Showing results for "Derby" in Literature & Fiction

The Illiad dates back to the 8th century BC and is Homer's epic precursor to The Odyssey. Set during the Trojan War, it tells of battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.

Brandon and Justine have just moved into their new house, an idyllic Craftsman bungalow in a picture-perfect enclave of East Los Angeles.

The year is 1970. Emma Gable, a blind teenager coming of age in a small industrial town in Western New York, is about as far from the seismic cultural transformations rocking campuses and city streets across America as a person can get. Emma escapes the chaos of her dysfunctional family by dialing up random numbers on the phone in her bedroom, just to see who'll answer.

Darby Buckingham was an unlikely candidate for frontier life. From his round-toed shoes to his derby hat, he was a man of culture, a creature of comfort, who liked his gourmet restaurants and expensive cigars. The short, stocky New Yorker made a fortune writing dime novels about the old west.

Darby Buckingham becomes the unwilling owner of a herd of 12 dirty and disagreeable camels. Deciding to go into the freight business, Darby is faced with unfriendly Paiutes, scorching desert and steep, impassable trails. Add to that the horrors contrived by the murderous band of a competitor, an ugly giant known as Big Bert Jasper, and you have all the makings of an exciting story. The Derby Man will be hard pressed to come out ahead on this caper.

Written in 1933, this classic ghost story features Bowen's typically superb descriptions of desolation and decay. Bowen was born on November 1, 1885, on Hayling Island, Hampshire, and died December 23, 1952. She was a novelist and writer whose total output numbers over 150 volumes.

Look sharp, hit hard - that's the Derby Man's style. He's a fast-moving mountain of muscle who throws himself into the thick of the West's greatest adventures - like the Pony Express, a grueling 2,000 mile race through hell. The pace and terrain are deadly enough but vengeful Paiute warriors and murdering saboteurs led by a sadistic giant threaten to turn the route into a trail of blood. Then one man with the guts to save the Pony Express stepped forward - the Derby Man.

Darby Buckingham, the portly New York writer, had an appetite for local color to add punch to his newest dime novel. But when Hench Hightower rode into town with his half-dead herd of mustangs, Darby had no stomach for what he saw. It was time to end a vicious cattle baron's control of the Nevada range...time to end the murder of the mustangs. Darby looked like a dude, but he'd fight like a demon. Caught up in a stampeding adventure, Buckingham swore he'd live to tell the tale.

When Darby Buckham's fianceé Dolly Beavers fails to show for their announced wedding, he realizes something is wrong. He strikes out for Reno convinced she must be a victim of foul play. Darby is accompanied by an overzealous, aspiring young writer. Looking after this tenderfoot while tracking down Dolly's captors on a danger-ridden trail that winds through Nevada, Wyoming and Colorado, Darby wonders if he'll live to see his wedding day.

A man could mine fabulous wealth on the Comstock, but Darby Buckingham strikes only a mother lode of trouble. With his sledgehammer fists and sharply honed wits, Darby sets out to expose a spellbinding stock manipulator. Rigging a boxing match that becomes a nightmare of punishment, sabotaging a mine shaft into a pit of death - Darby's rattle-snake of an opponent baits him ruthlessly.

He is the most cruelly dangerous opponent the Derby Man has ever challenged: Wesley Bryant, now the crime lord of San Francisco. Darby smashes through the sword-wielding Chinese Tong warriors who protect Bryant's vicious web of vice, but Bryant escapes to launch his most ruthless scheme - stealing the vast wealth of Alaska for his own empire of evil.

The thundering engines of the Central Pacific are stalled in the quest to conquer the mighty Sierras. Only a mountain of a man, Darby Buckingham, could pound the railroad through the granite walls of trouble. Atop sheer rock cliffs just a death plunge away from the surging river a thousand feet below, braving punishing cold, Darby must lay down track, foot by hard-blasted foot, with a construction crew that is threatening to tear itself apart with vicious fighting.

It begins as a statistical oddity: a spike in children born with acute speech delays. Physically normal in every way, these children never speak and do not respond to speech; they don't learn to read, don't learn to write. As the number of cases grows to an epidemic level, theories spread. Maybe it's related to a popular antidepressant; maybe it's environmental. Or maybe these children have special skills all their own.

Amid the heralded springtime traditions and fabulous splendor of the Kentucky Derby, two Boston couples—longtime friends—indulge in a once-in-a-lifetime getaway. The weekend feels like a winner. It’s a milestone-birthday present for the newly—and reluctantly—turned forty Drew Starling. Her husband, Nate, has spared no expense, despite the mounting gambling debts that Drew knows nothing about. He’s certain that with his lucky charm, Drew, by his side, he can reverse his misfortunes at Churchill Downs.