Best of
Novels

1982

The Book of Disquiet


Fernando Pessoa - 1982
    He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology, and horoscope. When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague." Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

The Color Purple


Alice Walker - 1982
    Alice Walker's iconic modern classic is now a Penguin Book.A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker's epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

Mississippi Writings: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Life on the Mississippi / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Pudd’nhead Wilson


Mark Twain - 1982
    This Library of America collection presents his best-known works, together for the first time in one volume.

The Women of Brewster Place


Gloria Naylor - 1982
    Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and open-hearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition. Her remarkable sense of community and history makes The Women of Brewster Place a contemporary classic—and a touching and unforgettable read.

If Not Now, When?


Primo Levi - 1982
    In this gripping novel, based on a true story, he reveals the extraordinary lives of the Russian, Polish and Jewish partisans trapped behind enemy lines during the Second World War. Wracked by fear, hunger and fierce rivalries, they link up, fall apart, struggle to stay alive, and to sabotage the efforts of the all-powerful German army. A compelling tale of action, resistance and epic adventure, it also reveals Levi's characteristic compassion and deep insight into the moral dilemmas of total war. It ranks alongside THE PERIOD TABLE and IF THIS IS A MAN as one of the rare authentic masterpieces of the 20th century.

Ham on Rye


Charles Bukowski - 1982
    From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, "Ham on Rye" offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

Master of the Game


Sidney Sheldon - 1982
    Kate Blackwell is one of the richest and most powerful women in the world. She is an enigma, a woman surrounded by a thousand unanswered questions. Her father was a diamond prospector who struck it rich beyond his wildest dreams. Her mother was the daughter of a crooked Afrikaaner merchant. Her conception was itself an act of hate-filled vengeance. At the extravagent celebrations of her ninetieth birthday, there are toasts from a Supreme Court Judge and a telegram from the White House. And for Kate there are ghosts, ghosts of absent friends and of enemies. Ghosts from a life of blackmail and murder. Ghosts from an empire spawned by naked ambition! Sidney Sheldon is one of the most popular storytellers in the world. This is one of his best-loved novels, a compulsively readable thriller, packed with suspense, intrigue and passion. It will recruit a new generation of fans to his writing.

...And Ladies of the Club


Helen Hooven Santmyer - 1982
    A true classic, it is sure to enchant, enthrall, and intrigue readers for years to come.

The Twilight Zone Companion


Marc Scott Zicree - 1982
    Zicree's account of the series from inception to cancellation, through syndications and sunbsequent offshoots and remakes, is fascinating reading for even the mosts casual fan. Coverage of each episode includes a plot synopsis, Rod Serling's narrations, critical commentary, behind-the-scenes stories and anecdotes from the original artist who created the series, a complete list of cast and credits, and over 200 production photographs.This second edition also has an addendum covering the Twilight Zone movie and the CBS program from the 1980s.

The Adventure of the Final Problem


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1982
    It was first published in Strand Magazine in December 1893. It appears in book form as part of the collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle later ranked "The Final Problem" fourth on his personal list of the twelve best Holmes stories.

Concrete


Thomas Bernhard - 1982
    This new novel by the internationally praised but not widely known Austrian writer is one of those—a book of mysterious dark beauty . . . . [It] is overwhelming; one wants to read it again, immediately, to re-experience its intricate innovations, not to let go of this masterful work."—John Rechy, Los Angeles Times"Rudolph is not obstructed by some malfunctions in part of his being—his being itself is a knot. And as Bernhard's narrative proceeds, we begin to register the dimensions of his crisis, its self-consuming circularity . . . . Where rage of this intensity is directed outward, we often find the sociopath; where inward, the suicide. Where it breaks out laterally, onto the page, we sometimes find a most unsettling artistic vision."—Sven Birkerts, The New Republic

The Bandini Quartet


John Fante - 1982
    Possessing a style of deceptive simplicity, emotional immediacy and tremendous psychological point, among the novels, short stories and screenplays that complete his career, the author's crowning accomplishment is the Arturo Bandini tetralogy.

A Midnight Clear


William Wharton - 1982
    Here they play at being soldiers in what seems to be complete isolation. That is, until the Germans begin revealing their whereabouts and leaving signs of their presence: a scarecrow, equipment the squad had dropped on a retreat from a reconnaissance mission and, strangest of all, a small fir tree hung with fruit, candles, and cardboard stars. Suddenly, Knott and the others must unravel these mysteries, learning as they do about themselves, about one another, and about the "enemy," until A Midnight Clear reaches its unexpected climax, one of the most shattering in the literature of war.

The Post-Office Girl


Stefan Zweig - 1982
    But what happens to human feeling in a completely commodified world? In The Post-Office Girl, Stefan Zweig, a deep analyst of the human passions, lays bare the private life of capitalism.Christine toils in a provincial post office in post–World War I Austria, a country gripped by unemployment. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from Christine’s rich American aunt inviting her to a resort in the Swiss Alps. Christine is immediately swept up into a world of inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed: nothing is impossible. But then, abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose. Christine returns to the post office, where yes, nothing will ever be the same again.Christine meets Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran and disappointed architect, who works construction jobs when he can get them. They are drawn to each other, even as they are crushed by a sense of deprivation, of anger and shame. Work, politics, love, sex: everything is impossible for them. Life is meaningless, unless, through one desperate and decisive act, they can secretly remake their world from within.Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde in Zweig’s haunting and hard-as-nails novel, completed during the 1930s, as he was driven by the Nazis into exile, but left unpublished at the time of his death. The Post-Office Girl, available here for the first time in English, transforms our image of a modern master’s achievement.

