Résultats lu par "Peter Joyce" dans Toutes les catégories

On one level...Melville’s tale is an historical adventure telling the story of life aboard ship shortly after the mutiny at Spithead in 1797. Billy is taken from a homeward bound merchantman to serve on the ‘Seventy Four’ HMS Indomitable. He falls foul of Claggart, the ‘Master at Arms’, and the final confrontation results in death. Billy becomes an unwilling martyr - what passes for justice must be implemented because of the rebellious climate of the time.

Mr Sleuth is a good guest, pays handsomely and in advance, needs very little looking after and seems to be a harmless gentleman. But when the murderous exploits of a serial killer known only as 'The Avenger' start occurring closer to home, Mrs Bunting begins to worry about her guest, his curious experiments and nocturnal habits.

Helen Rathbone meets her elderly uncle, James Ollerenshaw, in Bursley Park, after an estrangement of several years. Both are very strong-willed, independent characters. Helen has an extravagant lifestyle and likes to spend money while the old man has lived a thrifty life and intends to continue in the same way. However, they develop a friendship which progresses rapidly, and Helen moves in to James' house to look after him.

Anthony Hope was constrained to return to the fictional land of Ruritania by an appreciative public who wanted more swashbuckling and derring-do from the hero Rudolph and more Machiavellian moustache twirling from the suave villain Rupert. The author came up with a literary construction which ensured he would never again have to visit fictional Ruritania - but nothing he subsequently wrote appealed as much as the two Zenda stories.

The Dark Flower has a universal theme - the positive powers and the disruptive effects of sexuality and desire. It is the story of Mark Lennan and his infatuation, adulterous affair, conventional marriage and obsession for a younger woman. The author drew on his own experiences for much of the substance of his work and was truly a free thinker with regard to the relationship between the sexes.

An enthusiastic, committed but naïve priest, Peter Graham, leaves his fiancée, Hilda, to serve as chaplain in France during World War 1. He is rapidly made aware of the British tommies' total indifference to what he has to offer and is appalled at the decline in morality of the officers revealed by their disrespect and attitude towards the local French women, most of who consequently lead lives of easy virtue.

Vanessa Paris is besotted with Benji, the devil-may-care son of John and Elizabeth Herries. Despite returning her all-consuming passion, Benji will not commit himself to marriage because he fears he can never remain constant and will eventually betray her. Benji's actions finally prompt Vanessa to leave Cumbria and seek a life in London. She stays at Hill Street with the ever persistent Ellis, who worships her.

Walter Herries establishes himself in Keswick and constructs an imposing property overlooking Uldale, further encroaching upon the peaceful lives of Jennifer and the children. Adam resolves to pursue a career in London, much to his mother's displeasure. He meets the Chartist campaigner Caesar Kraft and lives with him and his daughter Margaret. On a visit to the capital, Elizabeth Herries chooses the opportunity to escape from her unhappy life but is finally pursued by John.

Victorian humour generally doesn't translate well across time. The Wrong Box is one of the exceptions. The plot revolves around the supposed death of Joseph Finsbury who, as a youth, with his brother Masterman joined a tontine - a scheme whereby each entrant pays a fixed amount and the sum total, with interest, is given to the one who lives the longest. At the beginning of the story there are three survivors and then two - the Finsbury brothers.

Twenty years have passed since their first adventure in Africa, but Leo assures Holly that Ayesha is alive and imploring him to find her. They search through Asia and eventually arrive in the city of Kaloon, ruled by the mad Khan Rassen and his devious wife, the Khania Atene. The people live under an uneasy truce with the followers of the Priestess of Hes, who dwells on the Mountain, a huge volcano that dominates the region.

'You will conceive a bunch of grapes,' said he, 'which are covered by some infinitesimal but noxious bacillus. The gardener passes it through a disinfecting medium. It may be that he desires his grapes to be cleaner. It may be that he needs space to breed some fresh bacillus less noxious than the last.'

The author dedicates his story to 'The Happy Few'. This presumably means those who lead lives free of hypocrisy and deceit. They are few indeed in the second part of this authoritative novel of early 19th-century France. Julien Sorel leaves the country town of Verrieres and flees to Paris with the sound of guns in pursuit. He is to take up a post as secretary to M. de la Mole, an influential businessman in the capital.

Robert Michael Ballantyne was one of the most popular adventure story writers during Victoria's reign. He believed that boys should grow up taking risks, and his hero, Martin Rattler, certainly has a thrilling time in this tale. Aunt Dorothy Grumbit thinks him a very bad boy, but Martin possesses all the manly virtues that one expects from a Ballantyne hero, and the story has all the traditional elements of a rollicking yarn: jolly jack tars, pirates, shipwreck, travel up the Amazon, diamond mines and capture by savage tribes.

A chilling tale of suspense with a puzzling mystery at the heart of the story. Architect Edward Westray is sent by his firm to restore Cullerne Minster. The young man believes that more work is needed to secure the bell tower, but his warnings go unheeded. A fellow lodger, the church organist Sharnall, is investigating the belief of the late Martin Joliffe, the landlady's brother, that he, Joliffe, was the rightful heir to the Blandamer title and estates.

Julian Sorel is a handsome, naïve but not wholly innocent young man, born of peasant stock. He is, however, very ambitious and determined to succeed in life and make a career for himself. If this involves lying, guile and hypocrisy - so be it. Not so long ago, two professions would have been open to him - the army or the church - but in the wake of Waterloo and the defeat of Napoleon, it would be preferable to take Holy Orders.

'The manuscript was submitted to me by a young officer of the R.F.A., home from the front on leave. He explained that he had brought with him from France a bundle of papers which he had found in one of the dug-outs of an abandoned gun position. He discovered the papers secreted in a dark corner wedged in between a post and the wall of one of the bunks.' (Extract from the preface by John Lane, publisher)

Edward Malone, an enthusiastic and ambitious columnist for the Daily Gazette, is urged by the woman he loves to undertake a heroic deed so that he may earn her love in return. In a few weeks, he is bound for the shores of South America in the company of the irascible academic Summerlee and debonair adventurer Lord John Roxton on an expedition to prove the claims of a bombastic genius. They venture to an isolated prehistoric land on top of a huge mountain in the tropical rain forests of the Amazonian jungle.

Includes 'Titbottoms Spectacles' by George William Curtis, 'The First Piano in Camp' by Samuel Davis, 'Mr Tolman' by Frank R. Stockton, 'Mrs Bullfrog' by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 'Against His Judgement' by Robert Grant, 'A Desperate Adventure' by Max Adeler, 'Occurence at Owl Creek' by Ambrose Bierce, 'The Stout Gentleman' by Washington Irving, 'Clothes 'by Gustav Kobbé and 'Negative Gravity' by Frank R. Stockton.

The Woman Who Did, written in 1893 wholly and solely to satisfy the author's conscience, was perhaps the most controversial book of the late 19th century. Certainly, it was a succès de scandale and a commercial triumph. The heroine, Herminia Barton, chooses to live unmarried with her lover. When he dies, she endures many a trial for her beliefs - particularly after the stigma of bearing his child - being cast out from both families.

The third and final collection in this series of reflections written by one of the wittiest and most whimsical men to press pen against paper. As well as his usual take on the foibles of his fellow Englishmen and women, Jerome ruminates, in his typically liberal fashion, about far-flung countries such as Russia, Africa and China. Jerome was never a 'jelly-bellied flag-flapping imperialist', and his vision, experience and worldliness are revealed to us over multiple essays.