Best of
Novels

1950

The Wall


John Hersey - 1950
    John Hersey's novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution & as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation & cruelty--a gripping, visceral story, impossible to put down.

A Town Like Alice


Nevil Shute - 1950
    A few years after the war, Jean is back in England, the nightmare behind her. However, an unexpected inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya to give something back to the villagers who saved her life. Jean's travels leads her to a desolate Australian outpost called Willstown, where she finds a challenge that will draw on all the resourcefulness and spirit that carried her through her war-time ordeals.

The Family Moskat


Isaac Bashevis Singer - 1950
    All the strata of this complex society were populated by powerfully individual personalities, and the whole community pulsated with life and vitality. The affairs of the patriarchal Meshulam Moskat and the unworldly Asa Heshel Bannet provide the center of the book, but its real focus is the civilization that was destroyed forever in the gas chambers of the Second World War.

Muhammad bin Qasim / محمد بن قاسم


Naseem Hijazi - 1950
    Muhammad Bin Qasim conquered Sindh introducing Islam to South Asia and giving Sindh the title of Bab-ul-Islam (The Gateway of Islam). He ended unjust treatment of the so-called 'untouchable caste' and incorporated the ruling class in his administration to establish law and order in the region.

The Drinker


Hans Fallada - 1950
    Discovered after his death, it tells the tale—often fierce, often poignant, often extremely funny—of a small businessman losing control as he fights valiantly to blot out an increasingly oppressive society.In a brilliant translation by Charlotte and A.L. Lloyd, it is presented here with an afterword by John Willett that details the life and career of the once internationally acclaimed Hans Fallada, and his fate under the Nazis—which brings out the horror of the events behind the book.

Khaak aur Khoon / خاک اور خون


Naseem Hijazi - 1950
    On June 3, 1947 Lord Mountbatten announced that district of Gurdaspur was to be assigned to Pakistan but Redcliffe, Head of the Boundary Commission, conspired with Indian politicians such as Nehru and modified the geographic boundaries of the two newly formed countries in order to include the district of Gurdaspur in India’s map. As a result, the Muslim population of Gurdaspur set out in search of a safe home in Pakistan but many dangers awaited them on their journey to their new homeland

Old Herbaceous: A Novel of the Garden


Reginald Arkell - 1950
    G. Wodehouse’s immortal butler, Jeeves. Born at the dusk of the Victorian era, Bert Pinnegar, an awkward orphan child with one leg a tad longer than the other, rises from inauspicious schoolboy days spent picking wildflowers and dodging angry farmers to become the legendary head gardener “Old Herbaceous,” the most esteemed flower-show judge in the county and a famed horticultural wizard capable of producing dazzling April strawberries from the greenhouse and the exact morning glories his Lady spies on the French Riviera, “so blue, so blue it positively hurts.” Sprinkled with nuggets of gardening wisdom, Old Herbaceous is a witty comic portrait of the most archetypal—and crotchety—head gardener ever to plant a row of bulbs at a British country house.This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction byPenelope Hobhouse, a renowned garden designer and lecturer and the author of numerous gardening books.

A Voice Through a Cloud


Denton Welch - 1950
    A masterpiece of self-analysis by the British novelist Denton Welch, who recounts the far-reaching struggle of his short life through a cloud of personal affliction and tragedy.

The Disenchanted


Budd Schulberg - 1950
    Then came the wild Twenties and years of high-pressure speakeasy carousing. Halliday was attractive, Halliday was charming, Halliday was weak. He flashed through the skies like a comet.This overwhelmingly moving chronicle was written by Budd Schulberg, author of What Makes Sammy Run? and The Harder They Fall - written, says Cleveland Press, "with such literary skill as to justify the widespread belief among critics that Budd Schulberg is major American novelist.

ಮಹಾಭ್ರಾಹ್ಮಣ | MahaBrahmana


Devudu Narasimhashastri - 1950
    Gives some great insights into Gayatri mantra and how it can transform the life of a mortal.

