It is Christmas 1183, and Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine are together in the castle at Chinon. Henry flaunts his new mistress; Eleanor plots against him with their sons. They will do anything they can to hurt each other, and they love each other to distraction.

Woody Allen on Woody Allen is a unique self-portrait of this uncompromising filmmaker that offers a revealing account of his life and work. In a series of rare, in-depth interviews, Allen brings us onto the sets and behind the scenes of all his films. Woody Allen on Woody Allen is punctuated with his memories and opinions: afternoon movie-watching while growing up in Brooklyn; anecdotes about the film industry; discussions of favorite films, most inspirational actresses, most revered cinematographers; his love of jazz; his fascination with the city of New York. From his youthful interest in the nonsensical surrealism of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers to the poetic lyricism of Ingmar Bergman, the conversations in Woody Allen on Woody Allen reveal the broad influences of Woody Allen's eclectic vision and bring him closer, in all his vulnerable complexity, than ever before.

Tiffky Doofky, garbage collector for the town of Popville, is proud of his calling, and quite a gay dog into the bargain. One fine spring morning, while he's making his rounds, it comes to him that something special is going to happen. Madame Tarsal, the fortuneteller, confirms his hunch and predicts that he will meet his true love that very day--before the sun goes down! "Nothing you can do can keep it from happening," she quacks, and the excited Tiffky kisses her right on the bill. The day turns out to be far from ordinary, but not in the way Tiffky Doofky, or even Madame Tarsal, had expected. A bad-tempered witch is at work here, though she looks just like a harmless old biddy, with her bicycle and red babushka. Tiffky's adventures under her spell take him so far from Popville and so close to sunset that he begins to despair of ever meeting his beloved. He even decides that Madame Tarsal ought to get a new crystal ball. But just as the sun is touching the horizon, Tiffky has his most perilous encounter, and it brings an ending entirely satisfactory to all.

The play begins with Max and Charlotte, a couple whose marriage seems about to rupture. But nothing one sees on a stage is the real thing, and some things are less real than others. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage by her husband, Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie. Both marriages are at the point of rupture because Henry and Annie have fallen in love. But is it the real thing? In The Real Thing , Tom Stoppard combines his characteristically brilliant wordplay and wit with flashes of insight that illuminate the nature--and the mystery--of love, creating a multi-toned play that challenges the mind while searching out the innermost secrets of the heart.

Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2008, Susan Gubar underwent radical debulking surgery, an attempt to excise the cancer by removing part or all of many organs in the lower abdomen. Her memoir mines the deepest levels of anguish and devotion as she struggles to come to terms with her body 's betrayal and the frightful protocols of contemporary medicine. She finds solace in the abiding love of her husband, children, and friends while she searches for understanding in works of literature, visual art, and the testimonies of others who suffer with various forms of cancer. Ovarian cancer remains an incurable disease for most of those diagnosed, even those lucky enough to find caring and skilled physicians. Memoir of a Debulked Woman is both a polemic against the ineffectual and injurious medical responses to which thousands of women are subjected and a meditation on the gifts of companionship, art, and literature that sustain people in need.

He's the most important person in human history--and Understanding Jesus: A Guide to His Life and Times makes His teaching and impact clearer than ever. More than any other Bible character, Jesus is the person both Christians and non-Christians admire and want to better understand. From Stephen M. Miller, author of the bestselling Who's Who and Where's Where in the Bible, this black-and-white paperback reference details the life of Christ, His teachings, and the faith He introduced to the world. You'll love Miller's casual, easy-to-read journalistic style, as he sets the story in the Roman world where Jesus lived, adding new insights from archaeology and ancient history. Fascinating sidebars and a complete topical index round out this important book.

