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The Comeback
by Lily ChuFor fans of The People We Meet on Vacation and everything K-Pop comes a hilarious and thoughtful story of fame, family, and love."Hilarious and relatable." —Talia Hibbert, USA Today bestselling author for The Stand-InAriadne Hui thrives on routine. So what if everything in her life is planned down to the minute: that's the way she likes it. If she's going to make partner in Toronto's most prestigious law firm, she needs to stay focused at all times.But when she comes home after yet another soul-sucking day to find an unfamiliar, gorgeous man camped out in her living room, focus is the last thing on her mind. Especially when her roommate explains this is Choi Jihoon, her cousin freshly arrived from Seoul to mend a broken heart. He just needs a few weeks to rest and heal; Ari will barely even know he's there. (Yeah, right.)Jihoon is kindness and chaos personified, and it isn't long before she's falling, hard. But when one wrong step leads to a shocking truth, Ari finds herself thrust onto the world stage: not as the competent, steely lawyer she's fought so hard to become, but as the mystery woman on the arm of a man the entire world claims to know. Now with her heart, her future, and her sense of self on the line, Ari will have to cut through all the pretty lies to find the truth of her relationship…and discover the Ariadne Hui she's finally ready to be.WHO IS ARIADNE HUI?Laser-focused lawyer climbing the corporate ladder"Perfect" daughter living her father's dreamShocking love interest of South Korea's hottest star
The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book
by Jerry SeinfeldA celebration of and behind-the-scenes look at Jerry Seinfeld’s groundbreaking streaming series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. <p><p>In his streaming show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld has engaged with some of the funniest people in history in classic cars, coffee shops, and diners. He has reminisced with Larry David; bantered with legends Steve Martin, Tina Fey, and Eddie Murphy; reunited with the cast of Seinfeld; and even paid a visit to President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. These and dozens of other guests talked about the intricacies of stand-up, the evolution of their careers and personal lives, and whatever else popped into their brilliant minds. <p><p>Seinfeld’s carefully crafted episodes have reimagined the talk show format, each one a unique, hilarious, and yet intimate conversation—a rare opportunity for viewers to witness their favorite performers unscripted and unvarnished. But in producing eighty-four episodes over eleven seasons, he has also created arguably the most important historical archive about the art of comedy ever amassed, with episodes featuring Garry Shandling, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, Carl Reiner, and Norm McDonald already serving as permanent shrines for legendary comedians. Timed to the 10th anniversary of the show’s debut and with an introduction from Jerry Seinfeld, this book isn’t just a record of the show but instead an inventive tribute full of behind-the-scenes photos and anecdotes. The book dives into the inspiration and creation of segments, the most unforgettable lines from guests, an index of the cars, and some of the most memorable moments from crew members. Originally conceived as an “anti-talk show,” Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee earned multiple Emmy nominations and helped lead the streaming revolution. <p> <b>New York Times Bestseller</b>
The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book
by Jerry SeinfeldA celebration of and behind-the-scenes look at Jerry Seinfeld&’s groundbreaking streaming series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.Over eleven seasons and eighty-four episodes, Jerry Seinfeld drove around in classic cars, grabbing coffee and chatting with the funniest people alive. He reminisced with the late Garry Shandling; bantered with legends Steve Martin, Tina Fey, and Eddie Murphy; reunited with the cast of Seinfeld; and even paid a visit to President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. These and dozens of other guests talked about the intricacies of stand-up, the evolution of their careers and personal lives, and whatever else popped into their brilliant minds. The result was not only a hilarious collection of casual yet intimate conversations—a rare opportunity for viewers to witness their favorite performers unscripted and unvarnished—but arguably the most important historical archive about the art of comedy ever amassed.Now that archive is preserved in the form of a gorgeously designed and carefully curated book. Seinfeld has hand-picked the show&’s keenest insights and funniest exchanges. Also included is a fascinating oral history featuring interviews with dozens of crew members, executives, guests, and Seinfeld himself that details how this scrappy creative experiment landed unprecedented access to the White House, earned multiple Emmy nominations, and helped lead the streaming revolution.Featuring a newly written introduction by Seinfeld and filled with beautiful never-before-seen production photos, this book is essential reading for comedy lovers, car aficionados, coffee connoisseurs, and Jerry Seinfeld fans.
