"Lupoff writes with intelligence, humor, wisdom, and a zest for life. He had a lot of fun writing this book, and it shows; because of it, we have a lot of fun reading it."Joe Gores, author of Hammett Where Memory Hides is a guided tour through the life and career of mystery and science fiction's most versatile practitioner. Richard A. Lupoff has been a professional author for six decades, and a life-time fan of everything from pulp magazines to comic books, science fiction and mystery, and more. As the extensive bibliography (included in this book) demonstrates, Lupoff's credits run the gamut of fiction, nonfiction, mainstream publishing, and fan journals. In the 1960s, he penned All In Color For a Dime , a foundation-laying work for modern comic book fandom, and Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure , a study of Tarzan's creator. The Comic Book Killer and Marblehead are among his best-known novels. His short story 12:01 PM , filmed twice in the 1990s, added a new sub-genre to science fiction and spawned a legion of imitators. In Where Memory Hides , Lupoff regales readers with triumphs and tribulations from his six-decade plus career. He also offers insights on writing, haggling with agents, and literary criticism of authors such as Dashiell Hammett, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and many others. This autobiography is available in two editions -- a standard trade paperback edition, and a paperback collector's edition with color graphics throughout. "... (Lupoff's) books and stories, I can testify, having read a great many of them and published some myself, almost unfailingly display not only his intelligence and perceptivity, but also the grace and charm of his wit, the skill of his narrative technique, and the exemplary individuality of his ideas. That is to say, he's a damned good writer."Robert Silverberg, author of The Book of Skulls "... Although in his 80s, Lupoff still writes with the enthusiasm of a young fan ..." Publisher's Weekly

In an insightful and original meditation on the writer's craft that is by turns descriptive and prescriptive, Delbanco explores how literary virtuosity is achieved, how the writing of fiction can be taught, and the way literature functions for writer and reader equally. The book includes a novella called "The Lost Suitcase," revolving around a famous anecdote about Hemingway's early work and how it came to be lost.

The collected early novels of an American master. Now finally collected into a single volume, the Sherbrookes trilogy—Possession, Sherbrookes, and Stillness—is Nicholas Delbanco’s most celebrated achievement. Centering upon one New England clan and their estate in southwestern Vermont—a full thousand acres, including the bleak and chilly Big House, from which the volatile Sherbrookes have such trouble escaping—these books form a virtuoso portrait of the love, pride, resentment, and even madness we inherit from our families. Written in his characteristically opulent, bravura prose, Delbanco is here revealed as a Henry James for our time: a passionate cataloger of human strength and frailty. Edited and revised by the author some thirty years after its first publication, the trilogy—“made new” as the single-volume Sherbrookes—can now be rediscovered by a new generation of readers.

Living in a rat-infested hotel in Franco’s post-war Spain, André Bennett, a Canadian painter, loves Toni, his girl friend, who wants him to return home. Roger Kraus, a Nazi on the run, shadows the young artist day and night. They meet on a bridge during the last night of the fiesta, and as the sky is shredded by exploding fireworks, the story draws to its violent climax. Originally published in 1954, The Acrobats marks Mordecai Richler’s stunning debut as a novelist.

Mordecai Richler’s final book pays homage to his personal heroes and celebrates a writer’s love of sport with his trademark irascibility, humour and acuity. Even while writing his bestselling novels, Mordecai Richler nurtured his obsession with sports, writing brilliantly on ice hockey, baseball, salmon fishing, bodybuilding, and wrestling for such publications as GQ , Esquire , The New York Times Magazine , Inside Sports , Commentary , and The New York Review of Books . Mordecai himself chose the pieces to include in Dispatches from the Sporting Life , and together they give us an intimate portrait of a man who admired the players and prized the struggle of sport—as much as he enjoyed skewering those who made a mockery of its principles. His encounters with Pete Rose, Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe (“Mr. Elbows... the big guy with the ginger-ale bottle shoulders”) are by turns bizarre, moving and uproarious. Richler travelled with Guy LaFleur’s Montreal Canadiens (“Les Canadiens sont là!”), but also with the “far-from-incomparable” Trail Smoke Eaters to Stockholm for the world hockey championships, where Canadians are “widely known, and widely disliked.” There are wonderful pieces here about Ring Lardner, George Plimpton, Hank Greenberg and lady umpires, and a marvellous essay on his unlimited enthusiasm for the all-inclusive Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports , which includes among its champions Sandy Koufax, “who may well be the greatest pitcher of all time, regardless of race, colour or creed,” as well as one Steve Allan Hertz, an infielder who played five total games in Houston in 1964 and had a batting average of .000.

