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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1848

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. New York. 1907. Harper & Brothers. 373 pages. hardcover.

secret agent harper and brothers 1907 no dw DESCRIPTION - From the seed of an actual attempt, made in 1894, to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, Conrad created one of his most tense and chilling plots. The world of THE SECRET AGENT - the world of law and order, fatuous civil servants and corrupt policemen -is grotesquely mirrored in its underworld, a squalid terrorist landscape inhabited by, among others, the Professor, who always carries a bomb in his pocket, and Verloc the pornographer, deceiver and spy. Repulsive characters and amoral caricatures collaborate to form a black satire on English society, a satire sharpened into focus wit ha port rait of ‘family life': Winnie Verloc's story relentlessly told to its ‘anarchic end of utter desolation, madness and despair' The bones of this tale, Conrad agreed, make up a'grisly skeleton', yet THE SECRET AGENT is certainly his most humorous and probably his most popular book, and, according to F. R. Leavis, ‘one of the unquestionable classics of the first order that he added to the English novel'.

Conrad Joseph Joseph Conrad (born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; Berdichev, Imperial Russia, 3 December 1857 - 3 August 1924, Bishopsbourne, Kent, England) was a Polish author who wrote in English after settling in England. He was granted British nationality in 1886, but always considered himself a Pole. Conrad is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent). He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe. He was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors, including D. H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Malcolm Lowry, William Golding, William S. Burroughs, Joseph Heller, Italo Calvino, Gabriel García Márquez, J. G. Ballard, John le CarrE, V.S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Hunter S. Thompson, J.M. Coetzee and Salman Rushdie. Films have been adapted from, or inspired by, Conrad's Almayer's Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, The Duel, Victory, The Shadow Line, and The Rover. Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew on his native Poland's national experiences and on his personal experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world, while plumbing the depths of the human soul. Appreciated early on by literary cognoscenti, his fiction and nonfiction have gained an almost prophetic cachet in the light of subsequent national and international disasters of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1916

Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad. New York. 1911. Harper & Brothers. 378 pages. October 1911. hardcover.

A political novel of great and disturbing power.

under western eyes 1911 no dw DESCRIPTION - Carrying a dramatic intensity beyond that even of his masterpiece, HEART OF DARKNESS, UNDER WESTERN EYES is Conrad's third and last major novel of political treachery and oppression. Along with THE SECRET AGENT and NOSTROMO, it presages the espionage thrillers of John Le Carre and Graham Greene with its spies and counterspies, brooding atmosphere of suspense, and riveting portrayal of betrayal, guilt, and intrigue. For Conrad himself it was a work of wrenching emotionality that took him to the edge of mental breakdown. The novel begins with a bomb that explodes to assassinate a hated Russian minister of police - and kill a number of innocent bystanders as well. The young student who first hides the perpetrator, then betrays him and becomes a spy among his exiled comrades, is Razumov, who in one irrevocable moment becomes entangled in a moral dilemma from which there is no escape. Conrad professed that he intended to render 'the psychology of Russia', a country being driven by a Czarist despotism into anarchy by revolutionaries 'unable to see that all they can effect is merely a name of names'. What he created in this masterwork published six years before the Russian Revolution was a chillingly accurate portrayal of the future - and of the terrorists who, acting in the name of liberty, still haunt our times.

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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1854

Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa. Middlesex. 1974. Penguin Books. Translated From The Portuguese By Jonathan Griffin. 128 pages. Cover design by Sylvia Clench. 0140421610. paperback.

0140421610 DESCRIPTION - This volumes in a sense the work of four poets, for Fernando Pessoa adopted in his writing four separate personas. Though he led an uneventful life, his poetry reveals a mind shaken by intensive inner suffering. Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis helped to set him free by hiving off three great swarms of thought and feeling': each a separate poet, they convey a sense of ambivalence and consolidate a striving for completeness. Dramatic, lyrical, Christian, pagan, old and modern, Pessoa's poets and poetry all contribute to the 'mysterious importance of existence'.

Pessoa Fernando Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessôa (June 13, 1888 - November 30, 1935), was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French. Pessoa was a prolific writer, and not only under his own name, for he dreamed up approximately seventy-five others. He did not call them pseudonyms because he felt that did not capture their true independent intellectual life and instead called them heteronyms. These imaginary figures sometimes held unpopular or extreme views.

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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1772

The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa by Fernando Pessoa. New York. 2001. Grove Press. Translated From The Portuguese & Edited By Richard Zenith. 342 pages. Jacket illustration - Portrait of Fernando Pessoa by Jose de Almida. Jacket design by Charles Rue Woods. 0802116949. July 2001. hardcover.

