Ellery Queen mystery set in New York City

From acclaimed photographer and famed lover of dogs Elliott Erwitt comes Woof , the most unintentionally persuasive advertisement for dog ownership there ever was. Erwitt's eye is unfailing, and his love for dogs is captured in each and every photo. Digging a hole, barking at a cat, jauntily carrying a stickErwitt takes these ordinary moments and makes them extraordinary. The humorist P. G. Wodehouse once said of Erwitt, 'Theres not a sitter in his gallery that doesn't melt the heart, and no beastly class distinctions, either. Thoroughbreds and mutts, they are all there." Add to that the level of respect Mr. Erwitt shows for his subjects: whether it be a scruffy little terrier pausing for a quick pant or a herding dog intensely focused on her flock, with one click of the shutter the individuality of each and every dog is conveyed and memorialized. Mostly new photographs, with a couple of old favorites sprinkled in for good measure, Woof is a celebration of dogs at their finest.

On one level, The Stepson is the tale of a young man's infatuation with his stepmother, a well-placed bourgeoise with painterly ambitions, of that young man's replication of his father's life (low-class affair, illegitimate son, marriage); and of his own successive marriages and affairs, none of which work. At a much deeper level, it is a study of what Russians call (after Goncharov's novel) oblomovschina, the paralysis of the will. Jean-Noel, the stepson in question, is a nullity with ambitions as long as he needn't do anything to advance them. He doesn't act, he undergoes. It is the intricate, tortuously rationalized play of his passivity before fate (an awful biological mother, a dreadful, deprived younger brother; young women, on an ascending social scale, who want to fill his void) that makes this one of Bove's most fascinating novels, a sort of tragic bedroom farce. . Bove is the Proust of the lower orders, of the defeated, of collective anonymity; he is all circumstance, context, distance. His style is a form of hyper-objectivity; his world bathes in a light where events always just fail to be understood. We should be grateful that forty years after the oblivion into which he fell after 1945 we have recovered a novelist whose work so perfectly incarnates the underside of French life between the wars, and who is now recognized as one of the key French writers of this century.

"His language is crystal clear, and on the surface one observes, in a sense, no other aim than to be accurate, lucid, and suitable to the subject. And yet dreams, visions of measureless depth, are conveyed beneath the serene mirror of this pure stream of language. One peers into it and is spellbound by beauty and originality" --Max Brod in Die Neue (Rundschau 1921)-- Back cover.

It first surfaced in the gripes of GIs during World War II and was captured early on by the typewriter of a young Norman Mailer. Within a generation it had become a basic notion of our everyday moral life, replacing older reproaches like lout and heel with a single inclusive category––a staple of country outlaw songs, Neil Simon plays, and Woody Allen movies. Feminists made it their stock rebuke for male insensitivity, the est movement used it for those who didn’t “get it,” and Dirty Harry applied it evenhandedly to both his officious superiors and the punks he manhandled. The asshole has become a focus of collective fascination for us, just as the phony was for Holden Caulfield and the cad was for Anthony Trollope. From Donald Trump to Ann Coulter, from Mel Gibson to Anthony Weiner, from the reality TV prima donnas to the internet trolls and flamers, assholism has become the characteristic form of modern incivility, which implicitly expresses our deepest values about class, relationships, authenticity, and fairness. We have conflicting attitudes about the A-word––when a presidential candidate unwittingly uttered it on a live mic in 2000, it confirmed to some that he was a man of the people and to others that he was a boor. But considering how much the word does for us, and to us, it hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves––at least until now.

The updated and revised edition of this business guide provides formulas for every conceivable type of written communication. It gives information on business letters, new technology and communication, and business law, which takes into account recent legislative changes.

In this rich examination of how we inherit and transform myths, Hans Blumenberg continues his study of the philosophical roots of the modern world. Work on Myth is in five parts. The first two analyze the characteristics of myth and the stages in the West's work on myth, including long discussions of such authors as Freud, Joyce, Cassirer, and Val+1⁄4ry. The latter three parts present a comprehensive account of the history of the Prometheus myth, from Hesiod and Aeschylus to Gide and Kafka. This section includes a detailed analysis of Goethe's lifelong confrontation with the Prometheus myth, which is a unique synthesis of "psychobiography" and history of ideas. Hans Blumenberg is Professor of Philosophy at the University of M++nster. Work on Myth is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

The late Harold Brodkey made headlines in 1991 upon publication of his 835-page, 27-years-in-the-making epic novel, The Runaway Soul; fortunately for his fans, he'd been turning out enough short stories, journalism, and essays in the interim to mitigate the long, long wait. Sea Battles on Dry Land is a posthumously published collection of essays, many culled from the pages of the New Yorker, that cover such diverse topics as Woody Allen's romantic and legal woes, weather, the AIDS epidemic in New York, and the author's recollections of Frank O'Hara. Divided into sections titled "Celebrity and Politics;" "Wit and Whimsy;" "Life, Love and Sex;" and "Language and Literature," Brodkey's essays, like their subject matter, are a mixed bag ranging from the genuinely insightful to the egregiously self-serving. In "The Roar of the Canon" Brodkey brings considerable critical acumen to his discussion of John O'Hara, pointing out: He did not work in the form in the ways that Fitzgerald and Hemingway did. He did not pursue any would-be essential social truth or analysis of community in his novels, as Dreiser and Faulkner did in theirs. Perhaps O'Hara knew his own fragility: Hemingway ended a suicide, after all. Perhaps O'Hara gambled ineptly but not suicidally: he stayed in the popular-serious mainstream. What's more, the writing here is incisive, elegant, and refreshingly free of the kind of excesses on exhibit in a preceding essay, "Frank and Harold," a queasy mix of starstruck name-dropping ("We entered the Village like the Jews into Canaan. Frank and Ashbery and Larry Rivers greeted us") and tedious recollections of long-past sophomoric conversations ("Frank shouted that surrealism was dead. John or Frank shouted that the entire surface of the canvas mattered. John, I think, said that Auden had loosened the girdle of form"). Sea Battles on Dry Land is proof--if we needed it--that when he was good, Brodkey was very, very good, but when he was bad, he was purple. --Alix Wilber

