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Daedalus Books
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The ever-brilliant Barnes concocts a mordant sexual comedy for his latest novel, taking over the later lives of three characters he introduced in the earlier Talking It Over. Straight, rather stuffy organic-food kingpin Stuart; his former best friend, the ebulliently witty layabout Oliver; and Gillian, whom Oliver stole from Stuart, address the reader in turns about just what happened (or in Oliver's case, show off for the reader in a dazzling display of verbal pyrotechnics that would bring down the house if this were a play). There's no doubt that in most ways Stuart deserves Gillian more than Oliver does, and the latter's attraction for her seems odd. On the other hand, Oliver is, unexpectedly, quite a good father, and there are hints of obtuseness and brutality about Stuart's bluff self-satisfaction. Poor Gillian, whose French-born mother also comments on the proceedings from a cynical distance, seems quite unable to decide between the two men when Stuart forcibly reenters her life. Out of their often self-serving, sometimes touchingly self-aware accounts of a handful of encounters emerges a funny, occasionally poignant look at the strange confusion between friendship and love--as well as more than a hint that nobody truly knows just who they really are and what they are capable of. It's slight but telling and, except for Oliver's wonderful and witty set pieces, oddly subdued for Barnes, but it would make an excellent play, in the Tom Stoppard vein. (Feb. 13) Forecast: Although Barnes's succession of clever novels have won him a following here, the strongly English domesticity portrayed in Love, Etc. seems unlikely to gather him many new adherents. For connoisseurs of brilliant invective, however, it's a treat, and Knopf is anticipating that interest with a 40,000 first printing. |
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A colour encyclopedia providing an authoritative overview of the Japanese garden flora. |
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On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a massive three-pronged attack on the Soviet Union, and in days his troops were within reach of Moscow. The attack was stunning, but Stalin's response was even more astonishing. During the invasion, the mighty Soviet military stood in place while its soldiers were slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands. Drawing on a wealth of newly available documents, from classified Politburo papers and diaries of key generals to diplomatic cables and secret police memos, the Russian historian Constantine Pleshakov paints a startling portrait of Stalin, one of history's most feared despots, as a vulnerable and paralyzed leader. Refusing to believe that the Germans would strike first, despite repeated warnings, he continued to supply them with war materials in the days before the attack, then tied his generals' hands in the crucial first hours of the invasion. For more than a week, while Hitler rolled over Soviet territory, Stalin cowered in his dacha, leaving the country rudderless and — as Pleshakov reveals here — nearly losing power. The Red Army's effort to regain the territory lost in those first ten days cost more than 10 million Soviet lives. Stalin's Folly is a dramatic hour-by-hour account that sheds light on an enigmatic and ruthless figure while providing a new and far deeper understanding of Russian history. |
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The author of such novels as The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove, Henry James was also a devotee of the novella, and in this omnibus literary critic Philip Rahv has collected ten of James's most important short novels. Accompanied by Rahv's commentary, this collection contains Madame de Mauves, Daisy Miller, An International Episode, The Siege of London, Lady Barberina, The Author of Beltraffio, The Aspern Papers, The Pupil, The Turn of the Screw, and The Beast in the Jungle. |
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As this 1989 thriller begins, James Bond has lost his license to kill. After he took revenge on the CIA agent who handed his friend over to the master criminal Sanchez, M revoked Bond's double-0 status. Now considered a rogue agent, with MI6 trying to bring him in and only the support of Q behind him, Bond goes after Sanchez. Aboard a ship, Bond tricks his way into Sanchez's inner circle and discovers the secret of his wealth—but Bond is walking a tightrope, and it is only a matter of time before he slips. After Kingsley Amis wrote Colonel Sun in 1968, it was John Gardner who was asked to carry on writing new adventures starring James Bond. Gardner ultimately wrote 14 original Bond books (as did Bond's creator, Ian Fleming), plus novelizations of the films GoldenEye and License to Kill. |
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The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.Cinema's longest-running franchise, James Bond made his debut in this 1953 novel by Ian Fleming. The unstoppable British agent is dispatched to the French casino Royale-les-Eaux, where he must bankrupt the dissolute and sadistic spy Le Chiffre, in the hope that this Russian pawn will beretiredby his paymasters. It will require more than luck, however; after a brutal night at the gaming tables, Bond finds himself dodging would-be assassins, fighting off torturers, and trying to save the life of his beautiful female counterpart, Vesper Lynd. |
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The unique and notable work being done by contemporary architects is generously presented in this illustrated volume. Their designs can be understood as homes intended to be interpretations of life and the environment. Each of the forty examples included. |
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Boys don't get all the fun. Whether readers consider themselves tomboys, girly-girls, or a little bit of both, this is the manual for everything that girls of all ages really need to know. Find out about female heroes in history, secret note-passing techniques, science projects, and friendship bracelets. Learn to play Double Dutch and cat's cradle, turn the perfect cartwheel, and induce giggles at sleepovers and discover the eternal mystery of what boys are actually thinking. |
