Here, Jemima Shore, investigator and TV personality, arrives at Inverness Station for a Highland holiday. The sun is shining. Paradise, she thinks. But at that moment, she hears a voice: "All this way for a funeral." So begins an adventure far removed from Jemima's visions of heather-covered hills, crystal-clear streams, romantic men in kilts, fairy-tale castles....Instead, she is plunged into the strange world of the aristocratic Beauregard family with its tensions, its jealousies, and its violence, in many ways a primitive world dominated by the land and its possessing. The setting is the Wild Island itself, sometimes enchanting, but too often frighteningly remote; the streams, not silvery, but brown and sinister; her holiday home, with its disturbing, sometimes terrifying, influences; the people--the dashing war hero Colonel Henry and his sons, the forthright old priest Father Flanagan, Bridie the family servant, Clementina the wayward heiress...none of them quite what they seem. And then there is the specter of the Scottish "freedom fighters," in the shape of the self-styled army of the Red Rose. It all adds up to a brilliantly told story of mystery and intrigue on the Wild Island.

An elderly caretaker at a large outdoor exhibition, called Art in Nature, finds that a couple have lingered on to bicker about the value of a picture; he has a surprising suggestion that will resolve both their row and his own ambivalence about the art market. A draughtsman's obsession with drawing locomotives provides a dark twist to a love story. A cartoonist takes over the work of a colleague who has suffered a nervous breakdown only to discover that his own sanity is in danger. In these witty, sharp, often disquieting stories, Tove Jansson reveals the fault-lines in our relationship with art, both as artists and as consumers. Obsession, ambition, and the discouragement of critics are all brought into focus in these wise and cautionary tales. Translated into English for the first time by Thomas Teal.

Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us."

Odan stared up, as the cloud grew, black and massed, while the lightning struck and the thunder rolled. Staring, Odan saw the long radiant arms of fire reaching out’ across the heavens. He knew this vision was his alone; this was not visible from proud Eresh over the horizon.“Come, you great god!” he bellowed. “Let me see you and your chariot of fire I”He was mad. He was quite mad by this time. He must be insane, thus to stand, head jutting, glaring up as a god descended in fire and glory from the heavens.In a great burst of maniacal frenzy he had conjured a god. And a god had answered* his call and his challenge.“I am Odan and I am of Eresh! Show me your attributes, show me your face, if you dare! For I am Odan the Khuzuk and my father is a god—is a god!”

Epub‘I was born in Peckham over the Falcon Billiard Saloon On a wet Monday morning, which may account for a lot of things, says Patrick Alexander. It does not, however, account for his insight into the workings of the Secret Service, or his knowledge and expertise on the use and misuse of firearms. What he doesn’t know about those subjects could be written on the nose of a boat-tailed bullet. Perhaps his subsequent career as reporter and television writer and his travels in Russia and Europe writing special features explains his lately revealed talent as a master story-teller.The jungle was all around him.The jungle is all around you wherever you are, his mother used to tell him when he was small.They were living in Ruislip then and he would look out of the window half-expecting a tiger to spring out of the sweet peas at the bottom of the garden.He wished he were in Ruislip now. A childish wish, as childish as the tears he wept over Kirote, who had been dead since dawn and was beginning to smellMechanically he brushed the flies away from the body with one hand and his own tears with the other. He wept partly from grief and partly from self-pity, but mostly from physical weakness. He had been underfed, overworked and sporadically maltreated for two years. Kirote was the only friend he made in that time. He had shared a cell with him and six other Africans - five thieves and a simple-minded rapistHe would have liked to bury him, but there was no time for niceties. Leave him to the hyenas and vultures and whatever else scavenged that part of the rain-forest He took the knife they had taken from the dead guard and, sniffing back his tears, moved on through the bush, following narrow paths and animal tracks, always beading west, taking a bearing from the sun whenever he glimpsed it through the perpetual gloom.His feet were tender, his legs ached, he was thirsty. But he kept on at a rhythmic pace.They had been in the rain-forest six days, living off wild bananas and forest snails and yams stolen from the occasional plantation. Now he was alone and frightened.

