Download or read book Ambrose Bierce and the Ace of Shoots written by Oakley M. Hall and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 2005 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oakley Hallas Ambrose Bierce mystery series has gained an impressive list of devotees, from Richard Ford to Diane Johnson and Amy Tan to Thomas Keneally. The sights, sounds, and smells of 1890s San Francisco surround readers as larger-than-life Ambrose aBittera Bierce tracks Californiaas notorious criminal minds. The fifth volume in the series, "Ambrose Bierce" and the "Ace of Shoots" follows the outspoken newspaperman as he and his associate Tom Redmond hunt down a celebrity shooter. When Colonel Studely brings his world-famous Wild West Show to town, he gets more than just a warm welcome. As the parade makes its way down Market Street, the colonel is shot dead. With clues and sinister motivesaa trail of seduction, a vengeful train robber, a haze of opiuma emerging from every direction, Bierce is stymied, but pierces the fog to reveal the true culprit. "Ambrose Bierce and the Ace of Shoots" is a rough-and-tumble romp through gritty old San Francisco.
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 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 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 Warlock written by Oakley Hall and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2014-08-05 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oakley Hall's legendary Warlock revisits and reworks the traditional conventions of the Western to present a raw, funny, hypnotic, ultimately devastating picture of American unreality. First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction. "Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880's is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the confrontation at the OK Corral takes on some of the dry purity of the Arthurian joust. Oakley Hall, in his very fine novel Warlock has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity. Wyatt Earp is transmogrified into a gunfighter named Blaisdell who . . . is summoned to the embattled town of Warlock by a committee of nervous citizens expressly to be a hero, but finds that he cannot, at last, live up to his image; that there is a flaw not only in him, but also, we feel, in the entire set of assumptions that have allowed the image to exist. . . . Before the agonized epic of Warlock is over with—the rebellion of the proto-Wobblies working in the mines, the struggling for political control of the area, the gunfighting, mob violence, the personal crises of those in power—the collective awareness that is Warlock must face its own inescapable Horror: that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated back into the desert as easily as a corpse can. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall." —Thomas Pynchon
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.
Download or read book So Many Doors written by Oakley Hall and published by Titan Books (US, CA). This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary lost crime novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Oakley Hall, instructor of Ann Rice, Amy Tan, Richard Ford, and Michael Chabon, who calls SO MANY DOORS "Beautiful, powerful, even masterful." It begins on Death Row, with a condemned man refusing the services of the lawyer assigned to defend him. It begins with a beautiful woman dead, murdered - Vassilia Caroline Baird, known to all simply as V. That's where this extraordinary novel begins. But the story it tells begins years earlier, on a struggling farm in the shadow of the Great Depression and among the brawling "cat skinners" of Southern California, driving graders and bulldozers to tame the American West. And the story that unfolds, in the masterful hands of acclaimed author Oakley Hall, is a lyrical outpouring of hunger and grief, of jealousy and corruption, of raw sexual yearning and the tragedy of the destroyed lives it leaves in its wake. Unpublished for more than half a century, So Many Doors is Hall's masterpiece, an excoriating vision of human nature at its most brutal, and one of the most powerful books you will ever read.
Download or read book The Publishers Weekly written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Devil s Dictionary written by Ambrose Bierce and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2021-03-16T22:46:04Z with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Dictionary, n: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.” Bierce’s groundbreaking Devil’s Dictionary had a complex publication history. Started in the mid-1800s as an irregular column in Californian newspapers under various titles, he gradually refined the new-at-the-time idea of an irreverent set of glossary-like definitions. The final name, as we see it titled in this work, did not appear until an 1881 column published in the periodical The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp. There were no publications of the complete glossary in the 1800s. Not until 1906 did a portion of Bierce’s collection get published by Doubleday, under the name The Cynic’s Word Book—the publisher not wanting to use the word “Devil” in the title, to the great disappointment of the author. The 1906 word book only went from A to L, however, and the remainder was never released under the compromised title. In 1911 the Devil’s Dictionary as we know it was published in complete form as part of Bierce’s collected works (volume 7 of 12), including the remainder of the definitions from M to Z. It has been republished a number of times, including more recent efforts where older definitions from his columns that never made it into the original book were included. Due to the complex nature of copyright, some of those found definitions have unclear public domain status and were not included. This edition of the book includes, however, a set of definitions attributed to his one-and-only “Demon’s Dictionary” column, including Bierce’s classic definition of A: “the first letter in every properly constructed alphabet.” Bierce enjoyed “quoting” his pseudonyms in his work. Most of the poetry, dramatic scenes and stories in this book attributed to others were self-authored and do not exist outside of this work. This includes the prolific Father Gassalasca Jape, whom he thanks in the preface—“jape” of course having the definition: “a practical joke.” This book is a product of its time and must be approached as such. Many of the definitions hold up well today, but some might be considered less palatable by modern readers. Regardless, the book’s humorous style is a valuable snapshot of American culture from past centuries. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Download or read book The Boarded Window written by Ambrose Bierce and published by Modernista. This book was released on 2024-06-13 with total page 9 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: »The Boarded Window« is a short story by Ambrose Bierce, originally published in 1891. AMBROSE BIERCE [1842-1914] was an American author, journalist, and war veteran. He was one of the most influential journalists in the United States in the late 19th century and alongside his success as a horror writer he was hailed as a pioneer of realism. Among his most famous works are The Devil's Dictionary and the short story »An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.«
