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  The Comedy Man - A Novel

  D. J. Taylor

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  An entertainer looks back on his life in this novel based on the rise and fall of a famous British comedy team From the vantage point of late middle age, Edward “Ted” King—one half of the dynamic duo Upward & King—discovers that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Ted met Arthur Upward in Britain’s National Service. They started out doing gigs at Soho cabarets, and in the mid-sixties, they took their act on the road. By the late seventies, they were the most beloved comedians on British television, watched by ten million viewers per week. This inventive novel, narrated by Ted on the eve of the release of a documentary about their famous partnership, begins with his boyhood in the farm fields of post-war Yarmouth. The son of a shopkeeper with few aspirations, Ted soon realizes he wants to tell jokes for a living. Then, one day in a hall at the sergeants’ mess, he sees Arthur perform the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” He instantly senses the titanic influence the other man will have on his life. Ted plays the straight man to Arthur’s pratfalling comic, and they go on to captivate a nation. Until it all goes wrong.   Crosscutting between the past and present, The Comedy Man is a poignant, funny “memoir” that reminds us how comedy is often derived from the most serious situations—and from the inexpressible longings of the human heart.

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  Famous All Over Town - A Novel

  Bernie Schein

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  This sweeping comic novel examines the public and private upheavals of life in a small Southern town from the Civil Rights era to the new millennium. 
   
  Famous All Over Town, the first novel from Southern storyteller Bernie Schein, is a comically candid multi-generational account of two Jews, a lowcountry native and a Northern transplant. Their lives interweave through the momentous events of a sleepy coastal hamlet based on Schein’s native Beaufort, South Carolina. 
   
  Schein’s cast includes Southern Jewish lawyer Murray Gold and his foil, displaced New York psychiatrist Bert Levy. There’s also an emotionally scarred drill sergeant and his alluringly unconventional wife; a corrupt sheriff and his violent son; an African American madam and her two brilliant children; a fallen Southern belle; a transvestite Vietnam veteran; and many others. With their conflicted identities, burgeoning ambitions, and romantic entanglements, they live through the turbulent 1960s into the 1990s, confronting the ramifications of the civil rights era, Vietnam, Watergate, and—closer to home—a deadly version of the infamous Ribbon Creek incident. 
   
  Foreword by Janis Owens.

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  Underbelly Hoops - Adventures in...

  Carson Cunningham

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  Hailing from basketball's epicenter, the great state of Indiana, Carson Cunningham memorized Georgetown's starting five in Kindergarten. Over the next twelve years or so, he played all the time with his buddies, stopping occasionally—oftentimes only because his parents forced him to – to read the books and magazines and newspapers laying around his house. Before he knew it, he'd become an all-state player in Indiana, a runner-up for PAC-10 Freshman of the Year honors, and then, after transferring to Purdue, a two-time Academic All-American. From there, came a journey into basketball's professional underbelly, which consisted of all or parts of three seasons in the CBA and stints playing in Australia and Estonia.Cunningham is the author of American Hoops: U.S. Men's Olympic Basketball from Berlin to Beijing, which offers a dynamic portrait of the global age through basketball, and of Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs' Glory Years, 1870-1945. In 2006, he earned a Ph.D. in history from Purdue University, and is on track to complete an MBA in DePaul University's Kellstadt Graduate School of Business. He teaches history at DePaul and lives and coaches where basketball thrives: Indiana. His wife Christy and his three children are his seashells and balloons.

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  In the Closed Room

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

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  In the Closed Room (1904) is a short novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  Excerpt from the book:  "In the fierce airless heat of the small square room the child Judith panted as she lay on her bed. Her father and mother slept near her, drowned in the heavy slumber of workers after their day's labour. Some people in the next flat were quarrelling, irritated probably by the appalling heat and their miserable helplessness against it. All the hot emanations of the sun-baked city streets seemed to combine with their clamour and unrest, and rise to the flat in which the child lay gazing at the darkness. It was situated but a few feet from the track of the Elevated Railroad and existence seemed to pulsate to the rush and roar of the demon which swept past the windows every few minutes. No one knew that Judith held the thing in horror, but it was a truth that she did. She was only seven years old, and at that age it is not easy to explain one's self so that older people can understand."

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  Mark Twain's Journal Writings...

  Mark Twain

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  This third volume of Mark Twain's journal writings continues on eclectic and varied path established by the first two volumes. Included in this collection are works that appeared by themselves in magazines during Twain's lifetime, as well as essays taken by editors and Twain himself from Twain's larger works, and re-published in collections of his stories. This volume includes the following works: "Buying Gloves in Gibraltar", "The great revolution in Pitcairn", "A Gift from India" [including editor's notes about Twain’s need to go on the lecture circuit, his authorship of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and other items], "From India to South Africa", "The Esquimau Maiden's Romance", "At the Appetitecure", "Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale", "Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?" (Introduction by John Greenman)

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  Motherhood - The Second Oldest...

  Erma Bombeck

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  #1 New York Times bestseller:A hilarious look at one of the toughest jobs on earth, by a writer “with the comic equivalent of perfect pitch” (The Boston Globe).   Anyone who thinks motherhood is easy has never had children. To care for children, a husband, and oneself is a superhuman task, and any woman who appears to be expert at doing all three simultaneously is not Supermom—she’s a good actress. For three decades, Erma Bombeck chronicled motherhood’s daily frustrations and victories. In this classic anthology, she presents all sorts of mothers, and even a stay-at-home dad, on good days and bad. With hilarious anecdotes and deep compassion, she shows that there is no other profession that demands so much, and rewards so highly. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erma Bombeck including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

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