Title: Dark Star_ A Novel
Author: Alan Furst
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Thriller
Description:From Publishers WeeklyFurst ( Night Soldiers ) will make his mark with this intelligent, provocative and gripping novel. In 1933, Andre Szara, a highly regarded Polish-born foreign correspondent for Pravda , is asked to perform small espionage tasks by the NKVD. These assignments escalate, until Szara finds himself responsible for obtaining vital production figures from a German-Jewish industrialist who fabricates steel wire essential to airplanes. Inevitably, Szaras integrity as a journalist is also compromised. During this period of Stalinist purges, clearly and chillingly described by Furst, only unpredictability is certain. Szara senses the precariousness of his position, which is compounded by an urgent appeal from a wealthy Jewish Frenchman for Szara to honor his own Jewish heritage by trading his steel wire information to the British in exchange for desperately needed immigration certificates to mandated Palestine. Furst depicts the historical, geographic and political context in lucid and highly readable prose his observation that Russia annexed Lithuania and Estonia while the worlds attention was focused on Frances struggle with Germany has an eerie timeliness. As darkness descends over Europe, Szara clings to life while simultaneously attempting to make some meaning of it. His story is not a pretty one but it is beautifully and compellingly told. br 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalThis is an intriguing combination of spy story and historical novel. It is about a Pravda journalist forced to become a Soviet intelligence agent in the years immediately before World War II. It is also about a Europe being driven into war, not simply by supposedly irresistible social forces but by the genuinely evil men who manipulate and direct events. Seen in this way, Stalin is as responsible for the coming of war as Hitler, and Stalins Russian purges signal the future deaths of millions in Central Europe. Agents in this novel are not just spies but metaphors for the actors, large and small, on the stage of history. Entertaining, exciting, and thought-provoking reading.br - Charles Mi chaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.br 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Title: Chamber Music
Author: James Joyce
File Type: Mobi
Subject:classics
Poetry
Description:
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish expatriate writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its highly controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin, providing the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. In particular, his tempestuous early relationship with the Irish Roman Catholic Church is reflected through a similar inner conflict in his recurrent alter ego Stephen Dedalus. As the result of his minute attentiveness to a personal locale and his self-imposed exile and influence throughout Europe, Joyce became simultaneously one of the most cosmopolitan and one of the most local of all the great English language writers.
Title: The Cruel Stars of the Night
Author: Kjell Eriksson
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Mystery
Description:From Publishers WeeklyIn Swedish author Eriksson's fine second ensemble procedural (after 2006's The Princess of Burundi), members of the Uppsala Violent Crime Division try to connect the dots linking the separate murders of two old men and the disappearance of a third. Eriksson eschews crackling dialogue and facile descriptions in favor of longer, slower developing profiles of the principal men and women of the police unit: Ann Lindell, Ola Haver, Sammy Nilsson, Allan Fredricksson and others. Their investigation proceeds in parallel with the story of Laura Hindersten, daughter of the missing man. Eriksson balances these stories nicely as the detectives reach for clues. Lindell, the single mother of a young boy, emerges as the most compelling investigator, but the others are also distinct individuals. The author's squad of detectives displays the kind of interdependency and fractious loyalty that endeared Ed McBain's 87th Precinct squad (_Cop Hater_, etc.) to fans for so many decades. (May) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. FromThis second procedural to appear in the U.S. from yet another Swedish crime fiction star follows in the substantial footsteps of the critically acclaimed Princess of Burundi (2006). This time Eriksson departs a bit from the Ed McBain-like ensemble focus used in the previous book; here the point of view stays mostly with police inspector Ann Lindell as she and her colleagues investigate the murders of three seemingly unrelated men in Uppsala. The connection, unclear to the police, is immediately apparent to the reader, as Eriksson alternates point of view between Lindell and a troubled woman, Laura, whose father has recently disappeared. Dramatic irony builds as we wait for Lindell to connect the dots. Once again Eriksson displays considerable finesse in portraying the inner lives of his cast and in showing how the various inspectors attempt to cope with the strains of the job. This time, though, the alternating focus on the civilian characters is less successful, with the detailed dissection of Laura's tangled psyche proving more distracting than compelling. Still, Eriksson is a major talent, and his feel for ensemble narrative will have McBain devotees enthralled. Bill Ott American Library Association. lt;
Title: The Petrified Ants
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction
Description:
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post-World War II America-a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Vonnegut explores the relationship between science's pursuit of truth and the state’s need to control it in The Petrified Ants, a darkly whimsical story about two Soviet researchers who stumble upon an amazing discovery, only to learn that natural history is also written by the hand that wields the power. The Petrified Ants and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut's unique voice had been stilled forever-and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius. Other stories from Look at the Birdie available as single-story e-books: On sale August 25, 2009Hello, Red On sale October 20, 2009: ConfidoFUBARShout About It from the HousetopsEd Luby's Key ClubA Song for SelmaHall of MirrorsThe Nice Little PeopleLittle Drops of WaterThe Honor of a NewsboyLook at the Birdie (Short Story)King and Queen of the UniverseThe Good Explainer
Title: Magician
Author: Raymond E. Feist
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Science-Fiction
Description:
He held the fate of two worlds in his hands... Once he was an orphan called Pug, apprenticed to a sorcerer of the enchanted land of Midkemia...
Then he was captured and enslaved by the Tsurani, a strange, warlike race of invaders from another world.There, in the exotic Empire of Kelewan, he earned a new name--Milamber. He learned to tame the unnimagined powers that lay withing him. And he took his place in an ancient struggle against an evil Enemy older than time itself.From the Paperback edition.
Title: Quicksilver
Author: Amanda Quick
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fantasy:Detective
Description:In the latest sizzling Victorian novel from the compelling world of the mysterious Arcane Society, a paranormal killer pushes an unlikely duos powers and passions to the limit.Virginia Dean wakes at midnight beside a dead body, with a bloody knife in her hand and no memory of the evenings events. Dark energy, emanating from the mirrors lining the room, overpowers her senses. With no apparent way in or out, shes rescued by a man shes met only once before, but wont soon forget.Owen Sweetwater inherited his familys talent for hunting the psychical monsters that prey on Londons women and children, and his investigation into the deaths of two glass-readers has led him here. The high-society types of the exclusive Arcane Society would consider her an illusionist, a charlatan, even a criminal, but Owen knows better. Virginias powers are real - and they just might be the key to his investigation.