The hero of Paul Ableman's Vilp (1962) is Clive Witt, a novelist in search of a hero for his new novel. He advertises for suitable applicants, and from seventy-three replies he selects three: Professor Guthrie Pidge, a zoologist; Pad Dee Murphy, an Irish-Burmese peasant; and Harry Glebe, the inventor of the renowned earth-borer. Clive's novel, though, progresses slowly. His three heroes refuse to mix their very disparate elements into a harmonious whole. Eventually, Clive scraps it and harnesses his team of heroes to a new work, an exciting science fiction tale called The Silver Spores . In this, mankind meets the Vilp! The novel ends with the 5,000 strong Vilp Galactic Council communing in space at an incredibly high telepathic level. 'Excellent... vital, taut, brilliantly imaginative' Anthony Burgess

First published in 1962 As Near as I Can Get was Paul Ableman's follow up to his critically acclaimed debut I Hear Voices. Following Alan Peebles, a young man struggling to become a poet, As Near as I Can depicts a mid-twentieth century London of offices, pubs and lodgings. Fuelled by drink through these desperate years, the narrator charts his encounters with women and fellow artists, as he seeks to glimpse a wonder in life barely discernible beneath the routine of every day. The novel was reviewed by Anthony Burgess, a greatly admirer of Ableman's work for its inventive language, bawdy high spirits and originality of form.

The Flutter of an Eyelid, originally published in 1933, is a vicious, and often quite funny, satire of Southern California's bohemian community in the 1920s by Jewish-American novelist Myron Brinig (1896-1991). Illustrated by Lynd Ward (1905-1985). Some of the novel's characters are loosely based on prominent residents of the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park, an early center of film-making on the West Coast. These include the rare book dealer Jake Zeitlin (1902-1987), whose shop became a gathering place for local writers and artists, and who introduced Brinig to his circle of friends; and the charismatic evangelist and media celebrity Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944). Zeitlin, who was caricatured as a self-loathing Jewish antique dealer in the novel, considered the book an "insulting betrayal" and, after seeing an early set of galleys, threatened to sue. He succeeded in having some of its more offensive anti-Semitic passages removed prior to its publication. Jewish himself, Brinig was no anti-Semite; he and Zeitlin simply did not get along. One source reports that shortly after the book was released, it was pulled from stores because of further legal threats from McPherson and some of the other individuals who were too "thinly disguised" in the novel.

Paperback edition of a novel first published in 1991, giving an account of one man's weekend encounter with insanity. The author has also written the award-winning autobiography TWhole Life', and several novels and short stories. His novel TFlying Home' was selected by the National Book Council as one of the 10 best Australian books of the decade.

This book is for all who have experienced love and yearning in their lives, who are able to smile through tears and conceal the sufferings of their souls behind that laughter. Yearning for Paradise follows the hero who finds his lost love and together they begin the path of return to the Garden of Paradise and at-one-ment with the once forsaken Lord. From medieval to modern times, from Mexico and Moscow to Mississippi, this magical mystery tour defies the boundaries of time and space. Mikhail Morgulis shows us how in our search to be reunited with the Father that love can conquer all. Yet it is we who must make that effort to do good and battle evil in this life. For the novel reminds us of the words of John F. Kennedy: "asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth, God's work must truly be our own."

Best Gay Erotica 2006 is a cornucopia of searing man-sex. From the languid, Bolero-paced striptease of a magnificently buff lover in James Williams’s "The End” to the fevered gropings of a skater boy and a pink-haired goth in "DogBoy and the BetaGoth” by Nadyalec Hijazi and Ben Blackthorne, Best Gay Erotica holds something for every wicked taste. In Jeff Mann’s "Daddy Dave,” a lover awakens his gentle new partner’s dominant side by letting him witness a master's skillful savagery. Steven Zeeland’s "Trouble Loves Me” maps a porn director’s odyssey through a vivid underworld of bad boy marines, sailors, and submariners. Edited by Richard Labonté and selected and introduced by the inimitable Matt Bernstein Sycamore, Best Gay Erotica 2006 furthers the series’ reputation for gorgeous storytelling and hot, no-holds-barred sex between men. The book also features an excerpt from Dennis Cooper’s new novel The Sluts.

