Download or read book Skios written by Michael Frayn and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 'Good God, thought Oliver, as he saw the smile. She thinks I'm him! And all at once he knew it was so. He was Dr Norman Wilfred.' On the sunlit Greek island of Skios, the Fred Toppler Foundation's annual lecture is to be given by Dr Norman Wilfred, the world-famous authority on the scientific organisation of science. He turns out to be surprisingly young and charming - not at all the intimidating figure they had been expecting. The Foundation's guests are soon eating out of his hand. So, even sooner, is Nikki, the attractive and efficient organiser. Meanwhile, in a remote villa at the other end of the island, Nikki's old school-friend Georgie waits for the notorious chancer she has rashly agreed to go on holiday with, and who has only too characteristically failed to turn up. Trapped in the villa with her, by an unfortunate chain of misadventure, is a balding old gent called Dr Norman Wilfred, who has lost his whereabouts, his luggage, his temper and increasingly all normal sense of reality - everything he possesses apart from the flyblown text of a well-travelled lecture on the scientific organisation of science... And as the time draws ever nearer for one or other Dr Wilfred - or possibly both - to give the eagerly awaited lecture, so Skios - Greece - Europe - career off their appointed track. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Skios is a story of mislaid identity, misdirected passion and miscalculated consequences. Michael Frayn is also the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His other bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award.

Download or read book Skios written by Michael Frayn and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a spiraling farce about upright academics, gilded captains of industry, ambitious climbers, and dotty philanthropists, Frayn tells a story of personal and professional disintegration as he delivers readers to the outer limits of hilarity.

Download or read book Towards the End of the Morning written by Michael Frayn and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2015-11-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Frayn's classic novel is set in the crossword and nature notes department of an obscure national newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street, John Dyson, a mid-level editor, dreams wistfully of fame and the gentlemanly life -- until one day his great chance of glory arrives. But does he have what it takes to succeed in the exciting world of television?

Download or read book A Landing on the Sun written by Michael Frayn and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-12 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Headlong and Spies, "an unconditional triumph" (The Washington Post Book World) For fifteen years, ever since the taciturn civil servant Summerchild fell to his death from a window in the Admiralty, there have been rumors. So Brian Jessel, a young member of the Cabinet Office, is diverted from his routine work and asked to prepare an internal report. Slowly, from the archives in the Cabinet Office Registry, Jessel begins to reconstruct Summerchild's last months. It begins to emerge that, at a time when America had just put men on the moon, the British were involved in an even bolder project, and that Summerchild was investigating a phenomenon as common as sunlight, but as powerful and dangerous as any of the forces that modern science has known. The secret world into which Brian Jessel stumbles turns out to be even more extraordinary than his department had feared.

Download or read book Care of Wooden Floors written by Will Wiles and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Housesitting at the ultra-modern apartment of a composer friend in a glum Eastern European city, a British copywriter accidentally spills wine on the apartment's priceless wooden floor and endures a psychologically disastrous week of perfectionist repair and maintenance.

Download or read book Now You Know written by Michael Frayn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of theatre's subtlest, most sophisticated minds" (The Times) Now You Know: "Frayn's light but serious, marvellous play, about official and unofficial secrets, about idle curiosity and investigative purpose" (Observer)

Download or read book Feel this Book written by Janeane Garofalo and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We are professionals. Though not specifically professionals in the field of 'psychology' or 'psychiatry, ' we are both highly paid actors and comedians, and as such know more about neuroses than you could possibly imagine. . . ." If you're tired of following the rules, dating people from Mars and Venus, gorging on chicken soup for your soul, or getting lost on a road less traveled, then it's time you listened to Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo, two people who actually sweat the small stuff . . . because, let's face it, if your body doesn't sweat, it dies--much like Ben and Janeane's train wreck of a relationship many years ago. From that experience came wisdom and self-reproachment. Now, in Feel This Book, they tackle the tough questions: - Is love necessary? - How can I make money off my spouse? - Compassion--is it overrated? - Why can't I sleep around and still love you? - How many times have you told your significant other that you would pick up something for dinner on your way home from the office, and next thing you knew you're at an all-night eatery with some hermaphrodite you found on the strip, having eggs and bacon at three in the morning? Through helpful tips, completely fabricated case studies, the six laws of spiritual success, the fourteen by-laws of spiritual awakening, and the twenty-three addendums and sub-laws regarding anything spiritual and successful, Stiller and Garofalo teach such valuable lessons as: - When it comes to family, grasp onto the blame and don't let go - Make the connection . . . between Deepak and Tupac - Your mother lied; looks are everything, and the sooner you submit and stop denying the inevitable, the happieryou will be - And much more! Feel This Book. Let it be your path, your compass, your sensible shoes, your Frappuccino(R). It's what self-help was meant to be.

