Best of
Novels

1960

The Most of P.G. Wodehouse


P.G. Wodehouse - 1960
    G. Wodehouse collection ever published. In addition to Wodehouse's best known and beloved Jeeves and Bertie stories, The Most of P. G. Wodehouse features delightful stories about The Drones Club and its affable, vacuous members: Mr. Mulliner, whose considered judgment on any and all topics is drawn from the experiences of his innumerable relatives; Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, the man of gilt-edged schemes; and Lord Emsworth, ruler of all he surveys at Blanding's Castle. Rounding out the collection are Wodehouses's witty golf stories and a complete and completely hilarious novel, Quick Service. As Jeeves would say, "The mind boggles, sir."

Promise at Dawn


Romain Gary - 1960
    Alone and poor, she fights fiercely to give her son the very best. Gary chronicles his childhood with her in Russia, Poland, and on the French Riviera. And he recounts his adventurous life as a young man fighting for France in the Second World War. But above all, he tells the story of the love for his mother that was his very life, their secret and private planet, their wonderland "born out of a mother's murmur into a child's ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love." A romantic, thrilling memoir that has become a French classic.

Trustee from the Toolroom


Nevil Shute - 1960
    A novel tells the story of a man who leads an ordinary, uneventful life, until overnight he becomes the trustee of his 10-year-old niece, and involved in the search for some missing money.

The Alexandria Quartet


Lawrence Durrell - 1960
    The lush and sensuous series consists of Justine(1957) Balthazar(1958) Mountolive(1958) Clea(1960).Justine, Balthazar and Mountolive use varied viewpoints to relate a series of events in Alexandria before World War II. In Clea, the story continues into the years during the war. One L.G. Darley is the primary observer of the events, which include events in the lives of those he loves, and those he knows. In Justine, Darley attempts to recover from and put into perspective his recently ended affair with a woman. Balthazar reinterprets the romantic perspective he placed on the affair and its aftermath in Justine, in more philosophical and intellectual terms. Mountolive tells a story minus interpretation, and Clea reveals Darley's healing, and coming to love another woman.

Butcher's Crossing


John Williams - 1960
    With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America.It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.

The Violent Bear It Away


Flannery O'Connor - 1960
    It is a dark and absorbing example of the Gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O'Conner's work. In it, the orphaned Francis Marion Tarwater and his cousins, the schoolteacher Rayber, defy the prophecy of their dead uncle--that Tarwater will become a prophet and will baptize Rayber's young son, Bishop. A series of struggles ensues: Tarwater fights an internal battle against his innate faith and the voices calling him to be a prophet while Rayber tries to draw Tarwater into a more "reasonable" modern world. Both wrestle with the legacy of their dead relatives and lay claim to Bishop's soul.O'Connor observes all this with an astonishing combination of irony and compassion, humor and pathos, resulting in a novel where range and depth reveal a brilliant and innovative writers acutely alert to where the sacred lives and to where it does not.

The Balkan Trilogy


Olivia Manning - 1960
    This classic work of post-war fiction was made into a magnificent BBC television series starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.

The Sot-Weed Factor


John Barth - 1960
    Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the wildly chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem.On his mission, Cooke experiences capture by pirates and Indians; the loss of his father's estate to roguish impostors; love for a farmer prostitute; stealthy efforts to rob him of his virginity, which he is (almost) determined to protect; and an extraordinary gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities. A hilarious, bawdy tribute to all the most insidious human vices, The Sot-Weed Factor has a lasting relevance for readers of all times.

A Kind of Loving


Stan Barstow - 1960
    Vic is attracted to the beautiful but demanding Ingrid, and as their relationship grows and changes, he comes to terms the hard way with adult life and what it really means to love. The influence of Barstow's novel has been lasting the literary label "lad-lit" was first applied to this book, and over the years it has been adapted for radio, television, and the big screen.Originally published in 1960, this popular novel about frustrated youth laid the groundwork for contemporary writers such as Tony Parsons and Nick Hornby.

Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio


Marguerite Henry - 1960
    A story, based on real events, about a boy and a half-Arabian mare who enter the Palio, an annual race in Siena, Italy, with all the pageantry of a medieval contest.

Mendelssohn is on the Roof


Jiří Weil - 1960
    Only as the statue topples does he recognize the face of Richard Wagner. This is just the beginning in Weil's novel, which traces the transformation of ordinary lives in Nazi-occupied Prague.

The L-Shaped Room


Lynne Reid Banks - 1960
    In this bestselling classic novel which became a famous film, Jane Graham, alone and pregnant, retreats to a dingy attic bedsit in Fulham where she finds unexpected companionship, happiness and love.Set in the late 1950s, the 27 year-old unmarried Jane Graham arrives alone at a run-down boarding house in London after being turned out of her comfortable middle class home by her shocked father who has learned she is pregnant.Jane narrates the story as we follow her through her pregnancy and her encounters with the other misfits and outsiders who reside at the boarding house.

Nathan Coulter


Wendell Berry - 1960
    Nathan Coulter begins Wendell Berry's sequence of novels about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky- a setting that is taking its place alongside Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and Winesburg, Ohio, as one of our most distinctive and recognizable literary locales.

The End of the Night


John D. MacDonald - 1960
    A journey into a world of fear and violence carried to their logical extreme—murder.

A Burnt-Out Case


Graham Greene - 1960
    Arriving anonymously at a leper colony in the Congo, he is diagnosed as the mental equivalent of a 'burnt-out case', a leper mutilated by disease and amputation. Querry slowly moves towards a cure, his mind getting clearer as he works for the colony. However, in the heat of the tropics, no relationship with a married woman, however blameless, will ever be taken as innocent.

குறிஞ்சி மலர் [Kurinji Malar]


Na. Parthasarathy - 1960
    This is a story which take place in thiruparankundram,Madurai.This story tells the characters of purani and aravindan,who lived in present world with tamil culture(panbadu) in them.main characters includes *Purani*Aravindan*Muruganandam*Mangalashwary ammal*Vasantha*Bharama karar

Pornografia


Witold Gombrowicz - 1960
    While recuperating from wartime Warsaw in the Polish countryside, the unnamed narrator and his friend, Fryderyk, attempt to force amour between two local youths, Karol and Henia, as a kind of a lewd entertainment. They become increasingly frustrated as they discover that the two have no interest in one another, and the games are momentarily stopped by a local murder and a directive to assassinate a rogue member of the Polish resistance. Gombrowicz connects these threads magnificently in a tense climax that imbues his novel with a deep sense of the absurd and multiplies its complexity. Gombrowicz is a relentless psychoanalyzer and a consummate stylist; his prose is precise and forceful, and the narrator's strained attempts to elucidate why he takes such pleasure at soiling youth creepily evoke authentic pride and disgust. Borchardt's translation (the first into English from the original Polish) is a model of consistency, maintaining a manic tone as it navigates between lengthy, comma-spliced sentences and sharp, declarative thrusts. - Publishers Weekly

A Distant Trumpet


Paul Horgan - 1960
    Originally published in 1960 selling half a million copies at the time and first reissued as a Nonpareil paperback in 1991, this immensely popular work of fiction has attracted, informed, and been embraced by a whole new generation of readers.

Pomp and Circumstance


Noël Coward - 1960
    'A South Sea Bubble of a book it is, with a Royal Visit expected on the Island of Samolo, and the narrator, a mother of three, dealing with everything from chicken-pox to the amours of a visiting Duchess' (Daily Telegraph); 'If there is anywhere on earth where the old Coward world still credibly lingers on, it is probably a fairly peaceful tropical colony ruled over by a British Governor General . . . Coward's long cast list might have walked out of one of his better comedies' (Evening Standard); 'It is all good, near-clean fun, magnificently readable' (Sunday Times).

The Only Girl in the Game


John D. MacDonald - 1960
    Her job is to lead the lambs to the sacrifice, to keep them happy at the tables, where her partners slaughter the suckers. She longs to be free of the entertainers rubbing elbows with thugs at the craps tables, the divorcées hocking their jewels next to all-night marriage chapels, and the little white balls bouncing along the roulette wheels twenty-four hours a day. But no matter how hard she tries to escape her past, she's fated to be caught for ever backstage in the sick glitter of the infamous strip with nothing but sand and neon and money, money, everywhere.

The sands of Kalahari


William Mulvihill - 1960
    

There Must Be a Pony


James Kirkwood Jr. - 1960
    His mother, Rita, is a sexy, gorgeous star - but a little nuts. His house is a palace - but lonely as hell. Ben, his mother's latest lover, fulfills Josh's longing for a father, gives him a chance he desperately needs to become his own person and to escape the tawdry temptations of Tinsel Town...until suddenly Ben is dead, Rita is under suspicion of murder, and Josh, if he is to become his own man, must discover the truth.