Download or read book A Horseman In The Sky written by Ambrose Bierce and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a warm afternoon in the fall of 1861 Carter Druse is on picket duty on top of a cliff overlooking a valley where five regiments of the Union army are resting. The enemy is near, and the Union force means to surprise them in the night unless “accident or vigilance” forewarns them. Druse had been sleeping but wakes to see a man on a horse surveying the activity in the valley below. He sights his rifle, but hesitates when the rider turns and seems to look straight at him. In a crisis of conscience, Druse questions where his duty lies. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
Download or read book Ambrose Bierce is Missing written by Joe Nickell and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What constitutes historical truth is often subject to change. Through ingenious detection, the accepted wisdom of one generation may become the discredited legend of another—or vice versa. In this wide- ranging study of historical investigation, former detective Joe Nickell allows the reader to look over his shoulder as he demonstrates the use of varied techniques in solving some of the world's most perplexing mysteries. All the major categories of historical mystery are here—ancient riddles, biographical enigmas, hidden identity, "fakelore," questioned artifacts, suspect documents, lost texts, obscured sources, and scientific challenges. Each is then illustrated by a complete case from the author's own files. Nickell's investigation of the giant Nazca drawings in Peru, for example—thought by some to provide proof of ancient extraterrestrial visitations—uses innovative techniques to reveal a very different origin. Other cases concern the 1913 disappearance of writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce, the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, the truth about the identity of John Demjanjuk ("Ivan the Terrible" to Polish death camp victims), the fate of a lost colonial American text, the authenticity of Abraham Lincoln's celebrated Bixby letter, and the apparent real-life model for a mysterious character in a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In reaching his solutions, Nickell demonstrates a wide variety of investigative techniques—chemical and instrumental analyses, physical experimentation, a "psychological autopsy," forensic identification, archival research, linguistic analysis, folklore study, and many others. His highly readable book will intrigue the scholar and the history buff no less than the mystery lover.
Download or read book What Do I Read Next written by Neil Barron and published by Gale Cengage. This book was released on 2005-10-21 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By identifying similarities in various books, this annual selection guide helps readers to independently choose titles of interest published in the last year.Each entry describes a separate book, listing everything readers need to know to make selections. Arranged by author within six genre sections, detailed entries provide: Title Publisher and publication dateSeriesNames and descriptions of charactersTime period and geographical settingReview citationsStory typesBrief plot summarySelected other books by the authorSimilar books by different authorsAuthor, title, series, character name, character description, time period, geographic setting and genre/sub-genre indexes are included to facilitate research.
Download or read book Negligible Tales 14 Unabridged Tales written by Ambrose Bierce and published by e-artnow. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This carefully crafted ebook: "Negligible Tales (14 Unabridged Tales)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. This ebook is a collection of rather morbid and grotesques tales by Ambrose Bierce. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842 – 1914?) was an American satirist, critic, poet, editor and journalist. Bierce became a prolific author of short stories often humorous and sometimes bitter or macabre. His dark, sardonic views and vehemence as a critic earned him the nickname, "Bitter Bierce". Content: A Bottomless Grave Jupiter Doke, Brigadier-General The Widower Turmore The city of the Gone Away The Major´sTale Curried Cow A Revolt of the Gods The Baptism of Dobsho The Race at Left Bower The Failure of Hope Wandel Perry Chumly´s Eclipse A Providential Intimation Mr. Swiddler´s Flip-Flap The Little Story
Download or read book Ambrose Bierce and the One eyed Jacks written by Oakley M. Hall and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 2003 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bierce and his sidekick Tom Redmond follow a trail of murder that leads from a sinister British yachtsman to a photographer of female flesh. Bierce's unraveling sheds a blinding light on parental guilt and fin-de-sicle morality. The third in Hall's Ambrose Bierce series, this is a must-have for fans of Caleb Carr's "The Alienist" and E.L. Doctorow's "The Waterworks."
Download or read book The Unabridged Devil s Dictionary written by Ambrose Bierce and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-09-15 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If we could only put aside our civil pose and say what we really thought, the world would be a lot like the one alluded to in The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. There, a bore is "a person who talks when you wish him to listen," and happiness is "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history. A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth. This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included. Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is a classic that stands alongside the best work of satirists such as Twain, Mencken, and Thurber. This unabridged edition will be celebrated by humor fans and word lovers everywhere.
Download or read book Britannica Book of the Year written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
