The Old Devils

The Old Devils
Author: Kingsley Amis
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012-10-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1590175921

Booker Prize Winner A pub gathering of elderly married couples devolves into booze-inflected reminiscing—and complaining—in this “sharp and funny” English comedy about marriage, aging, and friendship (The Washington Post). Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon. Long-dormant rivalries and romances are rudely awakened, as life at the Bible and Crown, the local pub, is changed irrevocably. Considered by Martin Amis to be Kingsley Amis’s greatest achievement—a book that “stands comparison with any English novel of the [twentieth] century”—The Old Devils confronts the attrition of ageing with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.

The Old Devils

The Old Devils
Author: Kingsley Amis
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2012-02-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1446414620

Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon.

The Old Devils

The Old Devils
Author: Kingsley Amis
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2004
Genre: Classical fiction
ISBN: 0099461056

When Alun Weaver and his wife, Rhiannon, a famous beauty in her day, move into a quiet retirement community, they find it peopled by friends from former days.

City of Devils

City of Devils
Author: Paul French
Publisher: Picador USA
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2018-07-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250170583

"In the 1930s, Shanghai was a haven for outlaws from all over the world: a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, fortunes made--and lost. 'Lucky' Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex-Navy boxing champion, he escaped from prison in the States, spotted a craze for gambling and rose to become the Slot King of Shanghai. 'Dapper' Joe Farren--a Jewish boy who fled Vienna's ghetto with a dream of dance halls--ruled the nightclubs. His chorus lines rivaled Ziegfeld's. In 1940 they bestrode the Shanghai Badlands like kings, while all around the Solitary Island was poverty, starvation and genocide. They thought they ruled Shanghai; but the city had other ideas. This is the story of their rise to power, their downfall, and the trail of destruction they left in their wake."--Jacket

The Alteration

The Alteration
Author: Kingsley Amis
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1590176170

BOOKER PRIZE–WINNING AUTHOR Set in a world in which the Reformation failed, this award-winning science fiction tale is “one of the best . . . alternate-worlds novels in existence” (Philip K. Dick) In Kingsley Amis’s virtuoso foray into virtual history it is 1976, but the modern world is a medieval relic, frozen in intellectual and spiritual time ever since Martin Luther was promoted to pope back in the sixteenth century. Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice. In the audience is a select group of experts whose job is to determine whether that faultless voice should be preserved by performing a certain operation. Art, after all, is worth any sacrifice. How Hubert realizes what lies in store for him and how he deals with the whirlpool of piety, menace, terror, and passion that he soon finds himself in are the subject of a classic piece of counterfactual fiction equal to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. The Alteration won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel in 1976.

The Devils of D-Day

The Devils of D-Day
Author: Graham Masterton
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 135
Release: 2016-06-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504025571

Unsealing the hatch of a rusty old WWII tank will unleash a demonic nightmare in this novel by “the master of modern horror” (Library Journal). Thirty-five years have passed since the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day turned the tide of World War II against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Reich, and it’s been more than three decades since the residents of the tiny French village of Le Vey witnessed the horrific slaughter of hundreds of German soldiers by thirteen black tanks. One of the tanks remains on the outskirts of town—its hatch mysteriously sealed, trapping its controller inside—only to be discovered by American surveyor and cartographer Dan McCook. Driven by curiosity and an inexplicable compulsion, McCook is about to do the unthinkable and release what lives within the tank upon an unsuspecting world. And once the monstrous occupant reunites with others of its demonic kind, a new world war will begin, one that threatens to wash the earth in blood and drag every man, woman, and child through the fiery gates of hell. A chilling and ingeniously original tale of demonic possession and apocalyptic possibilities, The Devils of D-Day is classic horror at its best, from the award-winning author of The Manitou.

The Green Man

The Green Man
Author: Kingsley Amis
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1590176162

The owner of a haunted country inn contends with death, fatherhood, romantic woes, and alcoholism in this humorous and “rattling good ghost story” from a Booker Prize–winning author (The New York Times) Maurice Allington has reached middle age and is haunted by death. As he says, “I honestly can’t see why everybody who isn’t a child, everybody who’s theoretically old enough to have understood what death means, doesn’t spend all his time thinking about it. It’s a pretty arresting thought.” He also happens to own and run a country inn that is haunted. The Green Man opens as Maurice’s father drops dead (had he seen something in the room?) and continues as friends and family convene for the funeral. Maurice’s problems are many and increasing: How to deal with his own declining health? How to reach out to a teenage daughter who watches TV all the time? How to get his best friend’s wife in the sack? How to find another drink? (And another.) And then there is always death. The Green Man is a ghost story that hits a live nerve, a very black comedy with an uncannily happy ending: in other words, Kingsley Amis at his best.

One Fat Englishman

One Fat Englishman
Author: Kingsley Amis
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2013-09-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1590176898

The hero of One Fat Englishman, a literary publisher and lapsed Catholic escaped from the pages of Graham Greene to the campus of Budweiser College in provincial Pennsylvania, is philandering, drunken, bigoted, and very very fat, not to mention in a state of continuous spluttering rage against everything, not least his own overgrown self. In America, Roger Micheldene must deal with not so obliging suburban housewives, aspiring Jewish novelists who as good as clean his clock, stray deer, bad cigars, children who beat him at Scrabble (“It was no wonder that people were horrible when they started life as children”), and America itself, while making ever-more desperate and humiliating overtures to Helen, a Scandinavian ice queen. If only Roger would dare to show some real feeling of his own. This comic masterpiece—about the 1950s crashing drunkenly into the consumerist 1960s and a final scion of a disintegrating Old World empire encountering its upstart New World offspring—is one of Kingsley Amis’s greatest and most caustic performances.

Seven Devils

Seven Devils
Author: L. R. Lam
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0756415810

This first book in a feminist space opera duology follows seven resistance fighters who will free the galaxy from the ruthless Tholosian Empire--or die trying. When Eris faked her death, she thought she had left her old life as the heir to the galaxy's most ruthless empire behind. But her recruitment by the Novantaen Resistance, an organization opposed to the empire's voracious expansion, throws her right back into the fray. Eris has been assigned a new mission: to infiltrate a spaceship ferrying deadly cargo and return the intelligence gathered to the Resistance. But her partner for the mission, mechanic and hotshot pilot Cloelia, bears an old grudge against Eris, making an already difficult infiltration even more complicated. When they find the ship, they discover more than they bargained for: three fugitives with firsthand knowledge of the corrupt empire's inner workings. Together, these women possess the knowledge and capabilities to bring the empire to its knees. But the clock is ticking: the new heir to the empire plans to disrupt a peace summit with the only remaining alien empire, ensuring the empire’s continued expansion. If they can find a way to stop him, they will save the galaxy. If they can't, millions may die.

All the Devils Are Here

All the Devils Are Here
Author: Louise Penny
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250145252

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PARADE MAGAZINE – ONE OF FALL'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS AARP'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF FALL CRIMEREADS – ONE OF THE BEST TRADITIONAL MYSTERIES OF THE YEAR GLOBE AND MAIL - TOP 100 BOOKS OF THE YEAR CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR KIRKUS REVIEWS - ONE OF THE BEST MYSTERIES/THRILLERS OF THE YEAR LIBRARY JOURNAL - ONE OF THE BEST CRIME FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR The 16th novel by #1 bestselling author Louise Penny finds Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec investigating a sinister plot in the City of Light On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man’s life. When a strange key is found in Stephen’s possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d’Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art. It sends them deep into the secrets Armand’s godfather has kept for decades. A gruesome discovery in Stephen’s Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized. Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family. For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.