For over thirty years, John Pearson has provided us with literary exposures of some of the most enigmatic people & underground organisations of our modern world. The Gamblers follows the fortunes of five men at the centre of the ultra-fashionable Clermont Set: the Clermont Club ...

Cassandra is an Oxford don; Julia, her sister, a bestselling novelist. They share a set of disturbing memories of a strange childhood game & of Simon, the handsome young neighbour who loved them both. Years later Simon re-enters their lives via a television programme on snakes & intrudes into their uneasy compromise of mutual antagonism & distrust. The old, wild emotions surge back, demanding & urgent, & this time the game is played out to a fatal finsih. Rich in ideas, subtle & exhilarating, THE GAME is a superb novel. ...

This classic history of crime tells how the Chicago underworld earned
- & kept
- its notorious reputation, from the time it

...

Home to the notorious ' Blue Book', which listed the names & addresses of every prostitute living in the city, New Orleans's infamous red-light district gained a reputation as one of the most raucous in the world. But the New Orleans underworld consisted of much more than the local bordellos. It was also well known as the early gambling capital of the United States, & sported one of the most violent records of street crime in the country. In The Gangs of New Orleans, Herbert Asbury, author of The Gangs of New York, chronicles the immense underbelly of ' The Big Easy'. From the murderous exploits of Mary Jane ' Bricktop' Jackson & Bridget Fury, two prostitutes who became famous after murdering a number of their associates, to the faux-revolutionary 'filibusters' who, backed by hundreds of thousands of dollars of public support
- though without official governmental approval
- undertook military missions to take over the bordering Spanish regions in Texas, the French Quarter had it all. Once again, Asbury takes the reader on an intriguing journey through a unique history of the American underworld.

...

Herbert Asbury, author of The Gangs of New York & The Gangs of Chicago, turns his attention to chronicle the seedy underworld of San Francisco, from its gold-rush glories to its subterranean opium dens. Houses of ill repute play host to shanghaied sailors, & the Chinese tong wars rage around the city. San Francisco's historic past is here brought to life in all its scintillating & infamous glory. ...

When the book opens Eve, who is the narrator, is just coming into consciousness. She has been given by God to the Serpent to raise. Her sense of wonder as the Serpent introduces her to life in Paradise is a strength of the book; she learns about nature, love & the way that the new & fascinating world works. When she comes into contact with God
- who rears Adam
- she is wary of his dominance & egotism. One day, becoming impatient to discover whether or not he`s designed the male & female to procreate properly, God rushes Adam & Eve into intercourse. The Serpent alone regcognizes the consequences of God`s act. ` Until today Eve has felt...that the world was good...' but ' Adam as good as raped her.' Eve is devastated by the experience.
Eve leaves the Garden to gain some distance from God & to discover what exists in the outside world; the Serpent accompanies her. They make several journeys
- one to a volcano, one to a desert, one to a mountain range & one to the sea (where Eve swims out to sea against the instructions of the Serpent & nearly drowns.) On their return to the Garden, the roots of the apple tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil begin to grow; the Serpent sensing that time is running out to teach Eve that love making is good, changes into a man & makes love to her with great sensitivity. After this she is prepared to accept her role as the mother of humankind.
God is outraged by Eve's
- & also Adams's
- interest in the tree of knowledge. He is at his capricious worst: everything must bow to his wishes. They realise that if they are to have any freedom of will they must leave God & the garden. The Serpent warns them that this will involve future suffering but Eve feels she must develop & be her own person. They go forth...










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When Jenny finds an arrowhead in her twentieth century garden she finds it holds the key to the past. In a beautiful dreamscape, Jenny discovers that the flint can bridge the gap in time between past & present America. With wonderment she meets the American Indians whose culture has been absorbed into the land her garden is built on. ...