Search

It's 1872 and China – still bruised from its defeat in the two Opium Wars – sends a group of boys, including seven-year-old Chen Mu, to America to study and bring back the secrets of the West. But nine years on Chen Mu becomes a fugitive and flees to Umberumberka, a mining town in outback Australia. He eventually finds peace working for Matthew Dawson, a rich pastoralist. When the bubonic plague ravages Sydney, Matthew Dawson's daughter returns to her father's property with her son, Edward. But it's a lonely life for a small boy surrounded only by adults, and he soon befriends Chen Mu, forging a friendship that will last a lifetime. Years later, Edward visits a mysterious and decadent Shanghai, where he falls in love with Ming Li, the beautiful young wife of a Chinese businessman. Invading Japanese armies tear the couple apart and years pass before they reunite, each scarred by the events of World War II and the Korean War. But will it be only to be torn apart once again? The Yellow Papers is a story of love, obsession and friendship set against a backdrop of war and racial prejudice. ‘Moving and though-provoking. An outstanding novel of originality and psychological depth.'Julienne van Loon ‘Will satisfy a readership hungry for a gripping, grandiose read.'Bookseller & Publisher

This collection brings together extended versions of papers delivered at the 2015 meeting of the Hungarian Society for the Study of English (HUSSE). The timeframe the papers deal with, starting with 15th century devotional texts, including Tudor interludes, Shakespearean plays and their adaptations, and ending in Milton, embraces three centuries of the history of English literature. As such, the contributions offer not only a variety of methodological approaches and disciplinary perspectives, but also highlight converging problems within this broad field, crystallized around three main topics of scholarship and constituting the three thematic parts of the volume, each containing three to four chapters. The first part, entitled “Medieval and Early Modern Experiments with Genre”, offers a set of readings that interpret texts in the light of their generic and thematic innovativeness. Attesting to the multiple ways in which Shakespeare is made our contemporary, the second part, “Shakespearean Texts and Adaptations—Our Contemporaries”, is comprised of essays on contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare and Renaissance theatre, taking the term “adaptation” in a broad sense. The contributions in the third part of the volume, “Perspectives on Milton”, all focus on John Milton, highlighting debates or underrepresented discourses in Milton studies. What connects the papers of the volume as a whole is the reinterpretation of traditional critical assumptions through innovative methods, including viewpoints integrated from other disciplines and discourses, such as theatre studies, digital humanities and social sciences, addressing the relevance of both traditional and innovative topics within English studies in a contemporary academic context.

This volume offers a selection of revised versions of the papers presented at the 7th International IDEA Conference held at Pamukkale University in Denizli, Turkey, organised by the Association of English Language and Literary Studies in Turkey. The contributions to this book offer a wide range of research from scholars on a variety of topics in English literature, including Shakespearean studies, Victorian, colonial, and postcolonial literature, poetry, and drama studies. The volume also includes a number of informative research articles on comparative and translation studies which will offer assistance to young scholars in their academic studies. In addition to acting as a guide to young academics, the book will also function as a fruitful reference book in a wide range of English literary studies.

The African writer, Yvonne Vera, used to recall that, as a young girl in the cotton fields, the urge to write was so strong that with no pen and paper available she picked up a twig and started to scratch words onto her skin. Stories in South Africa

Witness tells the story of Todd, who sees his ex-teacher Jason Ripley attacking a mild-mannered shopkeeper he knows from his paper round. Shocked by what he has witnessed, Todd informs the police of the brutal attack Mr Wilson has faced. But Todd has no idea just how this will change his life. It becomes clear that Jason Ripley has acquaintances who are keen to seek revenge on Todd for his actions. And they won't rest until they get it, no matter who gets in their way.<br><br>Witness is part of the Shades 2.0 series, published by Ransom Publishing, a specialist publisher for reluctant readers and struggling readers. The Shades 2.0 books offer fast-paced, shorter stories (just 64pp each) for older readers who may find longer books too daunting, but who still want the excitement of a great story told with pace and style. <br><br>Witness is ideal for reluctant readers aged 12+ with a reading age of 9 - 10 years.<br>

In May 1901 the Salisbury Galleries announce the biggest exhibition of the Old Master Paintings ever seen in Europe. Excitement is intense. But before it opens, one of Britain s leading art experts, Christopher Montague, is found murdered in his study. When Lord Francis Powerscourt is called in to investigate he finds every book, notepad and scrap of paper has been removed from the scene of the crime. Montague had been working on something that would have rocked the art world. Did his article that claimed a number of the Old Masters had been painted recently by a single hand have anything to.

