2009, ISBN: 9780762437351
Gebundene Ausgabe
Tor Books. Good. 4.18 x 0.88 x 6.81 inches. Mass Market Paperback. 1992. 320 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned.<br>Jim Meeker came down from Montana to run Texas cattle--only to find … Mehr…
Tor Books. Good. 4.18 x 0.88 x 6.81 inches. Mass Market Paperback. 1992. 320 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned.<br>Jim Meeker came down from Montana to run Texas cattle--only to find that Hoppy's Bar-20 ran the water. So when a trio of snake-mean rustlers started themsel ves a cattle war, the powder was primed, the guns cocked, and Hop py was smack in the middle. So it's friend against friend, broth er against brother, gun against blazing gun. Time's running out, and the range is red with blood. Editorial Reviews About the Au thor Clarence E. Mulford is the creator of the character Hopalong Cassidy, who appeared in countless films, novelizations, and a l ong running television series. Mulford died in 1956. Excerpt. R eprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER I Antonio's Scheme The raw and mighty West, the greatest stage in all the h istory of the world for so many deeds of daring which verged on t he insane, was seared with grave-lined trails. In many localities the bad-man made history in a terse and business-like way, and a lso made the first law for the locality--that of the gun. There w ere good bad-men and bad bad-men, the killer by necessity and the wanton murderer; and the shifting of these to their proper strat a evolved the foundation for the law of to-day. The good bad-man, those in whose souls lived the germs of law and order and justic e, gradually became arrayed against the other class, and stood up manfully for their principles, let the odds be what they might; and bitter, indeed, was the struggle, and great the price. From t he gold camps of the Rockies to the shrieking towns of the coast, where wantonness stalked unchecked; from the vast stretches of t he cattle ranges to the ever-advancing terminals of the persisten t railroads, to the cow towns, boiling and seething in the loosed passions of men who brooked no restraint in their revels, no one section of country ever boasted of such numbers of genuine bad-m en of both classes as the great, semi-arid Southwest. Here was on e of the worst collections of raw humanity ever broadcast in one locality; it was a word and a shot, a shot and a laugh or a curse . In this red setting was stuck a town which we will call Eagle, the riffle which caught all the dregs of passing humanity. Unmapp ed, known only to those who had visited it, reared its flimsy bui ldings in the face of God and rioted day and night with no though t of reckoning; mad, insane with hellishness unlimited. Late in t he afternoon rode Antonio, broncho-buster for the H2, a man of li ttle courage, much avarice, and great capacity for hatred. Crafty , filled with cunning of the coyote kind, shifty-eyed, gloomy, ta citurn, and scowling, he was well fitted for the part he had elec ted to play in the range dispute between his ranch and the Bar-20 . He was absolutely without mercy or conscience; indeed, one migh t aptly say that his conscience, if he had ever known one, had be en pulled out by the roots and its place filled with viciousness. Cold-blooded in his ferocity, easily angered and quick to commit murder if the risk were small, he embraced within his husk of so ul the putrescence of all that was evil. In Eagle he had friends who were only a shade less evil than himself; but they had what h e lacked and because of it were entitled to a forced respect of s mall weight--they had courage, that spontaneous, initiative, heed less courage which toned the atmosphere of the whole West to a ma gnificent crimson. Were it not for the reason that they had drift ed to his social level they would have spurned his acquaintance a nd shot him for a buzzard; but, while they secretly held him in g reat contempt for his cowardice, they admired his criminal cunnin g, and profited by it. He was too wise to show himself in the tru e light to his foreman and the outfit, knowing full well that dea th would be the response, and so lived a lie until he met his fri ends of the town, when he threw off his cloak and became himself, and where he plotted against the man who treated him fairly. Rid ing into the town, he stopped before a saloon and slouched in to the bar, where the proprietor was placing a new stock of liquors on the shelves. Where's Benito, an' th' rest? he asked. Back ther e, replied the other, nodding toward a rear room. Who's in there? Benito, Hall, Archer an' Frisco. Where's Shaw? Him an' Clausen a n' Cavalry went out 'bout ten minutes ago. I want to see 'em when they come in, Antonio remarked, headed towards the door, where h e listened, and then went in. In the small room four men were gro uped around a table, drinking and talking, and at his entry they looked up and nodded. He nodded in reply and seated himself apart from them, where he soon became wrapped in thought. Benito arose and went to the door. Mescal, pronto, he said to the man outside . Damned pronto, too, growled Antonio. A man would die of alkali in this place before he's waited on. The proprietor brought a bot tle and filled the glasses, giving Antonio his drink first, and s ilently withdrew. The broncho-buster tossed off the fiery stuff a nd then turned his shifty eyes on the group. Where's Shaw? Don't know--back soon, replied Benito. Why didn't he wait, when he know ed I was comin' in? Hall leaned back from the table and replied, keenly watching the inquisitor, Because he don't give a damn. You --! Antonio shouted, half rising, but the others interfered and h e sank back again, content to let it pass. But not so Hall, whose Colt was half drawn. I'll kill you some day, he gritted, but bef ore anything could come of it Shaw and his companions entered the room and the trouble was quelled. Soon the group was deep in dis cussion over the merits of a scheme which Antonio unfolded to the m, and the more it was weighed the better it appeared. Finally Sh aw leaned back and filled his pipe. You've got th' brains of th' devil,' Tony. Eet ees not'ing, replied Antonio. Oh, drop that lin go an' talk straight--you ain't on th' H2 now, growled Hall. Beni to, you know this country like a book, Shaw continued. Where's a good place for us to work from, or ain't there no choice? Thunder Mesa. Well, what of it? On the edge of the desert, high, big. Th e walls are stone, an' so very smooth. Nobody can get up. How can we get up then? There's a trail at one end, replied Antonio, cro ssing his legs and preparing to roll a cigarette. It's too steep for cayuses, an' too narrow; but we can crawl up. An' once up, al l hell can't follow as long as our cartridges hold out. Water? in quired Frisco. At th' bottom of th' trail, an' th' spring is on t op, Antonio replied. Not much, but enough. Can you work yore end all right? asked Shaw. Yes, laughed the other. I am 'that fool, A ntonio,' on th' ranch. But they're th' fools. We can steal them b lind an' if they find it out--well, here he shrugged his shoulder s, th' Bar-20 can take th' blame. I'll fix that, all right. This trouble about th' line is just what I've been waitin' for, an' I' ll help it along. If we can get 'em fightin' we'll run off with t h' bone we want. That'll be easy. But can you get 'em fightin'? a sked Cavalry, so called because he had spent several years in tha t branch of the Government service, and deserted because of the d iscipline. Antonio laughed and ordered more mescal and for some t ime took no part in the discussion which went on about him. He wa s dreaming of success and plenty and a ranch of his own which he would start in Old Mexico, in a place far removed from the border , and where no questions would be asked. He would be a rich man, according to the standards of that locality, and what he said wou ld be law among the peons. He liked to day-dream, for everything came out just as he wished; there was no discordant note. He was so certain of success, so conceited as not to ask himself if any of the Bar-20 or H2 outfits were not his equal or superior in int elligence. It was only a matter of time, he told himself, for he could easily get the two ranches embroiled in a range war, and on ce embroiled, his plan would succeed and he would be safe. What d o you want for your share, Tony? suddenly asked Shaw. Half. What! Half? Si. You're loco! cried the other. Do you reckon we're goin g to buck up agin th' biggest an' hardest fightin' outfit in this country an' take all sorts of chances for a measly half, to be d ivided up among seven of us! He brought his fist down on the tabl e with a resounding thump. You an' yore game can go to hell first ! he shouted. I like a hog, all right, sneered Clausen, angrily. I thought it out an' I got to look after th' worst an' most impor tant part of it, an' take three chances to you fellers' one, repl ied Antonio, frowning. I said half, an' it goes. Run all th' ends , an' keep it all, exclaimed Hall. An', by God, we've got a hand in it, now. If you try to hog it we'll drop a word where it'll do th' most good, an' don't you forget it, neither. Antonio is righ t, asserted Benito, excitedly. It's risky for him. Keep yore yall er mouth shut, growled Cavalry. Who gave you any say in this? Hal f, said Antonio, shrugging his shoulders. Look here, you, cried S haw, who was, in reality, the leader of the crowd, inasmuch as he controlled all the others with the exception of Benito and Anton io, and these at times by the judicious use of flattery. We'll ad mit that you've got a right to th' biggest share, but not to no h alf. You have a chance to get away, because you can watch 'em, bu t how about us, out there on th' edge of hell? If they come for u s we won't know nothing about it till we're surrounded. Now we wa nt to play square with you, and we'll give you twice as much as a ny one of th' rest of us. That'll make nine shares an' give you t wo of 'em. What more do you want, when you've got to have us to r un th' game at all? Antonio laughed ironically. Yes. I'm where I can watch, an' get killed first. You can hold th' mesa for a mon th. I ain't as easy as I look. It's my game, not yourn; an' if yo u don't like what I ask, stay out. We will! cried Hall, arising, followed by the others. His hand rested on the butt of his revol ver and trouble seemed imminent. Benito wavered and then slid nea rer to Antonio. You can run yore game all by yore lonesome, as lo ng as you can! Hall shouted. I know a feller what knows Cassidy, an' I'll spoil yore little play right now. You'll look nice at th ' end of a rope, won't you? It's this: share like Shaw said or ge t out of here, and look out for trouble aplenty to-morrow morning . I've put up with yore gall an' swallered yore insultin' actions just as long as I'm going to, and I've got a powerful notion to fix you right here and now! No fightin', you fools! cried the pro prietor, grabbing his Colt and running to the door of the room. I t's up to you fellers to stick together! I'll be damned if I'll s tand-- began Frisco. They want too much, interrupted Antonio, ang rily, keeping close watch over Hall. We want a fair share, an' th at's all! retorted Shaw. Sit down, all of you. We can wrastle thi s out without no gunplay. You-all been yappin' like a set of fool s, said the proprietor. I've heard every word you-all said. If yo u got a mite of sense you'll be some tender how you shout about i t. It's shore risky enough without tellin' everybody this side of sun-up. I mean just what I said, asserted Hall. It's Shaw's offe r, or nothin'. We ain't playing fool. Here! Here! cried Shaw, pus hing Hall into a seat. If you two have got anything to settle, wa it till some other time. That's more like it, growled the proprie tor, shuffling back to the bar. Good Lord, 'Tony, cried Shaw in a low voice. That's fair enough; we've got a right to something, a in't we? Don't let a good thing fall through just because you wan t th' whole earth. Better have a little than none. Well, gimme a third, then. I'll give you a slug in th' eye, you hog! promised H all, starting to rise again, but Shaw held him back. Sit down, yo u fool! he ordered, angrily. Then he turned to Antonio. Third don 't go; take my offer or leave it. Gimme a fourth; that's fair eno ugh. Shaw thought for a moment and then looked up. Well, that's m ore like it. What do you say, fellers? No! cried Hall. Two-ninths , or nothin'! A fourth is two-eighths, only a little more, Shaw r eplied. Well, all right, muttered Hall, sullenly. That's very goo d, laughed Benito, glad that things were clearing. The others gav e their consent to the division and Shaw smiled. Well, that's mor e like it. Now we'll go into this thing an' sift it out. Keep mum about it--there's twenty men in town that would want to join us if they knowed. I'm goin' to be boss; what I say goes, spoke up A ntonio. It's my game an' I'm takin' th' most risky end. You ain't got sand enough to be boss of anything, sneered Hall. Yore sand is chalk. You'll say too much someday, retorted Antonio, glaring. Oh, not to you, I reckon, rejoined Hall, easily. Shut up, both o f you! snapped Shaw. You can be boss, Tony, he said, winking at H all. You've got more brains for a thing like this than any of us. I don't see how you can figger it out like you do. Antonio laugh ed but he remembered one thing, and swore to take payment if the plan leaked out; the proprietor had confessed hearing every word, which was not at all to his liking. If Quinn should tell, well, Quinn would die; he would see to that, he and Benito. All new ma terial copyright 1992 by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. ., Tor Books, 1992, 2.5, Bantam Books. Good. 6.93 x 1.54 x 4.29 inches. Paperback. 1993. 346 pages. Cover worn. <br>A very funny book... no character is m inor: they're all hilarious. --Houston Chronicle. In The Road T o Gandolfo, Robert Ludlum introduced us to the outrageous General MacKenzie Hawkins and his legal wizard, Sam Devereaux, whose plo t to kidnap the Pope spun wildly out of control into sheer hilari ty. Now Ludlum's two wayward heroes return with a diabolical sche me to right a very old wrong -- and wreak vengeance on the (exple tive deleted) who drummed the hawk out of the military. Their out raged opposition will be no less than the White House. Byzantine Treachery. Discovering a long-buried 1878 treaty with an obscure Indian tribe, the hawk -- a.k.a. Chief Thunder Head -- hatches a brilliant plot that will ultimately bring him and his reluctant l awyer Sam before the Supreme Court. Their goal: to reclaim a choi ce piece of American real estate -- the state of Nebraska. Which just happened to the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Air Comma nd! Will they succeed against the powers that be? Will the Wopota mi tribe ever have their day in the Supreme Court? From the Oval Office to the Pentagon, all the president's men are outfitted, un til it rests with CIA Director Vincent Vinnie the Bam-Bam Mangeca vallo to cut Sam and Hawk off at the pass. And only one thing is certain: Robert Ludlum will keep us in nonstop suspense and side- splitting laughter-through the very last page. From the Paperbac k edition. Editorial Reviews Review Praise for Robert Ludlum an d The Road to Omaha A very funny book . . . No character is mino r: They're all hilarious.--Houston Chronicle Don't ever begin a Ludlum novel if you have to go to work the next day.--Chicago Sun -Times --This text refers to the hardcover edition. From the Pub lisher A very funny book... no character is minor: they're all hi larious. --Houston Chronicle. In The Road To Gandolfo, Robert L udlum introduced us to the outrageous General MacKenzie Hawkins a nd his legal wizard, Sam Devereaux, whose plot to kidnap the Pope spun wildly out of control into sheer hilarity. Now Ludlum's two wayward heroes return with a diabolical scheme to right a very o ld wrong -- and wreak vengeance on the (expletive deleted) who dr ummed the hawk out of the military. Their outraged opposition wil l be no less than the White House. Byzantine Treachery. Discoveri ng a long-buried 1878 treaty with an obscure Indian tribe, the ha wk -- a.k.a. Chief Thunder Head -- hatches a brilliant plot that will ultimately bring him and his reluctant lawyer Sam before the Supreme Court. Their goal: to reclaim a choice piece of American real estate -- the state of Nebraska. Which just happened to the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Air Command! Will they succee d against the powers that be? Will the Wopotami tribe ever have t heir day in the Supreme Court? From the Oval Office to the Pentag on, all the president's men are outfitted, until it rests with CI A Director Vincent Vinnie the Bam-Bam Mangecavallo to cut Sam and Hawk off at the pass. And only one thing is certain: Robert Ludl um will keep us in nonstop suspense and side-splitting laughter-t hrough the very last page. --This text refers to the hardcover ed ition. About the Author Robert Ludlum was the author of twenty-o ne novels, each a New York Times bestseller. There are more than 210 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. In addition to the Jason Bourne series -The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultima tum-he was the author of The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Chancello r Manuscript, and The Apocalypse Watch, among many others. Mr. Lu dlum passed away in March, 2001. From the Paperback edition. --T his text refers to the hardcover edition. From the Inside Flap f unny book... no character is minor:  they're all hilarious. --Hou ston  Chronicle. In The Road To  Gandolfo, Robert Ludlum introd uced us to the  outrageous General MacKenzie Hawkins and his lega l  wizard, Sam Devereaux, whose plot to kidnap the  Pope spun wil dly out of control into sheer hilarity.  Now Ludlum's two wayward heroes return with a  diabolical scheme to right a very old wron g -- and  wreak vengeance on the (expletive deleted) who  drummed the hawk out of the military. Their outraged  opposition will be no less than the White House.  Byzantine Treachery. Discovering a long-buried 1878  treaty with an obscure Indian tribe, the hawk --  a.k.a. Chief Thunder Head -- hatches a brilliant plot  that will ultimately bring him and his reluctant  lawyer Sam before th e Supreme Court. Their goal: t --This text refers to the hardcove r edition. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All rights reserv ed. 1 The small, decrepit office on the top floor of the govern ment building was from another era, which was to say nobody but t he present occupant had used it in sixty-four years and eight mon ths. It was not that there were dark secrets in its walls or male volent ghosts from the past hovering below the shabby ceiling; qu ite simply, nobody wanted to use it. And another point should be made clear. It was not actually on the top floor, it was above th e top floor, reached by a narrow wooden staircase, the kind the w ives of New Bedford whalers climbed to prowl the balconies, hopin g--most of the time--for familiar ships that signaled the return of their own particular Ahabs from the angry ocean. In summer mo nths the office was suffocating, as there was only one small wind ow. During the winter it was freezing, as its wooden shell had no insulation and the window rattled incessantly, impervious to cau lking, permitting the cold winds to whip inside as though invited . In essence, this room, this antiquated upper chamber with its s parse furniture purchased around the turn of the century, was the Siberia of the government agency in which it was housed. The las t formal employee who toiled there was a discredited American Ind ian who had the temerity to learn to read English and suggested t o his superiors, who themselves could barely read English, that c ertain restrictions placed on a reservation of the Navajo nation were too severe. It is said the man died in that upper office in the cold January of 1927 and was not discovered until the followi ng May, when the weather was warm and the air suddenly scented. T he government agency was, of course, the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. For the current occupant, however, the foregoing was not a deterrent but rather an incentive. The lone figure in the nondescript gray suit huddled over the rolltop desk, which wa sn't much of a desk, as all its little drawers had been removed a nd the rolling top was stuck at half-mast, was General Mac?Ken?zi e Hawkins, military legend, hero in three wars and twice winner o f the Congressional Medal of Honor. This giant of a man, his lean muscular figure belying his elderly years, his steely eyes and t anned leather-lined face perhaps confirming a number of them, had once again gone into combat. However, for the first time in his life, he was not at war with the enemies of his beloved United St ates of America but with the government of the United States itse lf. Over something that took place a hundred and twelve years ago . It didn't much matter when, he thought, as he squeaked around in his ancient swivel chair and propelled himself to an adjacent table piled high with old leather-bound ledgers and maps. They we re the same pricky-shits who had screwed him, stripped him of his uniform, and put him out to military pasture! They were all the goddamned same, whether in their frilly frock coats of a hundred years ago or their piss-elegant, tight-assed pinstripes of today. They were all pricky-shits. Time did not matter, nailing them di d! The general pulled down the chain of a green-shaded, goosenec ked lamp--circa early twenties--and studied a map, in his right h and a large magnifying glass. He then spun around to his dilapida ted desk and reread the paragraph he had underlined in the ledger whose binding had split with age. His perpetually squinting eyes suddenly were wide and bright with excitement. He reached for th e only instrument of communication he had at his disposal, since the installation of a telephone might reveal his more than schola rly presence at the Bureau. It was a small cone attached to a tub e; he blew into it twice, the signal of emergency. He waited for a reply; it came over the primitive instrument thirty-eight secon ds later. Mac? said the rasping voice over the antediluvian conn ection. Heseltine, I've got it! For Christ's sake, blow into th is thing a little easier, will you? My secretary was here and I t hink she thought my dentures were whistling. She's out? She's o ut, confirmed Heseltine Broke?michael, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. What is it? I just told you, I've got it! Got w hat? The biggest con job the pricky-shits ever pulled, the same pricky-shits who made us wear civvies, old buddy! Oh, I'd love t o get those bastards. Where did it happen and when? In Nebraska. A hundred and twelve years ago. Silence. Then: Mac, we weren't around then! Not even you! It doesn't matter, Heseltine. It's t he same horseshit. The same bastards who did it to them did it to you and me a hundred years later. Who's 'them'? An offshoot of the Mohawks called the Wopotami tribe. They migrated to the Nebr aska territories in the middle 1800s. So? It's time for the sea led archives, General Broke?michael. Don't say that! Nobody can do that! You can, General. I need final confirmation, just a few loose ends to clear up. For what? Why? Because the Wopotamis m ay still legally own all the land and air rights in and around Om aha, Nebraska. You're crazy, Mac! That's the Strategic Air Comma nd! Only a couple of missing items, buried fragments, and the fa cts are there. . . . I'll meet you in the cella rs, at the vault to the archives, General Broke?michael. .& #8200;. . Or should I call you co-chairman of the Joint Chi efs of Staff, along with me, Heseltine? If I'm right, and I know damn well I am, we've got the White House-Pentagon axis in such a bind, their collective tails won't be able to evacuate until we tell 'em to. Silence. Then: I'll let you in, Mac, but then I fa de until you tell me I've got my uniform back. Fair enough. Inci dentally, I'm packing everything I've got here and taking it back to my place in Arlington. That poor son of a bitch who died up i n this rat's nest and wasn't found until the perfume drifted down didn't die in vain! The two generals stalked through the metal shelves of the musty sealed archives, the dull, webbed lights so dim they relied on their flashlights. In the seventh aisle, Mac?K en?zie Hawkins stopped, his beam on an ancient volume whose leath er binding was cracked. I think this is it, Heseltine. Good, and you can't take it out of here! I understand that, General, so I 'll merely take a few photographs and return it. Hawkins removed a tiny spy camera with 110 film from his gray suit. How many rol ls have you got? asked former General Heseltine Broke?michael as Mac?Ken?zie carried the huge book to a steel table at the end of the aisle. Eight, replied Hawkins, opening the yellow-paged volu me to the pages he needed. I have a couple of others, if you nee d them, said Heseltine. Not that I'm so all fired-up by what you think you may have found, but if there's any way to get back at E thelred, I'll take it! I thought you two had made up, broke in M ac?Ken?zie, while turning pages and snapping pictures. Never! I t wasn't Ethelred's fault, it was that rotten lawyer in the Inspe ctor General's office, a half-assed kid from Harvard named Devere aux, Sam Devereaux. He made the mistake, not Brokey the Deuce. Tw o Broke?michaels; he got 'em mixed up, that's all. Horseshit! Br okey-Two put the finger on me! I think you're wrong, but that's not what I'm here for and neither are you. . .  . Brokey, I need the volume next to or near this one. It should s ay CXII on the binding. Get it for me, will you? As the head of I ndian Affairs walked back into the metal stacks, the Hawk took a single-edged razor out of his pocket and sliced out fifteen succe ssive pages of the archival ledger. Without folding the precious papers, he slipped them under his suit coat. I can't find it, sa id Broke?michael. Never mind, I've got what I need. What now, M ac? A long time, Heseltine, maybe a long, long time, perhaps a y ear or so, but I've got to make it right--so right there's no hol es, no holes at all. In what? In a suit I'm going to file again st the government of the United States, replied Hawkins, pulling a mutilated cigar out of his pocket and lighting it with a World War II Zippo. You wait, Brokey-One, and you watch. Good God, for what? . . . Don't smoke! You're not supposed t o smoke in here! Oh, Brokey, you and your cousin, Ethelred, alwa ys went too much by the book, and when the book didn't match the action, you looked for more books. It's not in the books, Heselti ne, not the ones you can read. It's in your stomach, in your gut. Some things are right and some things are wrong, it's as simple as that. The gut tells you. What the hell are you talking about? Your gut tells you to look for books you're not supposed to rea d. In places where they keep secrets, like right in here. Mac, y ou're not making sense! Give me a year, maybe two, Brokey, and t hen you'll understand. I've got to do it right. Real right. Gener al Mac?Ken?zie Hawkins strode out between the metal racks of the archives to the exit. Goddamn, he said to himself. Now I really g o to work. Get ready for me, you magnificent Wopotamis. I'm yours ! Twenty-one months passed, and nobody was ready for Thunder Hea d, chief of the Wopotamis. 2 The President of the United States , his jaw firm, his angry eyes steady and penetrating, accelerate d his pace along the steel-gray corridor in the underground compl ex of the, Bantam Books, 1993, 2.5, Blackie & Son Ltd. Fair. Hardcover. undated (c. 1890s). 220 pages. sunned spine wear, marks & damage to cloth boards flyleaf & frontispiece removed - gutter splitting foxing, crease s<br><br><p><strong>SYDNEY'S CHUMS</strong><br /><br /><em>A Stor y of East and West London</em><br /><br />by H. F. Gethen<br /><b r />illustrated by John H. Bacon<br /><br />Blackie & Son Ltd, UK , undated (c. 1890s)<br />demi hb, 220pp, 2 illustrated plates<br />red cloth boards, spine & front decorated in green, orange, cr eam & gold<br /><br />ACCEPTABLE: sunned spine; wear, marks & dam age to cloth boards; flyleaf & frontispiece removed - gutter spli tting; foxing, creases</p> ., Blackie & Son Ltd, 2, New York Ballantine 1984. Good. 120 x 180mm. Paperback. 1984. 224 pages. Cover worn. <br>In 1914, when Jean-Marc Montjean, a yo ung French doctor, falls for the beautiful Katya, his love leads to devastating trauma, horror, and tragedy for himself and Katya' s family Editorial Reviews Review A most exquisite, elegant, in genious thriller. --New York Daily News A tour de force . . . A story that explores meticulously some of the darker corners of th e human soul. --Washington Post --This text refers to an out of p rint or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author Trev anian's books have been translated into more than fourteen langua ges and have sold millions of copies worldwide. He lives in the F rench Basque mountains. He is the author of The Crazyladies of Pe arl Street, Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, and Th e Main. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edit ion of this title. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All right s reserved. salies-les-bains: august 1938 Every writer who has d ealt with that last summer before the Great War has felt compelle d to comment on the uncommon perfection of the weather: the endle ss days of ardent blue skies across which fair-weather clouds toi led lazily, the long lavender evening freshened by soft breezes, the early mornings of birdsong and slanting yellow sunlight. From Italy to Scotland, from Berlin to the valleys of my native Basse Pyrenees, all of Europe shared an exceptional period of clear, d elicious weather. It was the last thing they were to share for fo ur terrible years-save for the mud and agony, hate and death of t he war that marked the boundary between the nineteenth and twenti eth centuries, between the Age of Grace and the Era of Efficiency . Many who have described that summer claim to have sensed somet hing ominous and terminal in the very excellence of the season, a last flaring up of the guttering candle, a Hellenistic burst of desperate exuberance before the death of a civilization, a final, almost hysterical, moment of laughter and joy for the young men who were to die in the trenches. I confess that my own memory of that last July, assisted to a modest degree by notes and sketches in my journal, carries no hint that I viewed the exquisite weath er as an ironic jest of Fate. Perhaps I was insensitive to the om ens, young as I was, filled with the juices of life, and poised e agerly on the threshold of my medical career. These last words p rovoke a wry smile, as only the conventions of language allow me to describe the quarter century I have passed as a bachelor docto r in a small Basque village as a medical career. To be sure, the bright hardworking young man that I was had every reason to hope he was on the first step of a journey to professional success, al though he might have drawn some hint of a more limited future fro m the humiliatingly trivial tasks he was assigned by his sponsor and patron, Doctor Hippolyte Gros, who emphasized his assistant's subordinate position in dozens of ways, both subtle and bold, no t the least effective of which was reminding patients that I was indeed a full-fledged doctor, despite my apparent youth and palpa ble lack of experience. Doctor Montjean will attend to writing o ut your prescription, he would tell a patient with a benevolent s mile. You may have every confidence in him. Oh, the ink may still be wet on his certificate, but he is well versed in all the most modern approaches to healing, both of body and mind. This last g ibe was aimed at my fascination with the then new and largely mis trusted work of Doctor Freud and his followers. Doctor Gros would pat the hand of his patient (all of whom were women of a certain age, as he specialized in the discomforts associated with menopa use) and assure her that he was honored to have an assistant who had studied in Paris. The widened eyes and tone of awe with which he said Paris were designed to suggest, in broad burlesque, that a simple provincial doctor, such as he, felt obliged to be humbl e before a brilliant young man from the capital who had everythin g to recommend him-save perhaps experience, compassion, wisdom, u nderstanding, and success. Lest I create too unflattering a port rait of Doctor Gros, let me admit that it was kind of him to invi te me to be his summer assistant, as I was fresh out of medical s chool, penniless, without any prospects for purchasing a practice , and burdened by a most uncomplimentary report of my year of int ernship at the mental institution of Passy. However, far from sho wing Doctor Gros the gratitude he had a right to expect, I courte d his displeasure by confessing to him that I considered his area of specialization to be founded on old wives' tales, and his pro fitable summer clinic to be little more than a luxury resort for women with more leisure than common sense. In sharing these obser vations with him, I am sure I believed myself to be admirably ope n and honest for, with the callous assurance of youth, I often mi stook insensitivity for frankness. It is little wonder that he oc casionally retaliated against my callow self-confidence with thru sts at my inexperience and my peculiar absorption with the darker workings of the mind. Indeed, one day in the clinic when I had been holding forth on the ethical parallels between withholding t reatment from the sick and giving it to the healthy, he said to m e, You have no doubt wondered, Montjean, why I chose you to assis t me this summer. Possibly you came to the conclusion that I was staggered by your academic accomplishments and impressed by the a ltruism revealed by your year of unpaid service at Passy. Well, t here was some of that, to be sure. Then too, there was the fact t hat you were born in this part of France, and your dark Basque go od looks are an asset to a clinic catering to women of a certain age and uncertain appetites. After all, having a Basque boy fiddl e with their bits lends to the local color. But foremost among yo ur qualities was your willingness to work cheap, which I admired because humility is an attractive and rare quality in a young doc tor. However, little by little, I am coming to the view that what I mistook for humility was, in fact, an accurate evaluation of y our worth. And, the truth be told, I wasn't of all that much val ue to him, as there was not really enough work at the clinic to o ccupy two doctors. My principal worth was as insurance against hi s falling ill for a day or two, and as freedom for him to take th e occasional day off-days he implied were devoted to romantic pre occupations. For Doctor Gros had something of a reputation as a r ake and a devil with the women who were his patients. He never bo asted openly of his conquests to the worthies of Salies who were his companions over a few glasses each evening in one of the arca de cafes around the central square. Instead he relied on the sile nt smile, the shrug, the weak gesture of protest, to establish hi s reputation, not only as a romancer of potency, but as a man pos sessed of great discretion and a finely tuned sense of honor. No r did Doctor Gros's particularly advantageous position in the str eam of sexual opportunity engender the jealousy one might have ex pected among his peers, for he was protected from their envy by a fully deserved reputation as the ugliest man in Gascony, perhaps in all of France. His was a uniquely thoroughgoing ugliness embr acing both broad plan and minute detail, an ugliness the total of which was greater than the sum of the parts, an ugliness to whic h each feature contributed its bit, from the bulbous veiny nose, to the blotched and pitted complexion, well warted and stained, t o the slack meaty mouth, to the flapping wattles, to the gnarled, irregular ears, to the undershot chin overbalanced by a beetling brow. Only his eyes, glittering and intelligent within their sun ken, rheumy sockets, escaped the general aesthetic holocaust. But withal there was a peculiar attraction to his face, a fascinatio n at the abandon with which Nature can embrace ruin, that lured o ne's glance again and again to his features only to have the gaze deflected by self-consciousness. Doctor Gros was by far the wit tiest and best-educated man in Salies, but the audience for his p ompous, rather purple style of monologue were the dull-minded men who controlled the spa community: the owners of the hotel-restau rants, the manager of the casino, the village lawyer, the banker, all of whom felt a certain reluctant debt to the doctor, for it was his clinic that was the principal attraction for the summer t ourist/patients who were the economic foundation of the town. Sti ll-even though Profit occupies so dominant a position in the mora l order of the French bourgeois mentality that vague impulses tow ards fair play and decency are easily held in rein-it is possible that the more prudish of Salies's merchants might have found Doc tor Gros's cavalier treatment of the lady patients offensive, had these pampered, well-to-do women been genuinely ill. But in fact they were robust middle-class specimens whose only physical dist ress was having attained an age at which fashionable society allo wed them to flap and flutter over women's problems, the clinical details of which they whispered to one another with that appalled delectation later generations would reserve for sex. So it was t hat I alone found Doctor Gros's sexual hinting and double entendr es medically unethical and socially distasteful, a view that my y outhful addiction to moral simplism required me to express. Looki ng back, I wonder that Doctor Gros put up with my self-assured ce nsure at all, but the peculiar fact was that he rather seemed to like me, in a gruff sort of way. He took impish delight in outrag ing my tidy and compact sense of ethics. Also, I was in a positio n, by virtue of education, to catch his puns and comic images tha t went over the heads of his merchant-minded cronies. But I belie ve the principal reason he was fond of me was nostalgic egotism: he saw in me, in both my ambitions and limitations, the young man he had been before time and fate reduced his brilliance to mere table wit, and eroded the scope of his aspirations to the dimensi ons of a profitable small-town clinic. Perhaps this is why his r eaction to my attitude of moral superiority was limited to giving me only the most trivial tasks to perform. And, in fact, I was n ot all that distressed at being relegated to the role of an eleva ted pharmacist, for I had just finished years of grinding work an d study that had drained mind and body and was in need of a lazy summer with time on my hands, with freedom to wander through the quaint, slightly shoddy resort village or to loaf on the banks of the sparkling Gave, overarched by ancient trees and charming sto ne bridges. I wanted time to rest, to dream, to write. Ah yes, w rite. For at that time in my life I felt capable of everything. H aving attempted nothing, I had no sense of my limitations; having dared nothing, I knew no boundaries to my courage. During the ye ars of fatigue and dulling rote in medical school, I had daydream ed of a future confected of two careers: that of the brilliant an d caring doctor and that of the inspired and inspiring poet. And why not? I was an avid and sensitive reader, and I made the commo n error of assuming that being a responsive reader indicated late nt talent as a writer, as though being a gourmand was but a short step from being a chef. Indeed, my first interest in the pioneer work of Doctor Freud sprang, not from a concern for persons woun ded in their collisions with reality, but from my personal curios ity about the nature of creativity and the springs of motivation. So it was that, for several hours a day throughout that indolen t, radiant summer, I wandered into the countryside with my notebo ok, or sat alone at an out-of-the-way cafe, sipping an aperitif a nd holding imagined conversations with important and terribly imp ressed lions of the literary world, or I lounged by the banks of the Gave, notebook open, sketching romantic impressions, my lofty poetic intent inevitably withering to a kind of breathless shatt ered prose in the process of being recorded-a dissipation that I was sure I would learn to avoid once I had mastered the tricks of writing. Then, too, there was the matter of love. As the reader might suspect, the expansive young man that I was had no doubt b ut that he was capable of a great love . . . a staggering love. I was, after all, twenty-five years old, brimming with health, a d evourer of novels, fertile of imagination. It is no surprise that I was ripe for romance. Ripe for romance? Is that not only the self-conscious and sensitive young man's way of saying he was hea vy with passion? Is not, perhaps, romance only the fiction by mea ns of which the tender-minded negotiate their lust? No, not quit e. I am painfully aware that the young man I used to be was callo w, callous, self-confident, and egotistic. There is no doubt he w as heavy with passion. But, to give the poor devil his due, he wa s also ripe for romance. I slipped into a comfortable, rather la zy, routine of life, doing all that Doctor Gros demanded of me an d nothing more. A more ambitious person-or a less blindly confide nt one-would have filled his time with study and self-improvement , for any dispassionate analysis of my future prospects would hav e revealed them to be most uncertain. I was, after all, without f amily and without means; I was in debt for my education; and I ha d no inclination to waste my talents on some impoverished rural c ommunity. Yet I was content to laze away my days, resting myself in preparation for some unknown prospect or adventure that I was sure, without the slightest evidence, lay just around the corner. As events turned out, I would have wasted any time spent in work and study; for the war came that autumn and I was called up imme diately. Romantically-and quite stupidly-I joined the army as a s imple soldier. Four years of mud and trenches, stench, fear, bru talizing boredom. Twice wounded, once seriously enough to limit m y physical activities for the rest of my life. Four years recorde d in my memory as one endless blur of horror and disgust. Even to this day I am choked with nausea and rage when I stand among my fellow veterans in the graveyard of my village and recite the nam es of those mort pour la France. Why did I submit myself to the butchery of the trenches when I might have served in the echelons as a medical officer? Even the most rudimentary knowledge of Doc tor Freud would suggest that I was pursuing a death wish . . . as indeed I was. I knew this at the time, but that knowledge neithe r freed nor, New York Ballantine 1984, 1984, 2.5, Star Book. Fair. Paperback. 1985. 246 pages. creased & sunned spine, tanned pages, wear, marks<br ><br><p><strong>DON'T EMBARRASS THE BUREAU</strong><br /><br />by Bernard F. Conners<br /><br />Star Book, UK, 1985<br />ISBN 9780 352315816<br />sml pb, 246pp<br /><br />ACCEPTABLE: creased & sunned spine, tanned pages, wear, marks<br /><br />Bernard F. Co nners was an FBI special agent for more than eight years, involve d extensively with espionage and criminal investigations. Here, h e uses those experiences to give us a suspense novel centering ar ound the attempted infiltration and control of the FBI.</p> ., Star Book, 1985, 2, Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This ... volume shares ... the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold ... Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946 ., Robinson and Running Press, 2009, 2.5<
nzl, n.. | Biblio.co.uk bookexpress.co.nz, bookexpress.co.nz, bookexpress.co.nz, bookexpress.co.nz, bookexpress.co.nz, bookexpress.co.nz Versandkosten: EUR 18.85 Details... |
2009, ISBN: 9780762437351
London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1994. Soft cover. Very Good/No Jacket (as published). 7.5" x 9.5. A well written First World War history. A clean and sound copy. All orders process… Mehr…
