The classic novel that inspired 'the greatest crime film of all time' Tyrant, blackmailer, racketeer, murderer - his influence reaches every level of American society. Meet Don Corleone, a friendly man, a just man, a reasonable man. The deadliest lord of the Cosa Nostra. The Godfather. But no man can stay on top forever, not when he has enemies on both sides of the law. As the ageing Vito Corleone nears the end of a long life of crime, his sons must step up to manage the family business. Sonny Corleone is an old hand, while World War II veteran Michael Corleone is unused to the world of crime and reluctant to plunge into the business. Both the police and ruthless rival crime lords scent blood in the water. If the Corleone family is to survive, it needs a ruthless new don. But the price of success in a violent life may be too high to bear... A modern masterpiece, The Godfather is a searing portrayal of the 1940s criminal underworld. Still shocking forty years after it was first published, this compelling tale of blackmail, murder and family values is a true classic.
In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.
Willard is a tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific who can't save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from a slow death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his 'prayer log'. Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, trawl America's highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. The spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick are running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin, Willard and Charlotte's orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.
"The greatest, wildest author of his generation" GuardianWe could tell you the year is 1944, that the main character is called Tyrone Slothrop and that he has a problem because bombs are falling across Europe and crashing to earth at the exact locations of his sexual conquests. But that doesn't really begin to cover it. Reading this book is like falling down a rabbit hole into an outlandish, sinister, mysterious, absurd, compulsive netherworld. As the "Financial Times" said, 'you must forget earlier notions about life and letters and even the Novel.' Forty years since publication, "Gravity's Rainbow" has lost none of its power to enthral.
Der neue psychedelische Roman von Thomas Pynchon: L.A., Ende der sechziger Jahre, Augenarzt Doc Sportello weiss, daß Liebe nur ein Wort ist, so wie ein Trip oder Marijhuana....und es tauchen eine Menge Surfer, Rocker und Drogenbosse auf, und langsam kriecht die Paranoia durch den Nebel L.A.s.
In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.
Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.
Michael Corleone's exile in Sicily is ending, but on the instructions of his father, The Godfather, he must bring back to him the young man known as Salvatore Giuliano - if he can find him. At sea amid the treacheries of a brutal and unfamiliar land, Michael must find a way through the labyrinthine deceits that surround him, while Giuliano prepares himself for a final confrontation with Don Croce, Capo di Capi of the Sicilian Mafia. A novel of explosive suspense, heroic action - and evil on an epic scale. In the hands of Mario Puzo's brilliantly sinister talent, the reader comes to know again the terrible magic of the Mafia.
"A web of spying, subterfuge, deceit and betrayal...Acute, witty ...winningly cunning". ("Sunday Times"). The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. Britain is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism. Serena Frome, in her final year at Cambridge, is being groomed for MI5. Serena is sent on a secret mission - Operation Sweet Tooth - which brings her into the world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one.
Cult horror director Stanislas Cordova hasn't been seen in public since 1971. To his fans he is an enigma. To journalist Scott McGrath he is the enemy. To Ashley he was a father. On a damp October night the young, beautiful Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Her suicide appears to be the latest tragedy to hit a severely cursed dynasty. For McGrath, another death connected the legendary director seems more than coincidence. Driven by revenge, curiosity and a need for the truth, he finds himself pulled into a hypnotic, disorientating world, where almost everyone seems afraid. The last time McGrath got close to exposing Cordova, he lost his marriage and his career. This time he could lose his grip on reality.
There is an ancient saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. This is the story of one such plane. Why did a Hercules C130, the world's sturdiest plane, carrying Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988? Was it because of: 1.Mechanical failure 2.Human error 3.The CIA's impatience 4.A blind woman's curse 5.Generals not happy with their pension plans 6.The mango season Or could it be your narrator, Ali Shigri? Teasing, provocative, and very, very funny, Mohammed Hanif's debut novel takes one of the subcontinent's enduring mysteries and out if it spins a tale as rich and colourful as a beggar's dream. Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel and shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2008.
Quentin Compson and Shreve, his Harvard room-mate, are obsessed by the tragic rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen. As a poor white boy, Sutpen was turned away from a plantation owner's mansion by a negro butler. From then on, he was determined to force his way into the upper echelons of Southern society. His relentless will ensures his ambitions are soon realised; land, marriage, children. But in after the chaos of Civil War, secrets from his own past threaten to destroy everything he has worked for.
This is by the author of Stoner. Will Andrews is no academic. He longs for wildness, freedom, hope and vigour. He leaves Harvard and sets out for the West to discover a new way of living. In a small town called Butcher's Crossing he meets a hunter with a story of a lost herd of buffalo in a remote Colorado valley, just waiting to be taken by a team of men brave and crazy enough to find them. Will makes up his mind to be one of those men, but the journey, the killing, harsh conditions and sheer hard luck will test his mind and body to their limits.
Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him. Hilarious and tragic, as its heart is savage indictment of twentieth-century madness, and a desire of the ordinary man to survive it.
