Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-256)

The Amphibian will throw you back to a time when skin and deep-sea diving had not yet made the Silent World begin yielding up its secrets on a really big scale, as aqualung and snorkel are doing today, and present to you Alexander Belyaev’s 1928 prevision of the ocean mastered by mankind. Sea-devil has appeared in the Rio de la Plata. Weird cries out at sea, slashed fishermen’s nets, glimpses of a most queer creature astride a dolphin leave no room for doubt. The Spaniard Zurita, greed overcoming his superstition, tries to catch Sea-devil and force it to pearl-dive for him but fails. On a lonely stretch of shore, not far from Buenos Aires, Dr. Salvator lives in seclusion behind a high wall, whose steel-plated gates only open to let in his Indian patients. The Indians revere him as a god but Zurita has a hunch that the god on land and the devil in the sea have something in common. Enlisting the help of two wily Araucanian brothers he sets out to probe the mystery. As action shifts from the bottom of the sea to the Spaniard’s schooner The Jellyfish and back again, with interludes in sun-drenched Buenos Aires and the countryside, the mystery of Ichthyander the sea-devil is unfolded before the reader in a narrative as gripping as it is informative. Alexander Belyaev, the first-and very nearly the best-Soviet science-fiction writer, was born in 1884 in Smolensk. When a little boy Alexander was full of ideas. One of them was to fly. And he did fly — from a rooftop — until one day he fractured his spine. This was put right, but at the age of 32 he developed bone tuberculosis and was bed-ridden for nearly six years and later for shorter stretches. After school he studied law and music. To pay for his tuition he played in an orchestra, designed stage settings and did free lance journalism, which he continued after graduation. In 1925 he gave up law and devoted himself wholly to writing.

Ellen was eight years old and wore bands on her teeth. Her best friend had just moved away and she missed her. Still, as she walked to the Spofford School of the Dance one Saturday, she was almost glad she had no best friend. Best friends do not have secrets from each other, and Ellen had a secret she did not want to share with anyone. But by the time the dancing lesson was over (surely the most devastating dancing lesson on record), Ellen had found a best friend and shared her secret. The best friend was Austine, and the secret was that Ellen was wearing woolen underwear. So was Austine!This whole book is a cause for rejoicing, for Mrs. Cleary has done it again. Ellen Tebbits is as funny as Henry Huggins. Perhaps it is even funnier. The children who read it will decide for themselves. Louis Darling, who has provided the wonderful illustrations, has already made his decision. He calls it a draw.

WOLF IV-THE PLANET FROM WHICH NO SHIP EVER RETURNED! Lars Heldrigsson was fresh out of the Colonial Service Academy and his first assignment was a milk-run to Vega aboard the Ganymede. Not a very exciting trip, except that the ship’s commander, Walter Fox, had explored and opened up more new colony-worlds than any other man alive! But the Ganymede had hardly blasted off before Lars discovered that not all the crew shared his admiration of their chief. Rumors circulated to the effect that Fox still believed there were other intelligent beings in the galaxy; that they weren’t going to Vega at all, but to Wolf IV, the one planet from which no man had ever returned alive . . . Then the ship made landfall and Lars’ first look out the viewport told him the rumors had been right! But it was the commander’s announcement that clinched it. “We’ve landed on Wolf IV,” Fox said grimly, “and we’re going to hunt aliens! You men work with me — or you’ll never see Earth again!”

