Robert Prentice has spent all his life attempting to escape hismother's stifling presence. His mother, Alice, for her part,struggles with her own demons as she attempts to realize her dreamsof prosperity and success as a sculptor. As Robert goes off tofight in Europe, hoping to become his own man, Richard Yatesportrays a soldier in the depths of war striving to live up to hisheroic ideals. With haunting clarity, Yates crafts an unforgettableportrait of two people who cannot help but hope for more even aslife challenges them both.
A continuation of the major series of individual Shakespeareplays from the world renowned Royal Shakespeare Company, edited bytwo brilliant, younger generation Shakespearean scholars JonathanBate and Eric Rasmussen Incorporating definitive text and cutting-edge notes fromWilliam Shakespeare: Complete Works-the first authoritative,modernized edition of Shakespeare's First Folio in more than 300years-this remarkable series of individual plays combines JonathanBate's insightful critical analysis with Eric Rasmussen's textualexpertise.
Spine-tingling and entertaining, "The Invisible Man" is ascience fiction classic-and a penetrating, unflinching look intothe heart of human nature. To its author, H. G. Wells, the novelwas as compelling as "a good gripping dream." But to generations ofreaders, the terrible and evil experiment of the dementedscientist, Griffin, has conveyed a chilling nightmare of believablehorror. An atmosphere of ever-increasing suspense begins with thearrival of a mysterious stranger at an English village inn andbuilds relentlessly to the stark terror of a victim pursued by amaniacal invisible man. The result is a masterwork: a dazzlingdisplay of the brilliant imagination, psychological insight, andliterary craftsmanship that made H. G. Wells one of the mostinfluential writers of his time.
Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate s least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times.
A dying man cautiously unravels the mysteries of memory and creation. Vadim is a Russian emigre who, like Nabokov, is a novelist, poet and critic. There are threads linking the fictional hero with his creator as he reconstructs the images of his past from young love to his serious illness.
Anchor proudly presents a new omnibus volume of threenovels--previously published separately by Anchor--by NaguibMahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Assembled here isa collection of Mahfouz's artful meditations on the vicissitudes ofpost-Revolution Egypt. Diverse in style and narrative technique,together they render a rich, nuanced, and universally resonantvision of modern life in the Middle East. The Beggar is a complex tale of alienation and despair. In theaftermath of Nasser's revolution, a man sacrifices his work andfamily to a series of illicit love affairs. Released from jail inpost-Revolutionary times, the hero ofThe Thief and the Dogs blamesan unjust society for his ill fortune, eventually bringing himselfto destruction. Autumn Quail is a tale of moral responsibility,isolation, and political downfall about a corrupt bureaucrat who isone of the early victims of the purge after the 1952 revolution inEgypt.
They meet by chance on Copacabana Beach:Tristao Raposo, a poor black teen from the Rio slums, surviving dayto day on street smarts and the hustle, and Isabel Leme, anupper-class white girl, treated like a pampered slave by her absentthough very powerful father. Convinced that fate brought themtogether, betrayed by families who threaten to tear them apart,Tristao and Isabel flee to the farthest reaches of Brazil's wildwest -- unaware of the astonishing destiny that awaits them . . .Spanning twenty-two years, from the mid-sixties to the lateeighties, BRAZIL surprises and embraces the reader with itscelebration of passion, loyalty, and New World innocence. "A tourde force . . . Spectacular." -- Time "Updike's novel, as tender asit is erotic, becomes a magnificently wrought love story . . . .Beautifully written." -- Detroit Free Press "From the Paperbackedition."
"The Star Rover" is the story of San Quentin death-row inmateDarrell Standing, who escapes the horror of prison life--and longstretches in a straitjacket--by withdrawing into vivid dreams ofpast lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and anEnglishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment ofJack London's friend Ed Morrell, this is one of the author's mostcomplex and original works. As Lorenzo Carcaterra argues in hisIntroduction, "The Star Rover" is "written with energy and force,brilliantly marching between the netherworlds of brutality andbeauty." This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the textof the first American edition, published in 1915.
