Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog: A Mystery by the internationally bestselli

Description: Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin, Andrew Bromfield "Pelagia's family likeness to Father Brown and Miss Marple is marked, and reading about her supplies a similarly decorous pleasure."-"The Literary Review" In a remote Russian province in the late nineteenth century, Bishop Mitrofanii must deal with a family crisis. After learning that one of his great aunt's beloved and rare white bulldogs has been poisoned, the Orthodox bishop knows there is only one detective clever enough to investigate the murder: Sister Pelagia.The bespectacled, freckled Pelagia is lively, curious, extraordinarily clumsy, and persistent. At the estate in question, she finds a whole host of suspects, any one of whom might have benefited if the old lady (who changes her will at whim) had expired of grief at the pooch's demise. There's Pyotr, the matron's grandson, a nihilist with a grudge who has fallen for the maid; Stepan, the penniless caretaker, who has sacrificed his youth to the care of the estate; Miss Wrigley, a mysterious Englishwoman who has recently been named sole heiress to the fortune; Poggio, an opportunistic and freeloading "artistic" photographer; and, most intriguingly, Naina, the old lady's granddaughter, a girl so beautiful she could drive any man to do almost anything.As Pelagia bumbles and intuits her way to the heart of a mystery among people with faith only in greed and desire, she must bear in mind the words of Saint Paul: "Beware of dogs-and beware of evil-doers.""Critics on both sides of the Atlantic have praised [Akunin's] clever plots, vivid characters and wit."-"Baltimore Sun""Akunin's wonderful novels are always intricately webbed and plotted."-"The Providence Journal" FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description "Pelagias family likeness to Father Brown and Miss Marple is marked, and reading about her supplies a similarly decorous pleasure."–The Literary ReviewIn a remote Russian province in the late nineteenth century, Bishop Mitrofanii must deal with a family crisis. After learning that one of his great aunts beloved and rare white bulldogs has been poisoned, the Orthodox bishop knows there is only one detective clever enough to investigate the murder: Sister Pelagia.The bespectacled, freckled Pelagia is lively, curious, extraordinarily clumsy, and persistent. At the estate in question, she finds a whole host of suspects, any one of whom might have benefited if the old lady (who changes her will at whim) had expired of grief at the poochs demise. Theres Pyotr, the matrons grandson, a nihilist with a grudge who has fallen for the maid; Stepan, the penniless caretaker, who has sacrificed his youth to the care of the estate; Miss Wrigley, a mysterious Englishwoman who has recently been named sole heiress to the fortune; Poggio, an opportunistic and freeloading "artistic" photographer; and, most intriguingly, Naina, the old ladys granddaughter, a girl so beautiful she could drive any man to do almost anything.As Pelagia bumbles and intuits her way to the heart of a mystery among people with faith only in greed and desire, she must bear in mind the words of Saint Paul: "Beware of dogs–and beware of evil-doers.""Critics on both sides of the Atlantic have praised [Akunins] clever plots, vivid characters and wit."–Baltimore Sun"Akunins wonderful novels are always intricately webbed and plotted."–The Providence Journal Author Biography Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in the republic of Georgia in 1956. A philologist, critic, essayist, and translator of Japanese, Akunin published his first detective stories in 1998 and has become one of the most widely read authors in Russia. He is the author of the Erast Fandorin novels, including The Winter Queen, The Turkish Gambit, Murder on the Leviathan, The Death of Achilles, and Special Assignments, and Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog, Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk, and Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel, in the Sister Pelagia series. He lives in Moscow.Andrew Bromfield was born in Hull in Yorkshire, England. Apart from his acclaimed translations of Boris Akunin, he is known for his translations of the stories and novels of Victor Pelevin, including The Life of Insects, Buddhas Little Finger, and Homo Zapiens. Long Description "Pelagias family likeness to Father Brown and Miss Marple is marked, and reading about her supplies a similarly decorous pleasure." -"The Literary Review" In a remote Russian province in the late nineteenth century, Bishop Mitrofanii must deal with a family crisis. After learning that one of his great aunts beloved and rare white bulldogs has been poisoned, the Orthodox bishop knows there is only one detective clever enough to investigate the murder: Sister Pelagia. The bespectacled, freckled Pelagia is lively, curious, extraordinarily clumsy, and persistent. At the estate in question, she finds a whole host of suspects, any one of whom might have benefited if the old lady (who changes her will at whim) had expired of grief at the poochs demise. Theres Pyotr, the matrons grandson, a nihilist with a grudge who has fallen for the maid; Stepan, the penniless caretaker, who has sacrificed his youth to the care of the estate; Miss Wrigley, a mysterious Englishwoman who has recently been named sole heiress to the fortune; Poggio, an opportunistic and freeloading "artistic" photographer; and, most