Fleming Community Library

G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece is a psychological thriller that centers on seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the names of the days of the week. Chesterton explores the meanings of their disguised identities in what is a fascinating mystery and, ultimately, a spellbinding allegory. As Jonathan Lethem remarks in his Introduction, the real characters are the ideas. Chesterton's nutty agenda is really quite...

A sort of love story revealing the purpose of the moon, the difference between criminals and outlaws, and the problem with redheads. Also paints a humorous portrait of contemporary society.

Early one morning, Thomas Pitt, dauntless mainstay of the Special Branch, is summoned to Long Spoon Lane, where anarchists are plotting an attack. Bombs explode, destroying the homes of many poor people. After a chase, two of the culprits are captured and the leader is shot . . . but by whom?As Pitt delves into the case, he finds that there is more to the terrorism than the destructive gestures of misguided idealists. The police are running a lucrative...

After 4 p.m. on September 6, 1901, 28-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz pumps two shots into the chest and abdomen of President William McKinley. Czolgosz had been on a receiving line waiting to shake the president's hand, his revolver concealed in an oversized bandage covering his right hand and wrist. After he is apprehended, Czolgosz says simply, "I done my duty." Both law enforcement and the press insist Czolgosz is merely the tip of a vast and...

When an explosion kills wealthy industrialist Gregory Van Dyke, Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt presumes that anarchists are responsible and personally asks Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy to track them down. Malloy is up to the challenge--but he faces a different kind of challenge when he encounters Sarah Brandt paying a condolence call on the Van Dykes. Faced with the impossibility of ever expressing his true feelings for Sarah, Frank had vowed...

Once again, the powers-that-be ask liberal aristocrat Lord Charles Sheridan to investigate a crime, here the detonation of a bomb in Hyde Park that kills a suspected anarchist seemingly en route to Buckingham Palace shortly after the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902.

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, attempts to reunite two planets cut off from each other by centuries of distrust.

This collection of interconnected stories begins with the anarchist daughter of missionaries in Manhattan who runs away to be an activist and ends with a wealthy young adulterer in Paris who is outsmarted by the object of his desire.