Search results for ""author sly"

Orson Welles called Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947) “a giant” whose “talent and originality are stupefying.” Jean Renoir said, “He invented the modern Hollywood.” Celebrated for his distinct style and credited with inventing the classic genre of the Hollywood romantic comedy and helping to create the musical, Lubitsch won the admiration of his fellow directors, including Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, whose office featured a sign on the wall asking, “How would Lubitsch do it?” Despite the high esteem in which Lubitsch is held, as well as his unique status as a leading filmmaker in both Germany and the United States, today he seldom receives the critical attention accorded other major directors of his era.How Did Lubitsch Do It? restores Lubitsch to his former stature in the world of cinema. Joseph McBride analyzes Lubitsch’s films in rich detail in the first in-depth critical study to consider the full scope of his work and its evolution in both his native and adopted lands. McBride explains the “Lubitsch Touch” and shows how the director challenged American attitudes toward romance and sex. Expressed obliquely, through sly innuendo, Lubitsch’s risqué, sophisticated, continental humor engaged the viewer’s intelligence while circumventing the strictures of censorship in such masterworks as The Marriage Circle, Trouble in Paradise, Design for Living, Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, and To Be or Not to Be. McBride’s analysis of these films brings to life Lubitsch’s wit and inventiveness and offers revealing insights into his working methods.

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Orson Welles called Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947) “a giant” whose “talent and originality are stupefying.” Jean Renoir said, “He invented the modern Hollywood.” Celebrated for his distinct style and credited with inventing the classic genre of the Hollywood romantic comedy and helping to create the musical, Lubitsch won the admiration of his fellow directors, including Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, whose office featured a sign on the wall asking, “How would Lubitsch do it?” Despite the high esteem in which Lubitsch is held, as well as his unique status as a leading filmmaker in both Germany and the United States, today he seldom receives the critical attention accorded other major directors of his era.How Did Lubitsch Do It? restores Lubitsch to his former stature in the world of cinema. Joseph McBride analyzes Lubitsch’s films in rich detail in the first in-depth critical study to consider the full scope of his work and its evolution in both his native and adopted lands. McBride explains the “Lubitsch Touch” and shows how the director challenged American attitudes toward romance and sex. Expressed obliquely, through sly innuendo, Lubitsch’s risqué, sophisticated, continental humor engaged the viewer’s intelligence while circumventing the strictures of censorship in such masterworks as The Marriage Circle, Trouble in Paradise, Design for Living, Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, and To Be or Not to Be. McBride’s analysis of these films brings to life Lubitsch’s wit and inventiveness and offers revealing insights into his working methods.

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When someone starts killing his fellow bounty hunters in the port of Fairhaven, Drago Appleroot is happy to help his contacts in the City Watch with their investigation—for a reasonable fee, of course. But posing as an assassin-for-hire to draw out the killer attracts the attention of two separate groups from a far-off Elven kingdom whose private war is being fought on the streets of his home town. Pitched into a maelstrom of treachery and lethal politics, Drago is forced into a long and dangerous journey to the heart of the Sylvan Marches, where one determined gnome might just decide the destiny of a kingdom. If he can survive long enough to decide which side he ought to be on. About Alex Stewart's Shooting the Rift: “Stewart makes his [faster than light travel] technology as accessible and relevant as the neuroware, genetic engineering, anti-gravity, and other assorted techno-furniture of the milieu. His various venues . . . are limned with vigor, vividness and vivacity. The personages are all true-to-life, delivering fine banter and plot-propelling dialogue, arising out of fully believable motivations and drives and desires. . . . the best of what ambitious adventure SF has always done and can plainly continue to do.”—Locus “Stewart writes with sly wit. He pokes fun at modern science fiction tropes. His clever writing even satirizes science fiction satire. He combines this with rollicking adventure, original plot twists and unexpected revelations and endings. Shooting the Rift is fun to read. Better still it promises a sequel.”—Galveston County Daily News

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SECRETS AND LIES RUIN LIVES'So many twists and thrills I was gripping the sides of the book all the way to the dynamite ending' DAN MALAKIN'A high-paced and relentlessly twisty thriller' L.V. MATTHEWS'An intricately plotted thriller full of deeply flawed yet believable characters. Utterly riveting and clever' CATHERINE COOPER'Fiendishly clever and compulsive - this novel will leave you feeling breathless in the best way' SARAH LAWTON'More twists and turns than a rollercoaster! Superbly plotted, compelling, pacy. Sarah is a tour de force' T ORR MUNROTwo women receive an anonymous note.For one it's a threat.For the other it's an invitation for revenge.Helena is beautiful, successful, and living in married bliss in Exeter. But she's hiding a secret that could tear her perfect life apart. When the notes begin to arrive, she realises someone else must know her secret. But what might her husband and his overbearing family do if they find out the truth?Thea is reeling from her best friend Helena's death. But when she starts digging into the circumstances, she receives a threatening note warning her to stop. She knows her friend's death wasn't an accident. This was murder. And she is determined to get revenge . . .PRAISE FOR SARAH BONNER'S DEBUT HER PERFECT TWIN:'Brilliantly twisty' T. M. Logan'Terrifyingly vivid' Janice Hallett'Made my jaw drop' Samantha Downing'A perfect storm of sly revenge and rivalry' L. V. Matthews

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A great and frequently subversive book by a lyric poet at the height of her craft.Throughout her seven critically acclaimed collections, Sidney Wade has established herself as a poet with a serious but light touch, capable of the clarity and inventiveness it takes to work a problem to both pleasure and resolution. Playing with and challenging form in all directions, the 27 new and 96 selected poems in Deep Gossip bristle with a sly wit that trips and delights the reader. Inspired by landscape, language, music, and living things, as well as the occasional bout of political outrage, Deep Gossip is a smart collection.Praise for Other Books by Sidney Wade"The quick, closely observed poems in Sidney Wade's beguiling Bird Book move from page to page like their subjects—in flight, on air, a murmuration sweeping across the horizon."—William Souder"Sidney Wade's linguistic and philosophical turns in Bird Book confirm that she is both the supreme heir to Wallace Stevens and one of the most original poets in the language."—Randall Mann"This is a beautiful, wise, and timely collection."—Daniel Anderson"As impressive and thrillingly exact as these poems are concerning matters ornithological, it is the exquisite music —'earth-sprung, bright, and resonant'—of Wade's radically short line that so enchants me, the free play of interlinear rhyme, phonemic harmonies, and small bursts of metrical rhythms that yield more vitality and delight than any gathering of poems I have encountered in a very long time."—B. H. Fairchild"Her poems [are] . . . a particular and splendid instance of what Hopkins meant by 'poetry proper, the language of inspiration.' "—Richard Howard

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Text and translation of comic plays sheds light on a fascinating era of theatrical production. `[Opens] up an entirely new corpus of texts for scholars and readers familar with and interested in European dramatic texts from this period, but who have heretofore not had access to them due to the language barrier.' Professor David F. Johnson, Florida State University, Tallahassee During the Middle Ages and early modern period, a dramatic culture of astonishing vitality developed in the Low Countries. Owing to the activities of organisationsknown as rederijkerskamers, or "chambers of rhetoric", drama became a central aspect of public life in the cities of the Netherlands. The comedies produced by these groups are particularly interesting. Drawing their forms and narratives from folklore and popular ritual, and entertaining in their own right, they also bring together a range of important concerns; they respond directly to some of the key developments in the period, reflecting the political and religious turmoil of the Reformation and Dutch Revolt, the emergence of humanism, and the appearance of an early capitalist economy. This collection brings together the original Middle Dutch text of ten of these comic plays, with facing translation into modern English. The selection is divided evenly between formal stage-plays and monologues, and provides a representation of the full range of rederijker drama, from the sophisticatedFarce of the Fisherman, with its sly undermining of audience expectation, to the hearty scatology of A Mock-Sermon on Saint Nobody, and the grim gallows humour of The Farce of the Beggar. An introduction and notes place the plays in their context and elucidate difficulties of interpretation. Ben Parsons is Teaching Fellow at the University of Leicester; Bas Jongenelen is teacher of Dutch Literature at Fontys Lerarenopleidingin Tilburg.