Thomas the Obscure


Maurice Blanchot - 1950
    Written between 1932 and 1940, Blanchot's first novel, here brilliantly translated by Robert Lamberton, contains all the remarkable aspects of his famous and perplexing invention, the ontological narrative--a tale whose subject is the nature of being itself. This paradoxical work discovers being in the absence of being, mystery in the absence of mystery, both to be searched for limitlessly. As Blanchot launches this endless search in his own masterful way, he transforms the possibilities of the novel. First issued in English in 1973 in a limited edition, this re-issue includes an illuminating essay on translation by Lamberton.

Rain on the Wind


Walter Macken - 1950
    But with a hideous birthmark on his cheek, a Jonah to those he loved, and only the simple life of a fisherman to offer, how could he hope to win Maeve? The white-capped waves and a great old black boat brought the answer. A dramatic story set amongst a fishing community in the west of Ireland, a classic in Irish fiction.

The Mike Hammer Collection: Volume I


Mickey Spillane - 1950
    Men and women didn't make love, they collided. Tough brutes used their fists to drive home a message. Tougher broads used guile. And no one's morals were loftier than the gutter. No apologies. Little redemption. They rendered critics powerless, shocked intellectuals, inspired a new wave of pulp mayhem, and left the public hungry for more.Given their hot, fever-pitch prose and breathless pacing, Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels quickly became one of the most successful series in publishing history—an innovative, no-holds-barred, ultravisceral explosion of sex and violence that made Hammer a literary legend, and Spillane, one of the bestselling authors of all time. After fifty years, neither has lost their power to sucker punch the reader.Find out for yourself in this first-time ever omnibus featuring the first three Mike Hammer novels by the living master of the hard-boiled mystery…

Some Tame Gazelle


Barbara Pym - 1950
    Fifty-something sisters Harriet and Belinda Bede live a comfortable, settled existence. Belinda, the quieter of the pair, has for years been secretly in love with the town's pompous (and married) archdeacon, whose odd sermons leave members of his flock in muddled confusion. Harriet, meanwhile, a bubbly extrovert, fends off proposal after proposal of marriage. The arrival of Mr. Mold and Bishop Grote disturb the peace of the village and leave the sisters wondering if they'll ever return to the order of their daily routines. Some Tame Gazelle, first published in Britain nearly 50 years ago, was the first of Pym's nine novels.

Savage Sanctuary - Wana Sarana (වන සරණ)


R.L. Spittel - 1950
    Spittel is an anthropologist who has made a study of the Veddas, an aboriginal people who dwell in the remote jungles of Ceylon, and avowedly his aim has been that of "weaving details of ethnological value into the fabric of a tale". In doing this his scientific inclination has induced him to invent as little as possible and to confine his efforts to the reconstruction of the life story of a real man, Tissahamy, an outlaw whose murderous activities engaged all the resources of the authorities to put an end to them. In his childhood some attempt was made to tame Tissahamy's wild spirit and even to train the boy for the Buddhist priesthood, but the call of the blood was too potent, and he soon sought the sanctuary of his ancestral jungle and became a great hunter."

The Town and the City


Jack Kerouac - 1950
    Kerouac's debut novel is a great coming of age story which can be read as the essential prelude to his later classics. Inspired by grief over his father's death and gripped by determination to write the Great American Novel, he draws largely on his own New England childhood.

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths


Barbara Comyns - 1950
    Sophia is twenty-one years old, carries a newt -- Great Warty -- around in her pocket and marries -- in haste -- a young artist called Charles. Swept into bohemian London of the thirties, Sophia is ill-equipped to cope. Poverty, babies (however much loved) and her husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with the dismal, ageing art critic, Peregrine, and learns to repent her marriage -- and her affair -- at leisure. But in this case virtue is more than its own reward, for repentance brings an abrupt end to a life of unpaid bills, unsold pictures and unwashed crockery ...

