Download or read book Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades written by Oakley Hall and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Morton Street Slasher has been leaving the corpses of his victims around San Francisco's Union Square. On the women's naked bodies are spade playing cards. The city's infamous newspaperman, Ambrose Bierce, blames the rash of murders on his old enemy, the Southern Pacific Railroad. A naive reporter at Bierce's Hornet pursues the case, uncovering conspiracy at every turn. In a fast-paced novel that is a combination of murder mystery, historical fiction, and quirky biography, Oakley Hall draws the reader into 1880s San Francisco and the changing world that was California in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Local and state politics, the exploitation of the Chinese, the power of the mining and railroad barons, and San Francisco's colorful history provide a backdrop for this irresistible thriller. The novel's chapters are introduced by appropriate excerpts from Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary and narrated by the young reporter Tom Redmond. Redmond is interested in the murders because of his attraction to a woman threatened by the Slasher, and Bierce encourages him because of his personal vendetta against the Big Four of the Railroad. Bierce's misogyny is an influence as well, which Hall uses to advantage in portraying the enigmatic journalist. Hall knows his territory and his characters well. The sights and smells of late-nineteenth-century California are cleverly evoked, and the story's key players are refreshingly authentic. Bierce brandishes his famed cynicism with all the aplomb of the sharp-eyed, sharp-witted newspaperman he was. Cameo appearances by such California worthies as Ina Coolbrith and Joaquin Miller add to the novel's historical richness. Intelligent, gripping, and often quite funny, Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades will satisfy any reader who craves adventure, mystery, romance, and fine writing.
Download or read book The Literature of California written by Jack Hicks and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 684 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is the first volume of a comprehensive anthology of Californian literature. It is divided into four parts and contains material ranging from Native American origin myths to Hollywood novels dissecting the American dream.
Download or read book The Great American Railroad War written by Dennis Drabelle and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How two of America's greatest authors took on the Central Railroad monopoly The notorious Central Pacific Railroad riveted the attention of two great American writers: Ambrose Bierce and Frank Norris. In The Great American Railroad War, Dennis Drabelle tells a classic story of corporate greed vs. the power of the pen. The Central Pacific Railroad accepted US Government loans; but, when the loans fell due, the last surviving founder of the railroad avoided repayment. Bierce, at the behest of his boss William Randolph Hearst, swung into action writing over sixty stinging articles that became a signal achievement in American journalism. Later, Norris focused the first volume of his trilogy, The Octopus, on the freight cars of a thinly disguised version of the Central Pacific. The Great American Railroad War is a lively chapter of US history pitting two of America's greatest writers against one of America's most powerful corporations. "Readers with interests in western American history or the origins of today’s political quagmires will find much to relish. " - Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Love War in California written by Oakley Hall and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sweeping Novel of a Twentieth-Century California Life Love and War in California tells the story, through the eyes of Payton Daltrey, of the last sixty years of an evolving America. The award-winning author Oakley Hall begins his newest work in 1940s San Diego, where his endearing, wide-eyed narrator must define his identity in terms of self, family, and World War II. As his classmates disappear into the war one by one, he becomes obsessed with abuses of power and embroiled with the charming, dangerous Errol Flynn; with the Red Baiting of the American Legion; with the House Un-American Activities Committee; and with the Japanese interment at Manzanar. Nevertheless, Payton, too, must go to the war, where he is a part of the invasion of Europe and that proving of the American soldier: the Battle of the Bulge. After war's end and time in New York, he returns to California as a writer and a seeker, whose old, long-lost love rises from the ashes to show him who he really is. Hall has been called a "master craftsman" (Amy Tan) with "one of the finest prose styles around" (Michael Chabon), and he has received the PEN Center USA West Award of Honor and the P&W Writers for Writers Award. Coming on the heels of Hall's San Francisco Chronicle bestseller (a reissue of his classic Western, Warlock), Love and War in California is more than a novel about a young boy who grows old. It's about how the passions of youth become the verities of age, and how we evolve as a nation, a country, and a people during times that are all at once turbulent, dangerous, and stirring.
Download or read book Ambrose Bierce and the Death of Kings written by Oakley M. Hall and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2002 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compulsively readable mystery, the hero is the historical figure Ambrose Bierce, William Randolph Hearst's star reporter and San Francisco's most celebrated writer at the turn of the 20th century. Intelligent, gripping, and often very funny, this wonderfully tangled tale of murder and mystery is sure to satisfy.
Download or read book The Rough Guide to San Francisco the Bay Area written by Nick Edwards and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents guidance and tools for visitors to San Francisco and the Bay Area, including maps, lodging and restaurant suggestions, and details on history, culture, and things to see and do.
Download or read book Ambrose Bierce and the One Eyed Jacks written by Oakley M. Hall and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ambrose ?Bitter? Bierce, San Francisco's infamous and legendary newspaperman and sometime sleuth is hardly surprised to be hired by William Randolph Hearst when his mistress receives threats. In steamy Sausalito, the playground of the rich and famous across the bay, Hearst's isn't the only case on the boil. While Ambrose and his sidekick, Tom Redmond, hunt the killer of a hard-partying yachtsman, Tom becomes entangled with the queen of the Portuguese Pentecostal feast. When Hearst's house photographer turns up dead Ambrose faces a web of murder and mystery.
