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.
Product De*ion Edited and with an Introduction by David Stuart Davies 'The figure of my wife came in... it came straight towards the bed... its wide eyes were open and looked at me with love unspeakable' Edith Nesbit, best known as the author of The Railway Children and other children's classics, was also the mistress of the ghost story and tales of terror. She was able to create genuinely chilling narratives in which the returning dead feature strongly. Sadly, these stories have been neglected for many years, but now, at last, they are back in print. In this wonderful collection of eerie, flesh-creeping yarns, we encounter love that transcends the grave, reanimated corpses, vampiric vines, vengeful ghosts and other dark delights to make you feel fearful. These vintage spooky stories, tinged with horror, are told in a bold, forthright manner that makes them seem as fresh and unsettling as today's headlines.
He is a good man, a brilliant corporate executive, an honest,handsome family man admired by men and desired by women. But a lifetime ago Ben Tyson was a lieutenant in Vietnam. There the men under his command committed a murderous atrocity --and together swore never to tell the world what they had done. Nowthe press, army justice, and the events he tried to forget havecaught up with Ben Tyson. His family, his career, and his personalsense of honor hang in the balance. And only one woman can revealthe truth of his past -- and set him free.
Agatha Christie's ginius for detective fiction is unparalleled. Her worldwide popularity is phenomenal, her characters engaging, her plots spellbinding. No one knows the human heart--or the dark passions that can stop it--better than Agatha Christie. She is truly the one and only Queen of Crime. The Muder Of Roger Ackroyd Village rumor hints that Mrs. Ferrars poisoned her husband, but no one is sure. Then there's another victim in a chain of death. Unfortunately for the killer, master sleuth Hercule Poirot takes over the investigation. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
"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.
‘If you loved Bridget Jones's Diary,you'll love this; there is no diminution of the freshness or fun,or of Fielding's underlying intelligence.Success has not spoiled her-she has simply gained in confidence and aplomb…fielding has a seam here she can mine endlessly until she herself gets bored,which Idare say will be long before her readers do'Mail on Sunday ‘Helen Fielding has created the most enchanting heroine for the millennium'Jilly Cooper
A young man, broken down in the fog, witnesses a murder he is asked to conceal...A full-length novel adapted by Charles Osborne from Agatha Christie's acclaimed play. When a stranger runs his car into a ditch in dense fog in South Wales and makes his way to an isolated house, he discovers a woman standing over the dead body of her wheelchair-bound husband, gun in her hand. She admits to murder, and the unexpected guest offers to help her concoct a cover story. But is it possible that Laura Warwick did not commit the murder after all? If so, who is she shielding? The victim's retarded young half-brother or his dying matriarchal mother? Laura's lover? Perhaps the father of the little boy killed in an accident for which Warwick was responsible? The house seems full of possible suspects! THE UNEXPECTED GUEST is considered to be one of the finest of Christie's plays. Hailed as 'another Mousetrap' when it opened on 12 August 1958 in the West End, it ran for 604 performances over the succeeding 18 months and
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If a recent spate of new translations is any evidence, Dante remains as popular as ever with the general reading public. Durling's new verse translation of the Inferno joins recent versions by Robert Pinsky (LJ 1/93) and Mark Musa (LJ 3/1/95). While Durling's translation (with Italian on the facing page) does not use Dante's rhyme or line divisions, it captures the metrical rhythm of the original. S imilarly, his rendering of Dante's diction is literal and accurate, conveying the tone and feel while remaining accessible. Supplemented with an introduction, useful notes, and appendixes, this version, soon to be joined by Purgatorio and Paradiso, can be recommended to the general reader. In a new reader's guide to the Divine Comedy, Gallagher, a Catholic priest as well as a poet and scholar, presents the Comedy canto by canto in a series of mini-essays that discuss content, themes, characters, major allusions, and religious doctrines, particularly from the perspective of Dante as a Christian. For
