Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Description
Whether following the obsessions of Henry James, marveling at the "indispensible" Beatrix Potter, or exploring the Manichean world of Oliver Twist, Graham Greene revisits the books and authors of his lifetime. Here is Greene on Fielding, Doyle, Kipling, and Conrad; on The Prisoner of Zenda and the "revolutionary . . . colossal egoism" of Laurence Stern's epic comic novel, Tristram Shandy; on the adventures of both Allan Quatermain and Moll Flanders;...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A teenage sociopath rises to power in Britain's criminal underworld in this "brilliant and uncompromising" thriller (The New York Times). Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown, raised amid the casual violence and corruption in the dire prewar Brighton slums, has left his final judgment in the hands of God. On the streets, impelled by his own twisted moral doctrine, he leads a motley pack of gangsters whose sleazy little rackets have most recently erupted...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Haiti, under the rule of Papa Doc and his menacing paramilitary, the Tontons Macoute, has long been abandoned by tourists. Now it is home to corrupt capitalists, foreign ambassadors and their lonely wives-and a small group of enterprising strangers rocking into port on the Dutch cargo ship, Medea: a well-meaning pair of Americans claiming to bring vegetarianism to the natives; a former jungle fighter in World War II Burma and current confidence man;...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In the Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1930s, all vestiges of Catholicism are being outlawed by the government. As churches are razed, icons are banned, and the price of devotion is execution, an unnamed member of the clergy flees. He's known only as the "whisky priest." Beset by heretical vices, guilt, and an immoral past, he's torn between self-destruction and self-preservation. Too modest to be a martyr, too stubborn to follow the law, and too...
Author
Language
English
Description
This collection features three classic novels that explore Graham Greene's most important themes: Catholicism, international intrigue, and the never-ending struggle to know oneself. The Heart of the Matter: In a British colony of West Africa, Henry Scobie is a pious man of modest means charged with securing borders. But when he's passed over for a promotion, the humiliation hits hard-for his wife. To make it up to her, Henry accepts a loan from a...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Graham Greene's first published novel tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. Elizabeth persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as...
Author
Language
English
Description
Graham Greene's extraordinary reputation rests largely on these three superb novels, all of which have been adapted into classic films. Brighton Rock: Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown, raised in the prewar Brighton slums, leads a motley pack of gangsters whose small-time scams have erupted in murder. The cover-up leads Pinkie to a timid and love-struck young waitress-his new wife, the key witness to his crimes, and, should she live long enough, his...
Author
Language
English
Description
Querry is a world-renowned architect noted for his magnificent churches, each designed not for the glory of God, but for the satisfaction of self. Suddenly infected with indifference, he has abandoned his pursuit of pleasure. Now he has reached the end of desire at the end of the world-a colony of lepers in the remote jungles of Africa.
Here, under the guidance of Doctor Colin, a fellow atheist, Querry's consideration of the sick could be something...
Author
Language
English
Description
It's 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it's not just a political tangle that's kept him tethered to the country. There's also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
James Wormold, a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, finds the answer to his prayers when British Intelligence offers him a lucrative job as an undercover agent. To keep the checks coming, Wormold must at least pretend to know what he's doing. Soon, he's apparently deciphering incomprehensible codes, passing along sketches of secret weapons that look suspiciously like vacuum parts, and claiming to recruit fellow operatives from his country...
11) A gun for sale
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Born out of a brutal childhood, Raven is an assassin for hire whose latest hit-a government minister-is one calculated to ignite a war. When the most wanted man in England is paid off in marked bills, he also becomes the easiest to track-and police detective Jimmy Mather has the lead. But Raven's got an advantage. Crossing paths with a sympathetic dancer named Anne Crowder, the emotionally scarred Raven has found someone in the wreckage of his life...
12) Loser Takes All
Author
Language
English
Description
A modest London accountant on a budget, Mr. Bertram has settled on a honeymoon at the seaside resort of Bournemouth with his fiancée, Cary. However, Bertram's boss, the solicitous Herbert Dreuther, won't hear of anything so common. Bertram and Cary are to be married in Monte Carlo, after which they'll be Dreuther's guests on his private yacht and sail down the coast of Italy. It sounds too lovely to be true. And surely Bertram can afford one night...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
On a peaceful Sunday afternoon, Arthur Rowe comes upon a charity fete in the gardens of a Cambridgeshire vicarage where he wins a game of chance. If only this were an ordinary day. Britain is under threat by Germany, and the air raid sirens that bring the bazaar to a halt expose Rowe as no ordinary man. Recently released from a psychiatric prison for the mercy killing of his wife, he is burdened by guilt, and now, in possession of a seemingly innocuous...
Author
Language
English
Description
In "Under the Garden," William Wilditch, a restless loner given to wanderlust, takes one final journey as he approaches death-back to his childhood home where he discovers that the memories of his youth are simply not to be believed. In "A Visit to Morin," an admirer and old friend of a once-renowned Catholic writer is unprepared for the startling confessions of the spiritually bereft, now-reclusive scribe. On a vast plantation, a peculiar wish is...
15) Orient Express
Author
Language
English
Description
The Orient Express has embarked from Ostend for a three-day journey to Cologne, Vienna, and Constantinople. The passenger list includes a Jewish trader from London with business interests in Turkey-and a score to settle; a vulnerable chorus girl on her last legs; a boozy and spiteful journalist who's found an unrequited love in her paid companion, and her latest scoop in second class-a Serbian dissident in disguise on his way to lead a revolution;...
Author
Language
English
Description
Affairs, obsessions, grand passions and tiny ardours are illuminated in this collection of 12 wryly humorous tales of love. Whether depicting the innocence and corruption of a honeymoon couple or the frustration of missed sexual opportunities, the stories expose a range of human frailties.
Author
Language
English
Description
In "The End of the Party," a game of hide-and-seek takes a terrifying turn in the dark. In "The Innocent," a romantic gets a rude awakening when he finds a hidden keepsake from a childhood crush. A husband's sexual indiscretion is revealed in a most public and embarrassing way in "The Blue Film." A rebellious teen's flight from her petit bourgeois life includes a bad boy, a gun, and a plan in "A Drive in the Country." In "A Little Place off the Edgware...
Author
Language
English
Description
British author Graham Greene embarked on two awe-inspiring and eye-opening journeys in the 1930s-to West Africa and to Mexico. Greene would find himself both shaken and inspired by these trips, which would go on to inform his novels.
Journey Without Maps: When Graham Greene set off from Liverpool in 1935 for what was then an Africa unmarked by colonization, it was to leave the known transgressions of his own civilization behind for those unknown....
Author
Language
English
Description
When Graham Greene left Liverpool in 1935 for what was then an Africa unmarked by colonization, it was to leave the known transgressions of his own civilization behind for those unknown. First by cargo ship, then by train and truck through Sierra Leone, and finally on foot, Greene embarked on a dangerous and unpredictable 350-mile, four-week trek through Liberia with his cousin, and a handful of servants and bearers, into a world where few had ever...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Maurice Bendrix, a writer in Clapham during the Blitz, develops an acquaintance with Sarah Miles, the bored, beautiful wife of a dull civil servant named Henry. Maurice claims it's to divine a character for his novel-in-progress. That's the first deception. What he really wants is Sarah, and what Sarah needs is a man with passion. So begins a series of reckless trysts doomed by Maurice's increasing romantic demands and Sarah's tortured sense of guilt....