Классика - скачать книги или читать онлайн. Страница 178

Beloved and bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith lends his delightful touch to the Austen classic, Emma.‘It's comfort reading at its most soothing’ IndependentPrepare to meet a young woman who thinks she knows everything.Fresh from university, Emma Woodhouse triumphantly arrives home in Norfolk ready to embark on adult life with a splash. Not only has her sister, Isabella, been whisked away on a motorcycle up to London, but her astute governess, Miss Taylor is at a loose end, abandoned in the giant family pile, Hartfield, alongside Emma’s anxiety-ridden father. Someone is needed to rule the roost and young Emma is more than happy to oblige.As she gets her fledging design business off the ground, there is plenty to delight her in the buzzing little village of Highbury. At the helm of her own dinner parties and instructing her new little protégée, Harriet Smith, Emma reigns forth. But there is only one person who can play with Emma’s indestructible confidence, her old friend and inscrutable neighbour George Knightley – this time has Emma finally met her match?You don’t have to be in London to go to parties, find amusement or make trouble. Not if you’re Emma, the very big fish in the rather small pond. But for a young woman who knows everything, Emma has a lot to learn about herself.Ever alive to the uproarious nuances of human behaviour, and both the pleasures and pitfalls of village life, beloved author Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma is the busybody we all know and love, and a true modern delight.

A brilliantly funny novel from the author of ‘The Abstinence Teacher’ and ‘Little Children’, made into an acclaimed film starring Reece Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick.Tracy Flick wants to be president of Winwood High. She’s one of those ambitious girls who finds time to do it all: edit the yearbook, star in the school musical, sleep with her English teacher. Staunch idealist, Jim McAllister (aka ‘Mr M’) thinks the students deserve better. So he persuades Paul Warren – a well-liked, good-hearted jock – to run as well. But that puts Paul’s sister, Tammy, in a snit. So she runs too, on an apathy platform – before starting a real campaign…to get herself kicked out of school.The idea was to educate the students of this suburban New Jersey school in the democratic process and the American way. But with all the sex scandals, smear campaigns and behind-the-scenes powerbrokers at Winwood High, it doesn’t look as if they need any lessons…

This is a rowdy, riotous tale, a tale in which the medieval past takes on a face, name, and occupation and roams around the humdrum town of Ashford, bringing chaos to the lives of those it picks on. No one is safe: not upstanding Beede and his drug-dealing son, nor teen chav Kelly who zestily finds God (much to the dismay of the Reverend responsible), or Gaffar, the tiny, amorous Kurd with an unusual fear of salad.Darkmans is a world where language snaps and crackles like static, twitching with barely containable energy. Past and present mingle and blur, and the lines between fantasy and reality, sanity and madness are continually rubbed out and redrawn – but by whose hand? And what about the grand scheme of things – is life a coincidence or is it a pattern, plotted by all-seeing, unknown forces?The third of Nicola Barker's visionary narratives of the Thames Gateway, Darkmans is a very modern book about very old-fashioned subjects: love and jealousy. It's also about invasion, obsession, displacement and possession, about comedy, art, prescription drugs and chiropody. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007 and following on from Wide Open (winner Dublin IMPAC award 2000) and Behindlings it confirms Nicola Barker as one of Britain's most original, innovative and exciting literary talents.

Reissue of the classic tale of espionage set in Cold War Europe, where the world’s greatest circus acrobat must break into an impenetrable fortress, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.Bruno Wildermann of the Wrinfield Circus is the world’s greatest trapeze artist, a clairvoyant with near-supernatural powers and an implacable enemy of the East European regime that arrested his family and murdered his wife.The CIA needs such a man, and recruits Bruno for an impossible raid – on the impreganble Lubylan fortress, where his family his held.Under cover of a circus tour, Bruno prepares to return to his homeland. But before the journey even begins a murderer strikes twice. Somewhere in the circus there is a communist agent with orders to stop Bruno at any cost…

Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the final novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITYBernard continues to chip away at the mystery of his sister-in-law Tessa Kosinski’s death in Berlin on the crucial night when his wife Fiona was brought out of the East. Fighting to uncover the truth, he must also confront the key relationships in his own life: Fiona is still far from stable now that she has returned to work, and their children remain in the clutches of his wealthy and manipulative father-in-law. Meanwhile, Werner Volkmann, Bernard’s friend since childhood, is reluctant to get involved in Bernard’s crusade.A wonderful depiction both of covert operations and office politics, Charity is packed with action, incident and intrigue, bringing to a triumphant conclusion a series of ten novels that represents one of the great acheivements of modern English fiction.This reissue includes a foreword from the cover designer, Oscar-winning filmmaker Arnold Schwartzman, and a brand new introduction by Len Deighton, which offers a fascinating insight into the writing of the story.

