Nazi persecution, oppression behind the Iron Curtain, the struggle of strangers in a strange land. This sombre history haunts the adults in Ann Beaglehole's novel Replacement Girl while their children expand into the bright, wide open landscape of their adopted country.Set in fifties to seventies Wellington, Replacement Girl vividly brings the immigrant experience to life. The story moves back and forwards in time and between New Zealand and Budapest, as Eva grows up in a family struggling with the after-effects of earlier losses and adjustment to a new culture. Eva and her group of four friends, all immigrant children and 'different', have to make their own adjustments and choices to survive and thrive in 1950s Wellington. They just want to leave the parents' past behind and live the carefree life of their schoolmates.With sensitivity and humour, Ann Beaglehole takes the reader inside the immigrant experience so that we see mid-century New Zealand through their eyes. Replacement Girl explores the tensions between generations and cultures. It is a story of love, relationships and cross-cultural marriage.

"Fantasy once again, deftly and convincingly -- as only Robert Nathan can do it -- handled, with a satiric twist now and again, and a pull at the heartstrings. He has told the story of a failure whose one escape into a dream world comes through the imposed background of the ship he has built for himself in his own drab front yard. When the wife who demands results, sells it as a hot dog stand, he takes one last stand -- and Fate plays into his hands and launches the ship on the high road of adventure, southward bound. He picks up a "crew" as rudderless as himself, and they make their way against insuperable obstacles until "the law" catches up with them. But -- he has won something as a bulwark for the future. There is pathos and humor and that indefinable tug at the love of makebelieve that gave One more spring its impetus. It lacks the immediate application to current problems -- but it has the same adult fairy tale quality."--Kirkus.

Things aren't looking so good for Cyril Paxton. Hoping to earn enough money to finally marry his true love, Daisy Strong, Cyril invests his savings in the stock market, and loses it all. Ruined and on the brink of emigrating to flee his creditors, he reads with amusement a newspaper story telling of the brazen robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds, worth half a million pounds. But who can imagine his surprise when he returns home and finds, thanks to a luggage mix-up on the train, that he is in possession of the jewels! Cyril is at first elated at his change of fortune, but he may not be so lucky as it seems. Inspector John Ireland of Scotland Yard is hot on his trail, suspecting him of being the thief. And worse yet, the real thieves are after him as well. And when Paxton falls into their clutches, he'll face a difficult choice: give up the jewels, or risk brutal torture and certain death! Richard Marsh was a versatile writer of ghost stories, horror novels, and romances, as well as thrilling mysteries like The Datchet Diamonds (1898). First appearing in the wake of the popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories, The Datchet Diamonds is one of the earliest modern detective novels. This edition reprints the unabridged text of the rare first edition and reproduces the original cover illustration from an early Victorian edition of the novel.

Evelyn, Gay and Margaret are sisters. When their widowed mother dies, the caring Evelyn is thrust into looking after Margaret, who was born blind. Gay, always pursuing her own interests, is happy to be taken out by the rich Gordon de Verriland, leaving Evelyn wondering if she will ever meet someone herself. Then, when Nicky March comes into Evelyn's life, could he be the one for her? Or will Gay's selfishness ruin her hope of love?

Tracker of lost memories and lost souls, the veteran San Francisco private eye Dan Kasdan manages, along his way from the 1960s to the 1990s, to find Priscilla, the love of his life, only to lose her. Kasdan, urged on by Priscilla, also finds himself entangled with Karim, the sleek pornographer and drug dealer who insists that only Dan is the right person to handle his transfers of cash and drugs. All three, Kasdan, Priscilla, and Karim, want more than what ordinary life can afford them. She Took My Arm As If She Loved Me is the story of the risks of love and age, played out against the turbulence of America's great metropolitan village, where freedom is no more easily come by than anywhere else.

