With the show in its seventh season on the fledgling CW, Coffee at Luke's is the perfect look at what has made the show such a clever, beloved part of the television landscape for so long.What are the risks of having your mother be your best friend? How is Gilmore Girls anti-family, at least in the traditional sense? What’s a male viewer to do when he finds both mother and daughter attractive? And how is creator Amy Sherman-Palladino like Emily Gilmore? From the show’s class consciousness to the way the characters are shaped by the books they read, the music they listen to and the movies they watch, Coffee at Luke's looks at the sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking underpinnings of smart viewer’s Tuesday night television staple, and takes them further into Stars Hollow than they’ve ever been before.

    Harry Rosenmerck is an aging Jewish cardiologist who has left his thriving medical practice in New York--to raise pigs in Israel. His ex-wife, Monique, ruminates about their once happy marriage even as she quietly battles an aggressive illness. Their son, David, an earnest and successful playwright, has vowed to reconnect with his father since coming out. Annabelle, their daughter, finds herself unmoored in Paris in the aftermath of a breakup.Harry eschews technology, so his family, spread out around the world, must communicate with him via snail mail. Even as they grapple with challenges, their correspondence sparkles with levity. They snipe at each other, volleying quips across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and Europe, and find joy in unexpected sources.Holy Lands captures the humor and poignancy of an adult family striving to remain connected across time, geography, and radically different perspectives on life.

    To date, it has been watched over 10 million times. Our Numbered Days is Neil’s debut full-length poetry collection, containing 45 of Neil’s poems including “OCD”, “Joey”, “Future Tense”, “Liminality”, “Moving Day”, and many, many never-before-seen poems.

    For the amusement of his friends, he?d often recount in long e-mails his latest misadventure, whether it was witnessing an armed robbery or being vomited on during his first sexual experience. In 2002, he started collecting those stories on a Web site he founded, mentallyincontinent.com. Soon he had a large following of visitors, including a rabid core group who suggested edits and helped him hone his writing craft. In 2005, he self-published the best stories from his site as a collection and in the years since he?s been holding impromptu readings across the country, selling thousands of copies (mostly out of the back of his truck). In Mentally Incontinent, Joe delivers a batch of hilarious and brand-new stories, featuring his misadventures with a stalker, his blind date with a fifteen-year-old, and his frustrated attempts to convince his mom that he?s not gay. A natural storyteller and a self-proclaimed magnet for weirdness, Joe Peacock has emerged from the bowels of the Internet with some interesting tales to tell.

    In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives—both real and imagined: “What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition” (Los Angeles Review of Books). Now, in Wounds, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in “The Visible Filth” to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table,” Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.

    The account of Roman’s desert odyssey alternates with the vivacious, bittersweet diary of his thirteen-year-old daughter, Anyusha (who is on her own perilous path, of which Roman is ignorant), and the startlingly alive witnessings of Amir, the young Palestinian who pushed the button and is now damned to observe the havoc he has wrought from a shaky beyond. Enriched by flashbacks to the alluringly sad tale of Anyusha’s mother, a famous Russian refusenik who died for her beliefs, The Wanting is a poignant study of the costs of extremism, but it is most satisfying as a story of characters enmeshed in their imperfect love for one another and for the heartbreakingly complex world in which that love is wrought.

    

    Swords kill only those who stand before them, stories decide who will live and die in generations to come.Shlom'am, a young man from the tribe of Ephraim, has grown up in the shadow of several secrets. He wonders why his father is deathly afraid of the King's soldiers, and why his mother has lied to him about the identities of those closest to him. Knowing his parents won't divulge more than they have to, Shlom'am sets out on his own to unearth his mysterious past.At the height of his journey, Shlom'am encounters the Crazed Princess. Princess Michal, daughter of the ill-fated King Saul and discarded wife of the illustrious, dangerous King David, seems doomed by the annals of history; hellbent on seizing the throne, David wiped out her father's line and left her isolated...and plotting. Only Michal knows the shocking circumstances of Shlom'am's birth. Only she can set into motion his destiny to become Jerobaam, the fourth king of Israel.The Secret Book of Kings is a sweeping biblical epic filled with court intrigue, romance, and rebellion. It engages with the canonized stories of the Israel's foundation and turns them on their heads. Brandes, known for her profound familiarity with Jewish sources, uncovers vibrant, adversarial men and woman buried deep in the scriptures and asks the loaded question: to what extent can we really know our past when history is written by the victors?

    It's OK." Over one hundred contributors share their failures, setbacks and most embarrassing moments for this compilation of hilarity with the hopes that their stories would give the embarrassed and struggling souls some comic and inspirational relief. Life is riddled with pain, disappointments, and failures, but given enough time, they're folly. "We're All A Mess. It's OK" captures life's most absurd moments honestly and without a filter. It's filled with funny essays and one-liners that highlight the grainier sides of being human and imperfect. The book covers everything from horrible internet dating experiences, the strangest of co-workers, vacations that went array, to the worst holiday gifts of all time. It's an anthology of real-life disasters. You'll enjoy comedian/actor Kim Banta's tale, "My First Date and a Sluggish Toilet," detailing a first date in the nicest home in town, ending with an overflowing toilet and panicked placement of poo into her purse. And... "You Must Have Me Confused With Someone Else" depicts Dane Levent's severe behavior problems with her golden retriever, Buddy, after picking him up from boarding, only to find out a week later that she had the wrong dog. And... "He's Worth the Wait" by Bes. D describes her mother-in-law's long-term relationship with a convicted felon she had met on Meet-An-Inmate.com. And... "Saying ‘I'm Sorry' Will Not Fix This Situation" by Ashley P. is a hilarious tale of turning her best date into her worst date by leaping onto her partner's lap, causing what is called in medical terminology, a penile fracture. And... Follow along with Traci Jo's daily embarrassment by her mother, picking her up from school wearing different wigs, such as Dorothy Hamill and Marilyn Monroe. And... Read an entire chapter dedicated to strange conditions, such as Shelley Miner Gardler's need to gather her pets before she goes to work to tell them goodbye and to assign one to be in charge while she's away. And... Discover why Christine T sorts M&Ms in ROYGBIV order and eats them first by frequency until they're even, and then one of each color in order, until they're gone. These humorous essays and quips are about the blunders and snafus, and of everyday life that most of us can relate to. It's like "Chicken Soup for the Soul" if you threw in snark and expletives. If you like Jenn Mann, Samantha Irby and Jenny Lawson, you will love "We're All A Mess. It's OK." Get a copy for your funniest friends, or for grouchy people, maybe it will cheer them up. The book is an easy read and offers a real message that we all can survive, even the worst of failures and ultimately, even though we're all a mess, it's OK. Snarky women, quip, short stories, essays, funny, humorous essays, humor essays, gifts for women, funny stories, dating, relationships, failures, work, family, cats, dogs, alpacas.

