Kangaroo by D. H. Lawrence

Kangaroo is D. H. Lawrence's eighth novel, set in Australia. He wrote the first draft in just forty-five days while living south of Sydney, in 1922, and revised it three months later in New Mexico. The descriptions of the country are vivid and sympathetic and the book fuses lightly disguised autobiography with an exploration of political ideas at an immensely personal level.
ptions of the different types of male silences are very, very good. The ups and down of a domestic relationship are also well done.
The book comes apart when he tries to integrate the personal with the political. The current feeling is that Lawrence did stumble upon a proto-fascist movement in Sydney in the 1920s. There is some element of reality being bent into shape by a supremely talented modernist author with romanticist leanings. The irrational politics of fascism could be a fertile field for such an author. And how Lawrence tries, but he does not have the tools. He has an intuitive understanding of the subconscious, but he can't entirely use this to comprehend the phenomenon of fascism. There was/is an appeal to the darker urges of the human psyche with the politics of fascism which Lawrence gropes toward but please do not read this book as an explanation of the Australian right between the wars. He just does not quite get it.
He gets into long and involved internal discussions of the nature of love and whether that is enough for politics. This is by far the worst part of the book. It is long and meandering and frankly makes little sense on any level.
This groping for understanding that is far from complete is on some levels reflected in the ambivalent character of Richard Lovat Somers. He has the ambivalence of Hamlet. He can almost make a choice, but it is always just out of his grasp because of some newly constructed reason.

Three Soldiers by John dos Passos

Three Soldiers is a 1921 novel by American writer and critic John Dos Passos. It is one of the American war novels of the First World War, and remains a classic of the realist war novel genre. 

The Word By Irving Wallace

                             A momentous archeological discovery, the greatest of all time—and the immediate effect it has on the varied group of men and women whose lives are intimately touched and altered by it—is at the heart of this exciting novel.

In the ruins of the ancient Roman seaport of Ostia Antica, an Italian archeologist has discovered a first-century papyrus, its faded Aramaic text revealing a new gospel written by James, younger brother of Jesus, the original source of the four gospels of the New Testament. The discovery offers the modern world a new Jesus Christ, a real man who lived and walked on earth, fills in the missing years of his ministry, contradicts the existing accounts of his life—and of his supposed death.

To the world at large, The Word—if it is genuine—will come as a revelation, a call to revived faith and hope in an age of doubt and fear. To the syndicate of international Bible publishers and their theologians, who have guarded the secret since its discovery and gambled their lives and fortunes on its authenticity—The Word is a consuming obsession as well as a business enterprise of such magnitude that they cannot let it be touched by the slightest tinge of doubt.

To Steven Randall, the cynical and successful young New York public relations man who has been hired to introduce the International New Testament to the world, the assignment offers more than an awesome challenge. Haunted by a broken marriage, a problem daughter, a demanding mistress, he sees in it the promise of a spiritual regeneration, a last chance to save himself from the pointlessness of life.

But from the moment that Randall decides to investigate the new gospel, he is caught up in a web of intrigue—involving an ex-nun, a homosexual Dutchman, a crippled secretary, a monk on womanless Mt. Athos, a German printer hiding a scandal that tests both his courage and the authenticity of The Word. Rediscovering his faith in his fellow man and his capacity to love, Randall desperately pursues the source of The Word, searching for the truth at the risk of his newfound relationship with the daughter of the man who discovered the lost gospel, Angela Monti, challenging the austere and enigmatic Reverend Maertin de Vroome, the radical religious reformer who is fighting The Word and its orthodox sponsors.

Swiftly, recklessly, Randall eludes the vast international organization known by the code name Resurrection Two, which has been created to exploit the new Bible. Moving from New York and London to Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, Rome—from the British Museum to a French radiocarbon laboratory, from the Dutch Westerkerk to a monastery on a Grecian peninsula—Randall continues his pursuit of the shadowy, mysterious figure—convict, madman, genius—who alone knows the truth about The Word.

With his brilliant flair for authentic detail, with his incomparable gift for storytelling, Irving Wallace has created in The Word his most explosive, controversial, and breathtaking novel. The discovery offers the modern world a new Jesus Christ, a real man who lived and walked on earth, fills in the missing years of his ministry, contradicts the existing accounts of his life—and of his supposed death.

To the world at large, The Word—if it is genuine—will come as a revelation, a call to revived faith and hope in an age of doubt and fear. To the syndicate of international Bible publishers and their theologians, who have guarded the secret since its discovery and gambled their lives and fortunes on its authenticity—The Word is a consuming obsession as well as a business enterprise of such magnitude that they cannot let it be touched by the slightest tinge of doubt.

Available ebook formats: epub

Unto Caesar by Emmuska Orczy

As a prefect of Rome, his allegiance belongs to Caesar; as a Christian, his life belongs to God. Amidst the tyranny and treachery of a half-crazed emperor's reign, Taurus Antinor seeks to remains true to his oath to Caesar and to God. When offered the glory of a kingdom and the love of a woman, this powerful magistrate sacrifices all for the sake of a Galilean upon a cross.