"The King became passionately enamored with a Jewess who was called by the name of Fermosa, meaning The Beautiful, and he forgot his wife. And he shut himself up with the Jewess for almost seven full years, forgetful of himself, and of his realm also, and paying no heed to any other thing." - Alfonso el Sabio, "Cronica General," c. 1270. This is a haunting love story of Alfonso VIII, the Christian King of Castile, and Raquel, the beautiful Jewess of Toledo, two lovers trapped by the bitterness and conflict of their times in a tragic alliance. Raquel was the daughter of Yehuda, a wealthy, proud aristocrat, who had come from Seville with his family to serve as Alfonso's Minister of Finance. His mission was to replenish the country's depleted treasury, but he saw in this assignment an opportunity to prevent war between the Christian North and the Moslem South and in the process to save his own people, the Jews, from being crushed between these two ruthless forces. But when the impetuous Alfonso fell in love with Raquel and demanded her as his mistress, Yehuda had to choose between his daughter's future and the fate of his people. In this epic romance of the lovers and their bitter destinies, Lion Feuchtwanger, one of the world's great historical novelists, has brilliantly recreated the drama and pageantry of the Middle Ages, rent with love and hate, cruelty and compassion, profanity and piety, bloodshed and ritual.

"Murder by poison alarmed, enthralled, and in many ways encapsulated the Victorian age. Linda Stratmann's dark and splendid social history reveals the nineteenth century as a gruesome battleground where poisoners went head-to-head with authorities who strove to detect poisons, control their availability, and bring the guilty to justice. She corrects many misconceptions about particular poisons and documents how the evolution of issues such as marital rights and the legal protection of children impacted poisonings. Combining archival research with a novelist's eye, Stratmann charts the era's inexorable rise of poison cases both shocking and sad"--

Raised without a father, Jana McPartland did not want the same for her unborn baby. So when the daddy-to-be took a hike, she turned to her closest friend, Sam Harrison. He'd always been her refuge from the storm...and this was one heck of a hurricane she'd found herself in. The bestselling novelist offered her a roof over her head, a paycheck for her hard work and all the safety she craved. Yet Jana found herself needing more from the brooding bachelor--to finally give in to the unspoken attraction that had always burned between them. But as a former foster kid, Sam wasn't the type of man who stepped out of his comfort zone. Until he proposed!

Imagine a technology that can change the structure and function of your own body...or that can devour an entire country. This is nanotechnology -- the creation of self-replicating machines with the capability to build or alter almost any structure, including the human form, by manipulating atoms or molecules -- and it has captured the imaginations of science fiction writers and readers everywhere. Now these, eleven short tales will capture you... Contents ix Preface (Nanotech) (1998) essay by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann 1 Blood Music (1983) novelette by Greg Bear 32 Margin of Error (1994) shortstory by Nancy Kress 40 Axiomatic (1990) shortstory by Greg Egan 58 Remember'd Kisses (1988) novelette by Michael F. Flynn 99 Recording Angel (1996) shortstory by Ian McDonald 117 Sunflowers (1995) shortstory by Kathleen Ann Goonan 153 The Logic Pool (1994) shortstory by Stephen Baxter 174 Any Major Dude (1991) shortstory by Paul Di Filippo 203 We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy [North American future] (1995) novella by David Marusek 274 Willy in the Nano-Lab (1998) poem by Geoffrey A. Landis [as by Geoffrey Landis ] 275 Further Reading (Nanotech) (1998) essay by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

"Frederic Raphael, the English novelist, screenwriter, and man of letters, and Joseph Epstein, the American essayist, short-story writer, and literary critic, exchanged e-mails sporadically over the years, usually commenting on each other's various writings. Then one day in 2009, Raphael wrote to Epstein to suggest that, since they enjoyed a benevolence toward each other unusual among literary men, they begin an exchange of e-mail correspondence on a regular basis. His thought was that, at the end of a year or so, the result might be an interesting book. Epstein, who had long admired Raphael's writing, agreed. The two men had never met, nor had they even spoken over the phone. Their friendship was conducted entirely online. Each week they exchanged e-mails of roughly 2,000 words. They discovered a great many things about each other they hadn't previously known. They shared, for example, a common birthplace in Chicago, where Raphael was born, though his family moved to England in 1938, and his education after that was exclusively English. Each man belongs to that dolorous fraternity of those who have buried a child. Their literary tastes vary, though not widely, since both grew up admiring the great modernist writers and both had an enduring love for Greek and Roman culture. Both men share a fundamental agreement about what, in artistic and intellectual realms, is serious. Raphael and Epstein are artists who happen also to be intellectuals. The result is that few subjects are off limits to them. They are of an age when they have long ceased to worry about their reputations. Wherever else they may look, it is not over their shoulders. Candor reinforced by comedy is the reigning note of Where Were We? as it was of Distant Intimacy, their earlier volume of e-mail correspondence. Writing about other writers, actors, politics, the movies, intellectual fashions, the writing life, and much else, both men say precisely what they think, and say it in high style. Readers may or may not agree with their strong views, but they will never find their thoughts other than fascinating. "--

