Download or read book Ask the Parrot written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coldblooded criminal known as Parker tries, and fails, to stay under the radar in rural New England: “Nobody does the noir thriller better than Stark.” —San Diego Union-Tribune In Ask the Parrot, the followup to Nobody Runs Forever, ruthless thief Parker is back on the run, dodging dogs, cops, and even a helicopter. His escape brings him to rural Massachusetts, where he is forced to work with a small-town recluse nursing a grudge against the racetrack that fired him. Even in hiding, Parker manages to get up to no good. It’ll be a deadly day at the races . . . “Richard Stark’s Parker crime novels are the ultimate page-turners.” —Jonathan Ames, The Boston Globe “Parker is a blunt instrument of a human being.” —John Hodgman, Parade “Often funny, laced with Stark’s brutally morbid humor . . . fast-moving, tense scenes that drip with potential violence before, inevitably, exploding into actual violence.” —Christopher Bahn, AV Club

Download or read book Nobody Runs Forever written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Together at last. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, Donald E. Westlake, one of the greats of crime fiction, wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hard-boiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists and a code all his own. With the publication of the last four Parker novels Westlake wrote-Breakout, Nobody Runs Forever, Ask the Parrot, and Dirty Money-the University of Chicago Press pulls the ultimate score: for the first time ever, the entire Parker series will be available from a single publisher. Nobody Runs Forever opens a three-part saga with a job at a poker game that sours into a necktie party. When Parker goes in on a messy scam-stealing an armored car-with someone he barely knows, as usual the amateurs get in the way of the job. Featuring new forewords by Chris Holm, Duane Swierczynski, and Laura Lippman-celebrated crime writers, all-these masterworks of noir are the capstone to an extraordinary literary run that will leave you craving more. Written over the course of fifty years, the Parker novels are pure artistry, adrenaline, and logic both brutal and brilliant. Join Parker on his jobs and read them all again or for the first time. But don't talk to the law.

Download or read book Breakout written by Richard Stark and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2008-04-03 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even Parker makes mistakes. Locked up in a prison from which no one has ever escaped, it's only a matter of time before the law uncovers his real name - and his extensive criminal past. To get out, Parker must take on the only accomplices he can find - yet his fellow convicts demand a price: help with another job. Their plan has too many weak links. And Parker isn't a man who likes complications. But with a big potential payoff and no other options, Parker is willing to chance it, just this once.

Download or read book A Parrot Without a Name written by Don Stap and published by Knopf Publishing Group. This book was released on 1990 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the work of two ornithologists in the Peruvian rainforest.

Download or read book Flashfire written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between Parker’s 1961 debut and his return in the late 1990s, the whole world of crime changed. Now fake IDs and credit cards had to be purchased from specialists; increasingly sophisticated policing made escape and evasion tougher; and, worst of all, money had gone digital—the days of cash-stuffed payroll trucks were long gone. But cash isn’t everything: Flashfire and Firebreak find Parker going after, respectively, a fortune in jewels and a collection of priceless paintings. In Flashfire, Parker’s in West Palm Beach, competing with a crew that has an unhealthy love of explosions. When things go sour, Parker finds himself shot and trapped—and forced to rely on a civilian to survive. Firebreak takes Parker to a palatial Montana "hunting lodge" where a dot-com millionaire hides a gallery of stolen old masters—which will fetch Parker a pretty penny if his team can just get it past the mansion’s tight security. The forests of Montana are an inhospitable place for a heister when well-laid plans fall apart, but no matter how untamed the wilderness, Parker’s guaranteed to be the most dangerous predator around.

Download or read book Firebreak written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parker and his team attempt to get past a mansion's security and heist a Montana millionaire's stolen paintings. No matter how untamed the wilderness, Parker's guaranteed to be the most dangerous predator around.

Download or read book The Handle written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Handle, Parker is enlisted by the mob to knock off an island casino guarded by speedboats and heavies, forty miles from the Texas coast. With double-crosses and double-dealings from the word go, Parker knows the line between success and failure on this score would be exactly the length of the barrel of a .38.

Download or read book The Brave Little Parrot written by Rafe Martin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can you save a burning forest with just sprinkles of water? This timeless Buddhist tale may just have the answer! In this ancient tale of one of the Buddha’s past lives, the Buddha is born as a little gray parrot who takes it upon herself to save her beloved forest home from a raging fire. Even though she can only sprinkle drops of water onto the blaze, her perseverance, courage, and compassion change everything, eventually saving the forest in an unexpected way. Zen teacher and acclaimed storyteller Rafe Martin and award-winning illustrator Demi render this centuries-old classic into a beautiful and timeless tale that will inspire all of us to find our own bravery and to act selflessly for the benefit of all.

Download or read book Backflash written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the publication of Butcher's Moon in 1974, Donald Westlake said, "Richard Stark proved to me that he had a life of his own by simply disappearing. He was gone." And readers waited. But nothing bad is truly gone forever, and Parker's as bad as they come. According to Westlake, one day in 1997, "suddenly, he came back from the dead, with a chalky prison pallor"--and the novels that followed showed that neither Parker nor Stark had lost a step. Backflash finds Parker checking out the scene on a Hudson River gambling boat. Parker's no fan of either relaxation or risk, however, so you can be sure he's playing with house money--and he's willing to do anything to tilt the odds in his favor. Featuring a great cast of heisters, a striking setting, and a new introduction by Westlake's close friend and writing partner, Lawrence Block, this classic Parker adventure deserve a place of honor on any crime fan's bookshelf.

