The first trade edition of the cult classic from the artist/author hailed by Iggy Pop as “the great nightmare anti-hero of the new age,” legendary tattoo artist Jonathan Shaw, that chronicles a scandalous, degenerative addiction between two people—a wild, brutal, passionate, and unstoppable ride into depravity and darkness through the back alleys of Rio De Janeiro and New York City. A legendary tattoo master and notorious creator of trendsetting underground art, Jonathan Shaw has created a masterpiece with this powerful story that captures the destructive addiction of love, sex and drugs, embodied in two people whose irresistible passions threaten to destroy them. In the wild backwaters of Rio de Janeiro and New York, motorcycle-riding, nomadic outlaw poet Ignacio Valencia Lobos—known as Cigano—attempts in vain to curb the unhinged habits of his lover Narcisa, a crack-smoking philosopher prostitute. Though he knows they will destroy each other, Narcisa is an exquisite poison he cannot resist. As they navigate the chaos of her downward spiral—dragged deeper by the gravity of drugs, burglaries and violence, Cigano recounts a love affair doomed by insanity, dysfunction, and vice. A magnificent epic of literary genius, Narcisa belongs among the works of such greats as Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Irvine Welsh, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Ruth Simon is beautiful, smart, talented, and always hungry. As a teenager, she starved herself almost to death, and though outwardly healed, inwardly she remains dangerously obsessed with food. For Joseph Zimmerman, Ruth's tormented relationship with eating is a source of deep distress and erotic fascination. Driven by his love for Ruth, and haunted by his own secrets, Joseph sets out to unravel the mystery of hunger and denial. This gripping debut novel is a powerful exploration of appetite, love, and desire.

From one of the great modern masters of the fantastic, “A beautiful, brilliant, meditation on art, love, inspiration and what makes life worthwhile."-- Neil Gaiman "[Carroll's] prose is spare, polished and quick-moving, sometimes lightly comic, always immensely engaging... Mr. Breakfast is pure pleasure to read. It will surprise you, make you laugh and scare you — and then, just when you think it’s over, add several extra twists." - Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Graham Patterson’s life has hit a dead end. His career as a comedian is failing. The love of his life recently broke up with him and he literally has no idea what to do next. With nothing to lose, he buys a new car and hits the road, planning to drive across country and hopefully figure out his next moves before reaching California. But along the way Patterson does something his old self would never have even considered: he gets tattooed by a brilliant tattoo artist in North Carolina. The decision sets off a series of extraordinary events that changes his life forever in ways he never could have imagined. Among other things, Patterson is gifted with the ability to see in real time three different lives that are available to him. The choice is his: The life he is leading right now, or two very different ones. In all of them there is love or fame and of course danger because once he has chosen, there is no telling what will happen next. Mr. Breakfast is a dazzling, absorbing and deeply moving novel about the choices that we have to confront and face, confirming Jonathan Carroll’s status as one of our greatest and most imaginative storytellers.

"I am a symmetrical man, almost to a fault," Frank Sinatra once said. It is a peculiar statement, because Sinatra is precisely asymmetrical. How to reconcile the enchanting crooner and the explosive bully? What to make of the smooth tones of his voice and the rough edges of his persona? To find the true correspondence between the public and the private Sinatra, the artist and the man, is no easy task. John Lahr, drama critic for The New Yorker and one of the finest writers on the performing arts working today, has done just this in The Artist and the Man Lahr traces the trajectory of the "solitary latchkey kid" from Hoboken, New Jersey, into the stratosphere of fame. Sinatra kept company with presidents and mobsters; he kept up the front of a happy family life for as long as he could and then took up with the most desired women in the world--Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall, Anita Ekberg, Marilyn Monroe, and many, many more. He led a life of manic gregariousness, yet spoke to the romance and loneliness of the "wee small hours of the morning." He desperately needed to exist within the gaze of the audience but at the same time would express aloofness toward his fans, saying he was happiest "when I'm onstage all by myself with an orchestra and nobody to bug me." The Artist and the Man also examines the miracle of Sinatra's return--much of what is marvelous about Sinatra today is that we know who he is at all, so far did he fall in the late forties. Sinatra came back with a vengeance as Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity , a heartfelt and brilliantly comic performance that won him an Academy Award. At the same time, he reclaimed control of the recording studio and, with the help of an ingenious arranger named Nelson Riddle, perfected the swinging sound of his mature years. Sinatra then proceeded to build a media empire that has been the standard by which all other stars have measured their success. The artist and the Sinatra epitomized control and he raged uncontrollably, destroying friendships, love affairs, and a plate-glass window or two; he won fans around the world across three generations, created an unparalleled body of recorded work, and almost single-handedly invented the postwar American swagger and "the image," Lahr writes, "of perfect individualism." Sinatra's life and art happen to be extremely well documented in photographs--from Weegee's hilarious pictures of bobby-soxer hysteria at New York's Paramount Theatre to William Read Woodfield's definitive and rare "Chairman of the Board" images. The Artist and the Man collects one hundred of the best photographs ever taken of Sinatra (some never before published)--representing his film work, the special intensity of his recording sessions, and the many swinging nights of this complex and fascinating man.