For more than five decades, with relentless candor, biting wit, and striking imagery, Bruce Benderson's fiction has celebrated the warped beauty of our megalopolises, including their clashes between the classes and their subcultures of sex and drugs. Oppressed but flamboyant, the voices of his subterranean worlds have become just too intense to be ignored. Now, for the first time, all his short texts, including 21 never before published, appear together in the same volume. Included is one of the first post-Stonewall coming out stories, written in 1970, decades before such narratives developed into a full genre. This, then, is the complete and definitive Bruce Benderson reader. Benderson's most well-known book, The Romanian: Story of an Obsession, was awarded the prestigious Prix de Flore in its French edition. Other publications include the essay collection Sex and Isolation, the short story collection Pretending to Say No, and the novels Pacific Agony and User.

Benjamin Disraeli was a British politician who twice served as the Prime Minister and also became the Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraeli is noted for being influential as a politician and as a novelist.

Tancred: or, The New Crusade by Benjamin Disraeli , 1847.Tancred, Lord Montacute, the novel's idealistic young hero, seems destined to live the life of any conventional member of the British ruling class. Dissatisfied with his life in fashionable London circles, he instead leaves his parents and retraces the steps of his Crusader ancestors to the Holy Land, hoping there to "penetrate the great Asian mystery" and understand the roots of Christianity.He meets the beautiful Eva, daughter of a Jewish financier, and becomes involvedin the political machinations of her foster-brother, the brilliant Fakredeen, a Lebanese emir. Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)was a British politician and writer who twice served as Prime Ministerof the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of themodern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broadoutreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in worldaffairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader WilliamEwart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy".He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the glory andpower of the British Empire.

In Undue Influence , acclaimed novelist Anita Brookner proves once again that even in the most closely circumscribed of lives, hearts can venture into unknown-and potentially explosive-territory. Claire Pitt is nothing if not a practical young woman, living a life in contemporary London that is to all appearances placid, orderly and consciously lacking in surprise. And yet Claire's tangled interior life gives the lie to that illusion. She is prone to vivid speculation about the lives of others, and to fantasies about her own fate that lead her into a courtship so strange that even she wonders at its power to compel her. Martin Gibson and his chronically ill wife Cynthia come to depend on Claire to an extent that is nothing short of baffling, and yet Claire becomes ever bolder in her pursuit of their acquaintance-and, ultimately, of Martin's elusive affections. The result, a potent tale of urban loneliness and the chance intersections that assuage it, constitutes one of Brookner's finest and most psychologically acute achievements.

IN 1941 a young Italian Jewish woman flees her country following the promulgation of Italy's so -called racial laws. She arrives in the neutral city of Lisbon and spends three days awaiting the certificate that will allow her to emigrate to the United States. During her stay she meets Juan Ruben, an anti-Fascist intellectual who coordinates a network of expatriates working to assist refugees. Although emotionally and intellectually displaced, the young woman comes to recognize her exile as a rite of passage, as an opportunity to acquire a new awareness of herself. Her experience of displacement becomes most intense during an outing to Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in Europe, whose cliffs symbolize "the last sign of earth, the end of Europe", yet also face outward toward the Atlantic and America. With a clear and spare style, Angela Bianchini explores the theme of exile from a variety of perspectives as she offers a glimpse into Italian culture at a major historical juncture. Bianchini lives in Rome, where she was born and raised. She is the author of six novels and a frequent contributor to major Italian newspapers. Angela M. Jeannet is Charles A. Dana Professor of Romance Languages (emerita) at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is the author of Under the Radiant Sun and the Crescent Moon: Italo Calvino's Storytelling and other works. David Castronuovo is an assistant professor of Italian at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

In the 16th century, there was great interest in the kind of magic that is in fact science. But the scientists were ahead of their time. There was no machinery. Da Vinci had already drawn plans for a submarine and an airplane, but it was impossible to have them built. Legends began to grow. Soon it was told, as absolute truth, that a living being had been created out of clay. Was there reason to believe this? Who can say? But one of the most enduring of all these legends was the story that a great rabbi, by the power of his mystic wisdom, had been permitted by God to create a manlike being in order to save the Jews from destruction. This was the Golem. Now Sulamith Ish-Kishor has written an exciting novel, based on this legend, told through the eyes of an orphan boy, Gideon ben Israyel. By a strange series of events, the High Rabbi of the city of Prague entrusts him with an awesome task. Brave, strong, and loyal, Cideon wants to do right. But he makes one fateful mistake.

"My father has married me to a mad old man." These words, written on a slip of paper inside a fading brocade collar, are a clue to the unlikely marriage of a Jewish remittance man and a 14-year-old orphan in a remote Newfoundland fishing station. More curious still are the connections that entangle a retired schoolteacher and an Israeli scholar almost two centuries later. When the bereaved Rosehannah Quint and her mysterious "mister" retreat into winter quarters at the back of Ireland's Eye, the two begin to develop an understanding based on curiosity as well as upon need - an understanding that works its way down the years. The Winterhouse is a compelling novel about finding oneself and creating one's own community.

In the tradition of the old "Ace Doubles" two-in-one books (flip one over to read the second title)--here is the twelfth Wildside Double: LISA KANE: A NOVEL OF WEREWOLVES, by Richard A. Lupoff. Lisa is a 12-year-old girl with all the worries of any normal girl beginning the transition to womanhood. She's frightened by the changes happening to her body--the budding breasts, the stiff black hairs that appear on the back of her hands, and the way her nails twist to look like claws during the full moon. Is this normal? Why is she so different from everyone else? Scott A. Culp says: "A good book...that does not deserve to be forgotten." THE PRINCES OF EARTH: A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, by Michael Kurland. Adam Warrington is a young man from a repressive plant in the grasp of fundamental Puritanism. Then he's accepted by the University of Sol on Mars, and his great adventure begins. On the way there his spaceship is hijacked by a disgruntled noble who wants to overthrow the emperor, and Adam is forced to choose sides. A grand tale in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein. A Young Adult Literary Guild Selection.

A Jewish politician stealing Boston's St. Patrick's day parade? A rabbi slipping down the abyss of his toilet bowl into a world of evil? These are some of the puzzles that Mark Mirsky assembles in his third novel, a mystery of the lost tribe of Jews who once inhabited the streets along Blue Hill Avenue in Boston's ghetto. Its protagonists are the godly Rabbi Lux, his high-strung wife, and her hysterical rival, the mother of the rabbi's missing pupil, Harvey Blatz. Forced by his conscience to set out on a search for Harvey, Rabbi Lux leaves the familiar surroundings of his study and descends into the world of Blue Hill Avenue, where he finds that the inhabitants are only half human and that an ancient antagonist, the snake, lurks in the bushes. The rabbi brings the whole of the Avenue to judgment in a tumultuous synagogue riot. When it comes to telling a story this Mark Mirsky is a young genius."--Harry Golden

From his cult classic, I Smell Esther Williams, to his wildly popular and insightful column "Wild Kingdom" appearing in Esquire magazine every month, Mark Leyner has been giving us up close and personal encounters of the most hilarious kind for over a decade. Now, in his new novel The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Leyner shares with us, long last, the quintessential coming of age story that every writer, at some point, is compelled to tell. In the novel we meet young Mark Leyner, 13-years-old to be exact, as he waits in a New Jersey prison to witness his father's execution. Adolescence is never easy, and it just so happens that this junior high schooler is on deadline to turn in a screenplay for which he has already been awarded the Vincent and Lenore DiGiacomo/Oshimitsu Polymers America Award. And, as it was for all of us during out teenage years, nothing seems to go as planned. Written as autobiography, screenplay and movie review, The Tetherballs of Bougainville twists three familiar narrative forms into an outlandishly compelling story. Leyner's use of the media-driven formats brilliantly reflects our secret, shameful and hilarious desire to experience our private lives as mass entertainment. The Tetherballs of Bougainville skewers and celebrates American pop culture in the late twentieth century. Leyner's version of our lives is so deeply funny because it is so painfully true.