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Brian Moore's Early Fiction
Brian Moore's early fiction refers to the seven pulp fiction thrillers, published between 1951 and 1957,Busby, p. 208. that the acclaimed novelist Brian Moore wrote before he achieved success and international recognition with ''Judith Hearne'' (1955) and '' The Feast of Lupercal'' (1957). Moore, who was born in Belfast in 1921, wrote his first fiction in Canada, where he lived from 1948 to 1958. His earliest books were thrillers, published under his own name or using the pseudonyms Bernard Mara or Michael Bryan. The first two of these pieces of pulp fiction, all of which he later disowned, were published in Canada by Harlequin – ''Wreath for a Redhead'' in March 1951 and ''The Executioners'' later in 1951. Arguably the most significant of these early works is ''Intent to Kill'' (written by Moore as "Michael Bryan" and published in 1957) which was adapted into a film of the same name, released in 1958. In the ''film noir'' genre, it was directed by Jack Cardiff and starred R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thriller (genre)
Thriller is a genre of fiction with numerous, often overlapping, subgenres, including crime fiction, crime, horror fiction, horror, and detective fiction. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the mood (psychology), moods they elicit, giving their audiences heightened feelings of suspense, Psychomotor agitation, excitement, Surprise (emotion), surprise, anticipation (emotion), anticipation and anxiety. This genre is well suited to Thriller film, film and television. A thriller generally keeps its audience on the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax (narrative), climax. The cover-up of important information is a common element. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists, unreliable narrators, and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is often a villain-driven plot, whereby they present obstacles that the protagonist or hero must overcome. Roots of the genre date back hundreds of years, but it began to develop as a distinct style in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Betsy Drake
Betsy Drake (September 11, 1923 – October 27, 2015) was an American actress, writer, and psychotherapist. She was the third wife of actor Cary Grant. Early life and education Betsy Drake, the eldest child of two American expatriates, was born in Paris. Her grandfather, Tracy Drake, and his brother had opened the Drake Hotel in Chicago on New Year's Eve in 1920. The Drakes lost their money in the 1929 stock-market crash. As a result, she returned to the U.S. on the with her parents, brothers, and a nanny. She grew up in Chicago; Westport, Connecticut; Washington, DC; Virginia; North Carolina; and New York City. She went to 12 different schools, both private and public, before concentrating on theater and acting at National Park Seminary. Career Drake began looking for work as an actress in New York City, supporting herself by working as a Conover model. She met the playwright Horton Foote, who offered her a job as an understudy in his play ''Only the Heart'', which en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gold Medal Books
Gold Medal Books, launched by Fawcett Publications in 1950, was an American book publisher known for introducing paperback originals, a publishing innovation at the time. Fawcett was also an independent newsstand distributor, and in 1949 the company negotiated a contract with New American Library to distribute their Mentor and Signet titles. This contract prohibited Fawcett from publishing their own paperback reprints. Roscoe Kent Fawcett wanted to establish a line of Fawcett paperbacks, and he felt original paperbacks would not be a violation of the contract. In order to test a loophole in the contract, Fawcett published two anthologies — ''The Best of True (magazine), True Magazine'' and ''What Today's Woman Should Know About Marriage and Sex'' — reprinting material from Fawcett magazines not previously published in books. When these books successfully sailed through the contract loophole, Fawcett announced Gold Medal Books, their line of paperback originals. Sales soared ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1954 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1954. Events *January – Kingsley Amis's first novel, the comic campus novel ''Lucky Jim'', is published by Victor Gollancz Ltd in London. *January 7 – The Georgetown–IBM experiment is the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, held in New York at the IBM head office. *January 25 – Dylan Thomas's radio play ''Under Milk Wood'' is first broadcast in the U.K. on the BBC Third Programme, two months after its author's death, with Richard Burton as "First Voice". *February – '' The London Magazine'' is revived as a literary magazine, with John Lehmann as editor. * March 31 – A. L. Zissu is sentenced in Bucharest to life imprisonment for "conspiring against the social order". This has been a focal point in the anti-Zionist clampdown in Communist Romania. * May 29 – The rediscovered and restored early 17th-century Corral de comedias de Almagro in Spain is re-ina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jove Books
Jove Books, formerly known as Pyramid Books, is an American paperback and eBook publishing imprint, founded as an independent paperback house in 1949 by Almat Magazine Publishers (also known as Almat Publishing Corporation) (Alfred R. Plaine and Matthew Huttner). The company was sold to the Walter Reade Organization in the late 1960s. It was acquired in 1974 by Harcourt Brace (which became Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) which renamed it to Jove in 1977 and continued the line as an imprint. In 1979, they sold it to The Putnam Berkley Group, which is now part of the Penguin Group. History 1949–1969 Phil Hirsch was vice president of Pyramid Books from 1955 to 1975 and had his name as author or editor on many of Pyramid's books, many of them anthologies of jokes, cartoons and humor, or concerned with the military and warfare, including some which combined those interests. While not the most prolific publisher of science fiction and fantasy during its years as Pyramid, it did offe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1951 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1951. Events *January 12 – Janie Moore, C. S. Lewis' so-called adoptive mother, dies. *March – The American writer Flannery O'Connor leaves hospital after being diagnosed with lupus at the age of 25. *March 12 – Hank Ketcham's U.S. '' Dennis the Menace'' appears for the first time in 16 United States newspapers. *March 17 – The homonymous U.K. '' Dennis the Menace'' comic strip first appears in the children's