Best of
Novels

1991

The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels


Ágota Kristóf - 1991
    With all the stark simplicity of a fractured fairy tale, the trilogy tells the story of twin brothers, Claus and Lucas, locked in an agonizing bond that becomes a gripping allegory of the forces that have divided "brothers" in much of Europe since World War II. Kristof's postmodern saga begins with The Notebook, in which the brothers are children, lost in a country torn apart by conflict, who must learn every trick of evil and cruelty merely to survive. In The Proof, Lucas is challenging to prove his own identity and the existence of his missing brother, a defector to the "other side." The Third Lie, which closes the trilogy, is a biting parable of Eastern and Western Europe today and a deep exploration into the nature of identity, storytelling, and the truths and untruths that lie at the heart of them all. "Stark and haunting." - The San Francisco Chronicle; "A vision of considerable depth and complexity, a powerful portrait of the nobility and perversity of the human heart." - The Christian Science Monitor.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ


José Saramago - 1991
    At once an ironic rendering of the life of Christ and a beautiful novel, Saramago' s tale has sparked intense discussion about the meaning of Christianity and the Church as an institution. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.

A Soldier of the Great War


Mark Helprin - 1991
    Then the Great War intervenes. Half a century later, in August of 1964, Alessandro, a white-haired professor, tall and proud, meets an illiterate young factory worker on the road. As they walk toward Monte Prato, a village seventy kilometers away, the old man—a soldier and a hero who became a prisoner and then a deserter, wandering in the hell that claimed Europe—tells him how he tragically lost one family and gained another. The boy, envying the richness and drama of Alessandro's experiences, realizes that this magnificent tale is not merely a story: it's a recapitulation of his life, his reckoning with mortality, and above all, a love song for his family.

The Bourne Trilogy


Robert Ludlum - 1991
    And he may have no future. His memory is blank. He only knows that he was fished out of the Mediterranean Sea, his body riddled with bullets. There are a few clues: evidence that plastic surgery has altered his face, a Swiss bank account containing four million dollars, and a name: Jason Bourne. But he is marked for death, racing for survival through the layers of his buried past into a world of murderous conspirators - led by the world's most dangerous assassin, Carlos. And no one can help Bourne but the woman who once wanted to escape him. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY: In a Kowloon Cabaret, scrawled in a pool of blood, is a name the world wanted to forget: Jason Bourne. The Chinese vice-premier has been slain by a legendary assassin. World leaders ask the same fearful questions: Why has Jason Bourne come back? Who is the next to die? But US officials know the truth: there is no Jason Bourne. The name was created as cover for David Webb on his search for the notorious killer Carlos. Someone else has taken the Bourne identity and unless he is stopped, the world will pay a devastating price. So Jason Bourne must live again. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM: The world's two deadliest spies in the ultimate showdown.Two men, each mysteriously summoned by telegram, witness a bizarre killing. The telegrams are signed Jason Bourne. Only they know Bourne's true identity and understand the telegram is really a message from Bourne's mortal enemy, Carlos, the world's deadliest and most elusive terrorist. And they also know that he wants a final confrontation with Bourne. Now David Webb must do what he hoped he would never have to do again - assume the terrible identity of Jason Bourne.

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon


Tom Spanbauer - 1991
    The narrator, Shed, is one of the most memorable characters in contemporary fiction: a half-Indian bisexual boy who lives and works at the Indian Head Hotel in the tiny town of Excellent, Idaho. It's the turn of the century, and the hotel carries on a prosperous business as the town's brothel. The eccentric characters working in the hotel provide Shed with a surrogate family, yet he finds in himself a growing need to learn the meaning of his Indian name, Duivichi-un-Dua, given to him by his mother, who was murdered when he was twelve. Setting off alone across the haunting plains, Shed goes in search of an identity among his true people, encountering a rich pageant of extraordinary characters along the way. Although he learns a great deal about the mysteries and traditions of his Indian heritage, it is not until Shed returns to Excellent and witnesses a series of brutal tragedies that he attains the wisdom that infuses this exceptional and captivating book.

The Call of the Wild / White Fang


Jack London - 1991
    

The Mage Winds


Mercedes Lackey - 1991
    But now the protective barrier over Valdemar is crumbling, and with the realm imperilled, Princess Elspeth, Herald and heir to the throne, has gone on a desperate quest in search of a mentor who can teach her to wield her fledgling mage-powers and help her to defend her threatened kingdom.Winds of fate With the realm at risk, Elspeth, herald and heir to the throne, abandons her home to find a mentor who can awaken her untrained mage abilities.Winds of change Princess Elspeth journeys to the Vale of the Tayledras Clan to seek Mage training among the powerful Hawkbrother Adepts, only to find that she and renegade adept Darkwind must confront the malevolent magic of Ancar of Hardorn.Winds of fury Herald-Princess Elspeth and her beloved partner, Darkwind the adept, return to Valdemar to confront the evil and powerful Ancar, who once again is threatening her homeland.

The First Mountain Man


William W. Johnstone - 1991
    Somehow he has to get these pilgrims through safely - if he doesn't want to be buried along the trail with the rest of them...

What's Eating Gilbert Grape


Peter Hedges - 1991
    1,091 and dwindling) is eating Gilbert Grape, a twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk who dreams only of leaving. His enormous mother, once the town sweetheart, has been eating nonstop ever since her husband's suicide, and the floor beneath her TV chair is threatening to cave in. Gilbert's long-suffering older sister, Amy, still mourns the death of Elvis, and his knockout younger sister has become hooked on makeup, boys, and Jesus--in that order, but the biggest event on the horizon for all the Grapes is the eighteenth birthday of Gilbert's younger brother, Arnie, who is a living miracle just for having survived so long. As the Grapes gather in Endora, a mysterious beauty glides through town on a bicycle and rides circles around Gilbert, until he begins to see a new vision of his family and himself.

Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord


Louis de Bernières - 1991
    In this iridescent gem of a novel, Louis de Bernieres returns to the territory he mapped so well in The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, a South American country of resplendent eccentricity, gargantuan corruption, and terrifying violence, where the ordinary machinery of government has rusted and the only thing that works is magic.

Empire of the Ants


Bernard Werber - 1991
    Unique, daring, and unforgettable, it tells the story of an ordinary family who accidentally threaten the security of a hidden civilization as intelligent as our own--a colony of ants determined to survive at any cost....Jonathan Wells and his young family have come to the Paris flat at 3, rue des Sybarites through the bequest of his eccentric late uncle Edmond. Inheriting the dusty apartment, the Wells family are left with only one warning: Never go down into the cellar.But when the family dog disappears down the basement steps, Jonathan follows--and soon his wife, his son, and various would-be rescuers vanish into its mysterious depths.Meanwhile, in a pine stump in a nearby park, a vast civilization is in turmoil. Here a young female from the russet ant nation of Bel-o-kan learns that a strange new weapon has been killing off her comrades. To find out why, she enlists the help of a warrior ant, and the two set off on separate journeys into a harsh and violent world. It is a world where death takes many forms--savage birds and voracious lizards, warlike dwarf ants and rapacious termites, poisonous beetles and, most bizarre of all, the swift, murderous, giant guardians of the edge of the world: cars.Yet the end of the female's desperate quest will be the eerie secret in the cellar at 3, rue des Sybarites--a mystery she must solve in order to fulfill her special destiny as the new queen of her own great empire. But to do so she must first make unthinkable communion with the most barbaric creatures of all. Empire of the Ants is a brilliant evocation of a hidden civilization as complex as our own and far more ancient. It is a fascinating realm where boats are built of leaves and greenflies are domesticated and milked like cows, where citizens lock antennae in "absolute communication" and fight wars with precisely coordinated armies using sprays of glue and acids that can dissolve a snail. Not since Watership Down has a novel so vividly captured the lives and struggles of a fellow species and the valuable lessons they have to teach us.From the Hardcover edition.

The Firm


Robin Waterfield - 1991
    Adaptation for younger readers.Mitch McDeere, a Harvard Law graduate, becomes suspicious of his Memphis tax firm when mysterious deaths, obsessive office security, and the Chicago mob figure into its operations.

Scarlett Part 1 of 2


Alexandra Ripley - 1991
    This is the book whose initial publication was an instant sensation: selling out immediately, setting new records, and enthralling readers all over the world. This is the book everyone wants to read, savor, and enjoy...

The Deceiver


Frederick Forsyth - 1991
    He has not been afraid to press the CIA to the explosion point - or to play cat-and-mouse with the KGB. He has successfully tricked Qaddafi and the IRA and once even set himself up as governor of a remote Caribbean island torn between Fidel Castor and the Colombian drug trade.But times have changed and mavericks like McCready are an endangered species. Now, before a panel of his peers, McCready must defend his unorthodox exploits or face dismissal. What hangs in the balance is not only his own career, but the very future of British intelligence.

Regeneration


Pat Barker - 1991
    Yet the novel is much more. Written in sparse prose that is shockingly clear—the descriptions of electronic treatments are particularly harrowing—it combines real-life characters and events with fictional ones in a work that examines the insanity of war like no other. Barker also weaves in issues of class and politics in this compactly powerful book. Other books in the series include The Eye in the Door and the Booker Award winner The Ghost Road.

The Gold Bug Variations


Richard Powers - 1991
    A national bestseller, voted by Time as the #1 novel of 1991, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1991" by Publishers Weekly, and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award--a magnificent story that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art, by the brilliant author of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance.

The Kitchen God's Wife


Amy Tan - 1991
    Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past—including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events that led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949.

Cloudstreet


Tim Winton - 1991
    An award-winning work, Cloudstreet exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction to captivate and inspire. Struggling to rebuild their lives after being touched by disaster, the Pickle family, who've inherited a big house called Cloudstreet in a suburb of Perth, take in the God-fearing Lambs as tenants. The Lambs have suffered their own catastrophes, and determined to survive, they open up a grocery on the ground floor. From 1944 to 1964, the shared experiences of the two overpopulated clans -- running the gamut from drunkenness, adultery, and death to resurrection, marriage, and birth -- bond them to each other and to the bustling, haunted house in ways no one could have anticipated.

Fatherland


Robert Harris - 1991
    It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb. As March discovers the identity of the body, he uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with an American journalist, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth - a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history.

Killing Ground


Douglas Reeman - 1991
    From the bridge of HMS Gladiator, Lieutenant-Commander David Howard's orders were chillingly clear. There could be no mercy.To the men who fought to protect the vital, threatened Merchat Navy convoys in the Western Approaches, the Battle of the Atlantic was a full-scale war.A relentless, savage war against an ever-present enemy and a violent sea - in an arena known only to its embittered survivors as the killing ground.HMS Gladiator was part of that war. An ordinary, hard-worked destroyer and her company of men. Fighting for survival in a war with no rules...

The Expendables


Leonard B. Scott - 1991
    This is the story of the men who fought with them -- and the 304 who didn't return.

Elephant Song


Wilbur Smith - 1991
    * ' With Wilbur Smith the action is never further than the turn of a page.' – The Independent * 'Sex, money, ambition fear and blood ... an emotional stampede.' – The Daily Mail

O Caledonia


Elspeth Barker - 1991
    Her father, home on leave, peering into the blue wicker basket, comments, "It's about the size of a cat." Later, as sibling after sibling appears, Janet finds herself slipping further and further toward the periphery of family life. Brought up in the unrelenting chill of Calvinism and the Scottish climate, she turns from people to animals, to literature, and to her own fertile imagination.Written with lyricism, poignance, and great unexpected flashes of humor, the novel traces the chain of events that, in the dour setting of Scotland in the 1940s and 50s, cause the bizzare death of a young girl. People, birds, and beasts move in a gleeful danse macabre through a lowering landscape in a tale as rich in atmosphere as it is witty and mordant.