Molly


Teresa Crane - 1982
    Fleeing her fanatical republican family, Molly O’Dowd arrives nearly penniless in London at the end of the nineteenth century. Plunged into the world of East End gambling houses and brothels, Molly invests what little money she has in a typing course, her only way out. This investment will lead her on the path to establishing herself as a woman of power and means.From the rough-and-tumble world of the London docks to the luxurious hotels and restaurants of the fashionable West End, Molly captures the temper of the times – the unrest of the labouring classes, the courage of the suffragette movement, the ravages of the First World War. Molly wins and loses in the tempestuous world of the capital but her energy and determination never flag and tides change when she meets a man who could match her in business… and in love. This rags-to-riches historical romance is perfect for fans of Lily Graham, Natalie Meg Evans and Fiona McIntosh.

Motel Chronicles


Sam Shepard - 1982
    Shepard chronicles his own life birth in Illinois, childhood memories of Guam, Pasadena and rural Southern California, adventures as ranch hand, waiter, rock musician, dramatist, and film actor. Scenes from this book form the basis of his play Superstitions, and of the film (directed by Wim Wenders) Paris, Texas, winner of the Golden Palm Award at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.

Wittgenstein's Nephew


Thomas Bernhard - 1982
    In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their once-casual friendship quickens, these two eccentric men begin to discover in each other a possible antidote to their feelings of hopelessness and mortality—a spiritual symmetry forged by their shared passion for music, a strange sense of humor, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and fear in the face of death. Part memoir, part fiction, Wittgenstein’s Nephew is both a meditation on the artist’s struggle to maintain a solid foothold in a world gone incomprehensibly askew, and an eulogy to a real-life friendship.

So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away


Richard Brautigan - 1982
    Through the eyes, ears and voice of Brautigan's youthful protagonist the reader is gently led into a small-town tale where the narrator accidentally shoots dead his best friend with a gun. The novel deals with the repercussions of this tragedy and its recurring theme of 'What if...' fuels anguish, regret and self-blame as well as some darkly comic passages of bitter-sweet romance and despair. Taken with the recently discovered, "An Unfortunate Woman", these two late Brautigan novels are a fitting epitaph to a complex, contradictory and often misunderstood genius.

Shike


Robert Shea - 1982
    Beautiful young Taniko struggles under oppression as the mistress of the cruel Kublai Khan, and Jebu, a young monk, is transformed into a fierce warrior, in a saga of the ancient Orient during a time of bloodshed and magic.

The Earth Will Shake: The History of the Early Illuminati


Robert Anton Wilson - 1982
    The history of the world is their story: a conspiracy as vast and all-encompassing as the riddle of time itself.In Naples, Italy, in 1764, a young aristocrat is about to stumble onto one piece of the great pattern. Through a heartless murder and his passion for the beautiful daughter of his enemy, young Sigismundo Celine uncovers the mystery of the Rossi brigade, former M.A.F.I.A. assassins, and the secret agenda of the dreaded Inquisition.In the wind of the raging social storm that will soon tear through Europe and America with the flame of revolution, Sigismundo begins his journey of discovery, joined by the boy Mozart, Dr. Frankenstein, Casanova the spy, lover and magician...and a mysterious violet-eyed assassin who calls him "brother." Join him. The journey has just begun.

Flanagan's Run


Tom McNab - 1982
    Flanagan, a grand-scale promoter in the P. T. Barnum vein, organizes a cross-country footrace from Los Angeles to New York, with a purse of $150,000 for the winner. Two thousand runners from around the world gather to participate in the grueling trek, which takes them through mountains, deserts, plains, and cities, forcing some friends and some alliances, tempered of course by the intense competition of the situation. Only a portion of the novel is set in Illinois, but organized fisticuffs in Springfield and organized crime in Chicago provide interesting and lively entertainment, along with period views of those cities.

Doré's Illustrations for Don Quixote


Gustave Doré - 1982
    . . . People still speak of it only as 'Doré's Don Quixote'." — Life and Reminiscences of Gustave DoréDoré himself had something of Quixote's chivalry and spent an arduous life drafting impossible dreams; he knew fame as well as pain, disillusionment, and failure. At age 30 he was ready for Quixote and prepared to realize his dream of illustrating the world's great books.Doré never became the painter he yearned to be, but he came very close to realizing his desired intimacy with the classics. His sympathy with Cervantes' satire was so close that, of the numerous Quixote interpretations by many outstanding artists, Doré's has become the standard. The French translation of Cervantes that Doré illustrated is forgotten; here is the memorable remnant of that work — all 120 full-page plates, plus a selection of 70 characteristic headpiece and tailpiece vignettes.As can be seen in the backgrounds, Doré was ready professionally as well as emotionally for Quixote. He had traveled through Spain preparing an earlier work, and his graphic memory was as strong and indelible as that of another great Quixote interpreter, Picasso. From Sancho's village through Spanish hills and dry plateaus, in the Pyrenees and by the sea, in rural castles and Barcelona luxury, Doré illuminated the seventeenth-century setting with a nineteenth-century acquaintance with the scene. Doré was also a careful student of Renaissance costume and architecture; his minutiae, so copious, are invariably correct.Captions written especially for this edition describe the action with reference to the original Spanish text, capturing high points of the story. But of course Doré conveys it all in a picture: the famous windmill charge, traversing the Sierra Morena, battling the Knight of the White Moon, visions of giants, dragons, flaming lakes, and damsels, the Dulcinea never found, all in full-page wood engravings. Doré's marvelous penchant for ghostly effects in panoramic landscapes and seascapes finds large scope here, carefully engraved by one of the best of his longtime studio engravers, H. Pisano.Doré's Man of la Mancha glows with the artist's own enchantment and humor. Artists and illustration aficionados will add this royalty-free volume to other Dover editions of Doré's works — art he created to stand with great literature that now stands alone. Doré's Quixote indeed stands alone, unique among the knights and graphic castles in Spain.

