Vesuvius Club

Author: Mark Gatiss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743291190
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
Meet Lucifer Box: Equal parts James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, with a twist of Monty Python and a dash of Austin Powers, Lucifer has a charming countenance and rapier wit that make him the guest all hostesses must have. And most do. But few of his conquests know that Lucifer is also His Majesty's most daring secret agent, at home in both London's Imperial grandeur and in its underworld of despicable vice. So when Britain's most prominent scientists begin turning up dead, there is only one man his country can turn to for help. Following a dinnertime assassination, Lucifer is dispatched to uncover the whereabouts of missing agent Jocelyn Poop. Along the way he will give art lessons, be attacked by a poisonous centipede, bed a few choice specimens, and travel to Italy on business and pleasure. Aided by his henchwoman Delilah; the beautiful, mysterious, and Dutch Miss Bella Pok; his boss, a dwarf who takes meetings in a lavatory; grizzled vulcanologist Emmanuel Quibble; and the impertinent, delicious, right-hand-boy Charlie Jackpot, Lucifer Box deduces and seduces his way from his elegant townhouse at Number 9 Downing Street (somebody has to live there) to the ruined city of Pompeii, to infiltrate a highly dangerous secret society that may hold the fate of the world in its clawlike grip--the Vesuvius Club.

The Devil in Amber

Author: Mark Gatiss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743283961
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
After an assignment in New York almost costs him his life, Box comes across a mysterious parchment that appears to be of interest to a megalomaniacal fascist leader, Olympus Mons, who heads an international band named F.A.U.S.T., an acronym for the Fascist Anglo-United States Trinity. Box's chance discovery that his sister, Pandora, has become part of Mons's inner circle provides him with an in, leading him back across the Atlantic, and in and out of a variety of sexual encounters.

Black Butterfly

Author: Mark Gatiss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416553703
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
Knave. Joker. Queen. Lucifer Box is back! The hero of The Vesuvius Club and The Devil in Amber returns with an artistic licence to kill, and the deadliest mission of his career. A new Queen has been crowned, an old enemy has resurfaced and the world is about to be embraced by the lethal wings of the Black Butterfly.... Lucifer Box. He's tall, he's dark and, like the shark, he looks for trouble. Or so he wishes. For, with Queen Elizabeth newly established on her throne, the now elderly secret agent is reaching the end of his scandalous career. Despite his fast-approaching retirement, however, queer events leave Box unable to resist investigating one last case.... Why have pillars of the Establishment started dying in reckless accidents? Who are the deadly paymasters of enigmatic assassin Kingdom Kum? And who...or what...is the mysterious Black Butterfly? From the seedy streets of Soho to the souks of Istanbul and the sun-drenched shores of Jamaica, Box must use his artistic licence to confront and kill an enemy with its roots in his own notorious past. Can Lucifer Box save the day before the dying of the light?

Awake

Author: Harald Voetmann
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811230821
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 98

Book Description
Harald Voetmann’s eye-opening English debut, Awake, is the first book of his erudite, grotesque, and absurdist trilogy about mankind’s inhuman will to conquer nature In a shuttered bedroom in ancient Italy, the sleepless Pliny the Elder lies in bed obsessively dictating new chapters of his Natural History to his slave Diocles. Fat, wheezing, imperious, and prone to nosebleeds, Pliny does not believe in spending his evenings in repose: No—to be awake is to be alive. There’s no time to waste if he is to classify every element of the natural world in a single work. By day Pliny the Elder carries out his many civic duties and gives the occasional disastrous public reading. But despite his astonishing ambition to catalog everything from precious metals to the moon, as well as a collection of exotic plants sourced from the farthest reaches of the world, Pliny the Elder still takes immense pleasure in the common rose. After he rushes to an erupting Mount Vesuvius and perishes in the ash, his nephew, Pliny the Younger, becomes custodian of his life’s work. But where Pliny the Elder saw starlight, Pliny the Younger only sees fireflies. In masterfully honed prose, Voetmann brings the formidable Pliny the Elder (and his pompous nephew) to life. Awake is a comic delight about one of history’s great minds and the not-so-great human body it was housed in.

Greek Island Vampires

Author: Stephenson Holt
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781798718742
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The sexy, vampire love-story that destroyed all the ancient myths.Modern science tells us that blood sugars are released, along with endorphins, on the climaxing of both males and females. Governments worldwide tell us that vampires do not really exist. The facts revealed in this book, told separately by Maria and by Jeffrey, tell us that sweet-blood lapping by vampires, after puncture, is tied into sex as much as canine tooth growth is tied into the climax. Nighttime walking and the fear of the dawn, garlic and crucifixes are discarded to the Hollywood film bin as you read and learn not to drink alcohol to excess on your next foreign holiday. Maria, a small-island, seventeen-year-old virgin, dreams of a life on her neighbouring larger islands. Her move sees her willing to convert to being a vampire in her search for love from Jeffrey, and also from her female employers in this uplifting tale. The unknown government compiler that translated, from the Greek, Maria's papers, allowing this author to merge them, time-wise, into Jeffrey's English journal is to be commended as, without that work, Maria's story may never have been told. The true story of vampire life may never have been revealed." Explicit and erotic but without the usual swear words, which made this an enlightening, uplit, holiday read." "My heart went out to Maria, wishing she'd make the right choices at every turn." "My thoughts leapt back to the early seventies, to my raucous, drunken behaviour on holiday with the girls, and how I could have easily become a victim."

