Dogfight, A Love Story
Dogfight, A Love Story

Author: Matt Burgess

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2011-09-06

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 030747643X

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What Jonathan Lethem did for Brooklyn, Matt Burgess does for Queens in this exuberant and brilliant debut novel about a young drug dealer having a very bad weekend. Alfredo Batista has some worries. Okay, a lot of worries. His older brother, Jose—sorry, Tariq—is returning from a stretch in prison after an unsuccessful robbery, a burglary that Alfredo was supposed to be part of. So now everyone thinks Alfredo snitched on his brother, which may have something to do with the fact that Alfredo is now dating Tariq’s ex-girlfriend, Isabel, who is eight months pregnant. Tariq’s violent streak is probably #1 worry on Alfredo’s list. Also, he needs to steal a pit bull. For the homecoming dogfight. Burgess brings to life the rich and vivid milieu of his hometown native Queens in all its glorious variety. Here is the real New York, a place where Pakistanis, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, An ­glos, African Americans, and West Indians scrap and mingle and love. But the real star here is Burgess’s incredible ear for language—the voices of his characters leap off the page in riotous, spot-on dialogue. The outer boroughs have their own language, where a polite greeting is fraught with menace, and an insult can be the expression of the most tender love. With a story as intricately plotted as a Shakespearean comedy—or revenge tragedy, for that matter—and an electrically colloquial prose style, Dogfight, a Love Story establishes Matt Burgess as an exuberant new voice in contemporary literature. The great Queens novel has arrived.

Dogfight, A Love Story
Dogfight, A Love Story

Author: Matt Burgess

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2010-09-21

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0385532997

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What Jonathan Lethem did for Brooklyn, Matt Burgess does for Queens in this exuberant and brilliant debut novel about a young drug dealer having a very bad weekend. Alfredo Batista has some worries. Okay, a lot of worries. His older brother, Jose—sorry, Tariq—is returning from a stretch in prison after an unsuccessful robbery, a burglary that Alfredo was supposed to be part of. So now everyone thinks Alfredo snitched on his brother, which may have something to do with the fact that Alfredo is now dating Tariq’s ex-girlfriend, Isabel, who is eight months pregnant. Tariq’s violent streak is probably #1 worry on Alfredo’s list. Also, he needs to steal a pit bull. For the homecoming dogfight. Burgess brings to life the rich and vivid milieu of his hometown native Queens in all its glorious variety. Here is the real New York, a place where Pakistanis, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, An ­glos, African Americans, and West Indians scrap and mingle and love. But the real star here is Burgess’s incredible ear for language—the voices of his characters leap off the page in riotous, spot-on dialogue. The outer boroughs have their own language, where a polite greeting is fraught with menace, and an insult can be the expression of the most tender love. With a story as intricately plotted as a Shakespearean comedy—or revenge tragedy, for that matter—and an electrically colloquial prose style, Dogfight, a Love Story establishes Matt Burgess as an exuberant new voice in contemporary literature. The great Queens novel has arrived.

Dogfight
Dogfight

Author: Michael Knight

Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1555848281

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A Los Angeles Times Notable Book: Short fiction by the author of Eveningland, “a writer of the first rank” (Esquire). “These 10 distinctive and intensely affecting stories confirm Knight as a writer of significant gifts. In short narratives that invariably entice the reader with an arresting opening sentence, he establishes a solid sense of place, using the local color of his native Alabama, and transforms ordinary people into nearly mythic figures. The first story, ‘Now You See Her,’ sets the stage, constructing a conflict of nearly Oedipal proportions. A veterinarian widower and his teenage son, Xavier, who calls himself X, spy on Grace, their next-door neighbor, who ‘it would appear . . . renounced clothing altogether’; the surprising climax occurs when her dog suddenly takes ill. In many of Knight’s offerings, animals act as agents of change: in the title story, a dogfight is the catalyst for an adulterous affair and results in a parallel clash between the dogs’ owners. ‘Gerald’s Monkey’ uses a man’s desire for a pet monkey to examine the emotional aftermath of Vietnam. Knight demonstrates agility with a diversity of viewpoints: he is equally at ease with first-person narration or third, an adult perspective or an adolescent’s, as in a stunner called ‘A Bad Man, So Pretty’ (taken from a Muhammad Ali quote) that works up to a Cain and Abel-style confrontation. Knight’s characters are both recognizable and transcendent, suddenly drawn into trespassing the ordinary limits of their lives to enter the realm of allegory.” —Publishers Weekly

Dogfight
Dogfight

Author: Calvin Trillin

Publisher: Random House Incorporated

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0812993683

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Presents a humorous ode to the 2012 presidential election that likens the campaign to a three-ring circus and includes riffs on figures ranging from Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich to Rick Perry and Rick Santorum.

