Inspired by William Carlos William's famous poem, "This Is Just to Say," a collection of ironic apology poems imagines how tricksters really feel about the mischief they make.

An absorbing and eye-opening meditation on Elvis Presley's life--since his death. In 18 essays illustrated with more than 60 photos and line drawings, Marcus shows how Elvis remains alive in the cultural imagination of our place and time, and how the King's vitality has intensified in direct proportion to the obsession with his memory.--

Praised by Robbie Robertson of The Band as "a classic & a ticket to ride," The Rose & the Briar assembles an astonishing group of writers and artists: Paul Muldoon, Stanley Crouch, R. Crumb, Jon Langford of the Mekons, Sharyn McCrumb, Luc Sante, Joyce Carol Oates, Dave Marsh, and more than a dozen other novelists, essayists, performers, and critics; to explore the ineffable power of the American ballad. From "Barbara Allen" through "The Wreck of the Old 97" to contemporary ballads by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, The Rose & the Briar is, as Geoffrey O'Brien hailed in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "a book full of internal echoes and provocative coincidences," featuring "historical investigation, shamanistic trance-journey, memoir, novella and cartoon," where "names and costumes change, soldiers become cowboys, demon lovers become backwoods murderer; the voices are unmistakably distinct but they share a common ground."

Harold Bloom, our preeminent literary critic, essays to explain the meaning of angels in world literature In this lovely gift book published for the holiday season, Harold Bloom again combines his lifelong interests in religion and literature. He begins by observing our present-day obsession with angels, which reached its greatest intensity as the current millennium approached. For the most part, these popular angels are banal, even insipid. Bloom is especially concerned with a particular subspecies of angels: fallen angels. He proceeds to examine representations of fallen angels from Zoroastrian texts and the Bible to Milton's Paradise Lost to Tony Kushner's Angels in America, arguing that familiarity with this rich literary tradition improves our reading and spiritual lives. Bloom's text is accompanied by more than a dozen original watercolors, line drawings, and illuminated letters by award-winning artist Mark Podwal. Every angel is terrifying, Rilke wrote. For Bloom, too, this is true in one sense, since he maintains that all angels are fallen angels. The image of Satan, the greatest of fallen angels, retains the ability to fascinate and frighten us, he argues, because we share a close kinship with him. Indeed, from a human perspective, we must agree that we are fallen angels. Fallenness is ultimately a human condition: the recognition of our own mortality. Throughout world literature angels have always served as metaphors for death. We may take consolation, however, in our double awareness that angels also represent love and the celebration of human possibilities.

“[A] tour de force of speculative historical fiction. Highly recommended.”— Library Journal In the extraordinary Worldwar tetralogy, set against the backdrop of World War II, Harry Turtledove, the “Hugo-winning master of alternate SF” ( Publishers Weekly ), wove an explosive saga of world powers locked in conflict against an enemy from the stars. Now he expands his magnificent epic into the volatile 1960s, when the space race is in its infancy and humanity must face its greatest challenge: alien colonization of planet Earth. Yet even in the shadow of this inexorable foe, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany are unable to relinquish their hostilities and unite against a massive new wave of extraterrestrials. For all the countries of the world, this is the greatest threat of all. This time, the terrible price of defeat will be the conquest of our world, and perhaps the extinction of the human race itself. Praise for Second Contact “An exciting, often surprising, story that will not only delight his fans but will probably send newcomers back to the Worldwar saga.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Outstanding entertainment.” — Booklist

