Played for a Fool


Book Description

A senseless murder sets in motion a deadly act of revenge as Megan O'Connor, drawn into a kidnapping plot three years ago, finally finds happiness with her recent engagement to a wonderful man, a pillar of the community.




To Play the Fool


Book Description

The first cremation the homeless people held in Golden Gate Park was for a dog; their second pyre held a much larger body. To find the one responsible for these deaths, Kate Martinelli sets out on a quest for Brother Erasmus -- an enigmatic creature who has befriended the homeless and speaks only in quotations.




Playing the Fool


Book Description

The role of the fool is to provoke the powerful to question their convictions, preferably while avoiding a beating. Fools accomplish this not by hectoring their audience, but by broaching sensitive topics indirectly, often disguising their message in a joke or a tale. Writers and thinkers throughout history have adopted the fool’s approach, and here Ralph Lerner turns to six of them—Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Robert Burton, Pierre Bayle, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Gibbon—to elucidate the strategies these men employed to persuade the heedless, the zealous, and the overly confident to pause and reconsider. As Playing the Fool makes plain, all these men lived through periods marked by fanaticism, particularly with regard to religion and its relation to the state. In such a troubled context, advocating on behalf of skepticism and against tyranny could easily lead to censure, or even, as in More’s case, execution. And so, Lerner reveals, these serious thinkers relied on humor to move their readers toward a more reasoned understanding of the world and our place in it. At once erudite and entertaining, Playing the Fool is an eloquently thought-provoking look at the lives and writings of these masterly authors.




Fool


Book Description

“Hilarious, always inventive, this is a book for all, especially uptight English teachers, bardolaters, and ministerial students.” —Dallas Morning News Fool—the bawdy and outrageous New York Times bestseller from the unstoppable Christopher Moore—is a hilarious new take on William Shakespeare’s King Lear…as seen through the eyes of the foolish liege’s clownish jester, Pocket. A rousing tale of “gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity,” Fool joins Moore’s own Lamb, Fluke, The Stupidest Angel, and You Suck! as modern masterworks of satiric wit and sublimely twisted genius, prompting Carl Hiassen to declare Christopher Moore “a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word.”




What's My Name, Fool?


Book Description

In Whats My Name, Fool? sports writer Dave Zirin shows how sports express the worst - and at times the most creative, exciting, and political - features of our society. Zirins sharp and insightful commentary on the personalities, politics, and history of American sports is unlike any sports writing being done today. Zirin explores how NBA brawls highlight tensions beyond the arena, how the bold stances taken by sports unions can chart a path for the entire labor movement, and the unexplored political stirrings of a new generation of athletes who are no longer content to just ''play one game at a time.'' Whats My Name, Fool? draws on original interviews with former heavyweight champ George Foreman, Olympic athlete John Carlos, NBA player and anti-death penalty activist Etan Thomas, antiwar womens college hoopster Toni Smith, Olympic Project for Human Rights leader Lee Evans and many others. It also unearths a history of athletes ranging from Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali to Billie Jean King, who charted a new course through their athletic ability and their outspoken views.




Fools


Book Description

Leon Tolchinsky is ecstatic. He’s landed a terrific teaching job in an idyllic Russian hamlet. When he arrives, he finds people sweeping dust from the stoops back into their houses and people milking upside down to get more cream. The town has been cursed with Chronic Stupidity for two hundred years, and Leon’s job is to break the curse. No one tells him that if he stays over twenty-four hours and fails to break the curse, he too becomes stupid. But he has fallen in love with a girl so stupid, she has only recently learned how to sit down.




The Fool's Girl


Book Description

Nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2011 Shakespeare in Love meets Twelfth Night - A gripping and evocative historical novel by bestselling Celia Rees




Fool for Love


Book Description

The sad lament of Pecos Bill on the eve of killing his wife: Cast: gender - mixed; number - 1 male, 1 female; size - small; ages - adults.




The Book of Leon


Book Description

Everyone’s favorite houseguest who never left, Leon Black (played by award-winning comedian JB Smoove on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm) drops his wisdom and good-bad advice for the masses. Learn the secrets Larry David has gleaned from the Falstaff of television. Live your best Leon. Bring the Ruckus. Aristotle. Gandhi. Lao Tzu. Dr. Ruth. Amateurs. For centuries bespeckled dorks have pored over the scrolls of the ancients, read tea leaves, and looked to the stars for philosophy, wisdom, and advice. While some people have probably offered good advice, and others offer bad advice, Leon is here to offer his brand of good-bad advice. These are the musings of a master genius spitting out the secrets of the universe—to help you become just like him. Be forewarned: in opening this tome and Leon’s mind, you need to be prepared for straight talk. The kind of unfiltered blunt straight talk that pounds on your door, invites itself in, makes itself at home, helps itself to your food, security pass code, your expensive organic beet juice, and finally makes itself comfortable on that twin bed in your guest room. All the while you think you’re helping it—but really it’s helping you help yourself! Because that’s how this book doozit. Leon Black, he ain’t wrong...he just ain’t right.




The Serpent of Venice


Book Description

Venice, a long time ago. Three prominent Venetians await their most loathsome and foul dinner guest, the erstwhile envoy from the Queen of Britain: the rascal-Fool Pocket. This trio of cunning plotters—the merchant, Antonio; the senator, Montressor Brabantio; and the naval officer, Iago—have lured Pocket to a dark dungeon, promising an evening of sprits and debauchery with a rare Amontillado sherry and Brabantio's beautiful daughter, Portia. But their invitation is, of course, bogus. The wine is drugged. The girl isn't even in the city limits. Desperate to rid themselves once and for all of the man who has consistently foiled their grand quest for power and wealth, they have lured him to his death. (How can such a small man, be such a huge obstacle?). But this Fool is no fool . . . and he's got more than a few tricks (and hand gestures) up his sleeve. Greed, revenge, deception, lust, and a giant (but lovable) sea monster combine to create another hilarious and bawdy tale from modern comic genius, Christopher Moore.