Download or read book Flaubert s Parrot written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • From the internationally bestselling author of The Sense of an Ending comes a literary detective story of a retired doctor obsessed with the 19th century French author Flaubert—and with tracking down the stuffed parrot that once inspired him. • “A high literary entertainment carried off with great brio.” —The New York Times Book Review Julian Barnes playfully combines a detective story with a character study of its detective, embedded in a brilliant riff on literary genius. A compelling weave of fiction and imaginatively ordered fact, Flaubert's Parrot is by turns moving and entertaining, witty and scholarly, and a tour de force of seductive originality.

Download or read book The Parrot Who Wouldn t Talk Other Stories written by Ruskin Bond and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-02-06 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘I think everyone has at least one eccentric aunt or uncle in the family. I had more than one. My boyhood days were enlivened by their presence.’ India’s best-loved children’s writer Ruskin Bond introduces us to some of the most endearing and adorable characters he has ever written about—his grandfather, with his unusual ability to disguise himself as just about anyone; the eccentric Uncle Ken, with his knack for trouble; the stationmaster Mr. Ghosh and his amazing family; and the unforgettable Aunt Ruby and her hilarious encounter with a parrot! Heart-warming, funny and delightful, The Parrot Who Wouldn’t Talk and Other Stories features some old favourites as well as refreshingly new stories. Marked by Bond’s inimitable style and trademark humour, and embellished with lively illustrations, this book will be a firm favourite with children.

Download or read book Parrot and Olivier in America written by Peter Carey and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-04-20 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parrot and Olivier in America has been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. From the two-time Booker Prize–winning author comes an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early nineteenth-century America. Olivier—an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville—is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected by an enigmatic one-armed marquis. When Olivier sets sail for the nascent United States—ostensibly to make a study of the penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from one more revolution—Parrot will be there, too: as spy for the marquis, and as protector, foe, and foil for Olivier. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, between their picaresque adventures apart and together—in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands—a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. And with their story, Peter Carey explores the experiment of American democracy with dazzling inventiveness and with all the richness and surprise of characterization, imagery, and language that we have come to expect from this superlative writer.

Download or read book Comeback written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited return of the legendary thief created by Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake) in “a riveting tale of betrayal and escape” (Chicago Tribune). Foreword by Lawrence Block After the bloodbath of Butcher’s Moon, the action-filled blowout Parker adventure, Donald Westlake said, “Richard Stark proved to me that he had a life of his own by simply disappearing. He was gone.” And for nearly twenty-five years, he stayed away, while readers waited. But nothing bad is truly gone forever, and Parker’s as bad as they come. According to Westlake, one day in 1997, “suddenly, he came back from the dead, with a chalky prison pallor”—and the resulting novel, Comeback, showed that neither Stark nor Parker had lost a single step. Knocking over a highly lucrative religious revival show, Parker reminds us that not all criminals don ski masks—some prefer to hide behind the wings of fallen angels. “Parker has not lost his touch—or his nerve . . . In a world of warped values, an honest crook like Parker is a true treasure.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Comeback is brisker, faster, and funnier than the earlier novels . . . Elmore Leonard wouldn’t write what he does if Stark hadn’t been there before. And Quentin Tarantino wouldn’t write what he does without Leonard . . . Old master that he is, Stark does all of them one better.” —Los Angeles Times “Energy and imagination light up virtually every page, as does some of the best hard-boiled prose ever to grace the noir genre.” —Publishers Weekly

Download or read book The Dame written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An action-packed whodunit set in San Juan by the crime fiction master and author of Point Blank. “A book by this guy is a cause for happiness” (Stephen King). Part-time actor-thief Alan Grofield has had his share of odd gigs, including a number of dangerous heists with a certain ruthless criminal named Parker. But nothing has been as dangerous, or as mystifying, as when he somehow finds himself playing bodyguard to a rich, demanding woman who’s in the midst of divorcing a notorious mobster. Holed up in her isolated jungle villa, Grofield can’t help wondering how he got there. Then someone gets murdered at the house, and Grofield’s job gets a lot more complicated. The second Alan Grofield novel by Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark The Dame is a rare Westlake take on a whodunit, features a cast of colorful characters and a suspenseful—and memorable—climax. This edition includes a new foreword by Sarah Weinman.

Download or read book Butcher s Moon written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sixteenth Parker novel, Butcher’s Moon is more than twice as long as most of the master heister’s adventures, and absolutely jammed with the action, violence, and nerve-jangling tension readers have come to expect. Back in the corrupt town where he lost his money, and nearly his life, in Slayground, Parker assembles a stunning cast of characters from throughout his career for one gigantic, blowout job: starting—and finishing—a gang war. It feels like the Parker novel to end all Parker novels, and for nearly twenty-five years that’s what it was. After its publication in 1974, Donald Westlake said, “Richard Stark proved to me that he had a life of his own by simply disappearing. He was gone.” Featuring a new introduction by Westlake’s close friend and writing partner, Lawrence Block, this classic Parker adventure deserves a place of honor on any crime fan’s bookshelf. More than thirty-five years later, Butcher’s Moon still packs a punch: keep your calendar clear when you pick it up, because once you open it you won’t want to do anything but read until the last shot is fired.

Download or read book The Mourner written by Richard Stark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mourner is a story of convergence—of cultures and of guys with guns. Hot on the trail of a statue stolen from a fifteenth-century French tomb, Parker enters a world of eccentric art collectors, greedy foreign officials, and shady KGB agents. Hired by a shifty dame who has something he needs, Parker will find out just who intends to bury whom—and who he needs to kill to finish the job.

Download or read book Sally Blanchard s Companion Parrot Handbook written by Sally Blanchard and published by PBIC Incorporated. This book was released on 1999 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: