Buddhist Catnaps and Broken-Down Hymns
Buddhist Catnaps and Broken-Down Hymns

Author: Tommy Housworth

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1491709472

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The men and women who inhabit Tommy Housworths stories are all chasing down redemption. As in life, some of them find it while others tumble into karmic detours that lead to harrowing - and at times, darkly humorous - results. An art critic becomes obsessed with an exhibit by a provocative performance artist. A man takes in the widow of a migrant worker after her husband is gunned down at the Texas border. A photographer faces a personal crossroads after being the sole witness to a suicide jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. At once idyllic and satiric, Buddhist Catnaps & Broken-Down Hymns captures the miracles and malaise of life in 21st century America. Soulful, honest, hilarious writing. Sean Daniels, Geva Theatre NYC Piercing and unforgettable...with grit, grace, humor, and wisdom, these stories reveal us to ourselves again and again. Stacey Brown, poet, Cradle Song These stories take you on a rush of a ride. Buckle up, put your bare feet on the dash and get ready to fly. Janece Shaffer, playwright, The Geller Girls

Please Open in the Event of My Death
Please Open in the Event of My Death

Author: Mark Hsu

Publisher: Amplify

Published: 2020-06-02

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9781645432975

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Imagine your plane is going down. Prayer is useless. Fiery death awaits. Now imagine your children. The hours spent feeding, giggling, teaching, changing diapers, soothing tantrums, gazing into eyes...all will fade from their memories until you're just a name. What are the stories-from "unabashedly sentimental" to "exceedingly age inappropriate"-you would want to preserve? What advice would you give them, the hard-earned wisdom to prepare them for life's challenges? Well, Mark Hsu was never in a plane crash, but his crippling fear of being in one led to Please Open in the Event of My Death. A litigation partner in New York City, Mark remembers hearing the refrain that having kids meant "your life is over"?and how he welcomed it. He recalls the night he first met his Italian wife and decided that the Japanese-Chinese guy needed to go for broke and show off his Roman-accented Italian. He describes his lonely, peripatetic youth in Japan, Italy, and all over the East Coast as the only child of a deep-cover CIA spy. Drawing inspiration from a range of sources, including the Japanese concept of omoiyari, Charles Barkley, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Prince, and a Nike print ad, Mark offers astute advice-not saccharine or blindingly idealistic-for modern times. Succeeding at work, navigating social waters, overcoming fear, surviving heartbreak, raising kids-this and other life advice, applicable to anyone, is in Please Open In the Event of My Death, just in case something horrible happens?which hopefully it won't.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Author: John Berendt

Publisher: Random House

Published: 1994-01-13

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0679429220

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city—now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author “Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.”—The New York Times Book Review Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. In this sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative, John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young people dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.

A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces

Author: John Kennedy Toole

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0802197620

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.”—The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

Welcome to Storyville
Welcome to Storyville

Author: Tommy Housworth

Publisher:

Published: 2005-10-01

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 9781599266831

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Welcome to Storyville, where a funeral gives way to rebirth, a high school reunion offers a shot at overdue revenge, and a third grade show-and-tell presentation changes the course of a boy's life. Storyville, where Zen wisdom can be found at a Red Sox game, in a waitress' small talk, or the liftoff of a boy's kite. Storyville, where every direction you take leads you to the Crossroads. Welcome To Storyville features 19 tales that go far beyond Tommy Housworth's humorous essays in his previous work (Smirking Into the Abyss). "Deep Six Holiday" portrays a man who gets a new lease on life after taking a stand at his friend's funeral. "All This Useless Beauty" harkens Raymond Carver in its sparse prose and lonely protagonists, reaching out for someone who can help them feel again. "Opening Day" follows a father and son to a baseball game on the day the father is separating from the boy's mom. "Meat is Murder" shows what can happen when a vegan and a right wing talk show host fall in love despite their best intentions. "Cutthroat Island" follows an out-of-work actor to the archipelago of the Seychelles as he tries his hand at playing a huckster on a reality program and gets more than he bargained for. "Charles Mingus Hates My Lily-White Ass" is an imagined experience between the ghost of the legendary jazz bassist and a music enthusiast that ends in violence and enlightenment. "One Horse, No Rider" follows two brothers a drunkard and a preacher - down divergent paths in the Old West. "The Ghosts of Birdland" is an allegorical jazz tale of healing in the wake of the September 11th tragedies, set on Christmas Eve, 2001 in New York City. "Sticks and Stones" is a dark and funny tale about a former geek returning to his high school reunion with a chip on his shoulder and revenge in his heart. "Me and The Devil Blues" is a fable that follows Charley Patton, a fictitious bluesman, who tried to emulate the deadly deal Robert Johnson made with the devil at the Crossroads in Mississippi. "The Mutineer" pays tribute to the late, great Hunter S. Thompson, recreating his life as if lived on the high seas, where pirates lurk over the horizon and the greatest treasure is truth. "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut" is the bittersweet tale of a third grader who gets busted for brining Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" to school for show and tell. "Beautiful Despair" is a study of what attracts two people who find beauty is such different corners. Welcome to Storyville also features flash fiction inspired by songs by U2, Emmylou Harris, Lou Reed, and Tom Waits.

The Invisible Painting
The Invisible Painting

Author: Gabriel Weisz Carrington

Publisher:

Published: 2023-05-23

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781526169648

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In this memoir, Gabriel Weisz Carrington, son of the renowned Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, draws on remembered conversations and events to demythologise his mother and declare her not an icon or a goddess but, first and foremost, an artist.

Voices of Time
Voices of Time

Author: Eduardo Galeano

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1429900350

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A striking mosaic of memories, observations, and legends that together reveal the author's own story and a grand, compassionate vision of life itself In this kaleidoscope of reflections, renowned South American author Eduardo Galeano ranges widely, from childhood to love, music, plants, fear, indignity, and indignation. In the signal style of his bestselling and much-admired Memory of Fire trilogy—brief fragments that build steadily into an organic whole—Galeano offers a rich, wry history of his life and times that is both calmly philosophical and fiercely political. Beginning with blue algae, the earliest of life forms, these 333 vignettes alight on the Galeano family's immigration to Uruguay in the early twentieth century, the fate of love letters intercepted by a military dictatorship, abuses by the rich and powerful, the latest military outrages, and the author's own encounters with all manner of living matter, including generals, bums, dissidents, soccer stars, ducks, and trees. Out of these meditations emerges neither anger nor bitterness, but a celebration of a blessed life in a harsh world. Poetic and passionate, scathing and lyrical, delivered with Galeano's inimitable mix of gentle comedy and fierce moral judgment, Voices of Time is a deeply personal statement from a great and beloved writer.

Psycho-Cybernetics (Updated and Expanded)
Psycho-Cybernetics (Updated and Expanded)

Author: Maxwell Maltz

Publisher: Souvenir Press

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1800812930

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The landmark self-help bestseller that has inspired and enhanced the lives of more than 30 million readers. In this updated edition, with a new introduction and editorial commentary by Matt Furey, president of the Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation, the original 1960 text has been annotated and amplified to make Maxwell Maltz's message even more relevant for the contemporary reader. Maltz was the first researcher and author to explain how the self-image (a term he popularized) has complete control over an individual's ability to achieve, or fail to achieve, any goal. He developed techniques for improving and managing self-image visualization, mental rehearsal and relaxation which have informed and inspired countless motivational gurus, sports psychologists, and self-help practitioners for more than sixty years. Rooted in solid science, the classic teachings in Psycho-Cybernetics continue to provide a prescription for thinking and acting that lead to life-enhancing, quantifiable results.