The Magnificent Ambersons, by Booth Tarkington, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Largely overshadowed by Orson Welles’s famous 1941 screen version, Booth Tarkington’s novel The Magnificent Ambersons was not only a best-seller when it first appeared in 1918—it also won the Pulitzer Prize.Set in the Midwest in the early twentieth century—the dawn of the automobile age—the novel begins by introducing the richest family in town, the Ambersons. Exemplifying aristocratic excess, the Ambersons have everything money can buy—and more. But George Amberson Minafer—the spoiled grandson of the family patriarch—is unable to see that great societal changes are taking place, and that business tycoons, industrialists, and real estate developers will soon surpass him in wealth and prestige. Rather than join the new mechanical age, George prefers to remain a gentleman, believing that being things” is superior to doing things.” But as his town becomes a city, and the family palace is enveloped in a cloud of soot, George’s protectors disappear one by one, and the elegant, cloistered lifestyle of the Ambersons fades from view, and finally vanishes altogether.A brilliant portrayal of the changing landscape of the American dream, The Magnificent Ambersons is a timeless classic that deserves a wider modern audience.Nahma Sandrow has written extensively about theater and cultural history, including the books Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater and Surrealism: Theater, Arts, Ideas. For many years a professor at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, she has lectured at Oxford University, Harvard University, the Smithsonian, and elsewhere. Views: 53
The idyllic town of Endover, New Hampshire, looks innocent. But below its surface a thirst and a desire both powerful and ancient boil fiercely. When two girls go missing, only one person can delve deep enough to find them - Maxine Stuart, a private investigator who has finally started to believe.
"Mad Maxie" understands why she was asked to help - no living mortal knows as much about the undead as she. But the dark force controlling Endover can see all, and will use Maxine's knowledge against her to strengthen his hold on the town. Not even the influence of Lou Malone, the man Maxie most desires, can convince her to abandon the crusade against a madman's yearning for power...and resurrected love. Views: 53
"That Seriously Obnoxious Time I Was Stuck at Witch Rimelda's One Hundredth Birthday Party" is a seriously funny story set in the world of Seriously Wicked, a young adult fantasy novel by Tina Connolly, the acclaimed author of Ironskin. Get ready to embrace your angsty inner witch at a pool party teeming with krakens, hexes, and cursed banana bread. Views: 53
Georgia 1864: Sherman's army marches inexorably from Atlanta to the sea. In its path: the charming old city of Savannah, where the Lester ladies-attractive widow Sara and her feisty twelve-year-old daughter Hattie-struggle to save the family rice plantation. When Sherman offers the conquered city to President Lincoln as "a Christmas gift," Hattie and the feared general find themselves on a collision course that will astonish both of them. Views: 53
After more than a decade, Richard Ford revives Frank Bascombe, the beloved protagonist from The Sportswriter and Independence Day. Fans will be scrambling for The Lay of the Land, a novel that finds Bascombe contending with health, marital, and familial issues wake of the 2000 presidential election. We asked Richard Ford to tell us a little more about what it's like to create (and share so much time with) a character like Frank. Read his short essay below. --Daphne Durham Richard Ford on Frank BascombeI never think of the characters I write as exactly people, the way some writers say they do, letting their characters "just take over and write the book;" or for that matter, in the way I want readers to think of them as people, or even as I think of characters in novels I myself read (and didn't write). In my own books I do all the writing--the characters don't. And for me to think of them as people, instead of as figures made of language, would make my characters less subject to the useful and necessary changes that occur as I grow in my own awareness about them as I make them up. Writing a character for twenty-five years and for three novels, as I have written about Frank Bascombe, has meant that Frank has, of course, become a presence in my life (and a welcome one). When I wrote Independence Day I began with the belief that Frank was pretty much the same character and presence he was in The Sportswriter. But when I went back later and read parts of The Sportswriter, I found that the sentences Frank "spoke" and that filled that second book were longer, more complex, and actually contained more nitty experience than the first book. This has also been true of The Lay of the Land: longer sentences, more experience to reconcile and transact, more words required to make lived life seem accessible. You could say that Frank had simply changed as we all do. But practically speaking--as his author--what this makes me think is that I've had to make up Frank up newly each time, and have not exactly "gone back" and "found" him--although Frank's history from the previous books has certainly needed to be kept in sight and made consistent. What is finally consistent to me about Frank is that I "hear" language I associate with him, and it is language that pleases me, with which I and he can (if I'm a good enough writer) represent life in an intelligent and hopeful and buoyant spirit a reader can make use of. --Richard Ford Views: 53
Free spirit Gemma Dante wishes her love life were going as well as her New Age business. So she casts a spell to catch her Mr. Right. But when the cosmic wires get crossed, into her life walks a clean-cut fireman who's anything but her type. Sean Kinnealy doesn't know what to make of his pretty neighbor who burns incense. He only knows that being near her sparks a fire in him that even the guys at Ladder 29, Engine 31 can't put out. Views: 53
All families have secrets but what if your father was hiding a secret that was destroying him ? and the rest of the family? An emotional story of family perfect for all fans of The Memory Keeper?s Daughter. Tragedy came as if so often does: a teenage party, emotions running high, followed by a horrific car crash. A girl is left dead and a boy is forced to leave his home town, with a secret that he will carry with him forever? Years later, when Summer's mother disappears one summer, she is left with her father. Obsessed with an accident from years ago, he slowly descends into mental illness. And as he becomes more disorientated, he reveals small fragments of a secret that has been hidden since his youth, a secret that changes everything. Summer supports her father as much as she can but eventually realises that she has to escape. She finds refuge with her great-aunt, Stella. Feisty, fun-loving, and dying of cancer, Stella holds parts of the family secret. Slowly, things fall into... Views: 53
Alone among the young girls taught by nuns at a convent school in nineteenth-century France, orphaned Herculine has neither wealth nor social connections. When she's accused of being a witch, the shy student is locked up with no hope of escape ... until her rescue by a real witch, the beautiful, mysterious Sebastiana. Swept away to the witch's manor, Herculine will enter a fantastic, erotic world to discover her true nature -- and her destiny -- in this breathtaking, darkly sensual first novel. Views: 53
The first book in a brand new trilogy from the author of Prospero's Children. Bartlemy Goodman, is one of the Gifted. An albino of Greek parentage, he was born in Byzantium amidst the decline of the Roman Empire. He now resides at Thornyhill house, England, with his dog, Hoover. One warm evening, a young homeless woman holding a baby turns up on Bartlemy's doorstep, and sensing destiny at work, he lets them stay. Annie and her son Nathan thrive in the small community of Thornyhill, but when more strangers arrive in the village, sinister happenings begin to occur. Views: 53
The kingdom of Faldoa has thrived under its new queen. Euphoria has changed the land, yet evil lies in wait. During a mission to dispose of the last pieces of the magic mirror, she is attacked by a dark elf assassin using a mysterious box. Taylon, her captain of the Royal Guard is able to fight off the assailant, but not before damage is done to the queen.Deep in the Territories, a strange prophecy comes forth from the elves, and Council Member Gantha is sent on a mission to find a wizard of races. Little does he know that this little foretelling speaks of resurrection of pure evil.Taylon, with the help of a local medicine woman, seeks out a cure for the queen's sickness in the far reaches of the kingdom, while the pieces of the magic mirror cause their own havoc. Views: 53
