It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic.

In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions, a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives.Because Troy Phelan\'s new will names a sole surprise heir to his eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil.Enter the lawyers. Nate O\'Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan\'s family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate is crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman - pursued by enemies and friends alike - holds a stunning surprise of her own.

"People come to my door—too many of them really—and knock to tell me Notes of a Dirty Old Man turns them on. A bum off the road brings in a gypsy and his wife and we talk . . . . drink half the night. A long distance operator from Newburgh, N.Y. sends me money. She wants me to give up drinking beer and to eat well. I hear from a madman who calls himself 'King Arthur' and lives on Vine Street in Hollywood and wants to help me write my column. A doctor comes to my door: 'I read your column and think I can help you. I used to be a psychiatrist.' I send him away . . ."

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine--and what he will become is far stranger.

Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer's dingy Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are mysteriously reduced he becomes shunned by those around him, and soon his only remaining visitors are his two beautifully dressed daughters. Goriot's fate is intertwined with two other fellow boarders: the young social climber Eugene Rastignac, who sees a way to gain the acceptance and wealth he craves, and the enigmatic figure of Vautrin, who is hiding darker secrets than anyone. Weaving a compelling and panoramic story of love, money, self-sacrifice, corruption, greed and ambition, Old Man Goriot is Balzac's acknowledged masterpiece. A key novel in his Comédie Humaine series, it is a vividly realized portrait of bourgeois Parisian society in the years following the French Revolution.

The Old Man was dead. That's what the coroner said. So why was he walking down A1A? How could he speak to T. K. and Sunny? The Ghostcatcher has to find out. In the meantime, secrets from a dark and violent past are about to be revealed. Will it happen in time to save an innocent girl? No one knows.Death of The Old Man is the third book in the Ghostcatcher series. T.K. Fleming is the retired English professor who just can't seem to avoid getting mixed up in murder. His girlfriend Sunny is at his side again along with all of the colorful cast of characters that haunt Key West. Who is the Obi Man and how can the dead speak? Maybe T.K. can find out before an innocent girl dies and they 'steal his shadow' and his life. The mysteries defy conventional logic and the dangers are very real. Its a fast paced read chocked full of adrenalin and a series of baffling events.

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine--and what he will become is far stranger.

The setting is in the mid 1950s where a successful business man fell on hard times due to his wife not managing their finances with wisdom. Upon her death, the children insisted on an expensive funeral which took Old Man’s retirement funds leaving him penniless. The greedy children became alienated and finally disowned him. Yet fortune was with him when he was encouraged by a middle aged widow.The setting is in the mid 1950s where a successful business man fell on hard times due to his wife not managing their finances with wisdom. Upon her death, the children insisted on an expensive funeral which took Old Man’s retirement funds leaving him penniless. The greedy children became alienated and finally disowned him. Yet fortune was with him when he was encouraged by a middle aged widow he met at the mission. There was a turn around that you will anticipate as you enjoy the story.

This old man has defied injustice and paid the price his entire life, and he's not about to stop doing the right thing now! Also, revenge is so very sweet, and also fun :DA evil scientist invaded the planet earth. There is chaos everywhere. A team of four superheroes is our last hope. This comic book is created by a little girl - Anusha Jain using "Create Children Book" app.

From the late and great Peter Ustinov comes a story full of wit, satire and insight. An increasingly decrepit God and a merely ill-tempered Satan are reconciled and attempt a mission to Earth, where their misadventures point up the comedy and tragedy of modern life, as they travel to a variety of countries in the guise of the Old Man (God) and Mr. Smith (Satan), with the FBI and Interpol in hot pursuit.

When Brian Duffy, an ageing soldier of fortune, is recruited in Venice by a strange old man to work as a bouncer in Vienna at an inn where the fabulous Herzwesten beer is brewed, everything seems straightforward. But his journey is far from it. Pursued and attacked from all sides, guarded and guided by creatures of myth, Duffy is no sooner in Vienna than the city is besieged by the turkish armies if Suleiman. And it becomes apparent that Duffy's presence is no accident and that it is up to him to preserve the West until the drawing of the dark. . .

"Listen," whispered Jimmy Skunk to Peter Rabbit as the strange howling sound echoed through the Green Forest. But Peter was listening. He had never heard anything like it. The sound made cold chills run up and down his backbone. What could it be?Children will love finding out as Peter Rabbit, Jimmy Skunk, Prickly Porky, Granny Fox, Reddy Fox, and other dwellers in the Green Forest react to a new — and scary — neighbor. All ends happily, of course, in this timeless fable by noted storyteller Thornton W. Burgess.Reprinted in large, easy-to-read type and enhanced with six new illustrations, based on the Harrison Cady originals, this book combines the fun of a good story with gentle lessons about nature, wildlife, and proper behavior.