intriguingly, Naina, the old ladys granddaughter, a girl so beautiful she could drive any man to do almost anything. As Pelagia bumbles and intuits her way to the heart of a mystery among people with faith only in greed and desire, she must bear in mind the words of Saint Paul: "Beware of dogs-and beware of evil-doers." "Critics on both sides ofthe Atlantic have praised [Akunins] clever plots, vivid characters and wit." -"Baltimore Sun " "Akunins wonderful novels are always intricately webbed and plotted." -"The Providence Journal" Excerpt from Book CHAPTER 1 The Death of Zagulyai . . . but i should tell you that, come the apple festival of Transfiguration Day, when the sky begins to change from summer to autumn, it is the usual thing for our town to be overrun by an absolute plague of cicadas, so that by night, much as you might wish to sleep, you never can, what with all that interminable trilling on all sides, and the stars hanging down low over your head, and especially with the moon dangling just above the tops of the bell towers, for all the world like one of our renowned "smetana" apples, the kind that the local merchants supply to the royal court and even take to shows in Europe. If someone should ever happen to glance down at Zavolzhsk from those heavenly spheres out of which the lamps of the night pour forth their bright rays, then the picture presented to that fortunate persons eyes would surely be one of some enchanted kingdom: the River sparkling lazily, the roofs glittering, the gas lamps flickering in the streets, and, hovering over all the shimmer and glimmer of this multifarious radiance, the tremulous silvery chiming of the cicada choir. But let us return to the reverend Mitrofanii. Our passing reference to nature was made purely and simply to explain why on such a night even the most ordinary of men, far less burdened with cares than the bishop of the province, would find sleep hard to come by. It is hardly surprising that ill-wishers, of whom every man has some, even this worthy pastor being no exception, should claim that it is not our governor, Anton Antonovich von Haggenau, but His Grace who is the true ruler of this extensive region. Extensive indeed the region may be, but densely populated it is not. The only genuine town it can really be said to possess is Zavolzhsk, and the others, including the district centers, are more like overgrown villages with a few stone administrative buildings clustered around a single square, a small cathedral, and a hundred or two little log houses with tin roofs of the kind that since time immemorial have for some reason always been painted green in these parts. And, God knows, even the provincial capital is no Babylon--at the time we are describing, its entire population amounted to twenty-three thousand five hundred eleven individuals of both sexes. Although, of course, during the week following Transfiguration, if no one was to die, the number of inhabitants was expected to increase by two souls, because the wife of the manager of the provincial chancelry, Shtops, and the tradesmans wife, Safulina, were near their time, and the general opinion was that the latter was already overdue. The custom of maintaining a strict accounting of the population had only been introduced recently, under the current administration, and then only in the towns. How many folk there may be making a living out in the forests and the swamps is something known only to God--go try counting them! The dense, impenetrable thickets extend for hundred of miles from the River all the way to the Ural Mountains, with schismatic monastic communities and salt factories buried among them, and along the banks of the dark, deep rivers that, for the most part, have no names at all, dwells the Zyt tribe, a quiet and submissive people of Ugrian blood. The only mention of the ancient life of our obscure province is contained in the Nizhny-Novgorod Miscellany, a chronicle from the fifteenth century. It speaks of a Novgorodian visitor by the name of Ropsha who was captured by "the wild, bare-bellied pagans" in the green forests and lost his head in a sacrifice to the stone idol Shishiga, and as the chronicler for some reason finds it necessary to explain, "this Ropsha did perish and give up the ghost and was buried without a head." But that was long ago, in the time of myth. Nowadays a splendid peace reigns supreme in these parts, with no brigandage on the roads, no killing, and even the wolves in the local forests are noticeably fatter and lazier than in other provinces, due to the abundance of wild- life here. God grant everyone a life as good as ours. And as for the murmurings of the bishops detractors, we shall not undertake to discuss here who is the genuine ruler of the Zavolzhie region--the reverend Mitrofanii, the governor Anton Antonovich, the governors most learned advisers, or even, perhaps, the governors wife, Ludmila Platonovna--because it is not for us to judge such things. Let us merely say that His Grace has far more allies and admirers in Zavolzhie than enemies. Recently, however, certain events had encouraged and emboldened the latter, thereby giving Mitrofanii particular reasons for his insomnia, in addition to those related to the frenzied trilling of the cicadas. This was the reason for the frown that pleated his high forehead into three folds and knitted his thick black brows together. The Bishop of Zavolzhsk was fair of face, not merely good-looking but strikingly handsome, so that instead of being a pastor, he might easily have been some Old Russian prince or Byzantine