Whatever the occasion--and her work offers a rich profusion of them--the poems reach to where possession is not within us, where new names are needed and meaning enlarged. Hence, what she sees reminds her of what is missing, and what she knows suggests what she cannot. From any event, she arcs bravely into the farthest reaches of mind. Fast readers will have trouble, but so what. To the good reader afraid of complexity, I would offer the clear trust that must bond us to such signal poems as (simply to cite three appearing in a row) Mother's Sewing Box, For My Father Looking for My Uncle, and The Chicory Comes Out Late August in Umbria. Finally, the poet's words again: . . . you get / just what you want and (just before that), Just as / from time to time / we need to seize again / the whole language / in search of / better desires.--Marvin Bell

    He cowrote The Tender Trap, which became a big-screen vehicle for Frank Sinatra, and his hilarious, Elvis-intensive satire Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! also made it to Hollywood, pairing the young Paul Newman with the equally young Joanne Woodward. Shulman's best-known creation, however, is probably Dobie Gillis--that smooth-talking schlemiel of a college student, always on the make for female companionship. And in this case, the synergistic success of the book--which generated both a limp movie musical and a much-beloved television series--does Shulman a real disservice. Why? The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis is much funnier than either of its live-action spin-offs, for one thing. With Dobie himself narrating, the plots shake off at least a grain of their sitcom stiffness. More to the point, though, is Shulman's mastery of wise-guy prose: the goofy, comical elevation of Dobie's voice suggests a kind of broad-brush S. J. Perelman, and if Shulman is a tad less clever than that comedic monster, he's also superior at inducing the world-class belly laugh. Certainly The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis does the trick nicely, and the period illustrations are an irresistible bonus, suitable for framing.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    An omnibus edition of three Ruth Rendell crime novels - A Demon in My View, A Judgement in Stone and The Face of Trespass.

    These texts are characterized by a startling and macabre novelty, with elements of the grotesque, fantastic and child-like touching the imagination of the everyday. They express the cultural landscape of Stalinism -- years of show trials, mass atrocities and stifled political life. Their painful, unsettling eloquence testify to the humane and the comic in this absurdist writer's work. The translator Neil Cornwall gives a biographical introduction to his subject, enlarged upon by the poet Hugh Maxton in a contextual assessment of the writing of Flann O'Brien, Le Fanu and Doyle, and of their shared concerns with detective fiction, terror and death. Daniil Kharms 91905-42) died under Stalin. Along with fellow poets and prose-writers of the era -- Khlebnikov, Biely, Mandelstam, Zabolotsky and Pasternak -- he is one of the emerging experimentalists of Russian modernism.

    

    A journey might be shining. One journey could remind you of another one. Are you sliding? Stumbling? Floating?Maybe it all depends on your point of view.Where -- and how -- will these sixteen poems take you?Winner 2000 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award

    Aspiring spies can get a head start into the world of becoming a private-eye or investigator. From chaos to counter-intelligence, secret messages to gadgets and every other spy thing in between, the Big Book of Spy Stuff opens the "top secret" file on the world of sabotage and espionage with humor and amazement.

    January cold coming in off two rivers. Hart is broke, freezing, looking for a place to lay low from the cops. If he can't find somewhere soon he might do something rash - like steal an overcoat and accept a wallet containing $11,000 from a man dying from gunshot wounds in the street. Whoever killed him might have a bed, though, even if that means hanging out with a bunch of thieves and drifters while the heat blows over. Lucky for Hart he's handy with his fists. And if he can use his looks and smarts to get in with the gang, maybe he can ride this out and score big on his own. Originally published in 1954, Black Friday is one of David Goodis's leanest, meanest melancholy thrillers. In the character of Hart, it features one of his classic, tortured romantic heroes, a man who becomes mired in circumstances from which there is no escape. In this edition, Black Friday is combined with short stories, unpublished since they were first written for pulp magazines in America over 50 years ago.

    But to Sean Lennon, he was Daddy. Drawing pictures and making up funny descriptions was one of the ways they played together. It's also one of the ways John was able to express his love for and great joy in his son. Full color.

    As their wedding day grows near, Alfred finds himself embroiled in an urban nightmare not the least of which is his fiance's family, the possiblity of marriage without Faith, muggings, and a sniper's bullet.

    This edition includes Love in a Wood, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, The Country Wife, and The Plain Dealer. The texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition, there is a scholarly introduction, a note on staging, and detailed annotation.

    Peter Constantine's historic collection presents 38 new stories and with them a fresh interpretation of the Russian master. In contrast to the brooding representative of a dying century we have seen over and over, here is Chekhov's work from the 1880s, when Chekhov was in his twenties and his writing was sharp, witty and innovative. Many of the stories in The Undiscovered Chekhov reveal Chekhov as a keen modernist. Emphasizing impressions and the juxtaposition of incongruent elements, instead of the straight narrative his readers were used to, these stories upturned many of the assumptions of storytelling of the period. Here is "Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town," written as a series of telegrams, beginning with "Have been drinking to Sarah's health all week! Enchanting! She actually dies standing up!..." In "Confession...," a thirty-nine year old bachelor recounts some of the fifteen times chance foiled his marriage plans. In "How I Came to be Lawfully Wed," a couple reminisces about the day they vowed to resist their parents' plans that they should marry. And in the more familiarly Chekhovian "Autumn," an alcoholic landowner fallen low and a peasant from his village meet far from home in a sad and haunting reunion in which the action of the story is far less important than the powerful impression it leaves with the reader that each man must live his life and has his reasons.

    Raffles, man-about-town, thief, and "finest slow bowler of his generation." With his partner in crime, Bunny Manders, Raffles preys on the rich, the greedy, and the unspeakably vulgar. His talents are exercised not only in London, but as far afield as Italy, Australia, and South Africa at the height of the Boer War. Throughout these exciting yarns the emphasis on panache, with intensifying suggestions of fallibility, goes to the heart of late Victorian attitudes and values.

    Ripley. Coming from Miramax Films in December 2003, Cold Mountain stars Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Directed by Academy Award®-winner Anthony Minghella who also wrote the screenplay, Cold Mountain is based on Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel of the same name and tells the story of Inman (Law), a wounded confederate soldier who is on a perilous journey home to his mountain community, hoping to reunite with his pre-war sweetheart, Ada (Kidman). In his absence, Ada struggles to survive, and revive her father's farm with the help of intrepid young drifter Ruby (Zellweger).The Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook is annotated with illustrations, movie stills, production design sketches keyed to the screenplay, costume designs, sidebars, and commentary from the cast and crew.