Download or read book The Russian Interpreter Valancourt 20th Century Classics written by Michael Frayn and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Manning's old friend Proctor-Gould was in Moscow and anxious to get in touch with him. Or so Manning was informed. He looked forward to the meeting. He had few friends in Moscow, none of them old friends, and no friends at all, old or new, in Moscow or anywhere else, called Proctor-Gould . . .' Paul Manning, a young Englishman working on his thesis in Soviet-era Moscow, takes on a part-time job as interpreter for the enigmatic Gordon Proctor-Gould, ostensibly an honest businessman, but possibly involved in more clandestine activities. When Proctor-Gould falls for the mercurial blonde Raya, Manning finds himself in the awkward position of acting as interpreter in their love affair, a situation made even more awkward by Manning's own feelings for her. And when it begins to appear Raya may be a police spy, Manning realizes he may have gotten himself into more than he bargained for ... Featuring an unusual blend of humor and suspense, Michael Frayn's second novel, "The Russian Interpreter" (1966), was inspired in part by the author's own experiences in Communist Russia and won the Hawthornden Prize as the best work of imaginative fiction published that year. This edition includes a new introduction by the author. 'Altogether a notable book ... Frayn is now our best equipped younger prose-writer as well as being a very sane and very funny one.' - "Times Literary Supplement" 'Imaginative and delightful - zany characters who stick in the memory and have a genuine life of their own. Frayn juxtaposes the humorous and the frankly sinister into a satisfying and witty picture.' - "Sunday Telegraph" 'Full of quirky, quixotic surprises ... will catch your curiosity and convert it into admiration.' - "Kirkus Reviews" (starred review)

Download or read book Matchbox Theatre written by Michael Frayn and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matchbox Theatre presents a sketch show in miniature: thirty short entertainments by Michael Frayn, author of Skios and Noises Off, 'the funniest farce ever written' (New York Times). Thirty snatches of people talking. To each other, to the world at large, to themselves, to no one. Heard, unheard. Overheard, half-heard. On telephones, into microphones. In a crypt, an airport, an orchestra pit. These tiny plays are offered here for performance in the smallest theatre in the world: the theatre of your own imagination. The scripts are provided. Everything else - casting, set design, ice cream sales - is up to you . . . 'Michael Frayn is the most philosophical comic writer - and the most comic philosophical writer - of our time.' Michael Arditti, Daily Mail

Download or read book A Very Private Life written by Michael Frayn and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2015-11-12 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Easily the most original thing Frayn has done . . . written with elegant simplicity.' New Statesman Uncumber lives at a time in the distant future when all humanity is divided in two - the Insiders and the Outsiders. The Insiders are privileged, with their every need catered to by somatic drugs, three-dimensional holovision and a prolonged life. Uncumber lives in this luxurious world and is told that she must never go out into the dust and disease of the real world. Uncumber, however, is haunted by a restless and inquisitive spirit. When she falls in love with an Outsider, she decides to go exploring ... 'A fairy tale of the future.' Guardian

Download or read book Headlong written by Michael Frayn and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-09 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academic Martin Clay is asked by a boorish country squire to assess his paintings. Clay spots what he suspects is a Bruegel and so begins a tale of lies and concealment as he schemes to separate the painting from its owner.

Download or read book The Trick of It written by Michael Frayn and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-12-16 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in a form of protagonist's letters to his Australian friend, this novel is a subtle and psychologically exact depiction of the moral degradation of an ordinary man afflicted with envy.

