It is fiercely compelling" EDMUND DE WAAL, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, and through a tumultuous period of European history - a tender and yet unsparing autobiographical journey. In July 1975, George Szirtes' mother, Magda, died in an ambulance, on her way to hospital after attempting to take her own life. She was fifty-one years old. This memoir is an attempt to make sense of what came before, to re-construct who Magda Szirtes really was. The Photographer at Sixteen moves from her death, spooling backwards through her years as a mother, through sickness and exile in England, the family's flight from Hungary in 1956, her time in two concentration camps, her girlhood as an ambitious photographer and her vanished family in Transylvania.The woman who emerges, fleetingly, fragmentarily - with her absolutism, her contradictions, her beauty - is utterly captivating. What were the terrors and obsessions that drove her? The Photographer at Sixteen reveals a life that is at Magda Szirtes from the depths of the end to the comparable safety of the photographer's studio where she first appears as a small child. It is a book born of curiosity, guilt and love.

    Two years later all of Allison's dreams seemed to be coming true. She had survived major heart surgery, gotten married to the man of her dreams, and was accepted to one of the top literary schools in Southern California. It wasn't until her best friend, Christina Harper, revealed she was pregnant that Ali began to feel a void in her life. As desire for a family grows, so does the realization that with her heart condition having a child could mean losing her life.

    While her friends keep observing weird occurrences and finding strange things in the woods they try to get some rest and relaxation. The camping site’s inhabitants have other plans for the group as death, sacrifice, and heritage rear their head in the equation. The Camping Trip is a story that will have you scared to pitch a tent in the woods ever again.

    In the course of a gripping, headlong narrative, Price's unnamed protagonist moves in and out of contemporary non-spaces on a confounding and enigmatic quest, all the while meditating on art in the broadest sense: not simply painting and sculpture but also film, architecture, literature, and poetry. From boutique hotels and highway bridges to PC terminals and off-ramps; from Kanye West and Jeff Koons to George Bush and Patricia Highsmith; from the playground to the internet to the mirror, Price's hybrid of fiction, essay, and memoir gets to the central questions not only of art, but of how we live now

    Like an Art of War for design, this slim volume contains guidance, inspiration, and reassurance for all those who labor with the user in mind. If you work on the web, in print, or in film or video, this book can help. If you know someone working on the creative arena, this makes a great gift. Funny, too.Look for fresh aphorisms on our Facebook page.

    

    It almost makes me want to have another child. Almost' Bryony Gordon ***Your No Guilt Pregnancy Plan is a revolutionary new guide to pregnancy and childbirth that puts the power firmly in your hands. It won't tell you what fruit your baby resembles week-by-week, but it will cover the huge shifts happening in your relationships, body, work and emotional life right now, giving you practical tools, tips and real stories to help you make a plan that is uniquely yours yet flexible enough to accommodate whatever your pregnancy, birth and life throw at you.***Further Praise for Your No Guilt Pregnancy Plan***'The book has everything a pregnant woman needs ... I'm sure this will be the go-to book for women in years to come' - Helen Thorn host of the Scummy Mummies podcast'Rebecca is a living, breathing Wonder Woman heroine. In a sea of complicated, important and sometimes angry debate around childbirth, she is a mast to hold onto.' - Cherry Healey, presenter and author of Letters to My FannyI can't think of a panicky question I had thought of through either of my pregnancies (and I thought of them at a rate of five per second) that wouldn't have been answered by this book. I wish I had had it, in fact. A very empowering guide to becoming a mother.' - Robyn Wilder, The Pool

    She must face unsurmountable danger, taking lives and putting hers on the line to save him while dealing with emotional turmoil when she found out her loving husband was not as devoted as she thought and her enemies are more powerful and devious than she imagined.

    She endured a catastrophic set of physical calamities as a child and young woman, was an active member of the Communist Party, and survived a tempestuous marriage to the artist Diego Rivera. This book includes many photographs of her life alongside her extraordinary paintings, and presents commentary by leading Mexican art historians, stunning reproductions of her most seminal works -- some never before reproduced, and nine gate-folds allowing the reader to examine in detail aspects of her larger works.

     Barwolf of Strangclyf wants to prove herself worthy of her new husband as he claims Strangclyf. After a life of drudgery under a father who despised her, she knows submission, but lacks manners. As they battle treachery in William’s court and later at Strangclyf, she proves everything he believed about the evil of women may not be true and he gives her hope for a future without domestic violence. Can the pair actually find love before a traitor destroys their lives?

