The young Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from repeated nightmares of living a double life, in which by day he worked as a respectable doctor and by night he roamed the back alleys of old-town Edinburgh. In three days of furious writing, he produced a story about his dream existence. His wife found it too gruesome, so he promptly burned the manuscript. In another three days, he wrote it again. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a "shilling shocker" in 1886
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11526.37 | Fiction literature | 21 January 2012
5
Maybe a phrase, a line, a hint somewhere would reveal a reason, any reason, for the elderly couple's disappearance. They'd saved everything ...there was even a copy of the 'certificate of living existence', that nadir of bureaucratic imbecility ...What was the 'protocol', to use a word dear to government offices? Did one simply write on a sheet of paper something like: 'I, the undersigned, Salvo Montalbano, hereby declare myself to be in existence', sign it, and turn it in to the appointed clerk?
The riddles of metaphysics are the deepest and most puzzling questions we can ponder. Riddles of Existence is the first book ever to make metaphysics genuinely accessible and fun. Its lively, informal style brings these questions to life and shows how stimulating it can be to think about them. Earl Conee and Theodore Sider offer a lucid discussion of the major topics in metaphysics.
Few recent thriller writers have excited the kind of critical praise that Daniel Silva has, with his novels featuring art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon. Now Allon is back in Venice, when a terrible explosion in Rome leads to a disturbing personal revelation: the existence of a dossier in the hands of terrorists that strips away his secrets, lays bare his history.
The Chocolate Cake Sutra: Ingredients for a Sweet Life
Because everyone yearns for a recipe for a fruitful life, many may gravitate to this friendly, accessible "cookbook." A Buddhist priest and confessed chocolate cake devotee, Larkin (Stumbling Toward Enlightenment) started Still Point Zen center in inner city Detroit. In the best Zen tradition, she recounts many personal anecdotes that find their flavor percolating in that everyday existence. These stories rise to make vivid points in focused, economical chapters.
