Best of
Modern

1988

The Corsican Woman


Madge Swindells - 1988
     When the beautiful Sybilia is married off to the son of her town’s leader, she soon discovers that being a woman in 1940s Corisca comes with few freedoms. But when the Second World War reaches the remote island, Sybilia is pressed into service for her country as a spy and as an assistant to a new arrival in town: the American captain Robin Moore. The two fall into a passionate love, much to the anger of her cruel father-in-law. Pregnant with Moore’s child, she is left a pariah when her lover is posted abroad, never to return again. Sybilia lives out the next twenty-five years alone, burdened with a deep sadness at the betrayal and loss of her lover. It isn’t until long after the war ends when she discovers the true fate of Robin Moore. A fate that sets her on the path to vengeance…

The Sheikh And The Dustbin, And, Other Mc Auslan Stories


George MacDonald Fraser - 1988
    George MacDonald Fraser is the author of the "Flashman" novels.

Bad Girls Good Women


Rosie Thomas - 1988
    But, when it comes, stardom is not enough, and the love that Mattie desires seems to elude her.Julia choose marriage and Ladyhill, a beautiful Dorset manor house. Then, after the tragedy, she realises that to achieve true independence she will have to risk her marriage and her child.Though each has to make her own choices, their friendship - despite the guilt and betrayal - endures over three turbulent decades.

Madness in the Family: Stories


William Saroyan - 1988
    A collection of short stories that were originally published in the 1960s and 1970s in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's.

March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 1988
    Solzhenitsyn tells this story in the form of a meticulously researched historical novel, supplemented by newspaper headlines of the day, fragments of street action, cinematic screenplay, and historical overview. The first two nodes—August 1914 and November 1916—focus on Russia’s crises and recovery, on revolutionary terrorism and its suppression, on the missed opportunity of Pyotr Stolypin’s reforms, and how the surge of patriotism in August 1914 soured as Russia bled in World War I.March 1917—the third node—tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob, but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The action of book 1 (of four) of March 1917 is set during March 8–12. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. Bread riots in the capital, Petrograd, go unchecked at first, and the police are beaten and killed by mobs. Efforts to put down the violence using the army trigger a mutiny in the numerous reserve regiments housed in the city, who kill their officers and rampage. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition, horrified by the violence, scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power, while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it. Meanwhile, Emperor Nikolai II is away at military headquarters and his wife Aleksandra is isolated outside Petrograd, caring for their sick children. Suddenly, the viability of the Russian state itself is called into question.The Red Wheel has been compared to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for each work aims to narrate the story of an era in a way that elevates its universal significance. In much the same way as Homer’s Iliad became the representative account of the Greek world and therefore the basis for Greek civilization, these historical epics perform a parallel role for our modern world.

Milligan's War: The Selected War Memoirs of Spike Milligan


Spike Milligan - 1988
    Adolf Hitler, Monty, Mussolini, Rommel (who?) - all played their modest parts in the Second World War and the shaping of human destiny, but we all know where the real action was... Milligan's war documents in words and pictures. The most scurrilous, bizarre and certainly the most hilarious military career embarked upon by any bombardier of the 56th heavy regiment, royal artillery, ever.'The most irreverent, hilarious book about the war that I have ever read' Sunday Express 'Desperately funny, vivid, vulgar' Sunday Times 'Milligan is the Great God to all of us' John Cleese 'The Godfather of Alternative Comedy' Eddie Izzard 'That absolutely glorious way of looking at things differently. A great man' Stephen Fry Spike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1918, he served in the Royal Artillery during WWII in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, before joining forces with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe to form the legendary Goon Show. Until his death in 2002, he had success as on stage and screen and as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and children's stories.

Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England


Stephen Greenblatt - 1988
    Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England is a sustained and powerful exemplification of this innovative method, offering a new way of understanding the power of Shakespeare's achievement and, beyond this, an original analysis of cultural process.

Can't Quit You, Baby (Contemporary American Fiction)


Ellen Douglas - 1988
    Cornelia is rich, white, and pampered, the mistress of the house, who oversees a seemingly perfect world of smooth surfaces and stubborn silence. Tweet, her housekeeper, is a poor, black, world-weary woman with a ghost-ridden past. As the years go by, Cornelia and Tweet each endure moments of uncertainty and despair; each, in her time of need, is rescued by the other.In the footsteps of Southern writers like Peter Taylor, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor, Ellen Douglas celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit in this story of two women bound by transgression and guilt, memory and illusion, gratitude and love."Ellen Douglas is not just one of our best Southern novelists. She is one of our best American novelists." - The New York Times Book Review

Stringbean's Trip to the Shining Sea


Vera B. Williams - 1988
    Enjoy yourselves!Love,Vera and JenniferStringbean Coe, his big brother, Fred, and their dog, Potato, are driving from Kansas to California in a pickup truck with a little house built on the back. Reading the postcards they send home every day is the next best thing to having a cross-country adventure all your own. "A good-hearted celebration of life and experience, and a gift to the public."--School Library Journal

Justice


Ian St. James - 1988
    But when Jack is corrupted by the rock music world, the friends find themselves opposing each other in court. This story of exploitation and big business is by the author of "Cold New Dawn" and "The Killing Anniversary".

January in July


Joan Elliott Pickart - 1988
    John had left him with a broken nose, Houston Tyler couldn't get the classy lady out of his head...or heart. He had to see January again -- and prove she was out of his league! Then the phone rang -- and hours later Houston was on a private plane with the woman of his dreams, headed for the coast of Maine. For months, January had been consumed, obsessed by him; now they'd have a chance to taste the fireworks between them, and learn if they were truly worlds apart. Houston knew they'd be sensational together, that he'd never love anyone more, but January had traveled first class for so long -- how could he slay the dragons of their differences? Transformed by Houston's kisses, January was ready to fight to keep him. Could she make him see the gift of love he brought was all she ever wanted, and what she cherished most?

Where Time Ends


Thomas Baird - 1988
    While camping in the Adirondacks teenage best friends Doug and Loop fall in with Ernie and her belligerent brother, as a Soviet missile attack heralds the beginning of a dangerous war with biological weapons and the entire country enters a state of chaotic emergency conditions.

Alice Walker's The color purple


Barbara Christian - 1988
    Each volume helps the reader to encounter the original work more fully by placing it in historical context, focusing on the important aspects of the text, and posing key questions.Monarch Notes include: Background on the author and the work Detailed plot summary Character analysis Major themes in the work Critical reception of the work Questions and model answers Guide to further study