The Late Wedding
The Late Wedding

Author: Christopher Albert Chen

Publisher: Samuel French, Incorporated

Published: 2021-06-21

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 9780573709326

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Inspired by the writings of Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler), The Late Wedding is a fractured portrait of a fractured marriage, as told through a series of interconnected fables, including an anthropological tour of fantastical tribes and their marital customs. Christopher Chen's winking second-person narrative, delivered by a six-person shape-shifting cast, deftly guides you on a wild and delightful examination of love and longing. At once an anthropological tour through marriage customs, a spy thriller, and a sci-fi love story, the mind-bending The Late Wedding is an inventive and surprising theatrical experience. "Wild, witty... contemplative and poignant... you gotta see this funny, brilliant play." - San Francisco Examiner "A seductive play... a fascinating little gem... a script about the mystery and challenges of love, in all its permutations. The play is a provocative one-act composed with a unique theatrical structure... a swirling nebula of magical notions put down in a contemporary world." - DC Metro Theatre Arts "A comic, dramatic inquiry into human relationships - between lovers or spouses; between playwright and audience - [The Late Wedding] is another of Chen's slyly metatheatrical, blissfully funny, whiplash-smart creations... What begins as a look at anthropological research into the marital arrangements and lore of a few odd tribes segues without warning into a political drama cum action thriller." - SF Gate "Bold and brainy... As The Late Wedding dips in and out of such genres as the spy caper and science fiction... it blurs the boundaries between its two strands of Calvino homage, so that the genre-sampling meta-theater begins to reflect on the bittersweet realities of marriage." - The Washington Post "[The Late Wedding] is about the vagaries of love and marriage, both homo- and heterosexual, and the way that we both cherish and distort the past, and about the creative process itself... you gotta see this funny, brilliant play." - San Francisco Examiner

Late for the Wedding
Late for the Wedding

Author: Amanda Quick

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2003-04-29

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 055389756X

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New York Times bestselling author Amanda Quick returns with a thrilling new venture into romance and mystery, featuring the most unusual, highly compatible--undeniably combustible--pairing of Tobias March and his mesmerizing partner, Lavinia Lake. An invitation to a country house party at Beaumont Castle provides a perfect solution to Tobias and Lavinia’s most exasperating challenge: how to escape the chaos of London for a remote, relaxing--and above all romantic--retreat from prying eyes and wagging tongues. But the lovers’ plans are foiled when their first cozy interlude of the weekend is disrupted by the appearance of a stunning woman from Tobias’s past. Aspasia Gray’s beauty is as haunting as her connection to Tobias. Her long-deceased fiancé was a friend of his--in addition to being an eccentric assassin. The mysterious nature of the bond between Tobias and Aspasia makes Lavinia more than a little uncomfortable. Especially as her first encounter with Aspasia occurs when she finds her in Tobias’s bedchamber... It seems Aspasia is seeking protection--and solace--after receiving an ominous message that eerily recalls the past. Suddenly the obstacles standing betweenTobias and Lavinia appear greater than just a little London gossip--and far more deadly.When events at the castle suggest someone is imitating the dead killer’s methods, the team of Lake and March fervently pursue the investigation--and each other--as their leads take them from Society’s most elegant haunts--and most discreet hideaways--to London’s shadiest backstreets. As their relationship heats up, so does the intrigue. Soon Lavinia will have to employ all her talents to flummox the scoundrel who so rudely interrupted her rendezvous. And then she and Tobias can get back to more pleasurable affairs.

Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

Author: Ada Calhoun

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-05-16

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 0393254801

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Seven essays celebrating the beauty of the imperfect marriage. We hear plenty about whether or not to get married, but much less about what it takes to stay married. Clichés around marriage—eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates—leave out the real stuff. After marriage you may still want to sleep with other people. Sometimes your partner will bore the hell out of you. And when stuck paying for your spouse’s mistakes, you might miss being single. In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which “the first twenty years are the hardest.” Calhoun’s funny, poignant personal essays explore the bedrooms of modern coupledom for a nuanced discussion of infidelity, existential anxiety, and the many other obstacles to staying together. Both realistic and openhearted, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give offers a refreshing new way to think about marriage as a brave, tough, creative decision to stay with another person for the rest of your life. “What a burden,” Calhoun calls marriage, “and what a gift.”

