What he heard is set down here in those distinctive voices, alongside Oz’s observations and reflections. A classic insider’s view of a land whose complex past and troubled present make for an uncertain future.“Oz’s vignettes . . . wondrously re-create whole worlds with an economy of words.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

    They couldn't be more different: Jane is a rather incompetent vicar's wife, who always looks as if she is about to feed the chickens, while Prudence, a pristine hothouse flower, has the most unsuitable affairs. With the move to a rural parish, Jane is determined to find her friend the perfect man. She learns that matchmaking has as many pitfalls as housewifery...

    And what is more, she is so intensely interesting that the girls admire her above all else. But Miss Brodie is not honest. She prevaricates and then tells the girls to do as she tells them, not as she does herself. She is having an affair with the music teacher and has had one with the art teacher, and this is not the most exemplary conduct. A

    T. Wallace Wooly, a self-important tycoon, but at heart a shy brown rabbit of a man, meets his future bride when he rescues her from a hotel fire. Readers might think this situation poses unique challenges to a couple just getting acquainted, but it probably helped that the soon to be Mrs. Wooly was completely naked at the time. Mr. Wooly is the most public, most consequential man in town and so respectable that the well-publicized rescue of the nude Miss Broome thrown over Mr.Wooly's shoulder as he rushes from the burning building sets tongues wagging. (You sly dog.) Mr. Wooly is aghast at the rumors, but Miss Broome is after all, bewitching, and Mr. Wooly is soon under the spell of her red lips, lustrous black hair, and slanting yellow eyes. It isn't long after their marriage that Mr. Wooly begins to question the wisdom of their hasty union when he sees his new wife climbing down the trumpet vine outside their bedroom window, riding the goat through the apple orchard in the moonlight, and killing chickens. Among other things.The Passionate Witch (1941) was initially drafted as a film scenario, but later completed as a novel by Norman Matson after Thorne Smith's death in 1934. Unlike Smith's hugely popular Topper novels, the post-humous collaborative effort failed to satisfy the public (and the critics). Still, much of Thorne Smith's magic and singular wit shines through and, all in all, the book doesn't disappoint. The storyline was heavily reworked for the sunnier, more successful movie adaptation, I Married a Witch (Masterpiece/United Artists/Cinema Guild, 1942).

    What kind of job is this, growing dogs? 2. Are these dogs nice? I mean of course they are. But if not, is this refundable? 3. Is this a stable business? Do you make a decent living? 4. Does the insurance kill you or is it okay? 5. Dogs are animals ? does this mean you qualify for some kind of Federal ranch subsidies? 6. What do I say to people who want to know how I can spend $1500 and up on a dog when there are so many dogs to be rescued from the pound? The (make-believe) Rabbis of the (fictional) Boca Raton Theological Seminary have developed the essential dog training program for raising a Jewish dog. For the first time, the same dynamic blend of passive-aggressiveness and smothering indulgence, that unique alloy of infantilization and disingenuous manipulation that created generations of high-achieving Jewish boys and girls, can be applied to create a generation of high-achieving Jewish doggies. Written (for real) by Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman, co-authors of the bestselling Yiddish with Dick and Jane and Yiddish with George and Laura, this essential "guide" is sure to be a complete howl.

    With Holocaust survivors for parents and few other 'real' relatives alive, relationships operated under a 'law of compression' in which tenuous connections turned friends into uncles, cousins and grandparents.

    Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family’s typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.This edition of A Christmas Story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Here is young Ralphie Parker’s shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine; his mother and father’s pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp; the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie’s duel in the show with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill; and, most crucially, Ralphie’s unstoppable campaign to get Santa—or anyone else—to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Who cares that the whole adult world is telling him, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid”?The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story, previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories, coalesce in a magical fashion to become an irresistible piece of Americana, quite the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart and tickle the funny bone.From the Hardcover edition.

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

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

    It brought her marriage to a man who yearned for her sweet, denied love - and passion for a man who yearned only for danger. It gave her a son born of shame, and a daughter born to destiny. It tested her love in the shadow of the Depression and the hell of the Nazi fury...And then Leah's journey brought her home.

    The unlikely thief, former child prodigy Benjamin Ziskind, is convinced that the painting once hung in his parents' living room. This work of art opens a door through which we discover his family's startling history--from an orphanage in Soviet Russia where Chagall taught to suburban New Jersey and the jungles of Vietnam.

    The Zelmenyaners describes the travails of a Jewish family in Minsk that is torn asunder by the new Soviet reality. Four generations are depicted in riveting and often uproarious detail as they face the profound changes brought on by the demands of the Soviet regime and its collectivist, radical secularism. The resultant intergenerational showdowns—including disputes over the introduction of electricity, radio, or electric trolley—are rendered with humor, pathos, and a finely controlled satiric pen. Moyshe Kulbak, a contemporary of the Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel, picks up where Sholem Aleichem left off a generation before, exploring in this book the transformation of Jewish life.

    

    This charming, delightful and extremely funny book about daily life in a frugal English household was named by booksellers as the out-of-print novel most deserving of republication.This is a gently self-effacing, dry-witted tale of a long-suffering and disaster-prone Devon lady of the 1930s. A story of provincial social pretensions and the daily inanities of domestic life to rival George Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody.

    A month later, Haim returns alone, on his first leave home. Struggling to come to terms with his experiences he wonders what happened to Dov during those fateful days.