The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, And The History Of American Comedy
by Kliph NesteroffIn The Comedians, comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff brings to life a century of American comedy with real-life characters, forgotten stars, mainstream heroes and counterculture iconoclasts. Based on over two hundred original interviews and extensive archival research, Nesteroff's groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past one hundred years. <P><P> Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, Nesteroff introduces the first stand-up comedian--an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian's primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy's part in the Civil Rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s,The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century.
The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy
by Kliph NesteroffIn The Comedians, comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff brings to life a century of American comedy with real-life characters, forgotten stars, mainstream heroes and counterculture iconoclasts. Based on over two hundred original interviews and extensive archival research, Nesteroff’s groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past one hundred years.Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, Nesteroff introduces the first stand-up comedian-an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian’s primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy’s part in the Civil Rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s, The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century.
The Comedown: A Novel
by Rafael Frumkin“So good, so fully realized. . . . A book about how easily our lives are wrecked, but also how powerfully we’re able to survive and rebuild.” —Nathan Hill, The New York Times Book ReviewA blistering dark comedy, Rafael Frumkin’s The Comedown is a romp across America, from the Kent State shootings to protest marches in Chicago to the Florida Everglades, that explores delineating lines of race, class, religion, and time.Scrappy, street smart drug dealer Reggie Marshall has never liked the simpering addict Leland Bloom-Mittwoch, which doesn’t stop Leland from looking up to Reggie with puppy-esque devotion. But when a drug deal goes dramatically, tragically wrong and a suitcase (which may or may not contain a quarter of a million dollars) disappears, the two men and their families become hopelessly entangled. It’s a mistake that sets in motion a series of events that are odd, captivating, suspenseful, and ultimately inevitable.Both incendiary and earnest, The Comedown steadfastly catalogs the tangled messes the characters make of their lives, never losing sight of the beauty and power of each family member’s capacity for love, be it for money, drugs, or each other.“A resounding success.” —The L.A. Review of Books“Ambitious, exhilarating . . . so compelling that, even when the novel concludes, the reader is left wondering where their lives took them.” —The Columbus Dispatch“An engrossing read. . . . Frumkin is whip-smart and funny.” —The Millions“Frumkin’s debut may find itself sharing shelf space with Franzen and Chabon.” —Full Stop“Frumkin has talent to burn.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review“Vivid and compassionately drawn characters.” —Library Journal (starred)“Funny, heartbreaking. . . . Frumkin’s intelligence and empathy radiates off every page.” —Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
The Comedy Bible: From Stand-up to Sitcom--the Comedy Writer's Ultimate "How To" Guide
by Judy CarterDo you think you're funny? Do you want to turn your sense of humor into a career? If the answer is yes, then Judy Carter's The Comedy Bible is for you. The guru to aspiring stand-up comics provides the complete scoop on being -- and writing -- funny for money. If you've got a sense of humor, you can learn to make a career out of comedy, says Judy Carter. Whether it's creating a killer stand-up act, writing a spec sitcom, or providing jokes for radio or one-liners for greeting cards, Carter provides step-by-step instructions in The Comedy Bible. She helps readers first determine which genre of comedy writing or performing suits them best and then directs them in developing, refining, and selling their work. Using the hands-on workbook format that was so effective in her bestselling first book, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, Carter offers a series of day-by-day exercises that draw on her many years as a successful stand-up comic and the head of a nationally known comedy school. Also included are practical tips and advice from today's top comedy professionals -- from Bernie Brillstein to Christopher Titus to Richard Lewis. She presents the pros and cons of the various comedy fields -- stand-up, script, speech and joke writing, one-person shows, humor essays -- and shows how to tailor your material for each. She teaches how to find your "authentic" voice -- the true source of comedy. And, perhaps most important, Carter explains how to take a finished product to the next level -- making money -- by pitching it to a buyer and negotiating a contract. Written in Carter's unique, take-no-prisoners voice, The Comedy Bible is practical, inspirational, and funny.
The Comedy Improv Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to University Improvisational Comedy in Theatre and Performance
by Matt Fotis Siobhan O'HaraThe Comedy Improv Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to University Improvisational Comedy in Theatre and Performance is a one-stop resource for both improv teachers and students, covering improv history, theory, maxims, exercises, games, and structures. You will learn the necessary skills and techniques needed to become a successful improviser, developing a basic understanding of the history of improvisation and its major influences, structures, and theories. This book also addresses issues associated with being a college improviser – like auditions, rehearsals, performances, and the dynamics of improv groups.
The Comedy Man: A Novel
by D. J. TaylorAn entertainer looks back on his life in this novel based on the rise and fall of a famous British comedy team From the vantage point of late middle age, Edward "Ted" King--one half of the dynamic duo Upward & King--discovers that nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Ted met Arthur Upward in Britain's National Service. They started out doing gigs at Soho cabarets, and in the mid-sixties, they took their act on the road. By the late seventies, they were the most beloved comedians on British television, watched by ten million viewers per week. This inventive novel, narrated by Ted on the eve of the release of a documentary about their famous partnership, begins with his boyhood in the farm fields of post-war Yarmouth. The son of a shopkeeper with few aspirations, Ted soon realizes he wants to tell jokes for a living. Then, one day in a hall at the sergeants' mess, he sees Arthur perform the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy." He instantly senses the titanic influence the other man will have on his life. Ted plays the straight man to Arthur's pratfalling comic, and they go on to captivate a nation. Until it all goes wrong. Crosscutting between the past and present, The Comedy Man is a poignant, funny "memoir" that reminds us how comedy is often derived from the most serious situations--and from the inexpressible longings of the human heart.
The Comedy Studies Reader
by Nick Marx Matt SienkiewiczFrom classical Hollywood film comedies to sitcoms, recent political satire, and the developing world of online comedy culture, comedy has been a mainstay of the American media landscape for decades. Recognizing that scholars and students need an authoritative collection of comedy studies that gathers both foundational and cutting-edge work, Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz have assembled The Comedy Studies Reader. This anthology brings together classic articles, more recent works, and original essays that consider a variety of themes and approaches for studying comedic media—the carnivalesque, comedy mechanics and absurdity, psychoanalysis, irony, genre, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and nation and globalization. The authors range from iconic theorists, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Sigmund Freud, and Linda Hutcheon, to the leading senior and emerging scholars of today. As a whole, the volume traces two parallel trends in the evolution of the field—first, comedy’s development into myriad subgenres, formats, and discourses, a tendency that has led many popular commentators to characterize the present as a “comedy zeitgeist”; and second, comedy studies’ new focus on the ways in which comedy increasingly circulates in “serious” discursive realms, including politics, economics, race, gender, and cultural power.
The Comedy Writer: A Novel
by Peter FarrellyA Confederacy of Dunces meets The Player in an offbeat, sidesplittingly hilarious novel about making it against all odds in 1990s' Hollywood, by the co-writer/director of Dumb and Dumber. When Henry Halloran's girlfriend dumped him, his Boston-based life suddenly seemed pointless. He was thirty-two with a dead-end job, and nothing on the horizon. There was obviously only one place to go: Hollywood. The Comedy Writer is the story of how Henry--armed with nothing more than a few ideas, a nothing-to-lose attitude, and the desire to be a screenwriter--joins myriad hopefuls in the City of Angels and achieves an L.A. kind of fame. From the surreal squalor of his one-room pad at the Blue Terrace apartments, he encounters nympho starlets, death-obsessed Rollerbladers, philosophical midgets, scruple-free producers, and an unforgettably psychotic roommate named Colleen. Combining the mordant wit and insight of Nathanael West with the lyricism and irony of a postmodern Candide, The Comedy Writer is a bawdy romp around and through the dream factory, in which Henry learns that while talent and integrity may be relative terms, life does, after all, have meaning. Sure to appeal to anyone who has ever dreamed of Hollywood success, who has found him- or herself a full-fledged adult without a clue for the future, or who ever thought Los Angeles might represent the end of modern civilization, The Comedy Writer is an incomparable comic tour de force marked by the kind of telling detail only a true insider can provide.
The Comedy and Legacy of Music-Hall Women 1880-1920: Brazen Impudence and Boisterous Vulgarity (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Sam BealeThis book explores the comedy and legacy of women working as performers on the music-hall stage from 1880–1920, and examines the significance of their previously overlooked contributions to British comic traditions. Focusing on the under-researched female ‘serio-comic’, the study includes six micro-histories detailing the acts of Ada Lundberg, Bessie Bellwood, Maidie Scott, Vesta Victoria, Marie Lloyd and Nellie Wallace. Uniquely for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, these pioneering performers had public voices. The extent to which their comedy challenged Victorian and Edwardian perceptions of women is revealed through explorations of how they connected with popular audiences while also avoiding censorship. Their use of techniques such as comic irony and stereotyping, self-deprecation, and comic innuendo are considered alongside the work of contemporary stand-up comedians and performance artists including Bridget Christie, Bryony Kimmings, Sara Pascoe, Shazia Mirza and Sarah Silverman.
The Comedy of Entropy: Humour/Narrative/Reading (The Royal Society of Canada Special Publications)
by Patrick O'NeillEntropic comedy is the phrase coined by Patrick O'Neill in this study to identify a particular mode of twentieth-century narrative that is not generally recognized. He describes it as the narrative expression of forms of decentred humour, or what might more loosely be called 'black humour.'O'Neill begins his investigation by examining the rise of an essentially new form of humour over the last three hundred years or so in the context of a rapid decay of confidence in traditional authoritative value systems. O'Neill analyses the resulting reorganization of the spectrum of humour, and examines th implications of this for the ways in which we read texts and the world we live in.He then turns from intellectual history to narratology and considers the relationship, in theoretical terms, of homour, play, and narrative as systems of discourse and the role of the reader as a textualizing agent.Finally, he considers some dozen twentieth-century narratives in French, German, and English (with occasional reference to other literatures) in the context of those historical and theoretical concerns. Authors of the texts analysed include Céline, Camus, Satre, and Robbe-Grillet in French; Heller, Beckett, Pynchon, Nabokov, and Joyce in English; Grass, Kafka, and Handke in German. The analyses proceed along lines suggested by structuralist, semiotic, and post-structuraist narrative and literary theory. From his analyses of these works O'Neill concludes they illustrate in narrative terms a mode of modern writing definable as entropic comedy, and he develops a taxonomy of the mode.
The Comedy of Errors
by William ShakespeareIdentical twins separated at birth provides the foundation for humour in one of Shakespeare's earlier plays. The young twin sons of Egeon, alongside another set of young twin boys, purchased as slaves, are lost to one another during a tempest at sea. As each searches for the other, the stage is set for a romp that revolves around mistaken identity, physical mishaps, and the comedy of errors referenced in the title.
The Comedy of Errors (First Avenue Classics ™)
by William ShakespeareThe merchant Egeon is caught crossing the border from Syracuse into the rival city of Ephesus—a crime punishable by death. But Egeon isn't a criminal; he's merely trying to find his wife and one of his twin sons, who were separated from him after a shipwreck twenty-five years ago. The Duke takes pity on Egeon after hearing his story and grants him a day to raise the money necessary to save his life. What Egeon isn't aware of is that both of his twin sons are now in Ephesus, and with two identical sons in one city, strange mix-ups are bound to happen. A tale of mistaken identities, this unabridged version of one of English playwright William Shakespeare's earliest comedic plays was first performed in 1594 and published in Shakespeare's First Folio in 1623.
The Comfort Of Saturdays (Isabel Dalhousie Novels #5)
by Alexander McCall SmithIsabel Dalhousie is a new mother and a connoisseur of philosophy; she'd rather not be a sleuth. But when a chance conversation at a dinner party draws her into the case of a doctor whose career has been ruined, she cannot ignore what may be a miscarriage of justice. Because for Isabel ethics are not theoretical at all, but an everyday matter of life and death. As she attempts to unravel the truth behind Dr Thompson's disgrace, Isabel's patient intelligence is also required to deal with challenges in her own life. There is her baby son Charlie; Cat's deli to look after, not to mention her vulnerable assistant Eddie; and a mysterious and unlikeable composer who has latched on to Jamie, making Isabel fear for the future of her new family. Isabel treads a difficult path between trust and gullibility, philanthropy and interference, while keeping in her sights the small but certain comforts of family, philosophy and a fine Saturday morning.