"A number one bestseller in Britain, Stephen Fry's astonishingly frank, funny, wise memoir is the book that his fans everywhere have been waiting for. Since his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, the American profile of this multitalented writer, actor and comedian has grown steadily, especially in the wake of his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action. Fry has already given readers a taste of his tumultuous adolescence in his autobiographical first novel, The Liar, and now he reveals the equally tumultuous life that inspired it. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, he survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, criminal conviction and imprisonment to emerge, at the age of eighteen, ready to start over in a world in which he had always felt a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry is a brilliantly idiosyncratic character who continues to attract controversy, empathy and real devotion"--

Written in the eleventh century, this exquisite portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan is widely celebrated as the world's first novel. Genji, the Shining Prince, is the son of an emperor. He is a passionate character whose tempestuous nature, family circumstances, love affairs, alliances, and shifting political fortunes form the core of this magnificent epic. Royall Tyler's superior translation is detailed, poetic, and superbly true to the Japanese original while allowing the modern reader to appreciate it as a contemporary treasure. Supplemented with detailed notes, glossaries, character lists, and chronologies to help the reader navigate the multigenerational narrative, this comprehensive edition presents this ancient tale in the grand style that it deserves.

Nothing can ruin Tina Rivers' big weekend at Patterson College with her boyfriend, Josh Martin. She's so excited, she doesn't even mind that her cousin, Holly, will be tagging along. But when Tina and Holly arrive, Josh is gone. His roommate, Christopher Roberts, says Josh is stuck in the mountains, delayed by car trouble. That's weird -- Josh never mentioned he was going away. It gets even weirder when Holly suddenly disappears. But Christopher isn't worried -- about Holly or Josh. Christopher seems to have the answer to everything. Tina is confused. But one thing is clear -- she's about to learn more about love and murder than she ever wanted to know.

The final, poignant chapter in a trilogy of bestselling true stories about a floppy-eared Scottish Fold named Norton Peter Gethers was a confirmed cat hater until the day he received a six-week-old kitten as a gift. Walking the streets of New York with Norton tucked into his pocket, Gethers began forming an intense attachment to his new pet. Before long Norton was flying with his owner on the Concorde to Europe, sipping milk in Parisian cafés, and eating custom-made pounce pizzas at Spago. Soon Gethers began to detail Norton’s adventures in print, and with The Cat Who Went to Paris and A Cat Abroad the duo made history as well as many, many friends around the world. The Cat Who’ll Live Forever chronicles the latest in Norton’s astonishing adventures, celebrity encounters, and worldwide excursions, culminating in his heartwarming and heartbreaking final cross-country trip. The first half of this book will have you smiling and laughing as Norton changes the lives of the Italian owners of a thirteenth-century abbey in Sicily, attends movie premiers with Sir Anthony Hopkins in the chic Hamptons, and relaxes at the dog run in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park. But as Norton gets older his schedule slows down and he struggles with the aches and pains and physical inconveniences that go along with age, teaching his human the essentials of loving and caring and coping with illness. Ultimately Norton passes along to his owner the most valuable lessons of all¯how to deal with death and grief, how to live life on your own terms, and how to appreciate and savor the joyful times that come along while we’re here on earth. The Cat Who’ll Live Forever is, on one level, a touching meditation on love and relationships and dealing with the pain of inevitable loss. Above all, it is a deeply moving and life-affirming tribute to a humble little animal who never let stardom go to his head and always understood the meaning of true friendship.

From the “master of historical narrative” ( Financial Times ), a dazzling, richly detailed, panoramic work—the first to document the genesis of a continent-wide European culture. The nineteenth century in Europe was a time of unprecedented artistic achievement. It was also the first age of cultural globalization—an epoch when mass communications and high-speed rail travel brought Europe together, overcoming the barriers of nationalism and facilitating the development of a truly European canon of artistic, musical, and literary works. By 1900, the same books were being read across the continent, the same paintings reproduced, the same music played in homes and heard in concert halls, the same operas performed in all the major theatres. Drawing from a wealth of documents, letters, and other archival materials, acclaimed historian Orlando Figes examines the interplay of money and art that made this unification possible. At the center of the book is a poignant love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot, with whom Turgenev had a long and intimate relationship; and her husband Louis Viardot, an art critic, theater manager, and republican activist. Together, Turgenev and the Viardots acted as a kind of European cultural exchange—they either knew or crossed paths with Delacroix, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among many other towering figures. As Figes observes, nearly all of civilization’s great advances have come during periods of heightened cosmopolitanism—when people, ideas, and artistic creations circulate freely between nations. Vivid and insightful, The Europeans shows how such cosmopolitan ferment shaped artistic traditions that came to dominate world culture.

