Each of the stories in this collection is spun from a simple, if typically wry and bleak, idea. In "Gaspar Ruiz", a South American general who has fought in a war of independence tells his guests a long tale about a notorious strong man that explains the origin of his current domestic arrangements. "The Informer" leads the reader into the depths of a political conspiracy, dealing very slyly indeed with questions of truth and pretence.

I have been called a writer of the sea, of the tropics, a descriptive writer - and also a realist. But as a matter of fact all my concern has been with the 'ideal' value of things, events and people. That and nothing else - Joseph Conrad When Willems stepped off the straight and narrow path of his own peculiar honesty he thought it would be a short episode - a sentence in brackets, so to speak - in the flowing tale of his life. But Willems was wrong, for he was about to embark on a voyage of discovery and self-discovery that would change, if not destroy, the reset of his life.

In the 1870s, supporters of the pretender to the throne of Spain take advantage of a young man's attraction to the sea to persuade him to run dangerous missions on their behalf, with the financial support of a beautiful but exceedingly baffling young heiress, with whom the young man is soon giddily in love. Told largely in the first person, the novel is unusual, for Conrad, in focusing largely on the evolving psychology of a young man in the throes of a great romantic passion.

Henry Whalley is a true sailor, earning years of experience as a ship’s captain before his retirement. Faced with unexpected financial problems and a desire to help his married daughter earn her place in the world, Whalley is forced to sell his boat and buy his way back into service on a trade vessel. But Whalley is living so close to financial ruin that any small deviation from his course will put him over the edge . . . The End of the Tether is one of the many books that author Joseph Conrad wrote about sailors and the sea.

Acclaimed as one of Joseph Conrad's finest literary achievements, this gripping novel deftly depicts the political turmoil of nineteenth-century Russia and follows the dramatic developments in the life of a student, Razumov, as he prepares for a career in the czarist bureaucracy. In a plot that twists and turns, Razumov unwittingly becomes embroiled in a revolutionary conspiracy when he gives refuge to a fellow student who assassinated a public official. Increasingly enmeshed in the radical's political intrigue, he betrays the anarchist who had placed blind faith in him.

"Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not a navigable element, but an intimate companion. The length of passages, the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence upon the very forces that, friendly to-day, without changing their nature, by the mere putting forth of their might, become dangerous to-morrow, make for that sense of fellowship which modern seamen, good men as they are, cannot hope to know."

Conrad began dictating the series of loose autobiographical sketches that would become 'A Personal Record' in 1911, when he was half way through writing 'Under Western Eyes'. His avowed aim was to give his readers a sense of 'the man behind the work', and he certainly succeeded in creating a vivid impression of the kind of Joseph Conrad he would have liked to have been seen as: a man capable of wry humour and self-deprecation, but a sober, serious man too, prepared to face life as he found it.

A brave Malay chieftain suffers from a surprising vulnerability. After giving birth to a series of unfortunate children, a farmer's wife is determined to bear no more. A spoonful of sugar brings a neophyte ivory trader to a moment of Nietzschean self-realisation. A pompous ass discovers that his wife has run off with another man. Secluded in an eerie lagoon, a Malay carries a guilty secret in his heart. "Tales of Unrest" was the first volume of short fiction Joseph Conrad published in his own lifetime.

In Nostromo, Joseph Conrad has transformed an apocryphal anecdote about a sailor who got away with stealing a boat loaded with silver into a grandly panoramic, yet deeply unsettling, narrative that sees every conceivable type of political person — from the laughably oafish and brutal to various shades of the well-meaning — caught up in an episode of revolutionary upheaval in the fictional South American country of Costaguana.

Ernest Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, follows the adventures of a group of young, hard-drinking, American expatriates - which Hemingway refers to as the "Lost Generation" - as they pinball through Europe, from France to Spain and back again.

Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

When mystery author D. B. Ziegler is late delivering her book, Abi Schore steps in to help. Surely she can give her favorite author moral support over the holiday break and get the manuscript to her boss at Tea & Sympathy Publishing in time for the new year. When Abi shows up on Ms. Ziegler’s doorstep bearing holiday treats, she’s met by the author’s handsome grandson Dov, who reveals a startling plot twist. His grandmother isn’t able to finish the book and Dov promised he’d complete it so fans won’t be disappointed—a task that’s harder than he ever imagined.

My fiancé brought me tea and scrambled eggs in bed that morning, and we snuggled together, talking about buying our rings, and about our perfect wedding next year. Then we headed into town. He held my hand and gazed at the ring I liked best, a smile spreading slowly over his face. Then a glass of bubbly to celebrate. I felt flushed, excited and ready for the rest of my life with the man I loved. We race to get on the train home. It screams to a halt and I run towards its open doors. Made it. I think he’s right behind me — but when I turn around, he’s gone.

Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.

As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.

When Heather McKinley dreamed of becoming a doctor, she imagined curing sick kids and sporting pink stethoscopes. She never anticipated the sleepless nights, grueling exams, and endless labs. And she certainly never knew that her medical school earned the nickname Dead Med thanks to the tragic history of students overdosing on illegal drugs. But Heather would never consider doing anything like that. That is, until her longtime boyfriend dumps her, she finds herself failing anatomy, and her world starts to crumble.

Tilly Farriday isn’t feeling very jolly this season. Recently divorced and broke, she’s squatting in one of her rental agency’s properties until her new home is ready. The sprinkles on top of the burnt Christmas cookie that is her life? The new owner shows up early, forcing Tilly to hide in the attic to save her job…and what remains of her dignity.