In this major new collection, John Hollander displays the elegance, versatility, and wit that mark him as perhaps the most urbane poet in America. "In Time and Place" features a generous offering of new verse, an extended prose piece, and a series of prose poems previously available only in a rare, privately published edition. The tightly rhymed quatrains of the new poems demonstrate once again the freedom Hollander achieves through mastery of form. The consummate control with which he writes in memoriam to a lost love and a time of absence gives him opportunities to move through dimensions most poets never see. His purgatorial mock-journal—dwelling on loss and gain, on difference and effacement, on places and the place of writing—leads into a sequence of captivating prose poems, where imagination centers on the word and language celebrates its own creation.

How does it feel to leave the people you've grown to love -- and go back to a family you no longer know? Holland,1945 -- World War II has finally ended. For thirteen-year-old Annie de Leeuw and her sister Sini, Almost three years of hiding from the Germans in the upstairs room of a remote farmhouse have also ended. Saying good-bye to the courageous family who hid them is very difficult. And Annie finds that being home again isn't easy either. Her mother is dead; her father, distant and distracted. Sini is out dancing with the soldiers every night , trying to make up for lost time, and Annie's oldest sister, Rachel, has become a Christian. Soon Annie has another problem -- getting used to a new stepmother she cannot seem to please. Annie learns that though the fighting is over, some of the wounds of the war still remain. Her old home is gone. Now she must build a new life for herself.

Joan Collins is one of the most glamorous women in the world and in Joan's Way she reveals the secrets of how to look amazing, whatever your age. In this book she shares many of her life experiences and the methods she has learned to deal with the good and bad things in life over the years. The book includes glamour and how to achieve it, Joan's exercise programme (she is photographed step-by-step working out with daughter Katy), Joan's make-up and skincare secrets, her tips on eating super-healthily, entertaining and assertiveness, and more. Plus relationships, love and sex: Joan talks frankly about 'everyone's favourite subject'.

Sophie Vasilyevich is a teenager growing up in Anglond, the child of exiles. Sometimes grass springs up where she walks, and her future holds an unusual fate: she is going to be kidnapped when she is sixteen, and no one can stop it. Taken between worlds to the city of Bath in 1920's England, Sophie meets a young man called James Carnwallis, once a pilot in the Great War. But even as she falls in love, she learns more about the forces at work - and her fate in their plans. As an alliance of shamans, ghosts and gods assembles in a desperate attempt to recover Sophie and prevent the destruction of their worlds, they find that their only hope may lie in Sophie's gift, and in the Greenwood: a power older than time itself.

This novel is a retelling of the classic story of Carmen, based on the original work by Prosper Mérimée. Set in Spain, the novel follows the passionate love affair between Carmen and the soldier Don José, and the tragic consequences that unfold as a result. Featuring an original score by composer Georges Bizet, this work is a classic of the operatic repertoire. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Jerome Charyn's three-part memoir of his boyhood in the Bronx has all the imagery and color of an enchanting and entertaining novel -- someone has said that it captures the author's world so accurately that it can't possibly be true. Bronx Boy , like The Dark Lady of Belorusse and The Black Swan , both selected by The New York Times as Notable Books of the Year, is a tour de force of memory and imagination. In this third and final installment, the higher truths of a masterly writer's art render moot the question of exactly where the real world ends and Charyn's imagined world begins. Still known as "Baby" although a younger brother has come along, young Charyn makes pocket money delivering eggs, belongs to a group of 12-year-old wannabe gangsters that meet in a soda shop run by an ex-con, and spends afternoons telling stories to the adoring wife of a wealthy Russian émigré. He becomes famous for his black-and-tans -- a concoction of coffee ice cream, seltzer, milk, chocolate sauce, crushed pecans -- and "a touch of bitterness that may have been the Bronx." So famous, indeed, that he walks away the winner of an annual black-and-tan contest sponsored by the real-life top gangster called "The Little Man" -- Meyer Lansky. In Charyn's hands, the often ridiculed Bronx is a magic place, as full of odd and wonderful characters as a three-ring circus. And at the center of it all, young "Baby," not as lucky in love as he would like to be, drinking it all in, putting his own extraordinary take on it. Charyn looks back at this with his singular vision, and records it all for us with the skill of the fine writer he is. This is a delightful and often moving story of a childhood that could only have been lived in New York in the fifties, a New York experience that could only have taken place in the Bronx of those days, a growing-up saga that could only have been captured by this singular author.

