Ayn Rand--The Early Ayn Rand_ A Selection From Her
Title: The Early Ayn Rand_ A Selection From Her Author: Ayn Rand File Type: Mobi Subject:Philosophy Description:Test Data In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand's birth, this newly revised collection of her early fiction ranges from works written from 1926 through 1940, and includes her previously unpublished short story, The Night King. Original.
Title: The Unexpected Guest
Author: Agatha Christie
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Mystery
Description:
Along a mist-shrouded country road in South Wales on a chilly November evening, engineer Michael Starkwedders car stands hopelessly stuck in a muddy ditch.Ambling up to the nearest house for help, Starkwedder gets no reply when he knocks on the French doors of the elegant, darkened home.With a push, the doors open, and inside he is witness to a startling scene a man, slumped over dead in a wheel-chair, and his lovely young wife standing nearby, with smoking-gun in hand.Laura Warwick immediately confesses to the crime.But Starkwedder, a man intrigued by what lay beneath the surface, begins to uncover family ties and chilling motives as twisted as the back roads of rural Wales-and soon discovers that in this seemingly open-and-shut case, nothing is what it appears to be...AUTHORBIO AGATHA CHRISTIE is the author of eighty crime novels and collections of stories, nineteen plays, six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott, two volumes of poetry, a volume of Christmas verse and stories, an autobiography, and Come, Tell Me How You Live.She is the creator of two of the most enduring figures of crime literature-Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple-as well as the author of The Mousetrap, the longest running play in the history of modern theater.Christie was awarded the CBE in 1956 and made a Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, in 1971.She was president of the Detection Club (1954) and was the first writer to be awarded the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award (1955). Agatha Christie died on January 12, 1976.CHARLES OSBORNE is a world authority on theatre and opera and has written a number of books on musical and literary subjects.He is the author of The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie as well as a novelization of Agatha Christies play, the bestselling Black Coffee.Born in Australia in 1927, he has lived in London for many years.
Title: Cheever_ A Life
Author: Blake Bailey
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Autobiography
Description:Amazon.com ReviewCheever: A Life, the author of Cheever is rich with detail and chronicles the mournful arc of a lifetime struggling with a core duplicity that ached throughout his writing life--despite a 41-year marriage, Cheever was a closeted bisexual who simmered with self-loathing. Bailey covers the author's childhood, his time in the army, his life as a writer and his literary rivals (Salinger, in particular, seemed to irritate him), his alcoholism (he would struggle against taking that first scoop of gin from the pantry every morning while he was writing), and his struggle to play the role of suburban family man. The book is peppered with literary cameos: Updike, Bellow, and Roth are there, along with his Iowa Writers' Workshop students T.C. Boyle, Ron Hansen, and Allan Gurganus. (While at Iowa Cheever made it a weekly ritual to watch Monday Night Football and eat homemade pasta with fellow instructor John Irving.) Bailey also edited two Library of America editions of Cheever's --Brad Thomas ParsonsFrom Publishers WeeklyRebellious Yankee son of a father who fell victim to the Depression and a doo-gooder-turned-businesswoman mother, father to three competitive children he rode mercilessly but adored, chronicler par excellence of the 1950s American suburban scene while deploring all forms of conformity: John Cheever (1912–1982) was a mass of contradictions. In this overlong but always entertaining biography, composed with a novelist's eye, Bailey, biographer of Richard Yates and editor of two volumes of Cheever's work for Library of America (also due in March), was given access to unpublished portions of Cheever's famous journals and to family members and friends. Bailey's book is fine in descriptions of Cheever's reactions to other writers, such as his adored Bellow and detested Salinger. Bailey is also sensitive in describing the prickly dynamic of Cheever's domestic life, lived through a haze of alcoholism and under the shadow of extramarital heterosexual and homosexual relationships. This Ovid in Ossining, who published 121 stories in the New Yorker as well as several bestselling novels, has probably yet to find a definitive position in American letters among academicians. This thoroughly researched and heartfelt biography may help redress that situation. 24 pages of photos. (Mar. 12) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Title: Tulipomania_ The Story of the World's Mo
Author: Mike Dash
File Type: Mobi
Subject:History
Description:Amazon.com Review
For history buffs or gardeners who enjoy more than just digging in the dirt, Tulipomania presents a fascinating look at the tulip frenzy that took place in Holland in the mid-1600s. Beginning as gifts given among the wealthy and educated folk of Europe and Asia, the tulip rapidly became a source of incredible financial gain--similar to todays Internet start-up companies or Beanie Baby collections. Stories of craftsmen discontinuing their trade and focusing on raising tulips for public auction, where they sold for prices comparable to that of a manor house, are astonishing. Poets, moralists, businessmen--it seems everyone was involved at some level.