aNo other popular writer of his time did any better writingthan you will find in The Call of the Wild.a--H. L. Mencken One ofthe greatest American storytellers, Jack London enjoyed phenomenalpopularity in his own time and remains widely read throughout theworld. His work is characterized by thrilling action, an intuitivefeeling for animal life, and a sense of justice that oftenmanifests itself through violence. "The Call of the Wild," perhapsthe best novel ever written about animals, traces a dogas suddenentry into the wild and his education in survival among the wolves.Library of America Paperback Classics feature authoritative textsdrawn from the acclaimed Library of America series and introducedby todayas most distinguished scholars and writers. Each bookfeatures a detailed chronology of the authoras life and career, andessay on the choice of the text, and notes. The contents of thisPaperback Classic are drawn from "Jack London: Novels and Stories,"volume number 6 in The Library of America series. I
For this novel of French bourgeois life in all its ingloriousbanality, Flaubert invented a paradoxically original and whollymodern style. His heroine, Emma Bovary, a bored provincialhousewife, abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe ina desperate love affair. A succA]s de scandale in its day, "MadameBovary" remains a powerful and arousing novel. Translated with anIntroduction by Geoffrey Wall New Preface by MichA]le Roberts
In 1920s Munich, homicide detective Axel Berg is called to the scene of a grisly homicide, the victim being a young society wife. Soon, a second body is uncovered; the discovery of a third indicates that Berg is dealing with an unimaginably evil killer. In the Germany of the time, the investigation cannot be straightforward. Hitler's power is growing, and the Nazis are a strong civic force in the city of Munich. Berg has always considered himself apolitical, and as an outsider living a routine life he's been of no interest to those with power. But this high-profile case changes all that, as senior officers work to their own agendas. Berg is alone as never before, with the imminent threat at all times of making a mistake with deadly consequences.
Upon its publication in 1857, "Little Dorrit" immediatelyoutsold any of Dickens's previous books. The story of WilliamDorrit, imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and his daughterand helpmate, Amy, or Little Dorrit, the novel charts the progressof the Dorrit family from poverty to riches. In his Introduction,David Gates argues that "intensity of imagination is the gift fromwhich Dickens's other great attributes derive: his eye and ear, hisnear-universal empathy, his ability to entertain both a sense ofthe ridiculous and a sense of ultimate significance." This ModernLibrary Paperback Classic is set from the text of the 1857edition.
Anton Chekhov's popularity in the west is without parallel for aforeign writer. He has been absorbed into our culture, and acceptedas one of our own. His plays lend themselves easily to the stage,calling for actors with intelligence and common sense rather than adramatic voice or histrionic skills. He takes from everyday lifethemes of frustration which apply to us all - the difficulty ofcarving out a happy existence, the problems of love, the fading ofhope, the universal feeling that time passes and we never quite getthings right. This seems pessimistic, and yet Chekhov claimed hewas writing comedy. Readers, actors and directors must decide forthemselves which way to play these pieces. They are full ofsadness, but a sadness described as the darkness of the last hourbefore the dawn . Whether tragic or comic, however, they are worksof the first importance. The Cherry Orchard has been described asthe best play since Shakespeare , Three Sisters as the best play inthe world .
This laugh-out-loud-funny novel comes from peter Farrelly,co-creator of the hit movies Dumb and Dumber,There's Something About Mary and Me,Myself and Irene. Hilari-ous yet melancholy,it tells of a young man's coming-of-age in the 1970s.Timothy Dunphy is a native of working class Pawtucket,Rhode Island.His mother killed herself if the family garage,and his tough-talking father calls him 'Dildo'. But Ti-mothy's meagre existence takes a turn when his old man exploits some shady connecti-ons to get him into a fancy connecticut prep shool.Timothy finds that the privileged elite are hardly immune to life's screw-ups,but he must also reconcile his pedigreed schoolmates with his mongrel friends back home,like slow-witted Bunny Cote and Quaa-lude-popping 'Drugs'Delaney.