Two Lives


William Trevor - 1991
    In Reading Turgenev, a lonely country girl escapes her loveless marriage in the arms of a bookish young man. In My House in Umbria, a former madam befriends the other survivors of a terrorist bombing with surprising results. Nominated for the Booker Award.

Flicker


Theodore Roszak - 1991
    Jonathan Gates could not have anticipated that his student studies would lead him to uncover the secret history of the movies—a tale of intrigue, deception, and death that stretches back to the 14th century. But he succumbs to what will be a lifelong obsession with the mysterious Max Castle, a nearly forgotten genius of the silent screen who later became the greatest director of horror films, only to vanish in the 1940s, at the height of his talent. Now, 20 years later, as Jonathan seeks the truth behind Castle's disappearance, the innocent entertainments of his youth—the sexy sirens, the screwball comedies, the high romance—take on a sinister appearance. His tortured quest takes him from Hollywood's Poverty Row into the shadowy lore of ancient religious heresies. He encounters a cast of exotic characters, including Orson Welles and John Huston, who teach him that there's more to film than meets the eye, and journeys through the dark side of nostalgia, where the Three Stooges and Shirley Temple join company with an alien god whose purposes are anything but entertainment.

Jernigan


David Gates - 1991
    To this lineage add Peter Jernigan, who views the world with ferocious intelligence, grim rapture, and a chainsaw wit that he turns, with disastrous consequences, on his wife, his teenaged son, his dangerously vulnerable mistress—and, not least of all, on himself. This novel is a bravura performance: a funny, scary, mesmerizing study of a man walking off the edge with his eyes wide open—wisecracking all the way.

Such a Long Journey


Rohinton Mistry - 1991
    A hard-working bank clerk, Gustad Noble is a devoted family man who gradually sees his modest life unravelling. His young daughter falls ill; his promising son defies his father’s ambitions for him. He is the one reasonable voice amidst the ongoing dramas of his neighbours. One day, he receives a letter from an old friend, asking him to help in what at first seems like an heroic mission. But he soon finds himself unwittingly drawn into a dangerous network of deception. Compassionate, and rich in details of character and place, this unforgettable novel charts the journey of a moral heart in a turbulent world of change.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Sophie's World


Jostein Gaarder - 1991
    Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

The Grapes of Wrath


Frank Galati - 1991
    

Music of the Swamp


Lewis Nordan - 1991
    In MUSIC OF THE SWAMP, he focuses his magic and imagination on a single theme--a boy's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father.

Cages


Peg Kehret - 1991
    But when she is caught Kit is sentenced to twenty hours of volunteer work at the humane society. Kit knows how it feels to be stuck in a cage like those animals and soon she begins to learn that the key to her own cage is right in front of her."Readers will relate to [Kit's] anguish and her spirit and courage." —Booklist

Cry, the Beloved Country: A Novel of South Africa: (A Study)


Edward Callan - 1991
    

Almanac of the Dead


Leslie Marmon Silko - 1991
    The acclaimed author of Ceremony has undertaken a weaving of ideas and lives, fate and history, passion and conquest in an attempt to re-create the moral history of the Americas, told from the point of view of the conquered, not the conquerors.

Father Melancholy's Daughter


Gail Godwin - 1991
    Her critically acclaimed work has placed her among the ranks of Eudora Welty, Pat Conroy, and Carson McCullers, firmly establishing Godwin as a Southern literary novelist for the ages. Father Melancholy's Daughter, is widely recognized as one of the author's most poignant and accomplished novels -- a bittersweet and ultimately transcendent story of a young girl's devotion to her father, the rector of a small Virginia church, and of the hope, dreams, and love that sustain them both in the wake of the betrayal and tragedy that diminished their family.

A Fine and Private Place/The Last Unicorn


Peter S. Beagle - 1991
    Beagle and published in 1968. It follows the tale of a unicorn, who believes she is the last of her kind in the world and undertakes a quest to discover what has happened to the others. It has sold more than five million copies worldwide since its original publication, and has been translated into at least twenty languages. In 1987, Locus ranked The Last Unicorn number five among the 33 "All-Time Best Fantasy Novels", based on a poll of subscribers. The story begins with a group of human hunters passing through a forest in search of game. After days of coming up empty-handed, they begin to believe they are passing through a Unicorn's forest, where animals are kept safe by a magical aura. They resign themselves to hunting somewhere else; but, before they leave, one of the hunters calls out a warning to the Unicorn that she may be the last of her kind. This revelation disturbs the Unicorn, and though she initially dismisses it, eventually doubt and worry drive her to leave her forest. She travels through the land and discovers that humans no longer even recognize her; instead they see a pretty white mare. She is taken captive by a traveling carnival led by witch Mommy Fortuna, who uses magical spells to create the illusion that regular animals are in fact creatures of myth and legend. There are many more adventures and the book is a delight, as well as thought-provoking. A good read!!

The Pop Larkin Chronicles


H.E. Bates - 1991
    The Chromicles comprise all five of the immensely popular series of comic novels consisting of ‘The Darling Buds of May’ (1958), ‘A Breath of French Air’ (1959), ‘When the Green Woods Laugh’ (1960), ‘Oh! To Be in England’ (1963), and ‘A Little of What You Fancy’ (1970). Bates, speaking of how he was inspired to create the Larkin family, recalled the real junkyard that he often passed near his home in Kent; and he remembered seeing a family -- a father, mother and many children, sucking at ice-creams and eating crisps in a "ramshackle lorry that had been recently painted a violent electric blue". He tried writing a brief tale based on the family, but soon decided that he couldn’t waste such a rich gallery of characters to a short story." Pop is a wonderful character who hates pomp, pretension and humbug; loves his family, but doesn’t hesitate to break a few rules... and his and the Larkins' secret is “that they live as many of us would like to live if only we had the guts and nerve to flout the conventions."

The Inner Side of the Wind, or The Novel of Hero and Leander


Milorad Pavić - 1991
    This novel parallels the myth of Hero and Leander, telling of two lovers in Belgrade, one from the turn of the 18th century, the other from early in the 20th, who reach out to each other across the gulf of time.

