Benjamin Kritzer is thirteen and ready to take on the world. But is the world ready for Benjamin Kritzer? In Benjamin Kritzer and Kritzerland, Benjamin has gone from adolescence to young adulthood, managing to survive his Martian family, Bad Men, a broken heart, a broken friendship and a multitude of adventures and cliffhangers in the unending serial known as his life. Now, in Kritzer Time, Benjamin must navigate the treacherous terrain of his teenage years, in a world that’s changing as fast as he is. But it’s when Benjamin meets Samantha Gilman, a girl as unique and special as he is, a girl who becomes part of his world, and a girl who will impact his life in ways that he can’t possibly imagine, that Kritzer Time reveals its true heart and soul. Kritzer Time is a time machine back to the wonderful world of Los Angeles in the early 1960s, and a heartfelt, warm, hilarious and touching story of a young boy becoming a young man.
They say that trying out a new musical can be murder. It doesn’t help that the show has a terrible second act, that the author has writer’s block, that most of the company can’t stand the composer/lyricist, that the show’s bombastic producer is threatening to close it, that two key people on the creative team are having an affair with the same person, and that the personalities of everyone involved are short-fused and volatile. In other words, it’s business as usual in the world of musical theater. But when someone vital to the show turns up dead, apparently of accidental causes, it’s time for one member of the production team to become an amateur Broadway sleuth in search of the truth – was the death an accident or was it murder? Set in the world of Broadway musical theater in 1969, Writer’s Block is a funny, bitchy, suspenseful tale of the creation of a new musical - from the start of rehearsals, through the tryouts in New Haven and Boston, to opening night and after. The arguments, the fights, the tensions, the betrayals – yes, there’s no business like show business.
How To Write A Dirty Book and Other Stories is Bruce Kimmel’s first collection of short fiction. In these wonderful and evocative tales you’ll find the warmth, humor, and emotion of his acclaimed Benjamin Kritzer trilogy (Benjamin Kritzer, Kritzerland, and Kritzer Time), the biting, acerbic wit of his two mysteries (Writer’s Block and Rewind), and a new element—the world of fantasy. All but one of the stories takes place in Mr. Kimmel’s favorite world—Los Angeles, both then and now. In I’ll See You In My Dreams, a depressed, miserable man longs to escape to the world of a recurring dream, where the perfect woman is waiting for him. In How To Write A Dirty Book, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter in 1959 Hollywood takes on the challenge of writing a naughty novel as a way to supplement his meager income—with surprising results! In Opening Out of Town, a bickering vacationing couple lose their way and stumble onto an all-singing, all-dancing small town. In Your Worst Nightmare, a seventy-two-year-old man seeks revenge against an Internet tormentor. With these and other stories, Mr. Kimmel takes you on a wild ride, a ride filled with nostalgia, longing, laugh-out-loud humor, fear, retribution, and love.
In this no-holds-barred political broadside, a rising journalistic star accuses the Republican party and corporate interests of robbing from Americans one of their chief civil liberties--the right to sue.
This volume explores the many ways in which politics shapes the allegedly nonpartisan judicial system in America, ranging from how judges are selected to the bench to how they rule when they get there. Each title in the Contemporary Debates series examines the veracity of controversial claims or beliefs surrounding a major political/cultural issue in the United States. Each book gives readers a clear and unbiased understanding of current high-interest issues by informing them about falsehoods, half-truths, and misconceptions-and confirming the factual validity of other assertions-that have gained traction in America's cultural and political discourse. This volume in the series provides a deeply researched and even-handed account of the relationship between America's judicial branch-which is supposed to view law through a nonpartisan lens-and the sometimes poisonous partisanship that is such a notorious factor in the nation's other two branches of government. Is political combat over judicial nominations worse than ever before? What impact is the politicization of the courts having on public faith in the legitimacy of the courts and our wider political system? Was former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day right when she asserted that "judicial independence is a bedrock principle of our court system, and we are losing it"? This work will provide insights into all these questions and more.
Just as Frank Sinatra had an additional and invaluable career as the great preservationist and evangelist of the American popular song (with particular focus on the Lost and Found), so author-actor-singer-director Bruce Kimmel has additionally served the cause of Broadway and Hollywood beyond measure, producing some of the most memorable vocalists of our time in recordings that give new life to music that might otherwise be forgotten, while renewing and revitalizing the theatrical canon with his impeccable taste and unerring musicality. In his usual engaging and endearing style, he at last gives us a first-hand view of his process. For this terrific chronicle, and for his immeasurable contribution to musical theatre, we can only give our most inadequate thanks. -Rupert Holmes, Tony and Edgar award-winning playwright and novelist Bruce Kimmel's rollicking memoir, There's Mel, There's Woody, and There's You, left his fans begging for more. Thankfully, the theatre gods are kind and answered our prayers. Actor, director, composer, playwright, novelist, film-maker...and good at all of them, Kimmel has reinvented himself more times than Madonna and had more lives than a cat. In Album Produced by..., he now shape-shifts into what may be his greatest theatrical incarnation-as the foremost album producer of theatre music in the last twenty-five years. Through time and labels, his amazing career fluctuates with more highs and lows than the sliding dials on a soundboard and is sweetened with the usual Kimmel witlaced raconteurism.Whether working with the greats (Carol Channing, Lauren Bacall, Dorothy Louden, Ann-Margret, to name a few) or promoting and often discovering the next big musical stars of Broadway, our intrepid hero battles lessthan- visionary bosses, broken promises, harried orchestrators, enraged engineers, the occasional disgruntled diva, and the mysterious crooner, Guy Haines. But he manages to defeat all obstacles and egos in his way, emerging triumphant to dance in divine syncopation with the glorious music he creates. To know the stories behind all those wonderful albums is to listen to them with fresh ears and a new appreciation of the talent, tears, and genius that went into them. -Charles Edward Pogue, screenwriter of Dragonheart, DOA, & The Fly
A crew of gunslingers take on a deadly challenge in this Ralph Compton western. They are four hired guns who haul freight for a price into the treacherous, untamed wilderness. Having already risked their lives for the Confederacy, now they’re fighting for themselves—and for a stake in the future—on the great frontier. Led by the poker-playing Faro Duval, these soldiers of fortune are about to take the biggest gamble of all: delivering an explosive cargo from Santa Fe to southwestern Utah. Their destination is Devil’s Canyon…and a mountain of gold. But there’s a wild card in the crew: a man who is one jump ahead of an unsavory past and one piece of silver away from selling them out. In a land of savage outlaws and hostile Utes, with a rattlesnake named Hal Durham in their midst, Duval and his men are running out of time and out of luck… More Than Six Million Ralph Compton Books In Print!