A Day of Fire

Author: Kate Quinn
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063310570
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
From six bestselling authors, including New York Times bestseller Kate Quinn, comes a vividly imagined novel following the lives of those in ancient Pompeii on the fateful day Mount Vesuvius erupts. Pompeii was a lively resort flourishing in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius at the height of the Roman Empire. When Vesuvius erupted in an explosion of flame and ash, the entire town would be destroyed. Some of its citizens died in the chaos, some escaped the mountain’s wrath . . . and these are their stories: A boy loses his innocence in Pompeii’s flourishing streets. An heiress dreads her wedding day, not knowing it will be swallowed by fire. An ex-legionary stakes his entire future on a gladiator bout destined never to be finished. A crippled senator welcomes death, until a tomboy on horseback comes to his rescue. A young mother faces an impossible choice for her unborn child as the ash falls. A priestess and a prostitute seek redemption and resurrection as the town is buried. Six authors bring to life overlapping stories of patricians and slaves, warriors and politicians, villains and heroes who cross each other’s paths during Pompeii’s fiery end. But who will escape, and who will be buried for eternity?

I Survived the Destruction of Pompeii, AD 79 (I Survived #10)

Author: Lauren Tarshis
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545662869
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 92

Book Description
The beast beneath the mountain is restless... No one in the bustling city of Pompeii worries when the ground trembles beneath their feet. The beast under the mountain Vesuvius, high above the city, wakes up angry sometimes -- and always goes back to sleep.But Marcus is afraid. He knows something is terribly wrong -- and his father, who trusts science more than mythical beasts, agrees. When Vesuvius explodes into a cloud of fiery ash and rocks fall from the sky like rain, will they have time to escape -- and survive the epic destruction of Pompeii?

Ghosts of Vesuvius

Author: Charles R. Pellegrino
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060751002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 499

Book Description
A fascinating look at Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Vesuvius eruption in comparison with other historically significant volcanic eruptions, including the World Trade Center disaster. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, which obliterated the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, was a disaster that resounds to this day. Now palaeontologist Charles Pellegrino presents a wealth of new knowledge about the doomed towns – and brings to vivid life the people, their last moments, and the aftermath. The lessons learned from modern scrutiny of that ancient eruption produce disturbing echoes in the present. Dr Pellegrino, who worked at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, shares his unique knowledge of the strange physics of volcanic 'downblast' and 'collapse column', drawing a direct link from past to present, and providing readers with a poignant glimpse into the last moments of the 'American Vesuvius'.

The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny

Author: Daisy Dunn
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631496409
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
“A wonderfully rich, witty, insightful, and wide-ranging portrait of the two Plinys and their world.”—Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his thirty-seven-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder’s notebooks—filled with pearls of wisdom—and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire from the dire days of terror under Emperor Domitian to the gentler times of Emperor Trajan. A biography that will appeal to lovers of Mary Beard books, it is also a moving narrative about the profound influence of a father figure on his adopted son. Interweaving the younger Pliny’s Letters with extracts from the Elder’s Natural History, Daisy Dunn paints a vivid, compellingly readable portrait of two of antiquity’s greatest minds.

The Night Villa

Author: Carol Goodman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345479602
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
An evocative tale of intrigue, romance, and treachery, Carol Goodman’s spellbinding new novel, The Night Villa, follows the fascinating lives of two remarkable women centuries apart. The eruption of Italy’s Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 buried a city and its people, their treasures and secrets. Centuries later, echoes of this disaster resonate with profound consequences in the life of classics professor Sophie Chase. In the aftermath of a tragic shooting on the University of Texas campus, Sophie seeks sanctuary on the isle of Capri, immersing herself in her latest scholarly project alongside her colleagues, her star pupil, and their benefactor, the compelling yet enigmatic business mogul John Lyros. Beneath layers of volcanic ash lies the Villa della Notte–the Night Villa–home to first-century nobles, as well as to the captivating slave girl at the heart of an ancient controversy. And secreted in a subterranean labyrinth rests a cache of antique documents believed lost to the ages: a prize too tantalizing for Sophie to resist. But suspicion, fear, and danger roam the long-untrodden tunnels and chambers beneath the once sumptuous estate–especially after Sophie sees the face of her former lover in the darkness, leaving her to wonder if she is chasing shadows or succumbing to the siren song of the Night Villa. Whatever shocking events transpired in the face of Vesuvius’s fury have led to deeper, darker machinations that inexorably draw Sophie into their vortex, rich in stunning revelations and laden with unseen menace. Praise for The Night Villa “Visit The Night Villa: Carol Goodman’ s luminous prose and superb storytelling will keep you entertained into the late hours.”—Nancy Pickard “The pleasure of a Carol Goodman novel is in her enviable command of the classical canon–and the deft way she [writes] a book that’s light enough for a weekend on the beach but literary enough for a weekend in the Hamptons.”—Chicago Tribune