London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1994. Soft cover. Very Good/No Jacket (as published). 7.5" x 9.5. A well written First World War history. A clean and sound copy. All orders processed and shipped promptly from the UK, usually on the day they are received. Please call or email with your questions., Sidgwick and Jackson, 1994, 3, Tor Books. Good. 4.18 x 0.88 x 6.81 inches. Mass Market Paperback. 1992. 320 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned.<br>Jim Meeker came down from Montana to run Texas cattle--only to find that Hoppy's Bar-20 ran the water. So when a trio of snake-mean rustlers started themsel ves a cattle war, the powder was primed, the guns cocked, and Hop py was smack in the middle. So it's friend against friend, broth er against brother, gun against blazing gun. Time's running out, and the range is red with blood. Editorial Reviews About the Au thor Clarence E. Mulford is the creator of the character Hopalong Cassidy, who appeared in countless films, novelizations, and a l ong running television series. Mulford died in 1956. Excerpt. R eprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER I Antonio's Scheme The raw and mighty West, the greatest stage in all the h istory of the world for so many deeds of daring which verged on t he insane, was seared with grave-lined trails. In many localities the bad-man made history in a terse and business-like way, and a lso made the first law for the locality--that of the gun. There w ere good bad-men and bad bad-men, the killer by necessity and the wanton murderer; and the shifting of these to their proper strat a evolved the foundation for the law of to-day. The good bad-man, those in whose souls lived the germs of law and order and justic e, gradually became arrayed against the other class, and stood up manfully for their principles, let the odds be what they might; and bitter, indeed, was the struggle, and great the price. From t he gold camps of the Rockies to the shrieking towns of the coast, where wantonness stalked unchecked; from the vast stretches of t he cattle ranges to the ever-advancing terminals of the persisten t railroads, to the cow towns, boiling and seething in the loosed passions of men who brooked no restraint in their revels, no one section of country ever boasted of such numbers of genuine bad-m en of both classes as the great, semi-arid Southwest. Here was on e of the worst collections of raw humanity ever broadcast in one locality; it was a word and a shot, a shot and a laugh or a curse . In this red setting was stuck a town which we will call Eagle, the riffle which caught all the dregs of passing humanity. Unmapp ed, known only to those who had visited it, reared its flimsy bui ldings in the face of God and rioted day and night with no though t of reckoning; mad, insane with hellishness unlimited. Late in t he afternoon rode Antonio, broncho-buster for the H2, a man of li ttle courage, much avarice, and great capacity for hatred. Crafty , filled with cunning of the coyote kind, shifty-eyed, gloomy, ta citurn, and scowling, he was well fitted for the part he had elec ted to play in the range dispute between his ranch and the Bar-20 . He was absolutely without mercy or conscience; indeed, one migh t aptly say that his conscience, if he had ever known one, had be en pulled out by the roots and its place filled with viciousness. Cold-blooded in his ferocity, easily angered and quick to commit murder if the risk were small, he embraced within his husk of so ul the putrescence of all that was evil. In Eagle he had friends who were only a shade less evil than himself; but they had what h e lacked and because of it were entitled to a forced respect of s mall weight--they had courage, that spontaneous, initiative, heed less courage which toned the atmosphere of the whole West to a ma gnificent crimson. Were it not for the reason that they had drift ed to his social level they would have spurned his acquaintance a nd shot him for a buzzard; but, while they secretly held him in g reat contempt for his cowardice, they admired his criminal cunnin g, and profited by it. He was too wise to show himself in the tru e light to his foreman and the outfit, knowing full well that dea th would be the response, and so lived a lie until he met his fri ends of the town, when he threw off his cloak and became himself, and where he plotted against the man who treated him fairly. Rid ing into the town, he stopped before a saloon and slouched in to the bar, where the proprietor was placing a new stock of liquors on the shelves. Where's Benito, an' th' rest? he asked. Back ther e, replied the other, nodding toward a rear room. Who's in there? Benito, Hall, Archer an' Frisco. Where's Shaw? Him an' Clausen a n' Cavalry went out 'bout ten minutes ago. I want to see 'em when they come in, Antonio remarked, headed towards the door, where h e listened, and then went in. In the small room four men were gro uped around a table, drinking and talking, and at his entry they looked up and nodded. He nodded in reply and seated himself apart from them, where he soon became wrapped in thought. Benito arose and went to the door. Mescal, pronto, he said to the man outside . Damned pronto, too, growled Antonio. A man would die of alkali in this place before he's waited on. The proprietor brought a bot tle and filled the glasses, giving Antonio his drink first, and s ilently withdrew. The broncho-buster tossed off the fiery stuff a nd then turned his shifty eyes on the group. Where's Shaw? Don't know--back soon, replied Benito. Why didn't he wait, when he know ed I was comin' in? Hall leaned back from the table and replied, keenly watching the inquisitor, Because he don't give a damn. You --! Antonio shouted, half rising, but the others interfered and h e sank back again, content to let it pass. But not so Hall, whose Colt was half drawn. I'll kill you some day, he gritted, but bef ore anything could come of it Shaw and his companions entered the room and the trouble was quelled. Soon the group was deep in dis cussion over the merits of a scheme which Antonio unfolded to the m, and the more it was weighed the better it appeared. Finally Sh aw leaned back and filled his pipe. You've got th' brains of th' devil,' Tony. Eet ees not'ing, replied Antonio. Oh, drop that lin go an' talk straight--you ain't on th' H2 now, growled Hall. Beni to, you know this country like a book, Shaw continued. Where's a good place for us to work from, or ain't there no choice? Thunder Mesa. Well, what of it? On the edge of the desert, high, big. Th e walls are stone, an' so very smooth. Nobody can get up. How can we get up then? There's a trail at one end, replied Antonio, cro ssing his legs and preparing to roll a cigarette. It's too steep for cayuses, an' too narrow; but we can crawl up. An' once up, al l hell can't follow as long as our cartridges hold out. Water? in quired Frisco. At th' bottom of th' trail, an' th' spring is on t op, Antonio replied. Not much, but enough. Can you work yore end all right? asked Shaw. Yes, laughed the other. I am 'that fool, A ntonio,' on th' ranch. But they're th' fools. We can steal them b lind an' if they find it out--well, here he shrugged his shoulder s, th' Bar-20 can take th' blame. I'll fix that, all right. This trouble about th' line is just what I've been waitin' for, an' I' ll help it along. If we can get 'em fightin' we'll run off with t h' bone we want. That'll be easy. But can you get 'em fightin'? a sked Cavalry, so called because he had spent several years in tha t branch of the Government service, and deserted because of the d iscipline. Antonio laughed and ordered more mescal and for some t ime took no part in the discussion which went on about him. He wa s dreaming of success and plenty and a ranch of his own which he would start in Old Mexico, in a place far removed from the border , and where no questions would be asked. He would be a rich man, according to the standards of that locality, and what he said wou ld be law among the peons. He liked to day-dream, for everything came out just as he wished; there was no discordant note. He was so certain of success, so conceited as not to ask himself if any of the Bar-20 or H2 outfits were not his equal or superior in int elligence. It was only a matter of time, he told himself, for he could easily get the two ranches embroiled in a range war, and on ce embroiled, his plan would succeed and he would be safe. What d o you want for your share, Tony? suddenly asked Shaw. Half. What! Half? Si. You're loco! cried the other. Do you reckon we're goin g to buck up agin th' biggest an' hardest fightin' outfit in this country an' take all sorts of chances for a measly half, to be d ivided up among seven of us! He brought his fist down on the tabl e with a resounding thump. You an' yore game can go to hell first ! he shouted. I like a hog, all right, sneered Clausen, angrily. I thought it out an' I got to look after th' worst an' most impor tant part of it, an' take three chances to you fellers' one, repl ied Antonio, frowning. I said half, an' it goes. Run all th' ends , an' keep it all, exclaimed Hall. An', by God, we've got a hand in it, now. If you try to hog it we'll drop a word where it'll do th' most good, an' don't you forget it, neither. Antonio is righ t, asserted Benito, excitedly. It's risky for him. Keep yore yall er mouth shut, growled Cavalry. Who gave you any say in this? Hal f, said Antonio, shrugging his shoulders. Look here, you, cried S haw, who was, in reality, the leader of the crowd, inasmuch as he controlled all the others with the exception of Benito and Anton io, and these at times by the judicious use of flattery. We'll ad mit that you've got a right to th' biggest share, but not to no h alf. You have a chance to get away, because you can watch 'em, bu t how about us, out there on th' edge of hell? If they come for u s we won't know nothing about it till we're surrounded. Now we wa nt to play square with you, and we'll give you twice as much as a ny one of th' rest of us. That'll make nine shares an' give you t wo of 'em. What more do you want, when you've got to have us to r un th' game at all? Antonio laughed ironically. Yes. I'm where I can watch, an' get killed first. You can hold th' mesa for a mon th. I ain't as easy as I look. It's my game, not yourn; an' if yo u don't like what I ask, stay out. We will! cried Hall, arising, followed by the others. His hand rested on the butt of his revol ver and trouble seemed imminent. Benito wavered and then slid nea rer to Antonio. You can run yore game all by yore lonesome, as lo ng as you can! Hall shouted. I know a feller what knows Cassidy, an' I'll spoil yore little play right now. You'll look nice at th ' end of a rope, won't you? It's this: share like Shaw said or ge t out of here, and look out for trouble aplenty to-morrow morning . I've put up with yore gall an' swallered yore insultin' actions just as long as I'm going to, and I've got a powerful notion to fix you right here and now! No fightin', you fools! cried the pro prietor, grabbing his Colt and running to the door of the room. I t's up to you fellers to stick together! I'll be damned if I'll s tand-- began Frisco. They want too much, interrupted Antonio, ang rily, keeping close watch over Hall. We want a fair share, an' th at's all! retorted Shaw. Sit down, all of you. We can wrastle thi s out without no gunplay. You-all been yappin' like a set of fool s, said the proprietor. I've heard every word you-all said. If yo u got a mite of sense you'll be some tender how you shout about i t. It's shore risky enough without tellin' everybody this side of sun-up. I mean just what I said, asserted Hall. It's Shaw's offe r, or nothin'. We ain't playing fool. Here! Here! cried Shaw, pus hing Hall into a seat. If you two have got anything to settle, wa it till some other time. That's more like it, growled the proprie tor, shuffling back to the bar. Good Lord, 'Tony, cried Shaw in a low voice. That's fair enough; we've got a right to something, a in't we? Don't let a good thing fall through just because you wan t th' whole earth. Better have a little than none. Well, gimme a third, then. I'll give you a slug in th' eye, you hog! promised H all, starting to rise again, but Shaw held him back. Sit down, yo u fool! he ordered, angrily. Then he turned to Antonio. Third don 't go; take my offer or leave it. Gimme a fourth; that's fair eno ugh. Shaw thought for a moment and then looked up. Well, that's m ore like it. What do you say, fellers? No! cried Hall. Two-ninths , or nothin'! A fourth is two-eighths, only a little more, Shaw r eplied. Well, all right, muttered Hall, sullenly. That's very goo d, laughed Benito, glad that things were clearing. The others gav e their consent to the division and Shaw smiled. Well, that's mor e like it. Now we'll go into this thing an' sift it out. Keep mum about it--there's twenty men in town that would want to join us if they knowed. I'm goin' to be boss; what I say goes, spoke up A ntonio. It's my game an' I'm takin' th' most risky end. You ain't got sand enough to be boss of anything, sneered Hall. Yore sand is chalk. You'll say too much someday, retorted Antonio, glaring. Oh, not to you, I reckon, rejoined Hall, easily. Shut up, both o f you! snapped Shaw. You can be boss, Tony, he said, winking at H all. You've got more brains for a thing like this than any of us. I don't see how you can figger it out like you do. Antonio laugh ed but he remembered one thing, and swore to take payment if the plan leaked out; the proprietor had confessed hearing every word, which was not at all to his liking. If Quinn should tell, well, Quinn would die; he would see to that, he and Benito. All new ma terial copyright 1992 by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. ., Tor Books, 1992, 2.5, Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This ... volume shares ... the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold ... Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946 ., Robinson and Running Press, 2009, 2.5<
gbr, n.. | Biblio.co.uk |
2009, ISBN: 9780762437351
Thames Methuen. Good. 18cm. Paperback. 1981. 384 pages. Text tanned<br>Provides general accounts of the fall o f France, Battle of Britain, Normandy invasion, and other monumen tal … Mehr…
Thames Methuen. Good. 18cm. Paperback. 1981. 384 pages. Text tanned<br>Provides general accounts of the fall o f France, Battle of Britain, Normandy invasion, and other monumen tal events of the Second World War n nEditorial Reviews n nReview nThe World at War will satisfy historians, participants and a ne w generation which would like a readable and factual account of h ow it happened and what happened. Sunday Times A first-rate piece of work which can be commended to anyone who wants to aquire a r apid and accurate grasp of what happened. Glasgow Herald --This t ext refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this titl e. n nAbout the Author nMark Arnold-Forster was born in 1920, and was therefore just old enough to have served throughout the Seco nd World War, first as a merchant seaman and then in the Royal Na vy. He spent most of the war in command of motor torpedo boats an d of MTB flotillas based at Dover attacking German coastal convoy s and minelaying in the continental estuaries. He was awarded the DSO and DSC, was three times mentioned in despatches, and was de mobilized as a reserve Lieutenant in 1946. As a newspaperman he w as blockaded in Berlin in 1948 and reported on post-war Europe. H e was chief editorial writer on the Guardian and continued to wri te regular leaders for the paper until his death in 1981. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this tit le. ., Thames Methuen, 1981, 2.5, Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This ... volume shares ... the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold ... Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946 ., Robinson and Running Press, 2009, 2.5<
nzl, nzl | Biblio.co.uk |
2009, ISBN: 0762437359
[EAN: 9780762437351], Gebraucht, guter Zustand, [PU: Robinson and Running Press, Philadelphia and London], WORLD WAR,1939-1945 -- PERSONAL NARRATIVES, 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. … Mehr…
[EAN: 9780762437351], Gebraucht, guter Zustand, [PU: Robinson and Running Press, Philadelphia and London], WORLD WAR,1939-1945 -- PERSONAL NARRATIVES, 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This . volume shares . the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold . Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946, Books<
AbeBooks.de Book Express (NZ), Wellington, New Zealand [5578174] [Rating: 5 (von 5)] NOT NEW BOOK. Versandkosten: EUR 25.12 Details... |
2009, ISBN: 9780762437351
Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best rem… Mehr…
Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This ... volume shares ... the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold ... Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946 ., Robinson and Running Press, 2009, 2.5<
Biblio.co.uk |
2009, ISBN: 9780762437351
Gebundene Ausgabe
Tor Books. Good. 4.18 x 0.88 x 6.81 inches. Mass Market Paperback. 1992. 320 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned.<br>Jim Meeker came down from Montana to run Texas cattle--only to find … Mehr…
