Risultati letto da "Gordon Griffin" in Tutte le categorie

One night a stranger wrapped in bandages and eccentric clothing arrives in an English village. That stranger, Griffin, is a brilliant and obsessed scientist who has discovered how to turn his entire body invisible. Although he initially feels joy at his newfound freedom and abilities, that joy quickly turns to despair when he struggles to discover a way to reverse the process.

An extraordinary wartime memoir, combining the best kind of adventure story with a coming-of-age testimony of unforgettable resonance and poignancy.

September 2011, Halkidiki, Northern Greece: A solitary 86-year-old man gazes across an Aegean headland, knowing that he must finally confront his past. He begins to write...September 1939, Nieppe, Northern France:14 year-old Stephen is living with his family, 25 kilometres from Ypres. His French mother battles with her encroaching blindness.

Englishman Edward Prendick finds himself shipwrecked on the open ocean. When a passing ship takes him aboard and revives him, things are starting to look less gloomy for the young scientist. Yet little does he know things about to get much worse. He is taken to an abandoned island occupied only by Dr. Moreau, a disgraced English scientist for his unethical treatment of live creatures. Prendick finds that the Doctor has been up to old habits, using the island's animals to create animal-human hybrids.

The Odyssey is an epic poem, written by the ancient Greek philosopher Homer, and considered to be the second oldest piece of western literature still in existence. Scholars believe it was written at the end of the eighth century BC. Still heavily used in schools because of its unique literary makeup and historical value, the poems follow Greek hero Odysseus, as he journeys home after the 10-year long Trojan War. His journey home takes another 10 years, and Odysseus encounters many obstacles.

Egypt 2153 BC: 80 priests set out under cover of darkness with a mysterious object.... Albania, 1986: A plane takes off bound for the Sudan. Somewhere over the Sahara it disappears.... The present: a mummified corpse is discovered in the dunes with a roll of camera film and a clay obelisk inscribed with a hieroglyphic sign.... Three unconnected events - or so it seems.

Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale in which an ugly beast must earn the true love of a beautiful girl to free him from the spell of an evil fairy. The first published version was written by French author Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in the middle 18th century. It was a novel-length story intended for adult readers and addressing the issues of the marriage system of the day in which women had no right to choose their husband or to refuse to marry.

Much has changed since Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor Police and hard-nosed Jerusalem detective Arieh Ben-Roi last met. Ben-Roi is about to become a father, and Khalifa is struggling with personal tragedies. But as they each work on their own - seemingly isolated - cases, the two investigations begin to entwine. They soon find themselves drawn into a sinister web of violence, abuse, corporate malpractice and anti-capitalist terrorism. And at the heart of the web lies the Labyrinth...

In April 1917, as Tsar Nicholas II's abdication sent shockwaves across war-torn Europe, the future leader of the Bolshevik revolution, Vladimir Lenin, was far away, exiled in Zurich. To lead the revolt, Lenin needed to return to Petrograd immediately. But to get there, he would have to cross Germany, which meant accepting help from the deadliest of Russia's adversaries and betraying his homeland.

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him further insight into human behavior. Presented through Swift's satiric hall of distorting mirrors, mankind is cast as diminished, magnified, and bestial - the composite of which is an uncompromising reflection of human nature.

A moving, inspiring and thought-provoking collection of 50 coming-out stories from around the world. From the good, the sad, the surprising and the funny, no two stories are the same, yet all are by people who share the courage to be vulnerable, take huge risks to find love and acceptance and are brave enough to be their authentic selves. Whether you have any experience of coming out or not, these stories are incredibly powerful and moving.

Drawing on the wisdom of 2,500 years of contemplative non-religious writing on all that it means to be human - from the origins of the universe to small matters of courtesy and kindness in everyday life - A. C. Grayling, Britain's most popular philosopher, has created a secular bible. This book is designed as a narrative and also to be dipped into for inspiration, encouragement and consolation, The Good Book offers a thoughtful, non-religious alternative to the many people who do not follow one of the world's great religions.

Joseph Sherman first visits Saigon, the capital of French colonial Cochin-China, in 1925 on a hunting expedition with his father, a US senator. He is lured back again and again as a traveler, a soldier, and then as a reporter by his fascination for the exotic land and for Lan, a mandarin's daughter he cannot forget. Over five decades, Joseph's life becomes enmeshed with the political intrigues of two of Saigon's most influential families, the French colonist Devrauxs, and the native Trans - and inevitably with Vietnam's turbulent, war torn fate.

The adventure begins in London on Tuesday, October 1st, 1872, when rich British gentleman Phileas Fogg gets in an argument with a group of friends. He enters a wager that sets him on a race to make it around the world in 80 days. Although the trip begins as planned with his valet Jean Passepartout, he is quickly mistaken as a bank robber by Scotland Yard detective Fix. Now being pursued on his journey, Fogg must quickly travel in order to win the wager, see the world, and avoid being apprehended for a crime he did not commit in the ultimate adventure story.

Robinson Crusoe is the classic tale about one man's lust for adventure. Crusoe leaves his parents and hometown for the open sea in the year 1651. But the ocean can be unforgiving, and Crusoe unfortunately learns this the hard way. Through a series of wild events, he ends up shipwrecked on a shore in South America, being forced to salvage what he can in order to survive. Overcoming his despair, Crusoe begins a new life on this island, searching for meaning and eventually finding redemption.

This classic novel takes place in Lantern Yard, a slum street in an unnamed city in Northern England, during the early 19th century. There, Silas Marner, a weaver and a member of a small Calvinist congregation, is falsely accused of stealing the congregation's funds while watching over their very ill deacon. Two pieces of evidence are against Silas: his possession of a pocket knife and the bag that formerly contained the money.

January 1901. Abigail and Daniel Wilson, often lauded as "The Museum Detectives," are on their way to the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. Their explorations of the pyramid, including the Robbers' Tunnel, take a very sinister turn when they come upon the dead body of a man who has been brutally garrotted. Investigations by the local police reveal him to be Simeon McGruder, a wealthy American who is financing an excavation of the pyramids.

What happened to the European mind between 1605, and 1649? In this turbulent period, science moved from the alchemy and astrology of John Dee to the painstaking observation and astronomy of Galileo, from the classicism of Aristotle, still favoured by the Church, to the evidence-based, collegiate investigation of Francis Bacon.

The Challenge of Things joins earlier collections like The Reason of Things and Thinking of Answers, but this time to collect Grayling's recent writings on the world in a time of war and conflict. In describing and exposing the dark side of things, he also explores ways out of the habits and prejudices of mind that would otherwise trap us forever in the deadly impasses of conflicts of all kinds.

This book thoroughly and calmly examines all the arguments and associated considerations offered in support of religious belief, and does so in full consciousness of the reasons people have for subscribing to religion, and the needs they seek to satisfy by doing so. And because it takes account of all the issues, its solutions carry great weight. The God Argument is the definitive examination of the issue, and a statement of the humanist outlook that recommends itself as the ethics of the genuinely reflective person.

Rather than presenting a set of categorical answers Grayling offers instead suggestions for how to think about every aspect of a question, and arrive at one's own conclusions. As a result Thinking of Answers is both an enjoyable and inspirational collection.