Its 2001 in New York City, in between the dot-com collapse and the events of September 11th. Things are going well with Maxine Tarnows fraud investigation business, until she starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO. With excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, this is a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet.
When Vic Wilcox (MD of Pringle's engineering works) meets English lecturer Dr Robyn Penrose, sparks fly as their lifestyles and ideologies collide head on. What, after all, are they supposed to learn from each other? But in time both parties make some surprising discoveries about each other's worlds - and about themselves.
The sleepy town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is jolted into panic when Sara Linton, paediatrician and medical examiner, finds Sibyl Adams dead in the local diner. As well as being viciously raped, Sibyl has been cut: two deep knife wounds form a lethal cross over her stomach. But it's only once Sara starts to perform the post-mortem that the full extent of the killer's brutality becomes clear. Police chief Jeffrey Tolliver - Sara's ex-husband - is in charge of the investigation, and when a second victim is found, crucified, only a few days later, both Jeffrey and Sara have to face the fact that Sibyl's murder wasn't a one-off attack. What they're dealing with is a seasoned sexual predator. A violent serial killer...
An enchanting Japanese novel about a brilliant mathematician who only has 80 minutes of short term memory, and the young housekeeper entrusted to look after him. Translated by Stephen Snyder.
Flying out of India, a light aircraft is hi-jacked and flown into the high Tibetan Himalayas. The passengers on board anxiously await their fate, among them Conway, a talented British consul. But on landing they are unexpectedly conducted to a remote valley, a legendary paradise of peace and beauty, known as Shangri-La. Have they been kidnapped?
Azula continues her destabilizing campaign against the Fire Nation and her brother, Fire Lord Zuko. But after a failed attack on her latest target, Azula finds herself in a mysterious forest temple inhabited by a solitary monk…or is it something more mysterious? Azula must confront her past, and finally face her chance at redemption. Written in consultation with Avatar Studios, the veteran team of Faith Erin Hicks, Peter Wartman and Adele Matera is back with a new story in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
One of the most celebrated thrillers ever written, "The Day of the Jackal" is the electrifying story of the struggle to catch a killer before it's too late. It is 1963 and an anonymous Englishman has been hired by the Operations Chief of the O.A.S. to murder General de Galle. A failed attempt in the previous year means the target will be nearly impossible to get to. But this latest plot involves a lethal weapon: an assassin of legendary talent. Known only as The Jackal this remorseless and deadly killer must be stopped, but how do you track a man who exists in name alone?
When Thomas Lang, a hired gunman with a soft heart, is contracted to assassinate an American industrialist, he opts instead to warn the intended victim - a good deed that doesn't go unpunished. Within hours Lang is butting heads with a Buddha statue, matching wits with evil billionaires, and putting his life (among other things) in the hands of a bevy of femmes fatales, whilst trying to save a beautiful lady ...and prevent an international bloodbath to boot. A wonderfully funny novel from one of Britain's most famous comedians and star of award-winning US TV medical drama series, House.
It is through the spirit, previously considered benign for thousands of vampire years and throughout the Vampire Chronicles, that we come to be told the hypnotic tale of a great sea power of ancient times; a mysterious heaven on earth situated on a boundless continent - and of how and why, and in what manner and with what far-reaching purpose.
From their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustration as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things Maurice Sendak. New edition.
'You'd be surprised how many ways I change on different coloured days.'Maybe on some days you feel sort of brown, like a bear; you feel slow and low, low down. But then comes a yellow day and wheeeeeeeee! you feel like a busy, buzzy bee. Dr. Seuss takes the reader on a journey through many different moods in this vibrant and highly original book.
Zagazoo is a baby like no other. In this quite exceptional picture book young readers will be delighted by the hilarious and unexpected changes in his behaviour as Zagazoo grows up. Parents may detect some strange echoes of family life. There have been many classic picture books from the incomparable pen of Quentin Blake, but never one more extraordinary.
It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared. They never returned. Whether "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is fact or fiction the reader must decide for themselves.
Henri had a passion for Napoleon and Napoleon had a passion for chicken. From Boulogne to Moscow Henri butchered for his Emperor and never killed a single man. Meanwhile, in Venice, the city of chance and disguises, Villanelle was born with the webbed feet of her boatman father - but in the casinos she gambled her heart and lost. As the soldier-chef's love for Napoleon turns to hate he finds the Venetian beauty, and together they flee to the canals of darkness.
Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love.It tells of Shinji, a young fisherman and Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. Shinji is entranced at the sight of Hatsue in the twilight on the beach and they fall in love.When the villagers' gossip threatens to divide them, Shinki must risk his life to prove his worth.
After the early death of her philandering husband, Etsuko moves into her father-in-law's house, where she numbly submits to the old man's advances. But soon she finds herself in love with the young servant Saburo. Tormented by his indifference, yet invigorated by her desire, she makes her move, with catastrophic consequences.
A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic.They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.