A classic collection of mysteries from the Golden Age of British crime writing, by the author of The Scarlet Pimpernel.Mysteries! There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation.So says a rather down-at-heel elderly gentleman to young Polly Burton of the Evening Observer, in the corner of the ABC teashop on Norfolk Street one afternoon. Once she has forgiven him for distracting her from her newspaper and luncheon, Miss Burton discovers that her interlocutor is as brilliantly gifted as he is eccentric - able to solve mysteries that have made headlines and baffled the finest minds of the police without once leaving his seat in the teahouse. The Old Man in the Corner is a classic collection of mysteries featuring the Teahouse Detective - a contemporary of Sherlock Holmes, with a brilliant mind and waspish temperament to match that of Conan Doyle's creation.

Fifty years ago, a group of college friends dabbled in the occult and released a malign presence on the world. Now, on his deathbed, the last of the students enlists the aid of three newcomers to banish the thing they summoned. Hampered by the old man's greedy son, the wizened director of the university library, and a private investigator with a troubled past, can Russian anthropologist Anna Rykov, Doctor Harry Lamb, and Father Sean O'Malley gather the knowledge and resources needed to defeat the entity? The Old Man's Request is a pulp adventure set in the 1920s, and the first part of the Utgarda Trilogy.

When junior-high boys Tyler, Scooter, and AJ see an old man digging through Scooter’s mailbox, they put on their detective hats to find out why. But when the mystery of the old man becomes more complicated than they foresaw, it appears that this newly formed detective agency might not make it to their second case.Marcus is a time traveler who, on his first trip through time, ends up not where he intended but in a mysterious junkyard full of strange artifacts and machinery. As he quickly discovers, he's not alone here, and the answer to what has happened to him and the motley assortment of strangers that surround him can only be revealed after they've all had a nice, cool drink at the Last Stop Bar & Grill.A science fiction short story. Approximately 7,000 words.

Everyone has an old man, and it's time to celebrate yours!A short collection of short stories by various authors both new and established. Especially made to celebrate fathers everywhere with stories ranging from deeply emotional to uplifting and sentimental.The world's #1 Big-Data Detective returns in yet another extremely unlikely, if not impossible adventure. This time the wrong things are happening at the wrong times in the wrong places while pasts and futures hang in the balance. Part Freakonomics, part Sherlock Holmes, part Doctor Who, part somewhere on the spectrum and 100% completely absurd, The Outlier series continues with "The Outlier #3, Lost Souls, another Dillon Sharif Tall Tale.

In a series of essays, Runyon, reflects on the frank, often outrageous opinions of his "old man," who knows a thing or two about just about everything—and even if he doesn't, he'll tell you anyway. Damon Runyon's "old man" is neither a small-time Broadway crook, nor a modest Brooklyn Babbitt... He is a salty old commentator on men, women and manners, who says what he thinks with more force and frequency than tact. My Old Man is a classic collection of humorous observations about life from bankers to windbags, and its as relevant and funny today as it was when it was first published in 1939.

This short story (3200 words) is about an old man finding his place in a futuristic world; a world of space travel and space colonization. Earth is suffocating and new worlds are needed. An expedition with the aim of colonizing a new planet is sent out.Road to Gethsemane tells the story of two women Magdalene (Mags) and Eden. Mags is a woman in her prime jilted by her husband, her children have flown the nest. She finds her self in penury living in squalor and in a dead end job. In a moment of madness she decides to accept the offer of a free holiday from a known smuggler. Upon her return she soon begins to realize her error, but has to face the consequences of her actions. She becomes entangled in a group of smugglers. Among them her ex-husband and a crooked copper. Who has become the subject of an internal investigation. The story soon become a game of whose watching who. Mags meet Eden a beautiful young model with a complicated past. the two meet through a mutual acquaintance and instead of becoming victims of the puppet masters they hatch a plan which would leave them rich and their enemies behind bars. But will each wrong demand a reckoning?

It all starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly in his room in an old people's home, he is waiting for the party he-never-wanted-anyway to begin. The mayor is going to be there. The press is going to be there. But, as it turns out, Allan is not... Slowly but surely Allan climbs out of his bedroom window, into the flowerbed (in his slippers) and makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, we learn something of Allan's earlier life in which - remarkably - he helped to make the atom bomb, became friends with American presidents, Russian tyrants, and Chinese leaders, and was a participant behind the scenes in many key events of the twentieth century.