This book sets out on an intellectual journey, with each chapter acting as a unique compass to lead the reader through the critical perspectives on resistance waiting to be discovered in 21st-century British literature. As such, the book appeals to general readers, including undergraduates, researchers, professionals, and anyone who is interested in cultural studies, literary studies, the humanities, and sociology, particularly resistance and discourse studies.

This book, by the eminent poetry critic Neil Corcoran, examines the ways in which the work of significant modern Irish, British and American poets interacts with or ‘negotiates'different contexts – historical, social, political, artistic and aesthetic. In Part 1 important work by David Jones, Robert Graves, Seamus Heaney and Bob Dylan is shown to negotiate poetic methods – both traditional and modernist – and also the work of major earlier writers to produce strikingly original new forms; and Derek Mahon's prose is read in the light of these concerns. The books shows how, by negotiating in this way, their work engages profoundly with complex and sometimes terrible histories, including the First World War and the Northern Irish Troubles. Part 2 discusses the ways in which ‘ekphrastic'work – poems which engage with visual art – by Elizabeth Bishop, W. S. Graham, John Ashbery, Sylvia Plath and Ciaran Carson negotiates comparable poetic and historical inheritances while also inventively responding to work by significant artists, notably Parmigianino, Poussin, de Chirico, Klee and members of the St Ives School. The book is a signal contribution to current critical debates about these poets, situating them in original or newly clarified contexts, and it offers exemplary close readings of noteworthy poems.

Identifies and investigates international medievalism through three distinct strands:'Internationally Nationalist','Someone Else's Past?', and'Activist Medievalism'.Medievalism - the reception of the Middle Ages - often invokes a set of tropes generally considered'medieval', rather than consciously engaging with medieval cultures and societies. International medievalism offers an additional interpretative layer by juxtaposing two or more national cultures, at least one of which is medieval.'National'can be aspirational: it might refer to the area within agreed borders, or to the people who live there, but it might also describe the people who understand, or imagine, themselves to constitute a nation. And once'medieval'becomes simply a collection of ideas, it can be re-formed as desired, cast as more geographically than historically specific, or function as a gateway to an even more nebulous past.This collection identifies and investigates international medievalism through three distinct strands,'Internationally Nationalist','Someone Else's Past?', and'Activist Medievalism', exploring medievalist media from the textual to the architectural. Subjects range from The Green Children of Woolpit to Refugee Tales, and from Viking metal to Joan of Arc. As the contributors to each section make clear, for centuries the medieval has provided material for countless competing causes and cannot be contained within historical, political, or national borders. The essays show how the medieval is repeatedly co-opted and recreated, formed as much as formative: inviting us to ask why, and in service of what.

An exploration across thirteen essays by critics, translators and creative writers on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, delving into how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Old English language and literary style have long been a source of artistic inspiration and fascination, providing modern writers and scholars with the opportunity not only to explore the past but, in doing so, to find new perspectives on the present. This volume brings together thirteen essays on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, exploring how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by translators, novelists, poets and teachers. These afterlives include the composition of neo-Old English, the evocation in a modern literary context of elements of early medieval English language and style, the fictional depiction of Old English-speaking worlds and world views, and the adaptation and recontextualisation of works of early medieval English literature. The sources covered include W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Seamus Heaney, alongside more recent writers such as Christopher Patton, Hamish Clayton and Paul Kingsnorth, as well as other media, from museum displays to television. The volume also features the first-hand perspectives of those who are authors and translators themselves in the field of Old English medievalism.

