The Second Mrs. Robinson


Book Description

The Second Mrs. Robinson is a chilling tale of passion and betrayal with all the suspense of a Mary Higgins Clark and the drama of a modern day Rebecca. Elaina Adams is newly divorced, wounded and vulnerable. Alex Robinson is a recent widower, brooding and intense, a genetic scientist with a mysterious past. He will stop at nothing to resurrect the love he shared with his late wife. NOT another book about cloning, this unique premise was inspired by real-life cutting-edge scientific research. For anyone who has ever loved and lost and dared to love again, The Second Mrs. Robinson will keep you guessing—right up to its unimaginable conclusion!




Mrs Robinson's Disgrace


Book Description

When the married Isabella Robinson was introduced to the dashing Edward Lane at a party in 1850, she was utterly enchanted. He was 'fascinating', she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man's charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, and she was to find it hard to shake...In one of the most notorious divorce cases of the nineteenth century, Isabella Robinson's scandalous secrets were exposed to the world. Kate Summerscale brings vividly to life a frustrated Victorian wife's longing for passion and learning, companionship and love, in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality.




The Graduate


Book Description

The basis for Mike Nichols' acclaimed 1967 film starring Dustin Hoffman -- and for successful stage productions in London and on Broadway -- this classic novel about a naive college graduate adrift in the shifting social and sexual mores of the 1960s captures with hilarity and insight the alienation of youth and the disillusionment of an era. The Graduate When Benjamin Braddock graduates from a small Eastern college and moves home to his parents' house, everyone wants to know what he's going to do with his life. Embittered by the emptiness of his college education and indifferent to his grim prospects -- grad school? a career in plastics? -- Benjamin falls haplessly into an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the relentlessly seductive wife of his father's business partner. It's only when beautiful coed Elaine Robinson comes home to visit her parents that Benjamin, now smitten, thinks he might have found some kind of direction in his life. Unfortuately for Benjamin, Mrs. Robinson plays the role of protective mother as well as she does the one of mistress. A wondrously fierce and absurd battle of wills ensues, with love and idealism triumphing over the forces of corruption and conformity.




Pictures at a Revolution


Book Description

Documents the cultural revolution behind the making of 1967's five Best Picture-nominated films, including Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, Doctor Doolittle, In the Heat of the Night, and Bonnie and Clyde, in an account that discusses how the movies reflected period beliefs about race, violence, and identity. 40,000 first printing.




Seduced by Mrs. Robinson


Book Description

*An Amazon Best Book of the Month* “[Gray] writes smartly and insightfully . . . The book as a whole offers a fascinating look at how this movie tells a timeless story.” —The Washington Post Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you? When The Graduate premiered in December 1967, its filmmakers had only modest expectations for what seemed to be a small, sexy art-house comedy adapted from an obscure first novel by an eccentric twenty-four-year-old. There was little indication that this offbeat story—a young man just out of college has an affair with one of his parents’ friends and then runs off with her daughter—would turn out to be a monster hit, with an extended run in theaters and seven Academy Award nominations. The film catapulted an unknown actor, Dustin Hoffman, to stardom with a role that is now permanently engraved in our collective memory. While turning the word plastics into shorthand for soulless work and a corporate, consumer culture, The Graduate sparked a national debate about what was starting to be called “the generation gap.” Now, in time for this iconic film’s fiftieth birthday, author Beverly Gray offers up a smart close reading of the film itself as well as vivid, never-before-revealed details from behind the scenes of the production—including all the drama and decision-making of the cast and crew. For movie buffs and pop culture fanatics, Seduced by Mrs. Robinson brings to light The Graduate’s huge influence on the future of filmmaking. And it explores how this unconventional movie rocked the late-sixties world, both reflecting and changing the era’s views of sex, work, and marriage.




Home School


Book Description

Finally, the sequel to the international bestseller and one of the most classic movies of all time, The Graduate, has arrived. At the end of Charles Webb’s first novel, The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock rescues his beloved Elaine from a marriage made not in heaven, but in California. For over forty years, legions of fans have wondered what happened to the young couple after The Graduate’s momentous final scene. The wait is over. Eleven years and 3,000 miles later, Benjamin and Elaine live Westchester County, a suburb of New York City, with their two sons, whom they are educating at home. A continent now stands between them and the boys’ surviving grandparent, now known as Nan, but who in former days answered to Mrs. Robinson. The story opens with the household in turmoil as the Westchester School Board attempts to quash the unconventional educational methods the family is practicing. Desperate situations call for desperate remedies—even a cry for help to the mother-in-law from hell, who is only too happy to provide her loving services—but at a price far higher than could be expected. At long last, the unforgettable characters that made The Graduate such a classic are back …and they’re better than ever—including, of course, the extraordinary Mrs. Robinson. Wryly observing the horrors and absurdities of domestic life, Home School has all the precision and wit that made The Graduate such a long-lasting success. Praise for Charles Webb and Home School: "There's a lot of sharp, funny dialogue....those who remember the good old days will have some fun." --Hartford Courant “Charles Webb is a highly gifted and accomplished writer.” – Chicago Tribune "Brilliant...sardonic, ludicrously funny." --The New York Times on The Graduate “Charles Webb's sequel to The Graduate sparkles with as much wit and invention as the original. Throughout the book, everything – dialogue, characterization, even incident – is pared down to a minimum, and yet the result, far from being undernourished, hums with richness and vitality. So here’s to you Mrs. Robinson, and to Charles Webb for doing such a fine job of resurrecting her.” --Sunday Telegraph (UK) “[Home School] offers a witty and bitingly accurate tale of suburban frustration whose slightness is integral to its charm.” --Daily Mail (UK) “Distinctive, wry, spare and beautifully modulated.” --Daily Telegraph (UK) “Forty years overdue, the sequel to The Graduate was worth the wait. A great read.” --The London Paper (UK) “By utilizing the same wry humor and pinpoint characterization of the first novel, and by delving even further into the dark motives of the iconic Mrs. Robinson, Webb has made this continuation of a classic believable and entertaining.” --The Works (UK)