Product Description When Jack Rodenko shipped out as a sailor during World War II, he never imagined that real adventure would be waiting for him at home in New Orleans. The Crescent City after the war is at the heart of a rapidly changing America, and ex-sailor Jack Rodenko is caught up in a strange and shifting milieu as he tends bar at a seedy club called L’Êtoile. While struggling to build a new life, Rodenko becomes involved with a corrupt, greedy power broker, and falls in love with a striking photographer - relationships that will force him to choose between two decidedly different futures. First published decades after the author's death in 1972, The Unknown Constellations is the first novel by unsung postwar literary hero Henry Swados. Through these pages, we can trace the origins of a unique voice and an unerring conscience. From Library Journal Written in the 1940s, this is Swados's recently rediscovered first novel. (The late Swados was the author of ten books, including The Will, which received a National Book Award nomination in 1963.) The novel concerns Jack Rodenko, a disaffected seaman who puts ashore in New Orleans, hoping to rebuild a life shattered by an accident that occurred while in college. Soon, he is a protege of corrupt, power-hungry Shepard Ball and becomes enmeshed in Ball's schemes involving drugs, weapons, and politics. In the end, Jack must decide between wealth and easy success with Ball or self-respect and the love of Linda Lester, a beautiful photographer. While generally melodramatic, the novel is significant for sounding themes Swados would develop in later works: father-son conflicts, concern for the working class, and the tensions between public and private commitments. For academic and large public libraries.?Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The story of Hannah Lazar's rise from humble origins to international fame in the fashion world and the passion and sorrows she experiences in love

Set during the California Gold Rush, Gabriel Conroy tells the story of a young man who falls in love with a woman from a higher social class. Bret Harte's vivid descriptions of the characters and the setting breathe life into the story, making it a classic of American literature. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"Humorous and highly amusing." - The Scotsman "A really entertaining collection of stories. The lover of fiction could not desire a more entertaining volume." - Yorkshire Post One of Richard Marsh's rarest works, Between the Dark and the Daylight (1902) contains twelve of Marsh's cleverest stories, ranging in theme from slapstick humour to Gothic horror. In "My Aunt's Excursion," the opening story of the volume, an urbanite Londoner leads his provincial aunt and her party of mostly deranged followers on a hilarious and madcap romp across London. In "Exchange is Robbery," Marsh's recurring charcters and jewellers to the aristocracy, Messrs. Golden and Ruby, discover they have been the victims of a massive jewel fraud. "The Haunted Chair," one of Marsh's strangest and most unnerving stories of horror, features an old chair at a gentlemen's club, whose owner seems capable of returning from the grave. In "A Relic of the Borgias," an ancient cameo ring appears to possess the power to kill. Other stories, like "Em" and "Nelly," reveal Marsh's softer side as a romantic novelist. This new edition, the first in over a century, features the unabridged text of the original work, along with an introduction by Prof. Paul Fox and a reproduction of the impossibly rare jacket cover of the original six shilling edition.

Wealthy Canadian scholar Harvey Gotham lives in splendid isolation in France and is working on a book about Job. He loves his wife, Effie,dearly but she has taken to planting bombs in supermarkets and has joined an anarchist group. Here, Spark returns to the Book of Job, whichhad always fascinated her, and 'the only problem' - the problem of suffering. Why does God allow it? A despairing and exhilarating read, TheOnly Problem is a masterwork.This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions betweenNovember 2017 and September 2018.

At the beginning, Deborah and her husband are in bed, saying goodbye to each other before he is posted overseas. They swear eternal loyalty. But Deborah is very soon bored by her life in the country with her young son and gets a job in London. She then acquires a lover, and when he is posted overseas another, and another

The lovely suburban streets are quiet, until one day the lawn of the philosopher is stolen, strange rains come, and little Celia makes a crashing announcement in class that closes her school. The Mud Game is a charming, surreal, entertaining novel about the way television took over our lives one strange day but left us still singing.

This new novel extends Koch's achievements in his previous novels and takes the reader to Koch's native Germany. Set in Weimar and Frankfurt in Germany, in the pivotal years 1927 and 1928, the novel is triggered the International Music Exhibition of 1927 "The Summer of Music. The reader is introduced to three main characters: Hanni Geisel, an amateur musician and hostess of star-studded Saturday 'dejeuners'; her lover Erwin Herzberg, the editor of the culture sections of the Frankfurter Zeitung; and Hanni's husband, Dr. Hermann Geisel, a successful lawyer and art collector. They constitute the Weimar triangle of the title. Koch again uses a multi-format narrative technique so highly praised in the German reviews of Recollections, including stories, excerpts from imagined memoirs, invented diaries, letters and even a synopsis of a never-produced operetta about the failed Hitler putsch of 1923, Putsching with Putzi.

The Prince of North Texas, unhappy because he has everything he wants except friends, finds they aren't so easy to come by.

