1807 results for "Mystery"

The First Casualty

Ben Elton
From Ben Elton, author of the hugely successful Past Mortem, a gut-wrenching historical drama which forces us to handle the truth. Flanders, June 1917: a British officer and celebrated poet is shot dead, killed not by German fire, but while he was recuperating from shell shock well behind the lines. A young English soldier is arrested and, although he protests his innocence, is charged with his murder. Douglas Konig is a conscientious objector, previously a detective with the London police, now imprisoned for his beliefs. He is released and sent to France in order to secure a conviction in the case. Forced to conduct his investigations amid the hell of the third Battle of Ypres, Konig soon discovers that both the evidence and the witnesses he needs are quite literally disappearing into the mud that surrounds him. Ben Elton s tenth novel is a gut-wrenching historical drama that explores some fundamental questions. What is murder? What is justice in the face of unimaginable daily slaughter? And where is the honour in saving a man from the gallows if he is only to be returned to die in a suicidal battle? As the gap between legally sanctioned and illegal murder becomes ever more blurred, Konig quickly learns that the first casualty of war is Truth. "From the Trade Paperback edition.""
Black Swan 2006 443 pages

Finding zero: a mathematician's odyssey to uncover the origins of numbers

Aczel, Amir D.
"The invention of numerals is perhaps the greatest abstraction the human mind has ever created. Virtually everything in our lives is digital, numerical, or quantified. The story of how and where we got these numerals, which we so depend on, has for thousands of years been shrouded in mystery. Finding Zero is an adventure filled saga of Amir Aczel's lifelong obsession: to find the original sources of our numerals. Aczel has doggedly crisscrossed the ancient world, scouring dusty, moldy texts, cross examining so-called scholars who offered wildly differing sets of facts, and ultimately penetrating deep into a Cambodian jungle to find a definitive proof. Here, he takes the reader along for the ride. The history begins with the early Babylonian cuneiform numbers, followed by the later Greek and Roman letter numerals. Then Aczel asks the key question: where do the numbers we use today, the so-called Hindu-Arabic numerals, come from? It is this search that leads him to explore uncharted territory, to go on a grand quest into India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and ultimately into the wilds of Cambodia. There he is blown away to find the earliest zero--the keystone of our entire system of numbers--on a crumbling, vine-covered wall of a seventh-century temple adorned with eaten-away erotic sculptures. While on this odyssey, Aczel meets a host of fascinating characters: academics in search of truth, jungle trekkers looking for adventure, surprisingly honest politicians, shameless smugglers, and treacherous archaeological thieves--who finally reveal where our numbers come from. "--
Palgrave Macmillan 2015-01-06 242 pages

The West End Horror

Nicholas Meyer
Strange things are happening in London, 1895. Someone kills a theater critic. There's a throat-slashing at the Savoy. A police surgeon disappears, taking two corpses with him. Then it gets really bizarre.Some of the theater's most fashionable and creative names are Bernard Shaw, a struggling writer; Bram Stoker, a shady box office clerk; Henry Irving, an aging star; and Oscar Wilde, a controversial wit. Scotland Yard is baffled by what appears to be a string of unrelated cases. But to Sherlock Holmes, it's elementary, a maniac is on the loose. And his name is Jack."Sherlock Holmes didn't die with Conan Doyle. He lives on through the pen of Nicholas Meyer." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)
Random House Publishing Group 1980-02 192 pages

That day the Rabbi left town

Kemelman, Harry
The head of the English department at Boston's Windermere College is murdered and there is no shortage of people who might have done it. Professor Malcom Kent, the victim, was a philanderer, a Peeping Tom and a snob. Rabbi David Small, professor of Judaica at the college investigates, drawn into the case because a suspect is a fellow rabbi. By the author of The Day the Rabbi Resigned.
Fawcett Columbine 1996 245 pages

