Peter Leroy, working on the principle of the panopticon, constructs a plausible life for Ariane Lodkochnikov, the sultry older sister of his imaginary childhood friend, maker of her own self and her own myth. • “Poignant. Dizzying. Wise. Mr. Kraft has created a heroine as complex as his narrative. [He] is a master at illuminating the shoals and shallows of a young person's heart. [His] work is a weird wonder, successfully mating tales from the kind of small-town life that hardly exists anymore with a never-ending examination of what it's like to create such a world.” — Karen Karbo, The New York Times Book Review • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • Length: novel, about 100,000 words
Dramatist Yvette Heyliger delivers power-packed full-length plays for leading women, each prefaced by an artistic statement. Her instincts for comic relief are genius." Backstage West "Heyliger has a solid flair for dialogue and a good ear for comedy." Park LaBrea News Bridge to Baraka (Excerpt) Yvette X appeared in a dashiki and huge Afro to bring the 60s Black Arts Movement to the present womens struggle in her side-splitting and astute Bridge to Baraka. The Dramatist White House Wives: Operation Lysistrata! Playwright Yvette Heyliger, herself African American and female (a combination not seen enough in American theatre, particularly when commenting on the nations political landscape) takes advantage of her position and writes dialogue that brings her unique perspective to light. Theatre is Easy Hillary and Monica: The Winter of Her Discontent It's more absurd than any Saturday Night Live sketch on the same subject, but it has more to say about ambition and the reasons behind one's actions than your average comedy routine... you'll end up having a hearty laugh. NYTheatre.com What Would Jesus Do? "Talk about great plays, this powerful drama depicting AIDS and its cover-up is as important as those Larry Kramer plays in the early stages of the dreaded scourge. Listen up theatre producers, this play should make it to Broadway, where it belongs." Celebrity Society Fathers Day A profound psychological drama with hard-hitting, solid characters and realistic dialogue; a tour de force for directors and actors The BCS Experience, GoProRadio Homegirl "A fresh and vivid comedy that connects the political to the personal, American history to Roanetta's story with a light touch and a warm heart." Los Angeles Times
Rev. Dr. Cynthia L. Hale has written out of her own experience of struggle in order to help other women realize and celebrate our uniqueness, acknowledge without shame our issues and challenges, and receive healing and forgiveness. I'm a Piece of Work! Sisters Shaped by God features poetry, reflections, and Scripture, taking women on a journey from brokenness to wholeness. It is a book designed to help women affirm themselves and to claim God's best.
This is a small book on a large subject: What is special about human beings? Hamlet mused, ‘What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how like a god!' but went on to speak of ‘this quintessence of dust'. Helen Oppenheimer prefers to start with the dust and move to the glory: we really are animals — and from these animals has come Shakespeare. People are indeed ‘miserable sinners’ — and also magnificent creatures. The author does not disguise that she is a Christian theologian whose subject is ethics, but she writes equally for non-Christians. Her invitation to the reader is: Here is a way of looking at things that I find exciting and convincing — I hope you do too.
From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together
The author has been a renowned teacher in the eastern zone of India. He has earned great reputation as a teacher of English Grammar & Composition. He commands great respect & is held in high esteem as a English language teacher because of his clear & unambiguous instructions and information of different items of Grammar and ways of compostion have enabled his disciples not only to write correctly, but also to write nicely and ostentatiously. Even now when he is a retired teacher he remains surrounded by hosts of teachers as well as students who, as they are after and have great thirst for clear, easy & graspable instructions regarding different grammatical items, flock over to him to satisfy their mind. It has been they who pressed the author to bring into writing at least a synopsis of different chapters of English Grammar to the comprehensive extent of their usual need so that future generation may go on getting its benefits, because of its easy way to imparting the subject lucid style of impressing the learners and vivid imagery enabling them to get acquainted with all the concepts of English Grammar employing almost no effort or calling on no teacher for help.
The National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect “antidote to mansplaining” (The Stranger). In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!” This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women. “In this series of personal but unsentimental essays, Solnit gives succinct shorthand to a familiar female experience that before had gone unarticulated, perhaps even unrecognized.” —The New York Times “Essential feminist reading.” —The New Republic “This slim book hums with power and wit.” —Boston Globe “Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Essential.” —Marketplace “Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions.” —Salon
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times
Simon Russell Beale is one of Britain's most recognisable and well-loved actors. He has played many roles on stage, film, television and radio - ranging from Winston Churchill to Stalin, George Smiley to King Arthur. But ever since his appearance at school as a glamorous Desdemona, complete with false eyelashes that rendered him half-blind, he has been captivated by Shakespeare. In A Piece of Work, Russell Beale tries to get under the skin of the playwright and find out what interested him. Was Shakespeare an instinctive 'conservative' or, rather, gently subversive? How collaborative was he? Did he add a line to Hamlet in order to accommodate his ageing and increasingly chubby principal actor, Richard Burbage? Did he suffer from insomnia and experience sexual jealousy? Russell Beale describes what it is to approach and live with some of Shakespeare's most famous characters. Some of the actor's inspiration comes from surprising sources. Watching Coronation Street gave him an idea for how Richard III might react on hearing of the death of the two Princes in the Tower; a visit to elderly patients in a local hospital gave him insights into King Lear's descent into madness; and the memory of childhood family holidays led him to a spectacular plunge into an ornamental pool in Much Ado About Nothing. Funny and touching about his family, Russell Beale also writes fascinatingly about some of the supremely creative people he counts as his friends - including Sam Mendes, Nick Hytner, Stephen Sondheim and Lauren Bacall. A Piece of Work is a brilliant account of an actor's life and work - and his relationship with our foremost dramatist.