Space


James A. Michener - 1982
    Michener tackles the most ambitious subject of his career: space, the last great frontier. This astounding novel brings to life the dreams and daring of countless men and women—people like Stanley Mott, the engineer whose irrepressible drive for knowledge places him at the center of the American exploration effort; Norman Grant, the war hero and U.S. senator who takes his personal battle not only to a nation, but to the heavens; Dieter Kolff, Hitler’s rocket scientist, whose specialty is a rare commodity in this new era; Randy Claggett, the astronaut who meets his destiny on a mission to the far side of the moon; and Cynthia Rhee, the reporter whose determined crusade brings their story to a breathless world.

The Dark Crystal


A.C.H. Smith - 1982
    From his quiet, dreamy existence in the secluded valley with the ponderous but cerebral urRu, Jen must suddenly depart on a Quest whose details are not fully explained to him. This gentle boy leaves his comfort zone in a desperate attempt to save his planet from another miillenium of destructive rule.Jen's goal is to find a special crystal shard and reunite it with the mother crystal -- now dark with grief and anger at the senseless destruction. This crystal is coveted and guarded in the Dark Castle by the vicious race of Skeksis, who terrorize the planet with their bat spies and insect zombies. Our unlikely hero has only his flute and his wits to guide him, but several surprise friends offer help and advice along his dangerous odyssey--including the last girl Gelfling. Together they race against celestial time, as the Great Conjunction of the triple suns is imminent.

Elfquest: Journey to Sorrows End


Wendy Pini - 1982
    Now a small but gallant band of Wolfriders must search the world for a place not contaminated by humans--a place where legends sy other elves live in peace and safety. If it's not already too late. This is the first full-length novel based on the smash-hit graphic Elfquest bestsellers.

A Severed Wasp


Madeleine L'Engle - 1982
    Now in her seventies, she encounters an old friend from her Greenwich Village days who, it turns out, is the former Bishop of New York. He asks Katherine to give a benefit concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This leads to new demands on her resources--human, artistic, psychological, and spiritual--that are entirely unexpected.

The Girl of the Sea of Cortez


Peter Benchley - 1982
    Every day, Paloma paddles her tiny boat into the ocean and anchors over a seamount—a submerged volcanic peak sixty feet underwater that is clustered with spectacular sea animals and a wondrous web of marine life. It is there that an astonishing event takes place, when on one of her dives Paloma is shadowed by a manta ray—an animal so large it blocks the sun. She develops an extraordinary relationship with this luminous, gentle creature, but instinctively knows its existence is a secret she must fiercely protect. Benchley’s novel paints a poignant picture of humanity’s precarious relationship with the ocean, which unfolds alongside a heartrending story of familial bonds, often revealing that the ignorance of man is far more dangerous than the sea. Full of beauty, danger, and adventure, The Girl of the Sea of Cortez is triumphant—a novel to fall in love with.

Dawn


Yoshiki Tanaka - 1982
    He seeks to overthrow the old order and become a truly absolute—yet benevolent—dictator. His rival, the humble Yang Wen-li of the Free Planets Alliance, wishes to preserve democracy even if he must sacrifice his political ideals to defeat the Empire. Their political and military battles play out over a galactic chessboard in an epic saga fifteen centuries in the making!

Shipwrecks


Akira Yoshimura - 1982
    His people catch barely enough fish to live on, and so must distill salt to sell to neighboring villages. But this industry serves another, more sinister purpose: the fires of the salt cauldrons lure passing ships toward the shore and onto rocky shoals. When a ship runs aground, the villagers slaughter the crew and loot the cargo for rice, wine, and rich delicacies. One day a ship founders on the rocks. But Isaku learns that its cargo is far deadlier than could ever be imagined. Shipwrecks, the first novel by the great Japanese writer Yoshimura to be translated into English, is a stunningly powerful, Gothic tale of fate and retribution.

Prince Ombra


Roderick MacLeish - 1982
    And he's going to need them. Bentley is a hero - the thousand and first to be exact - in a long line of heroes that has stretched all the way back to antiquity. Heroes like Arthur and Hercules. And now: Bentley.That's because there is an evil in the world that never dies. Its name is Prnce Ombra. When Prince Ombra arises a hero is called upon to battle him. One day when Bentley is grown he will be that hero.What Bentley doesn't know is that his "one day" is today.

Shoeless Joe


W.P. Kinsella - 1982
    What follows is a rich, nostalgic look at one of our most cherished national pastimes and a remarkable story about fathers and sons, love and family, and the inimitable joy of finding your way home.

Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S.