The 13th is Magic


Joan Howard - 1950
    Adventures of a brother and sister who live in a mysterious Manhattan apartment building.

Maggie-Now


Betty Smith - 1950
    In Brooklyn's unforgiving urban jungle, Maggie Moore is torn between answering her own needs and catering to the desirous men who dominate her life. Confronted by her quarrelsome Irish immigrant father, the feckless lover who may become her husband, and others, Maggie must learn to navigate a cycle of loss, separation, and hope as she forges her own path toward happiness.With characteristic warmth, compelling insight, and easy, conversational prose, Betty Smith's Maggie-Now poignantly illuminates one woman's struggles and successes as she grapples with timeless questions of desire, duty, self-sacrifice, and the quest for fulfillment. Maggie-Now is an unforgettable masterpiece from one of the twentieth century's greatest talents.

Adventure Story (Acting Edition Series)


Terence Rattigan - 1950
    

The Exploits of Engelbrecht


Maurice Richardson - 1950
    Fifteen stories that relate the activities of the Surrealist Sportsman's Club, a society with very dubious morals that spends the time it has left between the collapse of the moon and the end of the universe taking the concept of the 'game' to its logical limit. A club can't operate without members, and those of the SSC are as strange and astonishing as some of the events they compete in. Most formidable of all, and more than just a little sinister, is the old Id, an "elemental force" who thinks nothing of venturing forth from his home at Nightmare Abbey to arrange a rugby match between Mars and the entire human race, or of playing chess with boy scouts and nuclear bombs as pieces. Centre stage, however, is given to Engelbrecht himself, the dwarf boxer. Surrealist boxers don't take on human opponents, but "do most of their fighting with clocks." Engelbrecht has his fair share of those and even bests a malign Grandfather Clock in a match where years rather than money is at stake, but his talents are also called upon to help him deal with almost the whole spectrum of Gothic, electric and purely impossible threats in a style both charming and ferocious. He's an eternal optimist and it's his pluck and spirit, rather than his fists or footwork, which generally make the greatest contribution to the precarious well-being of his club. The tone of these adventures is a curious blend of Gothic and science fiction, but an avant-garde Gothic and an absurdist SF, a voice which simultaneously lampoons much of the atmosphere found in novels of the past and future while making a genuine contribution to both kinds. Richardson has placed his tongue firmly in his cheek, true, but then he has proceeded to bite it off with molars sharpened on the grindstones of profundity... “The Exploits of Engelbrecht is English surrealism at its greatest. Witty and fantastical, Maurice Richardson was light years ahead of his time. Unmissable.” - J.G. Ballard

A Coronet for Cathie


Gwendoline Courtney - 1950
    It is a story with a 'Cinderella' twist, and will be enjoyed by girls of eleven and fifteen.

Quatrefoil


James Barr - 1950
    Both are in every obvious respect what is generally termed masculine. There is no suggestion of the effeminate – nothing that could evoke the characterization of gay. Their backgrounds and personalities are thoroughly American, and they live and work in a completely normal man's social and professional world. Other men respect and admire their courage and ability and even their physical prowess. Women are very much attracted to both of them.Tim, the older the two, has already recognized and resolved the problem of his sexual deviation. Phillip has not. A product of rural American mores and attitudes, he has a fierce contempt for "queers" and at the same time a deep and secret dread that the germ of homosexuality maybe buried somewhere within himself. One or two incidences in his life have shaken him profoundly and have made him determined ruthlessly to crush any tendencies in himself as well as to avoid any close relations with other men. He is engaged to be married as soon as he is discharged from the Navy, and he intends to rear a big family, to take over the operations of his family's bank and other interests, and to become a responsible and civic-minded leader in his community.As the story opens, he has almost reached the refuge and security he has carefully planned. But then he meets Danelaw. From that moment the struggle begins – a tense and shattering emotional upheaval composed of aversion, self-contempt, admiration and – finally – love. There are other well-drawn characters in this drama – Phillip's exceptional family; his fiancée and her mother; Tim's fascinating wife; Lt. Bruner, the blackmailer; Stuff, the hard-boiled sailor who worshipped Philip. QUATREFOIL is a deeply moral novel. Two men of integrity and intellect are confronted with the knowledge that they are deviants from the normal pattern of our society – that most people in that society would abhor and persecute them if they openly avowed their difference. Both men avidly desire to live within the social conventions and to attain the ends that motivate all men – a home, a family, respecting in their community, an opportunity to do honest and satisfying work, to realize their ambitions.This is their problem and QUATREFOIL is their story. It will evoke some disturbing thoughts.

