The Dark Labyrinth

The Dark Labyrinth

Lawrence Durrell

Literature & Fiction / Travel / Memoir

This captivating Mediterranean novel was written by Lawrence Durrell immediately after finishing his exquisite vignette about Corfu, Prospero's Cell, and a decade before Justine. The story is set on Crete just after the War, as an odd assortment of English travellers come ashore from a cruise ship to explore the island and in particular to examine a dangerous local labyrinth. They include an extrovert painter, a spiritualist, a Protestant spinster with a fox terrier, an antiquarian peer and minor poet, a soldier with guilty memories of the Cretan resistance, a pretty convalescent and an eccentric married couple. To some extent the book is a roman à clef and Durrell's characters talk with great reality about their experiences, themselves and a certain psychological unease that has led most of them to embark on their journey. The climax is a disastrous visit to the labyrinth, with its reported minotaur. The novel is a gripping piece of story-telling, full of atmosphere and the vivid first-hand writing about Mediterranean landscape and people of which Durrell was a master. [ Cefalu (1947; republished as The Dark Labyrinth in 1958) ]
Read online
  • 171
Murder on the Court

Murder on the Court

Barbara Barrett

Fiction / Memoir / Suspense

No good deed goes unpunished, as television star Marla Dane learns the hard way. The recently fired TV detective, trying to figure out her next move at her sister's Minnesota condo, reluctantly agrees to sub as Water Girl at a weekend pickleball match. Which makes her the first suspect of many when the team captain turns up dead. Eloise Wallace, owner of a local PR company, will never receive the title Boss of the Year. She's dragged her staff, her old college roommate, and even her ex-husband and ex-employees onto her pickleball team. No wonder their success on the court is so sad. They all have reasons for wanting her dead, and Marla and former cop Rex Alcorn are enlisted to figure out who poisoned her. As Marla's sister Kitty distracts them with a new obsession, pie baking, Marla and Rex find their suspects crusty and evasive. The victim excelled at making everyone around her miserable, so what did the killer have to gain by staying in her life — or...
Read online
  • 170
The Brooklyn Follies

The Brooklyn Follies

Paul Auster

Fiction / Memoir

'I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I travelled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain . . .'So begins Paul Auster's remarkable new novel, The Brooklyn Follies. Set against the backdrop of the contested US election of 2000, it tells the story of Nathan and Tom, an uncle and nephew double-act. One in remission from lung cancer, divorced, and estranged from his only daughter, the other hiding away from his once-promising academic career, and, indeed, from life in general. Having accidentally ended up in the same Brooklyn neighbourhood, they discover a community teeming with life and passion. When Lucy, a little girl who refuses to speak, comes into their lives, there is suddenly a bridge from their pasts that offers them the possibility of redemption. Infused with character, mystery and humour, these lives intertwine and become bound together as Auster brilliantly explores the wider terrain of contemporary America - a crucible of broken dreams and of human folly.
Read online
  • 169
The Capricorn Bracelet

The Capricorn Bracelet

Rosemary Sutcliff

Fiction / Children's Books / Memoir

Rosemary's Sutcliff's absorbing collection of stories cover the fall of Londinium to the building of Hadrian's Wall, and the final departure of the Romans from Britain. Set at the time of the Roman occupation of Britain, they follow the fortunes of one family over three hundred years. All soldiers, they are linked by the Capricorn bracelet, first worn by the centurion Lucius for distinguished conduct, then handed down through the generations.
Read online
  • 169
Bulibasha

Bulibasha

Witi Ihimaera

Fiction / Memoir

Caught in the middle of the clash between two great Maori clans, Simeon, grandson of Bulibasha and Ramona, struggles with his own feelings and loyalties as the battles rage . . .� This award-winning novel is being reissued to tie in with the release of Mahana, the stunning film adaptation of the novel. Also available as an eBook
Read online
  • 168