Uncle Janice
Uncle Janice

Author: Matt Burgess

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2015-11-24

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0345803442

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Twenty-four-year-old Janice Itwaru is an “uncle”—NYPD lingo for an undercover narcotics officer—and the heroine of the most exuberantand original cop novel in years. A New York City cop who can last eighteen months in Narcotics, without getting killed or demoted first, will automatically get promoted to detective. Undercover narc Janice Itwaru is at month seventeen. Ambitious, desperate for that promotion, she hits the sidewalks of Queens in her secondhand hoochie clothes, hoping to convince potential criminals—drug dealers, addicts, dummies, whomever—to commit a felony on her behalf. And things aren’t any easier back at the narco office, where she has to keep up with the bantering lies and inventively cruel pranks of her fellow uncles while coping with the ridiculous demands of her NYPD bosses. With an ailing mother at home, her cover nearly blown, quota pressures from her superiors, and rumors circulating that Internal Affairs has her unit under surveillance, Janice is running terribly short on luck as her promotion deadline approaches. Now she has to decide which evil to confront: the absurd bureaucrats at One Police Plaza, or the violent drug dealers who may already be on to her identity. Bursting with the glorious chaos of the New York City streets, Uncle Janice is both a deeply funny portrait of how undercover cops really talk and act, and a compelling story of their crazy, dangerous, and complicated lives.

Help Your Dog Fight Cancer
Help Your Dog Fight Cancer

Author: Laurie Kaplan

Publisher: JanGen Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 0975479474

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50% of our dogs will have cancer in their lifetimes. This book is a crash course for caretakers, by medical animal writer Laurie Kaplan. Composed during her Siberian Husky Bullet's triumphant battle against lymphoma, written to educate all caretakers and to help those who have dogs with cancer.

The Lost Dogs
The Lost Dogs

Author: Jim Gorant

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011-09-06

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1101543809

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An inspiring story of survival and our powerful bond with man's best friend, in the aftermath of the nation's most notorious case of animal cruelty. Animal lovers and sports fans were shocked when the story broke about NFL player Michael Vick's brutal dog fighting operation. But what became of the dozens of dogs who survived? As acclaimed writer Jim Gorant discovered, their story is the truly newsworthy aspect of this case. Expanding on Gorant's Sports Illustrated cover story, The Lost Dogs traces the effort to bring Vick to justice and turns the spotlight on these infamous pit bulls, which were saved from euthanasia by an outpouring of public appeals coupled with a court order that Vick pay nearly a million dollars in "restitution" to the dogs. As an ASPCA-led team evaluated each one, they found a few hardened fighters, but many more lovable, friendly creatures desperate for compassion. In The Lost Dogs, we meet these amazing animals, a number of which are now living in loving homes, while some even work in therapy programs: Johnny Justice participates in Paws for Tales, which lets kids get comfortable with reading aloud by reading to dogs; Leo spends three hours a week with cancer patients and troubled teens. At the heart of the stories are the rescue workers who transformed the pups from victims of animal cruelty into healing caregivers themselves, unleashing priceless hope. Includes an 8-page photo insert. Watch a video

If You're in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!
If You're in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!

Author: Leonard Sherman

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-01-10

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0231542828

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Businesses often find themselves trapped in a competitive dogfight, scratching and clawing for market share with products consumers view as largely undifferentiated. Conventional wisdom suggests that dogfights are to be expected as marketplaces mature, giving rise to the notion that there are "bad" industries where it is unlikely that any company can succeed. But there are notable exceptions in which enlightened executives have changed the rules to grasp the holy grail of business: long-term profitable growth. Rather than joining the dogfights raging within their industry, companies such as Apple, FedEx, and Starbucks have chosen to become metaphorical cats, continuously renewing their distinctive strategies to compete on their own terms. In If You're in a Dogfight, Become a Cat, Leonard Sherman draws on four decades of experience in management consulting, venture capital, and teaching business strategy at Columbia Business School to share practical advice on two of the most vexing issues facing business executives: why is it so hard to achieve long-term profitable growth, and what can companies do to break away from the pack? Sherman takes the reader on a provocative journey through the building blocks of business strategy by challenging conventional wisdom on a number of questions that will redefine management best practices: What should be the overarching purpose of your business? Do you really know what your strategy is? Is there such a thing as a bad industry? Where do great ideas come from and how do I find them? What makes products meaningfully different? What makes and breaks great brands? How and when should I disrupt my own company? What are the imperatives to achieving long-term profitable growth? Filled with dozens of illustrative examples of inspiring successes and dispiriting falls from grace, this book provides deep insights on how to become the cat in a dogfight, whether you are a CEO, mid-level manager, aspiring business school student, or curious observer interested in achieving sustained profitable growth.

Wirewalker
Wirewalker

Author: Mary Hall

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-09-06

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0698139534

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Sometimes heroes can be found in the most unlikely places. Fourteen-year-old Clarence Feather knows no world beyond desolate Mayfair Heights. Three years ago, his mother was killed before his eyes by a stray bullet. When his father becomes unable to keep the family afloat, Clarence is manipulated into running drugs. But he longs to be a good person, in spite of the seemingly impossible odds. Wandering through his neighborhood, Clarence meets Mona, a huge albino Great Dane. The two develop a deep bond. When he is forced to attend a dog fight as a rite of passage, Clarence realizes that Mona isn’t safe, and neither is he. Can he find a way to protect Mona? Can he survive life in Mayfair Heights and still become the person his mother wanted him to be? A novel about self-reliance, difficult choices, and imagination in the face of danger and isolation, Wirewalker is a masterfully written debut that blends gritty realism with moments of fantastical escape.