This book proposes a new approach to the literary representations of London by means of correlating geocriticism, spatial literary studies and memory studies in order to investigate the interplay between reality and fiction in mapping the urban imaginary. It conducts an analysis of depictions of London in British literature published between 1975 and 2005, exploring the literary representations of the real urban restructurings prompted by the rebuilding projects in war and poverty-stricken districts of London, the remapping of the metropolis by immigrants, gentrification and the displacement of communities, as well as the urban dissolution caused by terrorism. The selected works of fiction written by Peter Ackroyd, Penelope Lively, Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Doris Lessing and Ian McEwan provide a record of the city in times of de/reconstruction, emphasizing the structure of London as a palimpsest, which becomes a central image. The book contributes to the development of the subject field by introducing a number of original concepts which connect geocriticism and memory studies.

Perhaps no great poet, in any language, has suffered more than Byron from being merely read about rather than actually read. As Bernard Beatty remarks in his introduction to this important collection of essays, the popular conception of ‘Byron'still often approximates to ‘Rupert Everett with a limp'.Reading Byron is the product and summation of nearly sixty years devoted to studying and teaching his poetry. It argues that, far from being ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know', Byron is serious, ethically orientated and rewarding to read. The book is in three parts: Poems – Life – Politics. Five new essays have been written especially for the first and largest section, which provides fresh perspectives on Byron's major works. The volume continues with three of Beatty's lively lectures on unappreciated aspects of Byron the man, and three pithy essays on Byron as a complex, if not systematic, political thinker.While Beatty does not question the pre-eminent status of the ‘bright'Don Juan, devoting a chapter to an unconventional reading of its final cantos, he argues powerfully that nineteenth-century readers, who responded on an unprecedented scale to the forceful poetic structures of the ‘dark'Byron in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Tales, Manfred, and Cain, were right to do so. Introduced by Jerome McGann (editor of the great Clarendon edition of the poet's works) and concluded in dialogue with Gavin Hopps (co-editor of the forthcoming Longman edition), Reading Byron is itself essential reading for any student or lover of Romantic poetry.

Eternity in British Romantic Poetry explores the representation of the relationship between eternity and the mortal world in the poetry of the period. It offers an original approach to Romanticism that demonstrates, against the grain, the dominant intellectual preoccupation of the era: the relationship between the mortal and the eternal. The project's scope is two-fold: firstly, it analyses the prevalence and range of images of eternity (from apocalypse and afterlife to transcendence) in Romantic poetry; secondly, it opens up a new and more nuanced focus on how Romantic poets imagined and interacted with the idea of eternity. Every poet featured in the book seeks and finds their uniqueness in their apprehension of eternity. From Blake's assertion of the Eternal Now to Keats's defiance of eternity, Wordsworth's ‘two consciousnesses'versus Coleridge's capacious poetry, Byron's swithering between versions of eternity compared to Shelleyan yearning, and Hemans's superlative account of everlasting female suffering, each poet finds new versions of eternity to explore or reject. This monograph sets out a paradigm-shifting approach to the aesthetic and philosophical power of eternity in Romantic poetry.

Transgression and Its Limits is a long overdue collection that reads the complex relationship between artistic transgressions and the limits of law and the subject. In mid-twentieth century theoretical understandings of transgressive culture, it is the existence of the limit that guarantees the possibility and success of the transgression. While the limit calls for obedience, it also tempts with the possibility of violation. To breach the limits of the acceptable is to simultaneously define them. However, this classical understanding of transgression may no longer apply under the conditions of post-modernity, late-capitalism, and the simulated or empty transgressions that this period of the simulacra encourages. Context becomes paramount in reading the myriad forms of transgression that encompass politics, aesthetics and the ethics of the obscene; while a range of theoretical perspectives are employed in order to elucidate the economies at work underneath the seemingly transgressive act. The essays selected include explorations of transgression in cinema, photography, art, law, music, philosophy, technology, and both classical and contemporary literature and drama. Professor Fred Botting's (co-author of Bataille and The Tarantinian Ethics) analysis of transgression from Bataille, to Baudrillard and Ballard compliments the collection's concerns about the status of transgression. Aside from fourteen critical essays on topics such as early-modern drama, George Bataille, J. G. Ballard, the female necrophilic, “torture-porn” cinema, and the art of Robert Mapplethorpe and Salvador Dali, there is also a new discussion of transgression between novelist Iain Banks and Professor Roderick Watson (Emeritus at the University of Stirling). With its focus on the paradoxical nature of the impulse to transgress, as well at its wide-ranging historical and artistic concerns, Transgression and Its Limits is a landmark book in a rapidly developing scholarly field.

The first full length study of Patrick McCabe's work, We Won't Make It Out Alive, examines the mental instability and carefully constructed childhoods that McCabe has crafted for his various characters—the one eyed quasi Al Pacino, the sequin studded transvestite, the bachelor farmer who routinely exhumes his dead mother for a chat.Beneath the grotesque and often very funny narratives of Irish border town life lurks startlingly similar pasts for these characters, spanning all of McCabe's catalogue. As children, they were subject to the cruelty of the orphanage/workhouse or deadbeat parents numbed by alcohol. Many were victims of sexual abuse by priests and witnesses to the senseless violence brought on by political divides. The outrageous personalities and later actions of these characters often overshadow these very real beginnings, and in this book, Kate Walls discusses the impact of these social problems and how McCabe's unfortunate (and usually well-meaning) narrators are driven crazy as a result.We Won't Make It Out Alive also discusses how these characters fare against the Troubles of the 1970s and, for the novels set in more contemporary times, the changing Ireland of the Celtic Tiger. Being on the fringes of society themselves, McCabe's characters have a unique vantage point from which to comment on these defining moments of social upheaval.

This volume analyses the form, structure and genre of a selection of non-fictional works by Daniel Defoe. Directing our scholarly gaze away from the much studied novels, the essays explore the rhetorical strategies and generic inventiveness on display in Defoe's better known non-fictional texts, such as The Shortest Way with the Dissenters and A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, and some of his lesser known publications, such as his Complete English Tradesman and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions. What emerges from the collection is the picture of an author who responded to early eighteenth-century debates and events with outstanding authorial skill and energy, and to whom matters of form and style were of great importance.

The essays in this book, written by poets, novelists, mountain-climbers and academics from all over the world, evoke the representation of mountains in the English-speaking world as artists, writers, philosophers or mountain-climbers have represented them from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries.From the Alps to the Pyrenees, from Mount Fuji to Mount Shasta, from the Himalayas to the Scottish Highlands, from Ikere in Nigeria to Devil's Tower in the United States, from Uluru in Australia to the most northern mountain of the Arctic, the shapes of the world speak the same language and tell the world its own story.This interdisciplinary book, weaving together mountaineering, literature, philosophy, painting, cinema, ecology, history, palaeontology, geography, geopolitics, toponymy, law, religion and myth, invites people to an innovative reading of mountains: it reveals the close relationship existing between the shapes of the world and all forms of writing and, at the same time, it shows how the representations of the imagination may be instrumental in protecting the natural world.The story told by the landscape inscribes a broken line in the shapes of the world, tearing the landscape like a fragile page whenever historical and political events (wars, mining or deforestation) leave scars in the landscape; but writers'and artists'representations of mountains constitute a path to awareness as they are not only a painting of beauty, but an image of our link to nature and a warning as well.For centuries the image of the mountain has conveyed a symbolism telling the story of human thought, and this book shows to what extent literature and art play an essential part in our awareness of nature.

Swift's A Modest Proposal has always aroused the interest not just of literary critics, but also of linguists and pragmatists. Within the latter approaches, the study of irony, and more concretely, the intentions and attitudes that must have guided the production of such an intricate work, have always been paramount. However, it seems that within pragmatics the analysis has been restricted so far to the 1729 work itself. In the present author's view, it is interesting to contextualise this masterpiece of irony and satire within Swift's wider writing on Ireland, an approach that remains to be carried out. Accordingly, this work sets out to analyse a selection of Swift's Irish Tracts, with a view to tracing the evolution within Swift's literary production of his views and attitudes towards the situation of his homeland. Although different pragmatic approaches are applied, the emphasis is laid upon the contributions that the relevance-theoretical framework and its studies on irony may bring to the understanding of this particular Tract. The works selected are meant to cover and also be representative of the main phases currently distinguished within Swift's writing on the'Irish Question'. It is therefore hoped that a deeper analysis of the former works by Swift on this topic will provide new insights for a better understanding of A Modest Proposal.

