I love music and books about the music industry. Fiction or nonfiction–the drama of a musician’s rise and efforts to sustain a career never gets old to me. I can relate to their determination to make a living doing something they love. Also, as a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, I’m fascinated by the musical history here and often meet people that had ties to the music industry and are now “regular people.” My latest novel Intermissionis about a singing group. I’ve read numerous books in this genre, from Motown bios to the five listed. What a great way to combine my two favorite things–music and books!
This is a mystery set in the gritty side of New Orleans, back alleys of the French Quarter and neighborhoods that tourists don’t see.
The murder setup is well-written and the author keeps the reader guessing about the outcome. Music lovers will appreciate the references to real singers and musicians that are woven into the story.
This is the 7th book in the Sleepy Carter detective series. There are a few references to previous books, but if you have not previously read any in this series, you won’t be lost. Fans of Walter Mosely will enjoy. I love New Orleans, (there are many mouth-watering food references in the story) and this book takes me there.
This is a book like no other! With its first sentences, it gripped me, and I couldn't put it down till the very end. The same happened to everybody I recommended it to.
Formally, it is part of a trilogy, and I loved to read all three of them. Its style is dry and almost merely reporting, and yet it is emotionally involved in a powerful way.
Is what we are told meant to be real? Or is it only the product of a traumatized mind trying to cope with war, poverty, pain, abuse, and the endless yearning for what is lost? Are the twins, the protagonists of this trilogy, really two separate fictional characters or rather one with a dissociated mind? A thrilling question till the end.
Twin brothers, left with their evil grandmother at a time when war has blurred all distinctions between good and evil, learn to steal and kill in the name of survival and create their own loveless morality
The Wrath to Come is a stirring and challenging book that exposes so many of the myths Americans deploy so that we can ignore the dark chapters of our nation's history, and soothe our conciseness. Churchwell wrote a thoroughly researched yet extremely readable book that uses Gone with the Wind as a vehicle to identify and catalog myths in the American understanding of our history. This book was released in 2022 but it has only become more relevant since it was released.
I grew up in the 1960s in the Midwest, in a male-dominated family, where appearances were highly important, where no one seemed to focus on anyone’s feelings or plans (particularly as a female member of the family). As a result, I’m drawn to books where the author explores this type of problematic relationship, of a protagonist trying to carve out her identity in the midst of often overwhelming obstacles. It also interests me to read about women who, like me, somehow managed to discover who they were (I use the word “translate” in my memoir), to carve out an identity that is separate from the idea that people around her erroneously hold to be true.
This book is particularly good for anyone who was/is in the baby-boomer generation and/or who had issues with their mother.
I identified with Meyer’s ongoing struggles with her mother, a mother who was born during a period when women were normally not allowed to stretch their wings and live their own lives. This was my situation and – in hindsight – I often wonder if many of my personal struggles with my mother were due to the fact that I was afforded so many more opportunities than my mother, through no fault of her own.
This compassionate and gripping memoir tells the story of three generations of daughters who, though determined to be different from their absent mothers, ultimately follow in their footsteps. Myers's new afterword continues the saga, allowing her to confront her family legacy and come full circle with her daughter and grandchildren.
Marcia Naomi Berger's passion is to help people create lasting, fulfilling marriages. An experienced clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and medical school clinical faculty member, Berger has held senior-level positions in child welfare, alcoholism treatment, and psychiatry. She says, "I stayed single for a long time because of my parent's divorce. Now happily married for over thirty-four years, I fill my books with the hard-earned wisdom I've gained professionally and personally."
I especially like this reader-friendly book because of its thoroughness, honesty, and wise advice. The authors are a married couple and social workers who draw from decades of experience counseling couples, leading workshops and seminars, and their marriage. I mention honesty because I'm impressed with the authors' openness, integrity, and conversational style.
Whether you're already married or hope to soon or someday, you'll probably benefit from how Linda and Charlie freely share knowledge gained from their successes and some embarrassing mistakes they've survived and corrected during their fifty-year, fulfilling marriage. Their commitment to growing as individuals and as a couple can be contagious, so check out this book and be prepared to stretch!
What if you could learn important relationship lessons now, rather than after you make the mistakes that most couples make? You can, and this best-selling book will point the way! Linda and Charlie Bloom were in their early 20's when they met and fell in love. At twenty five they married and their first-born came eighteen months later.
According to Charlie, "We were young and we made a lot of mistakes; enough to fill a book." Fast forward about twenty years.
Charlie's little sister Claire was about to get married and she invited him to read something inspirational at her…
As a longtime arts educator who has worked predominantly with kids ages 3 to 12, I initially set out to find books that could inspire them about theatre. For many years I have searched for the perfect books that achieve this and have used all of these books in my teaching.
An oldie, but goodie, Wendy Wasserstein’s Pamela’s First Musical follows the wide-eyed title character as she enjoys the experience of a lifetime: a trip with her Aunt Louise to see her first musical on the Great White Way. This book is written by one of Broadway’s great female playwrights, the late Wendy Wasserstein.
On Pamela's ninth birthday, her Aunt Louise takes her to her first Broadway musical where she gets to meet the actors and staff who helped make it an award-winning show. Reprint.
As a humorist and lover of all things comedy, I know how quickly a good joke can feel dated. (Heck, lots of great bits from last year don’t even work anymore.) Drama almost always holds up better than comedy. For example, you can still get swept up in dramatic narratives as ancient as The Odyssey. But do Aristophanes’ or Shakespeare’s “comedies” elicit even the slightest guffaws? Not from me. So, I hear you cry, are there any written works from more than 100 years ago that remain lol funny today? Well, don’t cry. Because yes, there are quite a few literary treasures that are still hysterically funny. The good news is that I’ve done some of that research for you.