Download or read book The Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area written by Rough Guides and published by Rough Guides UK. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Full-colour throughout, The Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area is the ultimate travel guide to the colourful Californian capital and its stunning surroundings. With 30 years experience and our trademark 'tell it like it is' writing style, Rough Guides cover all the basics with practical, on-the-ground details, as well as unmissable alternatives to the usual must-see sights. At the top of your to-pack list, and guaranteed to get you value for money, each guide also reviews the best accommodation and restaurants in all price brackets. We know there are times for saving, and times for splashing out. In The Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area: - Over 50 colour-coded maps featuring every listing - Area-by-area chapter highlights - Top 5 boxes - Things not to miss section Make the most of your trip with The Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Now available in ePub format.
Download or read book A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America written by Charles L. Crow and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blackwell Companion to American Regional Literature is the most comprehensive resource yet published for study of this popular field. The most inclusive survey yet published of American regional literature. Represents a wide variety of theoretical and historical approaches. Surveys the literature of specific regions from California to New England and from Alaska to Hawaii. Discusses authors and groups who have been important in defining regional American literature.
Download or read book Gothic Writers written by Douglass H. Thomson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-11-30 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its roots in Romanticism, antiquarianism, and the primacy of the imagination, the Gothic genre originated in the 18th century, flourished in the 19th, and continues to thrive today. This reference is designed to accommodate the critical and bibliographical needs of a broad spectrum of users, from scholars seeking critical assistance to general readers wanting an introduction to the Gothic, its abundant criticism, and the present state of Gothic Studies. The volume includes alphabetically arranged entries on more than 50 Gothic writers from Horace Walpole to Stephen King. Entries for Russian, Japanese, French, and German writers give an international scope to the book, while the focus on English and American literature shows the dynamic nature of Gothicism today. Each of the entries is devoted to a particular author or group of authors whose works exhibit Gothic elements, beginning with a primary bibliography of works by the writer, including modern editions. This section is followed by a critical essay, which examines the author's use of Gothic themes, the author's place in the Gothic tradition, and the critical reception of the author's works. The entries close with selected, annotated bibliographies of scholarly studies. The volume concludes with a timeline and a bibliography of the most important broad scholarly works on the Gothic.
Download or read book Sunset Limited written by Richard J. Orsi and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-02-06 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only major US railroad built from west to east, the Southern Pacific played a major role in the shaping of the West & the development of southern California in particular. 'Sunset Limited' explores the corporate strategy over time to reveal how the company saw its place in the world.
Download or read book Chasing the Sun written by Edward Joseph Beverly and published by Sunstone Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Chasing the Sun" is a guide to Western fiction with more than 1,350 entries, including 59 reviews of the author's personal favorites, organized around theme.
Download or read book 1906 written by James Dalessandro and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2004-04-08 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set during the great San Francisco earthquake and fire, this page-turning tale of political corruption, vendettas, romance, rescue--and murder--is based on recently uncovered facts that will forever change the public's understanding of what really happened.
Download or read book Ambrose Bierce Takes on the Railroad written by Daniel Lindley and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1999-10-30 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of California journalist and wit Ambrose Bierce and his struggle with the railroad octopus controlled by the Big Four (Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins). This is the first book to look at Bierce's early muckraking campaign in depth through Bierce's acid journalism and the railroad's private and public reactions. After a brief literature review and biography of Bierce, one of America's greatest wits, journalists, and short-story writers, the study turns to his thirty-year battle with the Central Pacific Railroad, which controlled much of California's economy and politics, often through bribery of politicians and newspaper editors and publishers. Lindley looks at the initial funding of the railroad through the U.S. government, the development of railroads as symbols of hope and progress, and the eventual corruption of that optimistic outlook by railroad owners and politicians. Bierce attacked the railroads in his columns during his tenure at three San Francisco periodicals, the Argonaut, the Wasp, and the Examiner. His efforts culminated in a trip to Washington, D.C., in 1896 to cover the funding bill debate in Congress, during which railroad officials attempted to avoid repaying millions of dollars in government loans. Bierce did not consider himself a muckraker. He derided the generation of Progressive journalists who followed him a decade after he ended his campaign against the railroad. Yet, Bierce's journalism was a precursor of what is popularly known as the muckraking period, 1902-1914.
Download or read book The Queen of Spades and Other Stories written by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 1994 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrated title story plus "The Shot," "The Snowstorm," "The Coffin-Maker," "An Amateur Peasant Girl," and "The Postmaster" -- all fascinating portraits of life in Tsarist Russia by one of that country's greatest writers.
Download or read book Great Ghost Stories written by John Grafton and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten classics by masters of the macabre: Bram Stoker's "The Judge's House," "The Moonlit Road" by Ambrose Bierce, M. R. James's "The Rose Garden," Charles Dickens, and seven others.
Download or read book Sequels written by Janet G. Husband and published by American Library Association. This book was released on 2009-07-30 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to series fiction lists popular series, identifies novels by character, and offers guidance on the order in which to read unnumbered series.
