Author: Ann Beattie
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 150111140X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
* A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of the Year A magnificent collection from award-winning author Ann Beattie—“profoundly intriguing and unsettling stories that abound in delectably witty and furious inner monologues, barbed dialogue, ludicrous predicaments, many faceted heartaches, and abrupt upswellings of affection, even love...always on point, funny, and poignant” (Booklist, starred review). Ann Beattie’s “seamless combination of biting wit and mordant humor, precise irony, and consummate cool” is on full display in this astutely observed collection set along the East Coast from Maine to Key West, that explores unconventional friendships, frustrated loves, mortality, and aging. In The Accomplished Guest, people pay visits or receive visitors, travel to see old friends, and experience the joys and tolls of hosting company (and of being hosted). In some stories, as in life, what begins as a benign social event becomes a situation played for high stakes. “Ann Beattie slips into a short story as flawlessly as Audrey Hepburn wore a Givenchy gown” (Oprah Daily), and the pieces in The Accomplished Guest—featuring recent O. Henry, Pushcart, and Best American Short Story selections—are marked by an undercurrent of loss and an unexpected element of violence, with Beattie’s signature mordant humor woven throughout. Some guests provide welcome diversions, others are uninvited interruptions, all are indelibly drawn. Beattie “punctures her characters’ pretensions and jadedness with an economy and effortless dialogue that writers have been trying to emulate for three decades” (The New York Times Book Review). The Accomplished Guest is fresh, funny, and overwhelmingly “brilliant at furnishing the precise level of niggling complexity that is tragicomically real” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Author: Sarah Blake
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 1250110254
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 497
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Book Description
Instant New York Times Bestseller Longlisted for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence 2020 New England Society Book Award Winner for Fiction “The Guest Book is monumental in a way that few novels dare attempt.” —The Washington Post The thought-provoking new novel by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Blake An exquisitely written, poignant family saga that illuminates the great divide, the gulf that separates the rich and poor, black and white, Protestant and Jew. Spanning three generations, The Guest Book deftly examines the life and legacy of one unforgettable family as they navigate the evolving social and political landscape from Crockett’s Island, their family retreat off the coast of Maine. Blake masterfully lays bare the memories and mistakes each generation makes while coming to terms with what it means to inherit the past.
Author: Ann Beattie
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525557369
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
A Good Housekeeping Best Book of the Year "Every sentence shines with wit, originality, and sharp observations." --The Boston Globe A razor-sharp, deeply felt novel about the complicated relationship between a charismatic teacher and his students, and the secrets we keep from those we love At a boarding school in New Hampshire, Ben joins the honor society led by Pierre LaVerdere, an enigmatic, brilliant, yet perverse, teacher who instructs his students not only about how to reason, but how to prevaricate. As the years go by, LaVerdere's covert and overt instruction lingers in his students' lives as they seek some sense of purpose or meaning. When Ben feels the pace of his life accelerating and views his intimate relationships as less and less fulfilling, there seems to be a subtext he's not able to access. And what, really, did Bailey Academy teach him? While relationships with his stepmother and sister improve, and a move to upstate New York offers respite from his anxiety about love and work, LaVerdere's reappearance in his life disturbs his equilibrium. Everything he once thought he knew about his teacher--and himself--is called into question. Written by one of our most iconic writers, known for casting a cold eye on her generation's ambivalence and sometimes mistaken ambition, A Wonderful Stroke of Luck is a keenly observed psychological study of a man who alternates between careful driving and hazardous risk taking, as he struggles to incorporate his past into the vertiginous present.
Author: John Kenneth Muir
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557836090
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
(Applause Books). Best in Show is the first in-depth look at the method behind film director and actor Christopher Guest's madness and genius. John Kenneth Muir focuses his attention on the acclaimed Guest-directed trilogy of what some call "mockumentaries": Waiting for Guffman , Best in Show and A Mighty Wind . In these films Guest has escorted rapt audiences into the purportedly real worlds of a small-town theatrical company, dog show competition, and folk music festival. Muir also details the events that lead to Rob Reiner's influential and legendary This Is Spinal Tap , which Rolling Stone called the best rock and roll movie of all time, and in which Guest played the part of guitarist Nigel Tufnel. Much of Best in Show exemplifies the unique process by which Guest directs films. He employs a common repertory company, improvises scenes often without any rehearsal, and does not use any screenplay with dialogue, instead following a detailed outline often co-authored with his ace actor/writer Eugene Levy. Company members that have been interviewed for this book include Fred Willard, Harry Shearer, Bob Balaban and Michael Hitchcock. Guest's influences Saturday Night Live , National Lampoon as well as his more conventional comedies, such as The Big Picture and Almost Heroes , are studied. Best in Show is general enough to bring new fans to the table, yet detailed enough to satisfy the most in-the-know Guest fan and film student. A complete filmography with Guest's directing, acting and writing credits is included, as is the appendix, "You Know You're in a Christopher Guest Film When ..." Guest once commented, "I am drawn to people who have dreams that are slightly out of reach." Now, thanks to John Kenneth Muir, the fascinating world of Christopher Guest and company is substantially more within reach.
