Book picks similar to
The Storyteller by Harold Robbins
fiction
harold-robbins
romance
wanted
In the Days of the Comet
H.G. Wells - 1906
But mankind is too busy hating, stealing, scheming, and killing to care. As luminous green trails of cosmic dust and vapor stream across the heavens, blood flows beneath: nations wage all-out war, bitter strikes erupt, and jealous lovers plot revenge and murder. The earth slips past the comet by the narrowest of margins, but all succumb to the gases in its tail. When mankind wakes up, everyone is completely and profoundly different. An ill-fated romance between Willie Leadford and Nettie Stuart unfolds in a world buried in misery and bent on its own destruction. After the earth passes through the comet's tail, suffering, pettiness, and injustice melt away. Willie, Nettie, and everyone around them are reborn. They now see themselves and their world in a dramatically new and wonderful way.
A Case of Need
Jeffery Hudson - 1968
Set against the ever-building pressure and pace of a large Boston medical center, the tensions flare-and explode-when a surgical operation tragically ends in death, raising countless questions. Was it accidental malpractice? A violation of the Hippocratic oath? Or cold-blooded murder?
Carrie / 'Salem's Lot / The Shining
Stephen King - 1983
His incredible narrative drive ensnares the reader in a web of everyday surroundings, believable situations and recognizable characters that are eventually caught up in a terrifying noose of monumental evil. Three of King's earlier classics are here together in one volume, complete and unabridged and chilling: the explosive adolescent powers of Carried; the slow, insidious corruption of a small American town by a terrorizing vampire; and the malicious machinations of the Overlook Hotel and the gift of the "shine."
Whispers
Dean Koontz - 1980
And even though she died five years ago, the whispers still haunt him in the dark…enough to make him kill—and kill again…Hilary Thomas is one of his intended victims. And she’s about to learn that even death can’t keep a bad man down…
Jane's House
Robert Kimmel Smith - 1982
The sort of novel that comes along rarely to touch something personal in us. It's the story of a man and woman falling in love, and of the children and the memories of a perfect first wife that could keep them apart. "Excellent!" —Philadelphia Inquirer
Tricky Business
Dave Barry - 2002
In the middle of a tropical storm one night, these characters are among the passengers it carries: Fay Benton, a single mom and cocktail waitress desperate for something to go right for once; Johnny and the Contusions, a ship's band with so little talent they are . . . well, the ship's band; Arnold and Phil, two refugees from the Beaux Arts Senior Center; Lou Tarant, a wide, bald man who has killed nine people, though none recently; and an assortment of uglies whose job it is to facilitate the ship's true business, which is money-laundering or drug-smuggling or . . . something.
Hit Man
Lawrence Block - 1998
Keller goes in, does the job, gets out: usually at a few hours’ notice . . . Often Keller’s work takes him out of New York to other cities, to pretty provincial towns that almost tempt him into moving to the woods and the lakeshores. Almost but not quite. But then one job goes wrong in a way Keller has never imagined and it leaves him with a big problem. Finding himself with an orphan on his hands, Keller's job begins to interfere with his carefully guarded life. And once you let someone in to your life, they tend to want to know what you do when you're away. And killing for a living, lucrative though it is, just doesn't find favour with some folks.
Dinosaur Planet
Anne McCaffrey - 1978
It was a simple mission. A standard crew.THE PROBLEMKai and his beautiful co-leader Varian, the best xenob-vet in the business, followed all the standard procedures -- but the results of their investigations were totally unexpected. Not only were the planet's creatures larger than anyone had anticipated and the geological finds smaller, but the rescue ship had inexplicably disappeared.THE NIGHTMAREThen suddenly on a world of giant swamp creatures and deadly predators, a curious change had come over many of the members of the ARCT-10 crew... a change that would lead all of them, in one way or another, into the primitive darkness of a future world.
The Black Candle
Catherine Cookson - 1989
Inheriting her father's businesses at the age of nineteen, by the time she was twenty-three in 1880, she was running them as confidently as any man. Yet the path destiny required her to follow was not an easy one. Her feckless cousin Victoria became infatuated with Lionel Filmore, the fortune-hunting elder son of an old but impoverished family living in the decayed grandeur of Grove House. Bridget had no illusions about Lionel, but Victoria's happiness was paramount to her.So a pattern began to form that would shape the lives of generations to come, a pattern of some good and some great evil, but all of it inexorably linking Bridget ever more closely with the Filmores and their house.The Black Candle displays all of Catherine Cookson's narrative skills and shrewd perception of human strengths and frailties which have established her as our most widely-read and best-loved novelist.