Finder

Rucka, Greg
As a bodyguard, Atticus Kodiak knows danger is part of the job. But he still can't shake his guilt over his best friend's death in their last assignment. As a bouncer at a hard-core club on the Lower West Side, Atticus is responsible for nothing more than keeping the scene under control. Until he sees Erika Wyatt, the teenage daughter of an Army colonel Atticus once guarded. Stalked by a cold-eyed commando fondling a wicked knife, Erika draws Atticus back into the protection business. In a case built on lies, vengeance, and sins of the past, Atticus is pulled into a vortex of treachery and violence, and learns that a promise can be the most dangerous weapon of all.... --
Bantam 1997 276 pages

House of mystery. Vol. 1: the Bronze Age omnibus

Wein, Len,Albano, John
At the end of the 1960s,a new generation of creators began to make its mark on American comics, and one of its greatest showcases was the family of gothic anthologies overseen by legendary DC comics editor Joe Orlando. In their stylishly sinister pages, spine-tingling stories were spun by the future masters of the medium, and arresting archetypes were established that still resonate to this day. Now these classic tales of of the weird, and the otherworldly are gathered for the first time in a handsome hardcover edition. HOUSE OF MYSTERY: THE BRONZE AGE OMNIBUS VOL 1 collects issues #174-200 of the acclaimed series and features scarily sublime work from a horde of comics' greatest talents, including Len Wein, Alex Toth, Gerry Conway, Bernie Wrightson, Marv Wolfman, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Jack Oleck, Neal Adams, Wally Wood, Al Williamson, Sergio Aragones, and many more!
DC Comics 2025 792 pages

In search of Deep Throat: the greatest political mystery of our time

Garment, Leonard
More than a quarter century after Bob Woodward introduced his Scotch-drinking, cigarette-smoking, garage-skulking friend and source in All the President's Men , the public remains enduringly engrossed by the mystery of Deep Throat's identity. Leonard Garment became fascinated himself and began his own search for Deep Throat. This is the story of that hunt and its successful outcome, a hunt conducted in quintessential Washington fashion: at lunches, dinners, and parties, through the examination of secret, classified documents and testimony, and assisted by liberal doses of political gossip and insider tips from Woodward himself.
Basic Books 2000 280 pages

The mystery of economic growth

Helpman, Elhanan
Far more than an intellectual puzzle for pundits, economists, and policymakers, economic growth--its makings and workings--is a subject that affects the well-being of billions of people around the globe. In The Mystery of Economic Growth , Elhanan Helpman discusses the vast research that has revolutionized understanding of this subject in recent years, and summarizes and explains its critical messages in clear, concise, and accessible terms. The tale of growth economics, as Helpman tells it, is organized around a number of themes: the importance of the accumulation of physical and human capital; the effect of technological factors on the rate of this accumulation; the process of knowledge creation and its influence on productivity; the interdependence of the growth rates of different countries; and, finally, the role of economic and political institutions in encouraging accumulation, innovation, and change. One of the leading researchers of economic growth, Helpman succinctly reviews, critiques, and integrates current research--on capital accumulation, education, productivity, trade, inequality, geography, and institutions--and clarifies its relevance for global economic inequities. In particular, he points to institutions--including property rights protection, legal systems, customs, and political systems--as the key to the mystery of economic growth. Solving this mystery could lead to policies capable of setting the poorest countries on the path toward sustained growth of per capita income and all that that implies--and Helpman's work is a welcome and necessary step in this direction.
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2004-09-30 223 pages

The Real Work On the Mystery of Mastery

Adam Gopnik
For decades now, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a more fundamental matter, one he had often meditated on in The New Yorker: How do masters learn their miraculous skill, whether it was drawing a museum-ready nude or baking a perfect sourdough loaf? How could anyone become so good at anything? There seemed to be a fundamental mystery to mastery. Was it possible to unravel it? In The Real Work--the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick--Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up--of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection--as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness. Gopnik's simplest and most invigorating lesson, however, is that we are surrounded by mastery. Far from rare, mastery is commonplace, if we only know where to look: from the parent who can whip up a professional strudel to the social worker who--in one of the most personally revealing passages Gopnik has ever written--helps him master his own demons. Spirited and profound, The Real Work will help you understand how mastery can happen in your own life--and, significantly, why each of us relentlessly seeks to better ourselves in the first place.
Liveright Publishing Corporation 2024-04-02 256 pages