A Very Strange Man
A Very Strange Man

Author: ʻIṣmat Cug̲h̲tāʼī

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This novel set in the Bombay Film World of the 1940s and 50s is the riveting story of Dharam Dev the famous actor director and producer and his all consuming and doomed passion for Zarina Jamal the young dancer from Madras whom he brings to Bombay and transforms into a great actress. He looks on in anguish as his betrayed wife Mangala a well-known playback singer sinks slowly into alcoholism. When Zarina abandons him he is overwrought and dies of an overdose friendless and alone. In an interview for the Journal Mehfil in 1972 Ismat Chughtai described this novel about the Bombay Film Industry as based on the life of a film producer who committed suicide after the dancer whom he had made into a big star left him in the lurch. This is not only a close personal look at an actor's rise to fame and glory but an insightful and critical examination of the Bombay film scene of the time by one who knew it at first hand. This irreverent sharply observed narrative is Vintage Chughtai.

The Strange Man
The Strange Man

Author: Greg Mitchell

Publisher: Charisma Media

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1616381949

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Twenty-two and unemployed, Dras Weldon is content to hide in the shadow of adolescence with his horror movies and comic books. But when a demonic stranger begins threatening his friends, Dras must choose to act or lose his best friend forever.

Talking to Strange Men
Talking to Strange Men

Author: Ruth Rendell

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2010-12-28

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1453210911

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A lonely man stumbles into a dangerous game in this twisting novel of psychological suspense by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Crocodile Bird. In a desolate alley on the bank of the Thames, a spy slips through the shadows. Mungo is the Director General of English intelligence, and he knows Moscow Centre has been watching him for weeks, but there is no spy in London better at losing a tail. Satisfied he hasn’t been followed, he drops off his message and disappears into the night. It’s a classic scene of Cold War espionage, save for one detail: Mungo isn’t a spy at all. He’s a teenager, playing an epic game of make-believe. John Creevey, still reeling from the implosion of his marriage, is dreaming of taking revenge against his wife’s lover when he discovers one of Mungo’s coded signals. Unaware that the message is simply part of a child’s game, he becomes obsessed with uncovering the rest of the spy network—a tragic misunderstanding that threatens to turn this imaginary war into something very real—and very deadly. “Rendell has brilliantly interwoven these compelling strands into one masterful tale of suspense,” writes Library Journal. Three-time Edgar Award winner Ruth Rendell was a master of psychological suspense, and Talking to Strange Men is one of the most unusual espionage stories in the history of the Cold War.

A Very Strange Man
A Very Strange Man

Author: Alannah Hopkin

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 9781848407947

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is a love story, set in the Irish literary world between 1986 and 2015. When they were first introduced by the poet Derek Mahon, Alannah Hopkin was an arts journalist turned full-time writer and Aidan Higgins, twenty-three years her senior, was a literary stylist, often cited as the heir to Ireland's great Modernist tradition. They wrote steadily during their twenty-nine years together, but their careers could not have been more different: while Aidan focused on fiction and memoirs, Alannah prioritised work that paid the bills. This gave Aidan the most stable and productive years of his life. But as his eyesight failed and his memory began to fade, Alannah became his carer and had to fight to keep her own writing career alive. Drawing from diaries and notebooks, and correspondence with writers such as Samuel Beckett, Alice Munro and Harold Pinter, this is a unique record of a major Irish writer. From the joyful honeymoon years - filled with launches, festivals and visits to their Kinsale home by Richard Ford, Edna O'Brien and other literary legends - to the increasingly difficult years of Aidan's decline, Hopkin tells their story candidly and without commentary. She shows us how, in spite of all, they remained the best of friends, in love until Aidan's very last breath.

Very Strange Bedfellows
Very Strange Bedfellows

Author: Jules Witcover

Publisher: Public Affairs

Published: 2007-08-05

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1586486039

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Through tapes, interviews, and primary sources, explores how the at-odds personalities of the unusual political pair of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew led to both of their downfalls.

A Very Strange Creature
A Very Strange Creature

Author: Ronda Armitage

Publisher: Orchard Books

Published: 2010-08-11

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781408301876

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When Monkey finds a strange creature in the jungle he's very puzzled, and he calls the other animals to help. It doesn't have a tail for swinging, a trunk for washing, a long neck for reaching the high trees or even webbed feet for swimming. Whatever could it be? Toddlers and parents alike will love this refreshing take on the classic 'new-baby' theme. With wonderfully warm, humorous text from Ronda Armitage, author of family favourite The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch. 'Perfect reading for toddlers with a new baby in the house' - Junior

The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories
The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories

Author: Miles John Breuer

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 0803219318

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Gathered here for the first time are Miles J. Breuer s first publication, The Man with the Strange Head ; his neglected dystopian novel Paradise and Iron (appearing here in book form for the first time); stories such as Gostak and the Doshes and Mechanocracy ; and Breuer s essay The Future of Scientifiction, one of the early critical statements of the genre. Also included are some of the author s letters from the Discussions column of Amazing Stories. Much of what we know as science fiction saw the light and found its themes, styles, and modes in the science fiction magazines of the early twentieth century. It was in these magazines of the 1920s and 1930s that Breuer often led the way. Breuer himself found his inspiration in the work of H. G. Wells and in turn influenced science fiction masters from Jack Williamson to Robert A. Heinlein. The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories collects the best work of this pioneer of the genre.

A Curious Man
A Curious Man

Author: Neal Thompson

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2013-06-06

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1448184371

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of the most successful entertainment figures of his time, Robert Ripley’s life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Bucktoothed and hampered by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of being an outsider into an appreciation of the weird and wonderful. He sold his first cartoon to LIFE magazine at eighteen, but it was his wildly popular ‘Believe It or Not!’ radio shows that won him international fame, and spurred him on to search the globe’s farthest corners for bizarre facts, human curiosities and shocking phenomena. Ripley delighted in making preposterous declarations that somehow turned out to be true – such as that Charles Lindburgh was only the sixty-seventh man to fly across the Atlantic or that ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ was not the USA’s national anthem. And he demanded respect for those who were labelled ‘eccentrics’ or ‘freaks’ – whether it be E. L. Blystone, who wrote 2,871 alphabet letters on a grain of rice, or the man who could swallow his own nose. By the 1930s, Ripley possessed a wide fortune, a private yacht and a huge mansion stocked with such oddities as shrunken heads and medieval torture devices. His pioneering firsts in print, radio and television tapped into something deep in the American consciousness – a taste for the titillating and exotic, and a fascination with the fastest, biggest, wackiest and weirdest – and ensured a worldwide legacy that continues today. This compelling biography portrays a man who was dedicated to exalting the strange and unusual – but who may have been the most amazing oddity of all.