The Hainish Novels and Stories


Ursula K. Le Guin - 1991
    Le Guin’s Hainish novels and stories are brought together in a single edition, complete and with new introductions by the author. Beginning in the 1960s and 70s, these remarkable works redrew the map of modern science fiction. In such visionary masterworks as the Nebula and Hugo Award winners The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Le Guin imagined a galactic confederation of human colonies founded by the planet Hain—an array of worlds whose divergent societies were the result of both evolution and genetic engineering.Le Guin first conceived her League of All Worlds in three early novels of daring inventiveness. In Rocannon’s World (1966), Hainish scientist Gaverel Rocannon ventures to an unnamed planet to conduct a peaceful ethnological survey only to discover a secret outpost of the League’s deadly enemy. In Planet of Exile (1966), the fate of colonists from Earth stranded on distant Werel depends on working together with the planet’s indigenous peoples if they are to survive the oncoming fifteen-year winter. City of Illusions (1967), set far in the future on a sparsely populated Earth that has lost contact with all other planets and is ruled by the mysterious, mind-lying Shing, turns on the appearance of an amnesiac with yellow eyes who may hold the key to humanity’s freedom.In The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) Earth-born Genly Ai travels to wintery Gethen to convince its nations to join the Ekumen, the confederation of known worlds. To do so he must navigate the subtleties of politics and culture on a planet populated by an ambisexual people who have never known war. The Dispossessed (1974), a philosophical adventure story in which a physicist strives to complete a theory of simultaneity that will for the first time allow instantaneous communication between all the planets of humanity, is set against the backdrop of Le Guin’s richly textured vision of what an anarchist society might look like in practice.The Word for World Is Forest (1972), is set on the colony planet of Athshe, where Terrans have arrived to strip its rich natural forests for a depleted Earth. To do so, they enslave the peaceable indigenous population, until the Athsheans rise up in a desperate act of defiance that will leave them and their planet forever changed.Five Ways to Forgiveness presents for the first time the complete story suite previously published as Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995). These five linked stories tell the history of the planet Werel and its slave planet Yeowe as their peoples, long known as “owners” and “assets,” together face an uncertain revolutionary future.In The Telling (2000), Sutty, an observer of the interplanetary confederation known as the Ekumen, has been sent to Aka to investigate why the planet has almost entirely lost its vital oral traditions and spiritual beliefs in the span of a single generation. Sutty’s quest for traces of Aka’s original religion causes her to reexamine her own childhood growing up amidst a repressive religious regime on Earth.Also included are eleven short stories, eight essays (including the provocative “On Not Reading Science Fiction”), and the surprising original 1969 version of the story “Winter’s King.” The endpapers have a map of Gethen colorized from a drawing by Le Guin herself and a planetary chart of the known worlds of the Hainish descent.Brian Attebery, editor, is professor of English at Idaho State University and the editor of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He edited The Norton Book of Science Fiction (1997) with Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Joy Fowler and is the author of Stories About Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth (2014) and Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (2002), among other books.

The Whitby Witches


Robin Jarvis - 1991
    Moved about from foster home to foster home, Ben and Jennet hope to make a fresh start in Whitby. But Ben sees things and people others cannot. There's something unusual about Alice Boston, their new guardian. And what is that horrible howling Jennet hears late at night? Something wicked's brewing in Whitby. Can Ben and Jennet put it to rest?

Gringos


Charles Portis - 1991
    Louise, a 90-pound stalker, hippies led by a murderous ex-con, and illegal Mayan excavators disrupt his laid-back lifestyle.

To the Ends of the Earth


William Golding - 1991
    Told through the pages of Edmund Talbot's journal - with equal measures of wit and disdain - it records the mounting tensions and growing misfortunes aboard the ancient ship. An instant maritime classic, and one of Golding's finest achievements, the trilogy was adapted into a major three-part BBC drama in 2005.

L.A. Noir


James Ellroy - 1991
    Confidential, the basis of the motion picture, includes Blood on the Moon, Because the Night, and Suicide Hill. 50,000 first printing.

Cape Cod


William Martin - 1991
    both destined to generations of proud leadership, shameful intrigue, and passion for the sandy crest of land that became their heritage...This is the story of the Bigelow and Hilyard clans, from their first years on America's shores, through the fury of her wars and the glory of her triumphs, to our own time when young Geoff Hilyard must fight to save both his marriage to a Bigelow heir and the windswept coast he loves. It is a struggle that will take him deep into the past, to a centuries-old feud that never died..And on a dangerous quest for a priceless relic of American history that has lain hidden in the Cape for over two hundred years.

A Tale of the Wind: A Novel of 19Th-Century France


Kay Nolte Smith - 1991
    Expert historical research and fictional drama make this a glorious "big read" in the tradition of Colleen McCullough.

Wise Children


Angela Carter - 1991
    Billed as The Lucky Chances, the sisters are the illegitimate and unacknowledged daughters of Sir Melchior Hazard, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day. At once ribald and sentimental, glittery and tender, this rambunctious family saga is Angela Carter at her bewitching best.

Sherlock Holmes: His Greatest Cases


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1991
    Conan Doyle’s original list, arranged in order merit, is included, as is the abridged text of "Sherlock Holmes to His Readers," an article by Conan Doyle for the Strand Magazine, later published as the preface to The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. The book's cover is by Michael Kirkham, whose clients have included Dazed & Confused, the Financial Times, the Independent, the New York Times, and Readers' Digest. Arthur Conan Doyle is one of the most revered writers of detective fiction. Through creating the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Doyle defined the mystery genre as a mix of wit, intelligence, and action. This book contains the following stories of Sherlock:1. The Hound of The Baskervilles (Novel)2. The Scandal in Boemia3. The Red-headed League4. The Five Orange Pips5. The Adventure of the Speckled Band6. The Musgrave Ritual7. The Reigate Squires8. The Final Problem9. The Adventure of the Empty House10. The Adventure of the Dancing Men11. The Adventure of the Priory School12. The Adventure of the Second Stain13. The Adventure of the Devil's Foot

Totally Disgusting


Bill Wallace - 1991
    its nice to have somebody to cuddle up to. My real problem is rats. Two scary rats in the storm cellar are plotting to attack Jessica! What's a kitten to do? How do I find the courage to protect the person I love?