From the author of The New York Times #1 bestselling novel The Carpetbaggers comes a powerful yarn exposing the money, fame, sex, politics, and power that accompany being at the top of the entertainment industry.... Based on the real lives of network executives and other high-profile personalities in the early days when television first became a viable threat to the all-powerful business of the silver screen, The Inheritors is the first in Harold Robbins's "Trilogy of Greed," and spent 21 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Steve Gaunt, the rebellious visionary, is the head of a successful television empire, making him a hit, both in the ratings and with the gorgeous women he meets. Sam Benjamin, one of the last of the old motion picture tycoons, desperately wants to hold on to the power that has long been associated with the more "glamorous" part of the business--the movies. When the two combine forces, they have the potential to remake the entertainment industry--or be each other's undoing. Will their friendship fall apart when their money is on the line, or will their partnership make them even more wealthy and powerful? Entertainment is a dirty business, built by ruthless mavericks, and friendships can fall in a heartbeat when money is on the line. The only rule is that nothing is real in Hollywood. In its initial publication, The Inheritors was a timely indictment of an industry on fire. Today, it is a fascinating look back at a time when television was just coming into its own, and how the movie industry dealt with this new and growing threat.

A man takes the law into his own hands when his daughter is raped and murdered and the killer is freed by the judge in a taut courtroom drama that questions the nature of justice.

For the past twenty-five years, Henry Rollins has searched out the most desolate corners of the Earth--from Iraq to Afghanistan, Thailand to Mali, and beyond--articulating his observations through music and words, on radio and television, and in magazines and books. Though he's known for the raw power of his expression, Rollins has shown that the greatest statements can be made with the simplest of acts: to just bear witness, to be present. In Occupants , Rollins invites us to do the same. The book pairs Rollins's visceral full-color photographs--taken in Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and elsewhere over the last few years--with writings that not only provide context and magnify the impact of the images but also lift them to the level of political commentary. Simply put, this book is a visual testimony of anger, suffering, and resilience. Occupants will help us realize what is so easy to miss when tragedy and terror become numbing, constant forces--the quieter, stronger forces of healing, solidarity, faith, and even joy.

This portrait of Nixon provides an understanding of what led to the Watergate scandal, and a perspective on the past 20 years of America's history. Nixon has recently emerged as an elder statesman in the USA, and the author had access to previously unavailable papers.

Hollywood star Mike Burton and his blond sex goddess have a rocky marriage, but when she's kidnapped and held for ransom he's quick tp pay the million dollar ransom without police interference. Detective Masao Masuto suspects her disappearance is a hoax, but the real puzzle is who set it up and who got the money since her husband was found dead.

A dog's murder leads detective Masuto to a most unusual poisoning case In Beverly Hills, murder has suddenly gone out of style. For five weeks, the head of the city's tiny homicide squad, Zen detective Masao Masuto, has worked only robbery investigations. But after more than a month without a corpse, this dry spell is about to end. The dead woman is Ana Fortez, a Chicana whose death was originally classified as terminal food poisoning brought on by a feast of botulism-infested clairs. But because botulism can only grow in an airtight space, the medical examiner warns Masuto that the fatal bacteria must have been purposefully injected into the pastry. When a wealthy housewife's dog drops dead after munching on premium chocolates, Masuto finds that her bonbons have been laced with the same toxin. He begins a search for a killer targeting the sweet tooth of Beverly Hills - proof that crime in Southern California never stays boring for long.

There is no easy way out of the spiraling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern.--Arundhati Roy The Power of Nonviolence, the first anthology of alternatives to war with a historical perspective, with an introduction by Howard Zinn about September 11 and the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks, presents the most salient and persuasive arguments for peace in the last 2,500 years of human history. Arranged chronologically, covering the major conflagrations in the world, The Power of Nonviolence is a compelling step forward in the study of pacifism, a timely anthology that fills a void for people looking for responses to crisis that are not based on guns or bombs. Included are some of the most original thinkers about peace and nonviolence-Buddha, Scott Nearing, Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," Jane Addams, William Penn on "the end of war," Dorothy Day's position on "Pacifism," Erich Fromm, and Rajendra Prasad. Supplementing these classic voices are more recent advocates of peace: Albert Camus' "Neither Victims Nor Executioners," A. J. Muste's impressive "Getting Rid of War," Martin Luther King's influential "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam," and Arundhati Roy's "War Is Peace," plus many others.

Noted authority selects 12 greatest players—Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker, Fischer, Botvinnik, Petrosian, Tal, Smyslov, Spassky, Bronstein, Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch—and presents 115 memorable games that show these masters at their most brilliant. Games include author’s choice of the greatest game ever played. 12 photos. Indexes. Bibliography.

Noted authority selects 12 greatest players—Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker, Fischer, Botvinnik, Petrosian, Tal, Smyslov, Spassky, Bronstein, Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch—and presents 115 memorable games that show these masters at their most brilliant. Games include author’s choice of the greatest game ever played. 12 photos. Indexes. Bibliography.