Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Book For Little Ones
My daughter loves all things fairy and asks for this to be read over and over.This is a charming story.It has sweet drawings and a couple of morals within the story.The pictures add so much to the text and I love the extra illustrations at the end as well as the poem at the beginning.Makes a great birthday present for all your little fairy lovers.A Tale of Fairyland (the Princess Nobody): With 61 Full-Color Illustrations ... Read more

Book Description
For the ambitious (and salacious-sounding) exhibition 50,000 Beds, Brooklyn-based multimedia artist Chris Doyle commissioned 45 fellow artists to make short videos, each set in a different hotel or motel in Connecticut. The videos were shown concurrently--in specially designed multi-screen galleries--at Connecticut's three premier contemporary art venues, which opened on three consecutive nights: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Artspace in New Haven and Real Art Ways in Hartford. Doyle's concept focuses on the hotel as a site of narrative potential, a location that is intimate, anonymous and infused with tension between the guests and the staff. All 45 artists included in the exhibition--a range of contemporary emerging artists who have come up with a diversity of responses to the challenge posed, from fiction to documentary to animation--are included in this attractive volume bound in faux suede. ... Read more

Book Description
Flood is a devastating and compulsive thriller that reads like fact. The country has suffered floods on an unprecedented scale in recent years, but have we seen the worst, an inundation that threatens millions of lives? Doyle’s vision is incontestable, backed up by over twenty-five years of research. Flood is the disaster novel of today.

A storm rages over the north of Britain, a troop carrier founders in the Irish Sea, flood indicators go off the scale, the seas are mountainous and a spring tide is about to strike the East Coast. Air sea rescue and military personnel struggle to save lives all down the coast. The worse is yet to come. When the storm reaches the south the two forces of wind and tide will combine and send a huge one-in-a-thousand tidal surge up the Thames.

But surely London is safe: the Thames Barrier will save the capital from disaster as it was intended to do? The river is a titanic presence by now, higher than anyone has known it, and the surge thunders towards the Barrier. Scientists begin to talk of the possibility of overtopping. Can fifty feet high gates be overwhelmed by a wave? Then there is an explosion the size of a small Hiroshima: a supertanker is ablaze in the estuary and most of the Essex petrochemical works are going up with it. The Thames catches fire and the wall of fire and water thunders towards Britain’s capital. This is the story of what happens next, and the desperate attempts to save the capital from destruction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliant update of DELUGE, and far better!
In 1976, Richard Doyle wrote a disaster novel called DELUGE, about London flooding. This was written before the Thames Barrier was built, and such a disaster was after that inconceivable. However, when you read this updated and much more realistic version, you will be left wondering whether the Barrier will be safe enough to stop a massive tidal surge. Not only that, in this story a tanker explodes, hitting oil refineries in Canvey Island , Essex, just east of London, causing a massive burning oil slick to head for the capital. The British Government's people - Home Secretary Venetia Maitland and Royal Navy troubleshooter Roland Raikes do all they can to prevent the disaster from getting worse as the burning flood tide heads at an alarming pace towards London. Richard Doyle has certainly done his research into how such a huge disaster could occur and just who it would affect. The locations featured are as authentic as you could get - the Van Ommeren oil refinery in Essex is a place I used to work next door to and brought back some memories. The descriptions of the fire and flood destroying landmarks is so well told it's unsettling at times, but this is a book you just cannot stop reading. There are no main characters, apart from, perhaps Raikes and Maitland, this story is told as-it-happens in a present tense making you feel you are there, the disaster itself is the main element focused on. There are assorted subplots of people being rescued from the London Underground, the THames Barrier and how it fails, schoolchildren escaping the Millennium Dome and shoppers trapped at Bluewater retail city - and a massive inferno at Canary Wharf tower. Overall, very frightening and hard to fault, and a book that makes compelling reading!