Longing is a psychological novel focusing on a young woman's dependence on her husband and her attempts to forge an independent life for herself by escaping their unhealthy relationship. Rosa, a frail, sensitive American Jew living in Paris, marries an alcoholic expatriate from Chile and finds herself trapped in a sado-masochistic relationship. Amid a series of fast-moving events - the birth of their daughter, moves to her parents' home in New York and then to Sausalito, California, and various sexual encounters - Espinosa explores Antonio's fears and failures and Rosa's implicit trust in him to direct her life. Ultimately, Rosa begins to question her relationship with her husband and her parents.

Mina Scarletti returns in her most thrilling mystery yet! Perfect for fans of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and Antonia Hodgson... A family is being torn apart by rumours of a murderer in their midst. Can Mina solve the mystery and lay the ghosts to rest? Brighton, 1871 Mina Scarletti is becoming well known for unmasking fraudulent psychics . So it is no surprise to her when a young couple write to her seeking her advice. George Fernwood and Mary Clifton, betrothed distant cousins, have a family secret that is preventing them from getting married. Twenty years ago, their alcoholic grandfather died in his bed and since then rumours have been circulating that someone in the family murdered him . Desperate to find out the truth, they have decided to seek out a medium to communicate with their grandfather, and they want Mina to help them find one who is genuine. Though she is not a believer in ghosts, Mina is intrigued by the family mystery and decides to help them in any way she can. Could one of the new mediums advertising in Brighton really be genuine? Will they help George and Mary find the answers they are looking for? Or will this Unquiet Ghost ruin the chance of happiness for future generations...? AN UNQUIET GHOST is the third cosy mystery in Linda Stratmann's intriguing historical series, the Mina Scarletti Mysteries, a traditional British detective series with a feisty woman sleuth set in Victorian Brighton. 'I love Linda Stratmann's writing . Her descriptions of Brighton are so sharp and vivid you can smell and taste the city on every page.' - Peter James, author of Dead Like You 'Linda Stratmann has provided an indomitable heroine in Mina Scarletti' - Promoting Crime Blog 'The novel is perfect for those who enjoy a Victorian atmosphere [...] it is thoughtful, well-characterised and thought-provoking' - Historical Novel Society 'Linda Stratmann is happily feeding the unquenchable thirst for Victorian crime fiction' - Crime Fiction Lover THE MINA SCARLETTI MYSTERY SERIES: BOOK ONE: Mr Scarletti's Ghost BOOK TWO: The Royal Ghost BOOK THREE: An Unquiet Ghost BOOK FOUR: The Ghost of Hollow House BOOK FIVE: His Father's Ghost BOOK SIX: The Cyanide Ghost

Babble, a babybook for our time, is a fiction about (1) loss of innocence, (2) rites of passage, (3) family life, (4) babies, (5) baby-sitters, (6) war and peace, (7) robots, (8) raw youth, (9) crime and punishment, (10) stories, (11) sex and death, (12) language, (13) advanced education, (14) love, (15) the invention of culture, (16) mystery, (17) play, (18) fathers and sons, (19) superheroes, (20) the dehumanization of art. Babble is a baby book for grown ups, a comic novel about entering and losing the world, an adult dream of lost babyhood. Like Baumbach's previous novel, Reruns , though moving perhaps one step further out (or in), Babble depicts our world through a screen of metaphors, using the stuff of dreams, memory and cultural fantasy.

In a Hotel Garden is a provocative work by the English novelist once described by Sir Frank Kermode as "an admirable and rare example of the writer-critic." It is a captivating novella, written almost entirely in dialogue. In a Hotel Garden unfolds character and meaning with a lovely, meditative tension. The narrator Ben relates to his friends his enthralling encounter with a Jewish woman in the Dolomite Alps. The tale of her compulsive visit to a hotel garden in Siena--where her grandmother fell in love with a man soon to be a victim of the Holocaust--illuminates Ben's half-lived life, and raises the question of how we can ever come to terms with the destruction of the European Jews in our century. The Independent in England (where this novel first appeared) said, "Its [the novel's] enigmas are those of life itself, and Josipovici sets them before us with clarity, tact and compassion."