The Comfort Of Saturdays (Isabel Dalhousie Novels #5)
by Alexander McCall SmithIsabel Dalhousie is a new mother and a connoisseur of philosophy; she'd rather not be a sleuth. But when a chance conversation at a dinner party draws her into the case of a doctor whose career has been ruined, she cannot ignore what may be a miscarriage of justice. Because for Isabel ethics are not theoretical at all, but an everyday matter of life and death. As she attempts to unravel the truth behind Dr Thompson's disgrace, Isabel's patient intelligence is also required to deal with challenges in her own life. There is her baby son Charlie; Cat's deli to look after, not to mention her vulnerable assistant Eddie; and a mysterious and unlikeable composer who has latched on to Jamie, making Isabel fear for the future of her new family. Isabel treads a difficult path between trust and gullibility, philanthropy and interference, while keeping in her sights the small but certain comforts of family, philosophy and a fine Saturday morning.
The Comforters (Virago Modern Classics #350)
by Muriel Spark'The greatest Scottish novelist of modern times.' Ian RankinIn this first novel by Muriel Spark - author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - the only things that aren't ambiguous are Spark's matchless originality and glittering wit.With an introduction by Ali Smith.Caroline Rose is plagued by the tapping of typewriter keys and the strange, detached narration of her every thought and action. She has an unusual problem - she realises she is in a novel. Her fellow characters are also possibly deluded: Laurence, her former lover, finds diamonds in a loaf of bread - could his elderly grandmother really be a smuggler? And Baron Stock, her bookseller friend, believes he is on the trail of England's leading Satanist.'A master of malice and mayhem.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times'Brilliantly original and fascinating.' Evelyn Waugh'A light, clever, mirthful tour de force ... It disrupts and charms its readers with its combination of wit, precision, intelligence and hilarity. As vibrant as ever, more than fifty years after its first appearance.' Ali Smith
The Comforters (Vmc Ser. #698)
by Muriel Spark'The greatest Scottish novelist of modern times.' Ian RankinIn this first novel by Muriel Spark - author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - the only things that aren't ambiguous are Spark's matchless originality and glittering wit.With an introduction by Ali Smith.Caroline Rose is plagued by the tapping of typewriter keys and the strange, detached narration of her every thought and action. She has an unusual problem - she realises she is in a novel. Her fellow characters are also possibly deluded: Laurence, her former lover, finds diamonds in a loaf of bread - could his elderly grandmother really be a smuggler? And Baron Stock, her bookseller friend, believes he is on the trail of England's leading Satanist.'A master of malice and mayhem.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times'Brilliantly original and fascinating.' Evelyn Waugh'A light, clever, mirthful tour de force ... It disrupts and charms its readers with its combination of wit, precision, intelligence and hilarity. As vibrant as ever, more than fifty years after its first appearance.' Ali Smith
The Comic Everywoman in Irish Popular Theatre: Political Melodrama, 1890-1925 (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Susanne CollearyThis book is a comprehensive study of comic women in performance as Irish Political Melodrama from 1890 to 1925. It maps out the performance contexts of the period, such as Irish “poor” theatre both reflecting and complicating narratives of Irish Identity under British Rule. The study investigates the melodramatic aesthetic within these contexts and goes on to analyse a selection of the melodramas by the playwrights J.W. Whitbread and P.J. Bourke. In doing so, the analyses makes plain the comic structures and intent that work across both character and action, foregrounding comic women at the centre of the discussion. Finally, the book applies a “practice as research” dimension to the study. Working through a series of workshops, rehearsals and a final performance, Colleary investigates comic identity and female performance through a feminist revisionist lens. She ultimately argues that the formulation of the Comic Everywoman as staged “Comic” identity can connect beyond the theatre to her “Everyday” self. This book is intended for those interested in theatre histories, comic women and in popular performance.
