Author : Nathaniel Rich
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 33,9 MB
Release : 2013-04-02
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0374224242
While working for a financial consulting firm that offers insurance against catastrophic events, a young mathematician becomes increasingly obsessed with doomsday scenarios until one of his worst-case scenarios unfolds in Manhattan.
Author : Charles Williams
Publisher : Open Road Media
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 16,59 MB
Release : 2012-09-18
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1453266194
DIVAboard a ghost ship, sailors discover a tale of treasure, lust, and murder/divDIV When the tanker finds the yacht, she is far from land, adrift in the middle of the Caribbean. No one is onboard, but the hold is stuffed with cash, the coffeepot is still warm, and a hint of perfume hangs in the air. The passengers have vanished, but the ship’s log tells a chilling story of the madness peculiar to the search for sunken riches./divDIV /divDIVThe journal was written by salvage diver Bill Manning, who was out of money and out of luck when he met a statuesque Swede named Shannon. She and her husband hire him to sail them to the Yucatan coast, to find a plane that went down carrying untold wealth. But a pair of gangsters is pursuing them, hoping for a crack at the treasure as well. For the sake of Shannon’s beauty Manning will chase this fortune, knowing it will take him to the height of riches, or to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. /div
Author : Abraham Polonsky
Publisher : Sadanlaur Publications
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 32,89 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN :
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), which stars Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Ed Begley, and Gloria Grahame, is written by blacklisted screenwriter Abraham Polonsky and directed by Robert Wise. The last great film noir of the black and white era it reflects the author's strong social conscience as racial conflict is portrayed as central to the failure of a bank robbery. This publication of the complete script blends the shooting script (written before the film was shot) and the continuity script (the elements which are contained in the finished film). The critical analysis draws extensively on specially conducted interviews with Robert Wise, Harry Belafonte and Abraham Polonsky. Discussed in depth are the significance of a black protagonist within the film noir genre; the adaptation from William McGivern's novel; and the critically celebrated jazz score by John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet.
Author : J R Jones
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 377 pages
File Size : 45,15 MB
Release : 2015-05-11
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0819573736
An “engrossing new biography” of the actor famed for his menacing onscreen persona—and his offscreen work for peace and civil rights (Film Quarterly). The Lives of Robert Ryan is an in-depth look at the gifted, complex, intensely private man Martin Scorsese called “one of the greatest actors in the history of American film.” The son of a Chicago construction executive with strong ties to the Democratic machine, Ryan became a star after World War II on the strength of his menacing performance as an anti-Semitic murderer in the film noir Crossfire. Over the next quarter century, he created a gallery of brooding, neurotic, and violent characters in such movies as Bad Day at Black Rock, Billy Budd, The Dirty Dozen, and The Wild Bunch. His riveting performances expose the darkest impulses of the American psyche during the Cold War. At the same time, Ryan’s marriage to a liberal Quaker and his own conscience launched him into a tireless career of peace and civil rights activism that stood in direct contrast to his screen persona. Drawing on unpublished writings and revealing interviews, film critic J.R. Jones deftly explores the many contradictory facets of Robert Ryan’s public and private lives, and how these lives intertwined in one of the most compelling actors of a generation. “Engaging . . . Jones describes a complex man who grappled publicly with the world’s demons and privately with his own, among them alcohol and depression.” —Associated Press “Jones has done a superb job . . . A masterly biography.” —Library Journal Includes photographs
Author : Danielle Steel
Publisher : Delacorte Press
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 44,72 MB
Release : 2017-05-02
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1101883928
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The wise, moving novel from Danielle Steel, whose many bestselling tales have made her one of America’s favorite authors Taking chances is part of life, but when you bet your future against the odds, it’s a high-risk game. Kate Madison’s stylish resale shop has been a big SoHo success, supporting her and her four kids since her husband’s untimely death. Now her children are grown and ready to forge lives of their own. And they all choose to play against the odds, to their mother’s dismay. Isabelle, a dedicated attorney, is in line to make partner at her Wall Street firm when she falls for a client she represents in a criminal case. She tells herself she can make a life with him—but can she? Julie, a young designer, meets a man who seems too good to be true and falls under his spell. She marries him quickly, gives up her job, and moves to Los Angeles to be at his side—but is all what it seems? Justin is a struggling writer who pushes for children with his partner before they’re financially or emotionally ready. Will the strain on the relationship take too high a toll? And Willie, the youngest, a tech expert, makes a choice that shocks them all, with a woman twelve years older. Kate—loving, supportive, and outspoken—can’t keep her children from playing against the odds. Can the odds be beaten? Not often—as her children have to learn for themselves. For Kate, the hardest lesson will be that she can’t protect the children she loves from the choices they make—but can only love them as they make them.