A newly translated collection of fiction by the influential Italian modernist, continuing on his landmark work Zeno's Conscience.A Very Old Man collects five linked stories, parts of an unfinished novel that the great Triestine Italo Svevo wrote at the end of his life, after the international success of Zeno’s Conscience in 1923. Here Svevo revisits with new vigor and agility themes that fascinated him from the start—aging, deceit, and self-deception, as well as the fragility, fecklessness, and plain foolishness of the bourgeois paterfamilias—even as memories of the recent, terrible slaughter of World War I and the contemporary rise of Italian fascism also cast a shadow over the book’s pages. It opens with “The Contract,” in which Zeno’s manager, the hardheaded young Olivi, expresses, like the war veterans who were Mussolini’s early followers, a sense of entitlement born of fighting in the...

This book is based on an old man’s perspective towards happiness. Positive thinking of the lonely man, may be an inspiration to all of us.Hope readers will love the old man for his indomitable spirits in an adverse condition.This book is based on an old man’s perspective towards happiness. Positive thinking of the lonely man actually inspire me a lot. Hope he may be an inspiration to others as well.Hope my readers will love the old man for his indomitable spirits in an adverse condition.

The sequel to Jonas Jonasson’s international bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared It all begins with a hot air balloon trip and three bottles of champagne. Allan and Julius are ready for some spectacular views, but they’re not expecting to land in the sea and be rescued by a North Korean ship, and they could never have imagined that the captain of the ship would be harbouring a suitcase full of contraband uranium, on a nuclear weapons mission for Kim Jong-un … Soon Allan and Julius are at the centre of a complex diplomatic crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel and President Trump. Things are about to get very complicated … Praise for The Hundred-Year-Old Man: ‘A mordantly funny and loopily freewheeling debut novel about ageing disgracefully’ Sunday Times ‘Imaginative, laugh-out-loud . . . a brilliant satire on the foibles of mankind’ Daily Telegraph ‘Fast-moving and relentlessly sunny’ Guardian

"An Old Man's Love," the last novel written by Anthony Trollope, tells the story of William Whittlestaff, who lost the woman he loved to a richer, more lively rival many years before, lives alone at Croker Hall in Hampshire, looked after by his loyal, odd housekeeper Mrs Baggett. Mr Whittlestaff impulsively takes in as his ward the orphaned daughter of an old friend, nineteen year-old Mary Lawrie, much to Mrs Baggett's disapproval. She - rightly - suspects that Mary's arrival will eventually lead to her master falling in love with the girl, who will supplant her as head of the household. The reserved, unworldly Mary gradually warms towards the lonely bachelor, and he eventually asks her to be his wife. Mary has only briefly experienced love three years before, with John Gordon, a penniless Oxford student who was sent away by her step-mother as a bad prospect. Mary accepts Mr Whittlestaff, but not before making him aware of the history of her short and painful dealings with John Gordon. He dismisses this knowledge, allowing that Mary 'may think of him' from time to time, but privately presuming the young man to be safely out of her life.But John Gordon unexpectedly arrives at Croker Hall. Fresh from the diamond fields of South Africa where he has made a considerable fortune in order to make himself worthy of Mary, he has come to renew his suit, and she finds herself caught in an impossible situation, feeling incapable of jilting the man whose proposal she has so recently accepted. Mr Whittlestaff, though well aware who it is that Mary really loves, is unwilling to be rejected himself once again, and reluctant to release her from her promise. John Gordon, unable quite to give up hope, goes to stay for a few days with an old university friend, Montagu Blake, a curate who lives nearby. Thus the battle is on for the hand of Mary Lawrie...

After toiling in obscurity for years, Charles Bukowski suddenly found fame in 1967 with his autobiographical newspaper column, "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," and a book of that name in 1969. He continued writing this column, in one form or another, through the mid-1980s. "More Notes of a Dirty Old Man" gathers many uncollected gems from the column's twenty-year run. Drawn from ephemeral underground publications, these stories and essays haven't been seen in decades, making "More" a valuable addition to Bukowski's oeuvre. Filled with his usual obsessions--sex, booze, gambling--"More" features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, his tortured, violent relationships with women, and his lurid escapades on the poetry reading circuit. Highlighting his versatility, the book ranges from thinly veiled autobiography to purely fictional tales of dysfunctional suburbanites, disgraced politicians, and down-and-out sports promoters, climaxing with a long, hilarious adventure among French filmmakers, "My Friend the Gambler," based on his experiences making the movie "Barfly." From his lowly days at the post office through his later literary fame, "More" follows the entire arc of Bukowski's colorful career. Edited by Bukowski scholar David Stephen Calonne, "More Notes of a Dirty Old Man" features an afterword outlining the history of the column and its effect on the author's creative development. Born in Andernach, Germany in 1920, Charles Bukowski came to California at age three and spent most of his life in Los Angeles. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994.