The most exciting historical retelling of 2023, Fair Rosaline is a subversive, powerful untelling of Romeo and Juliet by New York Times bestselling author Natasha Solomons, perfect for readers of Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell and Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese. Was the greatest ever love story a lie? The first time Romeo Montague sees young Rosaline Capulet he falls instantly in love. Rosaline, headstrong and independent, is unsure of Romeo's attentions but with her father determined that she join a convent, this handsome and charming stranger offers her the chance of a different life. Soon though, Rosaline begins to doubt all that Romeo has told her. She breaks off the match, only for Romeo's gaze to turn towards her cousin, thirteen-year-old Juliet. Gradually Rosaline realizes that it is not only Juliet's reputation at stake, but her life. With only hours remaining before she will be banished behind the nunnery walls, will Rosaline save Juliet from her Romeo? Or can this story only ever end one way? Bold, lyrical, and chillingly relevant, this spellbinding prequel to Shakespeare's best-known tale reveals the dark subtext of the timeless story of star-crossed lovers, shattering everything we thought we knew about Romeo and Juliet. "Irresistible." --Jennifer Saint, Sunday Times bestselling author of Ariadne "I have not been able to stop thinking about this book." --Elodie Harper, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Wolf Den "I absolutely devoured this thought-provoking, female-centric take on Shakespeare." -- Jillian Cantor, USA Today bestselling author of Beautiful Little Fools

Through her great capacity to love, a kind and beautiful maid releases a handsome prince from the spell which has made him an ugly beast.

(Vocal Selections). Fame: The Musical has been dazzling audiences since its debut in 1988. Originally based off the award-winning 1980 movie, then a long-running television series and even a reality show, the musical follows the lives of a group of aspiring entertainers at New York's High School for Performing Arts. Catchy songs and spectacular dance numbers fill the Broadway hit that has now been produced in nearly 25 countries worldwide. All songs include lyrics, melody line, and chord changes with professionally arranged piano accompaniment. Titles: Prologue: Pray I Make P.A. * Hard Work * I Want to Make Magic * There She Goes!/Fame * Let's Play a Love Scene * Mabel's Prayer * Think of Meryl Streep * Dancin' on the Sidewalk * These Are My Children * In L.A. * Let's Play a Love Scene (Duet) * Bring on Tomorrow * Fame.

A brilliant, idiosyncratic collection of introductions and afterwords (plus some liner notes) by New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon—“one of contemporary literature’s most gifted prose stylists” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). In Bookends, Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon offers a compilation of pieces about literature—age-old classics as well as his own—that presents a unique look into his literary origins and influences, the books that shaped his taste and formed his ideas about writing and reading. Chabon asks why anyone would write an introduction, or for that matter, read one. His own daughter Rose prefers to skip them. Chabon's answer is simple and simultaneously profound: "a hope of bringing pleasure for the reader." Likewise, afterwords—they are all about shared pleasure, about the "pure love" of a work of art that has inspired, awakened, transformed the reader. Ultimately, this thought-provoking compendium is a series of love letters and thank-you notes, unified by the simple theme of the shared pleasure of discovery, whether it's the boyhood revelation of the most important story in Chabon's life (Ray Bradbury's "The Rocket Man"); a celebration of "the greatest literary cartographer of the planet Mars" (Edgar Rice Burroughs, with his character John Carter); a reintroduction to a forgotten master of ghost stories (M. R. James, ironically "the happiest of men"); the recognition that the worlds of Wes Anderson's films are reassembled scale models of our own broken reality (as is all art); Chabon's own rude awakening from the muse as he writes his debut novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; or a playful parody of lyrical interpretation in the liner notes for Mark Ronson's Uptown Special, the true purpose of which, Chabon insists, is to "spread the gospel of sensible automotive safety and maintenance practices." Galaxies away from academic or didactic, Bookends celebrates wonder—and like the copy of The Phantom Tollbooth handed to young Michael by a friend of his father he never saw again—it is a treasured gift.

