A beautiful actress, a rising star of the giant German film company UFA, now controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. The very clever, very dangerous Propaganda Minister — close confidant of Hitler, an ambitious schemer and flagrant libertine. And Bernie Gunther, former Berlin homicide bull, now forced to do favors for Joseph Goebbels at the Propaganda Minister’s command.
This time, the favor is personal. And this time, nothing is what it seems.
Set down amid the killing fields of Ustashe-controlled Croatia, Bernie finds himself in a world of mindless brutality where everyone has a hidden agenda. Perfect territory for a true cynic whose instinct is to trust no one.
Drôle de vacances pour Gilles Novak et Régine, venus se reposer à l'abri d'une petite crique méditerranéenne avec leur amie Gisèle. Des vacances qui s'annoncent mouvementées : un mystérieux submersible lumineux saborde la barque de Charles Floutard, avant de disparaître entre deux eaux, étrange tache phosphorescente qui file doucement vers le large sans tracer de sillage. Et puis, il y eut cette violente explosion sous-marine, une explosion qui souleva d'énormes vagues tourbillonnantes d'où jaillit un formidable geyser d'écume et de jets de vapeur brûlante. Oui, vraiment de drôles de vacances...
The epic novel combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million "Communists," followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule.
Au nombre des admirateurs qui entouraient Kerlam lors du vernissage de ses œuvres figuraient ses amis Gilles Novak et Régine Véran. Soirée mondaine qu'allait troubler l'irruption d'un miséreux tenant des propos étranges et alarmants. S'agissait-il d'un clochard illuminé ou d'un pauvre hère réellement doué de facultés supra-normales ? Quel était donc cet « oiseau noir », quelle était donc cette « pieuvre géante » aux tentacules innombrables dont il prédisait l'effroyable menace, entre autres « prophéties » inquiétantes ? Divagation ? Voire ! Gilles et ses Compagnons allaient bientôt changer d'avis lorsque, roulant la nuit, un terrifiant cercle de flammes enveloppa brusquement
Ranging from the 17th century to the present and crossing multiple continents, Counternarrative’s novellas and stories draw upon memoirs, newspaper accounts, detective stories, interrogation transcripts, and speculative fiction to create new and strange perspectives on our past and present. In “Rivers,” a free Jim meets up decades later with his former raftmate Huckleberry Finn; “An Outtake” chronicles an escaped slave’s fate in the American Revolution; “On Brazil, or Dénouement” burrows deep into slavery and sorcery in early colonial South America; and in “Blues” the great poets Langston Hughes and Xavier Villaurrutia meet in Depression-era New York and share more than secrets.
067 - Les veilleurs de Poseidon
La brune Lagyna-N'Shtago avait vu le jour sur la planète Koranka. Elle et ses compatriotes étaient devenus les amis de Gilles Novak, de Régine et de Floutard. Or, cette humanoïde jetait soudain le masque : reniant les siens, elle pactisait avec les Rold-Nhours, leur livrant sans regret Gilles Novak et ses compagnons ! Bafoués, le secret de leurs bases sous-marines trahi par la transfuge, les Veilleurs de Poséidon allaient-ils pouvoir échapper à l'anéantissement et sauver en même temps la Terre de l'esclavage ? Parallèlement, la ruse de Gilles Novak réussirait-elle pour tromper les inquiétants Rold-Nhours dont lui et ses amis étaient les prisonniers ?
Markus Novak just wants to come home. An investigator for a Florida-based Death Row defense firm, Novak’s life derailed when his wife, Lauren, was killed in the midst of a case the two were working together. Two years later, her murderer is still at large, and Novak’s attempts to learn the truth about her death through less-than-legal means and jailhouse bargaining have put his job on the line. Now he’s been all but banished, sent to Garrison, Indiana to assess a cold case that he’s certain his boss has no intention of taking.
As Novak knows all too well, some crimes never do get solved. But it’s not often that the man who many believe got away with murder is the one calling for the case to be reopened. Ten years ago, a teenaged girl disappeared inside an elaborate cave system beneath rural farmland. Days later, Ridley Barnes emerged carrying Sarah Martin’s lifeless body. Barnes has claimed all along that he has no memory of exactly where — or how — he found Sarah. His memory of whether she was dead or alive at the time is equally foggy. Tired of living under a cloud of suspicion, he says he wants answers — even if they mean he’ll end up in the electric chair.