Twenty-two-year-old Karla is thrilled to be hired as anentertainer on the Sound of Music cruise ship where the rum punchis 80 percent Kool-Aid, the ice sculp- tures are plastic, and her"fake it till you make it" M.O. seems adventuresome. Karla is lessthrilled when her new boyfriend, Jack, suggests that they form asinging duo on land, but by now faking enthusiasm has become a wayof life. She and Jack buy backing tracks, crib lyrics from theradio, and embark on a not-as-glamorous-as-it-should-be careerperforming in the luxury hotel bars of the Middle East and China.But after a thousand and one nights on the road, Karla and Jackfind themselves struggling to keep their act both personal andprofessional together. Funny, fast-paced, and incisive, A Thousandand One Nights captures the performances, large and small, we useto make it through life.
在线阅读本书 During the French Revolution's reign of terror, the mysteriousScarlet Pimpernel rescues helpless men, women, and children fromtheir doom in this unique, wonderfully colorful adventureclassic.
Purchase of this book includes free trial access towww.million-books.com where you can read more than a million booksfor free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IllSTEVE TREATS It was for several minutes, I suppose, that I stooddrawing these silent morals. No man occupied himself with me. Quietvoices, and games of chance, and glasses lifted to drink, continuedto be the peaceful order of the night. And into my thoughts brokethe voice of that card-dealer who had already spoken so sagely. Healso took his turn at moralizing. "What did I tell you?" heremarked to the man for whom he continued to deal, and whocontinued to lose money to him. "Tell me when?" " Didn't I tell youhe'd not shoot ? " the dealer pursued with complacence. " You gotready to dodge. You had no call to be concerned. He's not the kinda man need feel anxious about." The player looked over at theVirginian, doubtfully. " Well," he said, " I don't know what youfolks call a dangerous man." " Not him " exclaimed the dealer withadmi
Mike Lovett rents a room in a Brooklyn boarding house with theintention of writing a novel. Wounded during World War II, Lovettis an amnesiac, and much of his past is a secret to himself. ButLovett's housemates have secrets of their own. As these mysteriousfigures vie for Lovett's allegiance, Barbary Shore playshavoc with our certainties, combining Kafkaesque unease withOrwellian paranoia and delivering its effects with a power thatMailer has made all his own.
On Christmas Eve, a party of friends descends on a purportedlyhaunted country retreat, charged with the task of discoveringevidence of the supernatural. Sequestered in their rooms for theholiday, the friends reconvene on Twelfth Night at a great feastand share their stories of spectral encounter. “Conducted” byCharles Dickens and counting Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collinsamong its contributors, The Haunted House examinesquintessentially Victorian themes–sex and longing, nostalgia andloss–in ways that continue to resonate today. Ingeniously conceivedand written, and spiked with flashes of Dickensian humor, thisvolume is a strange and sheer delight.
Book De*ion This story begins in ashadowed forest on Good Friday in the year of our Lord 1300. Itproceeds on a journey that, in its intense re-creation of thedepths and the heights of human experience, has become the key withwhich Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of itsown identity. About Author DANTE ALIGHIERI was born in Florence, Italy in 1265. His earlypoetry falls into the tradition of love poetry that passed from theProvencal to such Italian poets as Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's friendand mentor. Dante's first major work is the Vita Nuova, 1293-1294.This sequence of lyrics, sonnets, and prose narrative describes hislove, first earthly, then spiritual, for Beatrice, whom he hadfirst seen as a child of nine, and who had died when Dante was 25.Dante married about 1285, served Florence in battle, and rose to aposition of leadership in the bitter factional politics of thecity-state. As one of the city's magistrates, he found it necessaryto banish leaders of the so-called "Black" facti
Amid the cactus wilds some two hudred miles from Hollywoodlies a privileged oasis called Desert D'Or. It is a place forstarlets and would-be starlets, directors, studio execs, and thewell-groomed lowlifes who cater to them. And, as imagined by NormanMailer in this blistering classic of 1950s Hollywood, Desert D'Oris a moral proving ground, where men and women discover what theyreally want--and how far the are willing to go to get it. "The DeerPark" is the story of two interlacing love affairs. SergiusO'Shaugnessy is a young ex-Air Force pilot whose good looks and airof indifference launch him into the orbit of the radiant actressLulu Meyers. Charles Eitel is a brilliant director wounded byaccusations of communism--and whose liaison with the volatile ElenaEsposito may supply the coup de grace to his career. As Mailertraces their couplings and uncouplings, their uneasy flirtationwith success and self-extinction, he creates a legendary portraitof America's machinery of desire.