To Love and to Honour


Emilie Loring - 1950
     Now, with her father dead, Cindy is determined to be free of Ken Stewart, her husband in name only. Then one day, a tall, handsome stranger comes to see her and urges her not to try for a divorce. Why did Ken Stewart send this man to her, Cindy wonders? And why does Ken Stewart want to stay married to her when she neither knows nor loves him? She is, after all, his wife in name only... Author of many spirited and memorable novels, Emilie Loring never failed to delight with her stories of love and danger. She was an American romance novelist of the 20th century, who began writing in 1914 at the age of 50 and continued until her death after a long illness in 1951. With nearly 37 million of her books printed worldwide, Loring stands as one of America's bestselling romance authors.

The Spanish Gardener


A.J. Cronin - 1950
    But months in the Mediterranean sunshine, in the care of the tender gardener, made little Nicholas blossom into an exuberant vitality. Then his father's possessiveness asserted itself...his love became repulsive. He grew cold with the desire to control those around him....From one of the greatest storytellers of this century comes an unforgettable saga of Americans abroad...of the decay of love between husband and wife, the struggle between father and son, the terrible poser of a diplomat bent on destroying those he loved.

Portrait in Smoke


Bill S. Ballinger - 1950
    From the moment he finds in his files a photograph marked "Krassy Almauniski, winner of the Stockyard News beauty contest", he’s obsessed and ends up following an old trail that leads to nothing but trouble.

The Swiss Family Perelman: A Rollicking International Road Trip with America's Greatest Humorist


S.J. Perelman - 1950
    This collection of stories, originally published in Holiday in the late 1940s, is jam-packed with Perelman's signature wit and extraordinary prose style.

Autumn Leaves


André Gide - 1950
    Gide's reflections and commentary masterfully showcase his delicate writing style and evocative sensibility, yielding new insights on writers such as Goethe and contemporaries Joseph Conrad, Nicolas Poussin, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul-Marie Verlaine. Through it all, Gide skillfully investigates humanity's contradictory nature and struggles to resolve the moral, political, and religious conflicts inherent in daily life.

The Lost Musicians


William Heinesen - 1950
    Set in the Faroese town of Torshavn at the beginning of the 20th century, this is the story of a group of musicians - the Boman Quartet - who find sanctuary in their music amid a series of dramatic and tragic events.

The Wise Robin


Noel Barr - 1950
    To read to or to be read by. Charming story and illustrations. Reading age 7 plus.

House of Flesh


Bruno Fischer - 1950
    Murder was done there, it was said, and other deeds, wanton and eerie. With a special introduction by author David Bischoff, who points out that this books smokes with the kind of passion you don't get much in this explicit era.

The Greenwood Shady


Elizabeth Cadell - 1950
    Deepwood House, too, was chiefly known as the home of three wicked and rich Stirlings. So one summer Deepwood attracted some rather strange visitors as well as the tourists--visitors who withered flowers at a touch and were known to leave cloven hoof-marks. The effect of these diabolic guests on the present inhabitants of Deepwood House is told with irresistible wit and gusto. *Note, these titles contain the original, unabridged, text exactly as the author first wrote it. Many later editions of Elizabeth Cadell's works were heavily abridged or changed. We hope you enjoy the re-issue of these timeless books. Watch for more to come in the near future!