Driven from his cherished London home by circumstances beyond his control, Thomas Lieven -- ladies man, pacifist and gourmand -- reluctantly finds himself forced to work as a secret agent for no less than four countries on various fronts of wartime Europe: England, France, Germany and the United States, before, during and after WWII.This book includes the recipes of the gourmet meals which Lieven prepares for friend and, sometimes, foe, during his manifold adventures, and which are a treat entirely in their own right.

Dr. Brenda Hamilton—a Ph.D. mathematician from Cal Tech—is beautiful, though she does not know her true beauty. She is a woman, though she does not know her true womanhood. Deep within herself she is sensual, though her senses have been dulled by this modern world. Hamilton has come to Africa to work under the brilliant Danish scientist Herjellsen, a man who speaks of reaching the stars. But what does the ancient stone axe lying on his lab table have to do with space travel? Soon, it becomes clear that Herjellsen's experiment is much larger than Hamilton or Herjellsen or even space travel, itself. It is about correcting a mistake made tens of thousands of years ago in human evolution.Thrown back in time, Hamilton must be shown her place in a tribe known simply as "the Men," Stone Age hunters who take what they desire and know their true manhood. Will Hamilton survive in this savage land? Will her lover, Tree, teach her what it truly means to be a woman? Can the...

This anthology is a thorough introduction to classic literature for those who have not yet experienced these literary masterworks. For those who have known and loved these works in the past, this is an invitation to reunite with old friends in a fresh new format. From Shakespeare s finesse to Oscar Wilde s wit, this unique collection brings together works as diverse and influential as The Pilgrim s Progress and Othello. As an anthology that invites readers to immerse themselves in the masterpieces of the literary giants, it is must-have addition to any library.From Library JournalThis, the fourth in Burroughs's Martian series, is not expected to make B&B rich, but it does appeal to fans like company president Beth Baxter and Burroughs's faithful audience. Stan Winiarski takes on the narration. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. ReviewCheck out these other great works (hundreds of volumes):Ultimate HandheldBible Library(121 volumes, 1 Million + Links)Ultimate HandheldClassic Library(more than 1000 works)Ultimate BibleStudy Suite(8 volumes, 1 Million + Links)Click here to see Hundreds of titles available from Packard Technologies

