This workbook is intended as a source of supplementary reading and exercise material for courses based on Mastering English. Where appropriate, exercises that inquire into the development framework of Mastering English are provided.
Douglas Kennedy’s new novel demonstrates once again his talent for writing serious popular fiction. The Pursuit of Happiness and A Special Relationship were both Sunday Times bestsellers in paperback.
When Harry Ricks arrives in Paris on a bleak January morning he is a broken man. He is running away from a failed marriage and a dark scandal that ruined his career as a film lecturer in a small American university. With no money and nowhere to live, Harry swiftly falls in with the city’s underclass, barely scraping a living while trying to finish the book he’d always dreamed of writing.
A chance meeting with a mysterious woman, Margit Kadar, with whom Harry falls in love, is his only hope of a brighter future. However, Margit isn’t all she seems to be and Harry increasingly feels that a dark force is at work in his life — as punishment begins to be meted out to anyone who has recently done him wrong. Before he knows it, he finds himself of increasing interest to the police, and waking up in a nightmare from which there is no easy escape.
A successful novelist by day, Hunter Rose becomes the unstoppable assassin Grendel by night, the leader of a vast criminal empire opposed by the mysterious wolf Argent. Containing the black-and-white interiors and full-color covers of Primer #2 and Grendel #1-3 originally published by Comico, this handsome hardcover volume is an essential piece of comics history, presenting the earliest work of Matt Wagner, the legendary creator behind such acclaimed projects as Mage, Sandman Mystery Theatre and Batman: The Monster Men among many others.
By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything
A young woman hired to keep the books at a down-at-the-heels nightclub is taken under the wing of the infamous Gloria Denton, a mob luminary who reigned during the Golden Era of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Notoriously cunning and ruthless, Gloria shows her eager young protégée the ropes, ushering her into a glittering demimonde of late-night casinos, racetracks, betting parlors, inside heists, and big, big money. Suddenly, the world is at her feet—as long as she doesn't take any chances, like falling for the wrong guy. As the roulette wheel turns, both mentor and protégée scramble to stay one step ahead of their bosses and each other.
At the distant beginning of Western civilization, according to European tradition, Greece stands as an insular, isolated, near-miracle of burgeoning culture. This book traverses the ancient world's three great centers of cultural exchange--Babylonian Nineveh, Egyptian Memphis, and Iranian Persepolis--to situate classical Greece in its proper historical place, at the Western margin of a more comprehensive Near Eastern-Aegean cultural community that emerged in the Bronze Age and expanded westward in the first millennium B.C.
In concise and inviting fashion, Walter Burkert lays out the essential evidence for this ongoing reinterpretation of Greek culture. In particular, he points to the critical role of the development of writing in the ancient Near East, from the achievement of cuneiform in the Bronze Age to the rise of the alphabet after 1000 B.C. From the invention and diffusion of alphabetic writing, a series of cultural encounters between "Oriental" and Greek followed. Burkert details how the Assyrian influences of Phoenician and Anatolian intermediaries, the emerging fascination with Egypt, and the Persian conquests in Ionia make themselves felt in the poetry of Homer and his gods, in the mythic foundations of Greek cults, and in the first steps toward philosophy. A journey through the fluid borderlines of the Near East and Europe, with new and shifting perspectives on the cultural exchanges these produced, this book offers a clear view of the multicultural field upon which the Greek heritage that formed Western civilization first appeared.
Robocop was one of the truly great bits of movie and pop culture magic from the 1980s, and Frank Miller wanted to deliver a masterpiece with his original movie script, but Hollywood massively edited his work. In full-on action, the Robocop story is told as Frank Miller always intended, composed straight from the master's original writings and scripts! The vast majority of Miller's insane ideas, vicious black humor and robotic mayhem never made it to the screen, but every last bit is finally unleashed in this series! With sequential adaptation from Steven Grant and art by superstar Juan Jose Ryp, this sci-fi epic is not to be missed!
In the 1970s and 1980s, before he earned national acclaim for his award-winning novels, Pete Dexter was a newspaper columnist. Every week, in a few hundred words, Dexter cut directly to the heart of the American character at a time of national turmoil and crucial change. With haunting urgency, his columns laid bare the violence, hypocrisy, and desperation he saw on the streets of Philadelphia and in the places he visited across the country. But he reveled, too, in the lighter side of his own life, sharing scenes with the indefatigable Mrs. Dexter, their young daughter, and a series of unforgettable creatures who strayed into their lives. No matter what caught Dexter's eye, it was illuminated by his dark, brilliant humor.
Collected here for the first time are eighty-two of the best of those spellbinding, finely wrought pieces—with a new introduction by the author—assembled by Rob Fleder, editor of the bestselling Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary Book. Paper Trails is searing, heart-breaking, and irresistibly funny, sometimes all at once. As Pete Hamill says in his foreword, these essays "are as good as it ever gets."
