Extravagant Strangers

Extravagant Strangers

Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips

Shakespeare called Othello "an extravagant and wheeling strangers/Of here and every where."  In this exciting anthology, Caryl Phillips has collected writings by thirty-nine extravagant strangers: British writers who were born outside of Britain and see it with clear and critical eyes.  These eloquent and incisive voices prove that English literature, far from being pure or homogenous, has in fact been shaped and influenced by outsiders for over two hundred years.Here are slave writers, such as Ignatius Sancho, an eighteenth-century African who became a friend to Samuel Jonson and Laurence Sterne; writers born in the colonies, such as Thackeray, Kipling, and Orwell; "subject writers," such as C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul, foreign émigrés, such as Joseph Conrad and Kazuo Ishiguro; and postcolonial observers of the British scene, such as Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and Anita Desai.  With this eloquent and often inspiring collection, Phillips proves,...
Read online
  • 107
Nicholas Bracewell 09 - The Fair Maid of Bohemia

Nicholas Bracewell 09 - The Fair Maid of Bohemia

Edward Marston

Edward Marston

When plague strikes London, Lord Westfield's Men count themselves fortunate they've been invited to perform as part of the wedding celebrations for Sophia Magdalena, the fair maid of Bohemia. The long journey across Europe is a daunting prospect but stage manger Nicholas Bracewell is confident they will arrive safely, and confident the mission Lord Westfield sets them to deliver secret documents to Talbot Roydon, an English alchemist at the Imperial Court, will go without a hitch. En route, murder strikes one of the actors during their first performance at Flushing. It's the first of many setbacks. Once in Prague, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II proves a madcap host. Worse, not only do attacks on the players continue as the royal wedding day approaches, but someone kidnaps Nicholas' sweetheart Anne Henrik....**
Read online
  • 104
What She Forgot

What She Forgot

Amanda Stevens

Mystery & Thrillers / Romance / Young Adult

A woman will do anything to remember her identity in this beloved story by Amanda Stevens, which was originally published as The Second Mrs. Malone by Harlequin Intrigue in 1997.A woman was found wandering down a street in the middle of the night, covered in blood - not her own. She knew her name was Andrea, but not what had happened to the man whose wedding band she wore. Or why the family she was supposed to belong to hated her so much.The only shelter she'd found in the nightmare days was Sergeant Troy Stoner, the policeman assigned to her case. But how could Troy trust - or love - her, when she didn't know the answer to the most important question of all: was she victim - or villainess?
Read online
  • 104
The collected stories

The collected stories

Paul Theroux

Travel / Nonfiction / Fiction

Part I World's End : World's end -- Zombies -- The imperial icehouse -- Yard sale -- Algebra -- The English adventure -- After the war -- Words are deeds -- White lies -- Clapham junction -- The odd-job man -- Portrait of a lady -- Part II Sinning with Annie : The prison diary of Jack Faust -- A real Russian ikon -- A political romance -- Sinning with Annie -- A love knot -- What have you done to our Leo? -- Memories of a curfew -- Biographical notes for four American poets -- Hayseed -- A deed without a name -- You make me mad -- Dog days -- A burial at Surabaya -- Part III Jungle Bells : Polvo -- Low tide -- Jungle bells -- Warm dogs -- Part IV Diplomatic Relations (i): The Consul's File : The consul's file -- Dependent wife -- White Christmas -- Pretend I'm not here -- Loser wins -- The flower of Malaya -- The autumn dog -- Dengue Fever -- The South Malaysia Pineapple Growers' Association -- The butterfly of the Laruts -- The tennis court -- Reggie Woo -- Conspirators -- The Johore murders -- The tiger's suit -- Coconut gatherer -- The last colonial -- Triad -- Diplomatic relations -- Dear William -- Part V Diplomatic Relations (ii): The London Embassy : Volunteer speaker -- Reception -- Namesake -- An English unofficial rose -- Children -- Charlie Hogle's earring -- The exile -- Tomb with a view -- The man on the Clapham omnibus -- Sex and its substitutes -- The honorary Siberian -- Gone west -- A little flame -- Fury -- Neighbors -- Fighting talk -- The winfield wallpaper -- Dancing on the radio -- Memo
Read online
  • 104
Key to the Door

Key to the Door

Alan Sillitoe

Literature & Fiction / Short Stories

An existential saga of working-class life in a British factory town and military service in the torrid jungles of the Far East from award-winning, bestselling author Alan SillitoeKey to the Door turns away from the boisterous pursuits of Arthur Seaton made infamous in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and focuses instead on the quieter rebellions of his older brother, Brian. Brian's childhood and adolescence in the grimy streets of Nottingham are shaped by the Depression-era struggles of his family, the life and culture of the factory town, and the love and bullying of his iron-willed grandfather and erratic father. When Brian reaches adulthood, he frequents the local pubs, works hard at a cardboard factory, and runs into a sticky situation with a woman named Pauline that obliges him to marry her. Soon though, he is conscripted for the postwar occupation of Malaya, and his true colors begin to show. Brian declares that he only wears his...
Read online
  • 104
Tiffany Girl

