600 results for "Adventure"

The Old Bunch

Meyer Levin,David Rolfe
Meyer Levin was a Chicago-born Jewish author. His best-known book is "Compulsion", which is a novelization of the notorious Loeb and Leopold murder case of 1924. Levin was in a special position to tell the story, because he was personally acquainted with the perpetrators. Levin is also famous for bringing Anne Frank's diary to light. But "The Old Bunch" may be his greatest work. "The Old Bunch" was written in the mid-1930's, and it tells the tales of the kids of a Chicago Jewish ghetto coming of age and stepping out into the world. It's presumably something of a fantasy autobiography, echoing Levin's own adventures -- Levin was born in 1905, and the events in this book take place beginning in the year 1921 (when the "bunch" is graduating from school), and running through to 1934. The book is compelling for its individual stories and for its living window into times past. Because it was written prior to the horrors of WWII, it's a very pure view of the pre-war era. (Anything written later will necessarily be done with hindsight, and will likely de-emphasize "unimportant" details in favor of those that connect to major war events.) But the history is merely a fascinating byproduct of the vivid human stories that fill the pages. "The Old Bunch" is surprisingly unknown today, which is a shame. This really is one of the great novels, in a class with Tolstoy and Steinbeck. It conveys the entirety of the era: The people, the culture, the economics, Chicago politics (very dirty!), with a global perspective as well (some characters travel to Europe and Palestine). It covers the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, the Great Depression, and the New Deal. To read the book is to live and breathe in these bygone days. Most importantly, Meyer Levin depicts events without agenda or judgment. Characters may be Democrats or Republicans or workers or bosses or religionists or atheists or many other things, but all are portrayed with depth, and none are simple heroes or villains or symbols. These are, in the end, tales about the very personal and individual transitions to adulthood, and the elusive quest for wisdom. It is the same challenge that every generation must face. "The Old Bunch" was critically acclaimed and went through numerous print editions, but it eventually passed into the public domain and was temporarily forgotten. A Wall Street Journal article in 2012 ("Destiny's Children", by Joseph Epstein) sparked a revival of interest, and Rancho Lazarus Publications is proud to present a new edition, accurately rendered and true to the original text, and with the addition of occasional footnotes to clarify details of historical accuracy that the modern reader may not have on tap. With almost 700 pages of text (the original hardback book ran to almost 1000 pages), this is an epic novel. But far from being overlong, it's the sort of reading that leaves you wishing there was more. "Written in good hard-driving colloquial prose, full of sharp characterizations. . . A very fine novel." -- New Republic "A landmark -- vivid and exciting reading. It brilliantly succeeds in taking the reader on a memorable tour of the world in which the old bunch lived." -- The New York Times
Rancho Lazarus Publications 2014-07-31 674 pages

Mac Raboy's Flash Gordon. Volume 4

Raboy, Mac
Thrill to the celestial dangers of space travel and the science fiction action of yesteryear's Flash Gordon weekly series! Ming the Merciless, the traitorous Klag, a mysterious creature known as "The Mind," and a host of villains and dangers oppose the hardy, heroic Flash in a reprint series that marks the first time that Mac Raboy's run on this acclaimed strip has ever been collected. From Alex Raymond to Reed Crandall to Al Williamson, stellar artists have long-contributed to the success of Flash Gordon, and Mac Raboy is in the same class of top talent. Beginning his comics career in 1940, Emanuel 'Mac' Raboy is perhaps best known for his work on Captain Marvel, Jr. and the Green Lama in the 1940s. In the Spring of 1948, he signed on with King Features to illustrate the 'Flash Gordon' Sunday page, and Mac Raboy's run on this serial was actually longer than Alex Raymond's. Join Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkov in these exquisitely drawn, fantastical adventures!
Dark Horse Books 2016 269 pages

