Forgotten Bookmarks: A Bookseller's Collection of Odd Things Lost Between the Pages


Michael Popek - 2011
    It could be a train ticket, a letter, an advertisement, a photograph, or a four-leaf clover. Eventually the book finds its way into the world-a library, a flea market, other people's bookshelves, or to a used bookstore. But what becomes of those forgotten bookmarks? What stories could they tell?By day, Michael Popek works in his family's used bookstore. By night, he's the voyeuristic force behind www.forgottenbookmarks.com, where he shares the weird objects he has found among the stacks at his store.Forgotten Bookmarks is a scrapbook of Popek's most interesting finds. Sure, there are actual bookmarks, but there are also pictures and ticket stubs, old recipes and notes, valentines, unsent letters, four-leaf clovers, and various sordid, heartbreaking, and bizarre keepsakes. Together this collection of lost treasures offers a glimpse into other readers' lives that they never intended for us to see.

Short Stories of Charles Bukowski


Charles Bukowski
    

Cyrano de Bergerac: in a free adaptation


Martin Crimp - 2019
    While Roxane is in love with the beautiful but inarticulate Christian.Cyrano's generous offer to act as go-between sets in motion a poignant and often hilarious love-triangle, in which each character is torn between the lure of physical attraction and the seductive power of words.Martin Crimp's adaptation of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac premiered at the Playhouse Theatre, London, in November 2019.

The Lost Boy: Tales of a Child Soldier


Ayik Chut Deng - 2020
    One of them, Ayik, was once a ten-year-old boy soldier training in the junior forces of the SPLA and like many of the young boys hating it. He regularly ran away, sometimes to refugee camps, but was found, dragged back and brutally punished by then fourteen-year-old Anyang, the man now sitting opposite him.After a tumultuous life in Africa, Ayik brings that trauma with him to Australia and at various times gets in trouble with the law over violence, alcohol and drugs. He is misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and is wrongly medicated for years. One day at a Brisbane church he looks across and sees his childhood torturer and is filled with hate. They do not interact then, but on their next encounter, a few years later, Ayik speaks with Anyang and says if they were still in Africa he would kill him.Thankfully a number of forces (including the law and parenthood and a better psychiatrist) eventually set Ayik on the straight and narrow. He is studying, working as an actor and volunteering at his local PCYC.An incredibly honest book showing that recovering from torture and war is a process of lifelong learning, choices and challenges.

The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship


David Whyte - 2009
    David Whyte knows there are three crucial relationships, or marriages, in our lives: the marriage or partnership with a significant other, the commitment we have to our work, and the vows, spoken or unspoken, we make to an inner, constantly developing self. In The Three Marriages, the bestselling author, poet, and speaker argues that it is not possible to sacrifice one relationship for the others without causing deep psychological damage. Too often, he says, we fracture our lives and split our energies foolishly, so that one or more of these marriages is sacrificed and may wither and die, in the process impoverishing them all. Whyte looks to a different way of seeing and connecting these relationships and prompts us to examine each marriage with a fierce but affectionate eye as he shows us the importance of cherishing all three equally. Drawing from his own struggles to achieve this goal as well as exploring the lives of some of the world's great writers and activists—from Dante to Joan of Arc, from Austen to Dickinson—Whyte reveals that our core commitments are irrevocably connected. Only by understanding the simultaneously robust and delicate nature of the three marriages and the stages of their maturation, he maintains, can we create a real portrait of what makes us tick and a real sense of finding a place in the world. In prose that's at once lyrical and inviting, Whyte investigates captivating ideas for bringing a deeper satisfaction to our lives, one that goes beyond our previously held ideas of balance.

Salomé


Oscar Wilde - 1891
    Symbolist poets and writers — Stéphane Mallarmé and Maurice Maeterlinck among them — defended the play's literary brilliance. Beyond its notoriety, the drama's haunting poetic imagery, biblical cadences, and febrile atmosphere have earned it a reputation as a masterpiece of the Aesthetic movement of fin de siècle England.Written originally in French in 1892, this sinister tale of a woman scorned and her vengeance was translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas. The play inspired some of Aubrey Beardsley's finest illustrations, and an abridged version served as the text for Strauss' renowned opera of the same name. This volume reprints the complete text of the first English edition, published in 1894, and also includes "A Note on Salomé" by Robert Ross, Wilde's lifelong friend and literary executor. Students, lovers of literature and drama, and admirers of Oscar Wilde and his remarkable literary gifts will rejoice in this inexpensive edition.

Tales from the Black Meadow


Chris Lambert - 2013
    Also of note are "Children of the Black Meadow" where a bereaved mother resurrects her deceased kids as blackberry bramble homunculi; cyclical damnation tale "The Coal Man and the Creature" and the paranoia-inducing sucker punch "The Watcher From the Village" ... this is a collection that strongly invites a second reading.." - STARBURST MAGAZINE "A banquet of weirdness..." - Hypnobobs"...visceral dread slowly rises from its mustiness..." - Mythogeography"A fine piece of British Hauntology" - Gareth Rees Author of Marshland"Properly spooky and really well written." - Sebastian Baczkiewicz - Creator of Radio 4's Pilgrim"Tales from the Black Meadow" features a blend of weird and disturbing short stories. This collection is well worth checking out for its originality and chilling tone." - Phil Syphe Author of Cash 'n' Carrots and other capers"very atmospheric black and white illustrations courtesy of Mr Nigel Wilson" - Hypnobobs"Lambert manages to create genuine atmosphere and spine-tingling moments... but he also injects some black humour and much appreciated wit." Steevan Glover - Author of The Frog and the ScorpionWhen Professor R. Mullins of the University of York went missing in 1972 on the site of the area known as Black Meadow atop of the North Yorkshire Moors, he left behind him an extensive body of work that provided a great insight into the folklore of this mysterious place.Writer Chris Lambert has been rooting through Mullins' files for over ten years and now presents this collection of weird and macabre tales.Marvel at tales such as The Rag and Bone Man, The Meadow Hag, The Fog House, The Land Spheres and The Children of the Black Meadow.What is the mystery surrounding The Coalman and the Creature?Who or what is The Watcher in the Village?What is the significance of the Shining Apples?Why is it dangerous to watch the Horsemen dance?Beautifully illustrated by Nigel Wilson these tales will haunt you for a long time to come."Can you tell me, maiden fair Can you tell me if or where I shall see my child again Walk upon the fields of men? Will she ever stumble back From the meadow all a'black?