Amazon.com ReviewIn To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip José Farmer introduces readers to the awesome Riverworld, a planet that had been carved into one large river on whose shores all of humanity throughout the ages has seemingly been resurrected. In The Fabulous Riverboat, Farmer tells the tale of one person whose is uniquely suited to find the river's headwaters, riverboat captain and famous Earthly author Sam Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain). Clemens has been visited by "X," a mysterious being who claims to be a rebel among the group that created Riverworld. X tells Clemens where he can find a large deposit of iron and other materials that Clemens can use to build the greatest riverboat ever seen. Since there is virtually no metal on the planet, it will also give Clemens an unbeatable edge when it comes to battling the various warlike societies that dominate the Riverworld.But Clemens is not alone in his quest for the iron, which arrives on the planet in the form of a giant meteorite. In fact, Clemens is besieged on all sides by forces determined to seize the precious ore, leading him to make a deadly pact with one of history's most notorious villains, John Lackland. Lackland's crimes during his reign as king of England were so hideous that no other English monarch will ever carry his name, and he's up to equally nefarious tricks on Riverworld. However, Clemens has a guardian angel in the form of Joe Miller, a giant subhuman with a big nose, a serious lisp, and a cutting wit. Miller has also been to the very headwaters of the river, where he saw a mysterious tower in the middle of the North Sea and where the creators of Riverworld are thought to reside. He will be an invaluable ally in completing the riverboat and sailing to the headwaters, but even an 800-pound giant may not be enough to help Clemens fulfill X's mission. -Product DescriptionResurrected on the lush, mysterious banks of Riverworld, along with the rest of humanity, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) has a dream: to build a riverboat that will rival the most magnificent paddle-wheelers ever navigated on the mighty Mississippi. Then, to steer it up the endless waterway that dominates his new home planet--and at last discover its hidden source.But before he can carry out his plan, he first must undertake a dangerous voyage to unearth a fallen meteor. This mission would require striking an uneasy alliance with the bloodthirsty Viking Erik Bloodaxe, treacherous King John of England, legendary French swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac, Greek adventurer Odysseus, and the infamous Nazi Hermann Göring. All for the purpose of storming the ominous stone tower at the mouth of the river, where the all-powerful overseers of Riverworld--and their secrets--lie in wait . . .Biography From Wikipedia - Philip José FarmerBorn: January 26, 1918, Terre Haute, Indiana, USADied: February 25, 2009 (aged 91), Peoria, Illinois, USAPhilip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author, principally known for his award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.Farmer is best known for his sequences of novels, especially the World of Tiers (1965–93) and Riverworld (1971–83) series. He is noted for the pioneering use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for, and reworking of, the lore of celebrated pulp heroes, and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters. Farmer often mixed real and classic fictional characters and worlds and real and fake authors as epitomized by his Wold Newton family group of books. These tie all classic fictional characters together as real people and blood relatives resulting from an alien conspiracy. Such works as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) are early examples of literary mashup.Literary critic Leslie Fiedler compared Farmer to Ray Bradbury as both being "provincial American eccentrics" ... who... "strain at the classic limits of the [science fiction] form", but found Farmer distinctive in that he "manages to be at once naive and sophisticated in his odd blending of theology, pornography, and adventure".Farmer was born in North Terre Haute, Indiana. According to colleague Frederik Pohl, his middle name was in honor of an aunt, Josie. Farmer grew up in Peoria, Illinois, where he attended Peoria High School. His father was a civil engineer and a supervisor for the local power company. A voracious reader as a boy, Farmer said he resolved to become a writer in the fourth grade. He became an agnostic at the age of 14. At age 23, in 1941, he married and eventually fathered a son and a daughter. After washing out of flight training in World War II, he went to work in a local steel mill. He continued his education, however, earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Bradley University in 1950.Farmer had his first literary success in 1952 with a novella called The Lovers, about a sexual relationship between a human and an extraterrestrial. It won him the Hugo Award as "most promising new writer", the first of three. Thus encouraged, he quit his job to become a full-time writer, entered a publisher’s contest, and promptly won the $4,000 first prize for a novel that contained the germ of his later Riverworld series. The book was not published and Farmer did not get the money. Literary success did not translate into financial security, and in 1956 he left Peoria to launch a career as a technical writer. He spent the next 14 years working in that capacity for various defense contractors, from Syracuse, New York to Los Angeles, California, while writing science fiction in his spare time.He won a second Hugo after the publication of his 1967 novella Riders of the Purple Wage, a pastiche of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake as well as a satire on a futuristic, cradle-to-grave welfare state. Reinvigorated, Farmer became a full-time writer again in 1969. Upon moving back to Peoria in 1970, he entered his most prolific period, publishing 25 books in 10 years. His novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go (a reworked, previously unpublished version of the prize-winning first novel of 20 years before) won him his third Hugo in 1971. A 1975 novel, Venus on the Half-Shell, created a stir in the larger literary community and media. It purported to be written in the first person by one “Kilgore Trout”, a fictional character appearing as an underappreciated science fiction writer in several of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. The escapade did not please Vonnegut when some reviewers not only concluded that it had been written by Vonnegut himself, but that it was a worthy addition to his works. Farmer did have permission from Vonnegut to write the book, though Vonnegut later said he regretted giving permission.Farmer had both critical champions and detractors. Leslie Fiedler proclaimed him "the greatest science fiction writer ever" and lauded his approach to storytelling as a “gargantuan lust to swallow down the whole cosmos, past, present and to come, and to spew it out again”. Isaac Asimov praised Farmer as an "excellent science fiction writer; in fact, a far more skillful writer than I am...." But Christopher Lehmann-Haupt described him in The New York Times in 1972 as “a humdrum toiler in the fields of science fiction”.Farmer died on February 25, 2009. At the time of his death, he and his wife Bette had two children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.Riverworld seriesThe Riverworld series follows the adventures of such diverse characters as Richard Burton, Hermann Göring, and Samuel Clemens through a bizarre afterlife in which every human ever to have lived is simultaneously resurrected along a single river valley that stretches over an entire planet. The series consists of To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), The Fabulous Riverboat (1971), The Dark Design (1977), The Magic Labyrinth (1980) and Gods of Riverworld (1983). Although Riverworld and Other Stories (1979) is not part of the series as such, it does include the second-published Riverworld story, which is free-standing rather than integrated into one of the novels.The first two Riverworld books were originally published as novellas, "The Day of the Great Shout" and "The Suicide Express", and as a two-part serial, "The Felled Star", in the science fiction magazines Worlds of Tomorrow and If between 1965 and 1967. The separate novelette "Riverworld" ran in Worlds of Tomorrow in January 1966. A final pair of linked novelettes appeared in the 1990s: "Crossing the Dark River" (in Tales of Riverworld, 1992) and "Up the Bright River" (in Quest to Riverworld, 1993). Farmer introduced himself into the series as Peter Jairus Frigate (PJF).The Riverworld series originated in a novel, Owe for the Flesh, written in one month in 1952 as a contest entry. It won the contest, but the book was left unpublished and orphaned when the prize money was misappropriated, and Farmer nearly gave up writing altogether. The original manuscript of the novel was lost, but years later Farmer reworked the material into the Riverworld magazine stories mentioned above. Eventually, a copy of a revised version of the original novel surfaced in a box in a garage and was published as River of Eternity by Phantasia Press in 1983. Farmer's Introduction to this edition gives the details of how it all happened.World of Tiers seriesThe series is set within a number of artificially constructed parallel universes, created tens of thousands of years ago by a race of human beings who had achieved an advanced level of technology which gave them almost godlike power and immortality. The principal universe in which these stories take place, and from which the series derives its name, consists of an enormous tiered planet, shaped like a stack of disks or squat cylinders, of diminishing radius, one atop the other. The series follows the adventures of several of these godlike humans and several "ordinary" humans from Earth who accidentally travel to these artificial universes. (One of those "ordinary" humans was Kickaha, real name Paul Janus Finnegan (PJF) who becomes the main protagonist in the series.) The series consists of The Maker of Universes (1965), The Gates of Creation (1966), A Private Cosmos (1968), Behind the Walls of Terra (1970), The Lavalite World (1977) and More Than Fire (1993). Roger Zelazny has mentioned that The World of Tiers was something he had in his mind when he created his Amber series. A related novel is Red Orc's Rage (1991), which does not involve the principal characters of the other books directly, but does provide background information to certain events and characters portrayed in the other novels. This is the most "psychological" of Farmer's novels.

