5744 results for "Literature"

Sara Paretsky

Paretsky, Sara
Performance by Kathy Bates Six cassettes, 9 hours INDEMNITY ONLY Meeting an anonymous client late on a sizzling summer night is asking for trouble. But trouble is Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski's specialty. Her client says he's the prominent banker, John Thayer. Turns out he's not. He says his son's girlfriend, Anita Hill, is missing. Turns out that's not her real name. V.I.'s search turns up someone soon enough -- the real John Thayer's son, and he's dead. Who's V.I.'s client? Why has she been set up and sent out on a wild-goose chase? By the time she's got it figured, things are hotter -- and deadlier -- than Chicago in July. V.I.'s in a desperate race against time. At stake: a young woman's life. BURN MARKS Someone knocking on the door at 3 A.M. is never good news. For V.I. Warshawski, the bad news arrives in the form of her wacky, unwelcome Aunt Elena. The fire that has just burned down a sleazy SRO hotel has brought Elena to V.I.'s doorstep. Uncovering an arsonist -- and the secrets hidden behind Elena's boozy smile - will send V.I. into the seedy world of Chicago's homeless... into the Windy City's backroom deals and bedroom politics, where new schemers and old cronies team up to get V.I. off the case -- by hook, by crook, or by homicide. BLOOD SHOT This time, V.I.'s girlhood pal Caroline needs her services. Caroline wants V.I. to uncover the identity of her father--which Caroline's dying mother angrily refuses to divulge. For V.I., it's a routine missing-persons search that means going back to her old stomping grounds, where she's not so hot to trot. But Caroline calls it quits when her friend, the head of a local recycling projec, is found dead in the polluted waters of a local pond. The trouble is, V.I. won't quit--because the search for Caroline's father has lead her into a toxic mix of corporate chicanery and chemical corruption. Add a dire family secret, and you've got a brew that could prove poisonous--especially to a certain private eye who knows too much.
Bantam Books 1992-11

How to be a heroine: or, What I've learned from reading too much

Ellis, Samantha
"Debating literature's greatest heroines with a friend, playwright Samantha Ellis has a revelation--"My whole life, I'd been trying to be Cathy, when I should have been trying to be Jane." With this discovery, she embarks on a retrospective look at the literary ladies--the characters and the writers--whom she has loved since childhood. From early obsessions with the March sisters to later idolizations of Sylvia Plath, Ellis evaluates how her heroines stack up today. And, just as she excavates the stories of her favorite characters, Ellis also shares a frank, often humorous account of her own life growing up in a tight-knit Iraqi Jewish community in London. Reflecting on the girls, the women, and the books that she loves the most, here a life-long reader explores how these heroines have shaped all of our lives"--
Vintage Books, A Division of Random House LLC 2015-02-03 264 pages

A little love in big Manhattan

Wisse, Ruth R.
In the early decades of this century, the wave of immigration that brought nearly two million Jews from the Pale of Settlement to the United States included an extraordinary group of gifted Yiddish poets and writers, who came to be called Di Yunge (The Young). A Little Love in Big Manhattan tells the story of two of the Young’s most prominent figures―Mani Leib, a lyric poet intent on refining the hard facts of his life into works of enduring beauty, and Moishe Leib Halpern, for whom poetry had to be the expression of coarse and shattering reality. Through a dual biography of these opposing personalities, Ruth Wisse describes the rich and vital cultural movement that embraced them both. She tells of the burst of creative energy exhibited by the young poets and intellectuals who, after a long day of manual labor, would congregate in the cafes of the Lower East Side for badinage, debate, and literary talk. They started literary journals and compiled anthologies of their writings, which found their way overseas and had a rejuvenating influence on Yiddish poetry abroad. Ironically, their achievement coincided with the decline of the language in which they wrote, so that Yiddish poetry came into its own in America at a time when the next generation could scarcely read it; there were no literary heirs. Ruth Wisse presents modern Jews with a part of their lost inheritance, and also claims for the Yiddish poets a place in the American canon. The first book to present these poets as part of the history of immigrant Jews in America, A Little Love in Big Manhattan (the title is from a poem of Halpern’s) will appeal to readers of poetry and to people interested in facets of the intellectual and artistic atmosphere of the interwar period.
Harvard University Press 1988-07-27 279 pages

Be the Change Rob Greenfield's Call to Kids--Making a Difference in a Messed-Up World

Robin Greenfield,Antonia Banyard
For young readers ages 8 to 12, an inspiring, lively guide to sustainable living from YouTube star and zero-waste activist Robin Greenfield. Features kid-friendly information on the highly popular movement towards zero-waste living, as well as information on the climate crisis and solutions. Robin Greenfield loves this planet, and he's willing to go to extremes to show kids how our way of life is causing it harm. He's walked around New York City dressed in his own garbage, cycled across the U.S. on a bamboo bike (three times), and survived one year on food he foraged or grew himself. For Robin, it's all worth it: he brings attention to important topics like food and water waste; our dependency on fossil fuels; our piles of stuff (and the energy required to produce it); and our disconnection from community and the wider world. In this uplifting book, Robin uses his own experiences--backed by solid information and a ton of great ideas--to show kids that no one is too young to make a difference, and no action is too small to make a start. Robin will donate 100 percent of his proceeds from this book directly to environmental nonprofits.
Greystone Books Limited 2024-12-10 96 pages

