Книги жанра Daedalus Books
Название: Nemesis
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2010
Рейтинг:
Описание:
In the stifling heat of equatorial Newark, a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, life-long disability, and even death. This is the startling and surprising theme of Roth's wrenching new book: a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children. At the center of NEMISIS is a vigorous, dutiful, twenty-three year old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor's dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground — and on the everday realities he faces — Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering, and the pain. Moving between the smoldering, malodorous streets of besieged Newark and Indian Hill, a pristine children's summer camp high in the Poconos — whose mountain air was purified of all contaminants — Roth depics a decent, energetic man with the best intentions struggling in his own private war against the epidemic. Roth is tenderly exact at every point about Cantor's passage into personal disaster and no less exact about the condition of childhood. Through this story runs the dark question that haunts all four of Roth's late short novels, EVERYMAN, INDIGNATION, THE HUMBLING, and now, NEMESIS: what kind of accidental choices fatally shape a life? How powerless is each of us up against the force of circumstance?
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2010
Рейтинг:
Описание:
Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can't walk for a year? Have sex? Smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it's possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA's new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2011
Рейтинг:
Описание:
In her brilliant first book Elif Batuman takes the reader on a journey both literary and physical as she traces the evolution of her fascination with Russian literature across the globe and several centuries. This is a deeply funny, fiercely intelligent portrait of the not-always-rational pursuit of knowledge. Though Batuman lavishes attention on the specifics of her passion-and may indeed inspire you to spend the rest of this season holed up with a thick Russian novel-her book is really about the process of learning itself. It's a relatable, absorbing account of what it feels like to be infatuated with ideas, and to let them lead you to ever more weird and wonderful places. Candid and reflective, mischievous and erudite, Batuman writes nimble and passionate essays celebrating the invaluable and pleasurable ways literature can increase the sum total of human understanding. A Most importantly though, it is really an examination of how we can bring our lives closest to our favourite books.
Название: The Prince of Mist
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2010
Рейтинг:
Описание:
From the author of the adult bestsellers Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game comes an atmospheric, adventurous YA ghost story about a mysterious house that harbors an unimaginable secret.
Название: The Private Patient
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2008
Рейтинг:
Описание:
When the notorious investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn booked into Mr Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Dorset for the removal of a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar, she had every prospect of a successful operation by a distinguished surgeon, a week's peaceful convalescence in one of Dorset's most beautiful manor houses and the beginning of a new life. She was never to leave Cheverell Manor alive. Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate the murder, and later a second death, which are to raise even more complicated problems than the question of innocence or guilt. A new detective novel by P. D. James is always keenly awaited and 'The Private Patient' will undoubtedly equal the success of her worldwide bestseller 'The Lighthouse'. It displays the qualities which P. D. James's readers have come to expect: a masterly psychological and emotional richness of characterisation, a vivid evocation of place and a credible and exciting mystery. 'The Private Patient' is a powerful work of contemporary fiction.
Название: Selected Novels and Short Stories
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2010
Рейтинг:
Описание:
The remarkable renaissance of Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of The Highsmith Reader, featuring two groundbreaking novels as well as a trove of penetrating short stories. With a critical introduction by Joan Schenkar, situating Highsmith's classic works within her own tumultuous life, this book provides a useful guide to some of her most dazzlingly seductive writing. Strangers on a Train (1950), transformed into a legendary film by Alfred Hitchcock, displays Highsmith's genius for psychological characterization and tortuous suspense, while The Price of Salt (1952), with its lesbian lovers and a creepy PI, provides a thrilling and highly controversial depiction of the love that dare not speak its name. The Highsmith Reader firmly establishes Highsmith's centrality to American culture by presenting key works that went on to influence a half-century of literature and film. Abandoned by the wider reading public in her lifetime, Highsmith finally gets the canonical recognition that is her due.
Название: Started Early, Took My Dog
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2011
Рейтинг:
Описание:
Tracy Waterhouse leads a quiet, ordered life as a retired police detective-a life that takes a surprising turn when she encounters Kelly Cross, a habitual offender, dragging a young child through town. Both appear miserable and better off without each other-or so decides Tracy, in a snap decision that surprises herself as much as Kelly. Suddenly burdened with a small child, Tracy soon learns her parental inexperience is actually the least of her problems, as much larger ones loom for her and her young charge. Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie, the beloved detective of novels such as Case Histories, is embarking on a different sort of rescue-that of an abused dog. Dog in tow, Jackson is about to learn, along with Tracy, that no good deed goes unpunished.