Universally acclaimed when first published in 1955, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit captured the mood of a generation. It was a national bestseller that was made into an award-winning film, it was translated into twenty-six languages, and its title has become a permanent part of our cultural vocabulary. Today, it is more relevant than ever. Here is the story of Tom and Betsy Rath, a young couple with everything going for them: three healthy children, a nice home, a steady income. They have every reason to be happy, but for some reason they are not. Like so many young men of the day, Tom finds himself caught up in the corporate rat race -- what he encounters there propels him on a voyage of self-discovery that will turn his world inside out. At once a searing indictment of corporate culture, a story of a young man confronting his past and future with honesty, and a testament to the enduring power of family, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a deeply rewarding novel about the importance of taking responsibility for one's own life. This edition includes a new introduction by Jonathan Franzen and an afterword by the author.

In Interplanetary war, you don’t merely attack a neutral vessel—you can turn It Into a helpless but terrible weapon-0-In the midst of an interplanetary war between Venus and Mars, an neutral ship is sabotaged and sent on a crash-course to Venus. Captain Brand has little time to figure out what is happening and how to stop it, before its all too late.

When four top operatives die mysterious deaths, Quiller, the Bureau's top intelligence agent, follows the world's five deadliest men from the French Riviera, to Rome, to Cambodia, to New York, and to Brazil. Reprint. NYT. PW. A Yugoslavian plane crashes in the south of France; a fuel tanker explodes at Rome airport, a British diplomat is shot dead in Phnom Penh. In each case Quiller, Adam Hall's relentless British agent witnesses the violence as he pursues a fanatical terrorist group known as Kobra.THE KOBRA MANIFESTO is the seventh of Adam Hall's highly acclaimed series of Quiller novels. This chilling novel has all the gloss, pace and tension of Ian Fleming, combined with a detailed knowledge of secret service procedures characteristic of John le Carre."Tense, intelligent, harsh and surprising." (The New York Times)

Epub (my conversion)The long wire was the telegraph from Junction City to Cochise, Texas, and it was going to get through for the Trans-Pecos Company even if it took the lives of both Davis brothers to do it…Bill Davis had started bossing the crew that was stringing the wire—and he was found dead in Ghost Canyon without a mark on him. Jim Davis didn’t know too much about telegraph work but he knew plenty about other things—like double-crosses, dirty competition, and hired guns.He would find out why and how his brother met his mysterious death—and at the same time he was going to see that the telegraph got through Ghost Canyon.