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An enthralling and lyrical fantasy debut, and the first in an incredible new trilogy re-telling The Epic of Gilgamesh. Brimming full of warring gods, rebellious humans, and the goddess of love caught between them whose destiny has the power to transform the shape of the world, this is perfect for readers of Madeline Miller and Jennifer Saint. Stories are sly things...they can be hard to catch and kill. Inanna is an impossibility, the first full Anunnaki born on Earth in Ancient Mesopotamia. Crowned the goddess of love by the twelve immortal Anunnaki who are worshipped across Sumer, she is destined for greatness. But Inanna is born into a time of war. The Anunnaki have split into warring factions, threatening to tear the world apart. Forced into a marriage to negotiate a peace, she soon realises she has been placed in terrible danger. Gilgamesh, a mortal human son of the Anunnaki, and notorious womaniser, finds himself captured and imprisoned by King Akka who seeks to distance himself and his people from the gods. Arrogant and selfish, Gilgamesh is given one final chance to prove himself. Ninshubar, a powerful warrior woman, is cast out of her tribe after an act of kindness. Hunted by her own people, she escapes across the country, searching for acceptance and a new place in the world. As their journeys push them closer together, and their fates intertwine, they come to realise that together, they may have the power to change to face of the world forever. The first novel in the stunning Sumerians Trilogy, this is a gorgeous, epic retelling of one of the oldest surviving works of literature.

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During his life, Geoffrey Chaucer (born c.1340) was courtier, diplomat, revenue collector, administrator, negotiator, overseer of building projects, landowner and knight of the shire. He was servant, retainer, husband, friend and father, but is now mainly known as a poet and ‘the father of English literature’, a postion to which he was raised by other writers in the generation after his death. It was Boccaccio’s Decameron which inspired Chaucer, in the 1390s, to begin work on The Canterbury Tales, which was still unfinished at his death in October 1400. It tells the story of a group of 30 pilgrims who meet at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames opposite the city of London, and travel together to visit the then famous shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury cathedral. The tavern host, who accompanies them, suggests that they amuse one another along the way by telling stories, with the best storyteller awarded a meal in the tavern (paid for by all the others) on their return. The stories told by the pilgrims range from bawdy comedies through saints’ lives and moral tracts to courtly romances, always delivered with a generous helping of Chaucer’s own sly wit and ironic humour. Although basing his characters on the stereotypes of ‘estates satire’, Chaucer succeeds in his aim of producing an overview of his times and their culture, for posterity, in the manner of Italian, proto-Renaissance, writers.This transcription and edition is taken from British Library MS Harley 7334, produced within ten years of Chaucer’s death. The on-page notes and glosses aim to enable readers with little or no previous experience of medieva

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So, you’ve been ripped out from your mother’s paws and taken in by a strange family of humans that has kids who insist on flapping your floppy ears and dressing you up like a ladybug. These new human-folk are trying to “teach” you things, like sitting or not ripping apart their fun-looking shoes, and you might start to think you should try to “obey.” But I know better; I’ve been around the block and peed on most parts of it. Puppies like you need my—wait, somebody just walked in with a hamburger. Gotta check this out. Ok, back now. Anyway, to survive in this world filled with brown-clad fools delivering packages and leashes, you need my guide to show you what’s what in this dog-eat-dog world of ours. Like dog beds; your human might try to force you to sleep in one of these, but with my sly techniques I can show you how to weasel your way into their clean, fresh-smelling king-sized bed, or even stretch yourself out and have it all to yourself. Those imbeciles might think they are your owner, but you’ll show them who really owns who armed with knowledge on these subjects: - Advanced barking—how loud and annoying can you go? - Cars—catch your Moby Dick - Licking—what, where, when, and why - Biting—ask questions later - Welcoming guests—try not to hyperventilate - And much more! Communicating with humans can be difficult, as they are not very smart, but they give you things and throw you balls, so you might as well try to amuse them.

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by local artist John Clark Mayden.Bronze Winner of the Foreword INDIES Award for Photography by FOREWORD ReviewsBaltimore native John Clark Mayden's photographs are distinctive to the city and specific to black life there, lingering on the front stoops and in the postage-stamp backyards of Charm City row houses. But these pictures are far from nostalgic. Informed by the photographer's deep commitment to both social justice and storytelling, they strip Baltimore of pretense and illusion and show the city's veins.Baltimore Lives gathers 101 of Mayden's best photographs in print for the first time. Taken between 1970 and 2012, these photos illuminate the experiences of life throughout the predominantly African American city, capturing the relaxed intimacy of community, family, and the comfort of home in contrast to the harsh sting of social injustice, poverty, and crime. In Mayden's work, we meet people who are not expecting us. We bear witness to their lives—their emotions, gestures, and faces that often reveal more than they conceal. But regardless of the camera's presence, people go on waiting for the bus, catching a breeze on their front steps, slogging through the snow to work and school, and, every so often, returning the photographer's gaze with a sly grin, a backward glance, a curious frown.Including a brief biography of John Clark Mayden written by his sister, Ruth W. Mayden, and an essay by art historian Michael Harris on how Mayden's work fits into larger trends of black photography, Baltimore Lives is a stunning visual history of the spatial and human elements that together make Baltimore's inner city.

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Winner, 2005 Western Books Exhibition, Rounce & Coffin Club, 2005 Julie Speed's meticulous craftsmanship and attention to detail bring to mind the work of painters from the fifteenth and sixteenth century Renaissance. Unlike those artists, however, Speed is inspired by an almost limitless number of easily available sources and is unencumbered by the sexual and societal restrictions of past centuries, which gives her the freedom to paint what she wants and the way she wants. This places her body of work squarely in the present. Utilizing her keen sense of the absurd, Speed ponders the big questions—the role of religion, isolation and longing, sexuality, sin and guilt—with a sly, sometimes black, sense of humor and a steadfast refusal to offer the viewer any tidy resolutions. It is the emphatically open-ended and omnivorous nature of her work, combining anxiety, erotica, and violence with the subversive power of beauty, that puts Speed in the vanguard of a return to figurative painting in contemporary art. To bring Speed's mysterious and compelling work to a wider audience, this beautifully illustrated volume presents one hundred color plates of her oil paintings, constructions and works on paper. Accompanying the plates are essays by art historians Elizabeth Ferrer and Edmund Pillsbury that discuss Speed's relationship to generations of figurative painters, from the artists of the Renaissance to the present, as well as her affinities with and differences from the surrealists, dadaists, and other historical movements. Rounding out the volume are fascinating excerpts from the "Books of Conversation," a series of public journals initiated by the Austin Museum of Art in connection with a touring survey of Speed's work, in which museum-goers wrote down their ideas, opinions, and questions for the artist, to which she provided written answers.

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"Brian Griffin's first work of fiction, Sparkman in the Sky, is like Hemingway's In Our Time in that it can be read either as a collection of short stories or as a discontinuous novel. From story to story, themes gather meaning until in the last one they are resolved or transposed into a new key. The first-person narrator may be named Hal or Ian or Victor, but by the end all these narrators have fused into a collective exemplar of how things go in a certain place in our time. . . . It's no knock on Brian Griffin to say that he has learned from Hemingway, among others. After all, Miles Davis was no less gifted a musician, no less original, for having learned from Dizzy Gillespie. And Griffin has his own original qualities, his own subtleties, his own sly humor-even a gift for farce. . . . This book is way beyond promising."-The New York Times Book Review Brian Griffin grew up in the country near Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, in a family he describes as "infested by preachers, all Southern Baptists of the fundamentalist sort." He earned his B.A. in English from Middle Tennessee State University and his M.F.A. from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Griffin teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee. He lives with his wife and children in Knoxville and works closely with a group there to promote interracial harmony in the inner city. Griffin's stories and poems have been well published in journals including Shenandoah, New Delta Review, Clockwatch Review, Snake Nation Review, and Southern Poetry Review. In addition to various short stories and poems, Griffin is currently at work on a novel.

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***The 7th novel in the Strike series, THE RUNNING GRAVE, is coming in September 2023. Pre-order now and be the first to read it***'Teems with sly humour, witty asides and intelligence ... A pleasure to read' TIMES-----Now a major BBC drama: The Strike seriesWhen novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published it would ruin lives - so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him.And when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before . . .A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, The Silkworm is the second in the highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant Robin Ellacott.*** The latest book in the thrilling Strike series, TROUBLED BLOOD, is out now! ***-----PRAISE FOR THE STRIKE SERIES: 'One of the most unique and compelling detectives I've come across in years' MARK BILLINGHAM'The work of a master storyteller' DAILY TELEGRAPH'Unputdownable. . . Irresistible' SUNDAY TIMES'Will keep you up all night' OBSERVER'A thoroughly enjoyable classic' PETER JAMES, SUNDAY EXPRESS

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Jeanne Pitre Soileau, winner of the 2018 Chicago Folklore Prize and the 2018 Opie Prize for Yo’ Mama, Mary Mack, and Boudreaux and Thibodeaux: Louisiana Children’s Folklore and Play, vividly presents children’s voices in What the Children Said: Child Lore of South Louisiana. Including over six hundred handclaps, chants, jokes, jump-rope rhymes, cheers, taunts, and teases, this book takes the reader through a fifty-year history of child speech as it has influenced children’s lives.What the Children Said affirms that children's play in south Louisiana is acquired along a network of summer camps, schoolyards, church gatherings, and sleepovers with friends. When children travel, they obtain new games and rhymes, and bring them home. The volume also reveals, in the words of the children themselves, how young people deal with racism and sexism. The children argue and outshout one another, policing their own conversations, stating their own prejudices, and vying with one another for dominion. The first transcript in the book tracks a conversation among three related boys and shows that racism is part of the family interchange. Among second grade boys and girls at a Catholic school another transcript presents numerous examples in which boys use insults to dominate a conversation with girls, and girls use giggles and sly comebacks to counter this aggression.Though collected in the areas of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette, Louisiana, this volume shows how south Louisiana child lore is connected to other English-speaking places: England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the rest of the United States.