Alpha 2

Silverberg, Robert
The second in a series of superb science fiction. The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality. Two criteria were used in the selecting of these stories—literary merit and importance to the genre. The result is that the variety of subjects is matched only by the richness and diversity of their handling—brilliant, frightening, clever, bizarre, powerful, witty, funny—and several steps in-between. Whatever else these stories may be doing, they all explore the interplay between human beings and the technological society man has created for himself. Good science fiction simultaneously peers into remote realms of space and time and holds a mirror to the contemporary moment; and if the reflection in that mirror is somewhat distorted, so be it. Blame not the messenger for bearing bad tidings. Herewith ten stories which demonstrate the unsettling kinds of insights that science fiction alone can offer. More are on the way. The nine volumes of this series provide an exciting cumulative view of a field in which some of the most vigorous and inventive fiction of our times has been produced. Simply put, here is the best science fiction from the best science fiction writers.
Independently published 2022-05-24 344 pages

Motives for fiction

Alter, Robert
"For many serious readers," Robert Alter writes in his preface, "the novel still matters, and I have tried here to suggest some reasons why that should be so." In his wide-ranging discussion, Alter examines the imitation of reality in fiction to find out why mimesis has become problematic yet continues to engage us deeply as readers. Alter explores very different sorts of novels, from the self-conscious artifices of Sterne and Nabokov to what seem to be more realistic texts, such as those of Dickens, Flaubert, John Fowles, and the early Norman Mailer. Attention is also given to such individual critics as Edmund Wilson and Alfred Kazin and to current critical schools. In Alter's essays, a particular book or movement or juxtaposition of writers provides the occasion for the exploration of a general intellectual issue. The scrutiny of well-chosen passages, the joining of images or themes or ideas, the associative and intuitive processes that lead to the right phrase and the right loop of syntax for the matter at hand-all these come together unexpectedly to illuminate both the text in question and the general issue. Recent discussions of mimesis in fiction generally proceed from a single thesis. By contrast, Motives for Fiction offers an empirical approach, attempting to define mimesis in its various guises by careful critical readings of a heterogeneous sampling of literary texts. Intelligent and good-humored, the book is also old-fashioned enough to wonder whether mimesis might not be a task or responsibility to which much contemporary fiction has not proved entirely adequate.
Harvard University Press 1984 234 pages

Guardian of the Dawn

Richard Zimler
From The Highly Acclaimed Author Of The Last Kabbalist Of Lisbon And Hunting Midnight Comes A Sweeping Tale Of Devotion, Persecution And Vengeance In Colonial India By The Time The 16Th Century Was Drawing To A Close In The Portuguese Colony Of Goa, The Catholic Inquisition Was Making Excellent Progress In Its Mission To Keep All Sorcerers Whether Native Hindus Or Immigrant Jews From Practising Their Traditional Beliefs. Those Who Refused To Denounce Others And Give Up Their Ways Were Either Strangled By Executioners Or Burnt Alive In Public Autos-Da-Fé. By Living Just Outside Colonial Territory, The Zarco Family Manages To Stick Firm To Its Portuguese Jewish Roots. Tiago And His Sister Sofia Enjoy A Peaceful Childhood Learning To Illustrate Manuscripts With Their Father, And Secretly Dipping Into The Heady Chaos Of The Hindu Festivals Celebrated By Their Beloved Cook Nupi. As The Children Reach Adulthood, The Family Is Torn Apart When First The Father And Then The Son Are Imprisoned By The Inquisition. But Who Could Have Betrayed Them? Impeccably Researched, Guardian Of The Dawn Is Both A Riveting Historical Mystery And, In Its Profound Exploration Of The Nature Of Evil, A Powerful Reinterpretation Of Othello. This Is Richard Zimler At His Imaginative, Energetic, And Insightful Best. Praise For The Last Kabbalist Of Lisbon Zimler [Is] A Present-Day Scholar And Writer Of Remarkable Erudition And Compelling Imagination, An American Umberto Eco. Francis King, Spectator Drenched In Atmosphere And Period Detail. Wall Street Journal A Riveting Literary Murder Mystery, His Novel Is Also A Harrowing Picture Of The Persecution Of 16Th-Century Jews, And In Passing, The Atmospheric Introduction To The Hermetic Jewish Tradition Of The Kabbalah. Independent On Sunday A Fascinating Novel With Spellbinding Subject Matter. Elle Praise For Hunting Midnight Enthralling&Hunting Midnight Is A Shamelessly Sprawling Historical Novel, Spanning Continents, Napoleonic Wars, A Secret Jewish Family, Kalahari Magic, And Slavery In South Carolina. Sydney Morning Herald Zimler Is Always An Exhilaratingly Free Writer, Free Of Ordinary Taboos&Hunting Midnight Shows Zimler At The Height Of His Powers. London Magazine This Is An Epic Melodrama, Spanning Three Continents And More Than Twenty-Five Years, Building Up To A Genuinely Moving Climax. Literary Review This Is A Rousing Roaring Roller Coaster Of A Read. Climb Aboard And Have Zimler Rattle You Off Into The Sort Of Expansive Imaginative Realm That Readers Dream Of And Lesser Writers Steer Clear Of&Bracing, Spine-Tingling Stuff. Australian Reading Hunting Midnight Was Like Discovering A Rare Gem. Richard Zimler Is A Brilliant Author With A Touch Of Genius. Rendezvous Magazine (Usa)
Penguin Books India 2008 386 pages

I Never Got a Dinner: The Autobiography of Red Buttons

Buttons, Red
In I Never Got a Dinner Red Buttons gives us the details of his long and fascinating life. From his Jewish-immigrant upbringing in New York City, to his glory days as host of his own prime-time television variety show, to his big-screen triumphs alongside such film giants as Marlon Brando, Ginger Rogers, and Jane Fonda, Buttons tackles his personal and professional life with sometimes hilarious, at other times devastating, sincerity.
Phoenix Books Inc 2008-12-01 292 pages