    The author of the enormously popular series featuring Baltimore P.I. Tess Monaghan as well as three critically lauded stand-alone novels, Lippman now turns her attention to short stories—and reveals another level of mastery.Lippman sets many of the stories in this sterling anthology, Hardly Knew Her, in familiar territory: her beloved Baltimore, from downtown to its affluent suburbs, where successful businessmen go to shocking lengths to protect what they have or ruthlessly expand their holdings, while dissatisfied wives find murderous ways to escape their lives. But Lippman is also unafraid to travel—to New Orleans, to an unnamed southwestern city, and even to Dublin, the backdrop for the lethal clash of two not-so-innocents abroad. Tess Monaghan is here, in two stories and a profile, aligning herself with various underdogs. And in her extraordinary, never-before-published novella, Scratch a Woman, Lippman takes us deep into the private world of a high-priced call girl/madam and devoted soccer mom, exploring the mystery of what may, in fact, be written in the blood.Each of these ingenious tales is a gem—sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, always filled with delightfully unanticipated twists and reversals. For people who have yet to read Lippman, get ready to experience the spellbinding power of "one of today's most pleasing storytellers, hailed for her keen psychological insights and her compelling characterizations," (San Diego Union-Tribune), who has "invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative, and exciting work" (George Pelecanos). As for longtime devotees of her multiple award-winning novels, you'll discover that you hardly know her.

    I've acted for Belasco and I've laid 'em out in the rows at the Palace. I've doubled as an alligator; I've worked for the Shuberts; and I've been joined to Billy Rose in the holy bonds. I've painted the house boards and I've sold tickets and I've been fired by George M. Cohan. I've played in London before the king and in Oil City before miners with lanterns in their caps. Fanny Brice was indeed show business personified, and in this luminous volume, Herbert G. Goldman, acclaimed biographer of Al Jolson, illuminates the life of the woman who inspired the spectacularly successful Broadway show and movie Funny Girl, the vehicle that catapulted Barbra Streisand to super stardom. In a work that is both glorious biography and captivating theatre history, Goldman illuminates both Fanny's remarkable career on stage and radio--ranging from her first triumph as Sadie Salome to her long run as radio's Baby Snooks--and her less-than-triumphant personal life. He reveals a woman who was a curious mix of elegance and earthiness, of high and low class, a lady who lived like a duchess but cursed like a sailor. She was probably the greatest comedienne the American stage has ever known as well as our first truly great torch singer, the star of some of the most memorable Ziegfeld Follies in the 1910s and 1920s, and Goldman covers her theatrical career and theatre world in vivid detail. But her personal life, as Goldman shows, was less successful. The great love of her life, the gangster Nick Arnstein, was dashing, handsome, sophisticated, but at bottom, a loser who failed at everything from running a shirt hospital to manufacturing fire extinguishers, and who spent a good part of their marriage either hiding out, awaiting trial, or in prison. Her first marriage was over almost as soon as it was consummated, and her third and last marriage, to Billy Rose, the Bantam Barnum, ended acrimoniously when Rose left her for swimmer Eleanor Holm. As she herself remarked, I never liked the men I loved, and I never loved the men I liked. Through it all, she remained unaffected, intelligent, independent, and, above all, honest. Goldman's biography of Al Jolson has been hailed by critics, fellow biographers, and entertainers alike. Steve Allen called it an amazing job of research and added Goldman's book brings Jolson back to life indeed. The Philadelphia Inquirer said it was the most comprehensive biography to date, and Ronald J. Fields wrote that Goldman has captured not only the wonderful feel of Al Jolson but the heartbeat of his time. Now, with Fanny Brice, Goldman provides an equally accomplished portrait of the greatest woman entertainer of that illustrious era, a volume that will delight every lover of the stage.

    A clandestine brotherhood hides a secret that could bring down the Catholic Church. Their chosen hiding place - the art of Hieronymus Bosch. London, 2014. An excommunicated priest approaches both the Church and the art world, claiming to possess an artefact that will destroy their reputations. This man, Nicholas Laverne, is poised to end over 500 years of silence and injustice. Yet, unknown to Nicholas, he has just summoned a killer intent on silencing him.

    In a body of work spanning over a half-century, he was variously a draughtsman, a printmaker, a sculptor and a painter. This short book is both a biography and a guide to his art. It focuses on the extraordinary works that Henri Matisse made during the last period of his life - the large-scale cut-outs on coloured paper, including his famous Blue Nudes, The Snail and Large Composition with Masks.

    Here is the dramatic - and tragic - story of Versailles and the men and women who made it their home.