Jeremy Leven - 1982
    He's not happy. No one seems to like or understand him; people have got him all wrong. And his relationship with God is a hostile one. Unloved and misunderstood, he's come back to Earth in search of a psychotherapist; he's prepared- if cured- to deliver the all-important Great Answer. In Jeremy Leven's wildly original comic novel, we follow the Prince of Darkness through his seven amazing therapy sessions. And we watch him grow increasingly well adjusted while his therapist, the unfortunate Dr. Kassler, descends deeper and deeper into hell.

Katie


Michael McDowell - 1982
    As the cellar filled with corpses, the family coffers filled with cash.Pretty young Philo Drax didn't have a family anymore. Katie had finished off her grandfather and her mother, and promised to put Philo out of her misery very soon now.It was a hard, cruel world for an innocent girl alone, but Philo was glad to be alive, and eager to continue so. She had prospeccts of a romantic marriage to sustain her through her trials. While Katie, poor creature, had only her cunning... and her hammer.DON'T EVER TURN YOUR BACK ON KATIE!

Mistral's Daughter


Judith Krantz - 1982
    Maggy--Flamboyant mistress of  Mistral's youth, the toast of Paris in the '20s.  Her luminous flesh was immortalized in the  paintings that made Mistral legendary. Teddy--Maggy's  daughter, the incomparable cover girl who lived fast  and left as her legacy Mistral's dazzling love  child. Fauve--Mistral's daughter, the headstrong,  fearless glory girl whose one dark secret drove her  to rule the world of high fashion and to risk  everything in a feverish search for love. From the  '20s Paris of Chanel, Colette, Picasso and Matisse to  New York's sizzling new modeling agencies of the  '50s, to the model ward of the '70s,  Mistral's Daughter captures the explosive  glamour of life at the top of the worlds of art and  high fashion. Judith Krantz has given us a  glittering international tale as spellbinding as her  other celebrated best-sellers,  Scruples, Princess Daisy, I'll Take  Manhattan, Till We Meet Again,  Scruple s Two,  Dazzle, and Lovers.

An Unsuitable Attachment


Barbara Pym - 1982
    There is Mark Ainger, the vicar, who introduces his sermons with remarks like ‘Those of you who are familiar with the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.’ His wife Sophia with her cat, ‘I feel sometimes that I can’t reach Faustina as I’ve reached other cats.’ Rupert Stonebird, anthropologist and eligible bachelor. The well-bred Ianthe Broome who works at the library and forms an unsuitable attachment with a young man there. The sharp-tongue Mervyn Cantrell, chief librarian, who complains that ‘when books have things spilt on them it is always bottled sauce or gravy of the thickest and most repellent kind rather than something utterly exquisite and delicious.’ There is also Daisy Pettigrew, the vet’s sister, another obsessional cat person, and Sister Dew who bears a strong resemblance to Sister Blatt in Excellent Women.

On The Black Hill


Bruce Chatwin - 1982
    They till the rough soil and sleep in the same bed, touched only occasionally by the advances of the twentieth century.In depicting the lives of Benjamin and Lewis and their interactions with their small local community Chatwin comments movingly on the larger questions of human experience.

The Fragrance of the Guava


Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza - 1982
    Guided by Mendoza, M�rquez reveals - as transfigured in his work by the power of language - the heat and colour of the Spanish Caribbean, the mythological world of its inhabitants, the exotic mentality of its leaders.

TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Romance of the Mexican Revolution and the 20th Century West


Clifford Irving - 1982
    a high-stepping, swashbuckling romance inspired by the unassailable historical fact that in his greenhorn youth, before he became a movie-star cowboy, Tom Mix rode in the company of the peasant revolutionary Pancho Villa ... Who among us has not wished he'd grown up as romantically as Mix does here?" -- New York Times Book Review "With Tom Mix and Pancho Villa, Clifford Irving takes his place among the giants of contemporary literature, dazzling us all with this robust, rousing, rip-roaring work of art." -- Ernest Lehman "Fabulous, big, rawboned wild-blooded adventure tale that gives the sights and sounds and smells of a turn-of-the-century world real enough to touch. Clifford Irving has written a novel to make any writer proud and many readers grateful." -- Los Angeles Herald Examiner "Intelligently conceived, rapidly paced, attitudinally wry, earthy - a well-written, cannily contemporary tale about the past." -- Dallas Times Herald ----- It's 1913, and Tom Mix, young cowboy and future movie star, rides south of the border to fight at the side of the charismatic Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary leader, already a legend. In the violent beauty of war-torn Mexico a partnership is formed, and an epic is born. Caught up in this sumptuous panoramic novel are some of the most dynamic characters ever to come to life on a page: Hannah, Tom's voluptuous Jewish fiancée; Rosa, the beautiful Indian child widow who loves Tom; Elisa, the sophisticated German rancher who becomes his mistress; Rudolfo Fierro, "the butcher," who lives to kill his enemies and vows to end Tom's life; Lieutenant George S. Patton, Jr., who ceaselessly hunts both Villa and Fierro; and above all, the tempestuous Pancho Villa, a man of ungovernable emotions, a hero and, at the same time, a villain larger than life. This is a story of romance and friendship, loyalty and revenge, politics and gold - an adventure that Publishers Weekly called "grand entertainment, full of wit, charm, and zest." The Los Angeles Times wrote that "Irving spins a fantasy worthy of Mark Twain," and the Houston Chronicle said, "Irving's wonderful big new book is a rollicking, ribald tale." The Chicago Tribune concluded that "[Tom Mix's] exploits - on the battlefield, behind the lines, in bed - are told with riveting skill."