    But gradually, as Sebald's precise, almost dreamlike prose begins to draw their stories, the four narrations merge into one overwhelming evocation of exile and loss.Written with a bone-dry sense of humour and a fascination with the oddness of existence The Emigrants is highly original in its heady mix of fact, memory and fiction and photographs.

    Even as he grew up and was estranged from his community, his religion and its traditions, he could not find his way to a life where he didn't struggle against God daily. "Foreskin's Lament" reveals Auslander's youth in a strict, socially isolated Orthodox community, and recounts his rebellion and efforts to make a new life apart from it. Auslander remembers his youthful attempt to win the "blessing bee" (the Orthodox version of a spelling bee), his exile to an Orthodox-style reform school in Israel after he's caught shoplifting Union Bay jeans from the mall, and his fourteen mile hike to watch the New York Rangers play in Madison Square Garden without violating the Sabbath. Throughout, Auslander struggles to understand God and His complicated, often contradictory laws. He tries to negotiate with God and His representatives-a day of sin-free living for a day of indulgence, a blessing for each profanity. But ultimately, Shalom settles for a peaceful cease-fire, a standoff with God, and accepts the very slim remaining hope that his newborn son might live free of guilt, doubt, and struggle. Auslander's combination of unrelenting humor and anger--one that draws comparisons to memoirists David Sedaris and Dave Eggers--renders a rich and fascinating portrait of a man grappling with his faith, family, and community.

     The order of the Knights Templar was founded by Hugh de Payens, a French nobleman from the Champagne region, along with eight of his companions, in Jerusalem around 1119. They originally consisted of a group of knights who protected Christian pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land against attack from brigands and Saracen pirates, after the crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099. The order's full name was the "Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon". They were given quarters next to the temple and adopted their distinctive uniform – white tunics with an eight-pointed blood-red cross. In 1129 they took monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and pledged themselves ready to die for their faith. They were gradually transformed into a chivalric order of warrior-monks who fought with distinction in the Crusades. Scroll to the top of the page and click Add To Cart to read more about this extraordinary chapter of history

    Now, at a moment when technology has inflamed tribal hatreds and the planet is beset by unnatural calami- ties, he is back with a new collection of essays that recall us to more humane ways of being in the world.Franzen’s great loves are literature and birds, and The End of the End of the Earth is a passionate argument for both. Where the new media tend to confirm one’s prejudices, he writes, literature “invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you.” Whatever his subject, Franzen’s essays are always skeptical of received opinion, steeped in irony, and frank about his own failings. He’s frank about birds, too (they kill “everything imaginable”), but his reporting and reflections on them—on seabirds in New Zealand, warblers in East Africa, penguins in Antarctica—are both a moving celebration of their beauty and resilience and a call to action to save what we love.Calm, poignant, carefully argued, full of wit, The End of the End of the Earth provides a welcome breath of hope and reason.

    In this charming and sweet solo show, Wally investigates a hiccup in the spacetime fabric of his neighborhood which is causing a number of strange events and occurrences. Part science fiction and part coming-of-age story, Wally Roux charts one boy's journey of self-discovery and identity.

    There is rampant speculation on the subject.Are they all great-looking and charming and well dressed?Yes. All of them, and especially Felicia Wong, who can even make her own clothes.I have a question about the process by which the entries in this collection are chosen. Is it scientific?The process by which The Best American Non-Required Reading is put together is not scientific. It is whatever one would consider the opposite of scientific.Creationist?Well, no, it's not creationist either. The point is that we are probably a bit less top-to-bottom thorough than, say, the Army Corps of Engineers. Well, actually, scratch that. We are probably about exactly as thorough as the Army Corps of Engineers, in that we are intermittently thorough.What is your opinion and the committee's opinion of the state of short stories and small magazines and other periodicals?This is a good time. It really is.More specifically?Not all of us Americans appreciate the fact that we have about 150 very good quarterlies in this country. Every state seems to have a very good quarterly, and about a hundred colleges have very good quarterlies — from the Kenyon Review to the University of Illinois's Ninth Letter. So by our estimate there are about 150 very good quarterlies in this country. Maybe more. Now, the thing we don’t always appreciate here in America is that elsewhere in the world there are few to no quarterlies.How does it feel to select something for the collection that you found in an unlikely place?It feels so good. This year, for example, at the last moment we found “Humpies” by Mattox Roesch. It was published by Agni Online, and we all loved it, and here it is, ideally able to reach a new audience. We all took pleasure in finding that one; the mandate of the committee is to find the offbeat and the lesser-known and bring these pieces to our readers, most of whom have great skin and bad eyes.