A Goomba's Guide to Life


Steven R. Schirripa - 2002
    Schirripa, The Sopranos’ own Bobby Bacala, exposes the inner mysteries of this unique Italian-American hybrid in A Goomba’s Guide to Life so that anyone can walk, talk, and live like a guy “from the neighborhood.”Über-goomba Steve Schirripa shows how being a goomba made him what he is today, offering lessons learned on his own journey from Bensonhurst to Vegas, and to his current gig as Bobby Bacala on one of TV’s most popular shows. Along the way, he shares secrets that will help you get in touch with your own inner goomba. You’ll learn what music to enjoy (Sinatra, yes; Snoop Dogg, no), what movies to watch (Raging Bull, yes; Titanic, never), which sports to follow (baseball is good; golf and tennis, fuhgeddaboudit), and even tips on goomba etiquette. Ever wonder how a real goomba gets the best seat in the house? (Hint: It involves tipping, jewelry, and intimidation.) Schirripa even includes goomba do’s and don’ts (never, ever criticize a goomba’s mother or her gravy; always wear more jewelry than you think you need).With knockout photographs of Schirripa and his compares, and insider information on how to think goomba, speak goomba, cook and eat goomba, and even how to behave at goomba weddings and funerals, A Goomba’s Guide to Life will show any wiseguy wannabe how to sing like a Soprano.

Gone Tomorrow


Gary Indiana - 1993
    A disfigured, jaded young actor narrates the story of a seductive and monstrous film director who has convened his international cast and crew in Colombia, where a serial killer is on the loose. The making of his film of vast, if vague, ambition, brings together a group of people whose implosive relationship - fired by narcissism, sex, alcohol and drugs - are fiercely dissected by the narrator against an ominous backdrop of cultural dissolution, social anarchy and political violence.

Kishore Kumar: Method in Madness


Derek Bose - 2004
    He was a singer by choice, an actor by compulsion, a filmmaker by conviction...a writer, music composer, lyricist and above all, a supreme impresario. He was known to be a miser, a madman and a troublemaker who could never be trusted. And then, there are those who knew him well who insist that he was as sober as a monk. So who was the real Kishore Kumar? This book attempts to provide an answer with a well-rounded picture of his personality and rare and lively pictures to supplement the text.

After the Roundup: Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France


Joseph Weismann - 2017
    After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated: all the adults and most of the children were transported on to Auschwitz and certain death, but 1,000 children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children left behind that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt. After eluding the guards and crawling under razor-sharp barbed wire, Joseph found freedom. But how would he survive the rest of the war in Nazi-occupied France and build a life for himself? His problems had just begun.Until he was 80, Joseph Weismann kept his story to himself, giving only the slightest hints of it to his wife and three children. Simone Veil, lawyer, politician, President of the European Parliament, and member of the Constitutional Council of France—herself a survivor of Auschwitz—urged him to tell his story. In the original French version of this book and in Roselyne Bosch’s 2010 film La Rafle, Joseph shares his compelling and terrifying story of the Roundup of the Vél’ d’Hiv and his escape. Now, for the first time in English, Joseph tells the rest of his dramatic story in After the Roundup.

Wrong Rooms


Mark Sanderson - 2003
    A Lonely Hearts ad in Time Out may not have promised much, but a detailed letter from an Australian called Drew marked the beginning of a relationship. April 1994 Drew was diagnosed with skin cancer. Three months later he died. This is their story.

Public Smiles, Private Tears


Helen Van Slyke - 1982
    But her personal life (including a failed marriage and an exciting but unfulfilling affair) makes Bev feel she is lacking as a woman. Using all of her strength and intuition to reach the very pinnacle of success, she is still constantly searching for love.Public Smiles, Private Tears is not only Bev's story --- it is the story of an entire generation of women who find themselves in a world where traditional standards and assumptions no longer work. There is Ruth who followed the rules, Marion who broke them, and Sylvia --- who created her own. Here too are the men who loved them, used them, worshiped from afar, hurt them --- and sometimes left them. Helen Van Slyke draws upon her own experience in the glittering world of the powerful to tell a fascinating story of the people she knows so well: their successes and failures, their triumphs and tragedies, their public smiles and their private tears.This is Helen Van Slyke's tenth and final novel, the first half of which she had completed before her untimely death on July 3, 1979. Although she had begun writing only nine years at the age of fifty, she achieved international acclaim as the author of such bestsellers as No Love Lost, A Necessary Woman, The Mixed Blessing, and The Heart Listens. James Elward, novelist (Storm's End: Tomorrow I Mine) and play-wright (Best of Friends; Hallelujah!), had always admired Helen Van Slyke, both as a writer and as a person. When he read the unfinished manuscript of Public Smiles, Private Tears, he truly felt that it was Helen's greatest achievement, and immediately began the enormous task of finishing the book. The result is a novel so completely faithful to the spirit of Helen Van Slyke that it is sure to captivate and move her readers just as her previous books have done --- a fitting tribute to a writer beloved by millions.

Boulevard


Jim Grimsley - 2002
    Ready for a change, he buys a one-way ticket to New Orleans. The year is 1978 and the rambunctious city beckons with its famous promise of bright lights, excitement, and men everywhere. Newell makes his way, finding a job in a pornographic bookstore and renting a room in the French Quarter. His good nature, good looks, and a daring stunt in a popular bar make him a quick favorite of the town. Soon he has friends. Some are harmless, like Henry, a pudgy sidekick who's a frequent denizen of the porn shop's movie booths. Others prove more dangerous, like party-boy Mark, Newell's first beau, who has a penchant for recreational drugs. Finally, Newell encounters the volatile Jack, who shows Newell the blackest heart of the city.Boulevard, Jim Grimsley's fifth novel, reminds us that Grimsley is what Publishers Weekly calls "an accomplished stylist and a complex moralist." He takes one character's dream and reveals what can happen when dreams are fulfilled.

Goodbye Barbary Lane


Armistead Maupin - 2014
    Maupin deftly illustrates how far America and the pioneering Anna have come, and nearly forty years into the series, his writing remains wildly addictive but is deeper and richer.”—People The last three novels of Armistead Maupin’s bestselling, critically-acclaimed Tales of the City are now available for the first time as an omnibus edition. The epic series, published between 1978 and 2014, spans the decade before the AIDS crisis through the era of marriage equality following an unforgettable set of characters, whose diverse sexual identities helped set the social stage for the ongoing sexual revolution.Goodbye Barbary Lane—comprised of Michael Tolliver Lives (2007), Mary Ann in Autumn (2010), and The Days of Anna Madrigal (2014)—brings closure to the lives and legacies of the characters through which generations have found connection to America’s larger cultural struggles over the past four decades.Joining two companion omnibus volumes, 28 Barbary Lane and Back to Barbary Lane, Goodbye Barbary Lane presents all of “Mr. Maupin’s adeptness at fluid dialogue, his flair for shaping characters who thread the needle between pop archetypes and singular human beings, and his great gift for intricate if occasionally preposterous plotting”(New York Times).