ALL SYSTEMS SNAFU!!!If anything could go wrong aboard the scoutship Dark Star, sooner or later it would. Now in the 20th year of their mission—destroying unstable planets—the ship and its crew were falling apart . . .After 20 years in space, isolation and loneliness have left their mark. The four surviving crew members are bored beyond relief. Only an occasional bomb run or another or the inevitable malfunctions aboard ship upsets the monotony.Then, Bomb #20 is primed, armed, and set to detonate—suddenly life on the Dark Star becomes frantic . . .

In Galaxies Like Grains of Sand, Brian W. Aldiss tells the tale of mankind's future over the course of forty million years. Each of these nine connected short stories highlights a different millennia in which man has adapted to new environments and hardships.This ebook includes a new introduction from the author.

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The towering modern classic of passion and ambition that forever changed the way we see the courageous immigrants who came to America's shores -- the story of Anna Friedman transfixes us with the turbulent emotions of a woman and her family touched by war, tragedy, and the devastating secrets of one forbidden love... bittersweet and evergreen.From the Paperback edition.

"Start talking, or we cut your fingers off, one by one.”The Straight Man told them the truth. They gave him a month to come up with the money. He’d been burned, but The Mob didn’t care. He owed them ten grand. Where would he get it?He sat down to think.Burglary was a field open to almost any fool, the prisons were full of them.Kidnapping would bring in tons of federal smoke. The idea of winning money gambling had built a lot of casinos.International gun running was controlled by the Spanish people and the government.Loan sharking was done legally by the banks for a mortgage on your soul, and illegally by The Mob for a mortgage on your life.Cattle rustling was open to everyone, some restaurants would go under without it.Hijacking was out ... it takes a well-organized gang for that, The best shot would be a one-time stunt that hadn’t been pulled before, like the first sky-jacker. He’d thought it out and been the only one to ever get away clean. America, The Straight Man decided, is a nation of specialists.

Raven Out of the bonds of slavery arose a beautiful warrior...Feared across the land, her blade was stained with the blood of thousands... Raven With her mysterious companion-mentor, Spellbinder, and a great black bird to watch over them, she was invincible. Together they would face the savage butchery of battle and the gathering forces of evil. Raven Deep intot he lost land of Quwhon she rode, her desinty written in blood-stained ice and carved in the distorted faces of the dead. Along with her loyal companions sh ewoudl battle men and demons to challenge her mortal foe, the evil weaponmaster Karl ir Donwayne. While beneath the snow and ice, Tanash, the Frozen God and enemy of all that lives, is imprisoned. Soon he will be free and men shall know the horror of true evil... The Frozen God

Hamilton Stark is a New Hampshire pipe fitter and the sole inhabitant of the house from which he evicted his own mother. He is the villain of five marriages and the father of a daughter so obsessed that she has been writing a book about him for years. Hamilton Stark is a boor, a misanthrope, a handsome man: funny, passionately honest, and a good dancer. The narrator, a middle-aged writer, decides to write about Stark as a hero whose anger and solitude represent passion and wisdom. At the same time that he tells Hamilton Stark's story, he describes the process of writing the novel and the complicated connections between truth and fiction. As Stark slips in and out of focus, maddeningly elusive and fascinatingly complex, this beguiling novel becomes at once a compelling meditation on identity and a thoroughly engaging story of life on the cold edge of New England.

Raven Out of the bonds of slavery arose a beautiful warrior...Feared across the land, her blade was stained with the blood of thousands... Raven Accompanied by her mysterious teacher, Spellbinder, she was invincible. Together they would face the savage butchery of battle and the gathering forces of evil. Raven The lovely Krya, wife of Kahrsaam's ruler, has been abducted. Held captive in a strange and distant land. Raven and Spellbinder and her only hope. But they must withstand the foraces of a powerful new evil and conquer the wrath of an old enemy--the dark sorcerer Belthis. As swords clash in fearsome battle, Belthis leads them deep into the frozen regions of the North, where his magic holds rule...even over the dead. A Time of Ghosts