Gospel Hour


T.R. Pearson - 1991
    When Donnie Huff survives a near-fatal logging accident, his ambitious mother-in-law insists that he has returned from the dead, and he embarks on a Pentecostal revival trail and a discovery of his own faith.

Moses in a mess


Barbara Kimenye - 1991
    The most neat dorm will win the Deputy Head's prize of Sh. 1,000.00. Members of each dorm employ every trick in the book to win the prize. How can Moses and King Kong ensure that the prize goes to Dorm 3?

Games of the Hangman


Victor O'Reilly - 1991
    When photographer Hugo Fitzduane finds a hanged body, it's ruled a suicide. But when the body of a terrorist is found with the same strange tattoo, Fitzduane is plunged into a firestorm of violence as he tries to expose the link.

Everybody's Guide to Natural ESP: Unlocking the Extrasensory Power of Your Mind


Ingo Swann - 1991
    His exciting new concepts of “mind mound,” “mind manifestation,” and the “ESP core” help readers demystify ESP and link this important inner reality to what is already known about dreams, memory, quantum physics, and human creativity. Swann shows how to become more receptive to the “deeper self” and make contact with the hidden reality in which ESP operates.

My Beloved Son


Catherine Cookson - 1991
    Whatever else her marriage had lacked, however, she had her son Joseph. She resolved he should have all in life she had missed and to achieve that end, she would stop at nothing.It was Sir Arthur Jebeau, her late husband's brother, who came to her aid, and soon Ellen and Joseph were living at the old fmaily seat at Screehaugh. It was a convenient arrangement, one which Ellen was not slow to recognise could work to her advantage, for Sir Arthur was a widower and Screehaugh had no mistress . . .That was in 1926, but the working out of so many increasingly intertwined destinies would continue for twenty more years and only come to final resolution with Joseph Jebeau's escape from the traumatic heritage of his mother's ruthlelss ambition and his emergence as his own true self.

The Birthday Boys


Beryl Bainbridge - 1991
    At once hair-raising and beautiful, here is an astonishing tale of misguided courage and human endurance. The Birthday Boys of the title are Scott and four members of his team, each of whom narrates a section of the book. As the story progresses the reader discovers that these men may not be reliable reporters. Their cocky optimism is both ghastly and dangerous. Brought up to despise professional expertise, their enterprise is lunatic, amateur and gentlemanly. Beryl Bainbridge makes it hauntingly clear: the men are fatally doomed in their bravery, the very stuff of heroes. Captain Scott's poignant trek becomes, in this remarkable novel, an historical event which prefigures the terrible new world dawning in Europe. It was an inept rehearsal for the carnage of the first world war, the ultimate challenge for the arrogant generals who shared Scott's skewed notion of courage that led men qualmlessly into harm's way. Subtle, poetic and unforgettable, The Birthday Boys is impossible to read without experiencing that magical shiver up the spine which is caused when great writing touches the soul.

Erotic Drawings by Jean Cocteau


Jean Cocteau - 1991
    Enveloped in a nimbus of immorality, he if any had a way of continually provoking the cultural authorities and astounding the public with his inexhaustible creativity. Be it as a writer, commentator or painter, actor, choreographer or producer, in the course of his spectacular career he worked and quarreled often enough with all the great artists of his era, from Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Satie and Picasso to Apollinaire, Radiguet, Gide and Truffaut. But no matter what form of artistic expression Cocteau chose to use, he left his personal stamp upon it in some inimitable way. While his literary works and films are known to a wide public, Jean Cocteau's extensive oeuvre as a painter and draughtsman still holds surprises in store. This book, with over 140 illustrations, presents a broad selection of his erotic drawings from four decades, many as yet unpublished. From "Le Livre blanc", Cocteau's controversial homoerotic manifesto printed anonymously in 1928, to his works from the early 60s, the style and line-work may vary but never the theme: Cocteau's highly explicit works are devoted to one subject alone: the Eros of the male sex."As far back as I can remember, I can find traces of my love for boys. I always preferred the strong sex, which I think may legitimately be called the fair sex."With these words Jean Cocteau openly acknowledged a homosexuality that he lived out to the full, and expressed in his erotic drawings. The volume contains 140 of his most beautiful works from four decades, most of which are published here for the first time.

Otherwise: Three Novels by John Crowley


John Crowley - 1991
    Then a Visitor from beyond the sky arrives to play a part in this dark bloody pageant. From the moment he is found by two women who tend to the dead in the wake of battles, it is clear that the great game is to change at last. Beasts It is the day after tomorrow, and society has been altered dramatically by experimentation that enables scientists to combine the genetic material of different species, mixing DNA of humans with animals. Loren Casaubon is an ethologist drawn into the political and social vortex that results with Leo -- a creature both man and lion -- at its center. Engine Summer A young man named Rush That Speaks is growing up in a far distant world -- one that only dimly remembers our own age, the wondrous age of the Angels, when men could fly. Now it is the "engine summer of the world," and Rush goes in search of the Saints who can teach him to speak truthfully, and be immortal in the stories he tells. The immortality that awaits him, though, is one he could not have imagined.

Cry of the Peacock


Gina B. Nahai - 1991
    She is the descendant of a three-thousand-year-old tribe of Jews -- the oldest community in diaspora, a people largely unknown to the outside world. He is a singer in the royal court, a wealthy man known for his good looks and his charm. A decade later, she will become the first woman in her ghetto ever to have left her husband. Against the backdrop of two hundred years of history, CRY OF THE PEACOCK traces the story of a Jewish woman caught in the turmoil of twentieth-century Iran. Told in a series of wondrous linked tales that weave a rich and epic tapestry, it is a magical journey inside the Iranian nation and its people. For the first time in any Western language this story of Iranian Jews offers an insider's glimpse into one of the most critical parts of the world today.

Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization


David Frawley - 1991
    In so doing, he seeks to fill a void in our understanding of human history, revealing secrets of Vedic and ancient civilization.

Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden


Stephen Jones - 1991
    Heavily illustrated with rare photos, stills, and drawings, 16 in full color. With an introduction by Stephen King.

Bill Pearl's Keys to the Inner Universe


Bill Pearl - 1991
    638 pages (8 1/2 x 11) of photographs, anatomical drawings, charts, exercises and sound reading covering every aspect of bodybuilding and weight training from the novice to the heavy weight. An Invaluable aid and a MUST for Coaches, Trainers and Gym Instructors. Nothing is forgotten, not even dieting or the psychology behind it all. Covers every aspect of bodybuilding and weight training A Must for Coaches, Trainers and Gym Instructors Currently in it's Ninth Printing Over 250,000 copies sold Basic Nutrional Facts Conduct Becoming a Champion Covers Every Aspect of Bodybuilding and Weight Training Exercises for Champion Physiques Fully Illustrated Chapters on the Ten Basic Muscle Groups Learning to Pose Muscle Charts Muscles and Energy Nutrition and Virility Pearl s Contest Career Prolonging Your Productive Years Proper Attitude Proper Breathing for Weight Training Summary List of Nutrition Women and Weight Training

Dark Ladies: Conjure Wife/Our Lady of Darkness


Fritz Leiber - 1991
    Norman Saylor considered it nothing but superstition, until he learned that his own wife was a practicing sorceress. Even still, he refuses to accept the truth that every woman knows...that in the secret occult warfare that governs our lives, witchcraft is a matter of life and death.Our Lady of DarknessMiddle-aged San Francisco horror writer Franz Westen is rediscovering ordinary life following a long alcoholic binge. The one day, peering at his apartment window from a top a nearby hill, he sees a pale, brown thing lean out his window...and wave.This encounter sends Westen on a quest through ancient books and modern streets, for the dark forces and paramental entities that thrive amidst the towering skyscrapers...and, meanwhile, the entities are also looking for him.

Into Their Labours


John Berger - 1991
    Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag are the three volumes that make up the trilogy.

Song of the Gargoyle


Zilpha Keatley Snyder - 1991
    In a blink of an eye his father, the court jester of Austerneve, is mysteriously kidnapped and the terrified boy must slip away secretly to avoid capture himself.Hiding in the dreaded forest nearby, Tymmon is adopted by a huge, furry, dog-like creature--a gargoyle--who has the loyalty of a dog and the fearsome powers of an enchanted being.Together, hungry, the two make their way to town, where Tymmon earns a living by playing his flute and learns to be happy. At least as happy as he can be without his father. Will he ever find a way to rescue him and be with him again?

Moonwise


Greer Gilman - 1991
    But when Sylvie disappeared in a moonlit wood, Ariane followed her - not into the familiar ground of their fantasy, but into the thorns and winter of a Cloud they had never invented, a world where ballads were constellations and the moon hunted souls by night...

Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia


Paula Richman - 1991
    The contributors to this volume focus on these "many" Ramayanas.While most scholars continue to rely on Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana as the authoritative version of the tale, the contributors to this volume do not. Their essays demonstrate the multivocal nature of the Ramayana by highlighting its variations according to historical period, political context, regional literary tradition, religious affiliation, intended audience, and genre. Socially marginal groups in Indian society—Telugu women, for example, or Untouchables from Madhya Pradesh—have recast the Rama story to reflect their own views of the world, while in other hands the epic has become the basis for teachings about spiritual liberation or the demand for political separatism. Historians of religion, scholars of South Asia, folklorists, cultural anthropologists—all will find here refreshing perspectives on this tale.

Old Dogs and Children


Robert Inman - 1991
    A masterpiece of old-fashioned storytelling that vividly evokes one woman's remarkable life and her struggle to make peace with the past. Reading tour.

Fatalism and Development: Nepal's Struggle For Modernization


Dor Bahadur Bista - 1991
    

Halfway Home


Paul Monette - 1991
    Reprint. 14,000 first printing.

Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism


John Updike - 1991
    The years have brought to him an increasing number of odd jobs, to which he has wittily responded. Here he contemplates our national monuments, the female body, the Fourth of July, the Gospel of Matthew, other writers, moralists, aspects of science, and more.

Solo Viola: A Post-Exotic Novel


Antoine Volodine - 1991
    He takes the reader into a fictional world where a variety of characters collide: three prisoners just released from jail, a band of circus performers, a string quartet, a writer, and a bird. All are trying to survive in an absurd and hostile environment of authoritarian spectacle, at the mercy of a tyrannical buffoon, and seeking the strange counterbalance of hope in a viola player, whose stunning music just might save them all, if only for a moment.

The Island and the Ring


Laura C. Stevenson - 1991
    "The story is classic fantasy and romance told in a refined tone that will appeal to subtle tastes. The lean but hypervisual narrative feeds the reader's imagination while the dialogue effortlessly imparts deep philosophy." -- Publishers Weekly

Dances with Wolves


John Barry - 1991
    Comes complete with a color photo section of scenes from the movie and a bio of the renowned film score composer John Barry.

Frida Kahlo


Malka Drucker - 1991
    To understand this richly complicated woman requires a willingness to read between the lines, because the story of Frida Kahlo is like Frida herself--magnetic, profound, and occasionally shocking.Frida Kahlo's life and art have made her a twentieth-century heroine. Struck by polio at age six and nearly killed in a bus accident at eighteen, she grew up to marry the great Mexican artist Diego Rivera and to become Mexico's best-known woman painter. This brief biography of Kahlo (1907-54), first published in 1991 in the Barnard Biography Series, is now available only from the University of New Mexico Press.

