Desdemona and the Deep


Book Description

A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST NOVELLA Award-winning author C.S.E. Cooney indulges in luxurious, dizzying fantasy In Desdemona and the Deep, the spoiled daughter of a rich mining family must retrieve the tithe of men her father promised to the world below. On the surface, her world is rife with industrial pollution that ruins the health of poor factory workers while the idle rich indulge themselves in unheard-of luxury. Below are goblins, mysterious kingdoms, and an entirely different hierarchy. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Desdemona's Fire


Book Description

This is the author's first book and winner of the 1999 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. While miscegenation has always been more a part of American history than many want to admit, Desdemona's Fire journeys through this often forbidden landscape in poems that are sometimes painfully poignant, yet fresh in their imagery and detail.




Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (Play)


Book Description

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is an exuberant comedy and feminist revisioning of Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet. It takes us from a dusty office in Canada’s Queen’s University, into the fraught and furious worlds of two of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, and turns them upside-down. Constance Ledbelly is the beleaguered “spinster” academic, and unlikely heroine who embarks on a quest for Shakespearean origins and, ultimately, her own identity. When she deciphers an ancient and neglected manuscript, Constance is propelled through a very modern rabbit hole and lands smack in the middle of the tragic turning points of each play in turn. Her attempts to save first Desdemona, then Juliet, from their harrowing fates, result in a wild unpredictable ride through comedy and near-tragedy, as mild-mannered Constance learns to love, sword-fight, dance Renaissance-style, and master a series of disguises… Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) a gender-bendy, big-hearted and crazily intelligent romp, where irony and anger sing in perfect harmony with innocence and poignancy.




The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet


Book Description

All Hamlet Kennedy wants is to be a normal eighth grader. But with parents like hers - Shakespearean scholars who actually dress in Elizabethan regalia . . . in public! - it's not that easy. As if they weren't strange enough, her genius seven-year-old sister will be attending her middle school, and is named the new math tutor. Then, when the Shakespeare Project is announced, Hamlet reveals herself to be an amazing actress. Even though she wants to be average, Hamlet can no longer hide from the fact that she- like her family - is anything but ordinary.




Unravelled Dreams


Book Description

Reveals how commodity failure, as much as success, can shed light on aspirations, environment, and economic life in colonial societies.




Othello


Book Description




As You Desire


Book Description

A rake in tarnished armor… Desdemona Carlisle has spent most of her young life dreaming of a knight in shining armor. When a dashing figure in midnight-black riding a snow-white steed comes to rescue her from the ruffians who have kidnapped her, she believes her destiny has finally arrived. She surrenders herself to the masked stranger’s embrace only to discover her rescuer is none other than Harry Braxton, the scoundrel who stole her heart when she was just a girl, adding it to his collection of exotic treasures as if it were just another trinket. Harry Braxton doesn’t want to be any woman’s knight-errant. He plays the role of notorious rake to hide the dangerous secret that has kept him from offering Desdemona his own heart. But his tarnished armor soon begins to crumple beneath the irresistible assault of Desdemona’s sparkling wit, her dazzling beauty, her teasing and tender touch. As a legendary treasure hunter, he never dreamed he’d be forced to give up the most priceless treasure of all. When Lord Ravenscroft, Harry’s aristocratic cousin, comes courting, Desdemona makes a startling discovery. She might yearn for a hero, but what she really needs is a man—the only man who can fulfill all of her desires… “Connie Brockway’s work brims with warmth, wit, sensuality and intelligence.”—Amanda Quick, New York Times bestselling author “If it’s smart, sexy, and impossible to put down, it’s a book by Connie Brockway!”—Christina Dodd, New York Times bestselling author “If you’re looking for passion, tenderness, wit, and warmth, you need look no further. Connie Brockway is simply the best.”—Teresa Medeiros, New York Times bestselling author “Connie Brockway’s work belongs on every reader’s shelf!”—Romantic Times “Connie Brockway delivers romance with strength, wit, and intelligence.”—Tami Hoag, New York Times bestselling author “Brockway’s lush, lyrical writing style is a perfect match for her vivid characters, beautiful atmospheric setting, and sensuous love scenes.” — Library Journal




Middlesex


Book Description

Spanning eight decades and chronicling the wild ride of a Greek-American family through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, Jeffrey Eugenides’ witty, exuberant novel on one level tells a traditional story about three generations of a fantastic, absurd, lovable immigrant family -- blessed and cursed with generous doses of tragedy and high comedy. But there’s a provocative twist. Cal, the narrator -- also Callie -- is a hermaphrodite. And the explanation for this takes us spooling back in time, through a breathtaking review of the twentieth century, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie’s grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set our narrator’s life in motion. Middlesex is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It’s a brilliant exploration of divided people, divided families, divided cities and nations -- the connected halves that make up ourselves and our world.




The Grove Book of Opera Singers


Book Description

Covering over 1500 singers from the birth of opera to the present day, this marvelous volume will be an essential resource for all serious opera lovers and an indispensable companion to the enormously successful Grove Book of Operas. The most comprehensive guide to opera singers ever produced, this volume offers an alphabetically arranged collection of authoritative biographies that range from Marion Anderson (the first African American to perform at the Met) to Benedict Zak (the classical tenor and close friend and colleague of Mozart). Readers will find fascinating articles on such opera stars as Maria Callas and Enrico Caruso, Ezio Pinza and Fyodor Chaliapin, Lotte Lehmann and Jenny Lind, Lily Pons and Luciano Pavarotti. The profiles offer basic information such as birth date, vocal style, first debut, most memorable roles, and much more. But these articles often go well beyond basic biographical information to offer colorful portraits of the singer's personality and vocal style, plus astute evaluations of their place in operatic history and many other intriguing observations. Many entries also include suggestions for further reading, so that anyone interested in a particular performer can explore their life and career in more depth. In addition, there are indexes of singers by voice type and by opera role premiers. The articles are mostly drawn from the acclaimed Grove Music Online and have been fully revised, and the book is further supplemented by more than 40 specially commissioned articles on contemporary singers. A superb new guide from the first name in opera reference, The Grove Book of Opera Singers is a lively and authoritative work, beautifully illustrated with color and black-and-white pictures. It is an essential volume--and the perfect gift--for opera lovers everywhere.




Shakespeare’s Props


Book Description

Cognitive approaches to drama have enriched our understanding of Early Modern playtexts, acting and spectatorship. This monograph is the first full-length study of Shakespeare’s props and their cognitive impact. Shakespeare’s most iconic props have become transhistorical, transnational metonyms for their plays: a strawberry-spotted handkerchief instantly recalls Othello; a skull Hamlet. One reason for stage properties’ neglect by cognitive theorists may be the longstanding tendency to conceptualise props as detachable body parts: instead, this monograph argues for props as detachable parts of the mind. Through props, Shakespeare’s characters offload, reveal and intervene in each other’s cognition, illuminating and extending their affect. Shakespeare’s props are neither static icons nor substitutes for the body, but volatile, malleable, and dangerously exposed extensions of his characters’ minds. Recognising them as such offers new readings of the plays, from the way memory becomes a weapon in Hamlet’s Elsinore, to the pleasures and perils of Early Modern gift culture in Othello. The monograph illuminates Shakespeare’s exploration of extended cognition, recollection and remembrance at a time when the growth of printing was forcing Renaissance culture to rethink the relationship between memory and the object. Readings in Shakespearean stage history reveal how props both carry audience affect and reveal cultural priorities: some accrue cultural memories, while others decay and are forgotten as detritus of the stage.