But what’s he really up to? And Novak knows why he’s so unhappy to be in Garrison — but why are the locals so hostile towards him? The answers lie in the fiendish brain of a dangerous man, the real identity of a mysterious woman, and deep beneath them all, in the network of ancient, stony passages that hold secrets deadlier than he can imagine. Soon Novak is made painfully aware that if he has any chance of returning to the life and career he left behind in Florida, he’ll need to find the truth in Garrison first.
Finding a mysterious novel at her bedside plunges documentary filmmaker Catherine Ravenscroft into a living nightmare. Though ostensibly fiction, recreates in vivid, unmistakable detail the terrible day Catherine became hostage to a dark secret, a secret that only one other person knew-and that person is dead.
Now that the past is catching up with her, Catherine’s world is falling apart. Her only hope is to confront what really happened on that awful day even if the shocking truth might destroy her.
Malgré ce camion qui bloquait la rue, Régine Véran sut se montrer patiente au volant de son Opel Rekord. Elle attarda machinalement ses regards sur un jeune homme, une baguette de pain sous le bras, et s'étonna de constater la subite émotion qu'il manifestait. Une moto arriva, zigzaguant entre les véhicules arrêtés. Soudain, du devant du camion déboucha une voiture d'enfant ; un landau qui, frein desserré, roulait à la rencontre de la moto. Le choc paraissant inévitable, Régine hurla car le bébé allait être broyé ! Or, inexplicablement, le landau s'éleva dans l'air pour se poser en douceur sur Je trottoir ! Médusée, Régine se demanda si Gilles Novak admettrait son témoignage I Ce n'était pourtant là que le début d'une aventure aux rebondissements tout aussi incroyables...
1989. Depuis 45 ans, depuis la victoire d'Hitler sur les troupes alliées, la Grande Allemagne règne sur le monde. Elle a même établi des bases permanentes dans l'espace. A Paris, Gilles Novak dirige le magazine pro-allemand Millenium ! A Marseille, Charles Floutard est devenu le peintre attitré de l'intelligentsia nazie ! Et si tout cela n'était le fruit que d'une manipulation criminelle, une fiction insensée créée par des agents d'une très lointaine civilisation de l'Avenir ? Et si Hitler avait perdu la Seconde Guerre Mondiale ?
La nappe de brume blanchâtre ondula graduellement autour du couple dont les silhouettes, déjà imprécises, perdaient encore de leur consistance. Par transparence, au travers de leurs formes tel un fondu enchaîné cinématographique, apparut la vaste salle au milieu de laquelle flottait le grand cylindre horizontal, ouvert à ses deux bouts. Le vieux savant mystérieux s'entourait parfois d'une étrange coloration mauve. Micheline et Raymond, à leur insu, n'étaient-ils pas attirés vers un piège terrifiant ? Le plus abominable de l'univers !
An unforgettable story of faith, forgiveness and second chances, is a powerful and touching novel from the Booker and Guardian-shortlisted author of Pigeon English.
John Lock has come to India to meet his destiny: a destiny dressed in a white karate suit and sporting an impressive moustache. He has fled the quiet desperation of his life in England: decades wasted in a meaningless job, a marriage foundering in the wake of loss and a terrible secret he cannot bear to share with his wife.
He has come to offer his help to a man who has learned to conquer pain, a world record breaker who specialises in feats of extreme endurance and ill-advised masochism. Bibhuti Nayak’s next record attempt — to have fifty baseball bats broken over his body — will set the seal on a career that has seen him rise from poverty to become a minor celebrity in a nation where standing out from the crowd requires tenacity, courage and perhaps a touch of madness. In answering Bibhuti’s call for assistance, John hopes to rewrite a brave end to a life poorly lived.
But as they take their leap of faith together, and John is welcomed into Bibhuti’s family, and into the colour and chaos of Mumbai — where he encounters ping-pong-playing monks, a fearless seven-year-old martial arts warrior and an old man longing for the monsoon to wash him away — he learns more about life, and death, and everything in between than he could ever have bargained for.