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Eating and drinking are essential to survival. Yet for human animals, they are intrinsically ambivalent, proliferating with ideological, historical and psychological leftovers. This study reveals and mobilizes the provisional meanings, repressed experiences and unacknowledged tensions bound up with representations of food, drink and their consumption. It creates a flexible critical framework by bringing together an unexploited convergence of post-war French thinkers who use – or whose thought is legible through – figures of eating and drinking, including Barthes, Bataille, Beauvoir, Bourdieu, Certeau, Cixous, Derrida, Fischler, Giard, Kristeva, Lacan, Lefebvre, Lévi-Strauss, Mayol and Sartre. New combinations emerge for elucidating the intersecting effects of incorporation; constructs of class, gender and racial difference; bad faith; distinction; secondary ideological signifying systems; provisional meanings bound up with linguistic traces; economies of excess; everyday ‘making-do’; the ethics of consuming the other; the return of the repressed; lack; abjection; and notions of ‘eating on the sly’, ‘mother’s milk’, the ‘omnivore’s paradox’ and ‘gastro-anomie’. The vast possibilities for re-thinking with eating and drinking are further exemplified in case studies of novels in which – often beyond authorial intentions – food and drink are structurally important and interpretatively plural. These are Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes/The Erasers (1953); Ernaux’s Les Armoires vides/Cleaned Out (1974); Darrieussecq’s Truismes/Pig Tales (1996); and Houellebecq’s La Carte et le territoire/The Map and the Territory (2010). New understandings of post-war French cultural production are revealed in these case studies. But above all, the analyses demonstrate the potential for literary, comparative, cultural, film, gender and food studies of re-thinking with eating and drinking across genres, periods and places.

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Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, she's a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trades she uses to get by–palm readings, zars, and a mysterious gift for healing–are all tricks, both the means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles and a reliable way to survive. But when Nahri accidentally summons Dara, an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior, to her side during one of her cons, she's forced to reconsider her beliefs. For Dara tells Nahri an extraordinary tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire and rivers where the mythical marid sleep, past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises and mountains where the circling birds of prey are more than what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass–a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.In Daevabad, within gilded brass walls laced with enchantments and behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments run deep. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, her arrival threatens to ignite a war that has been simmering for centuries. Spurning Dara's warning of the treachery surrounding her, she embarks on a hesitant friendship with Alizayd, an idealistic prince who dreams of revolutionizing his father's corrupt regime. All too soon, Nahri learns that true power is fierce and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences. After all, there is a reason they say to be careful what you wish for . . .

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A witch struggling to regain what she has lost casts a forbidden spell - only to discover much more than she expected, in this enchanting new rom-com by New York Times bestselling author Lana Harper.Six months after having been hit by a power surge that nearly obliterated her memory, Delilah Harlow is still picking up the pieces. Her once diamond-sharp mind has become shaky and unreliable, and bristly, self-sufficient Delilah is forced to rely on friends, family, and her raven familiar for help. In an effort to reclaim her wits and former independence, she casts a dangerous blood spell meant to harness power with healing capacities.While the spell does restore clarity, it also unexpectedly turns Delilah into an irresistible beacon for the kind of malevolent supernatural creatures that have never before ventured into Thistle Grove. One night - just as things are about to go terribly sideways with a rogue succubus - a mysterious stranger appears in the nick of time to save Delilah's soul.Gorgeous, sultry, and as dangerous as the knives she carries, Catriona Quinn is a hunter of monsters - and half-human, half-fae herself, she is the kind of sly and morally gray creature Delilah would normally find horrifying. Though Delilah balks at the idea of a partnership, she has no choice but to roll the dice on their collaboration. As the two delve deeper into the power that underlies Thistle Grove, they uncover not only the town's hidden history but also a risky attraction that could upend Delilah's entire life.......................................Readers are spellbound by Lana Harper's enchanting rom-coms!'The book I've been waiting for all my life' Emily Henry'Like if Casey McQuiston wrote paranormal' Goodreads'A queer rom com that bewitches from the very first page' Publishers Weekly'John Tucker Must Die but with queer witches' Goodreads'Compulsively fun' Jacqueline Carey'Sexy, charming and completely magical!' Kerry Winfrey'The perfect autumnal witchy romance!' Goodreads'Hilariously funny and glue-you-to-the-page engrossing' Bookpage'I want to go to Thistle Grove' Seanan McGuire'It's basically John Tucker Must Die meets The Craft, with an extra serving of queer relationships' The Lesbrary'Charming, sweet, and magical, the perfect book to enjoy on a cosy autumn night' The Nerd Daily'The kind of book that you just sort of ache to step inside . . . a perfect fall read' Goodreads'The witchy, sapphic, revenge romcom I've been dreaming of' Goodreads......................................Meet the other wonderful Witches of Thistle Grove in Payback's a Witch, From Bad to Cursed, and Back in a Spell - out now!

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The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is the complete collection of short fiction from the world-renowned Lydia Davis.WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2013.'Big rejoicing: Lydia Davis has won the Man Booker International prize. Never did a book award deliver such a true match-winning punch. Best of all, a new audience will read her now and find her wit, her vigour and rigour, her funniness, her thoughtfulness, and the precision of form, which mark Davis out as unique.Daring, excitingly intelligent and often wildly comic [she] reminds you, in a world that likes to bandy its words about, what words such as economy, precision and originality really mean. This is a writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert and as epoch-making, in her own way, as Proust. A two-liner from Davis, or a seemingly throwaway paragraph, will haunt. What looks like a game will open to deep seriousness; what looks like philosophy will reveal playfulness, tragicomedy, ordinariness; what looks like ordinariness will ask you to look again at Davis's writing. In its acuteness, it always asks attentiveness, and it repays this by opening up to its reader like possibility, or like a bush covered in flowerheads.She's a joy. There's no writer quite like her' Ali Smith'What stories. Precise and piercing, extremely funny. Nearly all are unlike anything you've ever read' Metro'I loved these stories. They are so well-written, with such clarity of thought and precision of language. Excellent' William Leith, Evening Standard'Remarkable. Some of the most moving fiction - on death, marriage, children - of recent years. To read Collected Stories is to be reminded of the grand, echoing mind-chambers created by Sebald or recent Coetzee. A writer of vast intelligence and originality' Independent on Sunday'A body of work probably unique in American writing, in its combination of lucidity, aphoristic brevity, formal originality, sly comedy, metaphysical bleakness, philosophical pressure and human wisdom' New Yorker'Davis is a high priestess of the startling, telling detail. She can make the most ordinary things, such as couples talking, or someone watching television, bizarre, almost mythical. I felt I had encountered a most original and daring mind' Colm Toibin, Daily TelegraphLydia Davis is the author of one novel and seven story collections, the most recent of which was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations of modern writers including Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris and Marcel Proust.

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“A woman once rang me up and said, ‘Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print Reptiles, you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.’ I replied, ‘Madame, if that’s the way you see it, so be it.’” A fittingly sly comment from renowned Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898–1972), whose complex and ambiguous drawings continue to leave hasty interpretations far behind. Long before the first computer-generated 3-D images, Escher was a master of the third dimension. His lithograph Magic Mirror dates as far back as 1946. By taking such a title for the book, mathematician Bruno Ernst stressed the enrapturing spell Escher’s work invariably casts on those who see it. Ernst visited Escher every week for a year, systematically talking through his entire oeuvre with him. Their discussions resulted in a friendship that gave Ernst intimate access to the life and conceptual world of Escher. Ernst’s account was meticulously scrutinized and made accurate by the artist himself. Escher’s work refuses to be pigeonholed. Scientific, psychological, or aesthetic criteria alone cannot do it justice. The questions remain: Why did he create the pictures? How did he construct them? What preliminary studies were necessary before achieving the final version? And how are his various creations interrelated? This updated and redesigned edition of a true classic—complete with biographical data, 250 illustrations, and a thorough breaking-down of each mathematical problem—offers answers to these and many other lingering mysteries, and is an authentic source text of the first order.

