In Burn After Reading , two gym instructors (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand) accidentally stumble across and try to sell a disk containing the memoirs of CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), who has recently been fired from the agency. Their attempts at blackmail go wildly awry, gradually engulfing Osborne Cox's estranged wife (Tilda Swinton) and her lover (George Clooney), whose involvement triggers a series of tragic consequences. With this latest offering, Joel and Ethan Coen take on the spy thriller and reinvent it as only they can-combining humor and violence in completely unexpected ways, with the verbal dexterity that so defines their work.

It is 1967 and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him since she has fallen in love with one of his more pompous colleagues. His domestic woes accumulate: his unemployable brother Larry is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny is playing hooky from Hebrew school, and his daughter is sneaking money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation, thus putting in jeopardy Larry's chances for tenure at the university. As if all this wasn't enough, he is tormented by the sight of his beautiful next door neighbor sunbathing nude. Larry's search for some kind of equilibrium is conveyed with the kind of humor, imagination, and verbal wit that have made the work of Ethan and Joel Coen so distinctive.

"A double edition containing the screenplays for the movies HONEY DON'T! and DRIVE-AWAY DYKES. HONEY DON'T! No man can HAVE her . . . No woman can HOLD her . . . And no one better PISS HER OFF! DRIVE-AWAY DYKES Their love can't be named - and can't be stopped! Strap in! Strap on! Dive in! Read on! An F&F double: two Fabers, two authors, two stories – too much! Faber brings you a Honey O’Donahue Mystery PLUS a sizzling story of love on the run." --Publisher's website.

Joel and Ethan Coen (b. 1954, 1957) started their careers in obscurity on a shoestring budget cajoled from family and friends in Minneapolis. Working entirely outside the studio system, the Coen brothers scored an unlikely first success in 1984 with their postmodern noir film Blood Simple. Two decades and nearly a dozen movies later, the Coens are now among the best-known writer/directors in Hollywood, turning out major studio releases featuring such stars as George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Tom Hanks. The Coens' films all share a distinctive, quirky ambience that critics have come to identify as "that Coen brothers feeling." Tricky moving camera work, frequent use of the voiceover, homages to directors and cinematic genres, a fascination with unexpected and off-kilter violence, and omnipresent black humor are all defining elements of the Coens' cinematic world. From such highly stylized movies as Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn't There to more mainstream but dark comedies such as Raising Arizona, Intolerable Cruelty, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coens are equally at home with existential despair and comic exuberance and are known for scripts packed with an obvious love for language. This collection of their most important interviews spans twenty years and is the most comprehensive published on the brothers. William Rodney Allen teaches at Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. He is the author of Walker Percy: A Southern Wayfarer and the editor of Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, both published by University Press of Mississippi.