Baltasar and Blimunda


José Saramago - 1982
    National bestseller. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.When King and Church exercise absolute power what happens to the dreams of ordinary people? In early eighteenth century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost a hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with strange visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fé where her mother is condemned and sent into exile, the two are bound body and soul by a love of unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Padre Bartolemeu Lourenço, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the inquisition rages and royalty and religion clash, they pursue his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.

Moazzam Ali / معظم علی


Naseem Hijazi - 1982
    The lead character, Moazzam Ali joins the fight against the British with the army of Siraj ud-Daula. The story goes around as the character moves from one place in India to another in search of the lost glory and freedom.

Two for Texas


James Lee Burke - 1982
    An evocative novel set during the Texas revolution from award-winning author James Lee Burke.

Light a Penny Candle


Maeve Binchy - 1982
    It is the beginning of an unshakeable bond between Elizabeth and Aisling O'Connor, a friendship which will endure through twenty turbulent years of change and chaos, joy and sorrow, soaring dreams and searing betrayals...Writing with warmth, wit and great compassion, Maeve Binchy tells a magnificent story of the lives and loves of two women, bound together in a friendship that nothing could tear asunder - not even the man who threatened to come between them forever.

Four Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Novels: Whose Body? / Clouds of Witness / Murder Must Advertise / Gaudy Night


Dorothy L. Sayers - 1982
    Murder Must Advertise. Gaudy Night.

The Way of a Serpent


Torgny Lindgren - 1982
    With sly humor, poor farmhand Johan Johansson (Bragging Johnny to his friends) relates the story of his family and the villainous father and son who own their land. Whenever the Johanssons can't pay their rent, the landlords possess themselves of their women; the debt is then temporarily canceled and credit extended. Along with his scripture-citing family and neighbors, Johan struggles to find the hand of Providence in this oppressive, ultimately incestuous arrangement, which ends with a mysterious (though equally arbitrary) "act of God."Although the characters in this parable are simply drawn, the women in Johnny's family make a powerful impression on both narrator and reader. Considering the example of his outwardly compromised mother, Johan says: "There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him, but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man."Geddes's translation is remarkable for its sensitivity to the characters' Bible-tinged speech.

Union Street


Pat Barker - 1982
    There's Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married, and already pregnant; Old Alice, welcoming her impending death; Muriel helplessly watching the decline of her stoical husband. And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.

Monsignor Quixote


Graham Greene - 1982
    The title character of Monsignor Quixote is a village priest, elevated to the rank of monsignor through a clerical error, who travels to Madrid accompanied by his best friend, Sancho, the Communist ex-mayor of the village, in Greene's lighthearted variation on Cervantes.

The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx


Lawrence Durrell - 1982
    'Durrell is a magician. He juggles with glittering words, he conjures up "cloud capped towers, gorgeous palaces and solemn temples," he entrances, intrigues and impresses.' The TimesAvignon: the kingdom of kings and Popes, capital of the historic South of France, heart of legendary Provence. The entwined lives of a group of friends - and lovers - are transformed forever by the outbreak of World War II. But their dramatic present only plunges them further into the darkness of an ancient past, as they become entangled in buried plots, gnostic cults, religious rituals, and a mysterious hunt for hidden Knight's Templar treasure. From Hitler's Europe to the medieval world, French chateaus to Egyptian deserts, The Avignon Quintet is an epic symphony of ecstasy and terror, madness and memory, passion and death. Consisting of five majestic novels - Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx - it is a wild, wise masterpiece that could only be written by the literary master of his century, Lawrence Durrell.'Entrancing ... Swooning ... Charged with Durrell's strange magic.' Guardian'An enigmatic and secretive work, a cluster of dark passages and gaudy treasure-filled caves ... Inventive gusto and fictive extravagance ... Sensational.' London Review of Books'Splendid ... Reckless all-or-nothing writing.' Sunday Telegraph 'A virtuoso, capable of extraordinary feats.' New York Times 'Pungent and teasing ... There is some insidious power in him that keeps one reading.' Observer What readers are saying: 'As if Proust had written Raiders of the Lost Ark ...Templars, gnostics, handsome princes, asylums, madness, Freudians, southern France, Egypt, ancient tombs, castles, exotica, erotica, incest, ghosts, gypsies, ascetics, spies, Nazis, secret societies, bordellos, feasts, Nubian lesbians, assassins disguised as nuns, literary doppelgangers, convents, hidden treasure, suicide, and art.''Mystery, love, incest, war, espionage, gypsies, mysticism, secret rituals: a masterful writer.' 'Magnificent ... An incredible level of writing that should be experienced by everyone who loves modern literature.''A masterpiece ... Unlike anything I've ever read.' 'The master at his peak.' 'The writing is spectacular, unlike anything today.' 'Deeply complex, very clever use of language and gripping. Highly recommended.' 'Hairs suddenly rise on the back of the neck ... Read with a glass of wine.'

After Hours


Edwin Torres - 1982
    But as a name with a rep to uphold it's tough, and Carlito needs to pull in some money somehow.

The Amityville Horror II


John G. Jones - 1982
    An inconspicuous hose in a sleepy Long Island suburb that gave rise to a monstrous evil, a terrible phenomenon that stunned the country. It was to be the dream home of the Lutz family, but it turned out to be a hell house. After just 28 days, the Lutzes fled in terror, convinced the house was possessed by evil spirits. Now comes the full terror of the Amityville horror, for the nightmare that Jay Anderson described was not the whole story. There is more, much more, and it is all disclosed for the first time in The Amityville Horror II. For four years after the Lutzes fled the house at 112 Ocean Avenue, they were followed and tormented by an inescapable evil. Now the reveal the harrowing details of their harrowing ordeal.

