SPARK MURIEL

Η ΔΕΣΠΟΙΝΙΣ ΤΖΗΝ ΜΠΡΟΝΤΙ ΣΤΗΝ ΑΚΜΗ ΤΗΣ
Η δεσποινίς Τζην Μπρόντι δεν είναι σαν τις άλλες δασκάλες που διδάσκουν στην αξιοσέβαστη Σχολή θηλέων Μάρσια Μπλέιν στο Εδιμβούργο του Μεσοπολέμου. Καλλιεργημένη, ρομαντική και αντισυμβατική θα διαλέξει μια ομάδα έμπιστων μαθητριών -που σύντομα όλο το σχολείο αποκαλεί "ο κύκλος της δεσποινίδος Μπρόντι"- για να τις μυήσει στον κόσμο των ενηλίκων. Ενώ συγκρούεται με τη διευθύντρια του σχολείου και αντιμετωπίζει την καχυποψία των συναδέλφων της εξαιτίας των διδακτικών της μεθόδων, θα αλλάξει τη ζωή των μαθητριών της μιλώντας τους για την πολι...
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ΣΤΗ ΘΕΣΗ ΤΟΥ ΟΔΗΓΟΥ
Η Λιζ έχει εξαντληθεί μετά από συνεχή δουλειά δεκάξι χρόνων στο ίδιο γραφείο. Έτσι αφήνει τα πάντα πίσω της, μεταμορφώνεται σε μια γελαστή, κακόγουστα ντυμένη ξελογιάστρα και φεύγει αεροπορικώς στο εξωτερικό για τις καλύτερες διακοπές της ζωής της. Αλλά η αναζήτηση περιπετειών, σεξ και καινούριων εμπειριών παίρνει μια σκοτεινή τροπή και μετατρέπεται σε ένα ταξίδι αυτοκαταστροφής. Σε μια ανώνυμη πόλη του νότου, η Λιζ θα συναντήσει τελικά τη μοίρα της. Μια συγκλονιστική ιστορία που καταδύεται στην άβυσσο της γυναικείας ψυχοσύνθεσης. Ένα καθη...
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Η ΠΥΛΗ ΤΗΣ ΕΥΤΥΧΙΑΣ
Η Πύλη του Μαντελμπάουμ τελικά δεν ήταν πύλη, αλλά ένα μικρό κομμάτι δρόμου ανάμεσα στην Ιερουσαλήμ των Εβραίων και την Ιερουσαλήμ των Ιορδανών. . . Σε μια επίσκεψη στους Άγιους Τόπους, η Μπάρμπαρα Βον - μισό-εβραία, νεοφώτιστη καθολική, αρραβωνιασμένη μ’ έναν αρχαιολόγο - συναντάει τον Φρέντι Χάμιλτον - διπλωμάτη, εργένη, ποιητή - στην Ιερουσαλήμ. Αγνοώντας την προειδοποίησή του ότι θα συλληφθεί εξαιτίας της εβραϊκής καταγωγής της, η Μπάρμπαρα ξεκινάει για ένα προσκύνημα που εξελίσσεται σε φυγή και άγρια καταδίωξη, σε μια φοβερή περιπέτει...
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ΕΤΟΙΜΑΣΟΥ ΝΑ ΠΕΘΑΝΕΙΣ
Να θυμάσαι πως θα πεθάνεις! είπε η φωνή στο τηλέφωνο. Η Νταίημ Λέτι Κόλστον όπως κι οι πιο πολλοί απ' τους υπόλοιπους ηλικιωμένους που δέχονται αυτά τα τηλεφωνήματα, δεν ήθελε να της το υπενθυμίζουν. Το ίδιο και ο αδελφός της Γκόντφρεϋ που ακριβώς επειδή διατηρεί ακμαίες τις δυνάμεις του διασκεδάζει παρακολουθώντας τη βαθμιαία κατάρρευση των άλλων. Όσο για την κυρία Πέτιγκρκ, συνοδό ηλικιωμένων κυριών η οποία έχει μετατραπεί σε αδηφάγο εκβιάστρια, αρνιέται πεισματικά να παραδεχτεί πως έχει σχέση με τα τηλεφωνήματα αυτά. Πολύ σύντομα αρχίζε...
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(H/B) THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS, THE DRIVER'S SEAT, THE ONLY PROBLEM
The brevity of Muriel Spark’s novels is equaled only by their brilliance. These four novels, each a miniature masterpiece, illustrate her development over four decades. Despite the seriousness of their themes, all four are fantastic comedies of manners, bristling with wit. Spark’s most celebrated novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, tells the story of a charismatic schoolteacher’s catastrophic effect on her pupils. The Girls of Slender Means is a beautifully drawn portrait of young women living in a hostel in London in the giddy postwar d...
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(P/B) MEMENTO MORI
Unforgettably astounding and a joy to read, Memento Mori is considered by many to be the greatest novel by the wizardly Dame Muriel Spark. In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone informs each, "Remember you must die." Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled by these seemingly supernatural phone calls, and in the resulting flurry many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are no...
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(P/B) SPARK'S SATIRE
From a fraudulent psychiatrist grappling with two equally fraudulent clients in Aiding and Abetting, to the dirty dealings of The Abbess of Crewe's band of corrupt nuns, to the three plane crash survivors of Robinson eking out an existence on an Atlantic island after its resident mystic disappears, these three satires probe the recesses of human fallibility with formidable precision. Spanning five decades, the glittering, sharp and sinister works of Spark's Satire confirm their author as one of our most incisive and wickedly funny satiris...
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(P/B) THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE
Romantic, heroic, comic and tragic, unconventional schoolmistress Jean Brodie has become an iconic figure in post-war fiction. Her glamour, freethinking ideas and manipulative charm hold dangerous sway over her girls at the Marcia Blaine Academy - the 'creme de la creme' - who become the Brodie Set, introduced to a privileged world of adult games that they will never forget. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) LOITERING WITH INTENT
Art, reality and the strange ways the two imitate one another are at the core of Muriel Spark's delightful Loitering with Intent, first published in 1981. Would-be novelist Fleur Talbot works for the snooty, irascible Sir Quentin Oliver at the Autobiographical Association, whose members are all at work on their memoirs. When her employer gets his hands on Fleur's novel-in-progress, mayhem ensues when its scenes begin coming true. Generating hilarious turns of phrase and larger-than-life characters (especially Sir Quentin's batty mother), S...
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(P/B) THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES
From the cruel irony of 'A member of the Family' to the fateful echoes of 'The Go-Away Bird' and the unexpectedly sinister 'The Girl I Left Behind Me', in settings that range from South Africa to the Portobello Road, Muriel Spark probes the idiosyncrasies that lurk beneath the veneer of human respectability, displaying the acerbic wit and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her unique talent. The Complete Short Stories is a collection to be loved and cherished, from one of the finest short story writers of the twentieth century. (From the pu...
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(P/B) THE BALLAD OF PECKHAM RYE
A man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalize the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. He succeeds, but not quite in the way his employer intended. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham Rye and brings lies, tears, blackmail and even murder into the lives of all he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to Beauty, the resident femme fatale, and even Mr Druce, the unsuspecting Managing Director himself. (From the ...
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(P/B) SYMPOSIUM
'This is the story of a dinner party, a knot of people with pasts and connections which at first seem few but are later found to be many ...The prevailing mood is urbane: the wine is poured, the talk continues, and all the time the ice on which the protagonists' world rests is being thinned from beneath by boiling emotions and ugly motives ...No living writer handles the tension between formality of expression and the subversiveness of thought more elegantly' -- Candia McWilliam, Independent on Sunday (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) SELECTED STORIES
These four stories, set at home and abroad, display Muriel Spark's characteristically witty and unbalancing powers. In 'The Executor' the niece of a famous author is pursued by an unfinished manuscript. 'Bang-bang You' re Dead' mixes childhood games and white-settler affairs to paint a sinister and comic portrait of colonial life and murder by proxy in Africa. Also set in Africa, 'The Seraph and the Zambesi' tells of a Christmas pageant which has the strangest visitor, while 'Portobello Road' is a story haunted by childhood friendships and...
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THE DRIVER'S SEAT
Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants' office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and the obsessional experience takes on a far darker significance as she heads on a journey of self-destruction. Infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in an unnamed southern city, as she meets her fate. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) MEMENTO MORI
Remember you must die. Dame Lettie Colston is the first of her circle to receive insinuating anonymous phone calls. Neither she, nor her friends, wish to be reminded of their mortality, and their geriatric feathers are thoroughly ruffled. As the caller's activities become more widespread, old secrets are dusted off, exposing post and present duplicities, self-deception and blackmail. Nobody is above suspicion. Witty, poignant and wickedly hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a book which leaves one relishing life...
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(P/B) THE FINISHING SCHOOL
In The Finishing School Muriel Spark is once again at her biting, satirical best. On the edge of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, a struggling would-be novelist and his wife run a finishing school of questionable reputation to keep the funds flowing. When a seventeen-year-old student's writing career begins to show great promise, tensions run high. A keen portrait of devouring regret, psychological unravelling and the glittering promise of youth, The Finishing School is the perfect natural partner to Muriel Spark's most famous novel The Prime o...
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(P/B) THE BACHELORS
The Bachelors displays the best of Sparkian satire, placing her at the heart of a great literary tradition alongside Waugh and Trollope, Wilde and Wodehouse. It demands rediscovery. (From the publisher) "It's easy to see why Waugh admired The Bachelors. On one level, it is a blithely carnivorous satire in the Waugh mould. The bachelors of the title - almost the only men we meet in the narrative - are the thirty-something male barristers, teachers, journalists and museum attendants of a small patch of West London. They lead inturned, dodde...
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THE YOUNG MAN WHO DISCOVERED THE SECRET OF LIFE
Three short stories: 'The Young Man who Discovered the Secret of Life' explores the relationship between a young man and the ghost that haunts his bedroom and forms the basis for this brilliant, symbolic little story. It is published for the first time in the Travelman First Edition series. 'The Snobs' is likewise a satire with a twist: set in a French chateau owned by a modest couple under threat of invasion from a pair of castle-crawling snobs. 'The Pearly Shadow' deftly resumes the spirit theme of the first story. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) SPARK'S EUROPE
From the grimly gothic Not to Disturb to the razor-sharp dissection of manners The Takeover and the mordantly brilliant The Only Problem, in a panoramic sweep taking in the shores of the Italian lakes to the castles of Geneva, Muriel Spark casts her unflinching gaze over the continent and onto some of the odder specimens of human nature abounding there. By turns savage, witty and profound, Spark's Europe reaffirms Muriel Spark as one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS
Beautifully packaged reissue of one of Muriel Spark's best loved novels, The Girls of Slender Means 'Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions' In the May of Teck Club - a London hostel 'three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit' - the young lady residents do their best to act as if the war never happened. They practice elocution, and jostle one another over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. But behind the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations they hide some t...
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