1961. What a milestone year that would prove to be. Spook was happy before that time, with a creek to play in and Grandpa Doc to spoil him. But then his mum has to drag him down to Melbourne, to a crappy flat above a dress shop, and the dreadful Mrs Green, their landlady. For what? All because of that fuss about his father and a jumping tree? That makes no sense at all. Soon the sanctimonious Theodore and foul-mouthed Wocker are foisted on Spook as "friends" — and some fri...

1961. What a milestone year that would prove to be. Spook was happy before that time, with a creek to play in and Grandpa Doc to spoil him. But then his mum has to drag him down to Melbourne, to a crappy flat above a dress shop, and the dreadful Mrs Green, their landlady. For what? All because of that fuss about his father and a jumping tree? That makes no sense at all.Soon the sanctimonious Theodore and foul-mouthed Wocker are foisted on Spook as "friends" — and s...

This great, genre-bending novel nominally centres on the quest of the monomaniacal Captain Ahab to gain revenge for the loss of his leg to an apparently malicious white sperm whale known in the fishery as Moby Dick.At times the compulsive and bombastic Captain Ahab sounds more like a figure from grand guignol than a reincarnated Lear, and listeners may find themselves wondering if the story of Ahab's attempted revenge, as narrated by Ishmael, one of his crew members, is at least partly a p...

The Charterhouse of Parma is a historic novel by French author Stendhal and tells the life of a Lombard nobleman, born soon after the appearance of Napoleon's army in Italy.The tale is set in northern Italy in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The plot revolves around Fabrizio del Dongo, an idealistic young nobleman, his aunt Gina Sanseverina (who loves Fabrizio more than perhaps she ought) and a large cast of other figures (many of them associated with ...

Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be "a simple tale" proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats, and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations. Based on the text which Conrad's first E...

Henry Whalley is a true sailor, earning years of experience as a ship's captain before his retirement. Faced with unexpected financial problems and a desire to help his married daughter earn her place in the world, Whalley is forced to sell his boat and buy his way back into service on a trade vessel. But Whalley is living so close to financial ruin that any small deviation from his course will put him over the edge . . . The End of the Tether is one of the many books that author Joseph Co...

The Red and the Black is a historic novel by French author Stendhal and tells the life of young Julien Sorel, an ambitious young carpenter's son turned priest, who secretly models his behaviour after the heroics of Napoleon, in an era when the great man had only recently died at St Helena.Julien Sorel - intelligent, handsome and who is determined to rise above his humble peasant origins. Stendhal presents the reader with a satirical plot that will involve you in pa...

Zwei Schwestern, eine Geschichte und ein Buch ohne TitelAnja und Gerit Kling, Deutschlands berühmtestes Schwesternpaar, sind seit Jahrzehnten als Schauspielerinnen erfolgreich und könnten doch kaum unterschiedlicher sein. Beide, Gerit und die fünf Jahre jüngere Anja, wuchsen in der Nähe von Potsdam auf, durchliefen die klassische DDR-Jugend und träumten schon früh von einem Leben in Freiheit. Fünf Tage vor dem Mauerfall flüchteten sie in den Westen. Die folgenden d...

"Die Globalisierungsfalle" ist zugeschnapptZwei Jahrzehnte nach den so zutreffenden Prognosen seines Weltbestsellers liefert Hans-Peter Martin eine ebenso brisante Analyse: Der Systemcrash findet statt. Robotik und die Digitalisierung werden die bestehende, enorme gesellschaftliche Ungleichheit noch verstärken, selbst im Westen wenden sich nicht nur breite Bevölkerungskreise, sondern auch die Elite von der Demokratie ab. Die Finanzkrise brodelt weiter, Handelskrieg...

Er ist ein Mann der Widersprüche: harter Wettbewerber und zugleich sozial engagiert. Dirk Roßmann, Gründer des modernen Drogeriemarktes, Unternehmer und Millionär, ist Widerständen nie ausgewichen. Schon mit 12 zeigte sich sein Unternehmergeist, mit 25 eröffnete er in Hannover den »Markt für Drogeriewaren«.Doch der Erfolg hatte Brüche: 1996 drohte der Konkurs, private Börsenverluste und ein Herzinfarkt brachten ihn an den Tiefpunkt. »Ich stellte alles auf Null und kämpfte um die Fir...

Das Kursbuch 214 widmet sich sowohl den widersprüchlichen Romantiken von Freundschaft als auch den differenzierten Abgründen von Feindschaft. Aktueller könnte ein Thema fast nicht sein. Das Denken in Freund-/Feind-Schemata ist auf der Tagesordnung zurück, mit all seinen Untiefen, seinen Risiken, seinen normativen Implikationen und seinen Konsequenzen. In dem Gespräch von Armin Nassehi und Peter Felixberger mit dem israelisch-deutschen Soziologen Natan Sznaider geht es um innere und äußere ...

In these four stories, written between 1900 and 1902, Joseph Conrad bid gradual farewell to his adventurous life at sea and began to confront the more daunting complexities of life on land in the twentieth century. In 'Typhoon' Conrad reveals, in the steadfast courage of an undemonstrative captain and the imaginative readiness of his young first mate, the differences between instinct and intelligence in a partnership vital to human survival. 'Falk', the companion sea-story, contrasts, as C...