Author: Lee Smith
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616203463
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
“Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction . . . Gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work.” —Robert Stone, author of Death of the Black-Haired Girl It’s 1936 when orphaned thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is admitted to Highland Hospital, a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina, known for its innovative treatments for nervous disorders and addictions. Taken under the wing of the hospital’s most notable patient, Zelda Fitzgerald, Evalina witnesses cascading events that lead up to the tragic fire of 1948 that killed nine women in a locked ward, Zelda among them. Author Lee Smith has created, through a seamless blending of fiction and fact, a mesmerizing novel about a world apart--in which art and madness are luminously intertwined.
Author: Fiona McFarlane
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374710643
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
A mesmerizing first novel about trust, dependence, and fear, from a major new writer Ruth is widowed, her sons are grown, and she lives in an isolated beach house outside of town. Her routines are few and small. One day a stranger arrives at her door, looking as if she has been blown in from the sea. This woman—Frida—claims to be a care worker sent by the government. Ruth lets her in. Now that Frida is in her house, is Ruth right to fear the tiger she hears on the prowl at night, far from its jungle habitat? Why do memories of childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency? How far can she trust this mysterious woman, Frida, who seems to carry with her own troubled past? And how far can Ruth trust herself? The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane's hypnotic first novel, is no simple tale of a crime committed and a mystery solved. This is a tale that soars above its own suspense to tell us, with exceptional grace and beauty, about ageing, love, trust, dependence, and fear; about processes of colonization; and about things (and people) in places they shouldn't be. Here is a new writer who comes to us fully formed, working wonders with language, renewing our faith in the power of fiction to describe the mysterious workings of our minds. A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013
Author: Joy Williams
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307763838
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Among the "best American short stories of the past two decades" (The Atlantic Monthly) from one of our most acclaimed writers. In short stories "so vibrant and alive they have heartbeats, the prose so electric and dazzling it makes the pulse race" (Vanity Fair), a masseuse breaks her rich client's wrist bone, a friend visits at the hospital long after she is welcome, and a woman surrenders her husband to a creepily adoring student. With her singular brand of gorgeous dark humor, Joy Williams explores the various ways—comic, tragic, and unnerving—we seek to accommodate diminishment and loss, offering a rich examination of our capacity for transformation and salvation.
Author: Tess Little
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0593238079
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
A glamorous birthday dinner in the Hollywood Hills ends with the famous host dead and every guest under suspicion in The Last Guest, a dark, cinematic suspense debut reminiscent of an Agatha Christie page-turner crossed with David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. “The Last Guest is a sharp, unshrinking look at the costs of submission—to power and control, to ambition and desire, even to the wish to protect those we love by forcing memory underground.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and When the Stars Go Dark When Elspeth Bell attends the fiftieth birthday party of her ex-husband, Richard Bryant, the Hollywood director who launched her acting career, all she wants is to pass unnoticed through the glamorous crowd in his sprawling Los Angeles mansion. Instead, there are only seven other guests—and Richard's pet octopus, Persephone, watching over them from her tank as the intimate party grows more surreal (and rowdy) by the hour. Come morning, Richard is dead—and all of the guests are suspects. In the weeks that follow, each guest comes under suspicion: the school friend, the studio producer, the actress, the actor, the new partner, the manager, the cinematographer, and even Elspeth herself. What starts out as a locked-room mystery soon reveals itself to be much more complicated, as dark stories from Richard's past surface, colliding with memories of their marriage that Elspeth vowed never to revisit. She begins to wonder not just who killed Richard, but why these eight guests were invited—and what sort of man would desire to possess a creature as mysterious and unsettling as Persephone. The Last Guest is a stylish exploration of power—the power of memory, the power of perception, the power of one person over another.
Author: Anthony Haden-Guest
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780345307200
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
True crime account of Buddy Jacobson, one-time horse trainer, would-be builder of a property empire, model-agency owner, compulsive womanizer, and murderer.
Author:
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617750778
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 80
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Book Description
"For those who've never had the opportunity to party like a rock star and felt like they were missing out, Please Take Me Off the Guest List' may very well smooth over those regrets." --The New York Times T Magazine, Men's Fashion issue "It's a gorgeous book, but there's more to it than that. Wakefield is a designer; she juxtaposed Zinner's photos with Lipez's stories of life in the rock and roll gutter in a really unique way. There is literally no way you could make this book into a satisfying e-book. It's a beautiful artifact." --The Stranger In this outstanding collaboration, Nick Zinner's photographs evoke the world he travels with his band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, while Zachary Lipez's essays recount his adventures as a bartender, drug abuser, bookstore clerk, metal fan, miserable adolescent, and relentless skirt chaser. The book is designed by Zinner's and Lipez's longtime collaborator, book artist Stacy Wakefield. Nick Zinner plays guitar in the three-time Grammy-nominated rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs and other collaborative projects. His photos have been exhibited all over the world. He lives in New York City. Zachary Lipez sings in the band Freshkills, tends bar at Beauty Bar Brooklyn, and deejays all over New York City. His writing appears on Vol.1 blog. Stacy Wakefield worked as design director for Index magazine, Artforum, and Bookforum. She now lives in the Catskills where she designs art books.