Not your usual disaster novel
First of Richard Doyle's books I've read. Its cover caught my eye in passing with the London Eye and a wall of fire behind it. I left this novel with a sense of disquiet and a massively improved sense of understanding as to exactly what a flood could do to London. Admittedly it is fiction, but it possessed enough convincing technical `fact' as to the impending reality to leave me with that lingering sour taste in the mouth.
The main driver behind `Flood' is the fact that there is no focus on a particular character. This limits the assumed pathos that tends to come with any disaster novel and, curiously, means the results of the flood become the main character. All of which made it extremely interesting.
I find that what tends to happen in this thriller sub-genre is that we follow defined characters as they both react to and deal with the aftermath of the given disaster.
That is limited here.
There are key people we can point to, like the Home Secretary, Venetia, the Barrier chief engineer, Angus, Bluewater's management team headed by Murdoch. There is also Sophie de Salis and her interaction with Harriet and the children Miranda and Chrissie, the head mistress, Pam and Jen-0's master, Ted, to name a few. Yet, we get snapshots of them spaced far apart so any development of a relationship between reader and character is not overly encouraged.
The premise of `Flood' is of a storm that develops over Canada, moves across the Atlantic, rounds Scotland and plunges down the North Sea. It creates a `surge' that coincides with High Tide up the Thames to the point that the relevant authorities realise too late it will top the Thames Barrier and flood substantial parts of London. The disaster is compounded by the fact that a laden supertanker gets out of control and several important gas and oil works explode ensuing millions of tonnes of oils and flammable chemicals ride the surge up the river. Add major gas explosions caused by the inferno to this and we end up with the worst case scenario - fire and flood.
So, geography becomes our main character as the story follows the flood up the Thames in a wave of destruction as we see it envelop Canvey Island, Docklands, Bluewater, the Underground, Dartford Bridge, the Dome and many more landmarks. The sheer scale of the devastation is hard to grasp and Doyle floods the novel with facts and science in a Clancy-esque manner.You end the novel with a better knowledge of Thames tidal flow, flood geography and disaster prevention methods than when you commenced. What is interesting is that the novel simply ends with the limits of the destruction. Several loose ends abound and we are presented with Britain's capital city in ruins and no indication of the actions in the aftermath other than an almost footnote about hope of light in a world gone dark.
So, not similar to other disaster novels I have read either in characterisation or presentation or plot. However, it ensures the reader keeps turning the pages in a fascinated horror of what unfolds and leaves that sense of disquiet at the end. ... Read more

Book Description
The story of Jack, the intrepid boy whose courage and ingenuity defeated a host of many-headed giants, has been told to children for hundreds of years. In 1842, when he was just 18, Richard Doyle, whose natural talent for draftsmanship was matched by imaginative invention and a passion for legend and the grotesque, created a picture-book version of Jack the Giant Killer, with hand-written text and a watercolor within a pictorial border decorating every page. It has remained one of the most beloved versions of this timeless tale.

In this new Everyman's edition, Doyle's vivid, wonderfully engaging illustrations have been enlarged and the text has been given greater legibility. It is a book that will satisfy both the child's delight in scariness, wonder, and magic, and the collector's pleasure in classic Victorian illustration. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Wonderful Imagination with a Taste for the Grotesque.
The author Richard Doyle was the son of a political caricaturist who went on to become a very gifted artist in his own right.In addition to working at some famous magazine of the time (called "Punch"), he also did the illustrations for the "Fairy Ring" (1846) which was a collection of newly translated Grimm's Fairy Tales.He combined a wonderful imagination with a taste for the grotesque.In 1842, while still a teenager he took a popular collection of traditional giant tales out of "The Child's Own Book" and retold it with such wonderful illustrations that it turned it into a classic.This is not "Jack and the Beanstalk".There is no magic beans, or golden goose.It's the story of a little boy named Jack and his adventures as he has to fight and kill several giants in some very gruesome ways.I don't know if I'd recommend this book for anyone faint of heart.In most tales he outsmarts the giants.In others he uses special gifts he has obtained, including a Cap of Knowledge, Shoes of Vast Swiftness, a Sword that can cut through anything, and a Coat that turns him invisible.The giants are very mean, and kidnap and eat people, but still for some reason or other, I couldn't help but feel sorry for some of them at times when Jack, who was already so much smarter than the giants, also becomes better equipped than them as well.Towards the end I guess I got the feeling that he had an unfair advantage.During one of his later adventures Jack briefly travels with King Arthur's son and eventually becomes a Knight of the Round Table.It was a very entertaining book, but a quick read.It was only 92 pages in length and most of those were taken up with the picturesque illustrations.