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Moby Grape are a genuine cult phenomenon. Their story, a mixture of myth and truth, is a cautionary tale, a triumph, and a tragedy all at once. Though they are seen as a symbol of 1960s San Francisco, Moby Grape were never actually a part of the city s counterculture movement. Yet they were immersed in it, sharing stages with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and many more. Moby Grape s five members came together from very different backgrounds, bursting onto the San Francisco scene in the fall of 1966. With their diverse pedigree, they were nothing less than musical alchemists, yet they were also rebels. Their blending of genres within a tight songwriting framework contrasted sharply with that of many of their SF peers. Following the release of the band s debut album in 1967, you could see everyone from Ringo Starr to Jimi Hendrix sporting a `Moby Grape Now! button. But in the months that followed, they were dogged by mismanagement, bad marketing, a scandalous drug bust, and general rock n roll mayhem. It seemed like it was all over in 1969, but in 1971 Moby Grape staged rock s first full-on reunion. Since then, they have fought to retain ownership of their own name, while two members of the band struggled with homelessness and mental illness. Despite all of this, they produced one of the best albums of the era, and today they are heralded by countless luminaries of rock music and rock criticism, from Robert Plant to Robert Christgau, Tom Waits to Greil Marcus. Drawing on extensive interviews with the surviving members of the band, What s Big and Purple and Lives in the Ocean? finally tells the full story of one of the great cult bands of the 60s.

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LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE'A writer out to do whatever the hell he wants . . . a grisly, gross-out slice of medieval life and death, it's vigorously, writhingly itself, spilling out of any box you put it in' Observer'A dark and bloody tale, well leavened with bone-dry humour, and with a dramatic climax that has about it the flavour of a Jacobean tragedy' Guardian 'Set to become an Irish cult classic' Sunday Business Post'A tremendously engaging and fun read . . . a crazed, quixotic odyssey' Kevin BarryAn ambitious noble and his three serving men travel through the Irish countryside in the stifling summer of 1348, using the advantage of the plague which has collapsed society to buy up large swathes of property and land. They come upon Nobber, a tiny town, whose only living habitants seem to be an egotistical bureaucrat, his volatile wife, a naked blacksmith, and a beautiful Gaelic hostage. Meanwhile, a band of marauding Gaels are roaming around, using the confusion of the sickness to pillage and reclaim lands that once belonged to them. As these groups converge upon the town, the habitants, who up until this point have been under strict curfew, begin to stir from their dwellings, demanding answers from the intruders. A deadly stand-off emerges from which no one will escape unscathed.'Nobber is hallucinatory and sly, conjuring a densely strange and savagely captivating world. There are lots of novels, and there are lots of novels that are all much alike, but there is nothing like Nobber' Colin Barrett'A skilled storyteller with a rich command of language and rare comedic flair' Irish Times

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The lagahoo is a shapeshifting, trickster figure of Trinidadian legend (and popular belief), a thoroughly creolised werewolf. Like the native American Coyote, he operates at both divine and very human levels, as both a world-creator and an interferer in peoples' affairs. The subject and consciousness of these arresting and truly original poems, Lagahoo is present from the beginnings of time, witness to countless arrivals and still around at the new millennium with his sly rejections of all repressions: sexual, social or political. He is present on a crowded bus, whispering, 'Your feet are bound and laced in leather,/ Your women's breasts are held with wires'. He is the creative, subversive creature of 'deep dark mud-lust and rebellion', who, unlike men, makes no distinction between himself and the earth he lives off ('I wear the red earth by staying low') whilst men live in a state of alienation and ecological enmity until their deaths when ('the earth will stitch their bodies/ With roots and vines, Like stupid little buttons.') Belief in the reality of the lagahoo has featured as a successful defence in the Trinidadian courts where Aboud practices his other occupation as a barrister. There a defendant was acquitted from a wounding charge on the grounds that he believed that his victim, attacked at night, was a lagahoo. The victim, indeed, corroborated this defence by admitting that though he had never seen one, 'Ah does hear dem howling in de night'. In locating his voice in the twilight world between legend and reality, Aboud constantly rearranges the way the world can be perceived.James Christopher Aboud was born in Trinidad in 1956 and educated there, in Canada, and in England. His first collection of poetry, The Stone Rose, was published in 1986. He lives in Port of Spain and is a Barrister-at-Law.

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A loving homage to the era celebrated by the hit Netflix series Bridgerton—and the cocktails that shaped its high society As a society doyenne and undercover libertine, Lady Thornwood knows what makes a drink perfect. In The Regency Book of Drinks: Quaffs, Quips, Tipples, and Tales from Grosvenor Square, this respectable cocktail connoisseur presents a guide of over 75 cocktail recipes shaped by the Regency era in both refinement and ingredients—and served alongside a heaping dose of high-society gossip, scandal, and speculation. Beginning with the gentlewoman's advice on setting up a Regency bar, the best glassware and garnishes, and an overview of the period’s most popular ingredients, the book is then divided into six subsequent recipe chapters drawn from high-society life during the London social season, from occasions such as "The Evening Soirée" to "Delicate Daytime Drinks" to even those rare, deliciously nonalcoholic drinks for "Polite Company." Throughout these chapters, Lady Thornwood weighs in with stylish sidebars and entertaining advice on how to host gatherings that are the talk of the "ton." Amidst all of her sly cheek and drama, our hostess presents readers and cocktail aficionados with an intriguing true history. In Regency England, as Britain’s Empire expanded, cocktails were becoming social currency—a showcase for wealth, trade connections, and even modern marvels like ice. The Regency shaped British high society for a century and helped launch the cocktail revolution we still enjoy today. As Lady Thornwood says, "As the Regency unfolds, ships sail up the Thames from every corner of the globe freighting exotic spices, vibrant fruits, and marvelous elixirs. Let us toast this bounty and craft it to our purpose. Cocktails stiffen the spine, unlock the tongue, and add sheen to even the dullest drawing room. Coupes up!"

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Copeland Forbes is one of the most consequential figures in the history of modern Jamaican music. Through his roles as personal and tour manager for some of the most iconic personalities in music, Forbes has been a witness to and a participant in some of the most intriguing dramas in the annals of modern popular music. Forbes is a much sought after speaking at music symposia and seminars across the world where his name is often a prime attraction and his vast knowledge a source of enlightenment and entertainment. Forbes has copped numerous awards for his outstanding contribution to the music industry including the Order of Distinction from the Government of Jamaica in 2017. In Reggae My Life Is, Forbes provides riveting accounts of incidents and colorful portraits of personalities that have helped to shape our society and our culture. It is a matter of easy concession that Forbes has led an exciting life. He has seen so many places and has made so many things happen during the 60 years he was entrusted with handling the affairs of some of the most celebrated figures ever to grace our planet. Among some of the fascinating figures making appearances in Forbes’ retrospective Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Dennis Brown, Jimmy Cliff, Bunny Wailer. Rita Marley, Frankie Crocker, Danny Sims, Marcia Griffiths, Gregory Issacs, Chris Blackwell, Mick Jagger, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Don Taylor, Sly and Robbie, Grace Jones and Don King. Forbes, with his prodigious recall, is able to situate some of the more seminal moments in the history of Jamaican music with clarity and humor. His knowledge of venues, dates and personalities is encyclopedic. Yet Forbes’ intention is not to provide fodder for the gossip mill. His aim is, instead, to clarify and contextualize in order to provide important lessons for those who seek to learn from art and life.

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True to Goldoni's mixture of comic wit and farce, the plot is a breathtakingly fast succession of twists and turns which only unravel in the very final lines with a surprise ending. Two friends are in love with the same young woman. Neither wants to place their friendship in jeopardy. How can love triumph without breaking off their friendship? Goldoni explores the conflicts brought about when Florindo has to choose between Lelio, his best friend, and Rosaura, his best friend's fiancee. Added to this conundrum are the issues of whether Ottavio, the old miser, will provide a dowry and the mature Beatrice's unashamed incessant pursuit of Florindo. The play is set in Bologna in Lelio's house. Florindo is a guest along with his faithful manservant. From the opening of the play, Florindo seeks to return home to Venice in order not to damage his friend's relationship. However, his departure is obstructed time and again by his hosts, leading to one complication after another. From the beginning, the plot is intense and fast-moving with inversions fed into the action in quick succession. This creates suspense which continues throughout the play as potential marriage partners are switched back and forth until the very ending when the audience finally discovers what the main characters' destiny will be. Will love or friendship prevail? The Venetian element is brought into this play through Florindo and his manservant, both Venetians. Apart from these two characters, all the others are portrayed as self-seeking, selfish and sly - whether servants or masters. The tension is kept at a constantly high level by the struggles between the characters. These struggles are not just brought about through love and friendship but are also generational and social. Furthermore, there is the added complication in the contrast of the characters' ideas of reality as they deceive one another. This creates dramatic irony and humour as the audience know more than any of the characters on stage.

