I FOUND IT ON A CHARITY BOOKSTALL ... and in an op shop, book fair, garage sale, junk yard. All the places where people leave their unwanted books--and I find weird and wonderful treasures. Come and join me in appreciating these literary marvels!
ASPIRIN ORARSENIC?Stake...Half a million dollarsMethod...Four pills in a phialResult...One dead wifeProof...The tell-tale effect of ultra-violet light!The toughest, most complicated web of intrigue that PERRY MASON ever had to fight his way through!
One of the two men on the cover is a robot—I'm not sure, but I think it is the one who is unconscious. Don't quote me on that, though!A CRIME THAT COULD INFLAME A GALAXY...A Spaceman--a specialist in robotics--has been murdered. Lije Baley, a plain-clothesman of his age, combs the huge cave of steel for a lone fanatic, for a murderer--for the solution to an almost perfect crime.
"A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law."
The creature on the cover is a "battler", which is.. well, let's go with the author's description:STRANDED ON A PLANET OF MONSTERSWhen the survivors of his starship were taken prisoner by the insect-creatures against whom Earth had fought a bitter war for nearly a century, Sector Marshal Warren expected to be impounded in a prison camp like those the Earthmen maintained. But the "Bugs" had a simpler method of dealing with prisoners--they dumped them on an uninhabited planet, without weapons or tools, and left them to fend for themselves against the planet's environment and strange monsters. A "Bug" spaceship orbited above, guarding them.Escape was impossible, the "Bugs" told them--but it was absolutely necessary, for reasons Warren couldn't tell even his own men.
If it looked like anything at all, Warren thought, it was an elephant—a large, low-slung elephant with six legs and two trunks which were much more than twenty feet long. Below the point where the trunk joined the massive head a wide, loose mouth gaped open to display three concentric rows of shark-like teeth, and above the trunks its two tiny eyes were almost hidden by protective ridges of bone and muscle. Between the eyes a flat, triangular horn, razor-edged fore and aft, came to a sharp point, and anything which had been caught by the trunks and was either too large or not quite dead was impaled on the horn while the trunks tore it to pieces of a more manageable size. Because it had no natural enemies and was too big and awkward to profit from camouflage, its hide was a blotchy horror of black and green and livid yellow.
—Page 64.
Murder is easy....
... so long as no one suspects you and the person in question is the last person one would suspect.Surely you won't let Agatha Christie diddle you again--it would be again, wouldn't it?
The ghost of Mark Twain looms over an oblivious Tom Sawyer—who incidentally, looks more like a teenager in this picture than a "small boy". Still, it's a bright cheerful cover that successfully conveys the mood of the classic boys' adventure story. The really puzzling thing about this edition of Tom Sawyer, is why the editor insists on calling the author by his birth name of "Samuel L. Clemens", rather than his better known nom de plume "Mark Twain"!A Bright, Fresh, Summertime World of Boyhood
When "Mark Twain"--as Samuel L. Clemens signed his books--was writing TOM SAWYER, published in 1876, he was already in his 40s. The carefree days of boyhood in a small Missouri town were already far behind him. He remembered them sharply, but the years brought a humorous perspective. He could appreciate all the fun of being a boy.
What did small boys do in a small town so long ago, when there was no television, no telephone, no movie houses?
They went swimming, they whitewashed fences, traded marbles and other prized possessions, they formed secret societies and had adventures filling up every minute of the time. Tom Sawyer even managed to attend his own funeral, though he was very much alive!
Samuel L. Clemens was born in 1835 and spent his youth in a small town not much different from the one depicted in the book. Before he died in 1910 at the age of 75, he adventured across the country and around the world, and wrote many books.
The New English Library's science fiction paperbacks had some fascinatingly odd cover art—including this one. It really doesn't have much to do with the stories inside, all of which were either set in the present or the very near future on Earth. It does give an impression of strangeness, however, which is perhaps the best come-on you can make to a potential buyer of science fiction!PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE... A wide canvas--and a wide group of stories. All the way from the downright vicious to the most gently tender: stories rich with humour, ripe with passion.Just two from man's short past--a blink in time. A few more for the present we all live in. And more from the long reach of the future.Here is a brilliant collection of stories representing the amazing talent of John Brunner. Read them and discover why the author is fast becoming one of the most popular science fiction writers of the sixties.
Of course it did.Sam Moraine, businessman, poker player and friend of the D.A. agreed as a lark to act as go-between in a kidnapping case. Following instructions, he went to the boat, delivered $10,000 in old bills and received in exchange a bundle of blonde dynamite named Ann Hartwell.
As they reached the mooring float, they were met by the beam of a flashlight and a man's voice saying:
"You're under arrest, both of you. Get your hands up in the air and keep them that way."
It was the Federal boys, and when they'd finished working him over, Sam thought the case was finished.
But it was only beginning. What had started out as a simple adventure turned into a boiling mess of crooked politicians, double-crossing cops, ex-cons, a certain lady of elegant if easy virtue - and MURDER!