Tor Books. Good. 4.18 x 0.88 x 6.81 inches. Mass Market Paperback. 1992. 320 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned.<br>Jim Meeker came down from Montana to run Texas cattle--only to find that Hoppy's Bar-20 ran the water. So when a trio of snake-mean rustlers started themsel ves a cattle war, the powder was primed, the guns cocked, and Hop py was smack in the middle. So it's friend against friend, broth er against brother, gun against blazing gun. Time's running out, and the range is red with blood. Editorial Reviews About the Au thor Clarence E. Mulford is the creator of the character Hopalong Cassidy, who appeared in countless films, novelizations, and a l ong running television series. Mulford died in 1956. Excerpt. R eprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER I Antonio's Scheme The raw and mighty West, the greatest stage in all the h istory of the world for so many deeds of daring which verged on t he insane, was seared with grave-lined trails. In many localities the bad-man made history in a terse and business-like way, and a lso made the first law for the locality--that of the gun. There w ere good bad-men and bad bad-men, the killer by necessity and the wanton murderer; and the shifting of these to their proper strat a evolved the foundation for the law of to-day. The good bad-man, those in whose souls lived the germs of law and order and justic e, gradually became arrayed against the other class, and stood up manfully for their principles, let the odds be what they might; and bitter, indeed, was the struggle, and great the price. From t he gold camps of the Rockies to the shrieking towns of the coast, where wantonness stalked unchecked; from the vast stretches of t he cattle ranges to the ever-advancing terminals of the persisten t railroads, to the cow towns, boiling and seething in the loosed passions of men who brooked no restraint in their revels, no one section of country ever boasted of such numbers of genuine bad-m en of both classes as the great, semi-arid Southwest. Here was on e of the worst collections of raw humanity ever broadcast in one locality; it was a word and a shot, a shot and a laugh or a curse . In this red setting was stuck a town which we will call Eagle, the riffle which caught all the dregs of passing humanity. Unmapp ed, known only to those who had visited it, reared its flimsy bui ldings in the face of God and rioted day and night with no though t of reckoning; mad, insane with hellishness unlimited. Late in t he afternoon rode Antonio, broncho-buster for the H2, a man of li ttle courage, much avarice, and great capacity for hatred. Crafty , filled with cunning of the coyote kind, shifty-eyed, gloomy, ta citurn, and scowling, he was well fitted for the part he had elec ted to play in the range dispute between his ranch and the Bar-20 . He was absolutely without mercy or conscience; indeed, one migh t aptly say that his conscience, if he had ever known one, had be en pulled out by the roots and its place filled with viciousness. Cold-blooded in his ferocity, easily angered and quick to commit murder if the risk were small, he embraced within his husk of so ul the putrescence of all that was evil. In Eagle he had friends who were only a shade less evil than himself; but they had what h e lacked and because of it were entitled to a forced respect of s mall weight--they had courage, that spontaneous, initiative, heed less courage which toned the atmosphere of the whole West to a ma gnificent crimson. Were it not for the reason that they had drift ed to his social level they would have spurned his acquaintance a nd shot him for a buzzard; but, while they secretly held him in g reat contempt for his cowardice, they admired his criminal cunnin g, and profited by it. He was too wise to show himself in the tru e light to his foreman and the outfit, knowing full well that dea th would be the response, and so lived a lie until he met his fri ends of the town, when he threw off his cloak and became himself, and where he plotted against the man who treated him fairly. Rid ing into the town, he stopped before a saloon and slouched in to the bar, where the proprietor was placing a new stock of liquors on the shelves. Where's Benito, an' th' rest? he asked. Back ther e, replied the other, nodding toward a rear room. Who's in there? Benito, Hall, Archer an' Frisco. Where's Shaw? Him an' Clausen a n' Cavalry went out 'bout ten minutes ago. I want to see 'em when they come in, Antonio remarked, headed towards the door, where h e listened, and then went in. In the small room four men were gro uped around a table, drinking and talking, and at his entry they looked up and nodded. He nodded in reply and seated himself apart from them, where he soon became wrapped in thought. Benito arose and went to the door. Mescal, pronto, he said to the man outside . Damned pronto, too, growled Antonio. A man would die of alkali in this place before he's waited on. The proprietor brought a bot tle and filled the glasses, giving Antonio his drink first, and s ilently withdrew. The broncho-buster tossed off the fiery stuff a nd then turned his shifty eyes on the group. Where's Shaw? Don't know--back soon, replied Benito. Why didn't he wait, when he know ed I was comin' in? Hall leaned back from the table and replied, keenly watching the inquisitor, Because he don't give a damn. You --! Antonio shouted, half rising, but the others interfered and h e sank back again, content to let it pass. But not so Hall, whose Colt was half drawn. I'll kill you some day, he gritted, but bef ore anything could come of it Shaw and his companions entered the room and the trouble was quelled. Soon the group was deep in dis cussion over the merits of a scheme which Antonio unfolded to the m, and the more it was weighed the better it appeared. Finally Sh aw leaned back and filled his pipe. You've got th' brains of th' devil,' Tony. Eet ees not'ing, replied Antonio. Oh, drop that lin go an' talk straight--you ain't on th' H2 now, growled Hall. Beni to, you know this country like a book, Shaw continued. Where's a good place for us to work from, or ain't there no choice? Thunder Mesa. Well, what of it? On the edge of the desert, high, big. Th e walls are stone, an' so very smooth. Nobody can get up. How can we get up then? There's a trail at one end, replied Antonio, cro ssing his legs and preparing to roll a cigarette. It's too steep for cayuses, an' too narrow; but we can crawl up. An' once up, al l hell can't follow as long as our cartridges hold out. Water? in quired Frisco. At th' bottom of th' trail, an' th' spring is on t op, Antonio replied. Not much, but enough. Can you work yore end all right? asked Shaw. Yes, laughed the other. I am 'that fool, A ntonio,' on th' ranch. But they're th' fools. We can steal them b lind an' if they find it out--well, here he shrugged his shoulder s, th' Bar-20 can take th' blame. I'll fix that, all right. This trouble about th' line is just what I've been waitin' for, an' I' ll help it along. If we can get 'em fightin' we'll run off with t h' bone we want. That'll be easy. But can you get 'em fightin'? a sked Cavalry, so called because he had spent several years in tha t branch of the Government service, and deserted because of the d iscipline. Antonio laughed and ordered more mescal and for some t ime took no part in the discussion which went on about him. He wa s dreaming of success and plenty and a ranch of his own which he would start in Old Mexico, in a place far removed from the border , and where no questions would be asked. He would be a rich man, according to the standards of that locality, and what he said wou ld be law among the peons. He liked to day-dream, for everything came out just as he wished; there was no discordant note. He was so certain of success, so conceited as not to ask himself if any of the Bar-20 or H2 outfits were not his equal or superior in int elligence. It was only a matter of time, he told himself, for he could easily get the two ranches embroiled in a range war, and on ce embroiled, his plan would succeed and he would be safe. What d o you want for your share, Tony? suddenly asked Shaw. Half. What! Half? Si. You're loco! cried the other. Do you reckon we're goin g to buck up agin th' biggest an' hardest fightin' outfit in this country an' take all sorts of chances for a measly half, to be d ivided up among seven of us! He brought his fist down on the tabl e with a resounding thump. You an' yore game can go to hell first ! he shouted. I like a hog, all right, sneered Clausen, angrily. I thought it out an' I got to look after th' worst an' most impor tant part of it, an' take three chances to you fellers' one, repl ied Antonio, frowning. I said half, an' it goes. Run all th' ends , an' keep it all, exclaimed Hall. An', by God, we've got a hand in it, now. If you try to hog it we'll drop a word where it'll do th' most good, an' don't you forget it, neither. Antonio is righ t, asserted Benito, excitedly. It's risky for him. Keep yore yall er mouth shut, growled Cavalry. Who gave you any say in this? Hal f, said Antonio, shrugging his shoulders. Look here, you, cried S haw, who was, in reality, the leader of the crowd, inasmuch as he controlled all the others with the exception of Benito and Anton io, and these at times by the judicious use of flattery. We'll ad mit that you've got a right to th' biggest share, but not to no h alf. You have a chance to get away, because you can watch 'em, bu t how about us, out there on th' edge of hell? If they come for u s we won't know nothing about it till we're surrounded. Now we wa nt to play square with you, and we'll give you twice as much as a ny one of th' rest of us. That'll make nine shares an' give you t wo of 'em. What more do you want, when you've got to have us to r un th' game at all? Antonio laughed ironically. Yes. I'm where I can watch, an' get killed first. You can hold th' mesa for a mon th. I ain't as easy as I look. It's my game, not yourn; an' if yo u don't like what I ask, stay out. We will! cried Hall, arising, followed by the others. His hand rested on the butt of his revol ver and trouble seemed imminent. Benito wavered and then slid nea rer to Antonio. You can run yore game all by yore lonesome, as lo ng as you can! Hall shouted. I know a feller what knows Cassidy, an' I'll spoil yore little play right now. You'll look nice at th ' end of a rope, won't you? It's this: share like Shaw said or ge t out of here, and look out for trouble aplenty to-morrow morning . I've put up with yore gall an' swallered yore insultin' actions just as long as I'm going to, and I've got a powerful notion to fix you right here and now! No fightin', you fools! cried the pro prietor, grabbing his Colt and running to the door of the room. I t's up to you fellers to stick together! I'll be damned if I'll s tand-- began Frisco. They want too much, interrupted Antonio, ang rily, keeping close watch over Hall. We want a fair share, an' th at's all! retorted Shaw. Sit down, all of you. We can wrastle thi s out without no gunplay. You-all been yappin' like a set of fool s, said the proprietor. I've heard every word you-all said. If yo u got a mite of sense you'll be some tender how you shout about i t. It's shore risky enough without tellin' everybody this side of sun-up. I mean just what I said, asserted Hall. It's Shaw's offe r, or nothin'. We ain't playing fool. Here! Here! cried Shaw, pus hing Hall into a seat. If you two have got anything to settle, wa it till some other time. That's more like it, growled the proprie tor, shuffling back to the bar. Good Lord, 'Tony, cried Shaw in a low voice. That's fair enough; we've got a right to something, a in't we? Don't let a good thing fall through just because you wan t th' whole earth. Better have a little than none. Well, gimme a third, then. I'll give you a slug in th' eye, you hog! promised H all, starting to rise again, but Shaw held him back. Sit down, yo u fool! he ordered, angrily. Then he turned to Antonio. Third don 't go; take my offer or leave it. Gimme a fourth; that's fair eno ugh. Shaw thought for a moment and then looked up. Well, that's m ore like it. What do you say, fellers? No! cried Hall. Two-ninths , or nothin'! A fourth is two-eighths, only a little more, Shaw r eplied. Well, all right, muttered Hall, sullenly. That's very goo d, laughed Benito, glad that things were clearing. The others gav e their consent to the division and Shaw smiled. Well, that's mor e like it. Now we'll go into this thing an' sift it out. Keep mum about it--there's twenty men in town that would want to join us if they knowed. I'm goin' to be boss; what I say goes, spoke up A ntonio. It's my game an' I'm takin' th' most risky end. You ain't got sand enough to be boss of anything, sneered Hall. Yore sand is chalk. You'll say too much someday, retorted Antonio, glaring. Oh, not to you, I reckon, rejoined Hall, easily. Shut up, both o f you! snapped Shaw. You can be boss, Tony, he said, winking at H all. You've got more brains for a thing like this than any of us. I don't see how you can figger it out like you do. Antonio laugh ed but he remembered one thing, and swore to take payment if the plan leaked out; the proprietor had confessed hearing every word, which was not at all to his liking. If Quinn should tell, well, Quinn would die; he would see to that, he and Benito. All new ma terial copyright 1992 by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. ., Tor Books, 1992, 2.5, Bantam Books. Good. 6.93 x 1.54 x 4.29 inches. Paperback. 1993. 346 pages. Cover worn. <br>A very funny book... no character is m inor: they're all hilarious. --Houston Chronicle. In The Road T o Gandolfo, Robert Ludlum introduced us to the outrageous General MacKenzie Hawkins and his legal wizard, Sam Devereaux, whose plo t to kidnap the Pope spun wildly out of control into sheer hilari ty. Now Ludlum's two wayward heroes return with a diabolical sche me to right a very old wrong -- and wreak vengeance on the (exple tive deleted) who drummed the hawk out of the military. Their out raged opposition will be no less than the White House. Byzantine Treachery. Discovering a long-buried 1878 treaty with an obscure Indian tribe, the hawk -- a.k.a. Chief Thunder Head -- hatches a brilliant plot that will ultimately bring him and his reluctant l awyer Sam before the Supreme Court. Their goal: to reclaim a choi ce piece of American real estate -- the state of Nebraska. Which just happened to the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Air Comma nd! Will they succeed against the powers that be? Will the Wopota mi tribe ever have their day in the Supreme Court? From the Oval Office to the Pentagon, all the president's men are outfitted, un til it rests with CIA Director Vincent Vinnie the Bam-Bam Mangeca vallo to cut Sam and Hawk off at the pass. And only one thing is certain: Robert Ludlum will keep us in nonstop suspense and side- splitting laughter-through the very last page. From the Paperbac k edition. Editorial Reviews Review Praise for Robert Ludlum an d The Road to Omaha A very funny book . . . No character is mino r: They're all hilarious.--Houston Chronicle Don't ever begin a Ludlum novel if you have to go to work the next day.--Chicago Sun -Times --This text refers to the hardcover edition. From the Pub lisher A very funny book... no character is minor: they're all hi larious. --Houston Chronicle. In The Road To Gandolfo, Robert L udlum introduced us to the outrageous General MacKenzie Hawkins a nd his legal wizard, Sam Devereaux, whose plot to kidnap the Pope spun wildly out of control into sheer hilarity. Now Ludlum's two wayward heroes return with a diabolical scheme to right a very o ld wrong -- and wreak vengeance on the (expletive deleted) who dr ummed the hawk out of the military. Their outraged opposition wil l be no less than the White House. Byzantine Treachery. Discoveri ng a long-buried 1878 treaty with an obscure Indian tribe, the ha wk -- a.k.a. Chief Thunder Head -- hatches a brilliant plot that will ultimately bring him and his reluctant lawyer Sam before the Supreme Court. Their goal: to reclaim a choice piece of American real estate -- the state of Nebraska. Which just happened to the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Air Command! Will they succee d against the powers that be? Will the Wopotami tribe ever have t heir day in the Supreme Court? From the Oval Office to the Pentag on, all the president's men are outfitted, until it rests with CI A Director Vincent Vinnie the Bam-Bam Mangecavallo to cut Sam and Hawk off at the pass. And only one thing is certain: Robert Ludl um will keep us in nonstop suspense and side-splitting laughter-t hrough the very last page. --This text refers to the hardcover ed ition. About the Author Robert Ludlum was the author of twenty-o ne novels, each a New York Times bestseller. There are more than 210 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. In addition to the Jason Bourne series -The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultima tum-he was the author of The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Chancello r Manuscript, and The Apocalypse Watch, among many others. Mr. Lu dlum passed away in March, 2001. From the Paperback edition. --T his text refers to the hardcover edition. From the Inside Flap f unny book... no character is minor:  they're all hilarious. --Hou ston  Chronicle. In The Road To  Gandolfo, Robert Ludlum introd uced us to the  outrageous General MacKenzie Hawkins and his lega l  wizard, Sam Devereaux, whose plot to kidnap the  Pope spun wil dly out of control into sheer hilarity.  Now Ludlum's two wayward heroes return with a  diabolical scheme to right a very old wron g -- and  wreak vengeance on the (expletive deleted) who  drummed the hawk out of the military. Their outraged  opposition will be no less than the White House.  Byzantine Treachery. Discovering a long-buried 1878  treaty with an obscure Indian tribe, the hawk --  a.k.a. Chief Thunder Head -- hatches a brilliant plot  that will ultimately bring him and his reluctant  lawyer Sam before th e Supreme Court. Their goal: t --This text refers to the hardcove r edition. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All rights reserv ed. 1 The small, decrepit office on the top floor of the govern ment building was from another era, which was to say nobody but t he present occupant had used it in sixty-four years and eight mon ths. It was not that there were dark secrets in its walls or male volent ghosts from the past hovering below the shabby ceiling; qu ite simply, nobody wanted to use it. And another point should be made clear. It was not actually on the top floor, it was above th e top floor, reached by a narrow wooden staircase, the kind the w ives of New Bedford whalers climbed to prowl the balconies, hopin g--most of the time--for familiar ships that signaled the return of their own particular Ahabs from the angry ocean. In summer mo nths the office was suffocating, as there was only one small wind ow. During the winter it was freezing, as its wooden shell had no insulation and the window rattled incessantly, impervious to cau lking, permitting the cold winds to whip inside as though invited . In essence, this room, this antiquated upper chamber with its s parse furniture purchased around the turn of the century, was the Siberia of the government agency in which it was housed. The las t formal employee who toiled there was a discredited American Ind ian who had the temerity to learn to read English and suggested t o his superiors, who themselves could barely read English, that c ertain restrictions placed on a reservation of the Navajo nation were too severe. It is said the man died in that upper office in the cold January of 1927 and was not discovered until the followi ng May, when the weather was warm and the air suddenly scented. T he government agency was, of course, the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. For the current occupant, however, the foregoing was not a deterrent but rather an incentive. The lone figure in the nondescript gray suit huddled over the rolltop desk, which wa sn't much of a desk, as all its little drawers had been removed a nd the rolling top was stuck at half-mast, was General Mac?Ken?zi e Hawkins, military legend, hero in three wars and twice winner o f the Congressional Medal of Honor. This giant of a man, his lean muscular figure belying his elderly years, his steely eyes and t anned leather-lined face perhaps confirming a number of them, had once again gone into combat. However, for the first time in his life, he was not at war with the enemies of his beloved United St ates of America but with the government of the United States itse lf. Over something that took place a hundred and twelve years ago . It didn't much matter when, he thought, as he squeaked around in his ancient swivel chair and propelled himself to an adjacent table piled high with old leather-bound ledgers and maps. They we re the same pricky-shits who had screwed him, stripped him of his uniform, and put him out to military pasture! They were all the goddamned same, whether in their frilly frock coats of a hundred years ago or their piss-elegant, tight-assed pinstripes of today. They were all pricky-shits. Time did not matter, nailing them di d! The general pulled down the chain of a green-shaded, goosenec ked lamp--circa early twenties--and studied a map, in his right h and a large magnifying glass. He then spun around to his dilapida ted desk and reread the paragraph he had underlined in the ledger whose binding had split with age. His perpetually squinting eyes suddenly were wide and bright with excitement. He reached for th e only instrument of communication he had at his disposal, since the installation of a telephone might reveal his more than schola rly presence at the Bureau. It was a small cone attached to a tub e; he blew into it twice, the signal of emergency. He waited for a reply; it came over the primitive instrument thirty-eight secon ds later. Mac? said the rasping voice over the antediluvian conn ection. Heseltine, I've got it! For Christ's sake, blow into th is thing a little easier, will you? My secretary was here and I t hink she thought my dentures were whistling. She's out? She's o ut, confirmed Heseltine Broke?michael, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. What is it? I just told you, I've got it! Got w hat? The biggest con job the pricky-shits ever pulled, the same pricky-shits who made us wear civvies, old buddy! Oh, I'd love t o get those bastards. Where did it happen and when? In Nebraska. A hundred and twelve years ago. Silence. Then: Mac, we weren't around then! Not even you! It doesn't matter, Heseltine. It's t he same horseshit. The same bastards who did it to them did it to you and me a hundred years later. Who's 'them'? An offshoot of the Mohawks called the Wopotami tribe. They migrated to the Nebr aska territories in the middle 1800s. So? It's time for the sea led archives, General Broke?michael. Don't say that! Nobody can do that! You can, General. I need final confirmation, just a few loose ends to clear up. For what? Why? Because the Wopotamis m ay still legally own all the land and air rights in and around Om aha, Nebraska. You're crazy, Mac! That's the Strategic Air Comma nd! Only a couple of missing items, buried fragments, and the fa cts are there. . . . I'll meet you in the cella rs, at the vault to the archives, General Broke?michael. .& #8200;. . Or should I call you co-chairman of the Joint Chi efs of Staff, along with me, Heseltine? If I'm right, and I know damn well I am, we've got the White House-Pentagon axis in such a bind, their collective tails won't be able to evacuate until we tell 'em to. Silence. Then: I'll let you in, Mac, but then I fa de until you tell me I've got my uniform back. Fair enough. Inci dentally, I'm packing everything I've got here and taking it back to my place in Arlington. That poor son of a bitch who died up i n this rat's nest and wasn't found until the perfume drifted down didn't die in vain! The two generals stalked through the metal shelves of the musty sealed archives, the dull, webbed lights so dim they relied on their flashlights. In the seventh aisle, Mac?K en?zie Hawkins stopped, his beam on an ancient volume whose leath er binding was cracked. I think this is it, Heseltine. Good, and you can't take it out of here! I understand that, General, so I 'll merely take a few photographs and return it. Hawkins removed a tiny spy camera with 110 film from his gray suit. How many rol ls have you got? asked former General Heseltine Broke?michael as Mac?Ken?zie carried the huge book to a steel table at the end of the aisle. Eight, replied Hawkins, opening the yellow-paged volu me to the pages he needed. I have a couple of others, if you nee d them, said Heseltine. Not that I'm so all fired-up by what you think you may have found, but if there's any way to get back at E thelred, I'll take it! I thought you two had made up, broke in M ac?Ken?zie, while turning pages and snapping pictures. Never! I t wasn't Ethelred's fault, it was that rotten lawyer in the Inspe ctor General's office, a half-assed kid from Harvard named Devere aux, Sam Devereaux. He made the mistake, not Brokey the Deuce. Tw o Broke?michaels; he got 'em mixed up, that's all. Horseshit! Br okey-Two put the finger on me! I think you're wrong, but that's not what I'm here for and neither are you. . .  . Brokey, I need the volume next to or near this one. It should s ay CXII on the binding. Get it for me, will you? As the head of I ndian Affairs walked back into the metal stacks, the Hawk took a single-edged razor out of his pocket and sliced out fifteen succe ssive pages of the archival ledger. Without folding the precious papers, he slipped them under his suit coat. I can't find it, sa id Broke?michael. Never mind, I've got what I need. What now, M ac? A long time, Heseltine, maybe a long, long time, perhaps a y ear or so, but I've got to make it right--so right there's no hol es, no holes at all. In what? In a suit I'm going to file again st the government of the United States, replied Hawkins, pulling a mutilated cigar out of his pocket and lighting it with a World War II Zippo. You wait, Brokey-One, and you watch. Good God, for what? . . . Don't smoke! You're not supposed t o smoke in here! Oh, Brokey, you and your cousin, Ethelred, alwa ys went too much by the book, and when the book didn't match the action, you looked for more books. It's not in the books, Heselti ne, not the ones you can read. It's in your stomach, in your gut. Some things are right and some things are wrong, it's as simple as that. The gut tells you. What the hell are you talking about? Your gut tells you to look for books you're not supposed to rea d. In places where they keep secrets, like right in here. Mac, y ou're not making sense! Give me a year, maybe two, Brokey, and t hen you'll understand. I've got to do it right. Real right. Gener al Mac?Ken?zie Hawkins strode out between the metal racks of the archives to the exit. Goddamn, he said to himself. Now I really g o to work. Get ready for me, you magnificent Wopotamis. I'm yours ! Twenty-one months passed, and nobody was ready for Thunder Hea d, chief of the Wopotamis. 2 The President of the United States , his jaw firm, his angry eyes steady and penetrating, accelerate d his pace along the steel-gray corridor in the underground compl ex of the, Bantam Books, 1993, 2.5, Blackie & Son Ltd. Fair. Hardcover. undated (c. 1890s). 220 pages. sunned spine wear, marks & damage to cloth boards flyleaf & frontispiece removed - gutter splitting foxing, crease s<br><br><p><strong>SYDNEY'S CHUMS</strong><br /><br /><em>A Stor y of East and West London</em><br /><br />by H. F. Gethen<br /><b r />illustrated by John H. Bacon<br /><br />Blackie & Son Ltd, UK , undated (c. 1890s)<br />demi hb, 220pp, 2 illustrated plates<br />red cloth boards, spine & front decorated in green, orange, cr eam & gold<br /><br />ACCEPTABLE: sunned spine; wear, marks & dam age to cloth boards; flyleaf & frontispiece removed - gutter spli tting; foxing, creases</p> ., Blackie & Son Ltd, 2, New York Ballantine 1984. Good. 120 x 180mm. Paperback. 1984. 224 pages. Cover worn. <br>In 1914, when Jean-Marc Montjean, a yo ung French doctor, falls for the beautiful Katya, his love leads to devastating trauma, horror, and tragedy for himself and Katya' s family Editorial Reviews Review A most exquisite, elegant, in genious thriller. --New York Daily News A tour de force . . . A story that explores meticulously some of the darker corners of th e human soul. --Washington Post --This text refers to an out of p rint or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author Trev anian's books have been translated into more than fourteen langua ges and have sold millions of copies worldwide. He lives in the F rench Basque mountains. He is the author of The Crazyladies of Pe arl Street, Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, and Th e Main. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edit ion of this title. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All right s reserved. salies-les-bains: august 1938 Every writer who has d ealt with that last summer before the Great War has felt compelle d to comment on the uncommon perfection of the weather: the endle ss days of ardent blue skies across which fair-weather clouds toi led lazily, the long lavender evening freshened by soft breezes, the early mornings of birdsong and slanting yellow sunlight. From Italy to Scotland, from Berlin to the valleys of my native Basse Pyrenees, all of Europe shared an exceptional period of clear, d elicious weather. It was the last thing they were to share for fo ur terrible years-save for the mud and agony, hate and death of t he war that marked the boundary between the nineteenth and twenti eth centuries, between the Age of Grace and the Era of Efficiency . Many who have described that summer claim to have sensed somet hing ominous and terminal in the very excellence of the season, a last flaring up of the guttering candle, a Hellenistic burst of desperate exuberance before the death of a civilization, a final, almost hysterical, moment of laughter and joy for the young men who were to die in the trenches. I confess that my own memory of that last July, assisted to a modest degree by notes and sketches in my journal, carries no hint that I viewed the exquisite weath er as an ironic jest of Fate. Perhaps I was insensitive to the om ens, young as I was, filled with the juices of life, and poised e agerly on the threshold of my medical career. These last words p rovoke a wry smile, as only the conventions of language allow me to describe the quarter century I have passed as a bachelor docto r in a small Basque village as a medical career. To be sure, the bright hardworking young man that I was had every reason to hope he was on the first step of a journey to professional success, al though he might have drawn some hint of a more limited future fro m the humiliatingly trivial tasks he was assigned by his sponsor and patron, Doctor Hippolyte Gros, who emphasized his assistant's subordinate position in dozens of ways, both subtle and bold, no t the least effective of which was reminding patients that I was indeed a full-fledged doctor, despite my apparent youth and palpa ble lack of experience. Doctor Montjean will attend to writing o ut your prescription, he would tell a patient with a benevolent s mile. You may have every confidence in him. Oh, the ink may still be wet on his certificate, but he is well versed in all the most modern approaches to healing, both of body and mind. This last g ibe was aimed at my fascination with the then new and largely mis trusted