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Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime
by Agatha ChristieIncludes a new introduction from Sophie Hannah, bestselling author of THE MONOGRAM MURDERS and HAVEN'T THEY GROWNAgatha Christie was not only the biggest selling writer of detective stories the world has ever known, she was also a mystery in herself, giving only the rarest interviews, declining absolutely to become any sort of public figure, and a mystery too in the manner in which she achieved her astonishing success.H R F Keating, a crime novelist and respected reviewer of crime fiction, brought together a dozen distinguished writers from both sides of the Atlantic to throw light on this double mystery. Some analyse the art itself; some explain the reasons for her success, not just the books, but also in film and theatre.The approaches are penetrating, affectionate, enthusiastic, analytical, funny - even critical. Together, they give an almost unique insight into the life and work of the First Lady of Crime.
The Ballroom Blitz
by Anton Du BekeThe stunning new Buckingham novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Anton Du Beke, featuring an audio exclusive introduction from the author.September 1940. As the skies split apart and bombs rain down on London, it's all the staff at the famed Buckingham Hotel can do to keep their guests in the luxury they're accustomed to, and evoke the magic of the Grand ballroom for them each night. Home on leave and still reeling from the tragic events at Dunkirk, the dashing Raymond de Guise struggles to define his role in this new world, and to do his duty both to his country, and his beloved wife Nancy- who needs him now more than ever. With profiteers skulking the London streets, and devious rivals plotting the Buckingham's downfall, the hotel staff must all hold onto what matters most- and decide where their loyalties truly lie. As the bombing intensifies and Christmas fast approaches, somehow the show must go on...
Beethoven the Pianist
by Tilman SkowroneckThe widely held belief that Beethoven was a rough pianist, impatient with his instruments, is not altogether accurate: it is influenced by anecdotes dating from when deafness had begun to impair his playing. Presenting a new, detailed biography of Beethoven's formative years, this book reviews the composer's early career, outlining how he was influenced by teachers, theorists and instruments. Skowroneck describes the development and decline of Beethoven's pianism, and pays special attention to early pianos, their construction and their importance for Beethoven and the modern pianist. The book also includes new discussions of legato and Beethoven's trills, and a complete annotated review of eyewitnesses' reports about his playing. Skowroneck presents a revised picture of Beethoven which traces his development from an impetuous young musician into a virtuoso in command of many musical resources.
The Book of Tangrams: 700 Puzzles
by Sam LoydThe challenge of the tangram, the original "Chinese puzzle," lies in your ability to arrange seven geometrical pieces — a square, a rhomboid, and five triangles — into a variety of different shapes. Collected by Sam Loyd, America's great puzzle expert, these 700 endlessly absorbing tangrams offer hours of mind-expanding amusement. Sam Loyd's The Book of Tangrams is also a tribute to this tricky and intriguing puzzle. In a famous and delightful spoof of the tangram's history, Loyd includes running commentary on the popular puzzle's origins in ancient China, its religious significance, and its relation to the Pythagorean theorem. But don't let the amusing dialogue fool you! The puzzles are genuine challenges. If you've ever tried your hand at tangrams before, you're probably already addicted to their limitless possibilities. If you haven't, this classic puzzle potpourri will have you hooked in no time! Solutions are included.
Booking Performance Tours
by Tony MicocciBooking Performance Tours is the quintessential guide for anyone involved in the touring of live arts and entertainment-as a producer, artist, presenter, agent, manager, or attorney. Industry insider Tony Micocci shares keen insights on: --Relationships among producers, agents, managers, and presenters --Negotiating styles --Taxation --Technology --Ethics in professional dealings --Booking strategies --Nonprofit versus commercial touring --Special considerations for booking Broadway and popular music --International touring --External factors affecting the field Booking Performance Tours includes nearly 100 pages of appendixes containing engagement contracts, technical riders, deal memos, and representation contracts, with extensive point-by-point analyses of all provisions. This book is destined to become the classic reference for the industry.
Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (Select Bibliographies Reprint Ser.)
by Quentin ReynoldsThe thrilling story of Judge Samuel S. Leibowitz and the front page criminal cases that highlighted his career as the nation’s most famous trial lawyer.“Dramatic and exciting as they come…. All of the famous trials of the last quarter century are brought to life in this exciting book penned by a master writer. It is a raw and violent work and certainly tops in interest.”—LOS ANGELES Herald Express“Exciting reading is this record of a great lawyer. The stories recorded here, now within the framework of law and time, are even more fascinating than when they rated banner headlines in the daily press.”—CHICAGO Sun“This book is far more exciting than any detective story you are likely to encounter, for it is the real thing.”—CLEVELAND Press“COURTROOM is a book which will have many absorbed readers, and a book which should do much to correct any popular impression that may exist as to the probity of lawyers who practice at the criminal bar…breezy, fast moving, and frankly written.”—SAN FRANCISCO Chronicle
Cousin Betty
by Honoré De BalzacLa Cousine Bette (French pronunciation: [la kuzin bɛt], Cousin Bette) is an 1846 novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Set in mid-19th century Paris, it tells the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman who plots the destruction of her extended family. Bette works with Valérie Marneffe, an unhappily married young lady, to seduce and torment a series of men. One of these is Baron Hector Hulot, husband to Bette's cousin Adeline. He sacrifices his family's fortune and good name to please Valérie, who leaves him for a tradesman named Crevel. The book is part of the Scènes de la vie parisienne section of Balzac's novel sequence La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy").