"What I want you to do," said Mr. George Wright, as he leaned towards the old sailor, "is to be an uncle to me." "Aye, aye," said the mystified Mr. Kemp, pausing with a mug of beer midway to his lips. "A rich uncle," continued the young man, lowering his voice to prevent any keen ears in the next bar from acquiring useless knowledge. "An uncle from New Zealand, who is going to leave me all \'is money."

This is another great book by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, the British-Hungarian novelist, creator of dozens of historical novels of the times of the French Revolution in the XVIII Century. She is best remembered for her main character, Sir Percy Blakeney, AKA The Scarlet Pimpernel, who rescued French aristocrats from the French Revolution.

When a controversial celebrity rabbi drops dead over his matzoh ball soup at the famed Canter's Deli in Los Angeles, retired private eye Amos Parisman— a sixtyish, no-nonsense Jewish detective who lives with his addled wife in Park La Brea—is hired by the temple's board to make sure everything is kosher. As he looks into what seems to be a simple, tragic accident, the ante is raised when more people start to die or disappear, and Amos uncovers a world of treachery and hurt that shakes a large L.A. Jewish community to its core.

From the New York Times bestselling author and one of the city's most provocative columnists comes a hip, contemporary novel about love, lust, and living in the same neighborhood as your parents.When twenty-six-year-old Rachel Block started rabbinical school, she didn't think she'd be dropping out after a semester and a half. But when a sick man dies under her counseling, she realizes she's not cut out for the rabbinate. To make ends meet, she takes a job as a bartender in Cobble Hill, her Brooklyn neighborhood -- much to her parents' chagrin. Until now Rachel has always been the perfect daughter, getting straight A's and dating nice Jewish boys. Now she's fending off come-ons from sleazy guys and trying to remember the ingredients in a Metropolitan. It's the quintessential quarter-life crisis, compounded by the fact that she's still living just blocks from her childhood home. To make matters worse, she's having trouble sleeping -- she can barely get through the night w...

...the sin of an old man is equal to about two sins of a young man. The fable-like story of an old man's sexual obsession with a young woman is a distillation of Italo Svevo's concerns--attraction of an older man to a younger woman, individual conscience versus social convention, and the cost of sexual desire. This novella is a marvel of psychological insight, following the man's vacillations and tortuous self-justifications to their tragic-comic end. It is presented here in a translation first commissioned and published by Virginia Woolf for her Hogarth Press. **The Art of The Novella Series **Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. From the Trade Paperback edition.

A young man discovers evil lurking in his sleepy valley village. What he witnesses will haunt him forever.A young man discovers evil lurking in his sleepy valley village. What he witnesses will haunt him forever.A short story by Ben Edge.

It's all come down to this. The past, the present, and the conclusion of man who's chosen to end so many colliding for the final time. From an unimaginable start within the pages of A Better Kind of Hate to a bitter, bloody end throughout All of Them To Burn, Bishop Rider remains what he's always been. What a certain type of predator forced him to become. His life and struggle not only a journey of choice driven by necessity, but one decades in the making. There will be carnage. There will be blood. But through it all, a sliver of hope. And perhaps, if he's lucky, a chance at brighter days. Time to go to work. Praise for Old Man Rider: "With glorious, unapologetic brutality, Old Man Rider tells, through several vivid vignettes, of Bishop Rider's exploits. Woven in are elements of his humanity, as well as his motivation. Johnson provides a well-written, thoughtful book of revenge, glorious bloody revenge. I found it utterly delightful...

The ravages of time have taken a toll on 72-year-old Mike Browning's physique, diminished his vitality, and eroded his golf swing. The seasoned linkster had long subscribed to the notion that decline is an inevitable consequence of aging, but his outlook changes after he meets a most unlikely mentor, Scotty. Mike first encounters Andy "Scotty" Sanderson one eerie night while walking his dog at Red Oak Country Club. Initially perplexed by the peculiar fellow dressed like a nineteenth-century Scotsman, he soon learns the mystical sage is a guardian of secrets with the potential to not only transform his game but also, more importantly, renew his flagging body and spirit. Mike's newfound fortitude and ameliorated golf skills are put to the test during the club championship finals. His nemesis, Tex, employs every deceitful trick in the bag in a shameful display of gamesmanship that violates the spirit of the sport, but integrity is restored as Mike holds...