Beyond the Gap

Harry Turtledove
Count Hamnet Thyssen is a minor noble of the drowsy old Raumsdalian Empire. Its capital city, Nidaros, began as a mammoth hunters’ camp at the edge of the great Glacier. But that was centuries ago, and as everyone knows, it’s the nature of the great Glacier to withdraw a few feet every year. Now Nidaros is an old and many-spired city; and though they still feel the breath of the great Glacier in every winter’s winds, the ice cap itself has retreated beyond the horizon. Trasamund, a clan chief of the mammoth-herding Bizogots, the next tribe north, has come to town with strange news. A narrow gap has opened in what they'd always thought was an endless and impregnable wall of ice. The great Glacier does not go on forever--and on its other side are new lands, new animals, and possibly new people. Ancient legend says that on the other side is the Golden Shrine, put there by the gods to guard the people of their world. Now, perhaps, the road to the legendary Golden Shrine is open. Who could resist the urge to go see? For Count Hamnet and his several companions, the glacier has always been the boundary of the world. Now they'll be traveling beyond it into a world that's bigger than anyone knew. Adventures will surely be had...
Macmillan 2008-04 432 pages

Trans-Siberian Express

Warren Adler
American cancer specialist Dr. Alex Cousins is on a covert mission to the USSR. His task: to save the life of Soviet Politburo Chief Viktor Moiseyevich Dimitrov. But the tenuous alliance between the two crumbles one night. Alex stumbles upon Dimitrov's sinister plans for a nuclear strike on China. The Russians dispatch Alex on a six-thousand-mile journey aboard the infamous Trans-Siberian Express - thus ensuring he won't get home in time to warn the US of the imminent attack.As the train lumbers east across snow-cloaked mountains, watchful eyes rest on the American doctor. Surrounding him are people beaten and broken by life, each drawn to this emperor of trains in search of a brighter future. But most curious is Anna Petrovna Valentinova, the hauntingly beautiful history professor.The Trans-Siberian Express roars onward through a cavern of hopes and memories. A train attendant yearns for love, a persecuted Jewish couple runs to a new home, and a passionate romance transcending political barriers unfolds under KGB surveillance.
Stonehouse Press 2021-02-23 408 pages

The Delegate from Venus by Henry Slesar, Science Fiction, Fantasy

Henry Slesar
Jerry Bridges, sitting in the chair opposite his employer's desk, chewed on his knuckles and said nothing. One part of his mind wanted him to play it cagey, to behave the way the newspaper wanted him to behave, to protect the cozy Washington assignment he had waited four years to get. But another part of him, a rebel part, wanted him to stay on the trail of the story he felt sure was about to break. "I didn't mean to make trouble, Mr. Conners," he said casually. "It just seemed strange, all these exchanges of couriers in the past two days. I couldn't help thinking something was up." "Even if that's true, we'll hear about it through the usual channels," Conners frowned. "But getting a senator's secretary drunk to obtain information--well, that's not only indiscreet, Bridges. It's downright dirty."
Alan Rodgers Books LLC 2011-06 26 pages

Harold Robbins' The curse

Robbins, Harold
Art investigator Madison Dupre knows a fake when she sees it. When the mysterious Dr. Kaseem offers to pay her a handsome sum to “ransom” a scarab stolen from the tomb of King Tut, her gut tells her to walk away. Since she still needs to pay the rent, Madison throws caution to wind and prepares to search for the Heart of Egypt. Before she can pack a suitcase, she finds herself framed for murder and on the run. Her leads take her to Stonehenge, England, where a Druid sex cult worships a “goddess of love,” a woman with enough personal wealth to buy a host of admirers. Madison finds an admirer of her own in Rafi al-Din, an Egyptian antiquities investigator she knows she can’t trust, but who arouses her passions. Drawn to Egypt in search of the scarab, Madison is trapped in the land of the Pharaohs when her passport is seized at the airport. She knows she is being played by Kaseem, who believes the Heart has the power to galvanize the masses to support his secret cause. From the famed Khan marketplace, to the Valley of the Kings and the incredible colossi at Abu Simbel, Madison treads a careful path among tomb robbers, assassins, and political fanatics. She must dodge curses both ancient and modern to stay alive. The wild and epic stories of Harold Robbins live on in this sweeping series by Junius Podrug.
Forge 2011-11-08 317 pages