Tiffany Girl

Deeanne Gist

Historical Fiction

From the bestselling author of It Happened at the Fair and Fair Play comes a compelling historical novel about a progressive "New Woman"—the girl behind Tiffany's chapel—and the love that threatens it all.As preparations for the 1893 World's Fair set Chicago and the nation on fire, Louis Tiffany—heir to the exclusive Fifth Avenue jewelry empire—seizes the opportunity to unveil his state-of-the-art, stained glass, mosaic chapel, the likes of which the world has never seen. But when Louis's dream is threatened by a glassworkers' strike months before the Fair opens, he turns to an unforeseen source for help: the female students at the Art Students League of New York. Eager for adventure, the young women pick up their skirts, move to boarding houses, take up steel cutters, and assume new identities as the "Tiffany Girls." Tiffany Girl is the heartwarming story of the impetuous Flossie Jayne, a beautiful, budding artist...
Read online
  • 103
Prizzi's Glory

Prizzi's Glory

Richard Condon

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

When the Prizzi family decides to enter politics, Charley Partanna tries to turn legit If Charley Partanna is lucky, he can go a few months without falling in love. During these stretches, he's able to focus on his job as chief executioner for the Prizzi family. But once romance strikes, Partanna—a criminal manager who still commits the odd murder for old time's sake—is lost to the world. So he knows there will be trouble when he meets his latest infatuation at an orgy. She's clothed from neck to ankles, but she's the sexiest woman Partanna has ever seen, and she hits his heart hard. His latest affair may be consuming Partanna body and soul, but he'll have to make sure it doesn't interfere with the Prizzi family's latest venture: politics. And with the Prizzis' sights set on the White House, Partanna will discover the campaign trail is a bloody one indeed. Prizzi's Glory is the 3rd book in the Prizzi series, but you may...
Read online
  • 103
The Dazzle of Day

The Dazzle of Day

Molly Gloss

Molly Gloss

Leaving a dilapidated Earth behind, Quakers across the globe pool funds and resources as they select colonists to send to a newly discovered planet to start life anew in this "miraculous fusion of...science fiction with unsparing realism and keen psychology" (Ursula K. Le Guin). In this "carefully conceived and deeply affecting" (The New York Times) novel, award-winning author Molly Gloss turns her attention to the frontiers of the future. A group of Quakers band together to abandon the ailing Earth, and travel to a settle a whole new world. The Dazzle of Day is their story. "The Dazzle of Day is a heartbreakingly good book...a rare dream of a book, passionate and lyric. The Dazzle of Day allows us to see our own world, our own present, more profoundly" (San Jose Mercury News).
Read online
  • 100
My Drowning

My Drowning

Jim Grimsley

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Gay & Lesbian

A woman looks back to her painful childhood in the rural South to solve a family mystery: "Magnificent . . . just masterful" (Ann Patchett). Ever since Ellen Tote can remember, she has dreamed of her mother slowly drowning. Now, with her own children all grown and her siblings long gone, Ellen is still haunted by her half-remembered past, and finally journeys back to her childhood for answers. Piecing together her memories of growing up among North Carolina tenant farmers in the 1940s, she articulates a story so shattering, it had long been silenced by fear and shame—in a heartrending and emotionally powerful tale from a PEN/Hemingway Award nominee and "one of the finest Southern novelists to appear in a long, long time" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). "There's a lyric intensity and a quiet authority in Ellen's narrative voice, and thoughtful consideration has been given to the question of how one makes peace with the griefs of the...
Read online
  • 98
Love Life

Love Life

Zeruya Shalev

Zeruya Shalev

Israel's provocative #1 bestseller from the author of Pain. In "a hybrid–Last Tango in Paris meets Story of O . . . Shalev deconstructs sexual longing" (Darcey Steinke, author of Flash Count Diary). Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as a novel that "broke all the barriers . . . sexually explicit yet dense with biblical allusions and psychological insight," Love Life unbuttoned Hebrew literature and spent four months as Israel's number one bestseller. What begins as a story of a young married woman's turbulent affair with an older man rapidly devolves into a feverish, lyrical crash course in the anatomy of obsession. When Yaara meets Aryeh, her father's boyhood friend, she is instantly drawn to his impassive and archly assured presence. It is not long before she forsakes her devoted and well-meaning husband for the powerful, mysterious older man who seems to embody all that she lacks: will, strength, and the key to her parents' inaccessible pasts. They embark on a heated...
Read online
  • 98
The Cockatrice Boys

The Cockatrice Boys

Joan Aiken

Children's Books / Mystery & Thrillers / Historical Fiction

What does a cockatrice enjoy most for dinner? Anyone it can find. So the alarmed inhabitants of England discover when a plague of monsters-known as cockatrices-invade their country and begin gobbling them up. They must be stopped! A plucky band of survivors dubbed the Cockatrice Corps- including youngsters Dakin and Sauna-decide to fight back. But how? A rollicking adventure filled with breathtaking twists and turns, The Cockatrice Boys is Joan Aiken at her comic best.At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
Read online
  • 95
The Inner Sanctum (1997)

The Inner Sanctum (1997)

Stephen Frey

Stephen Frey

New York Times bestselling author Stephen Freypresents a financial thriller of corruption at the highestlevels of government and the greed that drives it. An IRS agent suspects foul play when her boss dies during an investigation into the financial profile of a senatorialcandidate's campaign. Now she possesses the information that could ruin the candidate's career, expose the military's secret black budget, and damage the credibility of a major investment banking firm. With the help of the banking firm's portfolio manager, she intends to reveal her information...unless she is silenced first! * Stephen Frey is the New York Times bestselling author of The Takeover * Both The Vulture Fund and The Takeover were optioned by ParamountPictures and Neufeld/Rehme Productions, the producers of Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October and Clear and Present Danger * Published to coincide with the Dutton hardcover publication of Stephen Frey's The Legacy * The Inner Sanctum includes a teaser chapter for The Legacy
Read online
  • 95
183