The Comic Imagination in Modern African Literature and Cinema: A Poetics of Laughter (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Maik NwosuThis book is a seminal study that significantly expands the interdisciplinary discourse on African literature and cinema by exploring Africa’s under-visited carnivalesque poetics of laughter. Focusing on modern African literature as well as contemporary African cinema, particularly the direct-to-video Nigerian film industry known as Nollywood, the book examines the often-neglected aesthetics of the African comic imagination. In modern African literature, which sometimes creatively traces a path back to African folklore, and in Nollywood — with its aesthetic relationship to Onitsha Market Literature — the pertinent styles range from comic simplicitas to comic magnitude with the facilitation of language, characterization, and plot by a poetics of laughter or lightness as an important aspect of style. The poetics at work is substantially carnivalesque, a comic preference or tendency that is attributable, in different contexts, to a purposeful comic sensibility or an unstructured but ingrained or virtual comic mode. In the best instances of this comic vision, the characteristic laughter or lightness can facilitate a revaluation or reappreciation of the world, either because of the aesthetic structure of signification or the consequent chain of signification. This referentiality or progressive signification is an important aspect of the poetics of laughter as the African comic imagination variously reflects, across genres, both the festival character of comedy and its pedagogical value. This book marks an important contribution to African literature, postcolonial literature, world literature, comic imagination, poetics, critical theory, and African cinema.
The Comic Toolbox: How To Be Funny Even If You're Not
by John VorhausA workbook approach to comedy writing as creative problem-solving. It offers tools of the trade such as Clash of Context, Tension and Release, The Law of Comic Opposites, The Wildly Inappropriate Response, and The Myth of the Last Great Idea to writers, comics, and anyone else who wants to be funny.
The Coming of Bill
by P. G. WodehouseThis book tells the story of Kirk Winfield, his marriage to Ruth, and their child called Bill. Bill's upbringing is threatened by the interference of Ruth's busybody writer aunt, Mrs Lora Delane Porter.
The Company: A Novel of the CIA
by Robert LittellThis realistic New York Times–bestselling epic spy novel captures the thrilling story of CIA agents in the latter half of the Twentieth Century.The New York Times bestselling spy novel The Company lays bare the history and inner workings of the CIA. This critically acclaimed blockbuster from internationally renowned novelist Robert Littell seamlessly weaves together history and fiction to create a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga of the CIA—known as “the Company” to insiders. Racing across a landscape spanning the legendary Berlin Base of the ’50s, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, Afghanistan, and the Gorbachev putsch, The Company tells the thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an amoral, elusive, formidable enemy—and each other—in an internecine battle within the Company itself. “Compulsive reading from start to finish.” —The Boston Globe“Hugely entertaining . . . A serious look at how our nation exercises power. . . . Popular fiction at its finest.” —The Washington Post Book World“As it happens, this longest spy novel ever written turns out to be one of the best.” —Chicago Tribune“Reads like a breeze . . . guaranteed to suck you right back into the Alice-in-Wonderland world of spy vs. spy.” —Newsweek“If Robert Littell didn’t invent the American spy novel, he should have.” —Tom Clancy“It's gung-ho, hard-drinking, table-turning fun.” —Publishers Weekly
The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything: All the Facts You Didn't Know You Wanted to Know
by Jonn ElledgeThe Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything is a treasure trove of random knowledge. Covering everything from the furthest known galaxies to the murky origins of oyster ice cream, inside you will find a discussion of how one might determine the most average-sized country in the world; details of humanity's most ridiculous wars; and, at last, the answer to who would win in a fight between Harry Potter and Spider-Man.Bizarre, brilliant and filled with the unexpected, The Compendium covers the breadth and depth of human experience, weaving its way through words and numbers, science and the arts, the spiritual and the secular. It's a feast of facts for a hungry mind.Includes entries on the cosmos, the human planet, questions of measurement, history/politics, the natural world, leisure and many 'oddities' that don't fit elsewhere...