work of Doctor Freud and his followers. Doctor Gros would pat the hand of his patient (all of whom were women of a certain age, as he specialized in the discomforts associated with menopa use) and assure her that he was honored to have an assistant who had studied in Paris. The widened eyes and tone of awe with which he said Paris were designed to suggest, in broad burlesque, that a simple provincial doctor, such as he, felt obliged to be humbl e before a brilliant young man from the capital who had everythin g to recommend him-save perhaps experience, compassion, wisdom, u nderstanding, and success. Lest I create too unflattering a port rait of Doctor Gros, let me admit that it was kind of him to invi te me to be his summer assistant, as I was fresh out of medical s chool, penniless, without any prospects for purchasing a practice , and burdened by a most uncomplimentary report of my year of int ernship at the mental institution of Passy. However, far from sho wing Doctor Gros the gratitude he had a right to expect, I courte d his displeasure by confessing to him that I considered his area of specialization to be founded on old wives' tales, and his pro fitable summer clinic to be little more than a luxury resort for women with more leisure than common sense. In sharing these obser vations with him, I am sure I believed myself to be admirably ope n and honest for, with the callous assurance of youth, I often mi stook insensitivity for frankness. It is little wonder that he oc casionally retaliated against my callow self-confidence with thru sts at my inexperience and my peculiar absorption with the darker workings of the mind. Indeed, one day in the clinic when I had been holding forth on the ethical parallels between withholding t reatment from the sick and giving it to the healthy, he said to m e, You have no doubt wondered, Montjean, why I chose you to assis t me this summer. Possibly you came to the conclusion that I was staggered by your academic accomplishments and impressed by the a ltruism revealed by your year of unpaid service at Passy. Well, t here was some of that, to be sure. Then too, there was the fact t hat you were born in this part of France, and your dark Basque go od looks are an asset to a clinic catering to women of a certain age and uncertain appetites. After all, having a Basque boy fiddl e with their bits lends to the local color. But foremost among yo ur qualities was your willingness to work cheap, which I admired because humility is an attractive and rare quality in a young doc tor. However, little by little, I am coming to the view that what I mistook for humility was, in fact, an accurate evaluation of y our worth. And, the truth be told, I wasn't of all that much val ue to him, as there was not really enough work at the clinic to o ccupy two doctors. My principal worth was as insurance against hi s falling ill for a day or two, and as freedom for him to take th e occasional day off-days he implied were devoted to romantic pre occupations. For Doctor Gros had something of a reputation as a r ake and a devil with the women who were his patients. He never bo asted openly of his conquests to the worthies of Salies who were his companions over a few glasses each evening in one of the arca de cafes around the central square. Instead he relied on the sile nt smile, the shrug, the weak gesture of protest, to establish hi s reputation, not only as a romancer of potency, but as a man pos sessed of great discretion and a finely tuned sense of honor. No r did Doctor Gros's particularly advantageous position in the str eam of sexual opportunity engender the jealousy one might have ex pected among his peers, for he was protected from their envy by a fully deserved reputation as the ugliest man in Gascony, perhaps in all of France. His was a uniquely thoroughgoing ugliness embr acing both broad plan and minute detail, an ugliness the total of which was greater than the sum of the parts, an ugliness to whic h each feature contributed its bit, from the bulbous veiny nose, to the blotched and pitted complexion, well warted and stained, t o the slack meaty mouth, to the flapping wattles, to the gnarled, irregular ears, to the undershot chin overbalanced by a beetling brow. Only his eyes, glittering and intelligent within their sun ken, rheumy sockets, escaped the general aesthetic holocaust. But withal there was a peculiar attraction to his face, a fascinatio n at the abandon with which Nature can embrace ruin, that lured o ne's glance again and again to his features only to have the gaze deflected by self-consciousness. Doctor Gros was by far the wit tiest and best-educated man in Salies, but the audience for his p ompous, rather purple style of monologue were the dull-minded men who controlled the spa community: the owners of the hotel-restau rants, the manager of the casino, the village lawyer, the banker, all of whom felt a certain reluctant debt to the doctor, for it was his clinic that was the principal attraction for the summer t ourist/patients who were the economic foundation of the town. Sti ll-even though Profit occupies so dominant a position in the mora l order of the French bourgeois mentality that vague impulses tow ards fair play and decency are easily held in rein-it is possible that the more prudish of Salies's merchants might have found Doc tor Gros's cavalier treatment of the lady patients offensive, had these pampered, well-to-do women been genuinely ill. But in fact they were robust middle-class specimens whose only physical dist ress was having attained an age at which fashionable society allo wed them to flap and flutter over women's problems, the clinical details of which they whispered to one another with that appalled delectation later generations would reserve for sex. So it was t hat I alone found Doctor Gros's sexual hinting and double entendr es medically unethical and socially distasteful, a view that my y outhful addiction to moral simplism required me to express. Looki ng back, I wonder that Doctor Gros put up with my self-assured ce nsure at all, but the peculiar fact was that he rather seemed to like me, in a gruff sort of way. He took impish delight in outrag ing my tidy and compact sense of ethics. Also, I was in a positio n, by virtue of education, to catch his puns and comic images tha t went over the heads of his merchant-minded cronies. But I belie ve the principal reason he was fond of me was nostalgic egotism: he saw in me, in both my ambitions and limitations, the young man he had been before time and fate reduced his brilliance to mere table wit, and eroded the scope of his aspirations to the dimensi ons of a profitable small-town clinic. Perhaps this is why his r eaction to my attitude of moral superiority was limited to giving me only the most trivial tasks to perform. And, in fact, I was n ot all that distressed at being relegated to the role of an eleva ted pharmacist, for I had just finished years of grinding work an d study that had drained mind and body and was in need of a lazy summer with time on my hands, with freedom to wander through the quaint, slightly shoddy resort village or to loaf on the banks of the sparkling Gave, overarched by ancient trees and charming sto ne bridges. I wanted time to rest, to dream, to write. Ah yes, w rite. For at that time in my life I felt capable of everything. H aving attempted nothing, I had no sense of my limitations; having dared nothing, I knew no boundaries to my courage. During the ye ars of fatigue and dulling rote in medical school, I had daydream ed of a future confected of two careers: that of the brilliant an d caring doctor and that of the inspired and inspiring poet. And why not? I was an avid and sensitive reader, and I made the commo n error of assuming that being a responsive reader indicated late nt talent as a writer, as though being a gourmand was but a short step from being a chef. Indeed, my first interest in the pioneer work of Doctor Freud sprang, not from a concern for persons woun ded in their collisions with reality, but from my personal curios ity about the nature of creativity and the springs of motivation. So it was that, for several hours a day throughout that indolen t, radiant summer, I wandered into the countryside with my notebo ok, or sat alone at an out-of-the-way cafe, sipping an aperitif a nd holding imagined conversations with important and terribly imp ressed lions of the literary world, or I lounged by the banks of the Gave, notebook open, sketching romantic impressions, my lofty poetic intent inevitably withering to a kind of breathless shatt ered prose in the process of being recorded-a dissipation that I was sure I would learn to avoid once I had mastered the tricks of writing. Then, too, there was the matter of love. As the reader might suspect, the expansive young man that I was had no doubt b ut that he was capable of a great love . . . a staggering love. I was, after all, twenty-five years old, brimming with health, a d evourer of novels, fertile of imagination. It is no surprise that I was ripe for romance. Ripe for romance? Is that not only the self-conscious and sensitive young man's way of saying he was hea vy with passion? Is not, perhaps, romance only the fiction by mea ns of which the tender-minded negotiate their lust? No, not quit e. I am painfully aware that the young man I used to be was callo w, callous, self-confident, and egotistic. There is no doubt he w as heavy with passion. But, to give the poor devil his due, he wa s also ripe for romance. I slipped into a comfortable, rather la zy, routine of life, doing all that Doctor Gros demanded of me an d nothing more. A more ambitious person-or a less blindly confide nt one-would have filled his time with study and self-improvement , for any dispassionate analysis of my future prospects would hav e revealed them to be most uncertain. I was, after all, without f amily and without means; I was in debt for my education; and I ha d no inclination to waste my talents on some impoverished rural c ommunity. Yet I was content to laze away my days, resting myself in preparation for some unknown prospect or adventure that I was sure, without the slightest evidence, lay just around the corner. As events turned out, I would have wasted any time spent in work and study; for the war came that autumn and I was called up imme diately. Romantically-and quite stupidly-I joined the army as a s imple soldier. Four years of mud and trenches, stench, fear, bru talizing boredom. Twice wounded, once seriously enough to limit m y physical activities for the rest of my life. Four years recorde d in my memory as one endless blur of horror and disgust. Even to this day I am choked with nausea and rage when I stand among my fellow veterans in the graveyard of my village and recite the nam es of those mort pour la France. Why did I submit myself to the butchery of the trenches when I might have served in the echelons as a medical officer? Even the most rudimentary knowledge of Doc tor Freud would suggest that I was pursuing a death wish . . . as indeed I was. I knew this at the time, but that knowledge neithe r freed nor, New York Ballantine 1984, 1984, 2.5, Star Book. Fair. Paperback. 1985. 246 pages. creased & sunned spine, tanned pages, wear, marks<br ><br><p><strong>DON'T EMBARRASS THE BUREAU</strong><br /><br />by Bernard F. Conners<br /><br />Star Book, UK, 1985<br />ISBN 9780 352315816<br />sml pb, 246pp<br /><br />ACCEPTABLE: creased & sunned spine, tanned pages, wear, marks<br /><br />Bernard F. Co nners was an FBI special agent for more than eight years, involve d extensively with espionage and criminal investigations. Here, h e uses those experiences to give us a suspense novel centering ar ound the attempted infiltration and control of the FBI.</p> ., Star Book, 1985, 2, Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This ... volume shares ... the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold ... Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946 ., Robinson and Running Press, 2009, 2.5<
2009, ISBN: 9780762437351
London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1994. Soft cover. Very Good/No Jacket (as published). 7.5" x 9.5. A well written First World War history. A clean and sound copy. All orders process… Mehr…
London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1994. Soft cover. Very Good/No Jacket (as published). 7.5" x 9.5. A well written First World War history. A clean and sound copy. All orders processed and shipped promptly from the UK, usually on the day they are received. Please call or email with your questions., Sidgwick and Jackson, 1994, 3, Tor Books. Good. 4.18 x 0.88 x 6.81 inches. Mass Market Paperback. 1992. 320 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned.<br>Jim Meeker came down from Montana to run Texas cattle--only to find that Hoppy's Bar-20 ran the water. So when a trio of snake-mean rustlers started themsel ves a cattle war, the powder was primed, the guns cocked, and Hop py was smack in the middle. So it's friend against friend, broth er against brother, gun against blazing gun. Time's running out, and the range is red with blood. Editorial Reviews About the Au thor Clarence E. Mulford is the creator of the character Hopalong Cassidy, who appeared in countless films, novelizations, and a l ong running television series. Mulford died in 1956. Excerpt. R eprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER I Antonio's Scheme The raw and mighty West, the greatest stage in all the h istory of the world for so many deeds of daring which verged on t he insane, was seared with grave-lined trails. In many localities the bad-man made history in a terse and business-like way, and a lso made the first law for the locality--that of the gun. There w ere good bad-men and bad bad-men, the killer by necessity and the wanton murderer; and the shifting of these to their proper strat a evolved the foundation for the law of to-day. The good bad-man, those in whose souls lived the germs of law and order and justic e, gradually became arrayed against the other class, and stood up manfully for their principles, let the odds be what they might; and bitter, indeed, was the struggle, and great the price. From t he gold camps of the Rockies to the shrieking towns of the coast, where wantonness stalked unchecked; from the vast stretches of t he cattle ranges to the ever-advancing terminals of the persisten t railroads, to the cow towns, boiling and seething in the loosed passions of men who brooked no restraint in their revels, no one section of country ever boasted of such numbers of genuine bad-m en of both classes as the great, semi-arid Southwest. Here was on e of the worst collections of raw humanity ever broadcast in one locality; it was a word and a shot, a shot and a laugh or a curse . In this red setting was stuck a town which we will call Eagle, the riffle which caught all the dregs of passing humanity. Unmapp ed, known only to those who had visited it, reared its flimsy bui ldings in the face of God and rioted day and night with no though t of reckoning; mad, insane with hellishness unlimited. Late in t he afternoon rode Antonio, broncho-buster for the H2, a man of li ttle courage, much avarice, and great capacity for hatred. Crafty , filled with cunning of the coyote kind, shifty-eyed, gloomy, ta citurn, and scowling, he was well fitted for the part he had elec ted to play in the range dispute between his ranch and the Bar-20 . He was absolutely without mercy or conscience; indeed, one migh t aptly say that his conscience, if he had ever known one, had be en pulled out by