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  The Troubled Air - A Novel

  Irwin Shaw

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  New York Times Bestseller: A provocative novel about one man’s struggle with courage and his conscience at the height of McCarthyism.  Clement Archer, head of a popular radio show, faces a profound dilemma: Five of his employees stand accused of being communists, and a magazine threatens disclosure unless Archer fires each and every one. Despite his efforts to meet his own moral standards and avoid self-incrimination, Archer finds himself hounded from both ends of the political spectrum for his seemingly righteous actions. The Troubled Air, Irwin Shaw’s second novel, was published immediately before the author moved to Europe, where he lived for the next twenty-five years. The story remains a powerful portrayal of a good, decent man ensnared by the hysteria and cruelty of a dark period in American history. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Irwin Shaw including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

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  The Somme - Also Including The...

  A. D. Gristwood

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  Two World War I classics: The story of a British soldier enduring the battle in France and a novella starring a man who takes drastic steps to escape the Great War.The million British dead have left no books behind. What they felt as they died hour by hour in the mud, or were choked horribly with gas, or relinquished their reluctant lives on stretchers, no witness tells. But here is a book that almost tells it. . . . Mr. Gristwood has had the relentless simplicity to recall things as they were; he was as nearly dead as he could be without dying, and he has smelt the stench of his own corruption. This is the story of millions of men—of millions.” —H. G. Wells In The Somme and its companion The Coward, first published in 1927, the heroics of war and noble self-sacrifice are completely absent, replaced by the gritty realism of life for the ordinary soldier in World War I and an unflinching portrayal of the horrors of war. Written under the guidance of master storyteller H. G. Wells, they are classics of the genre. Based on A. D. Gristwood’s own wartime experiences, The Somme revolves around a futile attack during the 1916 Somme campaign. On the battlefront, Tom Everitt is wounded and must be moved back through a series of dressing stations to the General Hospital at Rouen. Few other accounts of the war give such an accurate picture of trench life, and The Spectator praised Gristwood’s “very effective writing,” calling The Somme “a book which anyone who was not in the War should read.”The Coward concerns a man who shoots himself in the hand to escape the chaos during the March 1918 retreat—an offense punishable by death—and is haunted by fear of discovery and self-loathing. Together, these works offer a vivid, immersive view of the First World War and the suffering it inflicted on the men who fought it.

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  The Crimson Petal and the White...

  Michel Faber

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  A teenage prostitute ascends through the many layers of Victorian London society in this highly acclaimed “big, sexy, bravura a novel” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times).  London, 1870s. At the heart of this panoramic narrative is a young woman’s struggle to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. Sugar, a nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, yearns for a better life. Her ascent through the strata of Victorian society begins with the egotistical perfume magnate William Rackham. Infatuated with Sugar, William’s patronage brings her into the circles of his family and milieu: his wife who barely overcomes chronic hysteria to make her appearances during “the Season”; his mysteriously hidden-away daughter, left to the care of minions; his pious brother, foiled in his devotional calling by his lust for the Widow Fox; as well as preening socialites, drunken journalists, untrustworthy servants, vile guttersnipes, and whores of all stripes and persuasions.   Twenty years in its conception, research, and writing, The Crimson Petal and the White is teeming with life, rich in texture and incident, with breathtakingly real characters. "Cocky and brilliant, amused and angry, [Faber] is rightfully earning comparisons to observer extraordinaire Charles Dickens. . . . It's hopeless to resist" (Entertainment Weekly).

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  Sugar Land

  Tammy Lynne Stoner

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  A novel of a lesbian coming of age in Depression-era small-town Texas: “The love child of Fannie Flagg and Rita Mae Brown . . . [a] ravishing debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)   It's 1923 in Midland, Texas, and Miss Dara falls in love with her best friend―who also happens to be a girl. Terrified, Miss Dara takes a job at the Imperial State Prison Farm for men. Once there, she befriends inmate and soon-to-be legendary blues singer Lead Belly, who sings his way out (true story)―but only after he makes her promise to free herself from her own prison…   “The story takes many delightful twists and turns, always described succinctly and colorfully by this narrator, who is irresistible even on days when she's ‘retaining enough water to grow rice in Arizona’ . . . A postcard of small-town Texas life from Prohibition through civil rights, tracing the treatment and awareness of gay people through these decades.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)   “How can you not adore a novel about love, food, and how working in a prison can help you discover who you really are? Every page has a beating heart; every character is so alive, you swear you hear them breathing. Stoner is an original and this debut is just fantastic.” —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times–bestselling author of With or Without You

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  Death at Neptune Yard

  Jan Durham

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  Halloween is coming to North Yorkshire, and the seaside town of Whitby is getting ready for its annual Goth Festival, where Goths of all ages descend on the town for a week of music, costumes, and spooky fun. When one of Liz McLuckie’s friends has a terrifying encounter with the Barghest— Yorkshire’s legendary Dog of Death— it sparks a series of mysterious fatalities in the town. Are supernatural forces at work, or is there another, more human, explanation? Liz decides to find out, with the help of her motley assortment of friends and Nelson the English bull terrier, the ugliest (and bravest!) dog in Yorkshire...

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  World's End

  Upton Sinclair

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  From the acclaimed author of The Jungle: The first in a Pulitzer Prize–winning historical saga about the son of an American arms dealer during WWI. Lanning “Lanny” Budd spends his first thirteen years in Europe, living at the center of his mother’s glamourous circle of friends on the French Riviera. In 1913, he enters a prestigious Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precocious—but their world is about to come to an abrupt and violent end.   When the gathering storm clouds of war finally burst, raining chaos and death over the continent, Lanny must put the innocence of youth behind him; his language skills and talent for decoding messages are in high demand. At his father’s side, he meets many important political and military figures, learns about the myriad causes of the conflict, and closely follows the First World War’s progress. When the bloody hostilities eventually conclude, Lanny joins the Paris Peace Conference as the assistant to a geographer asked by President Woodrow Wilson to redraw the map of Europe.   Perfect for fans of The Winds of War, World’s End is the magnificent opening chapter of a monumental series that brings the first half of the twentieth century to vivid life. A thrilling mix of history, adventure, and romance, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of Upton Sinclair’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.

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