Bibliography: p. 114-115

From her Academy Award—nominated screenplays to her bestselling fiction and essays, Nora Ephron is one of America’s most gifted, prolific, and versatile writers. In this classic collection of magazine articles, Ephron does what she does best: embrace American culture with love, cynicism, and unmatched wit. From tracking down the beginnings of the self-help movement to dressing down the fashion world’s most powerful publication to capturing a glimpse of a legendary movie in the making, these timeless pieces tap into our enduring obsessions with celebrity, food, romance, clothes, entertainment, and sex. Whether casting her ingenious eye on renowned director Mike Nichols, Cosmopolitan magazine founder Helen Gurley Brown—or herself, as she chronicles her own beauty makeover—Ephron deftly weaves her journalistic skill with the intimate style of an essayist and the incomparable talent of a great storyteller.About the AuthorNora Ephron is also the author of I Feel Bad About My Neck, Crazy Salad, Scribble Scribble, and Heartburn. She received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally…, Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. Her other credits include the films Michael, You've Got Mail, and the play Imaginary Friends. She lives in New York City with her husband, writer Nicholas Pileggi. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.The FoodEstablishment:Life in the Land of the Rising Souffle(Or Is It the Rising Meringue?)One day, I awoke having had my first in a long series of food anxiety dreams (the way it goes is this: there are eight people coming to dinner in twenty minutes, and I am in an utter panic because I have forgotten to buy the food, plan the menu, set the table, clean the house, and the supermarket is closed). I knew that I had become a victim of the dreaded food obsession syndrome and would have to do something about it. This article is what I did.Incidentally, I anticipated that my interviews on this would be sublime gourmet experiences, with each of my subjects forcing little goodies down my throat. But no. All I got from over twenty interviews were two raw potatoes that were guaranteed by their owner (who kept them in a special burlap bag on her terrace) to be the only potatoes worth eating in all the world. Perhaps they were. I don't know, though; they tasted exactly like the other potatoes I've had in my life.September 1968You might have thought they'd have been polite enough not to mention it at all. Or that they'd wait at least until they got through the reception line before starting to discuss it. Or that they'd hold off at least until after they had tasted the food--four tables of it, spread about the four corners of the Four Seasons--and gotten drinks in hand. But people in the Food Establishment are not noted for their manners or their patience, particularly when there is fresh gossip. And none of them had come to the party because of the food.They had come, most of them, because they were associated with the Time-Life Cookbooks, a massive, high-budget venture that has managed to involve nearly everyone who is anyone in the food world. Julia Child was a consultant on the first book. And James Beard had signed on to another. And Paula Peck, who bakes. And Nika Hazelton, who reviews cookbooks for the New York Times Book Review. And M.F.K. Fisher, usually of The New Yorker. And Waverley Root of Paris, France. And Pierre Franey, the former chef of Le Pavillon who is now head chef at Howard Johnson's. And in charge of it all, Michael Field, the birdlike, bespectacled, frenzied gourmet cook and cookbook writer, who stood in the reception line where everyone was beginning to discuss it. Michael was a wreck. A wreck, a wreck, a wreck, as he himself might have put it. Just that morning, the very morning of the party, Craig Claiborne of the New York Times, who had told the Time-Life people he would not be a consultant for their cookbooks even if they paid him a hundred thousand dollars, had ripped the first Time-Life cookbook to shreds and tatters. Merde alors, as Craig himself might have put it, how that man did rip that book to shreds and tatters. He said that the recipes, which were supposed to represent the best of French provincial cooking, were not even provincial. He said that everyone connected with the venture ought to be ashamed of himself. He was rumored to be going about town telling everyone that the picture of the souffle on the front of the cookbook was not even a souffle--it was a meringue! Merde alors! He attacked Julia Child, the hitherto unknockable. He referred to Field, who runs a cooking school and is author of two cookbooks, merely as a "former piano player." Not that Field wasn't a former piano player. But actually identifying him as one--well! "As far as Craig and I are concerned," Field was saying as the reception line went on, "the gauntlet is down." And worst of all--or at least it seemed worst of all that day--Craig had chosen the day of the party for his review. Poor Michael. How simply frightful! How humiliating! How delightful! "Why did he have to do it today?" moaned Field to Claiborne's close friend, chef Pierre Franey. "Why? Why? Why?"Why indeed?The theories ranged from Gothic to Byzantine. Those given to the historical perspective said that Craig had never had much respect for Michael, and they traced the beginnings of the rift back to 1965, when Claiborne had gone to a restaurant Field was running in East Hampton and given it one measly star. Perhaps, said some. But why include Julia in the blast? Craig had done that, came the reply, because he had never liked Michael and wanted to tell Julia to get out of