The Bachelors displays the best of Sparkian satire, placing her at the heart of a great literary tradition alongside Waugh and Trollope, Wilde and Wodehouse. It demands rediscovery. 'It's easy to see why Waugh admired The Bachelors. On one level, it is a blithely carnivorous satire in the Waugh mould. The bachelors of the title – almost the only men we meet in the narrative – are the thirty-something male barristers, teachers, ...
Jesse is a twenty-nine year old adrift in San Francisco's demimonde of sexually ambiguous, drug-taking outsiders, desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend. She becomes caretaker and confidante to Madame Pig, a grotesque, besotted recluse. Jesse also meets Madison, Pig's daughter or lover or both, who uses others' desires for her own purposes, and who leads Jesse into a world beyond all boundaries. As ...
May, 1831, and on a tiny island off the Isle of Man a lighthouse provides a harsh living for an unusual family. Lucy and Diya, husbandless and with three children between them, watch over the ancient light on Ellan Bride. Meanwhile the Scottish engineer, Robert Stevenson, is modernising the nation's lighthouses, and Ellan Bride and the future of the family, are under threat. When two surveyors arrive to assess the light, tension escalates t ...
Caught in the melting pot of social injustice, revolution, war, and pacifism, this powerful book gives a vivid account of the experiences and struggles of a Glasgow family from the First World War and into the Depression at the end of the Twenties. It is a story of Glasgow apprentices, their lives dignified with a desire for art and learning and the ideal of reforming the world. The book follows the fortunes of one particular family, the ...
A Million Ways to Die in the West pays homage to the traditional Western with a modern comic spin, following a cowardly farmer who seeks the help of a gunslinger's wife to win back the woman who left him. Author Seth MacFarlane produced, directed, and starred in the film, released in May 2014. ...
In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a heart-stopping image: a young girl fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. It becomes an icon for millions, winning acclaim and prizes – and a subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer's best friend, who has suffered a tragedy of her own. With the flash of a camera, one girl's life is shattered and another's is altered ...