Download or read book Noises Off written by Michael Frayn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “As finely worked as a Swiss watch and as funny as the human condition permits ... the zigzag brilliance of the text as the clunky lines of the farce-within-a-farce rub against the sharp dialogue of reality.” The Guardian A play-within-a-play following a touring theatre company who are rehearsing and performing a comedy called Nothing On, results in a riotous double-bill of comedic craft and dramatic skill. Hurtling along at breakneck speed it shows the backstage antics as they stumble through the dress-rehearsal at Weston-super-Mare, then on to a disastrous matinee at Ashton-under-Lyne, followed by a total meltdown in Stockton-on-Tees. Michael Frayn's irresistible, multi-award-winning backstage farce has been enjoyed by millions of people worldwide since it premiered in 1982 and has been hailed as one of the greatest British comedies ever written. Winner of both Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best Comedy. This edition features a new introduction by Michael Blakemore.

Download or read book Waiting for Sunrise written by William Boyd and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERVienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, sits in the waiting room of the city's preeminent psychiatrist as he anxiously ponders the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis. When the enigmatic, intensely beautiful Hettie Bull walks in, Lysander is immediately drawn to her, unaware of how destructive the consequences of their subsequent affair will be. One year later, home in London, Lysander finds himself entangled in the dangerous web of wartime intelligence - a world of sex, scandal and spies that is slowly, steadily, permeating every corner of his life...

Download or read book The Glass Pearls Faber Editions written by Emeric Pressburger and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of The Passenger, this thrilling tale of an ex-Nazi surgeon hiding in plain sight in 1960s London by the celebrated filmmaker is a lost noir gem, introduced by Anthony Quinn and narrated on audio by Mark Gatiss. 'Stunning: incredibly good, thought-provoking and tense.' Ian Rankin 'This extraordinary novel had me hooked from start to finish.' Sarah Waters 'An outstanding novel: gripping, tense and darkly unsettling.' Jonathan Freedland 'A wonderfully compelling noir thriller and audacious and challenging act of imagination.' William Boyd 'One of the best London novels of the 20th century.' Benjamin Myers Nothing is more inviting to disclose your secrets than to be told by others of their own ... London, June 1965. Karl Braun arrives as a lodger in Pimlico: hatless, with a bow-tie, greying hair, slight in build. His new neighbours are intrigued by this cultured German gentleman who works as a piano tuner; many are fellow émigrés, who assume that he, like them, came to England to flee Hitler. That summer, Braun courts a woman, attends classical concerts, dances the twist. But as the newspapers fill with reports of the hunt for Nazi war criminals, his nightmares become increasingly worse . 'A haunting, remarkable novel, as startlingly original as any of Pressburger's films.' Nicola Upson 'A dark and harrowing window on the past: the ending will haunt your dreams.' Janice Hallett

Download or read book Gods of the Morning written by John Lister-Kaye and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gods of the Morning follows the year through the turning of the seasons at Aigas, the Highlands estate John Lister-Kaye has transformed into a world-renowned wildlife center. John's affection, wisdom and lyricism sings off every page, bringing the natural world around him to life: from the rookery filled with twenty-nine nests and distinct bird calls to descriptions of the winter morning light, from the wood mice and the squirrels preparing for winter to tracking a fox's path through the snow. In particular it brings John's lifelong love of birds—his gods of the morning—to the fore.In the Highland glens, bird numbers plummet as their food supplies —natural fruits and every kind of creeping, crawling, slithering or flying bug—begin to disappear. By the first frosts the hills will have emptied down to a few hardy stalwarts such as the golden eagles, the raven and the irrepressible hooded crows. Silence settles across the land. The few species that are left frequent a changed world. Soon only the buzzards and wood pigeons will hang on in the woods and the coniferous forests will be host to flocks of chaffinches, tits, siskins, and crossbills passing through.

Download or read book Pocket Playhouse written by Michael Frayn and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pocket Playhouse is Michael Frayn's latest imaginative offering that brings the stage to the page. In thirty-six comic sketches, he provides a tour de force of theatrical imagination and satire. Each sketch reveals the author's infectious delight in writing between the lines of theatre, fiction and comedy.Charmingly packaged and published with flair, Pocket Playhouse is the perfect gift for all theatre and comedy writers.