Frank Machianno is the guy, a late-middle-aged ex-surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront. He's a beloved fixture of the community, a stand-up businessman, a devoted father to his daughter. Frank's also a hit man, a retired hit man ...
EVEN Boston has its tender- loin districts. One of them slopes off the fringes of Beacon Hill and is known as Scollay Square. Scollay was a "liberty town" through World War II, and it is of this time in this place that Pearl Schiff writes in a first novel at once distin- guished for its brutal candor and reportorial skill.
Scollay Square is "a catchy tune with dirty lyrics," and among those singing it within the taverns, movies and penny arcades sprawling along its brightly lit course are derelicts, bookies, short-order cooks, bar- tenders, drunks, sailors and girls. Especially sailors and girls. Not all the liberties in- volved come free, of course, and sometimes the price is to be measured in heartaches and despair rather than money. But some of the temporary attach- ments of the square come to bloom. It is to Miss Schiff's credit that she sees the humani-ties as well as the nihilisms of her scene.
Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil nation, is on the brink of revolution. Inside the opulent palaces and lavish mansions, the royal family is ransacking the country's dwindling coffers while the desert kingdom seethes with unrest.
In a vase in a closet, a couple of years after his father died in 9/11, nine-year-old Oskar discovers a key ...The key belonged to his father, he's sure of that. But which of New York's 162 million locks does it open?
Whilst sleeping in a strange bed in a strange land, five-year-old Stefan is lulled to sleep each evening by his father's extraordinary bedtime stories...
In hierdie deel van Die Mannheim-sage woed die spanninge tussen Deborah Mannheim, Karl Mannheim en Kit Malloy steeds. Deborah se verbittering teenoor haar man, Karl, vererger, en daarby word haar liefde vir Kit galsterig met die verloop van die jare. Weens sy onvermoë om sy vrou se liefde te herwin word die lewe vir Karl onuithoudbaar – soveel so dat hy dinge in sy eie hande neem. Maar ook Deborah en Kit dra letsels ná die Boereoorlog: Ten spyte van hul hunkering na mekaar, bly hul liefde onvervuld. Op die vooraand van die Eerste Wêreldoorlog ontmoet Kurt, Deborah se seun, vir Victoria, Kit se dogter. Hulle word verlief en is bereid om die besware van hul families teen te staan. Die spanning bereik ’n breekpunt wanneer hulle in ’n skermutseling in Europa vasval en hul liefde ’n duur prys verg . . . Wat hou die toekoms vir die Mannheim- en Malloy-families in? En kan Deborah en Kit, dekades ná hulle die eerste keer ontmoet het, uiteindelik versoen raak in hul liefde vir mekaar?
Johannesburg dreig om ’n spookdorp te word. Die stad se myne is deurspek met piriet, en op politieke gebied word die fondamente gelê vir die Anglo-Boereoorlog. Dit is teen hierdie agtergrond dat die liefdesverhaal van Deborah Mannheim en Kit Malloy afspeel. Maar Deborah sal uiteindelik moet kies: Kies sy haar liefde vir Kit, of eerder die verpligtinge teenoor haar man, Karl, en die skatryk Mannheim-familie, wie se myne skielik haar verantwoordelikheid geword het?