Amazon.com ReviewSome people will remember The Incredible Shrinking Man as a movie with great special effects and a surprisingly good script, given the ridiculous title. Matheson's classic novella is the reason for that. As Scott Carey -- husband, father, and all-around decent guy -- mysteriously shrinks, he faces unimagined horrors at every step, up to the story's surprising resolution. It's packaged here with a number of Matheson's other classic stories, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," which became a popular Twilight Zone episode, and "Duel," which was turned into a movie by a very young Steven Spielberg. From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Matheson's legendary 1956 sci-fi tale of Scott Carey, a family man who is slowly shrinking into obscurity and a terrifying new world inside his own house, is beautifully realized by Yuri Rasovsky's memorable reading. Enthusiastic and compelling, Rasovsky seems predisposed to the suspense master's style of writing. Capturing the brilliant mix of everyday life and extraordinary horrors that Matheson is so revered for creating, Rasovsky reads with a dry, cool wit that breathes new life into this classic tale. He knows exactly how to relay the tension and anxiety to his audience, and never ceases to raise the stakes and bring the audience to their knees in sheer terror. This is a thrilling and unforgettable experience. A Tor paperback. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Following a military mutiny on a Caribbean island that takes the life of his commander, young Lieutenant Sulgrave returns to the United States and becomes embroiled in a turbulent love affair with the man's widow.

Mrs Harris is a salt-of-the-earth charlady, content with her lot, cleaning the homes of the rich. However, her knack of setting things straight often has the tendency to stray beyond keeping things neat and tidy... In Mrs Harris MP, the honest as-ever old char impresses her employer with her no-nonsense political views to such an extent that he - an MP, no less - encourages her to become a voice for the people of Battersea and stand for election herself. The world of local politics, however, soon proves a test for a lady as straight-laced as Mrs Harris; political skulduggery, the glare of the media and the apparent betrayal of a trusted friend all becoming issues she just hadn't bargained on...

Amazon.com ReviewUrsula K. Le Guin is one of science fiction's greatest writers. She is also an acclaimed author of powerful and perceptive nonfiction, fantasy, and literary fiction. She has received many honors, including six Nebula and five Hugo Awards, the National Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Newbery, the Pilgrim, the Tiptree, and citations by the American Library Association. She has written over a dozen highly regarded novels and story collections. Her SF masterworks are The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), The Dispossessed (1974), and The Lathe of Heaven (1971).George Orr has dreams that come true--dreams that change reality. He dreams that the aunt who is sexually harassing him is killed in a car crash, and wakes to find that she died in a wreck six weeks ago, in another part of the country. But a far darker dream drives George into the care of a psychotherapist--a dream researcher who doesn't share George's ambivalence about altering reality.The Lathe of Heaven is set in the sort of worlds that one would associate with Philip K. Dick, but Ms. Le Guin's treatment of the material, her plot and characterization and concerns, are more akin to the humanistic, ethically engaged, psychologically nuanced fiction of Theodore Sturgeon. The Lathe of Heaven is an insightful and chilling examination of total power, of war and injustice and other age-old problems, of changing the world, of playing God. --Cynthia WardReview"When I read The Lathe of Heaven as a young man, my mind was boggled; now when I read it, more than twenty-five years later, it breaks my heart. Only a great work of literature can bridge - so thrillingly - that impossible span." - Michael Chabon"A rare and powerful synthesis of poetry and science, reason and emotion." -- The New York Times"Gracefully developed...extremely inventive.... What science fiction is supposed to do." -- Newsweek"Profound. Beautifully wrought...[Le Guin's] perceptions of such matters as geopolitics, race, socialized medicine, and the patient-shrink relationship are razor sharp and more than a little cutting." -- National Review

This client wasn't Mickey Spillane's usual. He was a man Spillane had sent to prison and he wanted desperately to find his missing sister. The only clue was a mound of filmy, exotic garments. As Spillane followed the little he had to go on, something like a pattern began to emerge. He knew he was missing something, and whatever it was kept gnawing at the corners of his mind. The single strand he had seemed to tie in to the deaths of two women, but red herrings fouled the trail. Then he stumbled on it - shielded in diplomatic immunity!