The Savage Gentleman

The Savage Gentleman

Philip Wylie

Science Fiction / Fiction / Philosophy

SUMMARY:Betrayed by his wife, Stephen Stone spirits his son, Henry, away to a remote tropical island and trains him to be an ideal physical specimen and a perfect gentleman. After years of isolation, Henry Stone is now a young man, standing a full six feet two inches tall and weighing 190 pounds. His hair is bronze, his eyes turquoise, his skin mahoganya magnificent man. When Henry finally returns to civilization, he finds that his father's business has grown into a news empire. Though he is the owner of this huge conglomerate, a great conversationalist and excellent company, well versed in etiquette, and extraordinarily nice, Henry has never seen a woman. Indeed his father has taught him never to trust a female and that love itself is a myth. When Henry collides with the contemporary world and the modern woman, the collision is necessarily fascinating and complicated for both Henry and the society he is discovering.
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The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise

The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise

Philip Wylie

Science Fiction / Fiction / Philosophy

A circus performer turned superspy is caught up in a Cold War web of conspiracy and death when the body of a murdered CIA agent is discovered in a Hawaiian marine park By any definition, Ringling Wallenda Grove is an extraordinary man. The son of expatriate Russian former circus owners, he mastered the arts of acrobatics, animal training, and magic at a young age, distinguished himself as an officer in World War II, and went on to amass a fortune of several million dollars before going into semiretirement. But there is another side to this man that few know about. R. W. Grove is a master spy, having honed his trade as a postwar intelligence agent with the OSS. Now the murder of a Company agent, whose body was found floating among the aquatic animals in Honolulu's popular Sea Life Park, is pulling Grove back into the game. A deadly international conspiracy is afoot, involving the nation's most bitter and dangerous enemies, and it centers on a covert CIA...
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Netochka Nezvanova

Netochka Nezvanova

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fiction / Psychology / Philosophy

Netochka Nezvanova - a 'Nameless Nobody' - tells the story of a childhood dominated by her stepfather, Efimov, a failed musician who believes he is a neglected genius. The young girl is strangely drawn to this drunken ruin of a man, who exploits her and drives the family to poverty. But when she is rescued by an aristocratic family, the abuse against Netochka's delicate psyche continues in a more subtle way, condemning her to remain an outsider - a solitary spectator of a glittering society. Conceived as part of a novel on a grand scale, Netochka Nezvanova remained incomplete after Dostoyevsky was exiled to Siberia for 'revolutionary activities' in 1849. With its depiction of the suffering, loneliness, madness and sin that affect both rich and poor in St Petersburg, it contains the great themes that were to dominate his later novels.
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December '41

December '41

William Martin

Philosophy / Poetry

From New York Times bestselling author William Martin comes a WWII thriller as intense as The Day of the Jackal and as gripping as The Eye of the Needle. In December '41, Martin takes us on the ultimate manhunt, a desperate chase from Los Angeles to Washington, D. C., in the first weeks of the Second World War. On the day after Pearl Harbor, shocked Americans gather around their radios to hear Franklin Roosevelt declare war. In Los Angeles, a German agent named Martin Browning is planning to kill FDR on the night he lights the National Christmas Tree. Who will stop him? Relentless FBI Agent Frank Carter? Kevin Cusack, a Hollywood script reader who also spies on the German Bund of Los Angeles, and becomes a suspect himself? Or Vivian Hopewell, the aspiring actress who signs on to play Martin Browning's wife and cannot help but fall in love with him?The clock is ticking. The tracks are laid. The train of narrow escapes, mistaken...
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A World to Win

A World to Win

Sven-Eric Liedman

Politics / Philosophy / History

Epic new biography of Karl Marx for the 200th anniversary of his birthIn this essential new biography — the first to give equal weight to both the work and life of Karl Marx — Sven-Eric Liedman expertly navigates the imposing, complex personality of his subject through the turbulent passages of global history. A World to Win follows Marx through childhood and student days, a difficult and sometimes tragic family life, his far-sighted journalism, and his enduring friendship and intellectual partnership with Friedrich Engels. Building on the work of previous biographers, Liedman employs a commanding knowledge of the nineteenth century to create a definitive portrait of Marx and his vast contribution to the way the world understands itself. He shines a light on Marx's influences, explains his political and intellectual interventions, and builds on the legacy of his thought. Liedman shows how Marx's masterpiece, Capital, illuminates the essential...
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