Michael Maloney

Crome Yellow (1921) is a novel by English author Aldous Huxley. Inspired by his stay at Garsington Manor with members of the Bloomsbury Group, Crome Yellow, Huxley's debut novel, satirizes the society of England's intellectual and political elite. In addition to its autobiographical content, the novel investigates such themes as spirituality, the nature and composition of art, and the fear of a dystopian future. Invited to spend part of the summer...

Bored and lonely after his family moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence.

"An intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted"-- A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted-- and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. His search eventually...

Sophia Chrysanthis is only sixteen when the German archaeologist Herr Obermann comes wooing: he wants a Greek bride who knows her Homer. Sophia passes his test, and soon she is helping to excavate the amphorae and bronze vessels at the battle site of Troy without damaging them. Obermann is very good at the art of archaeology—perhaps too good at it. The atmosphere at Troy is tense and mysterious. Sophia finds herself increasingly baffled by the...

King Richard III is one of Shakespeare's most popular and frequently performed plays. Janis Lull's introduction to this new edition, based on the First Folio, emphasises the play's tragic themes - individual identity, determinism and choice - and stresses the importance of women's roles in the play. It also underscores the special relationship between Richard III and Macbeth, demonstrating that the later tragedy re-examines issues raised in the earlier...

After a failed suicide attempt Maggie has lived with Sir Charles Stafford for ten years. But after he is murdered and a valuable painting is stolen she sets out to track down the painting and the murderer.

A snooping columnist, who writes under the pseudonym Mrs. Jones, secretly infiltrates 10 Downing Street in an effort to reveal the Prime Minister's intimate personal details and deflate her re-election campaing. Once inside, he finds not scandal, but true love.

In late twelfth-century England, a thirteen-year-old boy named Arthur recounts how Merlin gives him a magical seeing stone which shows him images of the legendary King Arthur, the events of whose life seem to have many parallels to his own. The year is 1199 and on the borders of England and Wales young Arthur de Caldicot waits impatiently to grow up and become a knight. One day his father's friend Merlin gives Arthur a shining black stone, and in...

In 1973, Gen. Pinochet overtook Chile in a violent coup. In 1998 came the surprise arrest of the former Chilean dictator for crimes against humanity. Armed with a diplomatic passport and apparent immunity, the retired general visited Great Britain for a vacation that was to forever change his life -- and the prospects for dictators across the globe. Amnesty International spearheaded the long-awaited arrest with help from the Spanish and British governments,...

When it comes to living an exciting life, sensible Jasper Pye is closed tighter than his omnipresent umbrella. But he's finally had it with being a prim and proper, boring civil servant and he is itching for something new. Fate agrees and sets into motion some fantastical plans guaranteed to turn his "responsible" life on it's head.