Directors: Barry Levinson (Bugsy), Oliver Stone (JFK), Barbra Streisand (The Prince of Tides), Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven), Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), Rob Reiner (A Few Good Men), Andrew Davis (The Fugitive), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral), Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), Mel Gibson (Braveheart), Michael Radford (Il Postino), Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire), Scott Hicks (Shine), Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies), Anthony Minghella (The English Patient), Steven Spielberg (Amistad), James L. Brooks (As Good As It Gets), James Cameron (Titanic), Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting), Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful), John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan), Peter Weir (The Truman Show), Frank Darabont (The Green Mile), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich), Michael Mann (The Insider), Sam Mendes (American Beauty), M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense), Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich and Traffic), Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind), Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring), Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge), Christopher Nolan (Memento), Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down), Stephen Daldry (The Hours), Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers), Rob Marshall (Chicago), Roman Polanski (The Pianist), Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York), Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation), Clint Eastwood (Mystic River), Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), Gary Ross (Seabiscuit), Peter Weir (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World), Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby), Marc Forster (Finding Neverland), Taylor Hackford (Ray), Alexander Payne (Sideways), Martin Scorsese (The Aviator).

A taut, emotionally gripping novel about one couple’s passionate desire for a child and their heartrending journey through adoption—from a critically acclaimed writer whose “voice is at turns wise and barbed with sharp humor” ( Vanity Fair ). Poignant, raw, and insightful, Jennifer Gilmore’s third novel is an unforgettable story of love, family, and motherhood. With a “voice [that is] at turns wise and barbed with sharp humor” ( Vanity Fair ) , Gilmore lays bare the story of one couple’s ardent desire for a child and their emotional journey through adoption. Jesse and Ramon are a loving couple, but after years spent unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, they turn to adoption, relieved to think that once they navigate the bureaucratic path to parent-hood they will have a happy ending. But nothing has prepared them for the labyrinthine process—for the many training sessions and approvals; for the constant advice from friends, strangers, and “experts”; for the birthmothers who contact them but don’t ultimately choose them; or even, most shockingly, for the women who call claiming they’ve chosen Jesse and Ramon but who turn out never to have been pregnant in the first place. Jennifer Gilmore’s eloquence about the human heart—its frailties and complexities—and her razor-sharp observations about race, class, culture, and changing family dynamics are spectacularly combined in this powerful novel. Suffused with passion and fury, The Mothers is a taut, gripping, and satisfying book that will stay with readers long after they turn the last page.

Exquisite charcoal drawings embellish seven short stories about love and separation, obedience and loyalty, and the nature of happiness

Five original stories with the flavor of classic folk literature focus on the themes of love, truth, fear, and kindness

Let yourself be drawn into the magical world of the dance with this sumptuous anthology. Love, laughter, betrayal, adventure and tragedy intertwine to create stories that will reach deep into the heart and dreams of the reader. The story of The Sleeping Beauty will whisk you away to the thorny castle where Princess Aurora awaits her prince; the comedy and confusion of Copplia will delight you, and the magical adventures of Clara in The Nutcracker will entrance you.

In Pumpkin Baby , a young child with an active imagination comes to terms with the imminent arrival of a sibling. Spurred on by trips with her mother to a family farm, she imagines a host of babies-each with their own unique characteristics-and wonders if she could, indeed, love such a brother or sister. Gently and lovingly told by Yolen, and wonderfully illustrated by Susan Mitchell, Pumpkin Baby is a perfect addition to the family library that's expecting a new cardholder. Excerpt from Pumpkin Baby : When I was three years old, old enough to know better, my Mama took a ripe pumpkin from Auntie May's patch of land. Auntie May called out, hoe in hand, "Gonna get a baby that way from all those seeds. A pumpkin baby." Their laughter flew back and forth, back and forth, across the rows. I thought about a pumpkin baby. Would it be orange on the outside. Would it be too heavy to pick up. too round to run and play with me? Would I, could I, ever love a pumpkin child?