archistrategus. His hair was long and gray, but his beard, also long and silky, was still half black as yet, and there was not so much as a single silver thread in his mustache. His glance was keen, but generally gentle and clear, which made it all the more frightening when it clouded over with anger and flashed with lightning. At such terrible moments the stern creases over his cheekbones were more pronounced, as was the aquiline curve of his large, noble nose. The reverend bishops deep, resonant voice with its rumble of thunder was equally well suited for a cordial private conversation, an inspired sermon, or a civic speech on one of the occasions when he attended the Holy Synod. In his young days, Mitrofanii had been an adherent of asceticism. He used to wear a cassock made of sackcloth, mortify the flesh by constant fasting, and even, so they say, wear chains of cast iron beneath his undershirt, but he had long since abandoned these austerities, having come to regard them as vain, immaterial, and even harmful to a genuine love of God. Having reached the age of maturity and attained wisdom, he became more considerate of his own flesh and that of others, and for his everyday vestments his preference lay in cassocks of fine cloth, blue or black. And on occasion, when the authority of his bishops title required it, he would robe himself in a mantle of extremely precious purple velvet, order a team of six horses to be harnessed to the bishops formal carriage, and insist that there must be two stately lay brothers with thick beards standing on the runningboards, wearing green cassocks trimmed with galloons that looked very much like livery. Of course, there were those who surreptitiously reproached His Grace for his sybaritic habits and devotion to grand style, but even they did not condemn him too harshly, remaining mindful of the exalted origins that had accustomed Mitrofanii to luxury from his childhood, so that he did not regard it as being in any way important--"he did not deign to notice it," as his clerk, Father Serafim Userdov, put it. His Grace the Bishop of Zavolzhsk was born into a family of courtly nobles and graduated from the Corps of Pages, from where he moved to the Horse Guards (that was back in the reign of Nikolai Pavlovich). He led the life usual for a young man of his circle, and if he was distinguished in any way from his peers, it was perhaps only by a tendency to philosophize, but then that is not such a very rare thing among educated and sensitive youths. In his regiment the "philosopher" was considered a good comrade and an excellent cavalryman, his superiors liked him and they promoted him, so that by the age of thirty he would certainly have risen to the rank of colonel had the Crimean campaign not intervened. God only knows what insights were revealed to the future Bishop of Zavolzhsk during his first taste of active combat, a cavalry skirmish near Balaclava, but after recovering from his saber wound, he had no wish to take a weapon into his hand ever again. He retired from the army, said his farewells to his family, and soon thereafter was serving his novitiate in one of the countrys most isolated monasteries. Even now, however, especially when Mitrofanii conducted the service in the cathedral on the occasion of one of the twelve great feasts or took the chair at a meeting of the consistory, it was easy to imagine how he used to command his lancers in his booming voice: "Squadron, sabers at the ready! At a trot, forward!" An extraordinary man will make his mark in any field of endeavor, and Mitrofanii did not languish in the obscurity of remote monastic life for long. Just as he had previously become the youngest squadron commander in the entire light cavalry, so now it fell to him to become the youngest Orthodox bishop. Initially appointed to be suffragan bishop here in Zavolzhsk, and then as the pastor of the province, he demonstrated so much wisdom and zeal that he was soon summoned to the capital to take up a high position in the church. There were many who predicted that in the none too distant future Mitrofanii would don the black veil of a metropolitan, but he astonished everyone by once again turning off the beaten track and requesting out of the blue to be allowed to return to us in the back of beyond, and, following long attempts to dissuade him, to the joy of us Zavolzhians he was released with a blessing, never again to abandon his modest see, so remote from the capital. And what does it matter if it is remote? It is a well-known fact that the farther one travels from the capital, the nearer one approaches to God. And our exalted and far-seeing capital will reach out a thousand miles should such an idea ever come i Details ISBN0812975138 Author Andrew Bromfield Language English Translator Andrew Bromfield ISBN-10 0812975138 ISBN-13 9780812975130 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 891.735 Year 2007 Short Title SISTER PELAGIA & THE WHITE BUL Imprint Random House Trade Paperbacks DOI 10.1604/9780812975130 Series Number 3 Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2007-01-30 NZ Release Date 2007-01-30 US Release Date 2007-01-30 UK Release Date 2007-01-30 Place of Publication New York Pages 288 Publisher Random House USA Inc Series Sister Pelagia Publication Date 2007-01-30 Subtitle A Mystery by the internationally bestselling author of The Winter Queen Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:9299058;

Price: 48.99 AUD

Location: Melbourne

End Time: 2024-12-25T03:28:28.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 AUD