Название: Super Sad True Love Story
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2010
Рейтинг:
Описание:
The author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart has risen to the top of the fiction world. Now, in his hilarious and heartfelt new novel, he envisions a deliciously dark tale of America's dysfunctional coming years — and the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink. In a very near future — oh, let's say next Tuesday — a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don't that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world's last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn't it? Lenny's from a different century — he totally loves books (or printed, bound media artifacts, as they're now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness. After meeting Lenny on an extended Roman holiday, blistering Eunice puts that Assertiveness minor to work, teaching our ancient dork effective new ways to brush his teeth and making him buy a cottony nonflammable wardrobe. But America proves less flame-resistant than Lenny's new threads. The country is crushed by a credit crisis, riots break out in New York's Central Park, the city's streets are lined with National Guard tanks on every corner, the dollar is so over, and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Undeterred, Lenny vows to love both Eunice and his homeland. He's going to convince his fickle new love that in a time without standards or stability, in a world where single people can determine a dating prospect's hotness and sustainability with the click of a button, in a society where the privileged may live forever but the unfortunate will die all too soon, there is still value in being a real human being. Wildly funny, rich, and humane, Super Sad True Love Story is a knockout novel by a young master, a book in which falling in love just may redeem a planet falling apart.
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 1999
Рейтинг:
Описание:
The Sword and the Shield is based on one of the most extraordinary intelligence coups of recent times: a secret archive of top-level KGB documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union which the FBI has described, after close examination, as the «most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source». Its presence in the West represents a catastrophic hemorrhage of the KGB’s secrets and reveals for the first time the full extent of its worldwide network.Vasili Mitrokhin, a secret dissident who worked in the KGB archive, smuggled out copies of its most highly classified files every day for twelve years. In 1992, a U.S. ally succeeded in exfiltrating the KGB officer and his entire archive out of Moscow. The archive covers the entire period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the 1980s and includes revelations concerning almost every country in the world. But the KGB's main target, of course, was the United States.Though there is top-secret material on almost every country in the world, the United States is at the top of the list. As well as containing many fascinating revelations, this is a major contribution to the secret history of the twentieth century. Among the topics and revelations explored are: The KGB’s covert operations in the United States and throughout the West, some of which remain dangerous today. KGB files on Oswald and the JFK assassination that Boris Yeltsin almost certainly has no intention of showing President Clinton. The KGB’s attempts to discredit civil rights leader in the 1960s, including its infiltration of the inner circle of a key leader. The KGB’s use of radio intercept posts in New York and Washington, D.C., in the 1970s to intercept high-level U.S. government communications. The KGB’s attempts to steal technological secrets from major U.S. aerospace and technology corporations. KGB covert operations against former President Ronald Reagan, which began five years before he became president. KGB spies who successfully posed as U.S. citizens under a series of ingenious disguises, including several who attained access to the upper echelons of New York society.
Название: Tigerlily's Orchids
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2011
Рейтинг:
Описание:
From one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation (People) comes a psychologically thrilling novel about the eccentric inhabitants of a London apartment building, the secrets they keep, and how knowing too much about one's neighbors might be deadly.
Название: Total War: From Stalingrad to Berlin
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2011
Рейтинг:
Описание:
In February 1943, German forces surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad and the tide of war turned. By May 1945 Soviet soldiers had stormed Berlin and brought down Hitler's regime. Total War follows the fortunes of these fighters as they liberated Russia and the Ukraine from the Nazi invader and fought their way into the heart of the Reich. It reveals the horrors they experienced — the Holocaust, genocide and the mass murder of Soviet POWs — and shows the Red Army, brutalized by war, taking its terrible revenge on the German civilian population. For the first time Russian veterans are candid about the terrible atrocities their own army committed. But they also describe their struggle to raise themselves from the abyss of hatred. Their war against the Nazis — which in large part brought the Second World War in Europe to an end — is a tarnished but deeply moving story of sacrifice and redemption.
Название: Tristia
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2008
Рейтинг:
Описание:
The great twentieth-century Russian poet's second volume of poetry, Tristia, explores myths of Orpheus and Eurydice in a brilliantly symbolic manner. This is one of the most important books of Russian poetry.
