Publisher: Charles River Editors
William Shakespeare is widely considered to have been the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s greatest dramatist. More than 400 years after Shakespeare’s death, his plays are still performed more than any other playwright and have been translated into every major language in the world. This edition of Love's Labour's Lost includes a table of contents.
A SALUTE TO BLUE-COLLAR REDNECKS WHO MAKE THIS COUNTRY RUN. Following his newfound fame for apprehending Plastic Surgeon to the Stars and serial killer Dr. Vanderlay Mukerjee, Gary moves back into the five-million-dollar mansion he bought with his lottery winnings. What was formerly Turpentine Acres is now Kensington Gardens, an upscale community that frowns upon Gary's lawn ornaments and Confederate flag. But when a thousand-pound feral hog begins savaging Kensington Gardens, the HOA calls on Gary to deal with the monster. Gary must also contend with wild hippos, a swimming pool full of iguanas, a robot buffalo with alien multiple personality disorder, and his girl Krystal's upcoming wrestling match with the transgendered Thing Called Xue. “Mike Baron has crafted a comic masterpiece of a novel. Unforgettable, colorful cast, Sustained comedy gold on every page.” – Chuck Dixon, author of the Levon Cade SeriesShow book
“A spontaneous seduction prompts a surreal chain of events in this raucous new novel . . . This is a wry, writhing tale about the forces that shape our fate.” —Booklist After his highly popular Who’s Who in Hell, Robert Chalmers delivers his second novel, a painfully funny story of disaster and redemption that recalls Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love. One morning Edward Miller, tabloid newspaper editor and reactionary alpha male, spontaneously seduces his temp in an office storeroom. The news doesn’t take long to reach his cold, beautiful wife—and it just happens to be their anniversary. By morning, his marriage is over, his career in shambles, and his house is on fire. Clearly, it’s time to leave town. After a brief stint in Spain as an English teacher, Miller flees again when his cover is blown, winding up in a Florida town populated by carnies and circus freaks and ruled with an iron fist by the Half Man, a criminal and sadist with no legs. Unexpectedly, despite even a one-eyed albino hit man who seems to overhear every compromising conversation between Miller and the Half Man’s wife the Lizard Woman, Miller gradually realizes this may be where he belongs. A brilliant ensemble black comedy and a touching statement on the redemptive power of love, Fortune’s Bastard confirms Robert Chalmers as one of Britain’s freshest and wittiest new voices. “A novel of wonderful surprises, an emotional see-saw that can be very funny, very sad and very brutal. This is a story about a love that shouldn’t work at all, but triumphs against the odds.” —Michael Palin, Monty Python alumnusShow book
“Davies introduces us to his alter ego . . . A humorous and insightful picture of postwar Canadian life as seen through the eyes of a delightful eccentric.”—Library Journal As editor and later publisher of the Peterborough Examiner, Robertson Davies published witty, curmudgeonly, mischievous, and fiercely individualistic columns under the name of his alter ego, Samuel Marchbanks. In 1985, Davies edited and selected from his alter ego’s observations to bring together previous titles in the Marchbanks bibliography: The Diary (1947), The Table Talk (1949), and Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack (1967). Marchbanks opines on politics, on his furnace, on theatre, on the taxman, on trains, on Christmas, on book-banners, on manners, indeed on everything under the sun. Not only this, but Davies’s copious and quite delectable Notes are “calculated to remove all Difficulties caused by the passage of Time and to offer the Wisdom, not to speak of Whimsicality, of this astonishing man to the Modern Public, in the most convenient form.” “This writing of four decades ago is consistently incisive, insulting, funny, relevant and altogether interesting.”—The New York Times “Now this crank of the first order is on full display for the first time in America . . . To explain to his younger American readers such arcana as ‘telegrams’ and ‘coal-burning furnaces,’ Davies has added graceful and comic notes that rival the entertaining opinions of Marchbanks himself.”—South Florida Sun-SentinelShow book
This collection of short stories, linked by the theme of music, is a gorgeous follow-up to One Heart, award-winning writer Jane McCafferty’s critcially acclaimed debut novelIn 14 original stories, Jane McCafferty illuminates modern life weaving her love of music throughout the lives and stories of her characters. From two middle-aged strangers who meet in an empty baseball stadium during a rainstorm, to a 23-year-old man who brings his 62-year-old wife home to meet his parents, to a young couple who live next door to an unemployed clown and his wife, these stories are at once unexpected and enthralling.Show book
A new collection of stories capturing the travails of aging millennials from “one of the funniest writers in America” (NPR) From the Thurber Prize–winning author of New Teeth, hailed as “a triumph of sustained humor” (Sarah Lyall, New York Times Book Review), comes a hilarious and powerful collection of short stories chronicling the plight of aging millennials. Super Mario turns forty and is forced to “take-a stock” of his life and how “messed up it’s-a become.” Goliath struggles to control the media narrative in the lead-up to his death match against David, a small, beloved child. And a long-discarded participation trophy reminisces about the glorious field day in 1993, when he wound up in the arms of a jubilant, asthmatic Simon Rich. High-stakes and heartfelt, Glory Days mourns the death of youthful innocence and hails the beginning of something approximating wisdom.Show book
The author of Mother London provides “another fabulous ride . . . as sprawling as a Victorian social novel and as vigorous as an eighteenth-century picaresque” (Kirkus, starred review). The King of the City recounts the times and trials of quintessential Londoner Dennis Dover, former rock guitarist, photojournalist, and paparazzo. Though he may travel far and wide, London's many vagaries always seduce Denny home. And London is where Rosie Beck is—Denny's brilliant, beautiful, socially conscious cousin. Rosie has always been Denny’s soul and soulmate. Since childhood they have been inseparable, delighting in a life with no limits. But now the metropolis that nurtured them is threatened by a powerful, unstoppable force that consumes the past and leaves nothing of substance in its wake. The terminator is named John Barbican Begg. A hanger-on from Denny and Rosie's youth, he has become the morally corrupt center of their London and the richest, most rapacious creature in the Western Hemisphere. Now, as their cherished landmarks tumble, conspiracy, secrets, lies, and betrayal become the centerpieces of Rosie and Dennis's days. For Barbican has but one goal: to devour the entire world. And the only choice left is to join in, drop out . . . or plot to destroy.Show book