Gertrude
Hermann Hesse - 1910
In this fictional memoir, the renowned composer Kuhn recounts his tangled relationships with two artists--his friend Heinrich Muoth, a brooding, self-destructive opera singer, and the gentle, self-assured Gertrude Imthor. Kuhn is drawn to Gertrude upon their first meeting, but Gertrude falls in love with Heinrich, to whom she is introduced when Kuhn auditions them for the leads in his new opera. Hopelessly ill-matched, Gertrude and Heinrich have a disastrous marriage that leaves them both ruined. Yet this tragic affair also becomes the inspiration for Kuhn's opera, the most important success of his artistic life.
Time's Eye
Arthur C. Clarke - 2003
Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline. Instead, the world becomes a patchwork of eras, from prehistory to 2037, each with its own indigenous inhabitants.Scattered across the planet are floating silver orbs impervious to all weapons and impossible to communicate with. Are these technologically advanced devices responsible for creating and sustaining the rifts in time? Are they cameras through which inscrutable alien eyes are watching? Or are they something stranger and more terrifying still?The answer may lie in the ancient city of Babylon, where two groups of refugees from 2037: three cosmonauts returning to Earth from the International Space Station, and three United Nations peacekeepers on a mission in Afghanistan have detected radio signals: the only such signals on the planet, apart from their own. The peacekeepers find allies in nineteenth-century British troops and in the armies of Alexander the Great. The astronauts, crash-landed in the steppes of Asia, join forces with the Mongol horde led by Genghis Khan. The two sides set out for Babylon, each determined to win the race for knowledge . . . and the power that lies within.Yet the real power is beyond human control, perhaps even human understanding. As two great armies face off before the gates of Babylon, it watches, waiting. . . .
Mayday
Nelson DeMille - 1979
The flight crew is crippled or dead. Now, defying both nature and man, three survivors must achieve the impossible. Land the plane. From master storyteller Nelson DeMille and master pilot Thomas Block comes Mayday, the classic bestseller that packs a supersonic shock at every turn of the page....the most terrifyingly realistic air disaster thriller ever. Like a growing tidal wave, the escaping air was gathering momentum. A teenaged girl in aisle 18, seat D, near the port-side aisle, her seat dislocated by the original impact, suddenly found herself gripping her seat track on the floor, her overturned seat still strapped to her body. The seatbelt failed and the seat shot down the aisle. She lost her grip and was dragged after it. Her eyes were filled with horror as she dug her nails into the carpet, as the racing air pulled her toward the yawning hole that led outside. Her cries were unheard by even those passengers who sat barely inches away from her struggle. The noise of the escaping air was so loud that it was no longer decipherable as sound, but seemed instead a solid thing pounding at the people in their seats......
Four Great Tragedies: Hamlet / Othello / King Lear / Macbeth
William Shakespeare - 1606
What is tragedy? The Elizabethans defined it as a "lofty" play showing "personages of great state" caught up in a "lamentable" action that "beginneth prosperously and endeth unfortunately." Whether judged by this or any other standard, the plays selected for this collection are considered to be the four central works of Shakespearean tragedy and must be included in any list of the world's finest tragic literature. And to make these plays more accessible for the modern reader, this edition includes the following special features:- Reliable texts by noted Shakespeare scholars - Texts printed in the clearest, most readable type - Names of each speaker given in full - Detailed footnotes at the bottom of each page keyed to the numbered lines of the text - Textual notes - Updated bibliography
Abduction
Robin Cook - 2000
A mysterious transmission from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean leads a crew of divers and oceanographers to investigate a phenomenon beyond scientific understanding....And to the discovery that will permanently change everything we have previously come to know about life on this Earth.
The Mask
Owen West - 1981
A teenager with no past, no family - and no memories. Carol and Paul were instantly drawn to her, this girl they named Jane - she was the daughter they never had. It was almost too good to be true.