The Wilt Inheritance

Author: Tom Sharpe
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 144640918X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Book Description
Stuck in a job he doesn't want - but can't afford to lose - as nominal Head of the Communications Department at Fenland University, Wilt is still subject to the whims of The Powers That Be, both in and outside of work. The demands of his snobbish wife Eva, and the stupendous school fees of his despicable quadruplet daughters, cause him the biggest headaches... apart from the hangovers, that is. When Eva signs him up for a summer job, teaching the gun-toting idiot son of a lusty local aristocrat, Wilt is not amused. But, as circumstances unravel and the summer goes on, Wilt sees that the situation could be put to his financial advantage, as well as giving Eva some headaches of her own. With Tom Sharpe's famous dark humour in full evidence, and an explosive plot which takes its readers to places they never realised they wanted to visit, The Wilt Inheritance is another instant classic from the British master of farce.

The Wilt Alternative

Author: Tom Sharpe
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1407099906
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Henry Wilt is no longer the victim of his own uncontrolled fantasies. As Head of a reconstituted Liberal Studies Department he has assumed power without authority at the Fenland College of Arts & Technology and the fantasies he now confronts are those of political bigots and reactionary bureaucrats - in addition to his wife's enthusiasm for every Organic Alternative under the compost heap and the insistence of his quadruplets on looking at every problem with an unflinching lack of sentimentality. It is only when Wilt becomes the unintentional participant in a terrorist siege that he is forced to find an answer to the problems of power, which have corrupted greater men than he. With a mental ingenuity born of his innate cowardice, Wilt fights for those liberal values which are threatened both by international terrorism and by the sophisticated methods of police anti-terrorist agents. In the confusion that follows, Wilt resumes his dialogue with the unflagging Inspector Flint and is himself subjected to the indignity of a psycho-political profile. Bitingly funny and brilliantly written, The Wilt Alternative exposes the farcical anomalies, which have become the social norms of our time.

Wilt

Author: Tom Sharpe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Interpersonal relations
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description

Porterhouse Blue

Author: Tom Sharpe
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446474658
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
______________________________ The 'endlessly funny' novel widely regarded as a classic of comic English literature Porterhouse College is world renowned for its gastronomic excellence, the arrogance of its Fellows, its academic mediocrity and the social cache it confers on the athletic sons of country families. Sir Godber Evans, ex-Cabinet Minister and the new Master, is determined to change all this. Spurred on by his politically angular wife, Lady Mary, he challenges the established order and provokes the wrath of the Dean, the Senior Tutor, the Bursar and, most intransigent of all, Skullion the Head Porter - with hilarious and catastrophic results.

Riotous Assembly

Author: Tom Sharpe
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 9780871131430
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
A South African woman struggles to convince the police that she has murdered her black cook.

The Throwback

Author: Tom Sharpe
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446474712
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
When Lockhart Flawse is catapulted out of his upper-class and rapunzel-esque life with the curmudgeonly Flawse Senior, he must enter the world of suburbia, and marriage. Rendered an absolute twit in modern society by his medieval upbringing, Lockhart must resort to drastic tactics in his attempt to return to Flawse House. Faced with the horrors of suburbia, he must either terrorise, blackmail and potentially kill an entire street of his tenants, or attempt to find his unknown and elusive father in order to inherit the estate. However, with the belief that he was dropped into his mother's arms by a stork, killing a street of people may be the wiser option for the socially inept young man. He is also under mounting pressure, as it may all be in vain if his gold-digging mother-in-law has her way. Now the wife of Flawse Senior, she has decided that if Lockhart's wealthy grandfather can't have the decency to die on his own, she will take matters into her own hands.

Wilt in Nowhere

Author: Tom Sharpe
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446474739
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
When his endlessly capricious wife Eva receives plane tickets for the family to visit Auntie Joan and Uncle Wally in Atlanta, Wilt knows only one thing - that nothing could entice him to fly three thousand miles over the water, and especially not two rotund Americans with more money than sense. What better way to escape and find equilibrium then to embark on a walking tour? Just Wilt, the countryside, and an ill-judged bottle of whiskey... Meanwhile, Eva finds her plans to inherit Joan and Wally's fortune slipping away faster than her sanity, thanks to a combination of sinister teenage quadruplets with foul mouths, and her unexpected role as lead suspect in a drug-trafficking plot. Outrageous, darkly comic, and packed with calamity on top of calamity, Tom Sharpe's latest episode of Wilt's misadventures is a razor-sharp farce that will delight fans both old and new.

The Book of Lost Friends

Author: Lisa Wingate
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 1984819895
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post–Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives. “An absorbing historical . . . enthralling.”—Library Journal Bestselling author Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as newly freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold away. Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Hannie, a freed slave; Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now destitute plantation; and Juneau Jane, Lavinia’s Creole half sister. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following roads rife with vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of stolen inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery’s end, the pilgrimage west reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope. Louisiana, 1987: For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt—until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, is suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled live oaks and run-down plantation homes lie the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything.

Indecent Exposure

Author: Tom Sharpe
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446474631
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
In Piemburgem, the deceptively peaceful-looking capital of Zululand, Kommandant van Heerden, Konstabel Els and Luitenant Verkramp continue to terrorise true Englishman and even truer Zulus in their relentless search for a perfect South Africa. Kommandant van Heerden, that great Anglophile, gropes his way towards attaining true 'Englishness' in the company of the eccentric Dornford Yates Club. But Luitenant Verkramp, whose hatred of all things English is surpassed only by his fear of sex, sets in motion an experiment in mass chastity (with the help of a lady psychiatrist), which has remarkable and quite unforeseen results.

Ancestral Vices

Author: Tom Sharpe
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446474534
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
With his only friend a computer, Walden Yapp has lived a singular life. Professor of Demotic History at the University of Kloone, Yapp spends his days highlighting the corrupt capitalistic nature of the upper-classes, and his nights feeding Doris his computer the information he has gathered So when capitalist Lord Petrefact hires him to write a damaging family history, Yapp seizes the chance to chronicle the corrupt life of the Petrefact family. Spurred on by his expectations of dishonesty and depravity Yapp heads of the town of Buscott, where nobody is what they at first appear to be. Now a pawn in Lord Petrefact’s vindictive family game, Yapp’s presence is as welcome as the plague. From provoking dwarfish marital problems to uncovering an erotic toy factory Yapp’s presence sparks a chain of events that ends in death, destruction and a murder trial. Going through a car wash will never feel the same again.