Before sitcoms, stand-up, SNL, and absolutely any great comedy movie you can name – there was Gilbert & Sullivan. Okay, yes they wrote operas (“light operas” technically; really more like our musicals today), but these works were created to be popular, scandalous, funny, and with hummable tunes for the masses. G&S operas were absurd, fantastic, politically incorrect, hysterical, “topsy turvy” extravaganzas that satirized (much like Wilde) the bourgeois mores of the day. Astonishingly, most of it holds up today, which is why you can still see Gilbert and Sullivan's productions being perpetually staged across the globe. If you can see one of their productions live – or on YouTube – go for it. But the libretto’s themselves are highly readable and funny. The Pirates of Penzance is a good gateway to their other works. It’s full of sex, crime, cops, pirates, bathing beauties, and non-stop earworms; and includes two of…
When a pirate's apprentice tries to leave the high seas and build a new life, his hopes are dashed when a secret comes to light. The man's plans are shattered as he's forced to return to his old stomping grounds. Frederic is a 21-year-old who has spent his life working as a pirate's apprentice. Now an adult, he's free from his commitment and able to venture out on his own. He eventually stumbles across a group of women including the beautiful Mabel. They immediately fall in love and plan to spend their lives together. Unfortunately, Frederic discovers that his birthday,…
I’m sure we all remember some of the first books we picked up, and how they’ve stayed with us despite every year that ticked away. These were stories that didn’t just resonate with us as kids; a part of them lasted—transcended age and periodic experiences. I love books that you can reach for no matter how old you are, with lessons and stories that can be enjoyed by anyone. My own writing is a reflection of that: timeless tales that bridge the gap between adolescence and adulthood, hoping to touch hearts with a spectrum of knowledge in science, myth, and philosophy.
I think every reread of this book unveils another layer to its complexity. The Little Prince is a classic tale that will mean different things to different people—a mesmerizing journey to wide-eyed children, a reminder of the world’s fragility to adults, and a longing for nostalgia by those grown who may have had their innocence stripped away early. The first time I read it, I was swept away by the pictures and pretty words, and yet still, there was an ache in my heart that only later, on my next read, did I truly understand. But every reader can feel it; the beauty and grief for a place or time we may never return to.
In 2000 Harcourt proudly reissued Antoine de Saint-Exupery's masterpiece, The Little Prince, in a sparkling new format. Newly translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Howard, this timeless classic was embraced by critics and readers across the country for its purity and beauty of expression. And Saint-Exupery's beloved artwork was restored and remastered to present his work in its original and vibrant colors. Now Harcourt is issuing uniform full-color foreign language editions. The restored artwork glows like never before. These affordable and beautiful editions are sure to delight an entire new generation of readers, students, children, and adults for whom Saint-Exupery's…
I am a graduate of Williams College and Princeton University and now a professor and former dean of arts and letters at the University of Notre Dame. As dean, I learned that too many of Notre Dame’s students were majoring in business. Invariably, when I asked them about their rationale, they would confess that their favorite courses were in the arts and sciences. They might have followed their passions, I thought, if they and their parents had a deeper sense of the value of a liberal arts education, so I wrote this book to answer their questions and give them justified confidence in the value of liberal arts courses.
When students come to college, everything is new. This book offers well-seasoned advice on how to make the most of office hours, how to study effectively, why not to worry about your major or career path too early, and at the same time, how to plan ahead.
Lots of nuts and bolts advice, a perfect high school graduation gift.
The unwritten rules of success that every student must follow to thrive in college
The Secret Syllabus equips students with the tools they need to succeed, revealing the unwritten rules and cultural norms and expectations not included in the official curriculum. Left to figure out on their own how the academic world works, students frequently stumble, underperform, and miss opportunities. Without mastery of the secret syllabus, too many miss out on the full, rich experience available to them in college.
Jay Phelan and Terry Burnham share the essential lessons they have learned from struggling, unfocused students as well as award-winning…
As an economics professor, I’ve spent the past twenty years researching why cities build upward. Though I mostly look at cities through the lens of statistics and data, every building has a personal and dramatic story that exists behind the numbers. And no matter where you go in the world, great cities with their towering skyscrapers all owe a debt to New York—every city wants its own version of the Empire State Building to signal its economic might. New York is the world’s metropolis. As the (now cliché) song line goes, “If I can make there, I’ll make it anywhere,” is a true today as a century ago.
When I walk through the streets of Manhattan, I’m constantly awed by the variety and density of its buildings. I wonder how such a city could have ever been built. New cities today lack the soul and character. But when you look at why these buildings exist, you see that they are there for a more mundane purpose: as shelter. The Garment District, for example, was created to house massive sweatshops to clothe America. Gotham’s apartment towers enclose the beds on which residents sleep.
Many of these structures were built by a group of family-run development companies. The founders of these enterprises invariably began as immigrants trying to hustle their way up the economic ladder. They started as teenagers working in the sweatshops or hawking newspapers and, bit by bit, erected their own real estate empires. Tom Schactman’s book tells how entrepreneurial spirit, along with New York’s rapid economic growth,…
A portrait of Manhattan real estate and of the multimillionaires who are its masters, describing a world of high risks and huge rewards. Skyscrapers embody the romance of our times. The inspired gamblers who built the structures that transformed not only Manhattan but also the world took great risks. Some of the most colourful failed, while others founded family dynasties among the wealthiest in America, from the Astors and Rockefellers to the Roses and Trumps. From penniless Russian Jewish immigrants to society patricians, from penthouses to tenements, real estate and its manipulations - the buildings, the strategies, even the disasters…
