Search results for ""Harlequin""

'They will play with us, then destroy us... They are what we fear in the dark.'The first warning is unexpected, calculated. The second warning is a gift: a plain white mask, carefully wrapped. But white is good - white means we are only being watched. It seems the power that connects me, Anita Blake, with Jean-Claude Vampire Master of the City and Richard, leader of the werewolves, is attracting very unwelcome attention - from creatures so feared no vampire will willingly speak their name. They are known as the Harlequin, and they have the authority to pass judgement upon me. It is forbidden to speak of the Harlequin unless you've been contacted. And to be contacted is to face a sentence of death.

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Successful entrepreneur A.A. Abrams is pursuing the enigmatic writer Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, who appears to have the ability to write expertly in the language of any place they go. Abrams sinks endless resources into finding the writer, but Tomoyuki Tomoyuki always manages to stay one step ahead, taking off moments before being pinned down. But how does the elusive author move from one place to the next, from one language to the next? Ingenious and dazzling, Harlequin Butterfly unfurls one puzzle after another, taking us on a mind-bending journey into the imagination.

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The first book in Bernard Cornwell’s bestselling GRAIL QUEST series, in a bright and bold repackage. The year is 1342. The English, led by Edward III, are laying waste to the French countryside. The army may be led by the King, but it is the archers, the common men, who are England’s secret weapon. The French know them as Harlequins. Thomas of Hookton is one of these archers. But he is also on a personal mission: to avenge his father’s death and retrieve a stolen relic. Thomas begins a quest that will lead him through fields smeared with the smoke of fires set by the rampaging English, until at last the two armies face each other on a hillside near the village of Crécy.

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In the fall of 1723, two London theaters staged, almost simultaneously, pantomime performances of the Faust story. Unlike traditional five-act plays, pantomime - a bawdy hybrid of dance, music, spectacle, and commedia dell'arte featuring the familiar figure of the harlequin at its center-was a theatrical experience of unprecedented accessibility. The immediate popularity of this new genre drew theater apprentices to the cities to learn the new style, and pantomime became the subject of lively debate within British society. Alexander Pope and Henry Fielding bitterly opposed the intrusion into legitimate literary culture of what they regarded as fairground amusements that appealed to sensation and passion over reason and judgment. In Harlequin Britain, literary scholar John O'Brien examines this new form of entertainment and the effect it had on British culture. Why did pantomime become so popular so quickly? Why was it perceived as culturally threatening and socially destabilizing? O'Brien finds that pantomime's socially subversive commentary cut through the dampened spirit of debate created by Robert Walpole's one-party rule. At the same time, pantomime appealed to the abstracted taste of the mass audience. Its extraordinary popularity underscores the continuing centrality of live performance in a culture that is most typically seen as having shifted its attention to the written text-in particular, to the novel. Written in a lively style rich with anecdotes, Harlequin Britain establishes the emergence of eighteenth-century English pantomime, with its promiscuous blending of genres and subjects, as a key moment in the development of modern entertainment culture.

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For four decades the internationally renowned French artist ORLAN has interrogated every defining aspect of being human—gender, ethnicity, religion, beauty, physiognomy, and even physiology itself—through an endlessly mutating oeuvre that defies categorization. Performance, sculpture, photography, poetry, design—ORLAN not only creates within these media, she disappears into them, willfully dissolving and reconfiguring her identity through her work. ORLAN is most famous for her series of cosmetic-surgery performances in the 1990s in which she reconfigured her face and body as a critique of the standards of beauty imposed on women. In 2008, in a seemingly radical departure, ORLAN chose to disappear from her work entirely, effacing her famously protean features from her creations. In fact, she had chosen an even more dramatic way to dismantle her identity and perform it anew. With her Harlequin Coat project ORLAN borrows the commedia dell’arte trickster hero, the harlequin, as her alter ego, using his patchwork motif as a metaphor for the fragmented, multicolored, multilayered performance of the human signature. It is her most collaborative work to date, involving, at different stages, artists from the worlds of fashion, design, film, and technology. In reaching back to this Italian Renaissance character ORLAN simultaneously reaches forward into the most pressing of contemporary concerns: How can we be sure of who and what we are? Fabulous Harlequin showcases photographs of ORLAN’s projects along with critical essays on ORLAN’s work.

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The armistice is months past but the memories won't go away. 'A harlequin, leaning against a tree stump and with a goblet of ale clasped in one outstretched hand. Beaumont felt chilled suddenly, in spite of the fire...Most likely it was the thing's mouth, red-lipped and fiendishly grinning, or maybe its face, which was white, expressionless, the face of a clown in full greasepaint.' Dennis Beaumont drove an ambulance in World War One. He returns home to London, hoping to pick up his studies at Oxford and rediscover the love he once felt for his fiancee Lucy. But nothing is as it once was. Mentally scarred by his experiences in the trenches, Beaumont finds himself wandering further into darkness. What really happened to the injured soldier he tried to save? Who is the figure that lurks in the shadows? How much do they know of Beaumont, and the secrets he keeps?

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Compared to many of MI5's other double agents, HARLEQUIN’s career was very short-lived, lasting only for a few months in 1943. However, during that time he provided insights into the various parties involved in the Appeasement process in 1938; the Czech crisis of 1939; the enterprises of a Franco-American businessman who hosted the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s marriage in France; the espionage activities of an aristocratic German family; Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr – many of the Abwehr’s personalities with whom he had come into contact or had known about and the agents he employed – as well as relations between the disparate organisations of the German intelligence services – the Abwehr, Gestapo, and Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence arm of the SS. Furthermore, he revealed the German Armistice Commission’s involvement in espionage and their links to the Abwehr. MI5 shared this intelligence with the FBI and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) before HARLEQUIN requested that he be returned to American custody where he remained for the rest of the war. His effectiveness as a double agent will be examined using newly-released official files as a primary source.

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Three of the most collectible lines of vintage dinnerware are thoroughly explored in this major work written by expert collectors. Colorful Fiesta, Harlequin, and Kitchen Kraft sets made since 1936 by The Homer Laughlin China Company are shown in 592 color photographs and detailed measured drawings along with extensive analysis of the shapes, marks, production methods, and decorations. Their enormous popularity, originally and now, has made these dinnerware lines familiar to four generations of Americans, and this reference will link them with collectors, dealers, and users long into the future.

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