The English Association of Pennsylvania State Universities held its annual meeting in 2006 at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania. The conference theme was “Literature, Writing, and the Natural World.” This collection grows out of the conference and indicates the desire to understand all aspects of our relationship with the natural world, the function of literature in clarifying that relationship (in ways science and politics cannot), and the role of the literature teacher-scholar wanting to respond to pressures of environmental change.In these times, interpretation is a vital task, not only for the way it educates us about our attitudes toward nature, but because it develops the crucial skills of looking closely, engaging, reflecting, and responding. One could argue that, as a culture, Americans are behind the curve in understanding the ways we depend upon a healthy relationship with nature, and one way (among many) depends upon examining it through texts and textual representation. When the writers here dig into The Main Woods, Jayber Crow, the poetry of Pablo Guevara, or the movie Crash, they are contributing to our understanding of the ways in which we view nature and how that view plays a role in the way we relate to nature.These days, many disciplines engage global warming and other environmental issues routinely, and the literature classroom should be no different. Just as we read a book and address fundamental themes such as “What does it mean to love?” or “How do we develop identity?” we should also be asking “What is my responsibility when I decide what resources to use?” If we understand literature as equipment for living in a warming world, we may be able to help students make some sense out of their world and some decisions about how to act.

This unique collection of work by Lawrence Durrell brings together a vast range of unpublished and ephemeral material spanning his entire writing career, illustrating the diversity, candour, depth of interests and humanity, humour, philosophical imagination and critical and aesthetic vision of one of the twentieth century's leading poets and novelists.Illustrated throughout with photographs, cartoons by Lawrence and Nancy Durrell, manuscript notes by Durrell and memorabilia, Lawrence Durrell's Endpapers and Inklings 1933-1988 provides the general reader, the specialist and the book collector with an unprecedented insight into Durrell's creativity and literary craftsmanship.This volume contains: “Durrell on Miller” (his lifelong admiration for Henry Miller); “Dramas and Screenplays” (including Black Honey, his melodramatic farce on Baudelaire and his mistress, and his screen treatments for Cleopatra and for Oedipus the King); “Essays, Lectures and Review” (including “The Minor Mythologies”, Durrell's essay on popular literature and his 1974 lecture on James Joyce's Ulysses). It also includes “Incorrigibilia” (spoofs from the juvenile writer to the elderly sage, with Bromo Bombastes, Durrell's squib on Shaw's Black Girl, unavailable since its private publication in 1933) and “The Asides of Demonax”, Durrell's final valedictory notebook, crammed with aperçus, jokes and profound reflections on life, beauty and death.

This volume is a collection of Lawrence Durrell's prose writings from his earliest years until shortly before his death. It is illustrated with photographs, cartoons by This unique collection of work by Lawrence Durrell brings together a vast range of unpublished and ephemeral material spanning his entire writing career, illustrating the diversity, candour, depth of interests and humanity, humour, philosophical imagination and critical and aesthetic vision of one of the twentieth century's leading poets and novelists.Illustrated throughout with photographs, cartoons by Lawrence and Nancy Durrell, manuscript notes by Durrell and memorabilia, Lawrence Durrell's Endpapers and Inklings 1933-1988 provides the general reader, the specialist and the book collector with an unprecedented insight into Durrell's creativity and literary craftsmanship.This volume contains: “Durrell on Durrell” (the writer's autobiographical essays); “The Artist's Eye” (detailing Durrell's interest in the visual arts); and “Fictions”, including the unpublished The Magnetic Island and the unfinished novel “Sappho”. It also encompasses “Durrell at War” (letters and essays relating to World War 2) and “Spirit of Place” (essays and prefaces including a deleted chapter from Reflections on a Marine Venus, an account of a 1949 duty trip through Tito's Yugoslavia, and in-depth surveys of the Cyprus situation in the 1950s).