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This title contains a book & CD. From the creators of A Child's Gift of Lullabyes, here is a Grammy-nominated soundtrack for children. With soothing melodies, meaningful lyrics and beautifully orchestrated arrangements, this collection is sure to give little ones hours of listening pleasure. The one-hour CD includes vocal and instrumental tracks of nine original lullabies, while the lyric book provides words for the caregiver. |
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«Inspired by Sigmund Freud's only, traumatic visit to America (a society of savages, he was to claim), Jed Rubenfeld's novel is an intricate tale of murder and the mind's dangerous mysteries. On a sweltering August evening in 1909 Freud disembarks from a steamship in New York City, accompanied by his protégé and rival Carl Jung. Across town, a debutante is found dangling from a chandelier, whipped, mutilated, and strangled. The next day, a second beauty—a rebellious heiress—barely escapes the killer, but is hysterical and can remember nothing. American Freudian Stratham Younger calls on his idol to analyze the spirited girl. «As The Interpretation of Murder races past ravished damsels, sinister aristocrats, architectural marvels (the building of the Manhattan Bridge), hysterical symptoms, a Hamlet-Freud nexus and downright criminal wordplay ('there are more things in heaven and earth, Herr Professor, than are dreamt in your psychology'; 'sometimes a catarrh, I’m afraid, is only a catarrh'), it cobbles together its own brand of excitement. That excitement is as palpable as it is peculiar».» |
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«Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, feared, envied, and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and, in some cases, ruled nations. As she did with Sex with the Queen, Eleanor Herman takes readers into the throne rooms and bedrooms of Europe's most powerful monarchs to relate history from the women's point of view. She finds that in most cases, the main function of a royal mistress was not providing the king with sex as much as with companionship. «Open Sex With Kings at almost any page and you'll find yourself immersed in a bawdy, deliciously appealing illicit scene occurring in the highest places.... Herman has written an enlightening social history that is great fun to read.» |
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«When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it», notes the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex in his introduction to this collection of love stories from literature. «But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.» Here then are 27 such cures for lovesickness and antidotes to adultery — by Harold Brodkey, Grace Paley, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Milan Kundera, and Vladimir Nabokov.» |
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In certain uncanny ways this wonderful, compelling novel prefigures Suite Francaise and rehearses some of the themes of her big unfinished sequence of novels. Nemirovsky must have down put her pen in 1940 and picked it straight up again to embark on Suite Francaise...This novel, though is finished, and exquisitely so — first published in France in 1947. It tells the story of two intertwined but warring French families through two world wars from 1911 to 1940, and its themes are war, love and money. This is Balzac or The Forsyte Saga on a smaller, more intimate scale, with the bourgeoisie observed close-up, with Nemirovsky's characteristically clear-eyed compassion and sly humour. Full of moving, vivid observation of the devastating effects of the two wars on a small Normandy town and an industrial family, whose patriarch is a monstrous David Golder character (as French as they come and not in the least Jewish). The exodus and flow of refugee humanity through the town in both wars pre-figures Suite Francaise, but differently again, because this is Normandy and near the Somme, and the town itself is twice razed. Evocative and unputdownable the novel brings home with heartbreaking detail and clarity how close were those two wars, how history repeated itself, unbelievably. It opens in the Edwardian era (on a fashionable Normandy beach) and ends with a changed world, under Nazi occupation. Nemirovsky has an astonishing ability to give you the most blinkered, small-minded of characters (in this case Mme Hardelot, mother of one of the central characters) and bring tears to your eyes — when Mme H realises that her son is leaving for the front in minutes rather than days... It's a gripping story of family life and starcrossed love, of money and feuds, against the backdrop of two terrible wars. |
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Following on from the huge success of the 44 Scotland Street series, Alexander McCall Smith 'moved house' to London's Pimlico and into his brand new daily novel, Corduroy Mansions. The building itself — described in a guide to the architecture of the area as 'a building of no interest whatsoever' — is believed to have been built as an asylum, or possibly a school, or maybe it was a mansion block — nobody is very sure. In fact, nothing of its history is known, although it does have some nice Arts and Craft features. At the moment it is inhabited by an assortment of characters — including amongst others a literary agent, a wine merchant, one accountant, possibly the first ever nasty Liberal Democrat MP and his long-suffering PA, and a small dog in his prime. At least one character is on a voyage of self-discovery, which has taken him to Cheltenham so far. Although Corduroy Mansions is a nickname, it is now recognized by the Post Office. |
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St Cedd's Church fete had been held in the grounds of Martingale manor house for generations. As if organizing stalls, as well as presiding over luncheon, the bishop and the tea tent, were not enough for Mrs Maxie on that mellow July afternoon, she also had to contend with the news of her son's sudden engagement to her new parlour maid, the sly single mother, Sally Jupp. On the following morning Martingale and the whole village are shocked by the discovery of Sally Jupp's body. Investigating the violent death at the manor house, Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is embroiled in the complicated passions beneath the calm surface of English village life. |
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From the authors of the bestselling The Daring Book for Girls, an all-new double-the-fun, double-the-adventure guidebook of stories, activities, facts, and games for daring girls everywhere. |
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