comic ''The Beano''. *Spring – Arthur C. Clarke's short story " The Sentinel", which will form a basis for the film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968) and a subsequent novel, is published as "Sentinel of Eternity" in the only issue ever produced of the American science fiction and fantasy pulp magazine '' 10 Story Fantasy''. *May – Joe Orton enters the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where he meets his lover and ultimate murderer Kenneth Halliwell. *June 18 – Frank Hardy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1995 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1995. Events *January 12 – The première of Sarah Kane's complete '' Blasted'' at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London provokes outrage. *February 28 – '' The Diary of Bridget Jones'' column first appears in ''The Independent'' newspaper (London). *March 1 – The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea is opened by Jimmy Carter. * April 23 – World Book Day is first celebrated. * July 16 – Amazon.com, incorporated a year earlier by Jeff Bezos in Washington (state) as an online bookstore, sells its first book: Douglas Hofstadter's '' Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought''. *August – Blackwell UK becomes the first British bookseller to offer online purchasing. * December 13 – The released film of Jane Austen's '' Sense and Sensibility'' has an Academy Award-winning screenplay by Emma Thompson. ''Uncertain dates'' *Simon & Schust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Statement (novel)
''The Statement'' (1995) is a thriller novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore. Set in the south of France and Paris in the early 1990s, ''The Statement'' is the tale of Pierre Brossard, a former officer in the pro-fascist militia that served Vichy France and a murderer of Jews. The novel was published by Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom in 1995 and by E.P. Dutton in the United States on 1 June 1996. Plot summary Now 70 years old, Brossard has spent the better part of his life in hiding by traveling among the monasteries and abbeys that offer him asylum. Though he has evaded capture for decades with the help of the French government and the Catholic Church, a new breed of government officials is now determined to break decades of silence and expose and to expiate the crimes of Vichy France. Inspiration The character of Pierre Brossard in ''The Statement'' is inspired by Paul Touvier (1915–1996), a French Nazi collaborator who was arrested for war crimes in 1989. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1990 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1990. Events *March – Anton Chekhov's play '' Three Sisters'' opens at the Gate Theatre in Dublin with locally born Sinéad, Sorcha and Niamh Cusack in the title rôles and their father Cyril Cusack as Dr. Chebutykin. * March 20 – Stephen Blumberg is arrested for stealing more than 23,600 books in North America. *May 24 – Alicia Girón García is the first woman to become director of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. *c. June – J. K. Rowling has the idea for Harry Potter while on a train from Manchester to London: "I was staring out the window, and the idea for Harry just came. He appeared in my mind's eye, very fully formed. The basic idea was for a boy who didn't know what he was." She begins writing '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', which will be completed in 1995 and published in 1997. *October – Nicci Gerrard marries Sean French in the London Borough of Hackn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lies Of Silence
''Lies of Silence'' is a novel by Brian Moore published in 1990. It focuses on the personal effects of The Troubles, a period of ethnic, religious and political conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to 1998. Plot The plot revolves around the protagonist, Michael Dillon, and his wife, Moira Dillon, who are held hostage in their house by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The men force Dillon, an apolitical hotel manager, to drive his bomb-laden car to the hotel that he manages so that they can kill a leading Protestant reverend, members of the Orange Order, and militant Protestants, all of whom are attending the same function. Various aspects of female psychology are also present throughout the novel, including Dillon's extramarital affair with the Canadian writer Andrea and Moira's mental breakdown following the revelation of his infidelity. Reception Upon its publication, ''Lies of Silence'' received positive acclaim internationally. ''Publi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1987 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1987. Events *January 2 – Golliwogs in Enid Blyton children's books are replaced by the British publisher with gnomes after complaints of a racial offence implication. *April – K. W. Jeter coins the term "Steampunk" in a letter published in '' Locus: the magazine of the science fiction & fantasy field''. *June – Virago Press of London publishes ''Down the Road, Worlds Away'', a collection of short stories ostensibly by Rahila Khan, a young Muslim woman living in England. Three weeks later, Toby Forward, an Anglican clergyman, admits to writing them and the publisher withdraws the book. "He, unlike the editors at Virago, had grown up in precisely the kind of area and social conditions that the book described.... Although the book never claimed to be other than a work of fiction, the publishers destroyed the stock still in the warehouse and recalled all unsold copies from the bookshops, thus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Colour Of Blood
''The Colour of Blood'', published in 1987, is a political thriller by Northern Irish-Canadian novelist Brian Moore about Stephen Bem, a Cardinal in an unnamed East European country who is in conflict with the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and finds himself caught in the middle of an escalating revolution. Description Clancy Sigal, writing in ''The New York Times'', described the novel as a study of faith under pressure: "Almost in thriller form, it is also a wise and illuminating meditation on the labyrinthine forces at work in a Roman Catholic Communist country like Poland (where Mr. Moore served with a United Nations relief group after the war)." According to critic Jo O'Donoghue, ''The Colour of Blood'' deals with the problem of how the modern Catholic Church "is to live in tandem with the secular authority". In her biography of Moore, Patricia Craig describes ''The Colour of Blood'' as a protest against intolerance, "with fanatical Catholicism presented as a destructiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