Magic and the supernatural are common themes in the philosophy and fiction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book explores varieties of scepticism and belief exhibited by a selection of philosophers and playwrights, including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, explicating how each author defines the supernatural, whether he assumes magic to operate in the world, and how he uses occult principles to explain what can be known and what is ethical. Beliefs and claims concerning impossible phenomena and superhuman agency require literary historians to determine whether an occult system of magical operation is being described in a given text. Each chapter in this volume evaluates whether a chosen early modern author is endorsing magic as efficacious or divinely sanctioned, or criticising it for being fraudulent or unholy. By examining works of fiction, it is possible to explore fantastic settings which were not intended to be synonymous with the early modern audience's everyday experience, settings where magic exists and operates according to the playwrights'designs. This book also sets out to determine what historical sources provided given authors with knowledge of the occult and speculates on how aware an audience would have been of academic, classical, or popular contexts surrounding the text at hand.

This book fills a remarkable void in literary studies which has escaped the attention of many researchers. It interrogates the extent to which nineteenth-century children's adventure novels justify and perpetuate the British Imperialist ideology of the period. In doing so, it begins with providing a historical background of children's literature and nineteenth-century British imperialism. It then offers a theoretical framework of postcolonial reading to decipher the colonial discourse employed in the selected children's adventure novels. As such, the book offers postcolonial readings of R.M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island (1858), W.H.G. Kingston's In the Wilds of Africa (1871), and H.R. Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885). It will appeal to students, academicians and researchers in fields such as postcolonialism, children's literature and British Imperialism.

This book offers captivating insights into the interaction between the Indian and the American cultural worlds. A fascinating work of research, it illustrates an extraordinary capacity to employ the details of literary texts as significant clues in understanding the configuration of transcultural identities. The book constructs an exciting dialogue between complex theoretical notions and the vibrant fictional worlds populated by Indian, American and European characters. Its original and multi-layered approach illustrates how complex theories of culture can help the reader understand contemporary processes of migration, cultural change and gender identity that interfere with daily life.

This book provides a clear historical and theoretical framework for reading three important novels published in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century. Examining the novels by Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell, the book offers an analysis of their strategies for radical reforms and for the restructuring of society and politics through improvements in the living and working conditions of the working class.The Industrial Novels begins with an introduction of the Industrial Revolution, which is then followed by chapters devoted to a detailed discussion of each novel. Through this, the book explores the negative social, political and economic effects of industrialization and urbanization, as reflected in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley (1849), Charles Dickens'Hard Times (1854), and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855). As such, the book will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of both literature and sociology.

According to Oscar Wilde, the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not'. Through a series of close and often unusual readings, this book endeavours to develop Wilde's remark into a detailed and creative theory of reading. Or perhaps that should be misreading: for, as this experimental work of criticism negotiates its way among the works of a number of late-nineteenth-century writers, particularly Robert Louis Stevenson and Wilde himself, Tearle uncovers some of the ways in which we as readers are prone to hallucinations while reading about, of all things, the experience of hallucination. Focusing in detail on a series of neologisms from writing of the period, such as'handconscience','figmentary', and'aftersense', and moving between a number of disciplines including literature, criticism, science, psychoanalysis, and even linguistics, Bewilderments of Vision endeavours to answer a number of questions, ranging from the urgent to the downright bizarre: What is the link between hallucination and social conscience in writing of the late-nineteenth century? Is there such a thing as textual hallucination? Why does the author of this book see a'snake'that is not there when he'reads'Jekyll and Hyde?