Heston Blumenthal has made his name creating such original dishes as Snail Porridge and Nitrogen Scrambled Egg & Bacon Ice Cream at his internationally acclaimed restaurant, The Fat Duck. In this book, a single-volume edition of the bestselling Perfection books, Heston focuses his creative talent on reinventing some of our most well-known (and most abused) dishes. He travels around the world in search of definitive versions of sixteen classic dishes: Roast Chicken & Roast Potatoes, Pizza, Hamburger,Bangers & Mash, Fish Pie, Steak, Spaghetti Bolognese, Risotto, Fish & Chips, Chilli Con Carne, Chicken Tikka Masala, Peking duck, Black Forest Gateau, Treacle Tart & Ice Cream, Trifle and Baked Alaska. Among the many adventures on his quest, he travels to Delhi and makes an MRI scan of the marinated chicken in his Tikki Masala; he discovers the secret to the ultimate crispy duck in Peking and experiments at home by inflating a Gressingham on a foot pump; he walks the Dickensian streets of Lambeth and learns how to capture the essence of a fish and chip shop in a perfume bottle, and he explores the Willy Wonka-esque Tate & Lyle factory and tastes some seventy-year-old syrup that proves an inspiration for the flavour of his treacle tart. Total Perfection is an original, inspiring and fascinating voyage around the culinary globe.

Eight tales-one for each night of Hanukkah-demonstrating the inventive storytelling powers of Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer. Miracles and visitations abound in the world Singer portrays, a world in which love triumphs over time and tribulation, and faith prevails. Each story is invested with the mystical spirit of Hanukkah. " The Power of Light can enrich readers of all faiths, all ages, with its descriptions of the miraculous power of light over evil. The stories also reveal Singer's genius.''- Publishers Weekly

International bestselling author Jackie Collins returns with another fast-paced and unforgettable tale of dangerous passion and suspense, both a prequel and sequel to her New York Times bestseller Lethal Seduction. Family secrets and hidden lives come to haunt Madison Castelli, the sexy, vivacious, and talented writer last seen in Jackie Collins's Lethal Seduction . As she digs into her father's past, trying to resolve the mystery that surrounds her mother's death many years before, Madison finds herself falling into a vortex of lust, greed, and deception, as eventually her quest of discovery turns into a race for her life. Fast-paced, sexy, and full of the glamour that pervades Jackie Collins's novels, Deadly Embrace is sure to please her fans and earn her many more.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Jackie Collins brings back her savvy heroine from the L.A. Connections series in this erotically charged, suspense-laced New York Times bestseller about secret obsession and deadly passion. Caught between two lovers, Madison Castelli's sex life is in overdrive. But when she discovers someone close to her is keeping deadly secrets, the real excitement begins.... Plunged into the high-powered circles of New York and the manic thrills of Las Vegas, Madison steps among explosive passions, mob machinations, and dangerous deceptions, only to find that nothing is ever as it seems.

"Legendary mega-seller Jackie Collins chronicles passion and power in one of America's most glamorous families. A vicious hit. A vengeful enemy. A drug addled Colombian club owner. A sex crazed Italian family. And the ever powerful Lucky Santangelo has to deal with them all, while Max--her teenage daughter is becoming The "It" girl in Europe's modeling world. And her Kennedyesque son, Bobby, is being set up for a murder he didn't commit. But Lucky can deal. Always strong and unpredictable with her husband, Lennie, by her side she lives up to the family motto--Never fuck with a Santangelo. Lucky rules. The Santangelos always come out on top. An epic family saga filled with love, lust, revenge and passion"--

"Meet twenty-six of history's most notorious women. Each bad girl has a rotten reputation, but there are two sides to every tale."--Amazon.com.

With fascinating insight, impeccable research, and captivating writing, controversial psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson, a new father himself, showcases the extraordinary behaviour of outstanding fathers in the animal kingdom. From the emperor penguin, who incubates the eggs of his young by carrying them around on his feet for two months, to the sea-horse, the only male animal that gives birth to its young. Mason also examines nature's worst fathers; lions, bears, and humans. A book that will forever change our perceptions of parenthood and love.

On the morning of November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, walked into the German embassy in Paris and in an act of desperation assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a low-level Nazi diplomat. He did it, he said, out "of love for my parents and for my people." Two days later, vom Rath lay dead, and the Third Reich exploited his murder to inaugurate its long-planned campaign of terror against Germany's Jewish citizens, in the mass pogrom that became known as Kristallnacht. In a bizarre concatenation of events that would rapidly involve Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Hitler himself, Grynszpan would become the centerpiece of a Nazi propaganda campaign that would later describe his actions as "the first shot of the Jewish War." Best-selling author Jonathan Kirsch brings to light this wrenching story, reexamining the historical details and moral dimensions of one of the most enigmatic cases of World War II. Was Grynszpan a crazed lone gunman, or was he an agent of the Gestapo, recruited to provide a convenient pretext for a major escalation of Nazi aggression? Was he motivated by a desire to strike a blow for the Jewish people as an early partisan fighter, or did his act of violence speak to an intimate connection between the assassin and his target, as Grynszpan later claimed?