Survival in Auschwitz

Survival in Auschwitz

Primo Levi

Memoir / Fiction / Science

Durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Primo Levi, vingt-quatre ans, juif, lutte auxcotes des maquisards antifascistes du Piemont. Capture en 1943, il se retrouvepeu apres a Auschwitz, ou il demeurera plus d'un an avant d'etre libere par l'armeerusse en janvier 1945.Au camp, il observe tout. Il se souviendra de tout, racontera tout: la promiscuitedes blocks-dortoirs, les camarades qu'on y decouvre a l'aube, morts de froid et defaim; les humiliations et le travail quotidiens, sous les coups de trique des kapos;les selections periodiques ou l'on separe les malades des bien-portants pourles envoyer a la mort; les pendaisons pour l'exemple; les trains, bourres de juifset de tziganes, qu'on dirige des leur arrivee vers les crematoires...Et pourtant, dans ce recit, la dignite la plus impressionnante; aucune haine, aucunexces, aucune exploitation des souffrances personnelles, mais une reflexionmorale sur la douleur, sublimee en une vision de la vie. Paru en 1946, Si c'est un homme est considere comme un des livres les plusimportants du XXe siecle. Parce qu'il est familier des grands textes philosophiques, Raphael Enthoven resout avec une talentueuse sobriete la difficile equation que pose le texte de Primo Levi: comment nommer l'innommable ? Remerciements a Benoit Peeters, ecrivain, pour sa lecture de l'interview de Primo Levi par Philippe Roth. Avec le soutien de la Fondation pour la Memoire de la Shoah
Read online
  • 162
Burning Boy

Burning Boy

Paul Auster

Fiction / Memoir

Booker Prize-shortlisted and New York Times bestselling author Paul Auster's comprehensive, landmark biography of the great American writer Stephen Crane.With Burning Boy, celebrated novelist Paul Auster tells the extraordinary story of Stephen Crane, best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, who transformed American literature through an avalanche of original short stories, novellas, poems, journalism, and war reportage before his life was cut short by tuberculosis at age twenty-eight.Auster's probing account of this singular life tracks Crane as he rebounds from one perilous situation to the next: A controversial article written at twenty disrupts the course of the 1892 presidential campaign, a public battle with the New York police department over the false arrest of a prostitute effectively exiles him from the city, a star-crossed love affair with an unhappily married uptown girl tortures him, a common-law marriage to the...
Read online
  • 159
Shiner

Shiner

Amy Jo Burns

Memoir / Fiction

On a lush mountaintop trapped in time, two women vow to protect each other at all costs-and one young girl must defy her father to survive.An hour from the closest West Virginia mining town, fifteen-year-old Wren Bird lives in a cloistered mountain cabin with her parents. They have no car, no mailbox, and no visitors-except for her mother's lifelong best friend. Every Sunday, Wren's father delivers winding sermons in an abandoned gas station, where he takes up serpents and praises the Lord for his blighted white eye, proof of his divinity and key to the hold he has over the community, over Wren and her mother. But over the course of one summer, a miracle performed by Wren's father quickly turns to tragedy. As the order of her world begins to shatter, Wren must uncover the truth of her father's mysterious legend and her mother's harrowing history and complex bond with her best friend. And with that newfound knowledge, Wren can imagine a different future for...
Read online
  • 158
Song for a Dark Queen

Song for a Dark Queen

Rosemary Sutcliff

Fiction / Children's Books / Memoir

From the day Cadwan fashioned a sword from a willow wand and composed a victory song for his young mistress, Boudicca, he has loyally charted her rise to Queen. Boudicca is the strong and brave leader of the Iceni tribe - courageously guiding her people from one victorious battle to her next. Then Emperor Nero rules that the royal line of the Iceni is to be ended, and Boudicca knows this is one battle she cannot afford to lose . . .
Read online
  • 158
Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog

Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog

David Cory

Historical Fiction / Memoir / Comics

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world\'s literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Read online
  • 157
A Gun for Sale

A Gun for Sale

Graham Greene

Fiction / Thriller / Memoir

Raven is an ugly man dedicated to ugly deeds. His cold-blooded killing of a European Minister of War is an act of violence with chilling repercussions, not just for Raven himself but for the nation as a whole. The money he receives in payment for the murder is made up of stolen notes and when the first of these is traced, Raven becomes a man on the run. As he tracks down the agent who has been double-crossing him and attempts to elude the police, he becomes both hunter and hunted: an unwitting weapon of a strange kind of social justice. In doing so, he sets the stage for Greene’s next novel, Brighton Rock. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Samuel Hynes. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Read online
  • 156
183