Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
I want to read the book!
All characters reduced
The Balloonist - cover

The Balloonist

MacDonald Harris

Publisher: The Overlook Press

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

The acclaimed novel of love, ambition, and Arctic adventure “told with fin de siecle elegance”—with an introduction by Philip Pullman (Kirkus Reviews).   It is July 1897, at the northernmost reach of the inhabited world. Swedish inventor Gustav Crispin is determined to become the first person to set foot on the North Pole, and return, borne by hot air balloon. Making the expedition with two companions—an American journalist and a young, French-speaking adventurer—all three climb into the small wicker gondola and cuts the ropes. But as Gustav pursues his history-making ambition, and their flimsy balloon is battered by Arctic winds, his mind returns again and again to his fraught romance with the beautiful Luisa.   Nominated for the National Book Award in 1977, The Balloonist was hailed by Mary Renault as a “tour de force.” The story of Gustav Crispin is “chilling and comic by turn . . . An unusual mixture of Arctic adventure and Parisian love story with philosophic overtones” (Kirkus Reviews).
Available since: 11/06/2012.
Print length: 256 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Where There's a Will - cover

    Where There's a Will

    Mark Dumas, Cara Lopez Lee

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    World War II hero Will Miner is close with his grandson, seventeen-year-old musician Dylan Mercer. So when Dylan’s best friend dies, he runs away to Grandpa’s to hide from his memory and his future. Dylan escapes choosing between college and rock-and-roll, disappears into the stories of eighty-one-year-old Grandpa Will, and discovers a surprise: before Will became a hero, he was a young rebel. Will’s tales of the circus, Route 66, riding the rails, and fighting a war, reveal he’s hiding his own losses. Where There’s a Will takes readers under the surface of one hot Tennessee summer, as grandfather and grandson spill secrets and discover a true bond between men.
    Show book
  • A Fleet In Being; Notes Of Two Trips With The Channel Squadro - cover

    A Fleet In Being; Notes Of Two...

    Rudyard Kipling

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Not Yet Available
    Show book
  • Justice - Stories - cover

    Justice - Stories

    Larry Watson

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    The author of Montana 1948 explores the early years of a powerful Western family in these “beautifully written” linked stories (USA Today). 
 
Larry Watson’s bestselling novel Montana 1948 was acclaimed as a “work of art,” a prize-winning evocation of a time, a place, and a family (San Francisco Chronicle). Justice is the stunning prequel that illuminates the Hayden clan’s early years, and the circumstances that led to the events of Montana 1948. With the precision of a master storyteller, Watson moves seamlessly through the decades and among the strong and hard-bitten characters that make up the Hayden family, and in the process opens an evocative window on the very heart of the American West. 
 
“An engrossing story of love, familial relationships, and secrets . . . re-creates the vivid beauty of Big Sky country.” —Booklist 
 
“Filled with rugged prose sometimes as biting as a northern plains wind.” —The Washington Post 
 
“Surprises and scenes of dramatic power punctuate the narrative . . . Throughout, Watson writes with ruthless honesty about his characters’ stunted dreams, unpredictable emotions and outbursts of senseless violence, showing once again that he understands not only the West but the untamed hearts that have roamed it.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
    Show book
  • Soldier of the Queen - cover

    Soldier of the Queen

    Griff Hosker

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    1878: When his family loses their home, to Jack Roberts, who has grown up hearing stories of the Crimean war and the magnificent charge of the Heavy Brigade, the choice between working in a dangerous factory or enlisting in the army and putting on the famed red uniform is an easy one. But when fighting for Queen and Country takes him far from home and defending a small mission station from overwhelming numbers, it is anything but easy and bravery and stoicism take on new meaning.
    Show book
  • The Dead Men - Fiskardo's War Book 2 - cover

    The Dead Men - Fiskardo's War...

    J. C. Harvey

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Summer 1630. The Swedish army is fighting its way down through Germany, with Jack Fiskardo and his company of scouts, or 'discoverers', fighting the guerrilla war ahead of the main advance. There are new allies to be made, new perils to overcome, new enemies to outwit and new adventures to pursue; but there is also a fortune for the taking, a mystery to be solved, and a destiny to fulfil - one that will see Jack brought face-to-face at last with his sworn enemy, Carlo Fantom. And in the wintry forests of Bohemia, that destiny will present Jack with an almost impossible choice - does he pursue his final vengeance, or does he turn aside, to help a child as helpless as he once was himself?
    Show book
  • Surviving Dresden - A Novel about Life Death and Redemption in World War II - cover

    Surviving Dresden - A Novel...

    James Kirby Martin, Robert Burris

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Surviving Dresden beautifully portrays the poignant and inspiring human struggle between good and evil in the search for peace during the last bloody days of World War II.On the ground that horrific night is a courageous young Jewish woman, Gisela Kauffmann. Having just received orders to be herded off to a concentration camp, Gisela will do anything to save herself and her family. In the air, RAF bomber Captain Wallace Campbell is torn between his sworn military duty to bomb an unarmed city crowded with refugees, and his growing conviction that total war is immoral.Surviving Dresden is told through the eyes of Gisela, Wallace, and a compelling cast of characters—a story of personal pain and suffering amid the hope, even as the bombs are falling, of restoring human sanity to a world torn apart.Masterfully sweeping, Surviving Dresden explores the depths of human courage in facing life and death, with human redemption triumphing.
    Show book