(Previously published as HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND)Alex Sedaka is appointed to defend a one-legged homeless man in what appears to be an open-and-shut case of stabbing amidst the homeless community. But who is the victim? Why did he have $2000 on him? And why didn't the killer take the money?For Alex, the problems are only beginning, because his client isn't talking and the only clue to the victim's identity is a tattoo with the phrase "the truth about Hashem." But the case is much bigger than Alex imagines. Thousands of miles away, the British Prime Minister is taking a personal interest in the case... which seems to involve people in the highest of places.Faced with attempts on his client's life and tension with his law partner Juanita, who is in a lesbian relationship with the new receptionist, Alex must keep his wits about him. But with SAS soldiers and MI6 officers stalking him, danger can come from any quarter. Perfect for fans of Harlan Coben and Lee Child.

CHAPTER I. The old man lived in a wood. He had a wife and a bag. The bag was quite a large bag. One day the old man went out for a walk. He took the bag with him. By and by he saw a hen in a field. Now when you see a hen in a field you say "Chuck, chuck!" The old man said "Chuck, chuck!" And the hen came to him. So that he caught her by the neck and put her in his bag. She made a great to-do, but he put her in. The old man said "Chuck, chuck!" and the hen came to him. On his way home, just as he turned a corner, the old man saw a policeman. The policeman had a red suit. He was one of those policemen who wear red suits because they are tired of wearing blue. The red policeman looked very hard at the old man and very hard at his bag. In fact he looked so very very hard that the old man got frightened and turned round and ran away. Of course the red policeman ran after him. When they had run about five miles the old man dropped his bag in order that he might run quicker. The red policeman had made up his mind to catch him; so that he did not stop to pick up the bag but kept on running after the old man. At length when they had run about ten miles he caught him. The red policeman ran after him. "Now, sir," said the red policeman, "what have you got in that bag?" "Nothing," said the old man. "Oh, you wicked old person," said the red policeman. "You know perfectly well that you have a hen in it. But you must come back with me, and we will soon find out." So the red policeman took the old man back to the place where he had dropped the bag. The bag was there, and the red policeman picked it up and opened it with great care. But the hen had got away. There was a big hole in the corner of the bag, and through this the hen had squeezed herself and run home as fast as ever she could. When the policeman found that the bag was empty he looked much puzzled. The old man for his part smiled a great deal. "I told you there was nothing in it," he said. The red policeman said, "Well, I expect I shall have to let you go this time. But mind you don\'t do it again." And the old man went home quite cheerfully with his bag under his arm. CHAPTER II. When the old man got home to his house in the wood he hung the bag up tidily on a nail. Then he sat down in a chair and began to laugh. He laughed for nearly a quarter of an hour by the clock. At length his wife came in to him from the garden and said, "Whatever are you laughing at?" "Whatever are you laughing at?" "Oh," replied the old man, holding his sides, "I am so amused!" Then he went on laughing. He laughed so much indeed that the tears came into his eyes and he nearly choked. His wife had to pat his back and give him a drink of water to put him right. Then he told her what had happened. How he had put a hen in his bag, how the red policeman had run after him, how he dropped the bag and let the policeman catch him, and how when the policeman took him back to the bag, the hen was gone. "Did she open the bag and fly away?" said the old woman....

From Publishers WeeklyMaster mystery writer Block has dabbled in his time in many genres, and early in his career, back in 1971, he published a handful of paperback erotic novels under a pseudonym; this is one of them. He wanted, he says, to have fun with an epistolary novel, and this is written entirely in the form of letters by a fired magazine editor, Larry Clarke, to his former wife, his previous employers, his previous wife's lover and so on. Block's knack of keeping things moving was prodigious even then, and the novel is a rapid and often amusing read, in which Larry Clarke takes sharp potshots at all and sundry, to often delicious effect. The erotic part is less successful, however; Larry (Clarke or Block) was under the impression, common to pornographers, that women crave anal penetration, which makes some of the sex scenes rather distasteful and far from aphrodisiac in effect. It's an interesting glimpse, nonetheless, of the early skills of one of our great noir stylists. (Feb.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.Review“Block is one of the best!” —The Washington Post

As she goes about her work with the villagers, slum dwellers and the common men and women of India, Sudha Murty—writer, social worker and teacher—listens to them and records what they have to say. Their accounts of the struggles and hardships which they have at times overcome, and at other times been overwhelmed by, are put together in this book.There are stories about people's generosity—and selfishness—in times of natural disasters like the tsunami; women struggling to speak out in a world that refuses to listen to them; and tales of young professionals trying to find their feet as they climb up the corporate ladder.Told simply and directly from the heart, The Old Man and His God is a collection of snapshots of the varied facets of human nature and a mirror to the souls of the people of India.

