Who says old folks are boring? Not Kat. She spends every summer with her grandmother at Old Town Books. Grandma's bookstore, located on the ground floor of her grand Victorian, plays host to the town's gossipy residents. Grandma is always ready with her own brand of wit and freely voices her opinion even if it is not always polite. Between Tuesday Bingo Night and Sunday lunch at Luby's Grandma keeps Kat's summers busy and full of excitment. Grandma falls in love with her bookstore rival, someone dies and a conspiracy brews. Watch as Kat and Grandma discover the truth along with all of Old Town.
The American Story of the Bookstores on Fourth Avenue from the 1890s to the 1960s New York City has eight million stories, and this one unfolds just south of Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, on the seven blocks of Fourth Avenue bracketed by Union Square and Astor Place. There, for nearly eight decades from the 1890s to the 1960s, thrived the New York Booksellers’ Row, or Book Row. This richly anecdotal memoir features historical photographs and the rags-to-riches tale of the Strand, which began its life as a book stall on Eighth Street and today houses 2.5 million volumes (or sixteen miles of books) in twelve miles of space. It’s a story cast with characters as legendary and colorful as the horse-betting, poker-playing, go-getter of a book dealer George D. Smith; the irascible Russian-born book hunter Peter Stammer; the visionary Theodore C. Schulte; Lou Cohen, founder of the still-surviving Argosy Book Store; and gentleman bookseller George Rubinowitz and his formidably shrewd wife, Jenny. Book Row remembers places that all lovers of books should never forget, like Biblo & Tamen, the shop that defied book-banning laws; the Green Book Shop, favored by John Dickson Carr; Ellenor Lowenstein’s world-renowned gastronomical Corner Book Shop (which was not on a corner); and the Abbey Bookshop, the last of the Fourth Avenue bookstores to close its doors. Rising rents, street crime, urban redevelopment, and television are many of the reasons for the demise of Book Row, but in this volume, based on interviews with dozens of the people who bought, sold, collected, and breathed in its rare, bibliodiferous air, it lives again.
In this rich, exciting new book, Gregg Camfield explores nineteenth-century American humor from the perspective of gender and domestic ideology, challenging recent theory asserting a broad gulf between men's and women's humor during the period and contributing vital new insights to the study of humor in general. Capturing in part I a vision of humor unique to the era, Camfield examines the period's faith in what was called "amiable humor," a genial and supple comic mode whose non- aggression makes it resist easy assimilation to theories stressing humor's basis in hostility, negation, rage, and other combative or displaced energies. Seeking to illuminate this distinct comedy, Camfield probes a related, central cultural strand--the domesticity ideal--that so often is a subject of this humor, carefully tracking contact between the two discourses and identifying their common social and intellectual roots. Turning next to four literary case-studies powerfully revealing of this contact, Camfield in part II pairs male and female humorists--Washington Irving and Fanny Fern; Harriet Beecher Stowe and Herman Melville; Mark Twain and Marietta Holley; and George Washington Harris and Mary Wilkins Freeman--not only to demonstrate the way these influential writers approach domesticity with genial humor, but also to support his claim that gender difference does not always correlate to differences in viewpoint and practice within this common style. Where many argue nineteenth- century women's humor constitutes a genre unto itself, Camfield finds that like women, men filtered reaction to the constraints and opportunities of home life through genial comedy, and that women, like their male counterparts, wrote humor marked by extravagance, expansion, caricature, fantasy, and posturing. Broadening out to an intriguing consideration of humor theory in part III, Camfield draws on recent work in psychology, culture studies, neo-pragmatist philosophy, and neuroscience to model a compelling alternative view of humor capable of negotiating both the complexities of nineteenth-century American humor and the comic art of periods before and since. Students and scholars of humor, nineteenth-century American literature and culture, and women's writing, will find Necessary Madness to be a provocative, essential achievement.
The only comprehensive resource for home gardeners and commercial potato growers, The Complete Book of Potatoes has everything a gardener or commercial potato grower needs to successfully grow the best, disease-resistant potatoes for North American gardens. Includes practical as well as technical information about the potato plant, its origin, conventional and organic production techniques, pest management, and storage practices. The plant profiles include still life photographs of the exterior and interior of the tuber, and a succinct description of each varietyÕs physical and culinary qualities.
Perfect for fans of Jenn McKinlay and Kate Carlisle, in Agatha award-winning author Cynthia Kuhn’s series debut, small-town bookseller and literary event planner Emma Starrs is out to close the book on a killer intent on crashing the party. To help save her family’s floundering Colorado bookstore, Starlit Bookshop, newly minted Ph.D. Emma Starrs agrees to plan a mystery-themed dinner party for her wealthy, well-connected high school classmate Tabitha Baxter. It’s a delightful evening of cocktails and conjecture until Tabitha’s husband, Tip—hosting the affair in the guise of Edgar Allan Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin—winds up murdered. In a heartbeat, Emma and her aunt Nora, a famous mystery writer, become suspects. Emma is sure the party’s over for Starlit events, until celebrated author Calliope Nightfall, whose gothic sensibilities are intrigued by the circumstances, implores the bookseller to create a Poe-themed launch event for her latest tome. Throwing a bash to die for while searching for additional clues is already enough to drive Emma stark raven mad, but another shocking crime soon reveals that Silvercrest has not yet reached the final chapter of the puzzling case. Someone in this charming artistic community has murder on the mind, and if Emma cannot outwit the killer, she and her beloved aunt will land behind bars, to walk free nevermore.
This is the standard history of the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Fully two-thirds of this volume is devoted to the period prior to the end of the American Revolution. Mr. Chase describes Haverhill's milestones--the laying out of the town, Indian wars, Haverhill in the Revolution, and so on--against a backdrop of genealogy. Thus, the narrative is interrupted on numerous occasions by genealogical and biographical essays of prominent citizens, lists of voters, militia companies, signatories to this and that, tax lists, householders in 1798, etc. The separate name index at the back of the book totals as many as 7,500 entries.
Written by locals, Fodor's travel guides have been offering expert advice for all tastes and budgets for 80 years. Scotland offers astonishing variety: its iconic lochs and mountains, as well as lively cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, have strong allure. St. Andrews is a pilgrimage for golfers; castles dot the country; and whisky distilleries are gaining popularity. Scotland's customs and products--from tartans to tweeds--are known worldwide, but there's nothing like experiencing them firsthand. This travel guide includes: · Dozens of maps · Hundreds of hotel and restaurant recommendations, with Fodor's Choice designating our top picks · Multiple itineraries to explore the top attractions and what’s off the beaten path · Major sights such as The Calanais Standing Stones, Tobermory, Isle of Skye, Glencoe, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, and Kelvingrove · Coverage of Edinburgh and the Lothians; Glasgow; The Borders and the Southwest; Fife and Angus; The Central Highlands; Aberdeen and the Northeast; Argyll and the Isles; Inverness and Around the Great Glen; The Northern Highlands and the Western Isles; Orkney and Shetland Islands