"I have never read a text which goes even half as far as this one in expressing the particular poignancy which lay at the heart of the impressionist movement. I say this as an art critic. As a novelist I would simply like to pay my tribute to the mastery of language, portraiture and storytelling which Figes has now at her command." John Berger ?Reprinted for the first time in nearly 25 years, this shimmering short novel gives an extraordinary portrait of a day in the life of an artist at work and at home. In prose as luminous as the colors Monet is using to portray his beloved garden, Eva Figes guides us through the day, from the dawn ('midnight blueblack growing grey and misty') through midday ('the sun was high now...shrinking what little shadow remained, fading colours, the pink rambler roses on the fence by the railway track looked almost white, and the grass had turned a tired yellow') to evening ('the tide of shadows rising as the sunset glow faded outside and the room grew dark.'). Monet's wife, Alice, grieving for a lost daughter; a living daughter, Germaine, fretting that she will not be able to marry the young man she loves; their friend, the abbe, eating and drinking with them, observing the essential faith of the painter's art; two children, playing, closest to Monet in the freshness and certainty of their vision; all experiencing in very different ways the richness of the light that Monet works unceasingly to pin down in his last, great paintings.

Erskine Childers, the famed author of the classic novel of sailing and spying The Riddle of the Sands served with London's finest-The City Imperial Volunteers within its artillery arm-associated with the Honourable Artillery Company. Childers-together with his enthusiastic colleagues from the professions of the city were keen to fight the Boers of South Africa and he has written an engaging and detailed account of his time with the regiment during the war. It is written in an easy informal style-of the kind that has ensured that his better known writing has endured for over a century-as he takes the reader through training to experiences on the battlefield itself.

In evoking the joy and pain of the Jewish immigrant experience, Anzia Yezierska has no peer. Her stories, written from the 1920s to the 1960s, immortalized the lives of the Jews of New York's Lower East Side. The Open Cage collects sixteen of her best stories and excerpts from her autobiography to illustrate her extraordinary storytelling gift as well as her personal experience as an immigrant woman. Along with her novel Bread Givers, the work gathered here constitutes her enduring achievement. Included are "The Fat of the Land," Children of Loneliness," America and I," The Lost 'Beautifulness, '" and other stories; vignettes from Red Ribbon on a White Horse: My Story; and four remarkable stories of old age. The introduction by Historian Alice Kessler-Harris and the afterword by Yezierska's daughter and biographer, Louise Levitas Henriksen, place the writings in a rich and valuable context.

Lois Ackerman watched her friends changing around her, and watched herself change as she sturggled to come to terms with her own intelligence in a time when intellignce and womanhood weren't supposed to mix; as she fell happily into the baffling predicaments of sex; and as she made her way nimbly around the compromises and capitulations that were claiming the brightest and best of her companions. This funny, touching novel radiates the aura of a fondly remembered, vanished age — a time not so innocent (and not so distant) as we might be tempted to believe.

In this English translation of the 1993 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize winner Dulcinea encantada (1992) by Mexican author Angelina Muñiz-Huberman, Dulcinea travels in a car writing novels in her mind about several Dulcineas: a medieval princess on a quest, a nineteenth-century lady-in-waiting in Mexico, and a twentieth-century young woman who was sent to Russia as a girl to escape the Spanish Civil War and later journeys to Mexico to reunite with her parents. Unsure of her identity, Dulcinea remembers, debates, and records memories of her exile. As she circles Mexico City, she examines the role of memory, speech, and writing through her fragmented narrative voice. Dulcinea explores her place in the world through storytelling, blurring the line between reality and imagination. This novel pairs a lyrical and contemplative style with experimental writing to present common themes of identity formation and exile in a unique form. Dulcinea’s quest is also one of spiritual connection with apocalyptic and mystical overtones. With allusions to both Christian and Jewish mystical traditions, this novel reveals a crypto-Jewish presence typical of Muñiz-Huberman’s writing, forming part of a Sephardic literary tradition. This edition includes an introduction and annotations by the translator, Rebecca Marquis.

In this sequel to the hilarious science fiction novel No Small Bills, the aptly named DuckBob Spinowitz is settling into his new job as Guardian of the Matrix and his new friendship with the Man in Black he dubbed Tall. But when a gift/bribe from Tall has an unexpected effect on the dour government agent, it's up to DuckBob to figure out what's going on and save his friend-and possibly the entire human race! Again! And all without leaving his couch!

The stories we tell are not limited to monsters and harsh otherworlds. Yet the fiction books in the Borealis imprint certainly belong to a world other than our own. This line encompasses our science fiction, fantasy and horror novels and anthologies.

Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946), was an English novelist, in his lifetime a major and successful writer of genre fiction including thrillers. He composed some one hundred and fifty novels, mainly of the suspense and international intrigue nature, but including romances, comedies, and parables of everyday life.

Fiction. Fourth volume of THE HEART BENEATH, a quartet of novels linking England and Germany in the mid–20th century.