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman


Peter L. Hays - 2008
    It has received worldwide productions, whether as a study of parent-child relationships, as in its landmark 1976 production directed by Miller in Beijing, or as a critique of Western capitalism and has been filmed once for television and twice for movies.

A Place for Humility: Whitman, Dickinson, and the Natural World


Christine Gerhardt - 2014
    Yet for all their metaphorical suggestiveness, Dickinson’s and Whitman’s poems about the natural world neither preclude nor erase nature’s relevance as an actual living environment. In their respective poetic projects, the earth matters both figuratively, as a realm of the imagination, and also as the physical ground that is profoundly affected by human action. This double perspective, and the ways in which it intersects with their formal innovations, points beyond their traditional status as curiously disparate icons of American nature poetry. That both of them not only approach nature as an important subject in its own right, but also address human-nature relationships in ethical terms, invests their work with important environmental overtones. Dickinson and Whitman developed their environmentally suggestive poetics at roughly the same historical moment, at a time when a major shift was occurring in American culture’s view and understanding of the natural world. Just as they were achieving poetic maturity, the dominant view of wilderness was beginning to shift from obstacle or exploitable resource to an endangered treasure in need of conservation and preservation.A Place for Humility examines Dickinson’s and Whitman’s poetry in conjunction with this important change in American environmental perception, exploring the links between their poetic projects within the context of developing nineteenth-century environmental thought. Christine Gerhardt argues that each author's poetry participates in this shift in different but related ways, and that their involvement with their culture’s growing environmental sensibilities constitutes an important connection between their disparate poetic projects. There may be few direct links between Dickinson’s “letter to the World” and Whitman’s “language experiment,” but via a web of environmentally-oriented discourses, their poetry engages in a cultural conversation about the natural world and the possibilities and limitations of writing about it—a conversation in which their thematic and formal choices meet on a surprising number of levels.

The Book of Tea


Kakuzō Okakura - 1906
    A keepsake enjoyed by tea lovers for over a hundred years, The Book of Tea Classic Edition will enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the seemingly simple act of making and drinking tea.In 1906 in turn-of-the-century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner, Boston's most notorious socialite. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art expert, and curator. Little known at the time, Kakuzo would emerge as one of the great thinkers of the early 20th century, a genius who was insightful, witty—and greatly responsible for bridging Western and Eastern cultures. Okakura had been taught at a young age to speak English and was more than capable of expressing to Westerners the nuances of tea and the Japanese Tea Ceremony.In The Book of Tea Classic Edition, he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the secular aspects of tea and Japanese life. The book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzo argues that tea-induced simplicity affected the culture, art and architecture of Japan.Nearly a century later, Kakuzo's The Book of Tea Classic Edition is still beloved the world over, making it an essential part of any tea enthusiast's collection. Interwoven with a rich history of Japanese tea and its place in Japanese society is a poignant commentary on Asian culture and our ongoing fascination with it, as well as illuminating essays on art, spirituality, poetry, and more. The Book of Tea Classic Edition is a delightful cup of enlightenment from a man far ahead of his time.

People We Love


Jenny Harper - 2015
    Jenny Harper is a most gifted storyteller." Alexander McCall Smith‘Thoroughly entertaining’ Katie FfordeFor readers of Jojo Moyes, Jodi Picoult, David Nicholls - you'll love Jenny Harper's "People We Love".Her life is on hold – until an unlikely visitor climbs in through the kitchen window.A year after her brother’s fatal accident, Lexie’s life seems to have reached a dead end. She is back home in small-town Hailesbank with her shell-shocked parents, treading softly around their fragile emotions.As the family business drifts into decline, Lexie’s passion for painting and for her one-time mentor Patrick have been buried as deep as her unexpressed grief, until the day her lunch is interrupted by a strange visitor in a bobble hat, dressing gown and bedroom slippers, who climbs through the window.Elderly Edith’s batty appearance conceals a secret and starts Lexie on a journey that gives her an inspirational artistic idea and rekindles her appetite for life. With friends in support and ex-lover Cameron seemingly ready to settle down, do love and laughter beckon after all?

Descent (The Walking Dead #5)


Jay Bonansinga - 2014
    A free promotional sampler containing the first chapter of the latest installment in the Walking Dead novel series!

Teechers


John Godber - 1989
    Using the format of an end-of-term play, the new drama teacher's progress through two terms of recalcitrant classes, synical colleagues and obstructive caretakers is reviewed. Disillutioned, he departs for a safer private school.

Japanese Woodworking Tools: Their Tradition, Spirit and Use


Toshio Odate - 1984
    A complete guide to the tools used by a shokunin, or master Japanese craftsman, this book is ideal for both beginning and professional woodworkers.

The Book of Eleven


Amy Krouse Rosenthal - 1998
    Forget about Letterman's Top Ten, Amy Krouse Rosenthal's random ponderings on quirky topics are refreshingly clever and zany. Her humor is of the great everyday observational type that everyone can relate to.