"A collection of bestselling, NBCC prize-winning author Jonathan Lethem's finest writing on the subject of writers and writing. A readerly wake-up call from one of America's finest and most acclaimed working writers. Picking up where his NBCC Award finalist collection The Ecstasy of Influence left off, More Alive and Less Lonely collects more than a decade of Lethem's finest writing on writing, with new and previously unpublished material, including: impassioned appeals for forgotten writers and overlooked books, razor-sharp essays, and personal accounts of his most extraordinary literary encounters and discoveries. Only Lethem, with his love of cult favorites and the canon alike, can write with equal insight about the stories of modern masters like Lorrie Moore and Salman Rushdie, graphic novelist Chester Brown, science fiction outlier Philip K. Dick, and classic icons like Moby-Dick. Edited by novelist Christopher Boucher (Golden Delicious), More Alive and Less Lonely deserves a place on every serious reader's bookshelf. Lethem's joyful approach to literature will inspire you to dive back into your favorite books and then point you towards what to read next"--

Watch out, Nancy Drew Move over, Theo Boone Devlin Quick is smart, strong, and she will DEFINITELY close the case in this thrilling new mystery series for girls and boys from New York Times bestselling author Linda Fairstein. Someone has stolen a page from a rare book in the New York Public Library. At least, that's what Devlin's friend Liza thinks she's seen, but she can't be sure. Any other kid might not see a crime here, but Devlin Quick is courageous and confident, and she knows she has to bring this man to justice--even if it means breathlessly racing around the city to collect evidence. But who is this thief? And what could the page--an old map--possibly lead to? With her wits, persistence, and the help of New York City's finest (and, okay, a little bit of help from her police commissioner mother, too), Dev and her friends piece the clues together to uncover a mystery that's bigger than anyone expected--and more fun, too. With all of the heart-pounding excitement that made her internationally bestselling Alexandra Cooper series a hit, Linda Fairstein paves the way for another unstoppable heroine . . . even if she is only twelve.

Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster's fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life. Three different narrators tell the story of Invisible , a novel that travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from Morningside Heights to the Left Bank of Paris to a remote island in the Caribbean. It is a book of youthful rage, unbridled sexual hunger, and a relentless quest for justice. With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us into the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, between authorship and identity, to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as "one of America's most spectacularly inventive writers."

The Red Notebook stories, pulled from Auster's own life or from the lives of those close to him, are explorations of unexpected coincidences. A wrong number becomes the genesis for a famous novel; a hero appears at an inopportune moment; a lightning storm harries a group of campers; a daughter plunges from a terrifying height only to land improbably safely; a Paul Auster imposter materializes. Like a magic show, The Red Notebook demonstrates that "there is much to life that is special and serendipitous -- if only we allow ourselves to perceive it this way" (The Washington Post).

Rebooted into a fresh new film franchise (2012) directed by Marc Webb and starring up-and-comers Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, and having debuted in its first ever Broadway appearance in March 2011, Spider-Man is back in the spotlight. Reaching out to millions of devoted fans, The Spider-Man Vault will afford readers a whole new look at the beloved "web-slinger". This vivid collection of images and ephemera focuses on a dynamic exploration of Spider-Man's character, providing a complete biography through his development in comics, media, and culture. Further drawing readers into Spidey's world will be approximately 20 removable features, housed in the sophisticated plastic pages specific to the "vault" format, and printed on special papers to heighten the noteworthiness of each carefully selected piece. From the classic comics to the big screen, The Spider-Man Vault is a comprehensive collection of art and ephemera that brings Spidey's back story out of the archive and into the arms of fans worldwide.