Moses and the Man from Mars


Barbara Kimenye - 1991
    

A Chughtai Collection: The Quilt and Other Stories, The Heart Breaks Free & the Wild One


Ismat Chughtai - 1991
    by Tahira Naqvi.includes "The Quilt and Other Stories, The Heart Breaks Free, and The Wild One.

Reading Turgenev


William Trevor - 1991
    A hasty marriage leads to despair and desolation.

Requiem: A Hallucination


Antonio Tabucchi - 1991
    He spent many years there as director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon. He even wrote Requiem in Portuguese; it had to be translated into Italian for publication in his native Italy.Requiem's narrator has an appointment to meet someone on a quay by the Tagus at twelve. But, it turns out, not twelve noon, twelve midnight, so he has a long time to while away. As the day unfolds, he has many encounters—a young junky, a taxi driver who is not familiar with the streets, several waiters, a gypsy, a cemetery keeper, the mysterious Isabel, an accordionist, in all almost two dozen people both real and illusionary. Finally he meets The Guest, the ghost of the long dead great poet Fernando Pessoa. Part travelog, part autobiography, part fiction, and even a bit of a cookbook, Requiem becomes an homage to a country and its people, and a farewell to the past as the narrator lays claim to a literary forebear who, like himself, is an evasive and many-sided personality.

Bayou


Pamela Jekel - 1991
    She was the first to forsake the bayou culture for the heady night life of New Orleans, and she was destined to love the one man who could never truly be hers;ZOE -- convent bred and forced to marry a rich planter, she watched her mother rise to the heights of Creole society, then chose a very different kind of happiness for herself.From the backwater bayou to the high life of New Orleans and the elegance of Mississippi River plantations, BAYOU is cotton and the War of 1812, sugar cane and the War Between the States, moonshine and World War I. But above all, it is the story of four remarkable women whose passions drove them to forge a way of life that will never been seen again.

Babouk: Voices of Resistance


Guy Endore - 1991
    By using the imagination of the novelist to fill in the gaps in the historical record, Endore is able to show us how slavery felt to the slaves who experienced it. His novel is rare for its depiction of the shared history of the slaves and its attention to the variety of the slave experience. It provides the reader with a vivid history of Haiti and a compelling account of slavery and rebellion.

The Ordeal: My Ten Years in a Malaysian Prison


Béatrice Saubin - 1991
    As a teenager she hitchhiked to India and later to Afghanistan and Thailand. In Malaysia, at age nineteen, she fell in love with Eddy Tan Kim Soo, a handsome, wealthy Chinese man. They planned to meet in Europe and later marry. But at the airport on her way home, her spanking new Samsonite suitcase - a gift from Eddy - was ripped apart by customs officials. Beatrice was horrified to see that it contained several kilos of heroin. Clearly she had been set up by Eddy, who, it turned out, was a member of a powerful drug cartel. Arrested, she languished in prison for two years before she was tried. Her sentence: death by hanging. On appeal, her sentence was reduced to life in prison. Efforts on the part of her grandmother and an impassioned attorney managed to stir up public opinion, finally leading to Beatrice's release after ten years. But however terrible, these years were not lost. While in prison, her spirits were never broken: she taught herself Malaysian and Cantonese; she became a model prisoner and a leader as well as a medical supervisor, caring for her fellow inmates. Here is her own odyssey - always gripping, often terrifying, but ultimately a story of courage and inspiration.

Spontaneous Combustion


David B. Feinberg - 1991
    . . both urgent and convincing."--The New York Times Book Review In this sequel to David Feinberg's national bestseller Eighty-Sixed, B.J. Rosenthal navigates life with an HIV-positive diagnosis amidst the "constant tide of deaths" in New York City during the AIDS crisis.

Journal of the Gun Years


Richard Matheson - 1991
    To survive on the untamed frontier of 1867, Halser becomes a crack shot. But he soon finds that there's always someone wanting to meet a legend face-to-face, gun-to-gun. One man alone, locked in a desperate struggle against forces bigger than himself.--Stephen King.

Baby Dolly


Ruby Jean Jensen - 1991
    With its tiny , delicate hands, its cunning wrought features, its hand-stitched gown. It was a doll any little girl would long to hold tight. Instead it has been kept hidden in the china cabinet all these years... — But now it was time for the doll to be taken out. To be carefully placed in a child's bed. So that it might once again claim its victims in the darkest hours of the night.

Jane Eyre (Oxford bookworms library, Stage 6)


Clare West - 1991
    Accessible language and carefully controlled vocabulary build students' reading confidence. Introductions at the beginning of each story, illustrations throughout, and glossaries help build comprehension. Before, during, and after reading activities included in the back of each book strengthen student comprehension. Audio versions of selected titles provide great models of intonation and pronunciation of difficult words.

The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor


John Barth - 1991
    Journalist Simon Behler finds himself in the house of Sinbad the Sailor after being washed ashore during a seagoing adventure. Over the course of six evenings, the two take turns recounting their voyages, merging medieval Baghdad and twentieth-century Maryland in a brilliantly entertaining weave of stories within stories.

Saint Maybe


Anne Tyler - 1991
    In 1965, the happy Bedloe family is living an ideal, apple-pie existence in Baltimore.  Then, in the blink of an eye, a single tragic event occurs that will transform their lives forever--particularly that of seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe, the youngest son, who blames himself for the sudden "accidental" death of his older brother.Depressed and depleted, Ian is almost crushed under the weight of an unbearable, secret guilt.  Then one crisp January evening, he catches sight of a window with glowing yellow neon, the CHURCH OF THE SECOND CHANCE.  He enters and soon discovers that forgiveness must be earned, through a bit of sacrifice and a lot of love...A New York Times Notable Book

Anne Tyler: A New Collection: The Accidental Tourist / Breathing Lessons / Searching for Caleb


Anne Tyler - 1991
    

Killing Suki Flood


Robert Leininger - 1991
    The moment Frank Limosin sees gorgeous eighteen-year-old Suki Flood sitting on the rear deck of the red Trans Am in the hot empty desert, he feels trouble in the air. The Trans Am has a flat tire. They're over ten miles from the nearest highway. And Suki, dressed in short shorts and a tiny halter top, doesn't know how to change a tire. Against Suki's will, Frank gives her a lesson in tire changing, then he thinks that's it, he'll never see her again. How wrong can one man be? Because Suki turns out to be fifty times more trouble than Frank ever dreamed possible. He saved her once. Now he has to save her again and again and again . . .