Now a major motion picture starring Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek, The Old Man and the Gun is here joined by two other riveting true-crime tales."The Old Man and the Gun" is the incredible story of a bank robber and prison escape artist who modeled himself after figures like Pretty Boy Floyd and who, even in his seventies, refuses to retire. "True Crime" follows the twisting investigation of a Polish detective who suspects that a novelist planted clues in his fiction to an actual murder. And "The Chameleon" recounts how a French imposter assumes the identity of a missing boy from Texas and infiltrates the boy's family, only to soon wonder whether he is the one being conned. In this mesmerizing collection, David Grann shows why he has been called a "worthy heir to Truman Capote" and "simply the best narrative nonfiction writer working today," as he takes the reader on a journey through some of the most intriguing and gripping real-life tales from around the world.

Roger Angell, the acclaimed New Yorker writer and editor, returns with a selection of writings that celebrate a view from the tenth decade of a engaged, vibrant life. Long known for his range and supple prose (he is the only writer elected to membership in both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters), Angell won the 2014 American Society of Magazine Editors' Best Essay award for "This Old Man," which forms a centerpiece for this book. This deeply personal account is a survey of the limitations and discoveries of great age, with abundant life, poignant loss, jokes, retrieved moments, and fresh love, set down in surprising and moving fashion. Legions of readers from different generations have discovered and shared this classic piece.This Old Man gathers essays, letters, light verse, book reviews, Talk of the Town stories, farewells, haikus, Profiles, Christmas greetings, late thoughts on the costs of war. Angell's fluid and...

Johnny Gregson moved to the country to enjoy the quiet of his twilight years, but it seems he's got two problems. The first is the roadkill. His neighbour - Hill "Scratch" Clayton - is the second. Scratch is a hard-edged old man and a creature of habit. He mows his lawn at first light every morning, and the sound of the John Deere's engine always wakes Johnny and his wife from their brittle sleep. Come winter the ride-on mower is replaced by Scratch's snowblower. Johnny tries to reason with him, but Scratch is set in his ways. There is no compassion in his soul. Old Man Scratch is a revenge story that is often touching, often humorous, but always bound by the unknown...the inexplicable fear of what man is capable of, and the darkness of his heart. For six years he has been scraping dead animals from his driveway and tossing them to the side of the road, and for six years they have disappeared within a day or two. He often asks himself, what happens to the roadkill? Just where does it go? After Johnny's world is turned upside down, he is compelled to take drastic action. He thinks he knows a way to silence Scratch forever.

'Will Millard IS the new Bill Bryson' Isabelle Broom, author of My Map of You Growing up on the Cambridgeshire Fens, Will Millard never felt more at home than when he was out with his granddad on the riverbank, whiling away the day catching fish. As he grew older his competitive urge to catch more and bigger fish led him away from that natural connection between him, his grandfather and the rivers of his home. That is, until the fateful day he let a record-breaking sand eel slip through his fingers and he knew that he had lost the magic of those days down by the river, and that something had to change. The Old Man and the Sand Eel is at its heart the story of three generations of men trying to figure out what it is to be a man, a father and a fisherman. It plots Will's scaly stepping stones back to his childhood innocence, when anything was possible and the wild was everywhere."A wonderfully fluent account of how the...

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher. Someone older who understood you when you were young and searching, who helped you see the world as a more profound place, and gave you advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of your mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn’t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Tuesdays With Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie’s lasting gift to the world.

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine—and what he will become is far stranger.

★ “One can't help but wonder why it took so long for this treasure to be translated into English. But it is here now."—Booklist (starred review)★ “Chamoiseau's prose is astounding in its beauty. . . and he ups the stakes by making this novel a breathtaking thriller, as well."—Publisher Weely (starred review)From a Prix Goncourt writer hailed by Milan Kundera as the "heir of Joyce and Kafka," a gripping story of an escaped slave in Martinique and the killer hound that pursues him From one of the most innovative and subversive novelists writing in French, a "writer of exceptional and original gifts" (The New York Times), whose Texaco won the Prix Goncourt and has been translated into fourteen languages, Patrick Chamoiseau's Slave Old Man is a gripping, profoundly unsettling story of an elderly slave's daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his master and a fearsome...

The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. They're young, they're fast and strong, and they're totally without normal human qualms. The universe is a dangerous place for humanity—and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF's biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did. Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers -- a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jared's brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades. At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutin's memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reason's for Boutin's betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his "father," he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity's mere military defeat…

The year 1957 marked the publication of Robert Ruark's best seller, The Old Man and the Boy, a tale of "infinite warmth and wisdom, love and understanding " It told of the Boy, Ruark himself, and the Old Man, his grandfather, as they roamed the North Carolina outdoors together, savoring the sights, sounds, and smells of the earth. As they explored the woods and fished the streams, the Old Man talked and the Boy listened. And as he listened, the Boy learned.The Old Man is now gone from the earth, but not from the memory of the Boy. In the pages of the present book, THE OLD MAN'S BOY GROWS OLDER, the Boy has grown up to new adventures, to college, to a seaman's berth on a North Atlantic freighter, to African safaris, and treks to the world's far corners—and to other dogs and boys who now follow him. But the Old Man is still there. He is there in anecdotal memories awakened by the sight of a tiger in Africa, a dog in Spain, or by the tantalizing smell of a hearty meal prepared...

