This is an exciting, atmospheric work that works on several levels: partly a story of tropical adventures, partly a melodramatic novel, partly a psychological thriller, partly a criticism of the empire. Axel Heist lives on an island in present-day Indonesia with a Chinese aide Wang. Heist visits a nearby island when a women's group plays in a hotel owned by Mr. Schomberg. Schomberg tries to impose himself sexually on one of the band members, Alma,...

This adventure story is of a heroic man victimized by his own integrity & destroyed by his sense of lost honor.

Considered by many to be E. M. Forster's greatest novel, Howards End is a beautifully subtle tale of two very different families brought together by an unusual event. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger." When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home-Howards End-to one of the Schlegel sisters,...

"The story of a young woman from Wisconsin who goes to Chicago, becomes an actress, marries and moves to New York, and when her husband loses his job, returns to the stage." ***"A powerful account of a young working girl's rise to the 'tinsel and shine' of worldly success, and of the slow decline of her lover and protector Hurstwood." Oxford Companion to Engl Lit. ***"Plain, unaffected, and unconventional story of the actual life of the lower middle-classes...

John Dos Passos had just returned from studying architecture in Spain when America entered World War I and - driven by the idealism that infected many young Americans (including Hemingway and e.e. cummings) - he joined up as a driver for the Ambulance Corps. His rapid and profound disillusionment forms the core of Three Soldiers, a fierce denunciation of the military and of the far-reaching social implications of its exploitation of young men. The...

"In 1917, after the entry of America into World War I, E. E. Cummings, arecent graduate of Harvard College, volunteered to serve on an ambulance corps in France. Arrived in Paris with a new friend, William Slater Brown, the two young men set about living it up in the big city before heading off to their assignment. Once in the field, they wrote irreverent letters about their experiences which attracted the attention of the censors and ultimately led...

"Written in a simple, lucid prose humorously reminiscent of Sir Thomas Malory's style, this episodic tale concerns the poor but carefree 'paisano' Danny and his friends Pillon, Pablo, Big Joe Portagee, Jesus Maria Corcoran, and the old Pirate, all of whom gather in Danny's house, which Steinbeck tells us 'was not unlike the Round Table.' The novel (accepted after nine publishers had turned it down) contrasts the complexities of modern civilization...

A story with no real beginning or end (it ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence), this "book of Doublends Jined" is as remarkable for its prose as for its circular structure. Written in a fanta[s]tic dream language, forged from polyglot puns and portmanteau words, the "Wake" features some of Joyce's most brilliant inventive work. Sixty years after its original publication, it remains, in Anthony Burgess's words,...

The ambitions, dreams, failings, and innermost thoughts of a diverse group of passengers are revealed as they travel aboard a bus along the backroads of California.

The third man : Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry has died in suspicious circumstances, and the police are closing in on his associates. The fallen idol : A small boy is caught up in the games adults play. Left in the care of the butler and his wife while his parents go on holiday, Philip realizes too late the danger of lies and deceit. But the truth is even deadlier.