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'Furious and addictive' New York Times 'Urgent, deeply moving, wholly original' GEORGE SAUNDERS'A dazzling lightning bolt of a novel' JENNY OFFILL'Fiercely funny and deliciously subversive' YIYUN LI'Wayward reads like a burning fever dream. A virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'***** If there's any justice in the world, Spiotta's firecracker of a novel, Wayward, will bring her the attention she very much deserves' Lucy Scholes, SUNDAY TELEGRAPHSamantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and she finds herself staring into 'the Mids' - hours of supreme wakefulness when women of a certain age contemplate their lives. For Sam, this means motherhood, mortality and the state of an unravelling nation. When Sam falls in love with a decrepit Arts and Crafts house on the wrong side of town, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life, attempting to find beauty in the ruins. 'One of the most wildly talented writers in America. This is Spiotta's best book yet' GEORGE SAUNDERS 'A slyly funny, clever and compelling story about the righteous (and rarely irrational) rage of women of a certain age' SARRA MANNING, RED magazine'A piercing novel about what we lose and gain by when we step out of life's deepest worn grooves' VOGUE'She writes with sly humour and utter seriousness; a rare articulation of midlife now' CLAIRE MESSUD'What begins as a vertiginous leap into hilarious rabbit holes ends as a brilliant meditation on mortality and time. How does she do it? Only Dana Spiotta knows. I'm just happy to see her work her magic' JENNY OFFILL

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This book presents an ethnopoetic translation and an interpretation of an evening of story­telling which took place in rural Afghanistan in 1975. Three years before the Marxist coup, two Muslim elders from Herat province were asked by a Marxist subgovernor to spend an evening telling traditional stories to an American woman. The storytellers wittily integrated themes of sense and nonsense, gender and sexuality, religion and public and private social control in thirteen recorded stories, here translated in full. In interpreting texts, Margaret A. Mills argues for a rhetorical sophistication among adept traditional performers which enables them to mount performances of traditional materials which are highly, and in this case slyly, sensitive to the political and social identities of self and audience. Such identities are in part negotiated and constructed via the performances. Noting that Afghan culture has traditionally posited noninstitutional religious authority against central government institutions, Mills points out certain ironies and tensions which recur as the stories unfold in the presence of the government bureaucrat. Using this evening of stories as an example, the author asserts that the creation of narrative meaning makes use of both intertextual and interpersonal relationships. This extended performance suggests Afghan perspectives on the integration of narrative and social critique, of religious authority and private ethics, of the real and the fantastic, the serious and the ludicrous, which challenge common western notions about genres of literary production (written and oral) and social interaction.

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HUSTLERS meets BIG LITTLE LIES in the heist of the summer… A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ‘Propulsive and captivating’ Vogue ‘Darkly comedic’ Daily Mail Meet Ava: rule-abiding lawyer who has ticked all of life’s boxes. She’s married to a successful surgeon and has just taken an indefinite career break to raise her adorable toddler. A picture-perfect life. Meet Winnie: Ava’s old college roommate. Once awkward, quiet and apparently academically challenged, she left Stanford in a shroud of scandal. But now, she is charismatic, wealthy and has returned to town dripping in designer accessories. An actual perfect life. When the two women bump into one another at a local coffee shop, it seems like fate has intervened: Winnie’s new-found success is courtesy of a shady business and she needs a favour; Ava is realising she is not built for the stay-at-home life. But what starts as one favour turns into two, then three, and soon Ava is in far deeper than she ever imagined. Now Ava has to make the ultimate decision: cut and run, or risk it all? ‘Entertaining, luxurious … innovative and subversive’ NEW YORK TIMES ’Riveting and energetic’ BALLI KAUR JASWAL ’Clever, sharp, and slyly funny’ KIRKUS REVIEWS ’Will keep you breathless to the last page’ CLAIRE MESSUD ’Sly, subversive … incisive’ BOOKLIST _____ NetGalley readers LOVE Counterfeit ‘One of the best books I’ve read all year’ * * * * *‘Gripping … ingenious’ * * * * *‘Amusing, addictive story that kept me reading all night’ * * * * *‘Mysterious, suspenseful and twisty … had me on the edge of my seat’ * * * * * *‘Fresh, observant and somehow … an incredible story without a wasted word’ * * * * *‘I absolutely loved this book … highly recommend’ * * * * *‘Devoured this in a night or two … funny, sad and eye-opening’ * * * * *‘This book refused to allow me to put it down!’ * * * * *‘Amusing, addictive … kept me reading all night’ * * * * *

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HUSTLERS meets BIG LITTLE LIES in the heist of the summer… A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ‘Propulsive and captivating’ Vogue ‘Darkly comedic’ Daily Mail Meet Ava: rule-abiding lawyer who has ticked all of life’s boxes. She’s married to a successful surgeon and has just taken an indefinite career break to raise her adorable toddler. A picture-perfect life. Meet Winnie: Ava’s old college roommate. Once awkward, quiet and apparently academically challenged, she left Stanford in a shroud of scandal. But now, she is charismatic, wealthy and has returned to town dripping in designer accessories. An actual perfect life. When the two women bump into one another at a local coffee shop, it seems like fate has intervened: Winnie’s new-found success is courtesy of a shady business and she needs a favour; Ava is realising she is not built for the stay-at-home life. But what starts as one favour turns into two, then three, and soon Ava is in far deeper than she ever imagined. Now Ava has to make the ultimate decision: cut and run, or risk it all? ‘Entertaining, luxurious … innovative and subversive’ NEW YORK TIMES ’Riveting and energetic’ BALLI KAUR JASWAL ’Clever, sharp, and slyly funny’ KIRKUS REVIEWS ’Will keep you breathless to the last page’ CLAIRE MESSUD ’Sly, subversive … incisive’ BOOKLIST _____ NetGalley readers LOVE Counterfeit ‘One of the best books I’ve read all year’ * * * * *‘Gripping … ingenious’ * * * * *‘Amusing, addictive story that kept me reading all night’ * * * * *‘Mysterious, suspenseful and twisty … had me on the edge of my seat’ * * * * * *‘Fresh, observant and somehow … an incredible story without a wasted word’ * * * * *‘I absolutely loved this book … highly recommend’ * * * * *‘Devoured this in a night or two … funny, sad and eye-opening’ * * * * *‘This book refused to allow me to put it down!’ * * * * *‘Amusing, addictive … kept me reading all night’ * * * * *

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Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

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KSAN!: The Hippie Radio Revolution that Rocked America is an oral history of America’s first hippie underground FM station which broadcasted the countercultural consciousness of the ‘60s and ‘70s to a new generation. A communal radio band of intrepid hellraisers, pranksters, and drug-enlightened geniuses defined this psychedelic era, from the Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park, to the rebellion and bitter end of the late 1970s, which launched the Reagan Revolution.Founded in San Francisco by Tom Donahue, a 1996 inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, an entire generation of Americans discovered a new musical universe among dance clubs, light shows and street fests––the original pop-ups. Almost overnight, KSAN became an audio clubhouse, where anyone could belong with friends and the cool cats and hipsters they just met.Rock gods, political stars, and literary celebrities, including Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey, Sly Stone, and John Lennon were all interviewed by founder Tom Donahue and his cohorts, whose listeners “tuned in and turned on” to bands like Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Quicksilver, Country Joe and the Fish, Hot Tuna, The Beatles and Santana, among others.Folk journalist Hank Rosenfeld was there during those final years––writing, producing, and announcing. His warm, funny voice presents a behind-the-mic experience at KSAN, the beloved, “Jive 95,” whose delicious dose of enlightened sunshine and 33 rpm LP dreamscapes ignited a radio explosion from coast to coast.So, how did KSAN go from a liberating voice to a corporate cliché? It’s all here in Rosenfeld’s insightful, hilarious account, which includes countless exclusive interviews with iconic performers and never before available in print or audio form.

