Aliens of uncertain density visits earth

A young astronaut has returned from an expedition tasked with collecting resources from Mars. He suffers through visits with the grieving families in order to deliver the letters of his dead comrades; always, he lies to the families about the manner of their loved ones’ deaths. Although he wishes to tell the families the grim truth — that Mars is often unheroic, senseless, gruesome, and that their loved ones died in exactly that manner — he realizes that it would be futile. The people need heroes, something to believe in. They also need the resources of Mars to provide the power for the luxuries to which they’ve become accustomed. His own homecoming in Ohio is a farce. He stands before the hopeful crowd, essentially the entire town, studying their eager faces. Although he wants to chastise them for sacrificing good men for their comfort, he gives them what they want. He knows that he will always feel alienated from society, always feel old.

The anthropologist's dream... Monte Stewart was an extremely intelligent, somewhat contentious anthropologist with a sense of humor and a nonconformist approach to life. As an expert in his field, he was chosen to approach the first apparently human-like form of life ever to be encountered on another planet. Here was the chance he had been waiting for all his life --- an opportunity to make contact, to investigate, to ascertain the facts about an altogether new man-like species, with the added knowledge that the peace of the worlds depended upon the establishment of friendly relations. But Stewart and his team of experts couldn't get to first base. They tried for weeks --- then vicious unreasoned tragedy struck their camp. What had gone wrong? Who were these 'people'? Why had they attacked the humans? Stewart had failed in his mission; but for his own peace of mind he had to discover the answers, and he had to do it alone.

Mary Rose was proud to be named after her aunt, because her aunt had been a heroine, saving the lives of everyone in the apartment building—before dying in the fire. But not everyone thought the first Mary Rose was a heroine. Young Mary Rose overheard her uncle’s remembrance of the events of that dramatic day—and they weren’t at all what she expected. Juvenile fiction by Marilyn Sachs; originally published by Doubleday

Clement’s Mission of Gravity was the engaging tale of the adventures of Barlennan, a sea captain among his caterpillar-like people, on the high-gravity world of Mesklin. In Star Light Barlennan and his sailors go with humans to the even stranger world of Dhrawn, a “crusted star” of the type mentioned by Harlow Shapley. Dhrawn circles the feeble red star Lalande 21185, which actually exists (although the planet is fictionalized). Most of the book is the story of a huge landship crossing Dhrawn’s solid surface crewed by these nonhuman sailors, amidst bizarre dangers, and trying to keep Barlennan’s strange plan secret from humans. The characters, despite being mostly from Barlennan’s world, Mesklin, are well drawn and the setting is well realized. Readers bewildered by the melting and freezing of Dhrawn’s ammonia-water hydrosphere will do well to consult a phase diagram. Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1971.

She is certainly shocking. It is September 1815, three months after Waterloo, and Hyde Park is the parade of Fashion, everyone who matters and hundreds who do not, all of them restless after the years of war. Some have been away too long, and Anice Anstey is something they have dreamed about. She bursts upon them suddenly, driving her sleek fast curricle, primrose and lavender, with a spanking pair of greys, and they give her a boisterous welcome. She openly calls herself a Cyprian, but no one is deterred by that!

The dramatic and explosive hardboiled classic: From murderers to prostitutes, corrupt politicians and racist white detectives, Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, Harlem’s toughest detective duo, must carry the day against an absurdist world of racism and class warfare.

Martin Armstrong came at last into his own upon publication of St. Christopher's Day. Previously known to a small inner circle only, he now found himself week after week in the list of best sellers published by such papers as The Observer, The Spectator, and John O' London's Weekly; and with a novel, moreover, which the majority of critics regarded as artistically an advance on any of his previous work. Those who have sympathetically watched this growth both in popularity and in artistic achievement will not, we think, be disappointed by The Sleeping Fury.

A Beautiful, Rapacious Mistress, A Savagely Strong Master--And A Plantation Seething With Fearful Hatred And Forbidden Lust The lush sugar plantation of Green Grove was the envy of every planter on the island of Antigua--just as its breathtakingly lovely mistress, Marguerite Warner, was the object of every hot-blooded man's tropic-fired hunger. But Marguerite had her own idea of the man she wanted. A man with enough iron strength to satisfy her carnal appetites and fulfill her ravenous dreams of power. Kit Hilton was the man she chose and wed and tried to shape to her will with every enticement of the flesh and seduction of the spirit. But no woman could hold his fiercely proud, freebooting adventurer -- and between them a struggle began that would explode in an orgy of violence and lust beyond all laws of God and man....

Loren Knight has been engaging in a secret love affair with her brother Duron's best friend and business partner, Michael Bailey. He is everything she could want and more in a man, but she believes the risk is too great for any type of relationship with him beyond the bedroom door. Michael Bailey has been fighting his attraction to Loren for years. He has stayed away from her out of respect for his best friend and business partner. Now that he and Loren have finally given into passion that they both have been craving, can Michael convince Loren that what they share is well worth the risk? **

A collection of irish folklore tales retold by Seumas MacManus.

One of Australia’s most celebrated novels: one woman’s journey from Australia to London Nora Porteous, a witty, ambitious woman from Brisbane, returns to her childhood home at age seventy. Her life has taken her from a failed marriage in Sydney to freedom in London; she forged a modest career as a seamstress and lived with two dear friends through the happiest years of her adult life. At home, the neighborhood children she remembers have grown into compassionate adults. They help to nurse her back from pneumonia, and slowly let her in on the dark secrets of the neighborhood in the years that have lapsed. With grace and humor, Nora recounts her desire to escape, the way her marriage went wrong, the vanity that drove her to get a facelift, and one romantic sea voyage that has kept her afloat during her dark years. Her memory is imperfect, but the strength and resilience she shows over the years is nothing short of extraordinary. A book about the sweetness of escape, and the mix of pain and acceptance that comes with returning home. From the Trade Paperback edition.Review“Finely honed structurally and tightly textured, it’s a wry, romantic story that should make Anderson’s American reputation and create a demand for her other work.” —***The Washington Post “There may be a better novel than Tirra Lirra by the River this year, but I doubt it.” —***Cleveland Plain Dealer “Subtle, rich, and seductive, this beautifully written novels casts a spell of delight upon the reader.” —Library JournalAbout the AuthorJESSICA ANDERSON (1916–2010) was an accomplished novelist and playwright from Queensland, Australia. She was a writer in residence at the University of New England, Armidale; a Senior Commonwealth Fellow; and two-time award winner of the Miles Franklin Award for literature (for Tirra Lirra By the River and The Impersonators). Though she did not have the means to devote herself to writing until she was forty, she wrote six novels, ten radio plays, and one short story collection before her death in 2010. ANNA FUNDER is the author of Stasiland and All That I Am. 

Novelisation of the BBC TV Series A for Andromeda