The Wedding Guest
The Wedding Guest

Author: Jonathan Kellerman

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0525618503

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Psychologist Alex Delaware and detective Milo Sturgis unravel a shocking crime at a raucous wedding reception in this gripping psychological thriller from the bestselling master of suspense. “Jonathan Kellerman’s psychology skills and dark imagination are a potent literary mix.”—Los Angeles Times LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a fine homicide detective, but when he needs to get into the mind of a killer, he leans on the expertise of his best friend, the brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware. While Sturgis has a knack for piecing together the details of a crime, Delaware can decipher the darkest intents driving the most vicious of perpetrators. And there’s no better place for the doctor’s analytical skills to shine than a rowdy hall full of young men and women intoxicated on life and lust . . . and suddenly faced with the specter of death. Summoned to a run-down former strip joint, Delaware and Sturgis find themselves crashing a wild Saints and Sinners–themed wedding reception. But they’re not the only uninvited guests. A horrified bridesmaid has discovered the body of a young woman, dressed to impress in pricey haute couture and accessorized with a grisly red slash around her neck. What’s missing is any means of identification, or a single partygoer who recognizes the victim. The baffled bride is convinced the stranger snuck in to sabotage her big day—and the groom is sure it’s all a dreadful mistake. But Delaware and Sturgis have a hundred guests to question, and a sneaking suspicion that the motive for murder is personal. Now they must separate the sinners from the saints, the true from the false, and the secrets from those keeping them. The party’s over—and the hunt for whoever killed it is on. “As usual, [Delaware and Sturgis] form a formidable team. Also as usual, the characters here are varied and described with gritty clarity, and the puzzle facing the duo involves a delightful mix of L.A. culture, this time from its dive bars to its much more serious side.”—Booklist

Becoming Mrs. Lewis
Becoming Mrs. Lewis

Author: Patti Callahan

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2018-10-02

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 0785218084

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Now a USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestseller! Meet the brilliant writer, fiercely independent mother, and passionate woman who captured the heart of C.S. Lewis and inspired the books that still enchant and change us today. When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis—known as Jack—she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn’t holding together her crumbling marriage. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford professor and the beloved writer of The Chronicles of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters. Embarking on the adventure of her life, Joy traveled from America to England and back again, facing heartbreak and poverty, discovering friendship and faith, and against all odds, found a love that even the threat of death couldn’t destroy. In this masterful exploration of one of the greatest love stories of modern times, we meet a brilliant writer, a fiercely independent mother, and a passionate woman who changed the life of this respected author and inspired books that still enchant us and change us. Joy lived at a time when women weren’t meant to have a voice—and yet her love for Jack gave them both voices they didn’t know they had. At once a fascinating historical novel and a glimpse into a writer’s life, Becoming Mrs. Lewis is above all a love story—a love of literature and ideas and a love between a husband and wife that, in the end, was not impossible at all. Praise for Becoming Mrs. Lewis: “Becoming Mrs. Lewis deftly explores the life and work of Joy Davidman, a bold and brilliant woman who is long overdue her time in the spotlight. Carefully researched. Beautifully written. Deeply romantic. Fiercely intelligent. It is both a meditation on marriage and a whopping grand adventure. Touching, tender, and triumphant, this is a love story for the ages.” —Ariel Lawhon, New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia “Patti Callahan Henry breathes wondrous fresh life into one of the greatest literary love stories of all time . . . The result is a deeply moving story about love and loss that is transformative and magical.” —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan’s Tale “It's novel. And it's a very good one. . . extraordinarily accurate. . . more accurate than most biographical essays that have been written about my mother.” —Douglas Gresham, son of Joy Davidman, wife of C.S. Lewis This expanded edition includes: Map of Oxford Expanded discussion guide with 20+ questions for book clubs Timeline of Jack's and Joy's Lives Joy's (imagined) letter to Jack 10 Things You May Not Know About Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis's Love Story Behind-the-scenes essay: Oxford—The City

On the Way to the Wedding
On the Way to the Wedding

Author: Julia Quinn

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2017-04-25

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 0062424165

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A New York Times Bestseller From #1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn comes the story of Gregory Bridgerton, in the final installment of her beloved Regency-set novels featuring the charming, powerful Bridgerton family, now a series created by Shondaland for Netflix. GREGORY’S STORY Unlike most men of his acquaintance, Gregory Bridgerton believes in true love. And he is convinced that when he finds the woman of his dreams, he will know in an instant that she is the one. And that is exactly what happened. Except ... She wasn’t the one. In fact, the ravishing Miss Hermione Watson is in love with another. But her best friend, the ever-practical Lady Lucinda Abernathy, wants to save Hermione from a disastrous alliance, so she offers to help Gregory win her over. But in the process, Lucy falls in love. With Gregory! Except ... Lucy is engaged. And her uncle is not inclined to let her back out of the betrothal, even once Gregory comes to his senses and realizes that it is Lucy, with her sharp wit and sunny smile, who makes his heart sing. And now, on the way to the wedding, Gregory must risk everything to ensure that when it comes time to kiss the bride, he is the only man standing at the altar …