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'Rich in charm and surprises' GUARDIAN'A transporting and entertaining read' THE TIMES'A triumph. Funny, mysterious, moving and ingenious - a Shakespearian knot of happiness all round' PHILIP PULLMAN One night in a remote hunting lodge with a Hollywood director causes an international scandal that wrecks Astrid's glittering stage career, and her marriage. Her ex-husband, the charismatic Scottish actor Magnus Fellowes, goes on to find global fame, while Astrid retreats to a disintegrating Sussex windmill. Now 82, she lives there still, with a troupe of dachshunds and her long-suffering friend, Mrs Baker, who came to clean twenty years ago and never left. But the past is catching up with them. There has been an 'Awful Incident' at the windmill; the women are in shock. Then Astrid hears that Magnus, now on his death bed, is writing a tell-all memoir. Outraged, she sets off for Scotland, determined to stop him. Windmill Hill is the story of two very different women, both with painful pasts, and their eccentric friendship - deep, enduring, and loyal to the last. Praise for Lucy Atkins:'Brilliantly observed. I loved it' CLAIRE FULLER'A truly memorable story, I loved it' JOANNA CANNON'An intriguing, brilliantly told story' NINA STIBBE'Charming and shocking . . . Never fails to delight' MICK HERRON'A deft display of Lucy Atkins's talents as a delicate observer of human nature' ARIFA AKBAR'Compulsive and skilfully woven' CLARE CHAMBERS'Intelligent and gripping' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING'Mesmerising . . . beautifully written' LITERARY REVIEW'Cleverly constructed' WOMAN & HOME'It was an utter joy to relish Atkins's wonderfully skilled and unobtrusive writing' SARAH PERRY 'Sly, witty and gripping . . . I loved it' NAOMI ALDERMAN 'A sinewy, supple and gorgeously satisfying triumph' LUCY MANGAN

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How to paint oil portraits like the Old Masters Mona Lisa. Girl with a Pearl Earring. Madame X. The infinite variety and beauty of humankind--like the mysteries behind sparkling eyes, a sly smile or an averted gaze--has captivated artists since the beginning of time. This expanded edition of Chris Saper's best-selling guide, Classic Portrait Painting in Oils, reveals keys for mastering how to paint beautiful portraits in oil to create soulful works of art. Through easy-to-follow lessons and expert oil painting tips and techniques, you'll find secrets for working from life, using reference photos and more to create rich, realistic portraits imbued with timeless character. 14 step-by-step demonstrations teach how to paint 7 diverse subjects of varying skin tones from life and from photographic reference Additional exercises reveal expert oil painting techniques for defining facial details, like eyes, mouths, wrinkles, facial hair and eyeglasses Professional tips for working from life, including ideal session times, posing, seeing and mixing color and even how to work with children The basics of using natural, artificial, creative and "Rembrandt" lighting to light your subject and convey a mood Expanded key concepts of "perfect practice," the importance of regularly painting subjects in real time and an insistence on excellent photographic reference material, including a checklist for how to take--and self-edit--your own quality photos New material on how to approach and execute paid commissions, including step-by-step demonstrations for painting both corporate and family subjects Through Saper's universal techniques, painters of all skill levels will learn to render more realistic portraits of every subject they paint, with predictable and joyful results.

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BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE GUARDIAN, SUNDAY TIMES, NEW YORKER Raw and radical, strange and beguiling - a love letter to Britain's breathtaking flatlands, from Orford Ness to Orkney, and a reckoning with the painful, hidden histories they contain'Expansive, arresting, with sly humour... Masud establishes herself as a significant chronicler of personal and national experience' Financial Times'Noreen Masud fathoms the depths of flat landscapes - sharp, subtle and very moving' Robert Macfarlane'Haunting and generous, beautifully written - this book is a gift' Preti Taneja'A Flat Place reminds us that there is hope in the smallest of gestures' Sara AhmedNoreen Masud has always loved flatlands. Her earliest memory is of a wide, flat field glimpsed from the back seat of her father's car in Lahore. As an adult in Britain she has discovered many more flat landscapes to love: Orford Ness, the Cambridgeshire Fens, Morecambe Bay, Orkney. These bare, haunted expanses remind her of the flat place inside herself: the place created by trauma.Noreen suffers from complex post-traumatic stress disorder: the product of a profoundly disrupted and unstable childhood. It flattens her emotions, blanks out parts of her memory, and colours her world with anxiety. Undertaking a pilgrimage around Britain's flatlands, seeking solace and belonging, she weaves her impressions of the natural world with poetry, folklore and history, and with recollections of her own early life.Noreen's British-Pakistani heritage makes her a partial outsider in these landscapes: both coloniser and colonised, inheritor and dispossessed. Here violence lies beneath the fantasy of pastoral innocence, and histories of harm are interwoven with nature's power to heal. Here, as in her own family history, are many stories that resist the telling. She pursues these paradoxes fearlessly across the flat, haunted spaces she loves, offering a startlingly strange, vivid and intimate account of the land beneath her feet.

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Churchill is generally considered one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, if not the greatest of all, revered for his opposition to appeasement, his defiance in the face of German bombing of England, his political prowess, his deft aphorisms, and his memorable speeches. He became the savior of his country, as prime minister during the most perilous period in British history, World War II, and is now perhaps even more beloved in America than in England. And yet Churchill was also very often in the wrong: he brazenly contradicted his own previous political stances, was a disastrous military strategist, and inspired dislike and distrust through much of his life. Before 1939 he doubted the efficacy of tank and submarine warfare, opposed the bombing of cities only to reverse his position, shamelessly exploited the researchers and ghostwriters who wrote much of the journalism and the books published so lucratively under his name, and had an inordinate fondness for alcohol that once found him drinking whisky before breakfast. When he was appointed to the cabinet for the first time in 1908, a perceptive journalist called him “the most interesting problem of personal speculation in English politics.” More than a hundred years later, he remains a source of adulation, as well as misunderstanding. This revelatory new book takes on Churchill in his entirety, separating the man from the myth that he so carefully cultivated, and scrutinizing his legacy on both sides of the Atlantic. In effervescent prose, shot through with sly wit, Geoffrey Wheatcroft illuminates key moments and controversies in Churchill’s career—from the tragedy of Gallipoli, to his shocking imperialist and racist attitudes, dealings with Ireland, support for Zionism, and complicated engagement with European integration. Charting the evolution and appropriation of Churchill’s reputation through to the present day, Churchill’s Shadow colorfully renders the nuance and complexity of this giant of modern politics.

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Through film composer Henry Mancini, mere background music in movies became part of pop culture--an expression of sophistication and wit with a modern sense of cool and a lasting lyricism that has not dated. The first comprehensive study of Mancini's music, Henry Mancini: Reinventing Film Music describes how the composer served as a bridge between the Big Band period of World War II and the impatient eclecticism of the Baby Boomer generation, between the grand formal orchestral film scores of the past and a modern American minimalist approach. Mancini's sound seemed to capture the bright, confident, welcoming voice of the middle class's new efficient life: interested in pop songs and jazz, in movie and television, in outreach politics but also conventional stay-at-home comforts. As John Caps shows, Mancini easily combined it all in his music. Mancini wielded influence in Hollywood and around the world with his iconic scores: dynamic jazz for the noirish detective TV show Peter Gunn, the sly theme from The Pink Panther, and his wistful folk song "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Through insightful close readings of key films, Caps traces Mancini's collaborations with important directors and shows how he homed in on specific dramatic or comic aspects of the film to create musical effects through clever instrumentation, eloquent musical gestures, and meaningful resonances and continuities in his scores. Accessible and engaging, this fresh view of Mancini's oeuvre and influence will delight and inform fans of film and popular music. John Caps is an award-winning writer and producer of documentaries. He served as producer, writer, and host for four seasons of the National Public Radio syndicated series The Cinema Soundtrack, featuring interviews with and music of film composers. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. A volume in the series Music in American Life

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THE BOOK THAT BROUGHT DOWN RUPERT MURDOCH - AND A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERMeet the Murdochs and the disastrously dysfunctional family of Fox News. Until recently, they formed the most powerful media and political force in America. Now their empire is cracking up and crashing down. In his irresistible trilogy on the chaotic Trump presidency - Fire and Fury, Siege, and Landslide - the journalist Michael Wolff led readers deep into the twisted corridors of the White House. Drawing on years of unprecedented access to the Murdoch family and key players, he plunges us behind the scenes of another empire of influence, and the result is astonishing and unforgettable. Here is Rupert Murdoch, the ninety-two-year-old billionaire - concerned about his legacy, but more concerned about profits. Here are his contentious children, jockeying to take over when the old man is gone. Here is star anchor Tucker Carlson considering a run for the presidency while his bosses have other plans for him. Sean Hannity, the richest man in television, has his own plans: to put Trump back in office. While presenter Laura Ingraham is just trying to survive in a man's world. As the fallout from the 2020 election and the Dominion lawsuit pummels the reputation of the network, the battling Murdoch heirs position themselves for the final act in this riveting drama."Michael Wolff's books were my foundation and port of entry for working on Succession." Jeremy Strong ("Kendall Roy")Praise for Fire and Fury:#1 New York Times bestseller, a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Sunday Times, Observer, Financial Times'The pages of Wolff's book are littered with insults and intrigue, backstabbing and dysfunction' Washington Post'What makes the book significant is its sly, hilarious portrait of a hollow man, into the black hole of whose needy, greedy ego the whole world has virtually vanished' Guardian