Lack of regulation and poor quality control were just a couple of the details that led to the abrupt crash in February 1637. Tulipomania was the original market bust--people were ruined, debts went unpaid. It was a disaster similar to the stock-market crash of 1929. A brief resurrection of the mania occurred 65 years later in Istanbul, and while it was not the financial obsession Holland experienced, it led to the creation of standards in flower shape and increased the development of new types. You dont need to be obsessed to enjoy this book--an interest in tulips, history, and the futures market ensures that this will be a remarkable read. --Jill Lightner
From Publishers Weekly
The centerpiece of this story is a stunning two months, December 1636 and January 1637, when fortunes were made and lost in the Netherlands--in tulip bulb futures trading. Stripped to its basics, this would be a dry case study in an economics textbook. But Dash adds depth to the tale by including relevant bits of botany, sociology and history, as well as glimpses of the personalities involved in the creation of the tulip market, such as the orphans who made a fortune selling their late fathers tulip bulbs and the man who owned a dozen extremely rare bulbs and wouldnt part with them at any price. Occasionally, he provides too much detail--his descriptions of how many guilders changed hands in particular transactions become repetitive, as do his physical descriptions of specific tulip varieties. Dash is fascinated by the contrast between the aesthetic sense of the Ottoman sultans (reflected in their love of tulip-laden gardens) and the ferocity of their rule (evidenced by fratricide, garroting and torture), but his musings on this interesting paradox are too unfocused to be enlightening. Overall, however, Dash (The Limit; Borderlands) effectively brings together a diverse mix of disciplines to illuminate the cultural, financial and psychological elements of an economic bubble--a subject that should be of great interest today. Readers interested in the technical aspects of economic speculation and those attuned to human folly will find this a worthwhile read. (Mar.) br
2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Title: A Pale Horse
Author: Charles Todd
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Mystery:Historical
Description:From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. The exemplary 10th Inspector Ian Rutledge historical whodunit (after A False Mirror) offers tight plotting and rich characterization amid understated but convincing evocations of post–WWI England. Haunted by memories of battle, unable to find a safe haven after his discharge from a psychiatric hospital and the abrupt departure of his fiancée, shell-shocked veteran Rutledge has returned to his prewar life as a Scotland Yard inspector. This time out, the War Office wants him to locate a mysterious person of interest, connected with (and perhaps the same as) an unidentified corpse found at a Yorkshire abbey. Rutledge toils diligently to uncover personal secrets and shames that may have motivated someone to kill, and their connection to a long-ago romance between the suspected killer's wife and the local inspector investigating the case. The mother and son writing as Charles Todd show no evidence of running out of ideas for murder mysteries that illuminate new aspects of their compelling protagonist and the horrors of the Great War. (Dec.) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. The Great War never relinquished its hold on Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, leaving him haunted and isolated, unable to forget. In the spring of 1920, he's dispatched to Berkshire to find a missing man whose war work is so secret even Rutledge cannot know its true nature. Meanwhile, miles away, an unidentified body has been discovered in the ruins of a Yorkshire abbey, clothed in a monk's robe and wearing a gas mask. In the shadow of a great white horse cut into the chalk hillside—where cottages once built to house the sick and untouchable now shelter outcasts like himself—Rutledge must extract a terrible truth from those who hide from the past. For death is never quite finished with anyone, least of all the men who fought in the bloody trenches of France.