Название: Vikings
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2010
Рейтинг:
Описание:
Feared throughout Europe, the Vikings swept across the sea in their swift longships and launched lightning raids on coastal towns, churches, and monasteries. Vikings tells the gripping story of these terrifying warriors, fearless explorers, and skilled artisans, and illustrates their ships, weapons, and everyday world. Eight special removable items range from a Runes decoder to a fold-out guide. It's a fantastic package.
Название: Yalta: The Price of Peace
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2010
Рейтинг:
Описание:
A major new history of the eight days in February 1945 when FDR, Churchill, and Stalin decided the fate of the world Imagine you could eavesdrop on a dinner party with three of the most fascinating historical figures of all time. In this landmark book, a gifted Harvard historian puts you in the room with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as they meet at a climactic turning point in the war to hash out the terms of the peace. The ink wasn't dry when the recriminations began. The conservatives who hated Roosevelt's New Deal accused him of selling out. Was he too sick? Did he give too much in exchange for Stalin's promise to join the war against Japan? Could he have done better in Eastern Europe? Both Left and Right would blame Yalta for beginning the Cold War. Plokhy's conclusions, based on unprecedented archival research, are surprising. He goes against conventional wisdom-cemented during the Cold War — and argues that an ailing Roosevelt did better than we think. Much has been made of FDR's handling of the Depression; here we see him as wartime chief. Yalta is authoritative, original, vividly — written narrative history, and is sure to appeal to fans of Margaret MacMillan's bestseller Paris 1919.
Название: An Alphabet of London
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2012
Рейтинг:
Описание:
London is the only city in the world where you could ever find Gilbert and George sharing space with the Gherkin and the Globe while the Great Fire burns and a gin drinker glugs her favorite tipple, and where members of the Bloomsbury Group hail a black cab while barrage balloons hover over Broadcasting House during the Blitz. In A London Alphabet, Christopher Brown presents a series of wonderfully whimsical linocuts illustrating every aspect of London past and present, including personalities, buildings, monuments, legends, historic events, and other metropolitan icons. From Dickens, Dr Johnson, Tower Bridge, and the Shard to the Diamond Jubilee, Wimbledon, pigeons, and jellied eels, all London life is here. A born-and-bred Londoner, Brown recounts his own memories of growing up in the capital, and also describes how he creates his distinctive prints. His unique, often humorous take on London will delight anyone who lives in or visits the city.
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2011
Рейтинг:
Описание:
What do the following have in common? Let there be light — Whited sepulchres — A rod of iron — New wine into old bottles Lick the dust — How are the mighty fallen — A thorn in the flesh — Wheels within wheels They're all in the King James Bible. This astonishing book has 'contributed far more to English in the way of idiomatic or quasi-proverbial expressions than any other literary source', wrote David Crystal in 2004. In Begat he returns to the subject: he asks how a work published in 1611 could have had such an influence on the language and looks closely at what that influence has been. He comes to some surprising conclusions. No other version of the Bible however popular (such as the Good News Bible) or imposed upon the church (like the New English Bible) has had anything like the same impact. David Crystal shows how its words and phrases got independent life in the work of poets, playwrights, novelists, and politicians, and how more recently they have been taken up by journalists, advertisers, Hollywood, and hip-hop. He reveals the great debt the King James Bible owes to its English forebears, especially John Wycliffe's in the fourteenth century and William Tyndale's in the sixteenth. He also shows that the revisions and changes made by King James's translators were crucial to its universal success. A person who professes to be a critic in the delicacies of the English language ought to have the Bible at his finger's ends, Lord Macaulay advised Lady Holland in 1831. David Crystal shows how true this is. His book is a revelation.
Название: British Vision
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2008
Рейтинг:
Описание:
Show-stoppers from many private and regional galleries, mixing paintings, watercolors, books, sculptures and photographs. The Guardian. Stunning and constantly surprising. Although it contains most of our great artists it is not a 'survey' so much as an unconventional, personal and thought-provoking take on British art, full of unexpected works and unfamiliar names, as well as familiar landmarks — over 300 works gathered from collections all over the world. The Spectator From the landscapes of Wilson and Constable to the visionary imagery of Blake and Bacon, this book, published to accompany a major exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, is a beautifully illustrated survey of British art from 1750 to 1950. British Vision presents some of the most celebrated works in British art history, selected from public and private collections in Europe, Britain, and the United States by Robert Hoozee, drawing on the expertise of Andrew Dempsey, John Gage, Mark Haworth-Booth, and Timothy Hyman. Among the artists whose work appears in British Vision are William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, George Stubbs, William Blake, Henry Fuseli, John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, Richard Dadd, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland, Francis Bacon, and Lucien Freud.Essays by a group of distinguished art historians focus on two defining characteristics of British art, observation and imagination, seen within the context of society, landscape, and the visionary. Together, they set forth important arguments about what makes British art recognizable, what gives it its typically «British» style, and how British artists have contributed to the history of art as a whole. This lavishly illustrated catalog is a sumptuous record of the most comprehensive exhibition of British art to be displayed in recent years, and represents a unique opportunity to discover the creative forces that shaped British art over two centuries.