Author : Nathaniel Rich
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 45,20 MB
Release : 2018-01-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0374716315
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Paris Review Staff Pick A January Pick by Salon, Town and Country, Southern Living, and LA Magazine New Orleans, 1918. The birth of jazz, the Spanish flu, an ax murderer on the loose. The lives of a traumatized cop, a conflicted Mafia matriarch, and a brilliant trumpeter converge—and the Crescent City gets the rich, dark, sweeping novel it so deserves. From one of the most inventive writers of his generation, King Zeno is a historical crime novel and a searching inquiry into man’s dreams of immortality. New Orleans, a century ago: a city determined to reshape its destiny and, with it, the nation’s. Downtown, a new American music is born. In Storyville, prostitution is outlawed and the police retake the streets with maximum violence. In the Ninth Ward, laborers break ground on a gigantic canal that will split the city, a work of staggering human ingenuity intended to restore New Orleans’s faded mercantile glory. The war is ending and a prosperous new age dawns. But everything is thrown into chaos by a series of murders committed by an ax-wielding maniac with a peculiar taste in music. The ax murders scramble the fates of three people from different corners of town. Detective William Bastrop is an army veteran haunted by an act of wartime cowardice, recklessly bent on redemption. Isadore Zeno is a jazz cornetist with a dangerous side hustle. Beatrice Vizzini is the widow of a crime boss who yearns to take the family business straight. Each nurtures private dreams of worldly glory and eternal life, their ambitions carrying them into dark territories of obsession, paranoia, and madness. In New Orleans, a city built on swamp, nothing stays buried long.
Author : Jessica Buchanan
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 46,82 MB
Release : 2013-05-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1476725160
An account of the aid worker co-author's dramatic January 2012 rescue from kidnappers in Somalia by members of a Navy SEAL Team Six unit offers insight into the effective use of targeted U.S. military missions.
Author : Jans B. Wager
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 42,88 MB
Release : 2017-03-21
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1477312277
Film noir showcased hard-boiled men and dangerous femmes fatales, rain-slicked city streets, pools of inky darkness cut by shards of light, and, occasionally, jazz. Jazz served as a shorthand for the seduction and risks of the mean streets in early film noir. As working jazz musicians began to compose the scores for and appear in noir films of the 1950s, black musicians found a unique way of asserting their right to participate fully in American life. Jazz and Cocktails explores the use of jazz in film noir, from its early function as a signifier of danger, sexuality, and otherness to the complex role it plays in film scores in which jazz invites the spectator into the narrative while simultaneously transcending the film and reminding viewers of the world outside the movie theater. Jans B. Wager looks at the work of jazz composers such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Chico Hamilton, and John Lewis as she analyzes films including Sweet Smell of Success, Elevator to the Gallows, Anatomy of a Murder, Odds Against Tomorrow, and considers the neonoir American Hustle. Wager demonstrates how the evolving role of jazz in film noir reflected cultural changes instigated by black social activism during and after World War II and altered Hollywood representations of race and music.
Author : Sonia Nassery Cole
Publisher : BenBella Books, Inc.
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 46,28 MB
Release : 2013-10-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 193952914X
When Sonia Nassery Cole set out to film The Black Tulip in her homeland of Afghanistan, she knew the odds were against her; she was told time and time again that filming inside a war zone would be impossible. What she didn't anticipate was how intent the Taliban and its sympathizers were on halting the film's production—the crew encountered extortion, government corruption, kidnapping attempts, and death threats, even with around-the-clock security. Her cinematographer fled after two days, and many others followed. After 9/11, Cole wrote The Black Tulip, based on a true story of a real Afghan family. The plot was simple: After 2001, when the Taliban was routed, an Afghan family opened The Poet's Corner—a restaurant with an open microphone for all to read poetry, perform music, and tell their stories. But the Taliban didn't approve, and the family's new-found hope proved fleeting as it struggled to maintain the restaurant and its vibrant way of life. Selected as Afghanistan's official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Academy Awards, The Black Tulip is a modern portrait of Afghanistan that captures the plight and resilience of its people. Without financial support from a studio or anyone else, Cole self-financed the film by mortgaging her home and selling her belongings. Then, with everything on the line, she left for Kabul to make the impossible possible and set out to gather the right people who would risk their lives and willingly be part of the production. In Will I Live Tomorrow?, Cole gives an intimate look into what went on behind the scenes of making a controversial film in the heart of a war-ravaged country—the looming terror the Taliban creates among Afghans everywhere and the challenges and fear the cast and crew faced every day. Will I Live Tomorrow? is a memoir about one woman's struggle to make a difference in a violent world.
Author : Bud Withers
Publisher : Triumph Books
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 41,99 MB
Release : 2002-09
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 1623684579
The inspirational and touching story of Gonzaga's rise from college basketball obscurity to near mythic status as everyone's favorite underdog, this book was penned by acclaimed college basketball writer Bud Withers, who has covered the Zags since it all began. In dramatic fashion he reanimates the events of the last few years, adding flesh to the personalities and summoning the details, great and small, that make up this unforgettable story. Readers will meet players such as Blake Stepp, a blue chip high school recruit who selected Gonzaga because of what it wasn't; Dan Dickau, who became a first-round NBA pick in 2002 after becoming Gonzaga's first All-American player in the history of the men's basketball program; Dan Monson, the former coach who instilled a fearless attitude among the players and began Gonzaga's storied run; Mark Few, the current coach who has continued and expanded upon the program's great success; and Father Tony Lehmann, the school's longtime chaplain who died in March 2002, who was the inspirational leader of the basketball team. This book is a must read for any college basketball fan wanting to know more about Gonzaga, the team that makes deep runs into the NCAA tournament almost every year without compromising on the small-school values that still separate it from the basketball factories it terrorizes each March.
