one's eye. A young man named Foley, very much like us, who begins to find out about the above people & things, & how they're reshaping the world!

    For six people-a little girl, a thief, a harried woman, a jobless young man, a bride now a widow, and a blind man- it is a night that brings to pass one of the legends of Christmas Eve: that "on that night lost things are found again".

    Then one day was different....the only trouble was that the magic had caused him to fly through Time instead of Space. Catweazle ended up at a place called Hexwood Farm, nine centuries later, where everything he saw appeared to happen by magic.

    With ingenuity and hard work, Robbie Trent manages to convince his parents and his wolf-hating neighbors that Wolf is as hard-working as any dog. Illustrator John Schoenherr won a Caldecott Medal for his artwork on Owl Moon.

    But Rutgers is lonely. Setting out to find a cure for his loneliness, he discovers some strange, prickly objects which he names water snouts and which make him very happy. But one day the water snouts mysteriously disappear and Rutgers and his animal friends become involved in exciting adventures as they set out to find them.

    

    Recounts the further adventures of the Wallings brothers in the late 1950s and early 1960s in a small Missouri town at the edge of the Ozark Mountains.

    It is one of the books written before Sue Grafton began the "Alphabet" series.It is a story of two feuding families, and how their love of violence impacts the lives of those in their family and around them.

    The stories have a point: they remind us that courage and clear-thinking in the midst of great danger go hand in hand and are the keys to survival. Not only is cowardice disgraceful, it is frequently lethal. Includes: Triumph of the Boon; The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck; Dr Blanke's First Command; Counterpunch; USS Cornucopia; December 6th; Rendezvous.

    This is a book that children never tire of reading or hearing! All the original familiar illustrations by W. H. Fry are included: 3 color plates, 21 black-and-white drawings.

    D. B. Bryan- The necklace by Guy de Maupassant- The adventure of the speckled band by Arthur Conan Doyle- To build a fire by Jack London- Leiningen versus the ants by Carl Stephenson- Eveline by James Joyce- The secret life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber- What stumped the bluejays by Mark Twain- The pearl by John Steinbeck

    While travelling by train, Elspeth sees a murder occurring in a train on a parallel track. Since she could not have seen the victim or the killer and she is an old woman, the police ignore her. Only Jane believes her, but can she prove anything when there is not even a dead body present?.Lord Egdware Dies - (Hercule Poirot, book 8) also known as: Thirteen at Dinner = Poirot had been present when Jane bragged of her plan to 'get rid of' her estranged husband. Now the monstrous man was dead. And yet the great Belgian detective couldn't help feeling that he was being taken for a ride. After all, how could Jane have stabbed Lord Edgware to death in his library at exactly the same time she was seen dining with friends? And what could be her motive now that the aristocrat had finally granted her a divorce?Murder in Mesopotamia - (Hercule Poirot, Bk 14) ="I have arrived", said the note. Louise Leidner claimed the writer had followed her halfway around the world and was now coming to kill her. But the others on the dig in Iraq thought the archeologist's wife was suffering from hysteria...until she was found bludgeoned in her bedroom.

    But in spite of the fun they can't forget that Volodia's uncle, a great Russian poet, has been imprisoned for critcizing the Communist government. Katya and Ivan long to help. But what can a teenage boy and a ten-year-old girl do against the powerful Secret Police? Read how a key, a car, a foreign journalist and a clown suit help Ivan in one of his greatest adventures.

    They are the veterans of the North African desert campaign, home for three weeks' leave after three long years at war - time to find the brothels, the black markets, the racketeers and the dollar-happy Yank servicemen. When a faceless madman in the War Office throws them into the shell-torn beaches, mountain trails and steaming jungles of New Guinea, they become creatures of the mud; walking skeletons racked with malaria. There are thousands of them. In the throes of battle, black clouds billow about the destroyers in the distance, piercing the darkness with savage explosions. In a merciless system of mutual slaughter, they must draw on every last ounce of their strength for a chance of survival against the raging fires of war, the endless jungle and the brutal enemy that lies within it.

    

    

    Or was it only imagination that propelled the boat? The four Richards children and their friend Kenny frighten themselves nearly out of their wits trying to find the answer to this question." (taken from inside of book)

    Number 5 in the Nova Broadcast series.

    

    Protected by the flowers who loved her, Star Bright didn't know she was ugly, or even that she was a toad, until an evil butterfly arrived to destroy her.

    It contains three complete novels - Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, George's Mother, and Crane's masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage; nineteen short stories and sketches, including " The Blue Hotel" and "The Open Boat", a barely fictionalized account of his own escape from shipwreck while covering the Cuban revolt against Spain; the previously unpublished essay "Above All Things"; letters and poems, plus a critical essay and notes by the noted Crane scholar Joseph Katz.