Employing a wild mix of tall tale, rich metaphor, and contemporary science fiction, this darkly hilarious novel explores a young man's attraction and ultimate addiction to skunk musk and the social difficulties he encounters as a result. He longs to find an isolated utopia where he can indulge his addiction in peace but is continually thwarted, even by a young woman with a unique understanding of his fetish because of her own fetish for fish. Exaggerating the traits that attract and repel lovers...
The Fortune of the Rougons (Pocket Classics S.) (Immortal Literature)
by Emile Zola
'He thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood.' Set in the fictitious Provencal town of Plassans, The Fortune of the Rougons tells the story of Silvere and Miette, two idealistic young supporters of the republican resistance to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'etat in December 1851. They join the woodcutters and peasants of the Var to seize control of Plassans, opposed by the Bonapart...
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HILAIRE BELLOC'P.G. Wodehouse remains the greatest chronicler of a certain kind of Englishness, that no one else has ever captured quite so sharply, or with quite as much wit and affection'Julian FellowesWeekend Wodehouse - required reading at country house parties in the late Thirties - remains one of the best introductions to the work of PG Wodehouse. All the favourites are here: Drones Club stories, Mr Mullinger stories, stories of Jeeves, Lord Amsworth and Ukridge.
Book 3 of the classic trilogy of humorous rural adventures through pre-war England Mr Finchley takes a fancy to a horse-drawn caravan that he sees for sale, but his new wife does not relish the prospect of a caravan journey so she goes to visit her brother, while he sets out to explore the countryside and go house-hunting. While learning to handle the horse and the caravan, he encounters a variety of eccentrics and country characters, and several unsuitable houses. It gradually emerges that th...
When Dr Philip Raven, an intellectual working for the League of Nations, dies in 1930 he leaves behind a powerful legacy - an unpublished 'dream book'. Inspired by visions he has experienced for many years, it appears to be a book written far into the future: a history of humanity from the date of his death up to 2105. The Shape of Things to Come provides this 'history of the future', an account that was in some ways remarkably prescient - predicting climatic disaster and sweeping cultural chang...
Opening with the long-awaited wedding of Mister Walton, Fiddler's Green follows Mister Walton's aide-de-camp, Sundry Moss, as he embarks on a Good Samaritan mission. What seems like a harmless journey soon turns into a nearly fatal scrape as he finds himself in a strange rustic netherworld, caught between two feuding--and fantastical--families who are determined to cover up a dark secret no matter what the cost. Full of romantic yearning, knockabout comedy, and touching drama, fans and newcomers...