Название: A New Omnibus of Crime
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2010
Рейтинг:
Описание:
This fantastic new collection picks up where Dorothy L. Sayers' landmark 1929 anthology The Omnibus of Crime left off, bringing together monumental, important, and entertaining works of short crime fiction published over eight decades from the era of the Great Depression to the first years of the twenty-first century. In lively introductory essays, celebrated crime writer Tony Hillerman and critic Rosemary Herbert place each story in the context of the author's work and the genre's literary history. Their extraordinary collection is international in scope and emphasizes the most exciting styles and voices, rather than taking a typical decade-by-decade approach. As a result A New Omnibus of Crime is packed with page-turning, engaging, and spine-tingling selections. Stories in this collection include Patricia Highsmith's Woodrow Wilson's Necktie, Sue Grafton's A Poison That Leaves No Trace, and many more, including never-before-published works from Jefferey Deaver, Catherine Aird, and Alexander McCall Smith. A New Omnibus of Crime is a marvelous achievement that brings together some of the greatest crime and mystery short fiction ever collected. Showcasing the work of such revered authors as Dashiell Hammett, P.D James, Ross Macdonald, Sara Paretsky, Ruth Rendell, and Elmore Leonard, it is a definitive volume that will be treasured by all fans of the genre. Essential for anyone with more than a passing interest in detective fiction. Brilliantly assembled, and beautifully edited by people who know what they're doing. Robert B. Parker, author of Cold Service and Resolution. This recent anthology boldly evokes the title of Dorothy Sayers's classic anthology of 1920. The editors aim to showcase the work of the four-score-and-seven years since. Here you'll find the whole gamut, from the tough-guy patter of hard-boiled Raymond Chandler to the more decorous detection practiced by Miss Sayers. David Lehman, Wall Street Journal. The best and most satisfying mystery bargain to come along in years. It will give readers countless hours of pleasure and surprise in one volume. Cleveland Plain Dealer Not a clunker in the bunch... There have been numerous collections since Dorothy L. Sayers', but until now, none has had the depth, intelligence and chutzpah to call itself A New Omnibus of Crime.
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 2011
Рейтинг:
Описание:
Of course, no one in their right mind travels across Siberia without an axe. No one in their right mind travels across Siberia in the middle of winter in a modified Russian jeep, with only a CD player (which breaks on the first day) for company. But Hugo-Bader is no ordinary traveler. As a fiftieth birthday present to himself, he sets out to drive from Moscow to Vladivostok, traversing a continent that is two and a half times bigger than America, awash with bandits, and not always fully equipped with roads. But if his mission sounds deranged it is in keeping with the land he is visiting. For Siberia is slowly dying — or, more accurately, killing itself. This is a traumatized post-Communist landscape peopled by the homeless and the hopeless: alcoholism is endemic, as are suicides, murders and deaths from AIDS. As he gets to know these communities and speaks to the people, Hugo-Bader discovers a great deal of tragedy, but there's also dark humour to be found amongst the reindeer shepherds, the former hippies, the modern-day rappers, the homeless and the sick, the shamans, and the followers of 'one of the six Russian Christs', just one of the many arcane religions that flourish in this isolated, impossible region.
Название: Busman's Honeymoon
Жанр: Daedalus Books
Год: 1995
Рейтинг:
Описание:
Murder is hardly the best way for Lord Peter and his bride, the famous mystery writer Harriet Vane, to start their honeymoon. It all begins when the former owner of their newly acquired estate is found quite nastily dead in the cellar. All too quickly, what Lord Peter had hoped would be a very private and romantic stay in the country has turned into a most baffling case, with a misspelled «notise» to the milkman at its center and a dead man who's been discovered in a most intriguing condition: with not a spot of blood on his smashed skull and not a penny less than six hundred pounds in his pocket.