The sequel to ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’.‘Birthday’ is the sequel to Alan Sillitoe’s classic novel of the 1950s, ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’.Four decades on from the novel which was at the forefront of the new wave of British literature, we rediscover the Seaton brothers: older, certainly; wiser – possibly not.Arthur and Brian Seaton, one with an ailing wife, one with an emotional knapsack of failure and success, are on their way to Jenny’s seventieth birthday party. Jenny and Brian had years ago experimented with sex – semi-clothed, stealthy, with the bonus of fear. Arthur, of course, had cut a winning swathe through the married and unmarried women of Nottinghamshire.Life has changed. But there is still pleasure; and still pain.Alan Sillitoe is undoubtedly one of the greatest English writers of our time, and, indeed, one of the most influential.

An extraordinary story of war and friendship from one of America’s most revered authors of the 20th CenturyTwo teenagers form an unlikely friendship in pre-War Philadelphia. Al is obsessed with lifting weights, looking good and chasing girls. Birdy is obsessed with flight.Birdy’s passion becomes all-encompassing. Birdy wants to fly.A few years later these young men find themselves emotionally and physically scarred by Word War Two. Al is called to an army psychiatric hospital to help the doctors there treat his friend, who he finds squatting on the floor of his cell and acting like a bird.This haunting and brilliant novel has electrified readers the world over. It has truly become a modern classic.In 1984, Birdy was turned into an award-winning movie directed by Alan Parker and starring Nicholas Cage and Matthew Modine

A poignant and brilliant sequel to Dandelion Wine from the author of Fahrenheit 451In Green Town Illinois, Douglas Spaulding is in the midst of a small civil war with the old pitted against the young in this, the second book in Bradbury’s semi-fictionalised account of his childhood. As the school board’s figure of authority Mr Calvin C. Quartermain attempts to outwit the boys at every turn, their antics increase and become ever more daring and mischevious. Once the shadow of winter draws across Green Town, the boys quickly realise that their enemy is not so much the senior members of their own community, but rather time itself which is ever ebbing away, just beyond the reach of their most daring trick yet: a bold attempt to sabotage the town’s clock.

An endearing classic of childhood memories of an idyllic midwestern summer from the celebrated author of ‘Farenheit 451’."He stood at the open window in the dark, took a deep breath and exhaled.The street lights, like candles on a black cake, went out.He exhaled again and again and the stars began to vanish.Douglas smiled. He pointed a finger.There, and there. Now over here, and here…Yellow squares were cut in the dim morning earth as house lights winked slowly on. A sprinkle of windows came suddenly alight miles off in dawn country.'Everyone yawn. Everyone up.'"In the backwaters of Illinois, Douglas Spaulding's grandfather makes an intoxicating brew from harvested dandelions. ‘Dandelion Wine’ is a quirky, breathtaking coming-of-age story from one of science fiction's greatest writers. Distilling his experiences into «Rites & Ceremonies» and «Discoveries & Revelations», the young Spaulding wistfully ponders over magical tennis shoes, and machines for every purpose from time travel to happiness and silent travel.Based upon Bradbury's own experiences growing up in Waukegan in the 1920s, ‘Dandelion Wine’ is a heady mixture of fond memory, forgiveness, magic, the imagination and above all, of summers that seemed to go on forever.

Four of Brian’s acclaimed essay collections in one ebook.Four books of essays dating from the 1970s to the 1990s.The books included are THIS WORLD AND NEARER ONES, PALE SHADOW OF SCIENCE, AND THE LURID GLARE OF THE COMET and THE DETACHED RETINA.

A collection of Lewis’s essays against ‘the new morality’ – a fine collection representing Lewis at his most brilliant.Published shortly after his death, aiming to make available some of his writings which were not at that time publicly accessible, and to counter the prevailing new morality of the sixties, ‘Christian Reflections’ gives a robust defence of the Christian Gospel.Now, fifty years later, when Christian communities are, in our own day, struggling to come to terms with a shifting morality, this little volume will be a comforting reminder of the never-changing truths of the faith.As ever, Lewis’s clear and eloquent mind gives plenty of food for thought, especially as he aims his intellectual ammunition at the modern myths still so prevalent in our post-modern culture.