Fools Playing Fools


Book Description

No sooner has handsome, partially disabled Ned Savage moved into the apartment next door to Hugo Miller than he is apparently murdered with a heavy candlestick to his head while he is collapsing into anaphylactic shock in his living room, due to a fungus that is commonly found on marijuana plants. The action happens in and around several productions of “Twelfth Night” in NYC and at a nearby Shakespeare festival. Hugo, Gabriele and Ruth travel to California to see a high-tech cannabis operation, to London to visit Ned’s pregnant wife (a secret marriage), and to Istanbul to meet a famous author who has invested in Ned’s career. Ned’s sexuality and his pregnant wife’s preferences aren’t clear, and Gabriele Cortese is part of a love triangle involving both of them. But the keys to the solution are found on a stormy night filled with lightning and fools in New York City.




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.




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.




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




King of Fools


Book Description

To survive in the City of Sin, an innocent girl must choose her new identity in this dark YA fantasy—the sequel to Ace of Shades. Indulge your vices in the City of Sin, where a sinister street war is brewing and fame is the deadliest killer of them all. Prim and proper Enne Salta never expected to team up with an infamous con man like Levi Glaiyser. But winning the Shadow Game was not the victory they imagined. Now the duo are wanted for murder and Enne is forced to live in disguise as Séance, a mysterious figure of the underworld. Desperate to build his empire, Levi makes a deal with the estranged son of Mafia donna Vianca Augustine, while Enna remains trapped by Vianca’s binding oath, unsure whether to embrace the role of refined lady or cunning street lord. As they walk a path of unimaginable wealth, a dangerous game of crime and politics swirls around them. And when unforeseen players enter, they must each make an impossible choice: sacrifice everything . . . Or die as legends.




Fanatics & Fools


Book Description

As America's leaders fight pre-emptive wars abroad and ordinary Americans fight to keep their heads above water here at home, Arianna Huffington offers a no-holds-barred account of where we stand and a clear and remarkable vision of where we should be headed. Taking aim at the ruthless fanatics in the Bush White House and the feckless fools in the all-too-compliant Democratic opposition, the best-selling author of Pigs at the Trough paints a scathing picture of our contemporary political landscape -- peopled with scoundrels and cowards, and awash in the constant and corrosive flow of dirty money. But the book doesn't stop there. Over the course of her run for governor of California, Arianna Huffington learned that criticism and outrage are not enough. She lays out her game plan for winning back America from our not-so-compassionately-conservative president, now firmly and happily in the grip of right-wing radicals like Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and John Ashcroft. With the 2004 election fast approaching, Arianna Huffington sees fire in the ashes of the Democratic Party and reason for hope that this can be the year that the people finally take back control of their government and their country. Fearless, funny, in full command of the facts, and ever passionate, Arianna Huffington offers not just a chapter-and-verse diagnosis of the fanaticism that drives the Bush White House but a bold vision of New Responsibility for rebuilding our broken democracy. If you want to know what you can do to restore America to the promise and moral greatness envisioned by our greatest leaders, from Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt to FDR and Bobby Kennedy, this book is required reading. These are big dreams, but, as Arianna argues, anything smaller guarantees the reelection of George Bush. Book jacket.




Fools Are Everywhere


Book Description

In this lively work, Beatrice K. Otto takes us on a journey around the world in search of one of the most colorful characters in history—the court jester. Though not always clad in cap and bells, these witty, quirky characters crop up everywhere, from the courts of ancient China and the Mogul emperors of India to those of medieval Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. With a wealth of anecdotes, jokes, quotations, epigraphs, and illustrations (including flip art), Otto brings to light little-known jesters, highlighting their humanizing influence on people with power and position and placing otherwise remote historical figures in a more idiosyncratic, intimate light. Most of the work on the court jester has concentrated on Europe; Otto draws on previously untranslated classical Chinese writings and other sources to correct this bias and also looks at jesters in literature, mythology, and drama. Written with wit and humor, Fools Are Everywhere is the most comprehensive look at these roguish characters who risked their necks not only to mock and entertain but also to fulfill a deep and widespread human and social need.




April Fools', Mr. Todd!


Book Description

It’s April Fools' Day — and Judy’s birthday — and Mr. Todd has a trick or two of his own planned in the latest Judy Moody tale for newly independent readers. April Fools' Day just happens to be one of Judy Moody’s favorite days of the year. And this year she’s got one thing on her mind: the perfect prank she’s going to play on Mr. Todd, thanks to an awesome present from her brother, Stink. Gotcha, Mr. Todd! But in all the excitement over spaghetti trees, April fish, and fools' errands, Judy worries that something else will be forgotten by Mr. Todd and Class 3T altogether: April 1 also happens to be Judy’s birthday! Gulp! Will her friends remember in time, or will Judy be the fool this year? And just what might Mr. Todd have up his sleeve?




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.