Field's den of thieves. Perhaps, said still others. But mightn't he also have done it because his friend Franey had signed on as a consultant to the Time-Life Cookbook of Haute Cuisine just a few weeks before, and Craig wanted to tell him to get out of that den of thieves? Perhaps, said others. But it might be even more complicated. Perhaps Craig had done it because he was furious at Michael Field's terrible review in the New York Review of Books of Gloria Bley Miller's The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook, which Craig had praised in the Times.Now, while all this was becoming more and more arcane, there were a few who secretly believed that Craig had done the deed because the Time-Life cookbook was as awful as he thought it was. But most of those people were not in the Food Establishment. Things in the Food Establishment are rarely explained that simply. They are never what they seem. People who seem to be friends are not. People who admire each other call each other Old Lemonface and Cranky Craig behind backs. People who tell you they love Julia Child will add in the next breath that of course her husband is a Republican and her orange Bavarian cream recipe just doesn't work. People who tell you Craig Claiborne is a genius will insist he had little or nothing to do with the New York Times Cookbook, which bears his name. People will tell you that Michael Field is delightful but that some people do not take success quite as well as they might. People who claim that Dione Lucas is the most brilliant food technician of all time further claim that when she puts everything together it comes out tasting bland. People who love Paula Peck will go on to tell you--but let one of them tell you. "I love Paula," one of them is saying, "but no one, absolutely no one understands what it is between Paula and monosodium glutamate."Bitchy? Gossipy? Devious?"It's a world of self-generating hysteria," says Nika Hazelton. And those who say the food world is no more ingrown than the theater world and the music world are wrong. The food world is smaller. Much more self-involved. And people in the theater and in music are part of a culture that has been popularly accepted for centuries; people in the food world are riding the crest of a trend that began less than twenty years ago.In the beginning, just about the time the Food Establishment began to earn money and fight with each other and review each other's books and say nasty things about each other's recipes and feel rotten about each other's good fortune, just about that time, there came curry. Some think it was beef Stroganoff, but in fact, beef Stroganoff had nothing to do with it. It began with curry. Curry with fifteen little condiments and Major Grey's mango chutney. The year of the curry is an elusive one to pinpoint, but this much is clear: it was before the year of quiche Lorraine, the year of paella, the year of vitello tonnato, the year of boeuf Bourguignon, the year of blanquette de veau, and the year of beef Wellington. It was before Michael stopped playing the piano, before Julia opened L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, and before Craig had left his job as a bartender in Nyack, New York. It was the beginning, and in the beginning there was James Beard and there was curry and that was about all.Historical explanations of the rise of the Food Establishment do not usually begin with curry. They begin with the standard background on the gourmet explosion--background that includes the traveling fighting men of World War Two, the postwar travel boom, and the shortage of domestic help, all of which are said to have combined to drive the housewives of America into the kitchen.This background is well and good, but it leaves out the curry development. In the 1950s, suddenly, no one knew quite why or how, everyone began to serve curry. Dinner parties in fashionable homes featured curried lobster. Dinner parties in middle-income homes featured curried chicken. Dinner parties in frozen-food compartments featured curried rice. And with the arrival of curry, the first fashionable international food, food acquired a chic, a gloss of snobbery it had hitherto possessed only in certain upper-income groups. Hostesses were expected to know that iceberg lettuce was declasse and tunafish casseroles de trop. Lancers sparkling rose and Manischewitz were replaced on the table by Bordeaux. Overnight rumaki had a fling and became a cliche.The American hostess, content serving frozen spinach for her family, learned to make a spinach souffle for her guests. Publication of cookbooks tripled, quadrupled, quintupled; the first cookbook-of-the-month club, the Cookbook Guild, flourished. At the same time, American industry realized that certain members of the food world--like James Beard, whose name began to have a certain celebrity--could help make foods popular. The French's mustard people turned to Beard. The can-opener people turned to Poppy Cannon. Pan American Airways turned to Myra Waldo. The Potato Council turned to Helen McCully. The Northwest Pear Association and the Poultry and Egg Board and the Bourbon Institute besieged food editors for more recipes containing their products. Cookbook authors were retained, at sizable fees, to think of new ways to cook with bananas. Or scallions. Or peanut butter. "You know," one of them would say, looking up from a dinner made during the peanut-butter period, "it would never have occurred to me to put peanut butter on lamb, but actually, it's rather nice."Before long, American men and women were cooking along with Julia Child, subscribing to the Shallot-of-the-Month Club, and learning to mince garlic instead of pus...

WARRING MUTANTS! A lush, green planet beckons from Main Mission Control's star-scanning screen . . . and to the homeless Alphans, it looks like Earth. But descent reveals a wasteland of towering, silent cities, mute testimony to an atomic holocaust! Two pockets of civilization survive: the drug-controlled inhabitants of Caster, and the freedom-loving people of Hyria. Soon the Alphans find themselves caught in the treacherous quicksands of civil war, their only allies a beautiful Hyrian with golden-brown eyes and an ancient man, last custodian of the old wisdom.

It was the body of a tall stout man. On his dead face, a handsome pair of gold pince-nez mocked death with grotesque elegance. The body wore nothing else. Lord Peter Wimsey knew immediately what the corpse was supposed to be. His problem was to find out whose body had found its way into Mr Alfred Thipps' Battersea bathroom.Review'She brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.' - P. D. James 'I admire her novels ... she has great fertility of invention, ingenuity and a wonderful eye for detail.' - Ruth Rendell 'She combined literary prose with powerful suspense, and it takes a rare talent to achieve that. A truly great storyteller.' Minette Walters About the AuthorDorothy L Sayers was born in Oxford in 1893, and was both a classical scholar and a graduate in modern languages. As well as her popular Lord Peter Wimsey series, she wrote several religious plays, but considered her translations of Dante's Divina Commedia to be her best work. She died in 1957.

WHAT WAS THE USE OF WANTING?Emma Hastings was a splendid theater sister, and the devastatingly handsome Dutch surgeon Justin Teylingen was certainly aware of her talents. During his visit to her hospital, Justin had gained the greatest respect and admiration for Emma, but that wasn't quite the same as feeling love--and Emma knew it was love that she wanted from Justin. But why would he see her as anything more than an efficient colleague when far prettier girls were his for the asking...?

Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar; for millennia its protective dome shutout the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rules the stars. But then, as legend had it, the Invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, a Unique to break through Diaspar’s stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.

Tom, Carrie, Em and Michael are still living on their own at World's End and, in between wondering where the next meal will be coming from, and trying to avoid interfering grown-ups, they are never short of fun and excitement. But then Carrie plunges into another dangerous rescue operation and Charlie the dog saves her life only by putting his own at risk. Desperately the children struggle to save Charlie from a terrible fate; but it is a race against time... This is the second book about the extraordinary family who live at World's End.

Don't think new thoughts, don't improve anything, don't wander over the next hillthese were the commandments for the men and women of the experimental village - one of those careful nurtured settlements established after the collapse of world civilization. The rules were made by the benevolent Masters of the Island - and they had to be obeyed. To disobey was to be destroyed. But Robert Ventnor, villager with a dangerously high quotient of curiosity, was the exception. He fled - and evaded liquidation. But he fled right into the hands of THESE SAVAGE FUTURIANS and thereby supplied the key that could blast apart civilization's second chance and destroy the world once and for all. **

Sophie was only a teenager, but she already had the emotions of an adultwoman-at any rate where her stepbrother Robert, was concerned. She hadalways adored Robert, and her feelings had never lessened with the years.But her whole family-including Robert himself-disapproved, and dideverything they could to discourage her affection for him. It was only thefact that she felt certain Robert really felt as attracted to her as she wasto him. that gave Sophie any hope at all. In spite of the fact that Roberthad now produced a fiancée Emma Norton, who appeared to have a hold over himwhich Sophie could never compete...

Sir Gareth Ludlow knows it is his duty as a man of honour to restore so young and pretty a girl as Amanda, wandering unattended, to her family. But it is to prove no easy task for the Corinthian.