Take Five


D. Keith Mano - 1982
    Con-man, filmmaker (currently working on producing "Jesus 2001", what he calls the religious equivalent of The Godfather, best known for his movie "The Clap That Took Over the World"), descendent of a wealthy and prestigious New York family whose wealth and prestige are on a sharp decline, racist and anti-Semite (though Simon dislikes all ethnic groups equally), possessor of never-satisfied appetites (food, women, drink, but most of all, money and more money), and the fastest talker since Falstaff, Simon is on a quest that goes backwards.Through the course of this 600-page novel, Simon loses, one by one, all of his senses (taste is lost when trying to siphon off gasoline for his roving, broken-down production van), ending in a state of complete debilitation in which he is being made ready for eternity and salvation.As energy packed as a William Gaddis novel and as rich in language as a Shakespearean play, Take Five is a modern masterpiece that is at once a celebration of life and a morality play on excess, as though anticipating the self-indulgent "me generation" of the decade.

Kinshu: Autumn Brocade


Teru Miyamoto - 1982
    by Teru Miyamoto, one of Japan's most popular literary writers.The word kinshu has many connotations in Japanese—brocade, poetic writing, the brilliance of autumn leaves—and resonates here as a vibrant metaphor for the complex, intimate relationship between Aki and Yasuaki. Ten years after a dramatic divorce, they meet by chance at a mountain resort. Aki initiates a new correspondence, and letter by letter through the seasons, the secrets of the past unfold as they reflect on their present struggles. From a lover's suicide to a father's controlling demands, to Mozart's Thirty-Ninth Symphony ("a veritable marvel of sixteenth notes"), to the karmic consequences of their actions, the story glides through their deeply introspective and stirring exchanges. What begins as a series of accusations and apologies, questions and excuses, turns into a source of mutual support and healing. Chosen as an Outstanding Work of Japanese Literature by the Japanese Literature Publishing Project.

Bid Me to Live: A Madrigal


H.D. - 1982
    documents her traumatic experiences during WWI on which she blamed a number of personal tragedies, including a stillborn child, the end of her marriage, and her pained relationship with D. H. Lawrence. This critical edition returns the novel to print for the first time in a generation. Editor Caroline Zilboorg offers invaluable background information and perspectives that facilitate a rich and rewarding reading of a complex novel. Including an introduction that recounts the autobiographical narrative on which the book is based, a biographical key to all the major characters, explanations of textual references, and photographs of all the central figures in the text, this is a powerful resource for understanding and appreciating one of the Imagist author's most accessible novels. H.D. (born Hilda Doolittle, 1886–1961) is an American writer whose work exerted enormous influence on modernist poetry and prose.

Flossie Teacake's Fur Coat


Hunter Davies - 1982
    Then she finds that when she tries on her sister's fur coat, she grows up to become a glamourous 18-year-old. Flossie exploits this, discovering the joys (and problems) of boys, pubs, Saturday jobs, discos and more.

Nothing Else Matters


Patricia St. John - 1982
    Lamia and her family are caught up in the fighting, with tragic consequences. Lamia struggles with the hatred that threatens to destroy her, until she grasps that forgiveness and love are the most important things. Nothing else matters.

Mark Twain: Selected Works


Mark Twain - 1982
    The nom de plume was especially appropriate for Clemens, reflecting both his love of the Mississippi and his wry sense of humor. This Library of Literary Classics edition contains his best works including: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.This deluxe edition is bound in padded leather with luxurious gold-stamping on the front and spine, satin ribbon marker and gilded edges. Other titles in this series include: Charlotte & Emily Bronte: The Complete Novels; Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Works; William Shakespeare: The Complete Works; Charles Dickens: Four Complete Novels; Lewis Carroll: The Complete, Fully Illustrated Works; and Jane Austen: The Complete Novels.

Oxherding Tale


Charles R. Johnson - 1982
    The result is a hilarious imbroglio and an offspring -- Andrew Hawkins, whose life becomes Oxherding Tale. Through sexual escapades, picaresque adventures, and philosophical inquiry, Hawkins navigates white and black worlds and comments wryly on human nature along the way. Told with pure genius, Oxherding Tale is a deliciously funny, bitterly ironic account of slavery, racism, and the human spirit; and it reveals the author as a great talent with even greater humanity.

The Crying Heart Tattoo


David Lozell Martin - 1982
    Beginning their relationship when Sonny is just fourteen and Felicity thirty-four, the couple share a poignant history together that ends only upon Felicity's passing — despite four marriages, numerous obstacles, and enough misadventures to challenge the most loyal of lovers.At once heartbreaking and euphoric, their story mirrors the tale that Felicity has passed down to Sonny, a story uncanny in its similarity to their own: when a prehistoric outcast locates her former tribe, she falls in love with a young boy.A masterful novel first published a quarter of a century ago, The Crying Heart Tattoo keeps the impossible within reach, proving once and for all that the struggle for true love is worth everything.

