Murder on the Leviathan

Author: Boris Akunin
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588363694
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
Paris, 1878: Eccentric antiquarian Lord Littleby and his ten servants are found murdered in Littleby’s mansion on the rue de Grenelle, and a priceless Indian shawl is missing. Police commissioner “Papa” Gauche recovers only one piece of evidence from the crime scene: a golden key shaped like a whale. Gauche soon deduces that the key is in fact a ticket of passage for the Leviathan, a gigantic steamship soon to depart Southampton on its maiden voyage to Calcutta. The murderer must be among its passengers. In Cairo, the ship is boarded by a young Russian diplomat with a shock of white hair—none other than Erast Fandorin, the celebrated detective of Boris Akunin’s The Winter Queen. The sleuth joins forces with Gauche to determine which of ten unticketed passengers on the Leviathan is the rue de Grenelle killer. Tipping his hat to Agatha Christie, Akunin assembles a colorful cast of suspects—including a secretive Japanese doctor, a professor who specializes in rare Indian artifacts, a pregnant Swiss woman, and an English aristocrat with an appetite for collecting Asian treasures—all of whom are con?ned together until the crime is solved. As the Leviathan steams toward Calcutta, will Fandorin be able to out-investigate Gauche and discover who the killer is, even as the ship’s passengers are murdered, one by one? Already an international sensation, Boris Akunin’s latest page-turner transports the reader back to the glamorous, dangerous past in a richly atmospheric tale of suspense on the high seas.

Special Assignments

Author: Boris Akunin
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588366693
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
In Special Assignments, Erast Fandorin, nineteenth-century Russia’s suavest sleuth, faces two formidable new foes: One steals outrageous sums of money, the other takes lives. “The Jack of Spades” is a civilized swindler who has conned thousands of rubles from Moscow’s residents–including Fandorin’s own boss, Prince Dolgorukoi. To catch him, Fandorin and his new assistant, timid young policeman Anisii Tulipov, must don almost as many disguises as the grifter does himself. “The Decorator” is a different case altogether: A savage serial killer who believes he “cleans” the women he mutilates and takes his orders from on high, he must be given Fandorin’s most serious attentions. Peopled by a rich cast of eccentric characters, and with plots that are as surprising as they are inventive, Special Assignments will delight Akunin’s many fans, while challenging the gentleman sleuth’s brilliant powers of detection. Praise from England: “Boris Akunin’s wit and invention are a source of constant wonder.” –Evening Standard “[Fandorin is] a debonair combo of Sherlock Holmes, D’Artagnan and most of the soulful heroes of Russian literature. . . . This pair of perfectly balanced stories permit the character of Fandorin to grow.” –The Sunday Telegraph “Agatha Christie meets James Bond: [Akunin’s] plots are intricate and tantalizing. . . . [These stories] are unputdownable and great fun.” –Sunday Express “The beguiling, super-brainy, sexy, unpredictable Fandorin is a creation like no other in crime fiction.” –The Times

Leviathan Wakes

Author: James S. A. Corey
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316134678
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 621

Book Description
From a New York Times bestselling and Hugo award-winning author comes a modern masterwork of science fiction, introducing a captain, his crew, and a detective as they unravel a horrifying solar system wide conspiracy that begins with a single missing girl. Now a Prime Original series. Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach. Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why. Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything. Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe. "Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written." —George R. R. Martin The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers

The Turkish Gambit

Author: Boris Akunin
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 0812968786
Category : Detective and mystery stories
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
In 1877, Erast Fandorin finds himself at the Bulgarian front in a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, where he assists a Russian woman who is risking her life for her fiancé, who has been falsely accused of espionage.

She Lover of Death

Author: Boris Akunin
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802148158
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
The Russian detective infiltrates a dangerous circle of suicidal poets in this “droll, incisive, and fiendishly clever” series set in nineteenth-century Moscow (The Seattle Times). Naive young Masha Mironova arrives in Moscow at the turn of the century determined to shed her provincial Siberian upbringing. Reinventing herself as the reckless and daring Columbine, she soon falls in with a subversive group of poets known as the Lovers of Death. At the home of their leader, the Doge, these seductive bohemians conduct nightly séances to determine who shall be Death’s next lover. Once named at a séance, the chosen member must await three signs from Death before taking his or her own life. The resulting string of suicides have drawn media attention and sparked widespread hysteria in Moscow. As the group’s numbers dwindle, the dashing investigator Erast Fandorin goes undercover to join their ranks. But will the gentleman-detective be able to stop Columbine from taking fatal action when she receives her three unmistakable signs? “A devastatingly attractive combination of Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey and James Bond.” —The Guardian

Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393066665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Book Description
A Los Angeles Times Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007 A Boston Globe Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007 Amazon.com Editors pick as one of the 10 best history books of 2007 Winner of the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History, given by the North American Society for Oceanic History "The best history of American whaling to come along in a generation." —Nathaniel Philbrick The epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an industrial empire through the pursuit of whales. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Herman Melville proclaimed, and this absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614. He then chronicles the rise of a burgeoning industry—from its brutal struggles during the Revolutionary period to its golden age in the mid-1800s when a fleet of more than 700 ships hunted the seas and American whale oil lit the world, to its decline as the twentieth century dawned. This sweeping social and economic history provides rich and often fantastic accounts of the men themselves, who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs. Containing a wealth of naturalistic detail on whales, Leviathan is the most original and stirring history of American whaling in many decades.