Cousin Pons
by Honoré De BalzacMild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with his friend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to fine dining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and a dedication to the collection of antiques. When these relatives become aware of the true value of his art collection, however, their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls away as they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man's inheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion to Cousin Bette, the darkly humorous Cousin Pons is among of the last and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urban society: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing consideration of human nature.
The Films of Orson Welles
by Charles HighamThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived</DIV
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
by Henri BergsonIn this great philosophical essay, Henri Bergson explores why people laugh and what laughter means. Written at the turn of the twentieth century, Laughter explores what it is in language that makes a joke funny and what it is in us that makes us laugh. One of the functions of humor, according to Bergson, is to help us retain our humanity during an age of mechanization. Like other philosophers, novelists, poets, and humorists of his era, Bergson was concerned with the duality of man and machine. His belief in life as a vital impulse, indefinable by reason alone, informs his perception of comedy as the relief we experience upon distancing ourselves from the mechanistic and materialistic. "A situation is always comic," Bergson notes, "if it participates simultaneously in two series of events which are absolutely independent of each other, and if it can be interpreted in two quite different meanings. " The philosopher's thought-provoking insights (e. g. , "It seems that laughter needs an echo. Our laughter is always the laughter of a group. ") keep this work ever-relevant as a thesis on the principles of humor.
Nico: Life And Lies Of An Icon
by Richard WittsNico was revered as ‘the most beautiful creature who ever lived’. She was Andy Warhol’s femme fatale and the High Preistess of Weird, yet few knew her real name or her wretched origins. When she called herself ‘a Nazi anarchist junkie’, they thought she was joking.Bob Dylan wrote a song about her, Jim Morrison a poem, Jean Baudrillard an essay, Andy Warhol a film, Ernest Hemingway a story – yet she fought against the idolatry of men to assert her independence as a composer of dissident songs.Nico’s contribution as an artist (17 films and 7 LPs) was smothered by gossip of her alleged affairs with men and women, whether Jimi Hendrix or Jeanne Moreau, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones or Coco Chanel.She drifted through society like a phantom. Each era celebrated a different Nico – the top covergirl of the Fifties, the Siren of the Sixties (as The Times acclaimed her), the Moon Goddess of the Seventies, and the High Priestess of Punk when rock stars like Siouxsie Sioux and Pattie Smith acknowledged her pre-eminence. Ironically, they did so at the lowest point in her life. For behind the Garbo-esque veneer lived a lonely woman trying to stand autonomous in a fast-changing world, seeking to survive her heroin addiction and to cope with her tormented mother and her troubled son, his existence denied by his film-star father.In this pioneer biography, which Nico asked the author to write shortly before her outlandish death in 1988, Richard Witts uncovers the reasons for her subterfuge, and examines the facts surrounding her encounters with terrorist Andreas Baader, the Black Panthers, and the Society for Cutting Up Men. Exclusive contributions from artists such as Jackson Browne, Iggy Pop, Viva, John Cale, David Bailey, Siouxsie Sioux – and many others including her relatives, friends and enemies – make this the definitive biography of an icon who was not only a testament to an era but hitherto unrecognised influence on popular music and style.
The Other Glass Teat: Essays
by Harlan EllisonIn the late 1960s, Harlan Ellison launched a weekly column for the Los Angeles Free Press, where he uncompromisingly discussed the effects of television on modern society. He assaulted everything from television sitcoms to corrupt politicians, talk shows to military massacres. Today, more than four decades later, almost all of his criticism still holds true. Open Road and Edgeworks Abbey, Ellison's company, are proud to make this second volume of fifty-two outspoken columns widely available.
The Partridge Family (The Partridge Family #1)
by Michael AvalloneCan America's top rock group prevail against the evil machinations of a fat but deadly enemy agent- without blowing their cool? If any group can do it, the Partridge family can! They're a high-voltage six-pack of talent and energy--five groovy kids plus one beautiful, mini-skirted Mom--and they've settled down in the Top Ten for., a long, long stay. Even the coolest clan in rock gets put up-tight when a sinister spymaster hunts them down. He's after an international secret they don't even know they're carrying, and he'll stop at nothing. But little does he know what lies ahead when he tangles with that all-American super-singing weapon, THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY
Poetics of Music
by Igor Stravinsky Arthur Knodel Ingolf DahlThese lessons provide penetrating glimpses into the thought processes of Stravinsky's mind. While dealing with his chosen topics-the phenomenon of music, the composition of music, musical typology, the avatars of Russian music, and the performance of music-he reveals his reverence for tradition, order and discipline. He believes 'the more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free. His opinions about Wagner, Verdi, Berlioz, Hindemith, Weber, Beethoven, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky and Bach are refreshing. He also analyzes the function of the critic, the requirements of the interpreter, the state of Russian music, and musical taste and snobbery." - The American Recorder Once again the concertgoer and music lover can take pleasure in Igor Stravinsky's thoughts on the essentials of music. It was over thirty years ago that Stravinsky delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University on which the French-language edition of this book and later the English translation by Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl were based. Now his Poetics of Music is available in paper-with a preface by George Seferis.
Polly of the Circus
by Margaret MayoThis scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Thundermaestro
by Annemarie Riley GuertinRumble, grumble, groan, growl, whoosh, swoosh, creak, squeak, tip tap, pitter-patter, splitter, splatter. The crescendo builds. With baton in hand, a little girl conducts a majestic symphony with the sounds of a summer rainstorm. The whoosh of wind and the toccata of raindrops make a grand concert. With gorgeous mixed-media illustrations that juxtapose the gathering storm outside with the music inside the girl&’s imagination, this celebration of the music of nature will leave readers breathless until the final bow.