Jewels And Ashes


Arnold Zable - 1991
    Zable travels from Australia to the Eastern European countryside of his parents' remembrance to understand the present-the inner lives of those who, like his parents, survived the hatred but lost every trace of family. Winner of top Australian literary awards.

Black Empire


George S. Schuyler - 1991
    Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and Marcus Garvey rolled into one fascist superman, and there you have Dr. Henry Belsidus. . . [The novels] are an Afrocentrist's dream. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New York Times Book Review

Defiant Pose


Stewart Home - 1991
    Stewart Home captures the loquacious charm and ideological posturing of the post-political left of the Thatcher-era, pitted against itself and its right-wing nationalist enemies. Meanwhile, everybody’s sucking, fucking, wanking, rimming, reaming in pursuit of their ‘genetic destinies.’ Stewart Home’s proto-porn pageantry is the best rejoinder to Thatcher’s new enterprise culture and the proto-“discourses” of that era. Defiant Pose is a timely, timeless book.”—Chris KrausPenny-Ante Editions is proud to announce a reissue of Stewart Home’s classic political satire, Defiant Pose, newly introduced by McKenzie Wark with an afterword by Home.Named 1991’s “Book of the Year” by The Face and Gay Times out of the United Kingdom, Defiant Pose: 25th Anniversary Edition ushers an out-of-print “assault on culture” into the 21st century to meet its relevance in today’s torrid times. Employing pastiche and détournement, Richard Allen’s skinhead novels get a perverse makeover, going head to head with Hegel, Hobbes, and the heretical tracts of Abiezer Coppe in wild ride where no subject is taboo. From fashionable pseudo politics, knucklehead neo-Nazis, middle-class masculinity, the art world, and literature’s so-called “outlaws,” Home’s targets are mercilessly skewered. A contemporary of Kathy Acker born from the punk era, Home has worked outside major cultural institutions for much of his career, and is unafraid to call a spade a spade — an impulse sorely lacking in today’s culture.

Watchers in the Woods


William W. Johnstone - 1991
    Then, the others came to kill animals with strange weapons and poison their sacred waters with the things they carelessly left behind. But they would soon learn to stay away. The Old Hunger would teach them. Especially the little ones.

Conversations With The Dead: The Grateful Dead Interview Book


David Gans - 1991
    David Gans, a self-professed Deadhead and host of "The Grateful Dead Hour," asked Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and the rest of the band the questions their fans would have asked if given the chance. And Gans reaches far beyond the musicians, talking with such often-overlooked key players as the recording engineer, sound man, and road crew—those who have had the coveted opportunity to witness the Dead's decades of music-making. This updated and expanded edition includes a rare, never-before-published interview with Seastones composer Ned Lagin and a new introduction by the author. With a readable combination of intensity, inquisitiveness, and candor, Gans has created an unprecedented portrait of a band who, after more than thirty years of music-making, has earned a unique place in American culture.

The Brave


Gregory McDonald - 1991
    With his family, Rafael lives on the edge of the refuse heap in a forgotten corner of America's Southwest. Desperately poor, he is determined to give his family some respite from their dire poverty, even if it means trading his own life to do it.Rafael finds a man who says he will pay many thousands of dollars in exchange for his life: and so he agrees to "star" in a snuff film.

Subtraction


Mary Robison - 1991
    Paige trails him to Houston, where he is holed up in a seedy bar, drunk and cheerfully ashamed of himself. He’s very glad to see her: she’s the only girl for him (and he should know—he’s tried most of the others).Finding Raf is one thing, but holding on to him is another. To sober him up, to keep him sober, to keep him, Paige enlists Raf’s old friend Raymond (himself an ex-alcoholic) and Raf’s new friend Pru, a holistically inclined contortionist-stripper. For a while life, and Raf, seem to settle down. But this foursome is nothing but trouble for one another. Pru is a hit-and-run artist, a sexual desperado who has already broken Raymond’s heart, and now Raymond is growing sweet on Paige. As Raf says, “Assorted wretchednesses ensue.”

Говорит Москва


Юлий Даниэль - 1991
    Nikolai Arzhak) plus fragments of unfinished books, poetry, and translations of poetry by Knut Skujenieks. There is also material about the trial of Daniel' and fellow writer Andrei Siniavskii/Terts.

Poems on the Underground


Gerard Benson - 1991
    An even bigger edition of the best selling poetry anthology, this time as a hardback, original format, in two colours throughout Originally published as 100 Poems on the Underground, this new tenth edition contains over 300 exceptional poems Total sales now exceed 275,000 - on a national basis, not purely London based Timeless, unpretentious and idiosyncratic collection of poetry, including many in translation and from a variety of cultures

Where the Chill Waits


T. Chris Martindale - 1991
    In a test of their manhood, four men venture deep into a forest where evil awaits them, and the survivors of the lurking entity's fury will bear its evil out into the world.

A Heart of Winter


Ayako Miura - 1991
    

The Gnole


Alan Aldridge - 1991
    It involves colourful and quirky characters living on the fringe of the human world, with a hero in Fungle the gnole.

Girls in the Grass


Melanie Rae Thon - 1991
    Winner of a 1997 Whiting Writers'Award One of Granta's "Best Young American Novelists"Ranging across a uniquely American landscape, from rural Idaho and suburban Arizona to downtown Boston, the eleven stories in this eagerly awaited reissued collection explore with painful lyricism the harsh awakenings of adolescence: eroticism and hypocrisy, love and violence, responsibility and guilt, adult inconstancy and the random cruelty of life and death.