From the glassworks of Murano to the commercial hub of Timbuktu--and through fearsome peril on land and sea--entrepreneurship, religion, gold fever, friendship and revenge fuel this rich historical romance from a masterful raconteur. In 1464, adventurer and merchant banker Nicholas van der Pole (hero of three previous Dunnett novels) returns to Venice to find his financial empire in jeopardy due to the Crusades and the onslaught of powerful, unscrupulous competitors.
In All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy begins his Border Trilogy with a coming of age tale that is a departure from the bizarre richness and mysterious violence of his early novels, yet in many ways preserves the mystery and the richness in a more understated form. Like Blood Meridian, this novel follows a young man's journey to the regions of the unknown. John Grady Cole, more heroic than the protagonists of McCarthy's earlier novels, confronts the evil that is an inescapable part of the universe as well as the evil that grows out of his own ignorance and pride. His story is told in a style often restrained and simple, embedded with lyrical passages that echo his dreams and memory.
Harold Blomm's "Novelists and Novels" is an in-between kind of book about books. The cynic may at once think that this is the kind of book that neither the novice nor mature reader will bother with. On the contrary, the book is a beautiful bridge that crosses from the basic to the sublime.
The early life of Herbert George Wells was filled with poverty, injuries, failed apprenticeships, brief periods of schooling, and the breakdown of his parents' marriage. Today, he is best remembered for such works as 'The Time Machine', 'The War of the Worlds', and 'The Invisible Man', novels that earned him the title of "father of science fiction". His literary output also included social novels, histories, political studies, and social commentary. In this all-new biography, discover how H.G. Wells, the son of a shopkeeper and a domestic servant, grew up to become the creator of imaginary worlds that still amaze readers more than a hundred years after their first publication.
Series of four novels by Lawrence Durrell. The lush and sensuous tetralogy, which consists of Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960), is set in Alexandria, Egypt, during the 1940s. Three of the books are written in the first person, Mountolive in the third. The first three volumes describe, from different viewpoints, a series of events in Alexandria before World War II; the fourth carries the story forward into the war years. The events of the narrative are mostly seen through the eyes of one L.G. Darley, who observes the interactions of his lovers, friends, and acquaintances in Alexandria.
