The Fourth Hand

“Imagine a young man on his way to a less-than-thirty second event — the loss of his left hand, long before he reached middle age.” The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: “How can anyone identify a dream of the future?” The answer: “Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love.” While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband’s left hand—that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy. This is how John Irving’s tenth novel begins; it seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is as realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. Irving’s previous novels—including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year—or his Oscar-winning screenplay of The Cider House Rules. The Fourth Hand is characteristic of John Irving’s seamless storytelling and further explores some of the author’s recurring themes—loss, grief, love as redemption. But this novel also breaks new ground; it offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change.

Billy, a solitary bisexual man, is dedicated to making himself worthwhile.

Until I Find You is the story of the actor Jack Burns – his life, loves, celebrity and astonishing search for the truth about his parents. When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead – has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or “scratcher.” Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England – including, tellingly, a girls’ school in Toronto. His real education consists of his relationships with older women – from Emma Oastler, who initiates him into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda’s, with whom he first appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when sent to learn wrestling at a local gym. Too much happens in this expansive, eventful novel to possibly summarize it all. Emma and Jack move to Los Angeles, where Emma becomes a successful novelist and Jack a promising actor. A host of eccentric minor characters memorably come and go, including Jack’s hilariously confused teacher the Wurtz; Michelle Maher, the girlfriend he will never forget; and a precocious child Jack finds in the back of an Audi in a restaurant parking lot. We learn about tattoo addiction and movie cross-dressing, “sleeping in the needles” and the cure for cauliflower ears. And John Irving renders his protagonist’s unusual rise through Hollywood with the same vivid detail and range of emotions he gives to the organ music Jack hears as a child in European churches. This is an absorbing and moving book about obsession and loss, truth and storytelling, the signs we carry on us and inside us, the traces we can’t get rid of. Jack has always lived in the shadow of his absent father. But as he grows older – and when his mother dies – he starts to doubt the portrait of his father’s character she painted for him when he was a child. This is the cue for a second journey around Europe in search of his father, from Edinburgh to Switzerland, towards a conclusion of great emotional force. A melancholy tale of deception, Until I Find You is also a swaggering comic novel, a giant tapestry of life’s hopes. It is a masterpiece to compare with John Irving’s great novels, and restates the author’ s claim to be considered the most glorious, comic, moving novelist at work today.

Patrick Wallingford is an irrefutably good-looking television journalist. While filming a report on a circus in India, a lion eats his left hand in a grisly scene that is watched by millions on television. Bereft of his hand, Wallingford bizarrely finds that his life is blossoming and he has become even more attractive to the opposite sex. When a surgeon offers him a hand transplant, he is seduced into agreeing, but unfortunately finds that his new hand has strings attached in the shape of the former owner's widow...

The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: “How can anyone identify a dream of the future?” The answer: “Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love.” While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband’s left hand– that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy. This is how John Irving’s tenth novel begins; it seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is as realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. Irving’s previous novels – including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year – or his Oscar-winning screenplay of The Cider House Rules. The Fourth Hand is characteristic of John Irving’s seamless storytelling and further explores some of the author’s recurring themes – loss, grief, love as redemption. But this novel also breaks new ground; it offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to

John Irving's memoir begins with his account of the distinguished career and medical writings of the novelist's grandfather Dr. Frederick C. Irving, a renowned obstetrician and gynecologist, and includes Mr. Irving's incisive history of abortion politics in the United States. But My Movie Business focuses primarily on the thirteen years John Irving spent adapting his novel The Cider House Rules for the screen--for four different directors. Mr. Irving also writes about the failed effort to make his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, into a movie; about two of the films that were made from his novels (but not from his screenplays), The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire; about his slow progress at shepherding his screenplay of A Son of the Circus into production. Not least, and in addition to its qualities as a memoir--anecdotal, comic, affectionate, and candid--My Movie Business is an insightful essay on the essential differences between writing a novel and writing a screenplay. The photographs in My Movie Business were taken by Stephen Vaughan, the still photographer on the set of The Cider House Rules--a Miramax production directed by Lasse Hallström, with Michael Caine in the role of Dr. Larch. Concurrently with the November 1999 release of the film, Talk Miramax Books will publish John Irving's screenplay.

When an Italian mob named The Red Hand extort the English nation, threatening to release a plague if their financial demands are not met, Professor Tillizini, a clever man, seeks to save his country by dismantling the secret society. After deciding the most efficient way to stop The Red Hand would be to reveal their secrets, particularly the identity of their leader, Tillizini begins his investigation with his friend, Antonio Festini. Though he is a talented investigator, Tillizini struggles to foil The Red Hand’s master plans of terrorism, but finds that he is a worthy match to the villainous organization’s wit and brawn. As the threat of a severe biological weapon weighs heavily over England, the professor continues his unorthodox method of fighting crime, searching for true identities, uncovering gripping drama, and eventually making a shocking discovery that hits very close to home. With betrayals, twists, family drama, and action, Edgar Wallace’s The Fourth Plague appeals to modern audiences and demands full attention. Filled with drama, mystery, and suspense, The Fourth Plague depicts an unconventional hero as he attempts to soil the nefarious plots of an Italian mob. The Fourth Plague was among Wallace’s earliest attempts at crime fiction, his second most popular genre. Despite being first published over one-hundred years ago in 1913, this captivating thriller feels fresh and contemporary, timeless with an exciting plot and compelling characters. This edition of The Fourth Plague by Edgar Wallace now features an eye-catching new cover design and is printed in a font that is both modern and readable. With these accommodations, this edition of The Fourth Plague creates an accessible and pleasant reading experience for modern audiences while restoring the original suspense and genius of Edgar Wallace’s work.