The feisty young heroine of Little Frog and the Scary Autumn Thing is back with a new adventure--being a big sister! Little Frog is no longer the littlest frog. Some new family members--the spring polliwogs--are so much trouble for the former "Only Frog," and Little Frog is all out of sorts. But when that polliwog trouble becomes nothing compared to a real threat---boys with nets!--Little Frog has to remember all that she's been taught in order to save the tadpoles from disaster. This charmer of a sequel is by multi-award winning author Jane Yolen, author of On Bird Hill, Owl Moon and the How Do Dinosaurs...? books. The wonderful spring palette and adorable pictures are by illustrator of the first Little Frog, Ellen Shi. About the LITTLE FROG Series Fear comes in many shapes and sizes. Seasons change. Families change. And change can be a scary thing for a little mind exploring the complicated emotions of facing the unknown. With gentle sweetness, Little Frog makes them laugh and breathe a sigh of relief through life's natural cycles. Little Frog shows young children they can muster up courage in the face of all things strange and new. With a little love, patience, and acceptance, big fears can be turned into bigger discoveries. Praise for LITTLE FROG "Vivid autumn foliage is generally considered to be a thing of beauty, but those unfamiliar colors spell danger to a young frog. Yolen doesn't rush Little Frog's emotional turnaround. Shi's inviting mixed-media landscapes make it clear that the amphibian is never in danger...reasoned reactions to her own nervousness hint at ways readers might tackle their own fears." -- PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY "This book is great for new/older siblings. It is cute and relatable." -- GOODREADS

"Rich colors underscore the intensity of Little Frog's feelings...a low-key way of introducing the idea of change, in nature or otherwise." - KIRKUS REVIEWS Most things that are scary are just new... Little Frog and the Scary Autumn Thing helps families embrace the new and unknown through the story of one little frog learning that change doesn't have to be frightening--especially when families face it together! It's Little Frog's first autumn, and she doesn't like it one bit. It is not the green world she loves so much, but something scarier and ominous, filled with red and gold and yellow. And noise! WHIRRRRR. CHIRRRR. BAROOOOOOM. But encouraged by her Mama, who reminds her that "Most things that are scary are just new," Little Frog bravely sets out into this world. When her courage waivers, she starts to run and soon is lost, miserably lost. She finds her way to Papa Frog, and he shows her what Mama Frog means. In a warm and satisfying ending: At last, arm in arm, Little Frog and Papa Frog happily hopped and danced all the way home to The Pond where Mama Frog had made a fresh shoo-fly pie for dinner, something all three of them knew well. This charmer of a story is by multi-award winning author Jane Yolen, author of Owl Moon and the How Do Dinosaurs...? books. The wonderful autumn palette and adorable pictures are by newcomer Ellen Shi, who is not afraid of trying something new herself. About the LITTLE FROG Series Fear comes in many shapes and sizes. Seasons change. Families change. And change can be a scary thing for a little mind exploring the complicated emotions of facing the unknown. With gentle sweetness, Little Frog makes them laugh and breathe a sigh of relief through life's natural cycles. Little Frog shows young children they can muster up courage in the face of all things strange and new. With a little love, patience, and acceptance, big fears can be turned into bigger discoveries. Praise for LITTLE FROG "Vivid autumn foliage is generally considered to be a thing of beauty, but those unfamiliar colors spell danger to a young frog. Yolen doesn't rush Little Frog's emotional turnaround. Shi's inviting mixed-media landscapes make it clear that the amphibian is never in danger...reasoned reactions to her own nervousness hint at ways readers might tackle their own fears." -- PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY

Angels have appeared universally throughout history in folklore, art, and in many religions. They bring messages from heaven to us mortals here on earth. This book celebrates the human angels - all around us - who inspire us by bringing us peace and tranquility, innocence and joy, hope and love.

"This powerful, meticulously researched novel is a moving tale of one girl's struggle against a world in turmoil. In 1930s Berlin, choked by the tightening of Hitler's fist, the Klein family are gradually losing everything that is precious to them. Their fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosa, slips out of Germany on a Kindertransport train to begin a new life in England. Charged with the task of securing a safe passage for her family, she vows that she will not rest until they are safe. But as war breaks out and she loses contact with her parents, Rosa finds herself wondering if there are some vows that can't be kept ...A sweeping tale of love and loss, with the poignant story of the Kindertransport at its heart, this is an exceptional accomplishment from one of Britain's bravest and most vibrant young writers."