The Member of the Wedding
The Member of the Wedding

Author: Carson McCullers

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Published: 2019-12-10

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 0735254125

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A novel that became an award-winning play and a major film, and that has charmed generations of readers, The Member of the Wedding is a story of the inimitable twelve-year-old Frankie, who is utterly bored with her life until she hears about her older brother’s wedding. Bolstered by lively conversations with her house servant, Berenice, and her six-year-old cousin—and her own unbridled imagination—Frankie takes on an overly active role in the wedding, even hoping to go (uninvited) on the honeymoon. This story is a marvelous study of the agony of adolescence and of wanting to be part of something larger and more accepting than yourself. The Member of the Wedding showcases Carson McCullers at her most sensitive, astute, and lasting best. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.

The Marriage Plot
The Marriage Plot

Author: Jeffrey Eugenides

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2011-10-11

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1429969180

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A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 A Publisher's Weekly Top 10 Book of 2011 A Kirkus Reviews Top 25 Best Fiction of 2011 Title One of Library Journal's Best Books of 2011 A Salon Best Fiction of 2011 title One of The Telegraph's Best Fiction Books of the Year 2011 It's the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead—charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy—suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus—who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange—resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology Laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love. Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

Happiness for Beginners
Happiness for Beginners

Author: Katherine Center

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1466847697

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As seen on Netflix - from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bodyguard and Hello Stranger Helen Carpenter can’t quite seem to bounce back. Newly divorced at thirty-two, her life has fallen apart beyond her ability to put it together again. So when her annoying younger brother, Duncan, convinces her to sign up for a hardcore wilderness survival course in the backwoods of Wyoming—she hopes it’ll be exactly what she needs. Instead, it’s a disaster. It’s nothing like she wants, or expects, or anticipates. She doesn’t anticipate the surprise summer blizzard, for example—or the blisters, or the rutting elk, or the mean pack of sorority girls. And she especiallydoesn’t anticipate that her annoying brother’s even-more-annoying best friend, Jake, will show up for the exact same course—and distract her, derail her, and . . . kiss her. But it turns out sometimes disaster can teach you exactly the things you need to learn. Like how to keep going, even when you think you can’t. How being scared can make you brave. And how sometimes getting really, really lost is your only hope of getting found. Happiness for Beginners is Katherine Center at her most heart-warming, captivating best—a nourishing, page-turning, up-all-night read about how to get back up. It’s a story that looks at how our struggles lead us to our strengths. How love is always worth it. And how the more good things we look for, the more we find.

What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage
What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage

Author: Amy Sutherland

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2008-02-12

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1588366901

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While observing exotic animal trainers for her acclaimed book Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched, journalist Amy Sutherland had an epiphany: What if she used these training techniques with the human animals in her own life–namely her dear husband, Scott? In this lively and perceptive book, Sutherland tells how she took the trainers’ lessons home. The next time her forgetful husband stomped through the house in search of his mislaid car keys, she asked herself, “What would a dolphin trainer do?” The answer was: nothing. Trainers reward the behavior they want and, just as important, ignore the behavior they don’t. Rather than appease her mate’s rising temper by joining in the search, or fuel his temper by nagging him to keep better track of his things in the first place, Sutherland kept her mouth shut and her eyes on the dishes she was washing. In short order, Scott found his keys and regained his cool. “I felt like I should throw him a mackerel,” she writes. In time, as she put more training principles into action, she noticed that she became more optimistic and less judgmental, and their twelve-year marriage was better than ever. What started as a goofy experiment had such good results that Sutherland began using the training techniques with all the people in her life, including her mother, her friends, her students, even the clerk at the post office. In the end, the biggest lesson she learned is that the only animal you can truly change is yourself. Full of fun facts, fascinating insights, hilarious anecdotes, and practical tips, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage describes Sutherland’s Alice-in-Wonderland experience of stumbling into a world where cheetahs walk nicely on leashes and elephants paint with watercolors, and of leaving a new, improved Homo sapiens.