Agatha Christie's 80 novels and short-story collections have sold over 2 billion copies in more than 45 languages, more than any other author. When Christie finally killed off her Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, the year before she herself died, that'detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep'in Christie's words, received a full-page obituary in the New York Times, the only fictional character ever to have done so. From her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a Poirot mystery, to her last, Sleeping Murder, featuring Miss Marple, Crawford explores Christie's life and fiction. Cawthorne examines recurring characters, such as Captain Arthur Hastings, Poirot's Dr Watson; Chief Inspector Japp, his Lestrade, as well as other flat-footed policemen that Poirot outsmarts on his travels; his efficient secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon; another employee, George; and Ariadne Oliver, a humorous caricature of Christie herself. He looks at the writer's own fascinating: her work as a nurse during the First World War; her strange disappearance after her first husband asked for a divorce; and her exotic expeditions with her second husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. He examines the author's working life - her inspirations, methods and oeuvre - and provides biographies of her key characters, their attire, habits and methods, including Poirot's relationships with women, particularly Countess Vera Rossakoff and Miss Amy Carnaby. In doing so, he sheds light on the genteel world of the country house and the Grand Tour between the wars. He takes a look at the numerous adaptations of Christie's stories for stage and screen, especially Poirot's new life in the eponymous long-running and very successful TV series.

The Irish novel has demonstrated an ability to sample other forms and influences, to improvise and evolve in the light of changing circumstances. Peter Guy's new study helps investigate the way in which Irish writers since the sixties have responded to these influences, re-examining their work through the theory of the French theorist Jacques Lacan.Focusing on the novelists John McGahern, Brian Moore and John Broderick in a simultaneous reading, and applying a psychoanalytical theory which centers in particular on gender and family relations, this new study also covers a number of other complex issues, issues which span the claustrophobic and repressive atmosphere of the 1950s to the secular ahistorical Ireland of today.

Twenty tales of intrigue, murder and mayhem from this most bloodthirsty and exciting of times. With dramatic settings ranging form the Eternal City of Rome to the most remote outposts of her Empire, here are new tales form the masters of the historical detective story, with classic gems and rare reprints - plus a special introduction, and a new Gordianus the Finder novella from Steven Saylor. A Gladiator Dies Only Once, Steven Saylor: set just before the rebellion of Spartacus, Gordianus is sent to investigate, not a murder but a resurrection.

Description based upon print version of record.

This book takes as its starting point Pierre-Simon Laplace's much-cited dream in 1812 of'a vast intelligence'which can'embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom'and for which the future and the past are equally calculable. Laplace sets out THE echt-Enlightenment ideal of scientific omniscience and the classic statement of a deterministic universe. The author investigates some of the ways in which Laplacian and, indeed, Newtonian models of observation and the universe are at once assimilated and complicated by Romantic and Victorian writers such as Carlyle, Burke, Abbott, Poe and Wordsworth. In particular, it aims to retrace some of the ways in which LaplacianNewtonian models of scientific'intelligence'come to inform nineteenth-century writers'views of themselves and their own modes of observation. The author also explains how some of these literary reimaginings look forward to more modern conceptions of science in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as Chaos Theory and Einsteinian Cosmology. Oddly enough, contemporary science would seem to realise Carlyle's vision of a'Natural-Supernaturalism', fusing Laplace's mechanical vision with Romanticism. This book covers a vast array of topics, including Philosophy, Wagner's music and music in general, Jungian analysis, and ends with the'omniscient'narrator in Charles Dickens's'The Old Curiosity Shop', as an example of what came to be the dominant mode of narration in later Victorian fiction.

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based upon print version of record.

Anonymous, the keeper of the diary, deputy director of a publishing company in a nameless city in China, is a happily married man with a daughter until he succumbs fully to his sexual desires, forever searching for new erotic experiences and secret liaisons. Anonymous is able to hoard a fortune, by embezzlement or corruption, with which he buys permanent resident status for his wife and daughter in the West. He stays behind in China, a situation commonly referred to as a naked official in contemporary Chinese terminology, one who has nothing to fear when exposed because his family is safely installed overseas with all his money.

This charming series of Victorian murder mysteries features mild-mannered Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard and, more importantly, Mrs Jeffries, his housekeeper. A policeman's widow herself, her quick wits allow her to nudge the Inspector in the right direction to solve the crime. When a doctor is discovered dead in his own office, Mrs Jeffries is on the look-out for a prescription for murder, determined to discover the culprit, despite how her employer feels about interviewing suspects...''He hated questioning people. He could never tell whether or not someone w.

