Graham Greene
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A teenage sociopath rises to power in Britain's criminal underworld in this "brilliant and uncompromising" thriller (The New York Times). Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown, raised amid the casual violence and corruption in the dire prewar Brighton slums, has left his final judgment in the hands of God. On the streets, impelled by his own twisted moral doctrine, he leads a motley pack of gangsters whose sleazy little rackets have most recently erupted...
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James Wormold, a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, finds the answer to his prayers when British Intelligence offers him a lucrative job as an undercover agent. To keep the checks coming, Wormold must at least pretend to know what he's doing. Soon, he's apparently deciphering incomprehensible codes, passing along sketches of secret weapons that look suspiciously like vacuum parts, and claiming to recruit fellow operatives from his country...
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Haiti, under the rule of Papa Doc and his menacing paramilitary, the Tontons Macoute, has long been abandoned by tourists. Now it is home to corrupt capitalists, foreign ambassadors and their lonely wives-and a small group of enterprising strangers rocking into port on the Dutch cargo ship, Medea: a well-meaning pair of Americans claiming to bring vegetarianism to the natives; a former jungle fighter in World War II Burma and current confidence man;...
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Graham Greene's first published novel tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. Elizabeth persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as...
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During a demonstration in Hyde Park, Communist bus driver Jim Drover acts on instinct to protect his wife by stabbing to death the policeman set to strike her down. Sentenced to hang-whether as a martyr, tool, or murderer-Drover accepts his lot, unaware that the ramifications for the crime, and the battle for his reprieve, are inflaming political unrest in an increasingly divided city. But Drover's single, impulsive act is also upending the lives...
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On a peaceful Sunday afternoon, Arthur Rowe comes upon a charity fete in the gardens of a Cambridgeshire vicarage where he wins a game of chance. If only this were an ordinary day. Britain is under threat by Germany, and the air raid sirens that bring the bazaar to a halt expose Rowe as no ordinary man. Recently released from a psychiatric prison for the mercy killing of his wife, he is burdened by guilt, and now, in possession of a seemingly innocuous...
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In a British colony in West Africa, Henry Scobie is a pious and righteous man of modest means enlisted with securing borders. But when he's passed over for a promotion as commissioner of police, the humiliation hits hardest for his wife, Louise. Already oppressed by the appalling climate, frustrated in a loveless marriage, and belittled by the wives of more privileged officers, Louise wants out. Feeling responsible for her unhappiness, Henry decides...
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THE THIRD MAN is one of the truly great post-war films. It is a thrilling story of black-marketeering set against a backdrop of Vienna in the immediate post-war era, when the city was divided into four zones amongst the major powers, Russia, Britain, France and America. The two main characters are quintessential Englishmen who attended the same public school. The story is written in the first person from the view of the British Chief of Police, who...
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Now that the dullish Henry Pulling has left his job with an agreeable pension and a firm handshake, he plans to spend more time weeding his dahlias. Then, for the first time in fifty years, he sees his aunt Augusta at his mother's funeral. Charging into her seventies with florid abandon, not a day of her life wasted, and her future as bright as her brilliant red hair, Augusta insists that Henry abandon his garden, follow her, and hold on tight. With...
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British author Graham Greene embarked on two awe-inspiring and eye-opening journeys in the 1930s-to West Africa and to Mexico. Greene would find himself both shaken and inspired by these trips, which would go on to inform his novels.
Journey Without Maps: When Graham Greene set off from Liverpool in 1935 for what was then an Africa unmarked by colonization, it was to leave the known transgressions of his own civilization behind for those unknown....
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Maurice Bendrix, a writer in Clapham during the Blitz, develops an acquaintance with Sarah Miles, the bored, beautiful wife of a dull civil servant named Henry. Maurice claims it's to divine a character for his novel-in-progress. That's the first deception. What he really wants is Sarah, and what Sarah needs is a man with passion. So begins a series of reckless trysts doomed by Maurice's increasing romantic demands and Sarah's tortured sense of guilt....
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In a dour Holland Park house with rooms and secrets long shuttered live three unyielding forces for morality: rigidly religious sisters Helen and Teresa, and their brother, a Roman Catholic priest. Into the lives of this insular trio comes their young grandniece, Rose Pemberton, following the death of her mother. To the mortification of her aunts, Rose has also brought her lover, Michael Dennis, who is twenty-five years Rose's senior, married, and...
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This collection features three classic novels that explore Graham Greene's most important themes: Catholicism, international intrigue, and the never-ending struggle to know oneself. The Heart of the Matter: In a British colony of West Africa, Henry Scobie is a pious man of modest means charged with securing borders. But when he's passed over for a promotion, the humiliation hits hard-for his wife. To make it up to her, Henry accepts a loan from a...
15) Orient Express
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The Orient Express has embarked from Ostend for a three-day journey to Cologne, Vienna, and Constantinople. The passenger list includes a Jewish trader from London with business interests in Turkey-and a score to settle; a vulnerable chorus girl on her last legs; a boozy and spiteful journalist who's found an unrequited love in her paid companion, and her latest scoop in second class-a Serbian dissident in disguise on his way to lead a revolution;...
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On his twelfth birthday, Victor Baxter is spirited away from boarding school by a stranger known only as the Captain who claims to have won him in a backgammon game with the boy's diabolical father. Settling into a new life in a dire London flat, Victor becomes the willing ward of his mysterious abductor and the tender and childless Liza. He quickly adapts to the only family he's ever known, despite the Captain's long disappearances on suspicious...
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In "Under the Garden," William Wilditch, a restless loner given to wanderlust, takes one final journey as he approaches death-back to his childhood home where he discovers that the memories of his youth are simply not to be believed. In "A Visit to Morin," an admirer and old friend of a once-renowned Catholic writer is unprepared for the startling confessions of the spiritually bereft, now-reclusive scribe. On a vast plantation, a peculiar wish is...
18) Loser Takes All
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A modest London accountant on a budget, Mr. Bertram has settled on a honeymoon at the seaside resort of Bournemouth with his fiancée, Cary. However, Bertram's boss, the solicitous Herbert Dreuther, won't hear of anything so common. Bertram and Cary are to be married in Monte Carlo, after which they'll be Dreuther's guests on his private yacht and sail down the coast of Italy. It sounds too lovely to be true. And surely Bertram can afford one night...
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The Callifer family has assembled in the English country home of Wild Grove where its patriarch-a once-renowned rationalist and man of letters-nears death. Arriving unexpectedly to pay his respects is his son, James, a pariah among the Callifers, who finds a dark veil still drawn over his mysterious childhood. It was decades ago, when James was fourteen, that something happened to him in the garden shed, a black hole in his memories. For everyone...
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Travels with my Aunt: Now that dullish London bank manager Henry Pulling has retired with an agreeable pension, he plans to spend more time weeding his dahlias. Then, for the first time in fifty years, he sees his aunt Augusta at his mother's funeral. Charging into her seventies with florid abandon, Augusta insists that Henry abandon his garden, follow her, and hold on tight. She whisks her nephew out of Brighton and onto the Orient Express bound...