Published to coincide with the centenary of Tolstoy's death,here is an exciting new edition of one of the great literary worksof world literature. Tolstoy's epic masterpiece captures withunprecedented immediacy the broad sweep of life during theNapoleonic wars and the brutal invasion of Russia. Balls andsoirées, the burning of Moscow, the intrigues of statesmen andgenerals, scenes of violent battles, the quiet moments of everydaylife--all in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has neverbeen surpassed. The Maudes' translation of Tolstoy's epicmasterpiece has long been considered the best English version, andnow for the first time it has been revised to bring it fully intoline with modern approaches to the text. French passages arerestored, Anglicization of Russian names removed, and outmodedexpressions updated. A new introduction by Amy Mandelker considersthe novel's literary and historical context, the nature of thework, and Tolstoy's artistic and philosophical aims. New, expandednotes provid
With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and peopl
From the author who gave us THE SCARLET LETTER and THE HOUSEOF THE SEVEN GABLES, here is a comprehensive selection of hisbest short stories, including: Endicott and the Red Cross Young Goodman Brown Earth's Holocaust Ethan Brand My Kinsman, Major Molineux And more!
James Baldwin's stunning first novel is now an American classic. With startling realism that brings Harlem and the black experience vividly to life, this is a work that touches the heart with emotion while it stimulates the mind with its narrative style, symbolism, and excoriating vision of racism in America. Moving through time from the rural South to the northern ghetto, starkly contrasting the attitudes of two generations of an embattles family, Go Tell It On The Mountain is an unsurpassed portrayal of human beings caught up in a dramatic struggle and of a society confronting inevitable change. "The most important novel written about the American Negro," says Commentary. "It is written with poetic intensity and great narrative skill," writes Harper's. Saturday Review praises it as "masterful," and the San Francisco Chronicle declares that this important American novel is "brutal, objective and compassionate." 作者简介： James Baldwin,one of America's most celebrated
An immediate bestseller when it was first published in December1843, A Christmas Carol has endured ever since as a perennialYuletide favorite. Charles Dickens's beloved tale about the miserlyEbenezer Scrooge, who comes to know the meaning of kindness,charity, and goodwill through a haunting Christmas Eve encounterwith four ghosts, is a heartwarming celebration of the spirit ofChristmas. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition alsoincludes two other popular Christmas stories by Dickens: "TheChimes," in which a man, persuaded by hypocritical cant that thepoor deserve their misery, is shown what his pessimisticresignation might lead to in a vision conjured by the pealing ofbells, and "The Haunted Man," Dickens's last Christmas tale, whichfeatures one of his great comic families, the Tetterbys.
In many ways this is a wonderful novel with interesting,alive, characters. The medical aspects are absorbing and relevant,and the plot, the story, is grandiose, immense, and fascinating.Before you read the book, read the author's acknowledgements at theend. Irving's grandfather was a leading gynecologist, and he hadhis medical facts checked by experts. (There are other interestingtidbits in the acknowledgements.) John Irving is obviously a masternovelist and he has lavished intense energy and creativity on thisbook. I just cannot help carping a bit. My qualm is that the"political" aspects are all a little too pat and comforting. Amongthe many characters we have the active, involved, and livelycripple (opps, sorry, I mean "differently abled person"); theabusive husband; the dignified, poor but honest negroes; thelovable orphans; the tough but ultimately gentle and sexuallyconfused lesbian; the sad but dedicated and kindly illegalabortionists; and so on. For anyone other than a devoutanti-abortion
War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleon's war withRussia. While it expresses Tolstoy's view that history is aninexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his greatnovel with a cast of over five hundred characters. Three of these,the artless and delightful Natasha Rostov, the world-weary PrinceAndrew Bolkonsky and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov illustrateTolstoy's philosophy.
The Sorrow Gondola was the great Swedish poet TomasTranstromer's first collection of poems after his stroke in 1990.Translated by Michael McGriff, Transtromer's great work isavailable in its first single-volume English edition.