the roots and its place filled with viciousness. Cold-blooded in his ferocity, easily angered and quick to commit murder if the risk were small, he embraced within his husk of so ul the putrescence of all that was evil. In Eagle he had friends who were only a shade less evil than himself; but they had what h e lacked and because of it were entitled to a forced respect of s mall weight--they had courage, that spontaneous, initiative, heed less courage which toned the atmosphere of the whole West to a ma gnificent crimson. Were it not for the reason that they had drift ed to his social level they would have spurned his acquaintance a nd shot him for a buzzard; but, while they secretly held him in g reat contempt for his cowardice, they admired his criminal cunnin g, and profited by it. He was too wise to show himself in the tru e light to his foreman and the outfit, knowing full well that dea th would be the response, and so lived a lie until he met his fri ends of the town, when he threw off his cloak and became himself, and where he plotted against the man who treated him fairly. Rid ing into the town, he stopped before a saloon and slouched in to the bar, where the proprietor was placing a new stock of liquors on the shelves. Where's Benito, an' th' rest? he asked. Back ther e, replied the other, nodding toward a rear room. Who's in there? Benito, Hall, Archer an' Frisco. Where's Shaw? Him an' Clausen a n' Cavalry went out 'bout ten minutes ago. I want to see 'em when they come in, Antonio remarked, headed towards the door, where h e listened, and then went in. In the small room four men were gro uped around a table, drinking and talking, and at his entry they looked up and nodded. He nodded in reply and seated himself apart from them, where he soon became wrapped in thought. Benito arose and went to the door. Mescal, pronto, he said to the man outside . Damned pronto, too, growled Antonio. A man would die of alkali in this place before he's waited on. The proprietor brought a bot tle and filled the glasses, giving Antonio his drink first, and s ilently withdrew. The broncho-buster tossed off the fiery stuff a nd then turned his shifty eyes on the group. Where's Shaw? Don't know--back soon, replied Benito. Why didn't he wait, when he know ed I was comin' in? Hall leaned back from the table and replied, keenly watching the inquisitor, Because he don't give a damn. You --! Antonio shouted, half rising, but the others interfered and h e sank back again, content to let it pass. But not so Hall, whose Colt was half drawn. I'll kill you some day, he gritted, but bef ore anything could come of it Shaw and his companions entered the room and the trouble was quelled. Soon the group was deep in dis cussion over the merits of a scheme which Antonio unfolded to the m, and the more it was weighed the better it appeared. Finally Sh aw leaned back and filled his pipe. You've got th' brains of th' devil,' Tony. Eet ees not'ing, replied Antonio. Oh, drop that lin go an' talk straight--you ain't on th' H2 now, growled Hall. Beni to, you know this country like a book, Shaw continued. Where's a good place for us to work from, or ain't there no choice? Thunder Mesa. Well, what of it? On the edge of the desert, high, big. Th e walls are stone, an' so very smooth. Nobody can get up. How can we get up then? There's a trail at one end, replied Antonio, cro ssing his legs and preparing to roll a cigarette. It's too steep for cayuses, an' too narrow; but we can crawl up. An' once up, al l hell can't follow as long as our cartridges hold out. Water? in quired Frisco. At th' bottom of th' trail, an' th' spring is on t op, Antonio replied. Not much, but enough. Can you work yore end all right? asked Shaw. Yes, laughed the other. I am 'that fool, A ntonio,' on th' ranch. But they're th' fools. We can steal them b lind an' if they find it out--well, here he shrugged his shoulder s, th' Bar-20 can take th' blame. I'll fix that, all right. This trouble about th' line is just what I've been waitin' for, an' I' ll help it along. If we can get 'em fightin' we'll run off with t h' bone we want. That'll be easy. But can you get 'em fightin'? a sked Cavalry, so called because he had spent several years in tha t branch of the Government service, and deserted because of the d iscipline. Antonio laughed and ordered more mescal and for some t ime took no part in the discussion which went on about him. He wa s dreaming of success and plenty and a ranch of his own which he would start in Old Mexico, in a place far removed from the border , and where no questions would be asked. He would be a rich man, according to the standards of that locality, and what he said wou ld be law among the peons. He liked to day-dream, for everything came out just as he wished; there was no discordant note. He was so certain of success, so conceited as not to ask himself if any of the Bar-20 or H2 outfits were not his equal or superior in int elligence. It was only a matter of time, he told himself, for he could easily get the two ranches embroiled in a range war, and on ce embroiled, his plan would succeed and he would be safe. What d o you want for your share, Tony? suddenly asked Shaw. Half. What! Half? Si. You're loco! cried the other. Do you reckon we're goin g to buck up agin th' biggest an' hardest fightin' outfit in this country an' take all sorts of chances for a measly half, to be d ivided up among seven of us! He brought his fist down on the tabl e with a resounding thump. You an' yore game can go to hell first ! he shouted. I like a hog, all right, sneered Clausen, angrily. I thought it out an' I got to look after th' worst an' most impor tant part of it, an' take three chances to you fellers' one, repl ied Antonio, frowning. I said half, an' it goes. Run all th' ends , an' keep it all, exclaimed Hall. An', by God, we've got a hand in it, now. If you try to hog it we'll drop a word where it'll do th' most good, an' don't you forget it, neither. Antonio is righ t, asserted Benito, excitedly. It's risky for him. Keep yore yall er mouth shut, growled Cavalry. Who gave you any say in this? Hal f, said Antonio, shrugging his shoulders. Look here, you, cried S haw, who was, in reality, the leader of the crowd, inasmuch as he controlled all the others with the exception of Benito and Anton io, and these at times by the judicious use of flattery. We'll ad mit that you've got a right to th' biggest share, but not to no h alf. You have a chance to get away, because you can watch 'em, bu t how about us, out there on th' edge of hell? If they come for u s we won't know nothing about it till we're surrounded. Now we wa nt to play square with you, and we'll give you twice as much as a ny one of th' rest of us. That'll make nine shares an' give you t wo of 'em. What more do you want, when you've got to have us to r un th' game at all? Antonio laughed ironically. Yes. I'm where I can watch, an' get killed first. You can hold th' mesa for a mon th. I ain't as easy as I look. It's my game, not yourn; an' if yo u don't like what I ask, stay out. We will! cried Hall, arising, followed by the others. His hand rested on the butt of his revol ver and trouble seemed imminent. Benito wavered and then slid nea rer to Antonio. You can run yore game all by yore lonesome, as lo ng as you can! Hall shouted. I know a feller what knows Cassidy, an' I'll spoil yore little play right now. You'll look nice at th ' end of a rope, won't you? It's this: share like Shaw said or ge t out of here, and look out for trouble aplenty to-morrow morning . I've put up with yore gall an' swallered yore insultin' actions just as long as I'm going to, and I've got a powerful notion to fix you right here and now! No fightin', you fools! cried the pro prietor, grabbing his Colt and running to the door of the room. I t's up to you fellers to stick together! I'll be damned if I'll s tand-- began Frisco. They want too much, interrupted Antonio, ang rily, keeping close watch over Hall. We want a fair share, an' th at's all! retorted Shaw. Sit down, all of you. We can wrastle thi s out without no gunplay. You-all been yappin' like a set of fool s, said the proprietor. I've heard every word you-all said. If yo u got a mite of sense you'll be some tender how you shout about i t. It's shore risky enough without tellin' everybody this side of sun-up. I mean just what I said, asserted Hall. It's Shaw's offe r, or nothin'. We ain't playing fool. Here! Here! cried Shaw, pus hing Hall into a seat. If you two have got anything to settle, wa it till some other time. That's more like it, growled the proprie tor, shuffling back to the bar. Good Lord, 'Tony, cried Shaw in a low voice. That's fair enough; we've got a right to something, a in't we? Don't let a good thing fall through just because you wan t th' whole earth. Better have a little than none. Well, gimme a third, then. I'll give you a slug in th' eye, you hog! promised H all, starting to rise again, but Shaw held him back. Sit down, yo u fool! he ordered, angrily. Then he turned to Antonio. Third don 't go; take my offer or leave it. Gimme a fourth; that's fair eno ugh. Shaw thought for a moment and then looked up. Well, that's m ore like it. What do you say, fellers? No! cried Hall. Two-ninths , or nothin'! A fourth is two-eighths, only a little more, Shaw r eplied. Well, all right, muttered Hall, sullenly. That's very goo d, laughed Benito, glad that things were clearing. The others gav e their consent to the division and Shaw smiled. Well, that's mor e like it. Now we'll go into this thing an' sift it out. Keep mum about it--there's twenty men in town that would want to join us if they knowed. I'm goin' to be boss; what I say goes, spoke up A ntonio. It's my game an' I'm takin' th' most risky end. You ain't got sand enough to be boss of anything, sneered Hall. Yore sand is chalk. You'll say too much someday, retorted Antonio, glaring. Oh, not to you, I reckon, rejoined Hall, easily. Shut up, both o f you! snapped Shaw. You can be boss, Tony, he said, winking at H all. You've got more brains for a thing like this than any of us. I don't see how you can figger it out like you do. Antonio laugh ed but he remembered one thing, and swore to take payment if the plan leaked out; the proprietor had confessed hearing every word, which was not at all to his liking. If Quinn should tell, well, Quinn would die; he would see to that, he and Benito. All new ma terial copyright 1992 by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. ., Tor Books, 1992, 2.5, Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This ... volume shares ... the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold ... Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946 ., Robinson and Running Press, 2009, 2.5<
2009
ISBN: 9780762437351
Thames Methuen. Good. 18cm. Paperback. 1981. 384 pages. Text tanned<br>Provides general accounts of the fall o f France, Battle of Britain, Normandy invasion, and other monumen tal … Mehr…
Thames Methuen. Good. 18cm. Paperback. 1981. 384 pages. Text tanned<br>Provides general accounts of the fall o f France, Battle of Britain, Normandy invasion, and other monumen tal events of the Second World War n nEditorial Reviews n nReview nThe World at War will satisfy historians, participants and a ne w generation which would like a readable and factual account of h ow it happened and what happened. Sunday Times A first-rate piece of work which can be commended to anyone who wants to aquire a r apid and accurate grasp of what happened. Glasgow Herald --This t ext refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this titl e. n nAbout the Author nMark Arnold-Forster was born in 1920, and was therefore just old enough to have served throughout the Seco nd World War, first as a merchant seaman and then in the Royal Na vy. He spent most of the war in command of motor torpedo boats an d of MTB flotillas based at Dover attacking German coastal convoy s and minelaying in the continental estuaries. He was awarded the DSO and DSC, was three times mentioned in despatches, and was de mobilized as a reserve Lieutenant in 1946. As a newspaperman he w as blockaded in Berlin in 1948 and reported on post-war Europe. H e was chief editorial writer on the Guardian and continued to wri te regular leaders for the paper until his death in 1981. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this tit le. ., Thames Methuen, 1981, 2.5, Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This ... volume shares ... the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold ... Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946 ., Robinson and Running Press, 2009, 2.5<
2009, ISBN: 0762437359
[EAN: 9780762437351], Gebraucht, guter Zustand, [PU: Robinson and Running Press, Philadelphia and London], WORLD WAR,1939-1945 -- PERSONAL NARRATIVES, 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. … Mehr…
[EAN: 9780762437351], Gebraucht, guter Zustand, [PU: Robinson and Running Press, Philadelphia and London], WORLD WAR,1939-1945 -- PERSONAL NARRATIVES, 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This . volume shares . the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold . Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946, Books<
2009, ISBN: 9780762437351
Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best rem… Mehr…
Philadelphia and London: Robinson and Running Press. Good. 20 x 13cm. Paperback. 2009. 630 pages. Cover worn. Text tanned. Sticker on cover.<br>How is t he Second World War best remembered? Not in terms of strategic ba ttles but as a great turning point in world history, recorded thr ough the personal records, diaries and speeches of those who stoo d witness. This ... volume shares ... the individual accounts of over 200 people who saw the events unfold ... Includes entries fr om Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Generals Patton and MacArthur and Erwin Rommel, as well as the private, harrowing moments of o rdinary people -- the soldier, the conscript, the housewife, and the POW--Page 4 of cover Includes bibliographical references (pa ges 595-604) 1. The War in Europe, September 1939 -- October 194 0 -- 2. The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 -- 44 -- 3. The War in t he Desert: North Africa 1940-43 -- 4. Barbossa: The German Invasi on of Russia, June 1941- February 1943 -- 5. Banzai: The War in t he Pacific, December 1941 -- June 1942 -- 6. Resistance & Reconqu est -- The War in Western and Southern Europe, November 1940 -- M ay 1945 -- 7. The Road to Berlin: The Eastern Front, February 194 3 -- May 1945 -- 8. Setting Sun: The War in the Pacific, July 194 2 -- September 1945 -- Epilogue: The Execution of Nazi War Crimin als at Nuremberg, 1946 ., Robinson and Running Press, 2009, 2.5<
Es werden 140 Ergebnisse angezeigt. Vielleicht möchten Sie Ihre Suchkriterien verfeinern, Filter aktivieren oder die Sortierreihenfolge ändern.
Bibliographische Daten des bestpassenden Buches
Autor: | |
Titel: | |
ISBN-Nummer: |
Detailangaben zum Buch - World War II: The Autobiography
EAN (ISBN-13): 9780762437351
ISBN (ISBN-10): 0762437359
Gebundene Ausgabe
Taschenbuch
Erscheinungsjahr: 2009
Herausgeber: RUNNING PR BOOK PUBL
604 Seiten
Gewicht: 0,431 kg
Sprache: eng/Englisch
Buch in der Datenbank seit 2010-03-03T19:01:39+01:00 (Zurich)
Detailseite zuletzt geändert am 2024-01-25T15:24:09+01:00 (Zurich)
ISBN/EAN: 9780762437351
ISBN - alternative Schreibweisen:
0-7624-3735-9, 978-0-7624-3735-1
Weitere, andere Bücher, die diesem Buch sehr ähnlich sein könnten:
Neuestes ähnliches Buch:
9780135011560 World War II: A Short History (Michael J. Lyons)
< zum Archiv...