The Centaur is a 1963 novel by John Updike. It won the National Book Award in 1964. The story concerns George Caldwell, a school teacher, and his son Peter, outside of Alton (i.e., Reading), Pennsylvania. The novel explores the relationship between the depressive Caldwell and his anxious son. Like James Joyce in Ulysses, Updike drew on the myths of antiquity in an attempt to turn a modern and common scene into something more profound, a meditation on life and man's relationship to nature and eternity. George is both the Centaur Chiron and Prometheus (some readers might see George's son Peter as Prometheus), Mr. Hummel, the automobile mechanic, is Hephaestus (AKA Vulcan); and so forth.
Published in 1967 and then extensively revised in 1978, The Ninth Configuration is a fascinating look at madness, philosophy, and the nature of religious belief. William Peter Blatty is most well-known for his novel The Exorcist, and his Academy-award winning screenplay for the movie. He also wrote a sequel to The Exorcist, Legion, and directed Exorcist III as well as the film version of The Ninth Configuration. Mark Kermode is a well-known film scholar and expert on William Peter Blatty's fiction and films.
Dr Azor Sparks's genius saves lives, he is also a pillar of the local evangelical church and a committed family man. So who would want to murder him? The answer, Lieutenant Peter Decker soon concludes, is a lot of people.
The Peter Duck of the title is an ancient, hugely experienced, sailor who has spent his life sailing the oceans on tea clippers such as the Thermopylae. Retiring to his wherry on the Norfolk Broads, Peter Duck passes his time in Lowestoft Harbour watching ships preparing to head out to sea.
First published in 1981, this award-winning biography remains a classic study of a quite remarkable character in Russian history. Remembered as an enlightened reformer and a statesman of considerable significance, yet also as a barbarous feudal tsar with a highly volatile temperament, Peter the Great provides the biographer with very rich pickings. Where Massie's volume triumphed over other predecessors, however, was in its extreme breadth of vision - as the Sunday Times remarked...
