" What do a chamber pot, a famous poet, a family feud, and a long-ago suitor all have in common? In this delicious laugh-out-loud new novel of love and loss, rivalry and reconciliation, treasure and trash, by acclaimed author Mameve Medwed (Mail, The End of an Error), we see what happens when past and present collide. . . ." Elizabeth Barrett Browning might have written about the length and breadth of love, but Abby Randolph has given up on all that, preferring to spend her time between her cluttered "needs work" apartment and the overcrowded antiques mart -- the optimistically named Objects of Desire. Yet Abby can't help but wonder what happened to her earlier passionate self who rejected the path set out for her, dropping out of Harvard and falling headfirst into an ill-fated love affair. . . . Then the "Antiques Roadshow" comes to town, and Abby turns up at the crack of dawn, artifact in hand, standing alongside thousands of Boston's hopefuls. But there, among the carousel horses, pipe sets, potbellied stoves, and bedraggled stuffed animals, it is Abby's rather ordinary -- and squalid -- piece of porcelain that gets the star treatment. Abby is barely able to enjoy her good news, for the moment the show airs, life comes back at her at full force. Everything changes: friendship, finances, family, love affairs, career, her view of others, and the way she sees herself. With this, her fourth novel, Medwed once again returns to Cambridge and, in her "sardonic, funny voice" ("Chicago Tribune"), "homes in on the rarified self-important atmosphere of our Ivy League institutions -- and the reflected snobbishness of the people who serve them" ("New York Times Book Review"). This novel is a gift to anyone who goes to a flea market or watches "Antiques Roadshow," anyone who has ever defied expectations, or, especially, anyone who has never been able to extinguish an old flame.

"Set at the height of Vietnam protests, Jimi Hendrix and LSD, Wet Goddess is a story of strange encounters, awkward misadventures, and ultimately, love. Stoked on cheap pot and reports that dolphins possess near-human intelligence, liberal arts major Zachary Zimmerman couldn’t have been more thrilled about his first pro photography job. The project: shoot a book about the stars of Florida Funland’s struggling dolphin show – while turning a blind eye to the writer’s affair with a trainer. But the writer isn’t the only one at Florida Funland looking for forbidden love. Ruby, a solo performer in the show, slowly edges her way inside Zach’s slightly foggy mind, drawing him deeper and deeper into her wet, wild realm of sensual abandon and unexpected violence. Previously excerpted in Penthouse and the classic Project Jonah anthology Mind in the Waters, this is the only authorized print edition of the long-awaited novel." -- From back of book

Is heterosexual sex inherently damaging to women? Is it possible for women to enjoy sensuality and pleasure with men that does not increase male power? Lynne Segal's unflinching examination of feminist thinking on sexuality over the past twenty-five years tackles these questions head on. Straightforward and challenging, she invites an exploration of sex in our culture--an exploration that could reverse the traditional male gaze and phallic construction of the heterosexual woman.Only two decades ago, politically aware women often declared themselves both sexual liberationists and feminists--their right to sexual fulfillment symbolized their right to selfhood. However, the most positive women's writing on female sexuality in recent years has come primarily from the lesbian community. Segal addresses the silence of heterosexual feminists on questions of sex and love and notes the shift toward sexual conservatism. She looks at the trends that followed Sixties sex as a subversive activity, the "liberated orgasm," sex advice literature, gender uncertainties, Queer politics, antipornography campaigns, the rise of the moral right.The hidden anxieties of male sexuality are also discussed. For both men and women, says Segal, our wildest dreams and worst fears are often projected onto sex. She urges an understanding of how our personal pleasures and pains remain public issues, and how a rethinking of sexual liberation could inspire a truly progressive politics for our time."It is always another whom we try to reach when we experience desire, it is their physical contact we want--sometimes, any sort of contact will suffice . . . and by whom we yearn to feel ourselves desired. It is the very greatest of joys, as I experience it . . . simply to know that we are able to desire, maybe even able to love, some other human adult." --from the book

The language of love can be beautiful or bawdy, naively simple or boldly salacious, elegantly baroque or course and common梠r, in certain moments, a wild mixture of all of these. Louis Untermeyer has gathered the world抯 greatest erotica in verse, ranging from the Bible to the present day. The most renowned poets of all time are represented in this fresh collection where freedom of range is matched by an equal freedom of speech in writing about sexual love. From Ovid to Swinburne, from Chaucer to E.E. Cummings, from Queen Elizabeth to Emily Dickinson, the poetry burns with mounting emotion and smolders with importunate pleadings, aggravating delays, passionate fulfillment or, alas, painful frustration. Here are the unexplored extremes encompassed by well-loved poets, the outspoken sensuality in the union of love and lust, and the earthy celebration of carnal pleasure. Here in more than six hundred poems, are the infinite variations in the traditional battle of the sexes: the gallant approach, the tentative flirtation, the provocative badinage, the coy denial, the gradually permitted intimacy, the timid or breathless consent, and the finally shared extremity of passion.

Thomas Mistler has always thought himself "a happy man, as the world goes." A scion of old money, he made his own fortune in advertising and is now poised to sell the company he founded for a fabulous price. But when a medical examination reveals the presence in his liver of a fatal intruder, "preposterously, unmistakably, he begins to rejoice," with a feeling of having been set free. But free from what? He will seek the answer surreptitiously, without revealing his illness to his family, during a last reprieve, a moment of grace in "the one place on earth where nothing irritates him." But amidst the surreal beauties of Venice, he finds bitterness and chaos as he allows himself to drift for the first time. His halfhearted efforts to seize the day and its present pleasures--first with a striving young photographer and later with a love of his youth who never loved him--cannot compete with his need to commune with the living and the dead that crowd his life: his father and uncle, pill

The bestseller reminiscence of playwright and author Lillian Hellman in a moving masterpiece, including Hollywood in the days of Sam Goldwyn, New York in the times of Dorothy Parker and Tallulah Bankhead, and a 30-year love affair with Dashiell Hammett.

Shayna Steinblatt, a lesbian, tries to help her grandmother with the adjustment to nursing home life, make peace with her mother, and work out a lasting relationship with Luz Maria Borges, who may be the love of her life.

A young girl's love of the coquíes' nightly song helps her survive a destructive hurricane with her family. Includes author's note and a glossary of terms.

Imagine that you could really understand the Bible...that you could read, analyze, and discuss the book of Genesis not as a compositional mystery, a cultural relic, or a linguistic puzzle palace, or even as religious doctrine, but as a philosophical classic, precisely in the same way that a truth-seeking reader would study Plato or Nietzsche. Imagine that you could be led in your study by one of America's preeminent intellectuals and that he would help you to an understanding of the book that is deeper than you'd ever dreamed possible, that he would reveal line by line, verse by verse the incredible riches of this illuminating text -- one of the very few that actually deserve to be called seminal. Imagine that you could get, from Genesis, the beginning of wisdom. The Beginning of Wisdom is a hugely learned book that, like Genesis itself, falls naturally into two sections. The first shows how the universal history described in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, from creation to the tower of Babel, conveys, in the words of Leon Kass, "a coherent anthropology" -- a general teaching about human nature -- that "rivals anything produced by the great philosophers." Serving also as a mirror for the reader's self-discovery, these stories offer profound insights into the problematic character of human reason, speech, freedom, sexual desire, the love of the beautiful, pride, shame, anger, guilt, and death. Something as seemingly innocuous as the monotonous recounting of the ten generations from Adam to Noah yields a powerful lesson in the way in which humanity encounters its own mortality. In the story of the tower of Babel are deep understandings of the ambiguous power of speech, reason, and the arts; the hazards of unity and aloneness; the meaning of the city and its quest for self-sufficiency; and man's desire for fame, immortality, and apotheosis -- and the disasters these necessarily cause. Against this background of human failure, Part Two of The Beginning of Wisdom explores the struggles to launch a new human way, informed by the special Abrahamic covenant with the divine, that might address the problems and avoid the disasters of humankind's natural propensities. Close, eloquent, and brilliant readings of the lives and educations of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's sons reveal eternal wisdom about marriage, parenting, brotherhood, education, justice, political and moral leadership, and of course the ultimate question: How to live a good life? Connecting the two "parts" is the book's overarching philosophical and pedagogical structure: how understanding the dangers and accepting the limits of human powers can open the door to a superior way of life, not only for a solitary man of virtue but for an entire community -- a life devoted to righteousness and holiness. This extraordinary book finally shows Genesis as a coherent whole, beginning with the creation of the natural world and ending with the creation of a nation that hearkens to the awe-inspiring summons to godliness. A unique and ambitious commentary, a remarkably readable literary exegesis and philosophical companion, The Beginning of Wisdom is one of the most important books in decades on perhaps the most important -- and surely the most frequently read -- book of all time.

"A thief and a nobleman, both down on their luck, cross paths on a bitter winter's day in 1701. One, known locally as "The Fowl-Filcher," is fleeing the gallows; the other, the callow Christian von Tornefeld, has escaped execution to fight for his Swedish king. Neither will reach his destination. Sent with a message to secure aid for von Tornefeld, the thief falls in love with his companion's secret fiance;e. He resolves to win her love for himself, and through a clever stratagem, exchanges his fate for the other man's. Risking everything to attain the woman and station of his dreams, he becomes the Swedish cavalier, staying one step ahead of exposure. Later, he sacrifices everything so that is daughter won't learn of his secret past. In this book he considered is masterpiece, Leo Perutz has created a picaresque world of barons and brigands, swashbuckling dragoons and spurned lovers, gentleman farmers and masked robbers, and lucky parchments, magic spells, and mystical visions. Part adventure, part historical novel of war-ravaged Europe, The Sweddish Cavalier is also a moral tale of deceit, betrayal, and redemption. "--

To provide this unique—if controversial—look at major league baseball as umpires see it, Lee Gutkind spent the 1974 season traveling with the umpiring crew of Doug Harvey (crew chief), Nick Colosi, Harry Wendelstedt, and Art Williams, the first black umpire in the National League. The result is an honest, realistic, insightful study of the private and professional world of major league umpires: their prejudices and petty biases, their unbending pride in their performance, their inside perspectives on the game, and their bitter criticism of the abuse often directed at their profession and at their conduct. As relevant today as it was in 1974, this illustrated chronicle shows how little has changed in the lives and duties of umpires in the last quarter century. Guided by his passionate love for the game as he wrote The Best Seat in Baseball, But You Have to Stand!, Gutkind attempted to present the umpires in a positive but realistic light: "I portrayed them as real people, honorable, hard-working and dedicated, but with warts and flaws like the rest of us. But they didn't want to be compared with real people; they wanted to be umpires—on a plateau above most everyone else." Since the publication of this book in 1975, neither Harvey nor Wendelstedt have communicated with Gutkind, with Wendelstedt even denying that Gutkind traveled with the crew.

“Intelligent but accessible, and often poignant . . . [by] the biggest talents on the essay and blog beat.” —Publishers Weekly (on Vol. 2) Anyone still asking, “What is creative nonfiction?” will find the answer in this collection of artfully crafted, true stories. Selected by Lee Gutkind, the “godfather behind creative nonfiction,” and the staff of Creative Nonfiction, these stories—ranging from immersion journalism to intensely personal essays—illustrate the genre’s power and potential. Edwidge Danticat recalls her Uncle Moïse’s love of a certain four-letter word and finds in his abandonment of the word near the end of his life the true meaning of exile. In “Literary Murder,” Julianna Baggott traces her roots as a novelist to her family’s “strange, desperate (sometimes conniving and glorious) past” and writes about her decision, in The Madam, to kill off a character based on her grandfather. And Sean Rowe explains why, if you must get arrested, Selma, Alabama, is the place to do it. This exciting and expansive array of works and voices is sure to impress and delight.

20 Writers Play Ball in 17 New Essays and 3 Classics. Stefan Fatsis sends his ?stunningly perfect, consummately perfect, why-would-anyone-use-anything-else? perfect” glove to be restored by the Glove Designer at Rawlings; Susan Perabo considers retiring from her imaginary career in the majors and assesses the likelihood of women finding actual careers on the baseball field; Sean Wilentz imagines a Cooperstown Fans’ Hall of Fame, with its cowbells, frying pans, bedsheet banners, and more. And in one of the three previously published, now-classic pieces in the collection, George Plimpton reflects on the slow demotion of aging or slumping players from pitcher to first base, to the outfield. United by the authors’ fervent love of the game, these essays remind us of the unique role baseball plays in our national history and collective imagination.

Lauren Book, now 25, was 11 years old when her new nanny, Waldina Flores, joined the family. For the next six years Lauren endured daily sexual and physical abuse. "I was a people pleaser," she says. "I was beaten every day...Waldy was very smart, like all predators are. She hit me and bruised me where my parents wouldn't look. When you are 13 and 14 parents never look at their children's stomachs or lower backs or butts or upper thighs." Lauren is the oldest of three children; her father, Ron Book, is a prominent Florida attorney and lobbyist. In 2002, after being encouraged by her boyfriend, Lauren confessed to her therapist, who in turn called her parents. Her father fired Flores. She fled to Oklahoma and was arrested one month later while coaching a 10-year-old girls' soccer team. While in prison, Flores wrote love letters to Lauren asking for money and ultimately was sentenced to another 10 years on top of the initial 15 years. Since then, Lauren and her father have successfully mounted a legislative onslaught against predators; the many laws they are responsible for include the right to get 48-hour access to predators' HIV test results, a ban on molesters from ever contacting their victims or families, passed legislation to create a statewide network of sexual assault treatment centers, and the controversial act that barred predators from living 2500 feet from public places where children gather such as schools, parks, and playgrounds. Lauren's memoir is a book about hope in the face of extreme adversity. While it deals with a tremendously sensitive and "dark" subject, the hope that it delivers to readers carries an everlasting positive impact. Her story will empower readers to address abuse issues in their own lives and move them to understand the resulting deep emotional matrix that results from abuse and the incredible power of an individual's ability to recover and embrace life.

When Quoyle's two-timing wife meets her just desserts, he retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters and family members all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As Quoyle confronts his private demons--and the unpredictable forces of nature and society--he begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery. A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family, The Shipping News shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.

A novel of love, sadness, wasted youth, and literary and intellectual ambition-"a wincingly funny debut" ("Vogue") Keith Gessen is a Brave and trenchant new literary voice. Known as an award-winning translator of Russian and a book reviewer for publications including "The New Yorker" and "The New York Times," Gessen makes his debut with this critically acclaimed novel, a charming yet scathing portrait of young adulthood at the opening of the twenty-first century. The novel charts the lives of Sam, Mark, and Keith as they overthink their college years, underthink their love lives, and struggle to find a semblance of maturity, responsibility, and even literary fame.

Based loosely on the relationship between Colette Peignot and Georges Bataille, My Mother: Demonology is the powerful story of a woman's struggle with the contradictory impulses for love and solitude. At the dawn of her adult life, Laure becomes involved in a passionate and all-consuming love affair with her companion, B. But this ultimately leaves her dissatisfied, as she acknowledges her need to establish an identity independent of her relationship with him. Yearning to better understand herself, Laure embarks on a journey of self-discovery, an odyssey that takes her into the territory of her past, into memories and fantasies of childhood, into wildness and witchcraft, into a world where the power of dreams can transcend the legacies of the past and confront the dilemmas of the present. With a poet's attention to the power of language and a keen sense of the dislocation that can occur when the narrative encompasses violence and pornography, as well as the traumas of childhood memory, Kathy Acker here takes another major step toward establishing her vision of a new literary aesthetic.

The Memory of All That is Katharine Weber’s memoir of her extraordinary family. Her maternal grandmother, Kay Swift, was known both for her own music (she was the first woman to compose the score to a hit Broadway show, Fine and Dandy ) and for her ten-year romance with George Gershwin. Their love affair began during Swift’s marriage to James Paul Warburg, the multitalented banker and economist who advised (and feuded with) FDR. Weber creates an intriguing and intimate group portrait of the renowned Warburg family, from her great-great-uncle, the eccentric art historian Aby Warburg, whose madness inspired modern theories of iconography, to her great-grandfather Paul M. Warburg, the architect of the Federal Reserve System whose unheeded warnings about the stock-market crash of 1929 made him “the Cassandra of Wall Street.” As she throws new light on her beloved grandmother’s life and many amours, Weber also considers the role the psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg played in her family history, along with the ways the Warburg family has been as celebrated for its accomplishments as it has been vilified over the years by countless conspiracy theorists (from Henry Ford to Louis Farrakhan), who labeled Paul Warburg the ringleader of the so-called international Jewish banking conspiracy. Her mother, Andrea Swift Warburg, married Sidney Kaufman, but their unlikely union, Weber believes, was a direct consequence of George Gershwin’s looming presence in the Warburg family. A notorious womanizer, Weber’s father was a peripatetic filmmaker who made propaganda and training films for the OSS during World War II before producing the first movie with smells, the regrettable flop that was AromaRama. He was as much an enigma to his daughter as he was to the FBI, which had him under surveillance for more than forty years, and even noted Katharine’s birth in a memo to J. Edgar Hoover. Colorful, evocative, insightful, and very funny, The Memory of All That is an enthralling look at a tremendously influential—and highly eccentric—family, as well as a consideration of how their stories, with their myriad layers of truth and fiction, have both provoked and influenced one of our most prodigiously gifted writers.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Dr Karl: where oddities are embraced, facts reign supreme, curiosity is king and brightly coloured shirts are compulsory! "Dr Karl is Australia's incumbent President of Science" The Age"There's no topic on which Dr Karl does not have an interestingly expressed opinion" The Weekly ReviewIn 50 Shades of Grey Matter, Australia's National Living Treasure Dr Karl Kruszelnicki applies his trademark straight-talkin'-no-high-falutin' scientific sense to a brand new range of Big Questions that you never knew you even wanted to ask, but now desperately need to know the answers to. Have you ever walked into a room and immediately forgotten the reason you're there? A solid thought convinced your legs to move, but by the time you reach your destination, you realise the thought has abandoned you en route. No, it's not dementia. It's the doorway. Impress your friends (and potential dates) by being able to answer such questions as:- Why is the sky is blue?- Why is it dark at night? - Why does lunacy erupt under a full moon?- What's the truth about spinach and Popeye?In this ever-changing, fast-paced and sometimes crazy world, few things are certain. But what is certain is that Dr Karl is here to help us battle our way through half-baked scientific myths and rumours, so that we may emerge smarter, stronger and viewing the world with more wonder than ever before. Fans of Adam Spencer will love 50 Shades of Grey Matter.

"Nearly every family has a skeleton in its closet, an ancestor who "sins" against custom and tradition and pays a double price. Karen Tintori refused to allow the truth to remain forgotten. This is a book for anyone who shares the conviction that all history, in the end, is family history."--Frank Viviano, author of Blood Washes Blood and Dispatches from the Pacific Century "Many books are called ‘page-turners' by reviewers, but this one will truly have you glued to the turning pages for hours."-- Comunes of Italy Magazine " Unto the Daughters reads like a nonfiction version of the film Godfather II--if it had been told from the point of view of a female Corleone."--Eleni N. Gage, author of North of Ithaka Karen Tintori thought she knew her family tree. Her grandmother Josie had immigrated from Sicily with her parents at the turn of the century. They settled in Detroit, and with Josie's eight siblings, worked to create a home for themselves away from the poverty and servitude of the old country. Their descendants were proud Italian-Americans. But Josie had a sister that nobody spoke of. Her name was Frances, and at age sixteen, she fell in love with a young barber. Her father wanted her to marry an older don in the neighborhood mafia--a marriage that would give his sons a leg up in the mob. But Frances eloped with her barber. And when she returned a married woman, her father and brothers killed her for it. Her family then erased her from its collective memory. Even 80 years and two generations later, Frances and her death were not spoken of, her name was erased from the family genealogy, her pictures burned, and her memory suppressed. Unto the Daughters is a historical mystery and family story that unwraps the many layers of family, honor, memory, and fear to find an honor killing in turn of the century Detroit. "Many books are called ‘page-turners' by reviewers, but this one will truly have you glued to the turning pages for hours. It's a must read for anyone researching their Italian ancestry."-- Comunes of Italy Magazine KAREN TINTORI is a writer and journalist who lives in Michigan with her family. Karen's books include Trapped, a 2002 Chicago Tribune favorite book, and The Book of Names (co-author), among others. Visit her website at: www. karentintori .com