The Journey


Anne Cameron - 1982
    In 1982, we moved to San Francisco and then merged with Aunt Lute Books (out of Iowa) in 1986 to become Spinsters/Aunt Lute Book Company. The Aunt Lute Foundation became a separate, non-profit publishing company in 1990 while Spinsters Ink moved to Minnesota in 1992. Today, we are housed in Duluth's Building for Women with other feminist organizations dedicated to serving women.Spinsters Ink publishes fiction and non-fiction that deal with significant issues in women's lives from a feminist perspective: books that not only name these crucial issues, but -- more important -- encourage change and growth. We are committed to publishing works by women writing from the periphery: fat women, Jewish women, lesbians, old women, poor women, rural women, women examining classism, women of color, women with disabilities, women who are writing books that help make the best in our lives more possible.Two women travel through the wild Canadian West of the late 1800s to escape the violence of their pasts.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL PA


Kenneth Rexroth - 1982
    His published memoir––all 365 pages of it––stopped at 1927, when the twenty-two-year-old writer and his first wife, Andrée, were about to settle in California. Now revised and expanded, An Autobiographical Novel includes reminiscences that cover another twenty years of literary life and two more marriages. Linda Hamalian, author of A Life of Kenneth Rexroth (W. W. Norton, 1991), sifted through more than 300 pages of raw tape transcriptions. Weighing fact against fictions (Rexroth loved a tall tale and relished gossip), Hamalian has prepared a valuable index that identifies obscure allusions and the real people who figured in Rexroth’s emotionally tumultuous life. “It adds up to a very good read,” she says. “I am willing to bet a nice chunk of money that readers will wish Rexroth had been able to go on and on loosening his talk-tapes.”

Kine


Alan Lloyd - 1982
    So with Kine and his motley allies we spend one glorious, unforgettable summer in another world - a world where solitary creatures prowl secret paths and hedgerows, and whiskered legions gather for battle as autumn draws near...Bewitching, cruel, fresh, poetic, sad - here is all the magic of the hidden coutryside.

The Christmas Tree


Jennifer Johnston - 1982
    Now she has returned home to die. While that process takes place she replays the fragments of her past. And, as the Christmas tree awaits its day, so she also waits, hoping that the outcome will be on her terms.

The Mouse Butcher


Dick King-Smith - 1982
    . . but that was before all the humans left the island. Now Tom himself is the "mouse butcher", supplying the rich Bampton-Bush family with mice, fish, and pheasant, and enjoying the company of their beautiful Blue Persian daughter, Diana.

A Late Divorce


A.B. Yehoshua - 1982
    Narrated in turn by each family member—husband and wife, sons and daughter, young grandson—the drama builds to a crescendo at the traditional family gathering on Passover eve.

The Glad River


Will D. Campbell - 1982
    And no one in Cummings, Mississippi, knew that Kingston Smylie's daddy was really his granddaddy and that Kingston wasn't really white. And at Camp Polk, no one knew anything at all about Fordache Arceneau because he spoke only Cajun. They met in basic training. Green kids who'd always felt themselves to be outsiders, they formed a community of three. They called it the neighborhood. After seeing action together at Guadalcanal, the three friends went back to the lives they'd each known, but they went on meeting regularly, keeping up the neighborhood. Their lives were untroubled, until the day Fordache found himself accused of murder, on trial for his life. And in a small Southern courtroom in the autumn of 1952, the neighborhood - bound by love and based on understanding - faced its ultimate test. The Glad River is a deeply affecting novel. Grounded in a particular place and time, its themes are, nonetheless, universal. A novel that probes the limits of religion and the state, it is also the work of a master storyteller and civil rights activist whose works are considered a treasure of modern Southern literature. *Contains strong language, may not be suitable for young readers.

Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown


Jonathan Z. Smith - 1982
    Smith has pointed the academic study of religion in a new theoretical direction, one neither theological nor willfully ideological. Making use of examples as apparently diverse and exotic as the Maori cults in nineteenth-century New Zealand and the events of Jonestown, Smith shows that religion must be construed as conventional, anthropological, historical, and as an exercise of imagination. In his analyses, religion emerges as the product of historically and geographically situated human ingenuity, cognition, and curiosity—simply put, as the result of human labor, one of the decisive but wholly ordinary ways human beings create the worlds in which they live and make sense of them. "These seven essays . . . display the critical intelligence, creativity, and sheer common sense that make Smith one of the most methodologically sophisticated and suggestive historians of religion writing today. . . . Smith scrutinizes the fundamental problems of taxonomy and comparison in religious studies, suggestively redescribes such basic categories as canon and ritual, and shows how frequently studied myths may more likely reflect situational incongruities than vaunted mimetic congruities. His final essay, on Jonestown, demonstrates the interpretive power of the historian of religion to render intelligible that in our own day which seems most bizarre."—Richard S. Sarason, Religious Studies Review

Family Happiness


Laurie Colwin - 1982
    Polly is a happy wife and mother from a remarkable strong and attractive family -- until one day she finds herself entagled in a completely unexpected, sweet, yet painful, love affair with a painter named Lincoln Bennett.  All of Polly's beliefs about herself explode, uprooting what had seemed to be a settled -- and everlasting -- idea of family happiness.

The Sextant


Brian Callison - 1982
    There was a storm and she sank almost immediately, taking with her not only Captain Herschell and all his crew but also the Captain's precious sextant from which he was never parted. Or so the Admiralty said at the time. And so his son John firmly believed. Until, forty years later, he was hailed to the Strathclyde Police H.Q. to identify the proceeds of a robbery; only to find among the loot his father's sextant in its immaculate rosewood box, burnished and polished -- and very definitely not resurrected from any watery grave. And so John and his girlfriend Fran set off in quest of the truth, to the isolated village of Laichy on its sea loch

Maggie Adams, Dancer


Karen Strickler Dean - 1982
    A young girl is determined to succeed as a ballet dancer despite the ambivalent attitudes of her parents and her boyfriend.