"To the One I Love..."The letter appeared mysteriously on the doorstep, and the Colman sisters' fantasies went straight to work. But what mystery man had sent it--and to which sister?USA TODAY bestselling author Emilie Richards introduces oldest sister Lacey, who wonders if the letter is a sign that her long-held dreams of her high school boyfriend are finally going to come true.Reader favorite Allison Leigh introduces youngest sister Marti, who knows that romantic letters aren't sexy Devlin Faulkner's style. But he had told her to expect surprises....And the ever-popular Peggy Moreland presents wild child Deanna, who's sure that letter came from ladies' man Porter Copely. He'll do anything to win her over!

A spunky young girl forms an unlikely friendship with a dying Chinese man while living in a group home For Greta, having light and carefree Hackey hanging around her mom is a lot more fun than having an ordinary dad. But Hackey isn't her father—he's more like a pimp, and no matter how friendly he is, he still treats Greta's mom like dirt. When the situation at home goes from bad to worse, Greta is moved into a home for at-risk children where she meets some of the most interesting girls she has ever known—and a shy young boy named Wing. Greta's riding a San Francisco cable car when she notices Wing carrying a huge basket of delicious-smelling food. It's for his grandfather, Old Man, who is dying in the Chinese hospital. Although they don't speak the same language, Greta and Old Man will become fast friends—two survivors, who refuse to give up on life.

The vivid and absorbing story of a man whose unwavering pursuit of success leaves him searching for the true meaning of life Raised in rural Arkansas during the Great Depression, Frank "Son" Wynn leaves home at age fourteen to seek his fortune. Handsome, charismatic, and headstrong, he eventually becomes a powder man, selling dynamite up and down the Mississippi River. With a single-minded determination, he expands his business at every opportunity, foreseeing the crucial role his product will play in constructing dams and levees to bring the region's annual flooding under control. Step by step, over the course of a long and challenging career, Son outmaneuvers his competitors and achieves a level of prosperity far removed from his humble beginnings. He is the quintessential self-made man—impressive and exasperating in equal measure, the cheerful expression he wears to greet customers masking the giant chip on his shoulder. His health failing,...

Who was the man who never grew old? Even in the enlightened society of near-future Earth, he was feared, reviled, castigated for remaining forever young. But when Matthew admits to his amazing longevity, and its source in biological science, he's called a liar. Life on Earth becomes intolerable, until he volunteers to travel on the world first interstellar spaceship—a multi-generation colony ship that will take centuries to complete its voyage. And even when he reaches journey's end—the planet Elysium—he finds personal discontent—a restlessness that will only be settled when he returns to his distant past!Paired with this novella is "The Recusants," the story of the creation of mental supermen—a race generated by ourselves! But when one of the advanced humans turns on the others, civil war may loom. Two great SF stories by a great storyteller.

A sizzling, suspenseful SHORT STORY wrapped in a puzzling mystery that will leave you hungry for more. "Groundhog Day" meets the modern day Old West!In the lonely mining ghost town of Goldwash, Nevada, Christmas has come early. Unfortunately, the local bar owner must be on this year's naughty list, because Santa brought her something even worse than a piece of coal on this dark, cold winter night, her old man.

Fans of John Scalzi's "Old Man" universe, prepare yourselves: there's a long new story in that universe, told from the point of view of one of the series' most intriguing characters. Subterranean Press is proud to publish The Sagan Diary, a long novelette that for the first time looks at the worlds of the Hugo-nominated Old Man's War and its sequel The Ghost Brigades from the point of view of Lieutenant Jane Sagan, who in a series of diary entries gives her views on some of the events included in the series... and sheds new light into some previously unexplored corners. If you thought you knew Jane Sagan before, prepare to be surprised.

Edgar Award-winning author Thomas Perry writes thrillers that move “almost faster than a speeding bullet" (Wall Street Journal). The Old Man is his latest whip-smart standalone novel.To all appearances, Dan Chase is a harmless retiree in Vermont with two big mutts and a grown daughter he keeps in touch with by phone. But most sixty-year-old widowers don't have multiple driver's licenses, savings stockpiled in banks across the country, and a bugout kit with two Beretta Nanos stashed in the spare bedroom closet. Most have not spent decades on the run. Thirty-five years ago, as a young hotshot in army intelligence, Chase was sent to Libya to covertly assist a rebel army. When the plan turned sour, Chase reacted according to his own ideas of right and wrong, triggering consequences he could never have anticipated. And someone still wants him dead because of them. Just as he had begun to think himself finally safe, Chase must reawaken his survival instincts to...