The Erast Fandorin Mysteries

Author: Boris Akunin
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1474614469
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 744

Book Description
THE FIRST THREE VOLUMES IN THE BESTSELLING ERAST FANDORIN SERIES 1 THE WINTER QUEEN 'Think Tolstoy writing James Bond with the logical rigour of Sherlock Holmes' GUARDIAN Moscow 1876. A young law student commits suicide in broad daylight in Moscow's Alexander Gardens. But this is no ordinary death, for the young man was the son of an influential industrialist and has left a considerable fortune. Erast Fandorin, a hotheaded new recruit to the Criminal Investigation Department, is assigned to the case. Brilliant, young, and sophisticated, Fandorin embarks on an investigation that will take him from the palatial mansions of Moscow to the seedy backstreets of London in his hunt for the conspirators behind this mysterious death. 2 TURKISH GAMBIT 'A popular hero to equal Sherlock Holmes and James Bond' THE TIMES The Russo-Turkish war is at a critical juncture, and Erast Fandorin, broken-hearted and disillusioned, has gone to the front in an attempt to forget his sorrows. But Fandorin's efforts to steer clear of trouble are thwarted when he comes to the aid of Varvara Suvorova - a 'progressive' Russian woman trying to make her way to the Russian headquarters to join her fiancé. 3 MURDER ON THE LEVIATHAN 'Fandorin is a beautifully drawn character who more than lives up to comparisons with Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes' DAILY EXPRESS On 15th March 1878 Lord Littleby, an English eccentric and collector, is found murdered in his Paris house together with nine members of his staff. A gold whale in the victim's hand leads Erast Fandorin to board the Leviathan, the world's largest steamship, as the murderer is one of the 142 first class passengers. Commissioner Gauche of the French police has narrowed down the suspects to ten, and they are forced to eat together at every meal time in the ship's Windsor Suite until 'the Crime of the Century' is solved. But is the murderer really at the table?

Subverting the Leviathan

Author: James R. Martel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231139847
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description
In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes's landmark work on political philosophy, James Martel argues that although Hobbes pays lip service to the superior interpretive authority of the sovereign, he consistently subverts this authority throughout the book by returning it to the reader. Martel demonstrates that Hobbes's radical method of reading not only undermines his own authority in the text, but, by extension, the authority of the sovereign as well. To make his point, Martel looks closely at Hobbes's understanding of religious and rhetorical representation. In Leviathan, idolatry is not just a matter of worshipping images but also a consequence of bad reading. Hobbes speaks of the "error of separated essences," in which a sign takes precedence over the idea or object it represents, and warns that when the sign is given such agency, it becomes a disembodied fantasy leading to a "kingdom of darkness." To combat such idolatry, Hobbes offers a method of reading in which one resists the rhetorical manipulation of figures and tropes and recognizes the codes and structures of language for what they are-the only way to convey a fundamental inability to ever know "the thing itself." Making the leap to politics, Martel suggests that following Hobbes's argument, the sovereign can also be seen as idolatrous--a separated essence--a figure who supplants the people it purportedly represents, and that learning to be better readers enables us to challenge, if not defeat, the authority of the sovereign.

The Leviathan

Author: Rosie Andrews
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1526637340
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSELECTED AS ONE OF THE OBSERVER'S 10 BEST DEBUT NOVELISTS OF 2022'It's hard to believe that such an accomplished novel could be a debut - The Leviathan is a gloriously dark story that sweeps you along to its harrowing yet satisfying conclusion. Superb' Susan Stokes-Chapman, number one bestselling author of Pandora'Darkly compelling and dripping with atmosphere... bewitching' Stacey Halls, Sunday Times bestselling author of THE FAMILIARSA beguiling tale of superstition, myth and murder, perfect for fans of The Binding, The Essex Serpent and Once Upon a River.SHE IS AWAKE...Norfolk, 1643. With civil war tearing England apart, reluctant soldier Thomas Treadwater is summoned home by his sister, who accuses a new servant of improper conduct with their widowed father. By the time Thomas returns home, his father is insensible, felled by a stroke, and their new servant is in prison, facing charges of witchcraft.Thomas prides himself on being a rational, modern man, but as he unravels the mystery of what has happened, he uncovers not a tale of superstition but something dark and ancient, linked to a shipwreck years before.Something has awoken, and now it will not rest.Richly researched, incredibly atmospheric, and deliciously unsettling, The Leviathan is set in England during a time of political and religious turbulence. It is a tale of family and loyalty, superstition and sacrifice, but most of all it is a spellbinding mystery and a story of impossible things.'Outstanding... a seething, haunting delight' Beth Underdown, award-winning author of THE WITCHFINDER'S SISTER'Thoroughly gripping and utterly absorbing' Jennifer Saint, author of ARIADNE

Trying Leviathan

Author: D. Graham Burnett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400833981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
In Moby-Dick, Ishmael declares, "Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that a whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me." Few readers today know just how much argument Ishmael is waiving aside. In fact, Melville's antihero here takes sides in one of the great controversies of the early nineteenth century--one that ultimately had to be resolved in the courts of New York City. In Trying Leviathan, D. Graham Burnett recovers the strange story of Maurice v. Judd, an 1818 trial that pitted the new sciences of taxonomy against the then-popular--and biblically sanctioned--view that the whale was a fish. The immediate dispute was mundane: whether whale oil was fish oil and therefore subject to state inspection. But the trial fueled a sensational public debate in which nothing less than the order of nature--and how we know it--was at stake. Burnett vividly recreates the trial, during which a parade of experts--pea-coated whalemen, pompous philosophers, Jacobin lawyers--took the witness stand, brandishing books, drawings, and anatomical reports, and telling tall tales from whaling voyages. Falling in the middle of the century between Linnaeus and Darwin, the trial dramatized a revolutionary period that saw radical transformations in the understanding of the natural world. Out went comfortable biblical categories, and in came new sorting methods based on the minutiae of interior anatomy--and louche details about the sexual behaviors of God's creatures. When leviathan breached in New York in 1818, this strange beast churned both the natural and social orders--and not everyone would survive.