1. That's What Love Is All About 2. (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay 3. Soul Provider 4. How Am I Supposed To Live Without You 5. How Can We Be Lovers 6. When I'm Back On My Feet Again 7. Georgia On My Mind 8. Time, Love And Tenderness 9. When A Man Loves A Woman 10. Missing You Now 11. Steel Bars 12. Said I Loved You...But I Lied 13. Can I Touch You...There? 14. I Promise You 15. I Found Someone 16. A Love So Beautiful 17. This River

The multitalented writers, directors, producers, and actors (as seen on The League, Transparent, and The Mindy Project ) share the secrets of their lifelong partnership in this unique memoir. “A book that anyone will love . . . You can enjoy it even if you have no idea who the Duplass brothers are.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times Whether producing, writing, directing, or acting, the Duplass Brothers have made their mark in the world of independent film and television on the strength of their quirky and empathetic approach to storytelling. Now, for the first time, Mark and Jay take readers on a tour of their lifelong partnership in this unique memoir told in essays that share the secrets of their success, the joys and frustrations of intimate collaboration, and the lessons they’ve learned the hard way. From a childhood spent wielding an oversized home video camera in the suburbs of New Orleans to their shared years at the University of Texas in early-nineties Austin, and from the breakthrough short they made on a three-dollar budget to the night their feature film Baghead became the center of a Sundance bidding war, Mark and Jay tell the story of a bond that’s resilient, affectionate, mutually empowering, and only mildly dysfunctional. They are brutally honest about how their closeness sabotaged their youthful romantic relationships, about the jealousy each felt when the other stole the spotlight as an actor (Mark in The League, Jay in Transparent ), and about the challenges they faced on the set of their HBO series Togetherness —namely, too much togetherness. But Like Brothers is also a surprisingly practical road map to a rewarding creative partnership. Rather than split all their responsibilities fifty-fifty, the brothers learned to capitalize on each other’s strengths. They’re not afraid to call each other out, because they’re also not afraid to compromise. Most relationships aren’t—and frankly shouldn’t be—as intense as Mark and Jay’s, but their brand of trust, validation, and healthy disagreement has taken them far. Part coming-of-age memoir, part underdog story, and part insider account of succeeding in Hollywood on their own terms, Like Brothers is as openhearted and lovably offbeat as Mark and Jay themselves. “Wright. Ringling. Jonas. I’m sure you could name a bunch of famous brother teams. They’re all garbage compared to Mark and Jay. I can’t wait for you to read this book.”—from the foreword by Mindy Kaling

With A WOMAN'S WORTH, Marianne Williamson turns her charismatic voice--and the same empowering, spiritually enlightening wisdom that energized her landmark work, A RETURN TO LOVE-- to exploring the crucial role of women in the world today. Drawing deeply and candidly on her own experiences, the author illuminates her thought-provoking positions on such issues as beauty and age, relationships and sex, children and careers, and the reassurance and reassertion of the feminine in a patriarchal society. Cutting across class, race, religion, and gender, A WOMAN'S WORTH speaks powerfully and persuasively to a generation in need of healing, and in search of harmony.

This is a memoir by Marianne Faithfull, recounting her days in the swinging '60s. She recalls her love and life with Mick Jagger, how Bob Dylan wooed her, the Rolling Stones courted her and finally, how drugs trapped her into a world where nothing else mattered but the next fix.

The Principles of Uncertainty is an irresistible invitation to experience life through the psyche of Maira Kalman, one of this country's most beloved artists. The result is a book that is part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman. Her brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images--which initially appear random--ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue. Kalman contends with some existential questions--What is identity? What is happiness? Why do we fight wars? And then, of course, death, love, and candy (not necessarily in that order).