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Churchill is generally considered one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, if not the greatest of all, revered for his opposition to appeasement, his defiance in the face of German bombing of England, his political prowess, his deft aphorisms, and his memorable speeches. He became the savior of his country, as prime minister during the most perilous period in British history, World War II, and is now perhaps even more beloved in America than in England. And yet Churchill was also very often in the wrong: he brazenly contradicted his own previous political stances, was a disastrous military strategist, and inspired dislike and distrust through much of his life. Before 1939 he doubted the efficacy of tank and submarine warfare, opposed the bombing of cities only to reverse his position, shamelessly exploited the researchers and ghostwriters who wrote much of the journalism and the books published so lucratively under his name, and had an inordinate fondness for alcohol that once found him drinking whisky before breakfast. When he was appointed to the cabinet for the first time in 1908, a perceptive journalist called him “the most interesting problem of personal speculation in English politics.” More than a hundred years later, he remains a source of adulation, as well as misunderstanding. This revelatory new book takes on Churchill in his entirety, separating the man from the myth that he so carefully cultivated, and scrutinizing his legacy on both sides of the Atlantic. In effervescent prose, shot through with sly wit, Geoffrey Wheatcroft illuminates key moments and controversies in Churchill’s career—from the tragedy of Gallipoli, to his shocking imperialist and racist attitudes, dealings with Ireland, support for Zionism, and complicated engagement with European integration. Charting the evolution and appropriation of Churchill’s reputation through to the present day, Churchill’s Shadow colorfully renders the nuance and complexity of this giant of modern politics.

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Tirso de Molina's Marta the Divine (c. 1614-15) is a spirited comedy about an ingenious young woman who fakes religious piety in order to avoid an arranged marriage imposed upon her by her father. Marta's false religiosity becomes a cover for sneaking her boyfriend into her house and, to all intents and purposes, having a sexual relationship with him without her credulous father suspecting a thing. The stakes involved in this risky gambit are particularly high because her boyfriend, Felipe, is also the man who has killed her brother. In this fast-moving play that celebrates the victory of youth over age, of love over revenge, little is held sacred, as circumstances spiral to the point of outrageousness. Not surprisingly, Marta has been a controversial play over the years, condemned for immorality and salaciousness by some, championed as an anticlerical tract by others. Readers and audience members over the years have puzzled as to what Tirso wants us to make of the title character and her behaviour. Is she a cautionary example, a sly hypocrite, whom we are to hold at a critical distance? Or she is a sympathetic comic heroine, even a proto-feminist, whose cause we are to embrace? No matter one's perspective, Marta is memorable because of the audaciousness and resourcefulness of the title character. Marta is a great stage creation, and the plot Tirso builds around this trickster has the feel of the archetypal, transcending the time and place of its creation. At the same time, Marta is a surprisingly comprehensive satire of the Spanish empire of its day. Through a variety of subtle touches, Tirso paints a picture of an imperial capital plagued by avarice and hypocrisy. The play has some puzzling elements or 'problems' from a technical point of view, but the irresistible force of its comic energy has appealed to readers and audiences for nearly 400 years. This edition presents the play for the first time ever in English translation. The translation is accompanied by the Spanish text, translators' note and a substantial introduction.

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A new, definitive English translation of the celebrated story collection regarded as a landmark of Norwegian literature and culture The extraordinary folktales collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe began appearing in Norway in 1841. Over the next two decades the publication of subsequent editions under the title Norske folkeeventyr made the names Asbjørnsen and Moe synonymous with Norwegian storytelling traditions. Tiina Nunnally’s vivid translation of their monumental collection is the first new English translation in more than 150 years—and the first ever to include all sixty original tales.Magic and myth inhabit these pages in figures both familiar and strange. Giant trolls and talking animals are everywhere. The winds take human form. A one-eyed old woman might seem reminiscent of the Norse god Odin. We meet sly aunts, resourceful princesses, and devious robbers. The clever and fearless boy Ash Lad often takes center stage as he ingeniously breaks spells and defeats enemies to win half the kingdom. These stories, set in Norway’s majestic landscape of towering mountains and dense forests, are filled with humor, mischief, and sometimes surprisingly cruel twists of fate. All are rendered in the deceptively simple narrative style perfected by Asbjørnsen and Moe—now translated into an English that is as finely tuned to the modern ear as it is true to the original Norwegian.Included here—for the very first time in English—are Asbjørnsen and Moe’s Forewords and Introductions to the early Norwegian editions of the tales. Asbjørnsen gives us an intriguing glimpse into the actual collection process and describes how the stories were initially received, both in Norway and abroad. Equally fascinating are Moe’s views on how central characters might be interpreted and his notes on the regions where each story was originally collected. Nunnally’s informative Translator’s Note places the tales in a biographical, historical, and literary context for the twenty-first century.The Norwegian folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe are timeless stories that will entertain, startle, and enthrall readers of all ages.

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Well before Andy Warhol’s rise to the pinnacle of Pop Art, he created and exhibited seductive drawings celebrating male beauty. Andy Warhol Love, Sex, & Desire: Drawings 1950-1962 features over three hundred drawings rendered primarily in ink on paper portraying young men, many of them nude, some sexually charged, and occasionally adorned with whimsical black hearts and delightful embellishments. They lounge or preen, proud of or even bored by their beauty, while the artist sketches them, rapt. They rarely engage with their keen observer, and likewise Warhol’s focus is on their form, their erotic qualities, and unbridled sexuality. If his subjects are content to revel in their attractiveness, so too is Warhol. His confident hand illustrates a multitude of colorful characters, yet also reveals much about this enigmatic artist. Warhol was already a booming commercial illustrator when he exhibited studies from this body of work at the Bodley Gallery on New York’s Upper East Side in 1956. He mistakenly saw these illustrations as his way of breaking into the New York art scene, underestimating the pervading homophobia of the time. While he never saw through his plan to publish the drawings as a monograph, he did produce more than a thousand elegant, seemingly effortless drawings from life. This volume finally brings his project to fruition by gathering his most striking images, published here for the first time in a comprehensive book and chosen by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Edited and featuring an introduction by the Foundation’s Michael Dayton Hermann, and essays by Warhol biographer Blake Gopnik and art critic Drew Zeiba. The inclusion of poems by James Baldwin, Thom Gunn, Harold Norse, Essex Hemphill and Allen Ginsberg create moments of introspection, which expand on the themes and moods present in the drawings. In style, the drawings evoke the sketches of Jean Cocteau and even Matisse: highly distilled and sure of line, yet loose. The sly voyeurism, meanwhile, is entirely Warhol’s own, and even the most risqué drawings contain a kind of droll humor—a sense of ironic detachment—that would become a Warhol trademark.

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The last the boy Papa saw of his Momma, she was galloping away on her horse Precious in the saddle her father took from a dead Mexican officer after the Battle of San Jacinto, fleeing from his Daddy, Old Karl, a vicious, tight-fisted horse trader. Momma’s flight sets Papa on a relentless quest to find her that thrusts him and his scrappy little dog Fritz into adventures all across the wild and woolly Hill Country of Central Texas, down to Mexico, and even into the realm of the ghostly “Shimmery People.” In The Devil’s Backbone, master storyteller Bill Wittliff takes readers on an exciting journey through a rough 1880s frontier as full of colorful characters and unexpected turns of events as the great American quest novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.Wittliff grew up listening to stories and memories like these in his own family, and in this imaginative novel, they come to vivid life, creating an engrossing story of a Texas Huck Finn that brims with folk wisdom and sly humor. A rogue’s gallery of characters thwart and aid Papa’s path—Old Karl, hell-bent on bringing the boy back to servitude on his farm, and Herman, Papa’s brother who’s got Old Karl’s horse-trading instincts and greed; Calley Pearsall, an enigmatic cowboy with “other Fish to Fry” who might be an outlaw or a trustworthy “o’Amigo”; o’Jeffey, a black seer who talks to the spirits but won’t tell Papa what she has divined about his Momma; Mister Pegleg, a three-legged coyote with whom Papa forms a poignant, nearly tragic friendship; the “Mexkins” Pepe and Peto and their father Old Crecencio, whose longing for his lost family is as strong as Papa’s; and blind Bird, a magical “blue baby” who can’t see with his eyes but who helps other people see what they hold in their hearts. Papa’s adventures draw him ever nearer to a mysterious cave that haunts his dreams—an actual cave that he discovers at last in the canyons of the Devil’s Backbone—but will he find Momma before Old Karl finds him?