Cain's Book


Alexander Trocchi - 1960
    Joe’s world is the half-world of drugs and addicts—the world of furtive fixes in sordid Harlem apartments, of police pursuits down deserted subway stations. Junk for Necchi, however, is a tool, freely chosen and fully justified; he is Cain, the malcontent, the profligate, the rebel who lives by no one’s rules but his own. Like DeQuincey and Baudelaire before him, Trocchi’s muse was drugs. But unlike his literary predecessors, in his roman a clef, Trocchi never romanticizes the source of his inspiration. If the experience of heroin, of the “fix,” is central to Cain’s Book, both its destructive force and the possibilities for creativity it creates are recognized and accepted without apology.

The Passport of Mallam Ila


Cyprian Ekwensi - 1960
    

The Woman Chaser


Charles Willeford - 1960
    One day Richard decides to make an ambitious film, which turns into a fiasco. Enraged, he exacts revenge on all who have crossed him.

How Can the Heart Forget?


Emilie Loring - 1960
    Coming toward her was Myles Langdon who had been away for a year. He was her childhood friend and the man she loved. But he was also her sister Sonia's fiance. That hardly surprised Ann-men were taken with her charm and wit but it was Sonia's beauty that really dazzled them Yet Sonia was in love with someone else-but she wouldn't break her engagement to Myles. Ann didn't know if she could continue to keep the secret of her love. Or is Sonia would run off with the man she was involved with. And Myles-what would he do?How can the heart forget?A wise and witty story of three high-spirited young people and their hidden loves.

The Morning of the Magicians


Louis Pauwels - 1960
    Nor is it a collection of bizarre facts, though the Angel of the Bizarre might well find himself at home in it. It is not a scientific contribution, a vehicle for an exotic teaching, a testament, a document, a fable. It is simply an account - at times figurative, at times factual - of a first excursion into some as yet scarcely explored realms of consciousness. The Morning of the Magicians is a classic of radical literature, a book that has challenged assumptions and conventional knowledge for decades. It has shaken the foundations of beliefs all over the world and may be the most influential book published in the twentieth century. Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier spent years searching "through all the regions of consciousness, to the frontiers of science and tradition" and opened their minds to any fact or theory that went beyond the frontier of current theories. The result is this remarkable work, and the stream of possibilities that it contains: Do mutants exist, are they a future form of man? Does extrasensory perception reveal that human consciousness has advanced beyond its currently accepted limits? What connects the ancient art of alchemy and modern atomic physics?

Like, Mad (Mad Reader 9)


Wallace Wood - 1960
    Notice how crisp and firm the cover stays--how those bright MAD pages begin to fizz. In just eight seconds, MAD's mind-rotting ingredients paralyze the cerebellum, bringing blessed relief. So remember: When brain-fog strikes, strike back . . . with MAD.

The Australian Ugliness


Robin Boyd - 1960
    In it Boyd rallied against Australia's promotion of ornament, decorative approach to design and slavish imitation of all things American.'The basis of the Australian ugliness,' he wrote, 'is an unwillingness to be committed on the level of ideas. In all the arts of living, in the shaping of all her artefacts, as in politics, Australia shuffles about vigorously in the middle - as she estimates the middle - of the road, picking up disconnected ideas wherever she finds them.'Boyd was a fierce critic, and an advocate of good design. He understood the significance of the connection between people and their dwellings, and argued passionately for a national architecture forged from a genuine Australian identity. His concerns are as important now, in an era of suburban sprawl and inner-city redevelopment, as they were half a century ago.Caustic and brilliant, The Australian Ugliness is a masterpiece that enables us to see our surroundings with fresh eyes. This handsome anniversary edition is complemented by Robin Boyd's original sketches for the book and a new afterword by major contemporary architects.

The Mingham Air


Elizabeth Fair - 1960
    “If only the Seamarks had left it alone …” Hester Clifford has come to Mingham to recover from pneumonia, at the invitation of her godmother, Cecily Hutton, an eccentric painter with a predilection for ruins. Hester determines to bring order to the Huttons’ easygoing lives, not to mention those of the villagers—including elderly Mrs. Hyde-Ridley, attempting to enforce her Edwardian standards of behaviour, Mrs. Merlin, the Rector’s wife, equally determined to share the joys of country dance with an unenthusiastic parish, and Thomas Seamark, a classic example of the wealthy, brooding widower. Amidst conflict, manipulation, matchmaking, and general hilarity, Hester clearly has her work cut out for her.Furrowed Middlebrow is delighted to make available, for the first time in over half a century, all six of Elizabeth Fair’s irresistible comedies of domestic life. These new editions all feature an introduction by Elizabeth Crawford.“Miss Fair’s understanding is deeper than Mrs. Thirkell’s and her humour is untouched by snobbishness; she is much nearer to Trollope, grand master in these matters.”--Stevie Smith“Miss Fair makes writing look very easy, and that is the measure of her creative ability.”--Compton Mackenzie

Mystery of the Haunted Pool


Phyllis A. Whitney - 1960
    A ship captain's log... A strange face that appears-then disappears at the bottom of a pool. What is the secret of the old sea captain's mansion? Susan Price and her brother, Adam, unravel the clues to a century-old mystery.. and discover a fortune.

