The Collected Novels Volume Three: Orient Express, It's a Battlefield, and A Gun for Sale

Graham Greene

Nov 2018 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

Three compelling novels from the British author who has been hailed as “one of the finest writers of any language” (The Washington Post).
 
In these novels of international intrigue and domestic drama, political injustice and crime, and the possibility of redemption, Graham Greene once again emerges as “the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety” (William Golding, Nobel Prize–winning author of Lord of the Flies).
 
Orient Express: The Orient Express has embarked on a three-day journey from Ostend to Cologne, Vienna, and Constantinople. The passenger list includes a Jewish trader from London with business interests in Turkey—and a score to settle; a vulnerable chorus girl on her last legs; a boozy and spiteful journalist who’s found an unrequited love in her paid companion, and her latest scoop in second class: a Serbian dissident in disguise on his way to lead a revolution; and a murderer on the run looking for a getaway. As the train hurtles across Europe, the fates of everyone on board will collide long before the Orient Express rushes headlong to its final destination.
 
“Interesting and entertaining.” —The New York Times
 
It’s a Battlefield: In pre–World War II London, during a demonstration in Hyde Park, Communist bus driver Jim Drover acts on instinct to protect his wife by stabbing to death the policeman set to strike her down. Sentenced to hang—whether as a martyr, tool, or murderer—Drover accepts his lot, unaware that the ramifications of the crime, and the battle for his reprieve, are inflaming political unrest. But Drover’s single, impulsive act is also upending the lives of the people he loves and trusts. Caught in a quicksand of desperation, sexual betrayal, and guilt, they will not only play a part in Drover’s fate, they’ll become agents—both unwitting and calculated—of their own fates as well.
 
“Adventurous . . . intelligent . . . ingenious.” —V. S. Pritchett
 
A Gun for Sale: Born out of a brutal childhood, Raven is an assassin for hire whose latest hit—a government minister—is calculated to ignite a war. When the most wanted man in England is paid off in marked bills, he also becomes the easiest to track—and police detective Jimmy Mather has the lead. But Raven’s got an advantage. Crossing paths with a sympathetic dancer named Anne Crowder, the emotionally scarred Raven has found someone in the wreckage of his life he can trust, maybe his only hope for salvation. Or at least, escape—because Anne is also Mather’s fiancée. Now the fate of two men will depend on her. And either way, it’s betrayal.
 
“[Greene is] a pioneer of the modern mood we now think of as noir.” —LA Weekly

About the author

Graham Greene (1904–1991) is recognized as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, achieving both literary acclaim and popular success. His best known works include Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American, and The Power and the Glory. After leaving Oxford, Greene first pursued a career in journalism before dedicating himself full-time to writing with his first big success, Stamboul Train. He became involved in screenwriting and wrote adaptations for the cinema as well as original screenplays, the most successful being The Third Man. Religious, moral, and political themes are at the root of much of his work, and throughout his life he traveled to some of the wildest and most volatile parts of the world, which provided settings for his fiction. Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour.