Two of Shakespeare's important and illuminating history plays in a comprehensive and scholarly update. This edition includes a discussion and criticism of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater by outstanding scholars past and present, stage histories of notable actors, directors, and producers, and clear, readable text and commentaries.
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A sparkling translation that gives new life in English to Dante’s Vita Nuova, his transcendent love poems and influential statement on the art and power of poetry, and the most widely read of his works after the Inferno A Penguin ClassicDante was only nine years old when he first met young Beatrice in Florence. Loving her for the rest of his life with a devotion undiminished by even her untimely death, he would dedicate himself to transfiguring her, through poetry, into something far more than a muse—she would become the very proof of love as transcendent spiritual power, and the adoration of her a radiant path into a “new life.” Censored by the Church, written in the Tuscan vernacular rather than Latin, exploding the courtly love tradition of the medieval troubadours, and employing an unprecedented hybrid form to link the thirty-one poems with prose commentary, Vita Nuova, first published in... Views: 460
This joyous play, the last comedy of Shakespeare's career, sums up his stagecraft with a display of seemingly effortless skill. Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, living on an enchanted island, has the opportunity to punish and forgive his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore—as well as to forestall a rebellion, to arrange the meeting of his daughter, Miranda, with an eminently suitable young prince, and, more important, to relinquish his magic powers in recognition of his advancing age. Richly filled with music and magic, romance and comedy, the play's theme of love and reconciliation offers a splendid feast for the senses and the heart.
Source: randomhouse.com Views: 460
Small-town life can be hard for a dead girl...
For Veronica Fischer the night to night life of a bloodsucking madam in Middle America is tough enough before she adopts Rachel Gregory, an eight year old ghost.
After her house is set on fire, and Rachel disappears, all signs point to foul play. When she finds herself with a hit out on her unlife, and warrants for her arrest, it becomes clear she's going to need help.
Now she has to contend with horny zombies, violent spirits, and murderous grave robbers if she's ever going to find Rachel and discover the awful truth of the coming storm.
A raucous ride through the dangerous lives of the lecherous undead. Views: 459
Cleveland was darker without him. They shut the subway down when he left. I remember his voice in my ear, whispering. "Don't let it consume you." Well, I guess I did. I guess it happened, because here I am.He always said he'd come back.He told me to transform, and so I did. I became a satellite burning up in the atmosphere. Even when we were apart, I left my lungs in his room so I could smell him. Never mind all that.I listened to the sounds of the train, passing and passing, my skin cells dividing, peeling back in the dark, balls of white hot gas and debris, veins unwinding and untangling into a single line, leading from me to Wyatt, red light fibers connecting his aorta to my superior vena cava.We rotated, umbilical tether twisting in the vacuum of space, tumbling toward each other in the dark with the stars around us already dead. Views: 457
Roy Clawson awakens from a nightmare...or was it more than a dream? After his terror subsides, he reexamines his life in the small town of Fairview. Why doesn't he fit in? Will he discover the truth...or does he even want to know the truth?Roy Clawson awakens from a nightmare...or was it more than a dream? After his terror subsides, he reexamines his life in the small town of Fairview. Why doesn't he fit in? Why is he never invited to the strange meetings at the high school? Why does a bright light periodically appear from the direction of the high school? Who is Murdoch? What are his parents hiding from him? Can his girlfriend be trusted? Will he discover the truth...or does he even want to know the truth? Views: 455
Called "elegantly, starkly beautiful" by The New York Times Book Review, The Siege is Helen Dunmore's masterpiece. Her canvas is monumental -- the Nazis' 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed six hundred thousand -- but her focus is heartrendingly intimate.
One family, the Levins, fights to stay alive in their small apartment, held together by the unlikely courage and resourcefulness of twenty-two-year-old Anna. Though she dreams of an artist's life, she must instead forage for food in the ever more desperate city and watch her little brother grow cruelly thin. Their father, a blacklisted writer who once advocated a robust life of the mind, withers in spirit and body. At such brutal times everything is tested. And yet Dunmore's inspiring story shows that even then, the triumph of the human heart is that love need not fall away. Views: 455
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. Views: 454
J. W. Duffield wrote this popular book that continues to be widely read today despite its age. Views: 454
Mother and adopted daughter, Taylor and Turtle Greer, are back in this spellbinding sequel about family, heartbreak and love.
Six-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam during a tour of the Grand Canyon with her guardian, Taylor. Her insistence on what she has seen, and her mother's belief in her, lead to a man's dramatic rescue. The mother and adopted daughter duo soon become nationwide heroes - even landing themselves a guest appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show. But Turtle's moment of celebrity draws her into a conflict of historic proportions stemming right back to her Cherokee roots. The crisis quickly envelops not only Turtle and her guardian, but everyone else who touches their lives in a complex web connecting their future with their past.
Embark on a unforgettable road trip from rural Kentucky and the urban Southwest to Heaven, Oklahoma, and the Cherokee Nation, testing the boundaries of family and the many separate truths about the ties that bind. Views: 453
Before Jack Kerouac expressed the spirit of a generation in his 1957 classic, On the Road, he spent years figuring out how he wanted to live and, above all, learning how to write. Atop an Underwood brings together more than sixty previously unpublished works that Kerouac wrote before he was twenty-two, ranging from stories and poems to plays and parts of novels, including an excerpt from his 1943 merchant marine novel, The Sea Is My Brother. These writings reveal what Kerouac was thinking, doing, and dreaming during his formative years, and reflect his primary literary influences. Readers will also find in these works the source of Kerouac's spontaneous prose style.
Uncovering a fascinating missing link in Kerouac's development as a writer, Atop an Underwood is essential reading for Kerouac fans, scholars, and critics. Views: 453
Oedipus the King is Sophocles' legendary rendition of the myth of the great king Oedipus, perhaps the best known of all of the Greek Tragedies.
When an oracle foretells that the young prince Oedipus will grow up to murder his father he is cast out of the kingdom by the king who hopes by doing so that he will avoid his fate. Oedipus grows up and many years later, not knowing his own identity, or the identity of his father, meets him at a crossroad where they argue and the king is killed. The rest of the tale pivots around the unraveling of this tangled family history and the appalling discovery of, not only patricide, but Oedipus' subsequent incest in unwittingly marrying his own mother.
Contains Oedipus The King, Oedipus At Colonus, and Antigone. Views: 453
s/t: All That Fall; Embers; Acts Without Words, I and II; Mimes This collection of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett’s dramatic pieces includes a short stage play, two radio plays, and two pantomimes. The stage play Krapp’s Last Tape evolves a shattering drama out of a monologue of a man who, at age sixty-nine, plays back the autobiographical tape he recorded on his thirty-ninth birthday.
The two radio plays were commissioned by the BBC; All That Fall “plumbs the same pessimistic depths [as Waiting for Godot] in what seems a no less despairing search for human dignity” (London Times), and Embers is equally unforgettable theater, born of the ramblings of an old man and his wife. Finally, in the two pantomimes, Beckett takes drama to the point of pure abstraction with his portrayals of, in Act Without Words I, frustrated desired, and in Act Without Words I, corresponding motions of living juxtaposed in the slow despair of one man and the senselessly busy motion of another. Views: 453