Don't miss this classic.
This book, a title in the Everyman's Library Children's Classics series, is a retelling of an old, old story. Richard Doyle was 18 in 1842. He copied the text of this book from a fairy tale that was already hundreds of years old, and he illustrated it with his own drawings, turning it into a picture book. He did this for his own amusement; he did not try to publish it. But five years after he died, his family published it, in 1888.

The book is chock-full of drawings. Full-page and half-page pictures, plus small paintings within the sentences themselves, can be found throughout. And the text itself is fun to read, especially from our modern-day viewpoint and what we've learned to expect from stories. For example, you won't find as much conflict and drama as you're used to. Jack decides to kill a giant, he goes out, and he kills the giant. He never loses, and the giants don't really put up much of a fight. But the story is still interesting because Jack defeats many different kinds of giants --- one-headed, two-headed, and even three-headed ones. And slaying isn't Jack's only claim to fame. Sometimes he doesn't kill the monsters, he just outsmarts them.

The old-fashioned language of the story is fun to read, and some of the storyteller's phrasing might even make you laugh. Here is an example: "Now Jack, though only the son of a poor farmer living in Cornwall, was very clever, for he not only fought and wrestled with all the youths within twenty miles round but he beat them likewise. Can it be wondered at that under these circumstances he should be his father's hope and his mother's joy and that the neighbours should look upon him with the greatest respect?" We might not admire little boys who fight quite as much as they admired them hundreds of years ago, but for Jack's chosen occupation, it was a necessity and it brought him great renown.

You will love the pictures, the fast pace, and exciting exploits in Jack's story. King Arthur even shows up on the scene, fitting in perfectly in this fairy-tale world of pure-hearted knights and fair damsels, castles and moats, and magicians with their enchantments. Don't miss this classic.


---Reviewed by Tamara Penny

A beautiful Victorian classic made easily accessible
Jack the Giant Killer requires good reading skills but tells the story of Jack, an intrepid boy who sets out to kill giants. Draftsman/author Doyle's watercolors have been enlarged for this edition, and text given greater legibility: the result is a beautiful Victorian classic easily accessible to modern audiences. ... Read more

Book Description
An island people are fighting for their lives — a volcano in the Canaries has erupted — soon ash and lava will annihilate everything, unless the locals can destroy the volcano first. A desperate group set out armed with high explosives.

Three thousand miles away across the Atlantic Ocean the peaceful seaport of Goodwill, Maine, is getting ready for its annual summer festival, Founders Day. Tourists and locals alike are in carnival mood. But all is not right — freak swells strike the coast, corpses are washed from cemeteries, the whales disappear from the sea. A convoy of surfers arrive: their network tells them something big is going to happen in this town any day now, and they want part of the action.
Meanwhile the islanders have braved the ash clouds and packed their explosives into a fault line.

Today half their island will crash into the sea.

Three thousand miles of ocean will not save Goodwill from what happens next. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Super Sweet book
This is a super book for fairy craft people.whether you do drawings or sculpting this is a great idea book..its very well done and can be used for glass painting as well.Im glad I took a chance on this one..its really good..B.W. ... Read more

Product Description
1973 Pierpont Morgan Library. Paperback. A manuscript. Richard Doyle (1824-1883) famous Victorian Illustrator. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Marvels & Tales, published by Wayne State University Press on April 1, 2003. The length of the article is 8402 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: "Like the fragments of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope": Andrew Lang Mixes Up Richard Doyle's In Fairyland.
Author: Jan Susina
Publication: Marvels & Tales (Refereed)
Date: April 1, 2003
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Volume: 17Issue: 1Page: 100(23)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Richard Edward Doyle, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 641 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author