FICTION D-F

THE PROVINCIAL LADY IN RUSSIA

E M Delafield
THE PROVINCIAL LADY IN RUSSIA
"I wish to Heavans you'd go and live of a Collective Farm in Ruissia for six months and write a funny book about it." So said E M Delafield's editor in the mid-1930s. She acceded to his wish, and the result is a book about a long visit to Stalinist Russia by an English lady of wit and refinement. With drawings by Leo Manso.
344 pages paperback (with d/w) (Academy Chicago, 1985)
Condition: paperback with d/w in good condition with very slight dust stains on top page edges.

LESS THAN ZERO

Bret Easton Ellis
LESS THAN ZERO
Set in affluent Los Angeles, this is a raw and powerful portrayal of young people who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. Its narrator, Clay, comes home to LA for Christmas. His holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the rich suburban homes, the relentless parties, the seedy bars and the glitzy rock clubs. A shocking coming-of-age novel about the casual nihilism that comes with youth and money.
208 pages paperback (Picador, 1985)
Condition: has faded page edges and owner's signature

DANIEL MARTIN

John Fowles
DANIEL MARTIN
Set internationally and spanning three decades, the novel is, in the authros' words, "intended as a defence and illustration of an unfashionable philosophy, humanism, and also an exploration of what it is to be English". It is a richly evoked narrative of a contemporary Englishman's attempt to see himself and his time in the mirrors of his past and his present.
704 pages hardback (BCA, 1978)
Condition: has dust stained top page edges and owner's signature

PEMBROKE

Mary Wilkins Freeman
PEMBROKE
Written in 1893, PEMBROKE is the story of two families and of the long and desperate courtship of two proud people. The love of the parents for their children, and of the young man and woman for each other, is eclipsed and all but destroyed by each character's unbending adherence to "what's right".
330 pages paperback (Academy Chicago Publishers, 1978)
Condition: has slightly faded top page edges

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS

Stephen Fry
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS
Ted Wallace is an old, sour, womanising, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic, but he has his faults too.
Fired from his newspaper, months behind on his alimony payments and disgusted with a world that undervalues him, ted seeks a few motnhs repose and free drink at Swafford Hall, the country mansion of his old friend Lord Logan.
But strange things have been going on at Swafford. Miracles. Healings. Phenomena beyond the comprehension of a mud-caked hippopotamus like Ted.
356 pages paperback
Condition: good

TRICK OF THE LIGHT

Jill Dawson
TRICK OF THE LIGHT
Mick, Rita and their daughter leave London for the backwoods cabin in Washington State but the remote setting brings out the primitive emotions. Dawson explores why women stay in damaging relationships and how patterns of behaviour are passed down the generations. A subtle, compassionate portrait of a young mother struggling to protect her child and of a father destroyed by his own childhood.
227 pages, paperback
Condition: mint

REFLECTIONS IN THE NILE

J Suzanne Frank
REFLECTIONS IN THE NILE
Set in the decadent Egypt of the woman pharaoh Hatshepsut, this debut novel portrays Dallas artist Chloe Kinglsey on an unforgettable journey. A twist in time has plunged her into a world of deadly politics and dark secrets that culminates with the chaos and terror of the biblical Exodus ... and challenges a modern woman to fight for her love, her beliefs, and her true destiny.
528 pages paperback (Warner Books, 1998)
Condition: good

NEANDERTHAL

John Darnton
NEANDERTHAL
In the remote mountains of central Asia, an eminent Harvard archeologist discovers something extraordinary. He sends a cryptic message to two colleagues. But then, he disappears.
Matt Mattison and Susan Arnot - once lovers, now academic rivals - are going where few humans have ever walked, looking for a relic band of creatures that have existed for over 40,000 years, that possess powers man can only imagine, and that are about to change the face of civilisation forever.
395 pages paperback (St Martins, 1997)
Condition: has some creasing on spine

SPADEWORK

Timothy Findley
SPADEWORK
On a summer evening in Stratford, Ontario, the errant thrust of a gardener's spade slices a telephone cable into instant silence. The resulting disconnection is devastating. With the failure of one call to reach a house, an ambitious young actor becomes the victim of sexual blackmail. The blocking of a second call leads tragically to murder. And when a Bell Canada repairman arrives to mend the broken line, his innocent yet irresistible male beauty has explosive consequences.
404 pages, paperback (Perennial, 2002)
Condition: good

WINTER'S TALES

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
WINTER'S TALES
Written after her return from Kenya and during the dark days of the Nazi occupation, these tales derive their themes and locales from Dinesen's childhood in Denmark. Luminous, introspective, full of "bottomless wisdom" and poetic feeling, they were the author's own favourite work.
218 pages, paperback (Penguin, 1986)
Condition: has faded cover and pages and owner's signature

THE ORDER OF DEATH

Hugh Fleetwood
THE ORDER OF DEATH
Fred O'Connor's secret apartment was both a dream and a refuge - a dream of the disordered world he longed for and a refuge from the disordered America that he believed existed. It wasn't quite perfect - for one thing he had to share it with Bob, and for another he had bought it with money that was illegally earned - but is perfect enough, and he would have gone to any lengths to protect it.
But not even Fred knew how appalling "any lengths" would be when smooth, pale Leo Smith came to threaten all he had ever lived for. Forced to confront reality, Fred O'Connor moves from a position of mad, lonely strength to one of terrible and ultimately tragic awareness
184 pages, paperback (J M Dent, 1983)
Condition: has faded page edges & owner's signature

CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER

Thomas de Quincey
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER
De Quincey wrote his Confessions at a time when opium was as easily available as aspirin today, and almost as frequently used, and when its dangers were not understood. Though something of a fugitive from respectable society, he shared his addiction with some of the most distinguished men of his age. De Quincey suffered from what he himself called a 'chronic passion of anxiety' which led him from the security and success he might have enjoyed into the direst poverty, and into the experiences which form the subjects of the terrible, drug-induced dreams he describes so superbly.
227 pages paperback (Penguin, 1976)
Condition: has faded pages and owner's signature

THE BEASTLY BEAUTITUDES OF BALTHAZAR B

J P Donleavy
THE BEASTLY BEAUTITUDES OF BALTHAZAR B
Born to riches in Paris and raised in lonely splendour, his life spreads to prep school in England. There he is befriended by the world's most beatific sinner, the noble little Beefy. And in holidays spent in Paris Balthazar B falls upon love and sorrow with his beautiful governess Miss Hortense, to lose her and live out lonely London years, waking finally to the green sunshine of Ireland and Trinity College. Here, reunited with Beefy, he is swept away to the high and low life of Dublin until their university careers are brough to an inglorious end. They return to London, there to take their tricky steps into marriage, Beefy in search of riches, Balthazar in search of love.
400 pages paperback (Penguin, 1980)
Condition: has faded cover and pages

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, 2 vols

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, 2 vols
The culmination of Dostoyevsky's work, the novel was completed in 1880, shortly before his death. A story of patricide and fraternal jealousy which profoundly involves the questions of anarchism, atheism, and the existence of God.
913 pages paperback (Penguin, 1970)
Condition: has faded covers and pages and owner's signature

THE DEVILS

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
THE DEVILS
Dostoyevsky's more controversial novel is a political drama, hailed as both a grim prohecy of the Russian Revolution and denounced as the work of a reactionary renegade, The book is a penetrating commentary on men and affairs, with malicious caricatures of revolutionaries and literary personalities. It is also a work of tragic intensity; Dostoyevsky, tormented by the conflict between good and evil, probed into the very recesses of the mind to discover the dark passions of men.
704 pages paperback (Penguin, 1971) Condition: has creased spine, faded covers/pages and owner's signature

THE IDIOT

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
THE IDIOT
Prince Myshkin, The idiot, is perhaps the most appealing of all Dostoyevsky's heroes. Gentle, saintly, foolish, and kind, Myshkin is on one view the pure idealised Christian: on the other he is the catalyst of a bitter criticism of the Russian ruling class. This dual vision marks it out for the modern reader as one of the author's major novels.
661 pages paperback (Penguin, 1971)
Condition: has faded covers and pages and owner's signature

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND/ THE DOUBLE

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND/ THE DOUBLE
Notes From Underground (1864) is a study of a single character, 'the real man of the Russian majority', amd a revelation of the author's own deepest beliefs.
The Double, Dostoyevsky's second novel, is the nightmarish story of a man haunted or possessed by his exact double. Is the double really a double or simply another side of his own nature? This uncertainty is what gives the ultimate horror to a tale which may be read as a classic study of human breakdown.
287pages paperback (Penguin, 1972)
Condition: has faded covers and pages and owner's signature

A PASSAGE TO INDIA

E M Forster
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
'That Marabar Case' was an event that threw the city of Chandrapore into a fever of racial feeling. Miss Quested, on a visit from England to the man she expected to marry, showed an interest in Indian ways of life which was frowned upon by the sun-baked British community. And the prejudice which most of them felt and expressed against any social contacts between the British and the Indians appeared, at first, to be justified when she returned, alone and distressed, from an excursion to the caves in the company of a young Indian doctor. He was arrested on a charge of attempted assault, but when the case came to trial Miss Quested withdrew her accusation and the doctor was set free. Was she the victim of an hallucination, a complex unidentified intruder, or what?
310 pages paperback (Penguin, 1974)
Condition: has faded covers and pages and owner's signature

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

E M Forster
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
Forster takes a group of well-bred English people and exposes them to a situation which rouses each of them to violent and unexpected reactions. The event which sparks them off is the marriage of one of their number to a vivid and flashy young Italian several years her junior. When she dies in childbirth her relatives and friends feel it their duty, for a variety of reasons, to rescue her baby from the dubious environment of its father. The emotions and quandaries in which they land themselves are observed with sympathy and wit.
159 pages paperback (Penguin, 1972)
Condition: has faded covers and pages and owner's signature

FOUR RUSSIAN PLAYS

FOUR RUSSIAN PLAYS
Most Russian critics agree that these four plays are the greatest productions of the Russian theatre before Chekhov. The Infant is certainly the first major Russian play and combines a neo-classical manner with a rich realism in dialogue and characterisation. Chatsky (or "Woe from Wit"), relatively unknown outside Russia, is regarded by Russians as one of the supreme works of their literature. The Inspector is the superb comedy in which a mistaken identity reveals the folly and corruption of the provincial bureaucracy, whilst Thunder is a tragedy whose hero and heroine are the victims of small-town bigotry and coarseness.
394 pages paperback (Penguin 1982)
Condition: has faded pages and owner's signature