At the age of nineteen, Yolande of Aragon is sent away from her family, her friends, and everything she knows, to marry the young Duke of Anjou, King Charles VI's first cousin. Their marriage has been arranged to form an alliance between the previously warring kingdoms of Aragon and Anjou, and is politically fraught in a time of great danger and unrest. Yet the union between Yolande and Louis becomes not only a great love story, but also sets in motion events which will change the course of history.As Louis spends more and more time and money fighting in Italy for his claim to the Kingdom

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based upon print version of record.

When Elizabeth Price engages private detective Roland'Orlando'Gibbons to find out the truth about her husband's suspected affair, she unwittingly sets off a chain of correspondence that reunites four formerly close-knit couples. They all live just a few suburban streets away from each other; they are all still married; so how - and why - did they become so estranged? In a series of letters - from love notes to condolence messages (the latter one arriving some years late) - each protagonist is far more self-revealing than they would ever be in person. The result is an uproarious and poi.

Description based upon print version of record.

The Journal Box contains four journals kept at different times since 1975 by the poet Elizabeth Smither. She records with wit and charm a rich life of the mind, of feelings and the complexities of thought that drive her work. Beautifully written, the journals teem with vivid impressions and offer keen insight into a creative and original personality.

The poems in this collection dissect and cut across psychological and cultural spaces as the poet reflects on the profundity of his experiences and encounters. The thoughtful reflections provide a snapshot of what it means to live in a world of where difference and sameness are never to be taken for granted. Though written from Africa, the poems transcend the geographical, cultural and emotional landscapes that have inspired the poetís creative genius. The poems reflect a wide gamut of themes such as love, anomy, hope, megalomania, treachery, education, vigilance and other tussles of everyday life. All those who cherish the moral rectitude of peace, culture, faithful questioning and critical thinking will find value in this enticing collection.

It is late summer in Hampshire and former headmistress, Harriet Quigley, is enjoying life. Her cousin Sam is moving next door and the only cloud on the horizon is village gossip about a man who disappeared months earlier, and a more recent near-fatal accident. Suddenly it's all going pear-shaped - and sensible, practical Harriet has only herself to blame. Sam has warned her not to play at being Miss Marple but despite her cousin's strictures Harriet is suspicious about several newcomers and she's been asking discreet questions. There's an enigmatic artist, a good-looking vicar, a handsome Texan, a millionaire orchid-fancier, and Elvis, the plumber. To cap it all someone's seen the family ghost and only her young cousin Edith takes Harriet's anxieties seriously. With a sudden death in Winchester Cathedral, a treasure hunt that attracts unwelcome attentions, and history that looms uncomfortably close, Harriet finds herself trapped somewhere very nasty - and she's not alone.

Description based upon print version of record.

When a body is discovered in the Regents Canal, the local residents vaguely wonder if it might belong to their missing neighbour Barbs, but none of them quite get round to doing anything about it. While Scarlett is preoccupied with her uptight husband Brian and her adolescent daughter Camille, Connie is wondering whether her lover Memet is being unfaithful to her. As the two women gossip and wryly comment on everything from advertising and the press, psychiatrists and school systems to nutrition cranks, the lives of both families are turned on their heads as the do-gooder Barbs'whereabo.

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based upon print version of record.

DI Kate Simms is on the fast track to nowhere. Five years ago she helped a colleague when she shouldn't have. She's been clawing her way back from a demotion ever since. Professor Nick Fennimore is a failed genetics student, successful gambler, betting agent, crime scene officer, chemistry graduate, toxicology specialist and one-time scientific advisor to the National Crime Faculty. He is the best there is, but ever since his wife and daughter disappeared he's been hiding away in Scotland, working as a forensics lecturer. In Manchester, drug addicts are turning up dead and Simms'superior.

A case of mistaken identity is transformed into a case of true love!As usual, the poor relations are in need of money to finance the hotel and this time it is up to Colonel Sandhurst to come to the rescue. After coming across Sir Randolph's daughter Frederica, who is running away to escape an awful marriage to Lord Bewley, the Colonel devises a plan to force Sir Randolph to settle his six month outstanding hotel bill and save Frederica from her terrible fate. The clever plan is thwarted when Lord Bewley shows up at the drop point instead of Sir Randolph, and the poor relations must make.