Mrs. Ted Bliss

Stanley Elkin
Mrs. Ted's life has always been defined by her family... her husband, her kids, her "gang" of friends in Chicago. Now a widow, living on her own in a Miami condominium complex, she begins to step out of her strictly defined lifestyle. Three men in particular are paying her a great deal of attention, and her children begin to worry about her adventures with her new "friends". But it's only when Mrs. Ted runs into her husband's former business partner, Milton "Junior" Yellin, that the blush comes back into her cheeks.
Wheeler Pub. 1996 414 pages

Kolymsky Heights

Davidson, Lionel
Mysterious, coded messages have come from the remotest, most dreaded former gulag in northern Siberia. They plead for a certain man to be sent to carry out the most astounding Russian secret of all. The man is Johnny Porter-fierce rebel, Rhodes scholar, loner outdoors- man, cynic, genius-the most memo- rable fiction hero of this decade. The account of how he gets in, finds the man—and woman-who sent for him, and tries to get their secret out is a masterpiece of wrenching excitement, shredding suspense, and immensely intelligent storytelling, with twists that continue until the last very page --
St. Martin's Press 1994 361 pages

Harry Harrison Super Pack

Harry Harrison
Harry Harrison was recognized as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writer's of America. He was best known for his Deathworld and Stainless Steel Rat series. He was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Sideways Awards. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. This omnibus edition of his work includes four complete novels and six short stories. Both of his best known series Deathworld and The Stainless Steel Rat are represented herein. If you enjoyed this book, you'll want to search on "Positronic Publishing Super Pack" and check out all our other exciting Super Packs!
Wilder Publications 2018-04-03 586 pages

Hidden Menace

David Kessler
When Mossad operative Dov Shamir kills an al-Quaida terrorist in London, his face is captured on a webcam, turning what should have been a routine assassination into a nightmare. Branded a "rogue operative" and abandoned by his own people, Dov takes refuge in the home of the one man he can count on to help him - a Palestinian intellectual who was his professor and mentor at the School of Oriental and African Studies where he did his PhD. Though Dov and Rahman are divided by politics, Rahman is a man of immense personal loyalty and a staunch opponent of anything that will bring the Palestinian cause into disrepute (as well as being Dov's former SCUBA diving partner). But it becomes particularly important to help when Dov reveals the terrorists' plan to blow up the sunken wreckage of an old World War II munitions ship packed with high explosives. But when the terrorists ambush them, Dov has to form an uneasy alliance with Salima - Rahman's feisty and distrustful 24-year-old daughter. Unable to convince the skeptical authorities that the attack on the ship is anything other than a desperate fabrication by Dov, their only hope is a junior police officer. But he has motives of his own. And with the net closing in on the fleeing Israeli operative, Dov and Salima find themselves caught in a race against time to stop the attack before hundreds of innocent people are killed.
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2011-11-30 88 pages

The Egyptologist

Arthur Phillips
From the bestselling author of Prague comes a witty, inventive, brilliantly constructed novel about an Egyptologist obsessed with finding the tomb of an apocryphal king. This darkly comic labyrinth of a story opens on the desert plains of Egypt in 1922, then winds its way from the slums of Australia to the ballrooms of Boston, by way of Oxford, the battlefields of the First World War, and a royal court in turmoil. Just as Howard Carter unveils the tomb of Tutankhamun, making the most dazzling find in the history of archaeology, Oxford-educated Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush is digging himself into trouble, having staked his professional reputation and his fiancŽe's fortune on a scrap of hieroglyphic pornography. Meanwhile, a relentless Australian detective sets off on the case of his career, spanning the globe in search of a murderer. And another murderer. And possibly another murderer. The confluence of these seemingly separate stories results in an explosive ending, at once inevitable and utterly unpredictable. Arthur Phillips leads this expedition to its unforgettable climax with all the wit and narrative bravado that made Prague one of the most critically acclaimed novels of 2002. Exploring issues of class, greed, ambition, and the very human hunger for eternal life, this staggering second novel gives a glimpse of Phillips's range and maturity, and is sure to earn him further acclaim as one of the most exciting authors of his generation.
Scribe Publications 2010 383 pages