Love Letters on Blue Paper And Other Stories (including Said the Old Man to the Young Man)

Her husband left her for another man. Her boyfriend may be cheating. Her mother's got a secret. Is everyone having great sex but Rachel? Lately, stand-up comic Rachel Katz's life has begun to resemble a not-so-funny comedy routine -- the kind where nobody laughs and everybody inches toward the door. It began when her husband cheated ... with another man. Now she's raising a ten-year-old son who's fixated on Barbra Streisand and wondering if her dentist boyfriend -- who won't stop flossing long enough to make love to her -- is having an affair. Enter Matt Clapton, a wickedly sexy washing machine repairman who likes Rachel's jokes and makes her feel like a woman for the first time in ages -- maybe in her entire life. With her mother busy planning a wedding Rachel isn't sure she wants, her son dead set on inviting Barbra to the reception, and the groom-to-be in South Africa, working on someone else's oral hygiene, the question is: What's she going to do about it? Especially when fame and fortune beckon in a comedy contest that could put her on the map ... and change her life forever. Spin Cycle tells a wickedly funny, shamelessly erotic story of lovers and liars, exes and children, parents and other strangers. This hip and hilarious new novel by the acclaimed author of Neurotica introduces a heroine who never loses her sense of humor and who discovers, somewhere between the rinse and spin cycles, that love -- and laughter -- can truly conquer all.

A beautifully written, sensual and evocative book, in the tradition of Amy Tan and Isabelle Allende, rich in magic realism and folklore. 'To understand the end you have to look for the beginning'. As a little girl in Jaffa, Israel, Tamara has an insatiable desire for stories, constantly asking questions of those around her, and demanding explanations. However, no-one ever seems to give Tamara the whole story, so instead she must piece together the various narratives herself in what will become a lifelong attempt to unravel the hidden secrets of her tangled family history, and so bring some meaning to her own life. Raised by her fiercely independent maternal grandmother, Simcha, who jealously guards her from others, in particular her paternal grandmother, Rashella, Tamara's love of stories develops into a voracious appetite for life itself. An impulsive, passionate seeker of knowledge in all its forms, nothing prepares her for the thrilling intensity and the danger of falling deeply, madly in love for the first time

A journey of identity and belonging in a changing South Africa. A passionate and complex tale of people in an unpredictable land. The story of a South African man who returns home and finds the one woman who remembers his past: his nanny. Together they travel through the nation, rediscovering the child he once was and meeting the country he had denied. He meets up with old school friends and discovers unexpected new friends as his travels reinvigorate his love for his country and its peoples.

Maxine Kumin's novel is onve of the first serious fictions to deal with the new possibiliti4es of man=woman relationships. It is about the genuine liberation of two people struggling honestly toward a mutually rewarding love. It is a refreshing and humanizing book, written with the grace and skill of one of America's best poets.

From Kirkus Reviews Reading a Rubens novel (Mate in Three, Our Father, Sat on Edge--all 1987) requires an iron-nerved distance. Her cool tales about acrid domestic relations and solitary masturbatory griefs, rages, and obsessions, touched as they are with a bizarre comic irony, cut deep. Here, a London psychiatrist, cold as an arctic bean, germinates an evil seed. Dr. Alistair Crown's wife, Virginia, has just given birth to their first child, named ``Doris'' by an angry Virginia from a card she found in the flowers Alistair brought her--flowers purloined from a cemetery. Alistair is cheap as well as rotten. Doris is born with Down's syndrome, and Alistair will never look at the child's face. But he will touch her body (after covering her face) with what he considers one version of parental love, and then, obsessed, he will draw doodles of an imagined Doris face. Inevitably, Alistair and Virginia separate, and he continues to see patients. (Rubens wickedly skewers the workday of a bored psychiatrist). Into Alistair's office one day comes ``Esau,'' a huge man covered with hair like an animal. Rejected by his father, Esau strips before medical men to reverse his father's withering verdict, and Esau becomes Alistair's gentle friend (platonic). Esau's tragic end preludes another erasure of innocence when little five-year-old Doris is kidnapped. The anguish of temporarily reunited parents and grandparents as hours and days tick by has acid calms and tempests of unrelieved nightmare. The close is predictable, but such is Rubens's skill that the reader must plunge along to the end of a very direful road indeed. A teeth-grinding, chilling tale of human nastiness--in guises that are both horrible and most commonplace. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Product Description Dr. Alistair Crown is disappointed when his wife gives birth to a daughter, but when he learns that she has Down syndrome, he rejects the child