He chuckled as he zipped his pants. “Not until you beg for it. And I didn’t say you were allowed to beg yet.”Stubborn, hot-headed Lily only has three options - get married, get on her back, or get the hell out. The local MC makes the rules, and they rule the town. She chooses to leave. Nobody tells her what to do. Nobody bosses her around. Until she meets Nomad. He’s the former president of the Dust Bowl Devils. When he offers her a ride to LA, she jumps onto the back of his bike without looking back. But he’s got a different sort of ride in mind… Warning: This 20,000+ word novella contains explicit language and graphic adult content including wild and rough sex between a young woman and a dominating older biker. Excerpt: “We’ll be staying in this town for a day or two,” he said as he stood. I followed him back outside. “I’ve got some business to attend to. You’ll wait in the motel unless I take you out, understand? You don’t go anywhere alone.” “What?!” That was just too much. He may have been doing me a favor, but I wasn’t his prisoner. He raised an eyebrow at me. “How about you ask like someone that has some manners?” I knew I was being deliberately shitty. I couldn’t help it. I was stressed and far from home, and his calm about the whole situation was making me angry. “Care to tell me what the fuck, please, sir?” We’d reached his bike. He paused to kick the stand up, intending to walk it to the gas station just in the next lot. He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “Oh, honey. You’re going to pay for that.” Goosebumps rose on my arms. I followed him to the gas pumps, a few steps behind. What did he mean by “pay”? I should have taken off right then. Fact was, I wasn’t his prisoner and I wasn’t his family, and if I wanted to run screaming, no one would take his side. Hell, he might not even try to follow me. I could make my own way to LA, or to anyplace else. But something stopped me. That hint of promise in his threat.

In 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted a serious illness that left him stone deaf. In this extraordinary book, Julia Blackburn follows Goya through the remaining thirty-five years of his life. It was a time of political turmoil, of war, violence, and confusion, and Goya transformed what he saw around him into visionary paintings, drawings, and etchings. These were also years of tenderness for Goya, of intimate relationships with the Duchess of Alba and with Leocadia, his mistress, who accompanied him to the end. Blackburn's singular distinction as a biographer is her uncanny ability to create a kaleidoscope of biography, memoir, history, and meditation--to think herself into another world. In Goya she has found the perfect subject. Visiting the towns Goya frequented, reading the revelatory letters that he wrote for years to a boyhood friend, investigating the subjects he portrayed, Julia Blackburn writes about the elderly...

A trip with his estranged father changes Nate forever. Commended for the Popular Paperback Young Adults Pick, 2014 and short-listed for the Forest of Reading - White Pine Award for Fiction, 2014 Just as summer vacation is about to arrive, Nate Huffman’s plans are unexpectedly shelved for the most unlikely of reasons: the reappearance of his estranged father. Not only is the old man back, he’s got this goofy idea about a road trip the two of them will take. Nate finds himself in a pickup with a man he can’t stand. His father wants to reconnect, and he wants Nate to really understand him. Larry Huffman has chosen to make this happen by taking his son into his own past, which has the Vietnam War as its centrepiece. As the two struggle their way through the jungle of the Ashau Valley, the old man relives the horror of the battle that changed him forever, and Nate undergoes changes of his own – and they experience something that goes far beyond what...

(From the dust jacket of the First Edition): Mr Wakefield's first book of Ghost Stories, published under the happy title of THEY RETURN AT EVENING, was so successful both here an in America (where it was recommended by that curious institution 'The Book of the Month Club') that the author has been persuaded to draw further upon the resources of his horrific imagination. For the encouragement of the reader, Mr Wakefield writes: 'Personally I hav not seen or felt anything supernatural for some years. (Probably since I began to write about them, Ghosts have left me in disgust). I am convinced, however, that any percipient peerson might enjoy any of these experiences on any dark night — or bright day. Such strollers are never farther away than just round the corner from what is called "Reality".' OLD MAN'S BEARD, H. R. Wakefield's second collection of ghost stories, was first published in 1929, and built on the success of the earlier THEY RETURN AT EVENING. The fifteen disturbing tales collected here are: 'Old Man's Beard', 'The Last to Leave', 'The Cairn', 'Present at the End', '"Look Up There!"', '"Written in Our Flesh"', 'Blind Man's Buff', 'A Coincidence at Hunton', 'Nurse's Tale', 'The Dune', 'Unrehearsed', 'A Jolly Surprise for Henri', 'The Red Hand', 'Surprise Item', 'A Case of Mistaken Identity'.