We'll Share a Double Funeral


James Hadley Chase - 1982
    Disguised as a police officer, he meets up with movie writer Perry Weston and persuades him to drive to Weston's remote fishing lodge. Once there, and somewhat to Weston's surprise, Logan agrees to talk about his life and how he came to murder six people. The police become suspicious and put a watch on the lodge. Then Weston's wayward wife visits him and promises a fresh start. Logan wants money and a chance to start again . . . Can either of them deliver or will Weston and Logan share a double funeral?

Gonji: Red Blade from the East


T.C. Rypel - 1982
    Zebra canceled their entire fantasy line after the fifth book, before the series could reach its intended closure. The plan is to complete the entire epic-series story arc for a new generation of fantasy readers.The series concerns a legendary halfbreed samurai-Viking named Gonji Sabatake, who is impelled by Destiny itself to quest after an ageless mystery and confound a timeless supernatural tyranny which takes him from medieval Japan, through Europe, and on into worlds unknown. Monsters, magic, and---above all---rich, lived-in characters abound, in a series teeming with resounding action and dynamic human interaction.

Princess and Minerva


Carolyn Lane - 1982
    

A Very British Coup


Chris Mullin - 1982
    His manifesto included public control of finance and the dismantling of the newspaper monopolies. As MI5 conspires with the press barons to bring him down, Harry finds himself caught up in a no-holds-barred battle for survival.

Rocky III


Sylvester Stallone - 1982
    Years of enjoying easy fights and a happy home life with Adrien.But now a vicious, young fighter named Clubber Lang, jealous of Rocky's success has challenged him to a bout.Can an out of shape hero beat this young upstart? Rocky's got the guts and the courage. And that's not enough, he's getting help -from none other than Apollo Creed himself.

Ignorance Is the Enemy of Love


Faarax M.J. Cawl - 1982
    

The Portable Kipling


Rudyard Kipling - 1982
    The Portable Kipling contains selections from The Jungle Books and Soldiers Three; more than twenty stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King," "The Cat that Walked by Himself," "The Eye of Allah," and the unsettling "Mary Postgate";  more than fifty poems; and three essays.  The volume also includes a complete chronology and a critical introduction by Irving Howe that permits us to see the formal achievements of Kipling's work as well as to enjoy its abundant pleasures—not least of which is the sheer satisfaction of great storytelling.

Mark Twain: Greenwich Unabridged Library Classics


Mark Twain - 1982
    With illustrations by True Williams, E.W. Kewmble, Dan Beard, and others.

Elsie de Wolfe: A Life in the High Style


Jane S. Smith - 1982
    Actress, tastemaker, businesswoman, feminist, and hostess, Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl, reigned supreme over turn-of-the-century New York, cafe-society Paris and wartime Hollywood. Her fabulous parties were 'de rigueur'; her skills as an interior decorator..which profession she virtually invented...revolutionized 20th century design; her advice on art and decoration helped build the collections of Fricks, Vanderbilts and Morgans; her derring-do....she flew lines during World War I ...earned her the French Legion of Honor. And the eccentricities of her personal life...most notably her 'bachelor' relationship with powerful impresario and politician Bessie Marbury, followed by her sudden marriage to the knight with the shadowy past, Sir Charles Mendl...kept gossip columns going for decades. She marched down Fifth Ave for women's rights, taught Wallis Simpson how to make a home fit for a King, and helped transform a row of tenements on Manhattan's east side into Sutton Place. On Broadway, Ethel Barrymore understudied her. Around her swirled everyone from the richest families of Europe and America, to the great names of Hollywood, to such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and Cecil Beaton.

Oh Dear, Doctor!


Robert Clifford - 1982
    Clifford's richly entertaining -- and true-life -- accounts of his experiences as a G.P. in a small West Country practice.Once again the inhabitants of Tadchester and Sanford prove that patients are not necessarily a virtue. Like Ralph, the tiny greengrocer, only too aware that an operation might restore marital duties with his huge bowler-hatted wife ... the commander's wife who was literally a knock-out ... and the dubious joys of being a school medical officer. Even off-duty things don't go too smoothly ... there are the trials and tribulations of taking his elderly and eccentric father-in-law on a camping holiday through France ... and the writers' summer school where Dr. Clifford ends up holding endless surgeries.Doctor, family man, humorist, philosopher and counsellor, Dr. Robert Clifford takes us through a three-year period in his busy life, sharing his patients' problems and joys, tragedies and courage.

Big Time


Cynthia D. Grant - 1982
    While waiting in Hollywood for a talent scout to make her little sister a star, Dory learns more than she wants to about the peculiarities of movie life.

When Sisterhood Was in Flower


Florence King - 1982
    Isabel Fairfax, a conservative Southern gentlewoman and former court reporter turned Regency romance writer, runs into conflict with Polly Bradshaw, a liberal Yankee feminist who embarks on a crusade to raise Isabel's female consciousness.

Ancient Lights


Davis Grubb - 1982
    The founders of an international electronic conspiracy are positioning themselves to take over the world. And there's only one man who can stop them--a country bumpkin from West Virginia named Sweeley Leech.

Time Without Bells


Horst Bienek - 1982
    Gleiwitz Suite, volume 3.