Just Another Sucker


James Hadley Chase - 1960
    But when that telephone call is part of a fake kidnap plan to extract five hundred thousand dollars from one of the richest men in the world, only a sucker would gamble on the deal paying off in his favour. Harry Barber is a sucker. After three and a half years in jail for a crime he didn't commit, with no job and no money, he is the perfect target of a brilliant plan to frame him for the brutal murder of a young girl.

The House of Five Talents


Louis Auchincloss - 1960
    Among his books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents (1960), Portrait in Brownstone (1962), and East Side Story (2004).

Jacob's Room & The Waves: Two Complete Novels


Virginia Woolf - 1960
    “Jacob’s Room...comes as a tremendous surprise. The impossible has occurred. The style closely resembles that of Kew Gardens....The break with Night and Day and even with The Voyage Out is complete. A new type of fiction has swum into view” (E. M. Forster).'I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot', Virginia Woolf stated of her eighth novel, The Waves. Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. Six children - Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis - meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore. The subsequent continuity of these six main characters, as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions, is interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature. In pure stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf presents a cross-section of multiple yet parallel lives, each marked by the disintegrating force of a mutual tragedy. The Waves is her searching exploration of individual and collective identity, and the observations and emotions of life, from the simplicity and surging optimism of youth to the vacancy and despair of middle-age.

Nude on Thin Ice


Gil Brewer - 1960
    Both of them just waiting for me.Only one thing stood in the way.A hot-eyed little tramp with a mind like ice and a body that could melt iron. She was out of this world, this hopped-up nymphet . . . and that's where she almost put me.Because this little girl had it all mapped out. She knew which side of the bed was buttered, and that the quickest way to the hidden loot was me . . .And murder!

The Young Flying Fox/ Fei Hu Wai Zhuan (飞狐外传)


Jin Yong - 1960
    Also known as Other Tales of the Flying Fox, this work consists of 2 volumes.

The Three-way Split


Gil Brewer - 1960
    

Trees on a Slope


Hwang Sun-won - 1960
    Trees on a Slope (1960) is his most accomplished novel--one of the few Korean novels to describe in detail the physical and psychological horrors of the Korean War. It is an assured, forceful depiction of three young soldiers in the South Korean army during the latter stages of the war: Hyŏnt'ae, the arrogant and overconfident squad leader; the stolid and dependable Yun-gu; and the Poet Tong-ho. The war affects the men in different ways. Before he can return home, Tong-ho takes his own life after shooting an officer and a prostitute. Hyŏn-t'ae, finding himself removed from situations of mortal danger, spends most of his time drinking; in the end he is arrested for abetting in the suicide of a young girl. Only Yun-gu is able to make the successful transition to postwar life. His ability to survive the encroachments of others, exploit limited resources, and capitalize on the lessons of harsh experience make him emblematic of Korea over the centuries.Trees on a Slope will introduce an English-reading audience to an important voice in modern Asian literature.

More Tales from Shakespeare


Charles Lamb - 1960
    Originally designed for teaching English as a foreign language, the series' combination of high interest level and low reading age makes it suitable for both English-speaking teenagers with limited reading skills and students of English as a second language. Many titles in the series also provide access to the pre-20th century literature strands of the National Curriculum English Orders. "Penguin Readers" are graded at seven levels of difficulty, from "Easystarts" with a 200-word vocabulary, to Level 6 (Advanced) with a 3000-word vocabulary. In addition, titles fall into one of three sub-categories: "Contemporary", "Classics" or "Originals". At the end of each book there is a section of enjoyable exercises focusing on vocabulary building, comprehension, discussion and writing. Some titles in the series are available with an accompanying audio cassette, or in a book and cassette pack. Additionally, selected titles have free accompanying "Penguin Readers Factsheets" which provide stimulating exercise material for students, as well as suggestions for teachers on how to exploit the Readers in class.

Walt Disney's Toby Tyler


Dorothea J. Snow - 1960