Lovely Assistant


Book Description

Jenny Ng missed her last appointment, was hit by a car, and was hired by a magician on the same day. And those aren't even remotely the strangest things that happened to her this summer. Jenny's a typical New Yorker, too jaded too early, struggling to get by in the big city. Of course, the typical New Yorker rarely has to deal with very large and sardonic horses, magic swords, severed limbs, and mirror images that refuse to cooperate with all that reflecting business. But Jenny learns to cope. With the help of a clever conjurer, a few feckless friends, and enough Grim Reapers to fill out a football league, it's up to Jenny to learn the finer points of Life and Death...and save the world while she's at it. Geoph Essex's fast and fearless prose combines the wit of Douglas Adams, the quirk of Christopher Moore, and the inventive mythology of Neil Gaiman in an adventure that spans galaxies without ever straying too far from the familiar.




Imperfections


Book Description

Richard Trench finds himself with no arms and no legs, reduced to a torso in the trunk of a car. There is a reason. It all makes sense. The point is there somewhere . . . Imperfections elucidates the private lives of supermodels and circus freaks, sheiks and designer dominatrixes and the metamorphosis of the body chic. These are lives where the importance of vehicular mephitis-cide, a charity lobster boil for burn victims, a grilled-cheese sandwich with the face of the Virgin Mary toasted on it and a prophecy about the uncanny deaths of the voice-actors for Tigger and Piglet, can not be overlooked. Set in the world of glittering photo shoots in exotic locations, extreme visions of beauty and raucous fashion shows, Imperfections is a genre-bending novel that sits solidly in the foggy area between fact and fiction.







To My Assistant


Book Description

From the Hollywood assistant trenches, a hilarious guide to surviving life at the bottom of the totem pole. I will not make you sort my M&Ms by color. I will not take off four hours in the middle of the day to go shopping and then announce upon my return that “it’s going to be a late one—we need to catch up!” I will not request that you create and maintain my online dating profile. Welcome to the wickedly funny world of To My Assistant, where overworked and underappreciated assistants finally get their due. We’ve all been there. You might even be there right now. Do you depend upon your college education to handle crucial business decisions such as memorizing your boss’ lunch order, trying to schedule four meetings where only one can go, and helping your boss detag Facebook photos? Or what about those awesome days when you’re instructed to “send me that thing from a week ago,” “call that guy I wanted to call,” or “book me a table at that restaurant that girl said was really good,” and are then berated when you’re not able to figure out immediately what your boss is talking about? To My Assistant compiles everything that disgruntled and optimistic assistants everywhere promise NEVER TO DO when, one day, they have assistants of their own. From ridiculous requests and backhanded compliments to outright insults, and complete with helpful tips and tricks for Boss Wrangling—like what you can learn about your boss’s mood from his meal choices, how to navigate such professional minefields as requests for your opinion and interactions with your boss’s children and pets, and advanced translation techniques for incoherent e-mails and text messages—these pages are just what the underpaid masses need to survive (and laugh at) the daily injustices of life at the bottom of the totem pole.




Pricksongs and Descants


Book Description

Pricksongs & Descants, originally published in 1969, is a virtuoso performance that established its author - already a William Faulkner Award winner for his first novel - as a writer of enduring power and unquestionable brilliance, a promise he has fulfilled over a stellar career. It also began Coover's now-trademark riffs on fairy tales and bedtime stories. In these riotously word-drunk fictional romps, two children follow an old man into the woods, trailing bread crumbs behind and edging helplessly toward a sinister end that never comes; a husband walks toward the bed where his wife awaits his caresses, but by the time he arrives she's been dead three weeks and detectives are pounding down the door; a teenaged babysitter's evening becomes a kaleidoscope of dangerous erotic fantasies-her employer's, her boyfriend's, her own; an aging, humble carpenter marries a beautiful but frigid woman, and after he's waited weeks to consummate their union she announces that God has made her pregnant. Now available in a Grove paperback, Pricksongs & Descants is a cornerstone of Robert Coover's remarkable career and a brilliant work by a major American writer.





Book Description




Comic Sense


Book Description

The idea for this study came to me in the course of my reading of innova tive US-American! fiction of the last three decades. I observed that much of it is cast in the comic mode - or, more precisely, that there seems to be in contemporary fiction an affinity between 'innovation' and 'the comic' and that this affinity, furthermore, appears to be characteristic of postmo dernism. It is obvious, at the same time, that comic has become an elusive and, more often than not, a disputable category. Frederick Karl, in his sur vey of American Fictions 1940-1980, maintains, for instance, that much comic writing consists in ridicule that lacks deeper intellectual and cul tural roots. "Wit and mockery," he notes, "by themselves have little lasting value. Even in the best of such fiction, Gravity's Rainbow, one is made aware of attenuated skits stiched onto previous segments, rather than baked in by a defined point of view. " (Karl: 27) Such assessments of course challenge my view that the comic is in significant ways connected with what is innovative in postmodernist US-American fiction. Yet the term comic -or related terms like humour, parody, irony and so fort- is regularly and heavily employed in discussions or reviews of con temporary fiction.




Fortune


Book Description

He's the reason to be careful what you wish for. After her jealous boyfriend makes an angry, careless wish, Maya DeLuca finds herself trapped in a traveling demonic circus and at the mercy of a devious jinni, Bell Madoc. She joins the other lost souls of Arcanium who suffer in perpetual purgatory under the weight of their wishes, all making the best of a cursed situation. But Maya's not even cursed because of her own wish, which means she still has three for Bell to grant. He may be fond of her—the passion they share is as hellfire hot as it is wrong—but that doesn't mean she's safe from his endlessly inventive, wicked imagination. He might twist her wishes at his whim for his own pleasure. Or he might just give her what she wants...which could be even worse.




Scarlett Johansson


Book Description

Despite her prominence as an actress, fashionista, social activist and the "sexiest woman in the world," Scarlett Johansson has kept her life private. Her work ethic has been strong since her film debut in North (1994) at age 10. Then in 2003, Lost in Translation brought kudos and launched her adult career. While she never abandoned the independents, Johansson became a leading lady in very big films, including eight outings as former Russian assassin Black Widow thwarting alien incursions in The Avengers and other films in the Marvel Universe. This book surveys Johansson's life and films from childhood to her 2019 Academy Award nominations for Jojo Rabbit and Marriage Story. Each film entry includes a plot synopsis, extracts from contemporary reviews, behind-the-scenes information, and the author's analysis of the film. Looked at in-depth are the three Woody Allen collaborations, her role as Black Widow, and the films in which she becomes "the other."




Frost Moon


Book Description

In an alternate Atlanta where magic is practiced openly, where witches sip coffee at local cafes, shapeshifters party at urban clubs, vampires rule the southern night like gangsters, and mysterious creatures command dark caverns beneath the city, Dakota Frost's talents are coveted by all. She's the best magical tattooist in the southeast, a Skindancer, able to bring her amazing tats to life. When a serial killer begins stalking Atlanta's tattooed elite, the police and the Feds seek Dakota's help. Can she find the killer on the dark fringe of the city's Edgeworld? Among its powerful outcasts and tortured loners, what kind of enemies and allies will she attract? Will they see her as an invader, as a seducer, as an unexpected champion ... or as delicious prey?




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