0802116949 DESCRIPTION - Building on the wonderful FERNANDO PESSOA & CO. : SELECTED POEMS, which was acclaimed by Booklist as 'a beautiful one-volume course in the soul of the twentieth century,' preeminent translator Richard Zenith has now edited and translated selections from Pessoa's prose. The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa offers a second sparkling opportunity to rediscover a forgotten master, a truly unique figure of early modernism. Though known primarily as a poet, Fernando Pessoa wrote prose widely, in several languages and in every genre - the novel, short stories, letters, and essays. Drawing from the huge body of work that Pessoa left behind, THE SELECTED PROSE OF FERNANDO PESSOA is further testimony from a writer whose worst enemy was his own brilliance. These pieces span playful intellectual inquiry. Platonic dialogue, and bitter intellectual scrapping between Pessoa and his many literary alter egos Pessoa experiments with the surrealist technique of automatic writing and toys with the occult. The heteronyms launch movements and write manifestos, and one of them attempts to break up Pessoa's only known romantic relationship. There are appreciations of Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilde, and Joyce, critical essays in which one heteronym derides the work of another, and a love letter by Pessoa's only known female heteronym. Also included is a generous selection from Pessoa's masterpiece THE BOOK OF DISQUIET, freshly translated by Richard Zenith from newly discovered materials. Fernando Pessoa was one of the greatest exponents of modernism - both in his astonishingly lively body of work, and in living a life that was at least as unusual. THE SELECTED PROSE OF FERNANDO PESSOA is an important contribution to literature that brings back to life a forgotten but crucial part of the canon.

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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1803

The Last Sanctuary by Craig Holden. New York. 1996. Delacorte Press. 372 pages. Cover design by Susan Koski Zucker. 0385312091. March 1976. hardcover.

0385312091 DESCRIPTION - At once a heart-pounding, chillingly realistic thriller and a dark plunge into the human psyche, THE LAST SANCTUARY is the tale of an innocent man accused of murder. When a killing is falsely blamed on Joe Curtis, a Gulf War veteran living on the edge of society, he hides in a dark underworld of armed militias and terrorist cults, running from the cops, federal agents, and from his own tortured soul. In a cat-and-mouse chase across soaring mountains and vast glaciers of Alaska, the complex relationship between the fugitive and his nemesis, a female Native American ATF agent, is rendered unpredictably and superbly.

Holden Craig Craig Holden is a professional writer, novelist, teacher, editor and fundraiser. He is currently the Associate Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations for the New Mexico State University Foundation. In 2015, he collaborated with Buddy Ritter on an award-winning non-fiction work about the history of Mesilla, New Mexico, called Mesilla Comes Alive. His sixth novel, Matala, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2008. He received his MFA in Fiction from the University of Montana in 1986, and then worked for two literary agencies in New York City, eventually becoming a film rights agent himself. His first novel, The River Sorrow, sold in 1993 to Delacorte Press, and was subsequently translated into a dozen languages. His third novel, Four Corners of Night, received the Great Lakes Book Award for fiction in 1999, and hit the USA Today bestseller list. His other novels include The Last Sanctuary (Delacorte, 1996), The Jazz Bird (Simon & Schuster, 2002) and The Narcissist's Daughter (Simon & Schuster, 2005). In 2004, he was a featured guest at the Festival International du Roman Noir in Frontignan, France. He has taught at the University of Toledo, the University of Michigan, and New Mexico State University. In addition to his work at the NMSU Foundation, he is the Executive Producer of a short film called Yochi (written and directed by Ilana Lapid) and is nearing completion of his 7th novel. He is the father of four children, two of whom still live with him and a pair of really old dogs.

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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1964

Four Corners of Night by Craig Holden. New York. 1999. Delacorte Press. 369 pages. Cover: Craig Holden/Phil Rose. 0385316259. hardcover.

0385316259 DESCRIPTION - A twelve-year-old girl is snatched from the street where she lives. And for two cops, Mack Steiner and Bank Arbaugh--partners, best friends, fathers themselves--the girl's disappearance will hurtle them back through layers of friendship, memory, and loss. Because seven years before, Bank's own daughter vanished without a trace. And now, as police descend on the small midwestern city, as witnesses are grilled and evidence mounts, one case begins to illuminate the other. And for two men, a harrowing journey has begun--one that will test their long, complicated friendship and uncover a chilling truth about two missing girls, two shattered families, and at least one heartbreaking lie.

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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1902

The River Sorrow by Craig Holden. New York. 1994. Delacorte Press. 387 pages. Cover photograph by S. Sakakibara. 0385312075. hardcover.

0385312075 DESCRIPTION - In one of the most unique and powerfully realized debut novels of the decade, Craig Holden creates a page-turning drama that is both emotionally shattering and harrowingly plausible. When a fatally burned victim is brought into the Morgantown General Hospital emergency room, a young doctor's life is changed irrevocably. For Dr. Adrian Lancaster, the arrival of 'John Doe' is only the first of a bizarre and bloody series of events that will force him to relive his violent past and put him on the run. On the road and underground, accused and accuser, Lancaster's only hope for survival lies in facing the terrifying truth.

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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1974

Moog-Moog, Space Barber by Mark Teague. New York. 1990. Scholastic. Illustrated by Mark Teague. unpaginated. Cover art by Mark Teague. 0590433326. November 1990. hardcover.

0590433326 DESCRIPTION - Elmo Freem has just gotten the worst haircut of his life. Not even a baseball cap can hide the mess on his head,and, worst of all, school starts tomorrow! Help arrives in the form of two space monsters, who suggest a visit to Moog-Moog, an amazing intergalactic barber. Elmo and his cat, Leon, travel through the galaxy for their appointment with the Great Moog-Moog, whose own changes color with every move he makes. But will Moog-Moog's scissors, clippers, X-ray blowgun, and outer space magic be enough to fix Elmo's hair disaster in time? Read this wacky romp to find out!

Teague Mark

Mark Teague is an American author and illustrator of children's books. Teague has illustrated over 40 books including the Poppleton series, the First Graders from Mars series, The Great Gracie Chase, and other favorites.

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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1741

Docherty by William McIlvanney. London. 1975. George Allen & Unwin. 324 pages. hardcover. 0048231185. Jacket design by Craig Dodd.

0048231185 DESCRIPTION - Tam Docherty was only five foot four - but wherever he stood he established a territory. The people who lived in High Street, Graithnock came there because of poverty, yet Tam moved as if he were there by choice. And his name was not a pleasant sound to more than one pit- manager in the south-west of Scotland. The Dochertys’ living-room had two set-in beds; Tam and Jenny slept in one, and in the other Conn, the youngest of the four children, born as Docherty opens in the early years of this century. Such were the bounds of his boyhood with its unchanging rhythm - his father coming back from the pit and his swooping affection, his mother, roughing his hair as she put him to bed, Angus bullying, Mick laughing, Kathleen bustling. Time was High Street. But High Street outside was also a sort of second mother, whose moods Conn learned like a favourite story: the Saturday morning muster of children; the time before tea when ‘the heavy squad’ came down from the forge and their boots sparked on the cobblestones; the men gathering each night at the street corner which became variously a pitch-and-toss school, a subdued male-voice choir and a parliament without powers. For where so little was owned, the great security they had was each other and their fight for responsibility for their own lives. William McIlvanney’s novel, celebrates that sense of community - strong, warm, and deeply tolerant - of people who strive to live with dignity where dignity has been denied them. At its centre stands Tam Docherty, a man too formidable to be patronised, a man we can watch hewing, almost day by day, a life of value out of his society’s massive indifference until, at the book’s close, that life stands out like a monument. William McIlvanney’s writing has passion and humour, tenderness and savagery, and a rare, deeply felt eloquence. His characters speak with the breath of life and in a Lallans of unexampled flavour, beautifully characterised by young Conn at school rebelling against the insipidity of English. For these qualities, and also because the kind of people in DOCHERTY are seldom written about except with patronising pity or condescending humour. William McIlvanney’s novel is an original and memorable achievement which brings him to the forefront of contemporary writers.

McIlvanney William

William McIlvanney is widely credited as the founder of the Tartan Noir movement that includes authors such as Denise Mina, Ian Banks, and Val McDermid, all of whom cite him as an influence and inspiration. McIlvanney’s Laidlaw trilogy “changed the face of Scottish fiction” (The Times of London), his Docherty won the Whitbread Award for Fiction, and his Laidlaw and The Papers of Tony Veitch both gained Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association. Strange Loyalties won the Glasgow Herald’s People’s Prize. William passed away in December 2015.

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Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1841

Remedy is None by William McIlvanney. London. 1966. Eyre & Spottiswoode. 244 pages. hardcover.

remedy is none eyre and spottiswoode 1966 DESCRIPTION - ‘Father dying. Come home at once.’ Charlie Grant had only gone to University because his father had scrimped and saved, through years of shifting employment and with the Scottish belief in the value of education. Now he was left with the old man’s blessing - ‘You’ll be a’ right Charlie. Wi’ a University education. You’ll no’ be like me. The guid jobs. The big money.’ Was this all, then, that remained to his father? A few shibboleths and magical words which he had had to learn to bolster his failure. When Charlie thought of the man his father had been the injustice of it ‘cleft his mind like lightning’. He could think of nothing except setting the injustice right. William McIlvanney shows already, in this his first novel, that he has wit, a strong narrative gift and the ability to give his characters and story a meaning beyond their local Scottish setting. The death of Charlie’s father, which lies at the core of the book, is brilliantly portrayed, and the resolution of a tragic situation movingly described. For only too late does Charlie begin to realise that, blinded by his father’s suffering, he has been guilty of the very injustice he has blamed on others and on the world they all live in. REMEDY IS NONE is a powerful novel, showing both promise and achievement.

McIlvanney William

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