Title: The Tyranny of the Night
Author: Glen Cook
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fantasy
Description:
Welcome to the world of the Instrumentalities of the Night, where imps, demons, and dark gods rule in the spaces surrounding upstart humanity. At the edges of the world stand walls of ice which push slowly forward to reclaim the land for the night. And at the world’s center, in the Holy Land where two great religions were born, are the Wells of Ihrain, the source of the greatest magics. Over the last century the Patriarchs of the West have demanded crusades to claim the Wells from the Pramans, the followers of the Written. Now an uneasy truce extends between the Pramans and the West, waiting for a spark to start the conflict anew.
Then, on a mission in the Holy Land, the young Praman warrior Else is attacked by a creature of the Dark—in effect, a minor god. Too ignorant to know that he can never prevail over such a thing, he fights it and wins, and in so doing, sets the terrors of the night against him.
As a reward for his success, Else is sent as a spy to the heart of the Patriarchy to direct their attention away from further ventures into the Holy Lands. Dogged by hidden enemies and faithless allies, Else witnesses senseless butchery and surprising acts of faith as he penetrates to the very heart of the Patriarchy and rides alongside their armies in a new crusade against his own people. But the Night rides with him, too, sending two of its once-human agents from the far north to assassinate him.
Submerged in his role, he begins to doubt his faith, his country, even his family. As his mission careens out of control, he faces unanswerable questions about his future. It is said that God will know his own, but can one who has slain gods ever know forgiveness?
Title: Ghosted
Author: Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction
Description:From Publishers WeeklyLike Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown, an account of the authors undercover year in Torontos Tent City, Bishop-Stalls debut novel breaks hearts. Emotionally damaged by childhood and adolescent traumas, druggie drifter and alcoholic gambler Mason Dubisee pushes the Dogfather hot dog cart in downtown Toronto during the day and sporadically tackles his stalled novel at night. Between his agonizingly described hangovers, Mason also writes suicide notes for various disturbed personalities. He falls in desperate love with Willy, a hemiplegic with a heart of gold and a heroin habit of her own, and runs afoul of a psychopathic prisoner on parole, who steals Masons file from Masons sometime shrink, who has serious problems of her own. Bishop-Stalls gritty, experimental style and grungy subject matter may turn off some readers, but his occasionally inchoate if conventional message about the toughness and grace of people who have saved one another will resonate with many. br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From BooklistMason Dubisee, who has just turned 30, is struggling to churn out a novel as he battles his gambling and cocaine addictions. After his childhood friend and drug dealer, Chaz, finds him an apartment and a job selling hot dogs in Toronto, one of Mason’s lunchtime customers commissions him to write a love letter that later turns out to be a suicide note. This prompts Mason to seek out work as a suicide-note writer. He feels guilty about this occupation, spending long nights at Chaz’s illegal bar, The Cave, where he meets and slowly falls in love with Willy, a beautiful young hemiplegic woman addicted to heroin. As their romance develops, Mason becomes increasingly aware that crafting a suicide note for his latest customer, a recent ex-con, will be more dangerous than he bargained for. This somewhat sophomoric novel becomes increasingly more suspenseful as Mason struggles to save the lives of those closest to him and as he seeks out redemption for his former sins. An adventurous, wild page-turner of a debut from Canadian author Bishop-Stall. --Julie Hunt
Title: Ringworld's Children
Author: Larry Niven
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Science-Fiction
Description:
Welcome to a world like no other.
The Ringworld: a landmark engineering achievement, a flat band 3 million times the surface area of Earth, encircling a distant star. Home to trillions of inhabitants, not all of which are human, and host to amazing technological wonders, the Ringworld is unique in all of the universe.
Explorere Louis Wu, an Earth-born human who was part of the first expedition to Ringworld, becomes enmeshed in interplanetary and interspecies intrigue as war, and a powerful new weapon, threaten to tear the Ringworld apart forever. Now, the future of Ringworld lies in the actions of its children: Tunesmith, the Ghould protector; Acolyte, the exiled son of Speaker-to-Animals, and Wembleth, a strange Ringworld native with a mysterious past. All must play a dangerous in order to save Ringworld's population, and the stability of Ringworld itself.
Blending awe-inspiring science with non-stop action and fun, Ringworld's Children, the fourth installment of the multiple award-winning saga, is the perfect introduction for readers new to this New York Times bestselling series, and long-time fans of Larry Niven's Ringworld.
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