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A playful, form-bending novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted, Women's Prize-winning author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet 'Playful and audacious' Independent Narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, Artful slips slyly between fiction and essay, guiding the reader thrillingly through a sequence of ideas on art and literature. With Smith's trademark humour, inventiveness, poignancy and critical insight, this is unique experiment in form, style, life, love, death, immortality and what art can mean. Based on four electrifying lectures given by the author at Oxford University, and exploring the explosive connections between art, story, memory and grief - Artful is a tidal wave of ideas to blast away the cobwebs and change how you see the world. *****'Artful is a revelation; a new kind of book altogether . . . makes you glad to be alive' Jackie Kay 'Powerful and moving' London Review of Books 'Blending of criticism and fiction, Artful belongs in a genre of its own . . . Joyful for anyone interested in the art of writing, and living, well' Anita Sethi, New Statesman

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'Riveting, twisty, page-turning stuff' GuardianA 'best books of 2020' pick for BBC Radio 4 Open Book, the Guardian, the Telegraph and Good Housekeeping'The page turner you've been looking for. Sly, witty and gripping . . . I devoured it' Naomi Alderman'An utter joy . . . wonderfully skilled' Sarah Perry'Beguiling, brilliantly creepy, and an utterly compelling read' Claire Fuller'Tender, creepy and gripping' Sunday Times'Spellbinding and spooky . . . a dazzling high wire act, superbly absorbing' Sunday MirrorWhen the eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford College Master vanishes in the middle of the night, police turn to the Scottish nanny, Dee, for answers.As Dee looks back over her time in the Master's Lodging - an eerie and ancient house - a picture of a high achieving but dysfunctional family emerges: Nick, the fiercely intelligent and powerful father; his beautiful Danish wife Mariah, pregnant with their child; and the lost little girl, Felicity, almost mute, seeing ghosts, grieving her dead mother.But is Dee telling the whole story? Is her growing friendship with the eccentric house historian, Linklater, any cause for concern? And most of all, why is Felicity silent?Roaming Oxford's secret passages and hidden graveyards, Magpie Lane explores the true meaning of family - and what it is to be denied one.'Enthralling . . . creepy and compelling' The Times'Deliciously dark' Alexandra Shulman'A gorgeously satisfying triumph' Lucy Mangan'A rare thing . . . simply stunning' Daily Express'I was gripped . . . highly original' Alex Clark'Creepy, suspenseful' Independent'One of the most intriguing narrators since Notes on a Scandal' Sara Collins'Grown-up and cleverly written . . . a dizzying sense of uncertainty' Literary Review'Keeps you guessing . . . a real sense of menace' Good Housekeeping'Wholly beguiling' Mick Herron'Dazzlingly good' Diane Setterfield'Beautiful writing' Polly Samson'Clever, tense and twisty' Amanda Craig'Highly intelligent' Sarah Vaughan'Simply brilliant!' JP Delaney'Darkly atmospheric' Jane Fallon'Clever and creepy' Erin Kelly'Highly recommended' Louise Candlish

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For the past 50 years, Mircea Dinescu has been one of Romanian poetry's most provocative and obstinately singular poets. After starting out as a writer of highly musical poetry that he spun round in his fingers with the aplomb of a magician who refuted reality, he ended up stuck in free verse, impelled mainly because of the surrealism of a world in which the label and the content of any box seldom matched. After his first gratuitous exercises when he was 22 and striving to commit himself to love poetry, he was surprised to discover that he had created a poetry of sly political allusion. He was like that communist worker employed in a factory producing bicycle parts who, stealing a tiny wheel one day, a few nuts and bolts on another, a gear, then taking home a chain and a length of pipe, until finally realising to his amazement that however he assembled these parts, instead of a bicycle the result was a Russian machine gun. The dictator at whom Dinescu shot his metaphors was eventually shot with real bullets by his own henchmen. Unlike Dinescu, those men were able to see the difference between a bicycle and a machine gun: later on, disguising themselves as anti-communists, they pedalled their bicycles into the brave new consumer society. A quarter of a century and more since the fall of communism, Mircea Dinescu still hesitates to think of himself as witness, judge or defendant. Like an agile monkey, he jumps into and out of the handbook of literature, just as into and out of the handbook of history, where he is mentioned on page 16, in the chapter entitled Revolutions. In 1989, Dinescu was liberated from house arrest by a large crowd in Bucharest who carried him triumphantly to the national television building. There he announced to his country and the world, with actor Ion Caramitru, that the dictator had fled. The country changed almost overnight from communist to capitalist, but Dinescu carried on doing what he'd always done: writing necessary poems that challenge all systems.

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Welcome to Cross River, Maryland. Established by the leaders of the country's only successful slave revolt in the mid-nineteenth century, its residents thump out a beat that echoes its violent founding. Among them – spanning decades, perspectives, and species – are David Sherman, a struggling musician who just happens to be God's last son; Tyrone, a ruthless Ph.D student channelling the insurrections of his forebears through a childhood game; Jim, a Robot Personal Helper desperate to escape the master who enslaves him; and James-my-man, who travels the path of the Underground Railroad year after year.Not to forget the water women who lure men to their watery graves and the screecher birds who cry out for sacrificial flesh...Contemporary and essential, The World Doesn't Require You announces the arrival of a generational talent, as Rion Amilcar Scott shatters rigid genre lines to explore larger themes of race, violence, and love – all told with sly humour and a dash of magical realism.PRAISE FOR THE WORLD DOESN'T REQUIRE YOU: 'I wandered into Cross River, not knowing a damn thing. Now I'm shuddering, gasping in wonder, reading stories over and over, and doing just about anything so that I never leave' MARLON JAMES'A musical and visceral explosion. The book makes you laugh even as it stabs. The truth told in a completely new way' NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH'Flat-out unputdownable' LAURA VAN DEN BERG'Rion Amilcar Scott doesn't hold back or tiptoe around issues about race. He's the most courageous writer I know; and this collection is an excellent example and significant achievement. He's now made his mark as a force to reckon with' NICOLE DENNIS-BENN'Surreal, intertextual, and darkly comical ... With breathtaking cruelty and devastating humor, Scott adduces the whole world in one community' NAFISSA THOMPSON-SPIRES

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The liberating power of anger has rarely felt so good and healing as in this complete collection of a landmark in feminist poetry.“She digs her teeth into the slaveries of woman, she cries them aloud with such fulminating energy that the chains begin to melt of themselves. Reaching into the hive of her angers, she plucks out images of fear and delight that are transparent yet loaded with the darknesses of life. Diane Wakoski is an important and moving poet.”—The New York TimesIn 1971, Diane Wakoski published The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems to tremendous acclaim. In the decades that followed, she wrote additional “betrayal” poems, which are now collected here in one volume for the first time. Relevant, moving—at times shocking—it is Wakoski’s honesty and bravery as an artist that continues to astonish, delight, inspire, and liberate readers.Wakoski responds to betrayal in a variety of ways including fantasies such as drilling bullet holes into the bodies of unfaithful lovers. But even her anger can be winking, as in the book’s sly dedication to “all those men who betrayed me at one time or another, in hopes they will fall off their motorcycles and break their necks.” There is joy here because it is self-knowledge that the writer seeks, as in the collection’s title poem: So some white wolves and I will sing on your grave, old man and dance for the joy of your death. “Is this an angry statement?” “No, it is a statement of joy.” “Will the sun shine again?” “Yes, yes, yes,” because I’m going to dance dance danceDiane Wakoski’s art as a confessional, storytelling poet has rarely been equaled. Her revelations become shared emotional truth with readers. The collection’s new introduction by poet and Green Mountains Review editor Elizabeth A. I. Powell gives context to the long wake of Wakoski’s inspiring influence on generations of readers. Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch is for anyone who ever lost a love and wishes to embrace the freedom, rather than the pain, it can bring.

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In Bitter Bronx, one of our most gifted and original novelists depicts a world before and after modern urban renewal destroyed the gritty sanctity of a land made famous by Ruth, Gehrig, and Joltin' Joe. Bitter Bronx is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with Jerome Charyn's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row, amid a "land of deprivation…where fathers trundled home…with a monumental sadness on their shoulders." In "Lorelei," a lonely hearts grifter returns home and finds his childhood sweetheart still living in the same apartment house on the Concourse; in "Archy and Mehitabel" a high school romance blossoms around a newspaper comic strip; in "Major Leaguer" a former New York Yankee confronts both a gang of drug dealers and the wreckage that Robert Moses wrought in his old neighborhood; and in three interconnected stories—"Silk & Silk," "Little Sister," and "Marla"—Marla Silk, a successful Manhattan attorney, discovers her father's past in the Bronx and a mysterious younger sister who was hidden from her, kept in a fancy rest home near the Botanical Garden. In these stories and others, the past and present tumble together in Charyn's singular and distinctly "New York prose, street-smart, sly, and full of lurches" (John Leonard, New York Times). Throughout it all looms the "master builder" Robert Moses, a man who believed he could "save" the Bronx by building a highway through it, dynamiting whole neighborhoods in the process. Bitter Bronx stands as both a fictional eulogy for the people and places paved over by Moses' expressway and an affirmation of Charyn's "brilliant imagination" (Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune).

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