The Works of Mary Robinson, Part I Vol 3


Book Description

Regularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.




My Life as a Goddess


Book Description

“Smart, fast, clever, and funny (As f*ck!)” (Tiffany Haddish), this collection of side-splitting and illuminating essays by the popular stand-up comedian, alum of Chelsea Lately and The Mindy Project, and host of truTV’s Talk Show the Game Show is perfect for fans of the New York Times bestsellers Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby. From a young age, Guy Branum always felt as if he were on the outside looking in. From a stiflingly boring farm town, he couldn’t relate to his neighbors. While other boys played outside, he stayed indoors reading Greek mythology. And being gay and overweight, he got used to diminishing himself. But little by little, he started learning from all the sad, strange, lonely outcasts in history who had come before him, and he started to feel hope. In this “singular, genuinely ballsy, and essential” (Billy Eichner) collection of personal essays, Guy talks about finding a sense of belonging at Berkeley—and stirring up controversy in a newspaper column that led to a run‑in with the Secret Service. He recounts the pitfalls of being typecast as the “Sassy Gay Friend,” and how, after taking a wrong turn in life (i.e. law school), he found stand‑up comedy and artistic freedom. He analyzes society’s calculated deprivation of personhood from fat people, and how, though it’s taken him a while to accept who he is, he has learned that with a little patience and a lot of humor, self-acceptance is possible. “Keenly observant and intelligent, Branum’s book not only offers uproarious insights into walking paths less traveled, but also into what self-acceptance means in a world still woefully intolerant of difference” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). My Life as a Goddess is an unforgettable and deeply moving book by one of today’s most endearing and galvanizing voices in comedy.




Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace, The Private Diary of A Victorian Lady ENHANCED EDITION


Book Description

Enhanced Edition of the bestselling Mrs Robinson's Disgrace, including author videos and podcasts On a mild winter's evening in 1850, Isabella Robinson set out for a party. Her carriage bumped across the wide cobbled streets of Edinburgh's Georgian New Town and drew up at 8 Royal Circus, a grand sandstone house lit by gas lamps. This was the home of the rich widow Lady Drysdale, a vivacious hostess whose soirees were the centre of an energetic intellectual scene. Lady Drysdale's guests were gathered in the high, airy drawing rooms on the first floor, the ladies in dresses of glinting silk and satin, bodices pulled tight over boned corsets; the gentlemen in tailcoats, waistcoats, neckties and pleated shirt fronts, dark narrow trousers and shining shoes. When Mrs Robinson joined the throng she was introduced to Lady Drysdale's daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Edward Lane. She was at once enchanted by the handsome Mr Lane, a medical student ten years her junior. He was 'fascinating', she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man's charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, which she was to find hard to shake... A compelling story of romance and fidelity, insanity, fantasy, and the boundaries of privacy in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality, Mrs Robinson's Disgrace brings vividly to life a complex, frustrated Victorian wife, longing for passion and learning, companionship and love.




A Chance in the World


Book Description

A stirring account of courage, hope, and victory, A Chance in the World is the extraordinary story of what is possible when you dare to believe. "Home is the place where our life stories begin. It is where we are understood, embraced, and accepted. It is a sanctuary of safety and security, a place to which we can always return. Down in the dank basement, amidst my moldy, hoarded food and beloved worm-eaten books, I dreamed that my real home, the place where my story had begun, was out there somewhere, and one day I was going to find it." Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives a terrifying existence. Caught in the clutches of a cruel foster family and subjected to constant abuse, he finds his only refuge in a box of books gifted to him by a kind stranger. In these books, he discovers new worlds he can only imagine and gains hope that one day he might have a different life, that one day he will find his true home. Armed with just a single clue, Steve embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, only to find that nothing is as it appears. A Chance in the World is the unbelievable true story of a broken boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Through it all, Steve's story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a new place, where love awaits.