18 books like Any human heart
Paul Kelver
IN WHICH THE AUTHOR SEEKS TO CAST THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THIS STORY UPON ANOTHER.
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Mosaic
A love story, a detective story, a book of secrets, a beautifully written journey into a forest of family trees.
After writing the definitive biographies of Lytton Strachey and George Bernard Shaw, Michael Holroyd turned his hand to a more personal subject: his own family. The result was Basil Street Blues, published in 1999. But rather than the story being over, it was in fact only beginning. As…
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The Life of Ian Fleming
Through extensive research and examination of private papers, this book exposes the fact that although Fleming might have denied the connection, the Bond books were in fact autobiographical.
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Here Lies
Winner of the Edgar Award, Eric Ambler’s autobiography Here Lies is an intriguing look inside the mind of one of our greatest thriller writers. Here the famously recalcitrant Ambler peels back the layers of experience that affected his life with the same skill he uses to unfold the plots of his novels. His South London childhood; his brief engineering career, which he gave up to work in theater;…
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Calamity town
Ellery Queen moves into the small town of Wrightsville, somewhere in New England, in order to get some peace and quiet so that he can write a book. As a result of renting a furnished house, he becomes peripherally involved in the story of Jim Haight and Nora Wright. Nora's father is president of the Wrightsville National bank, "oldest family in town", and when the head cashier Jim Haight became…
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Galatea 2.2
"Dazzling...a cerebral thriller that's both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling, a lively tour de force."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesAfter four novels and several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2—Richard Powers—returns to the United States as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul…
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The League of Night and Fog
Two brilliant operatives known as Saul and Drew are drawn together to solve a baffling mystery: Why have ten elderly men from around the world been kidnapped? As the agents investigate they are pulled into a violent cycle of revenge that stretches back to World War II--and is now forcing sons to pay for their father's darkest sins.David Morrell's international thrillers have no equal. From the…
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Ben, in the World
"Ben Lovatt can never fit in. To those he meets, he seems awkward: too big, too strong, inhumanly made. He baffles and he terrifies: those who do not understand him want him locked up.".
"His own mother locked him up; then, guilty, she liberated him. But her unyielding love for him corroded their family; this fifth child broke the home into bits. And now he has come of age and again finds…
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Palm Sunday
"In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut’s singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.”
From…
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Heretics
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London, England on the 29th of May, 1874. Though he considered himself a mere rollicking journalist, he was actually a prolific and gifted writer in virtually every area of literature. A man of strong opinions and enormously talented at defending them, his exuberant personality nevertheless allowed him to maintain warm friendships with people - such as George…
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The Life of Samuel Johnson
Index term: English literature
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A Coffin for Dimitrios
A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel leads Charles Latimer, the author of a handful of successful mysteries, into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers. At first merely curious to reconstruct the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of assassination, espionage, drugs, and…
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Cowper
In this masterful biography, Goldwin Smith presents the life and works of William Cowper (1731-1800), whom Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “the best modern poet". Tracing Cowper's life—from his beginnings in England to his death—Smith analyzes his major lyrical works and as well as his hymns. Smith also offers an examination of the writer's lasting influence on Romantic poetry.
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One Good Turn
Awards
BCA Crime Thriller of the Year Best Novel (nominee)
It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander - until he becomes a suspect. With "Case Histories", Kate Atkinson showed how…
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On a Chinese screen
On a Chinese Screen was first published in 1922 by Heinemann Publishers, London. Its 58 short vignettes are based on Maugham’s travels along the Yangtze River from 1919 to 1920. Although later editions of the book added the subtitle “Sketches of Life in China,” there are actually only a few descriptions of the places he visited and the local Chinese people he met; rather, Maugham focuses on…
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Mysterious Mr. Sabin
"The mysterious Mr. Sabin is an unscrupulous French royalist who aids the German government in a conspiracy of war against England. His part in the plot is that of securing valuable papers recording the coast defenses of England, for which services he demands Germany's conquest of France and the restoration of the monarchy in the person of Prince Henri and his cousin, Helene of…
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Pray for Brave Heart
About the undeclared and ever-waging war of our time, the war for men's minds, and the action takes place in Switzerland.
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Windmills of the gods
A college professor, a naive Kansan, becomes the US ambassador to Romania and learns a lot about life.
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