13 Little Blue Envelopes


Book Description

New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson’s funny, heartbreaking, and utterly romantic tale gets a great new cover! Ginny Blackstone never thought she’d spend her summer vacation backpacking across Europe. But that was before she received the first little blue envelope from Aunt Peg. This letter was different from Peg’s usual letters for two reasons: 1. Peg had been dead for three months. 2. The letter included $1000 cash for a passport and a plane ticket. Armed with instructions for how to retrieve twelve other letters Peg wrote—twelve letters that tell Ginny where she needs to go and what she needs to do when she gets there—Ginny quickly finds herself swept away in her first real adventure. Traveling from London to Edinburgh to Amsterdam and beyond, Ginny begins to uncover stories from her aunt’s past and discover who Peg really was. But the most surprising thing Ginny learns isn’t about Peg . . . it’s about herself. Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it’s all because of the 13 little blue envelopes. Look for the sequel, The Last Little Blue Envelope!




Hollywood Highbrow


Book Description

Today's moviegoers and critics generally consider some Hollywood products--even some blockbusters--to be legitimate works of art. But during the first half century of motion pictures very few Americans would have thought to call an American movie "art." Up through the 1950s, American movies were regarded as a form of popular, even lower-class, entertainment. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, viewers were regularly judging Hollywood films by artistic criteria previously applied only to high art forms. In Hollywood Highbrow, Shyon Baumann for the first time tells how social and cultural forces radically changed the public's perceptions of American movies just as those forces were radically changing the movies themselves. The development in the United States of an appreciation of film as an art was, Baumann shows, the product of large changes in Hollywood and American society as a whole. With the postwar rise of television, American movie audiences shrank dramatically and Hollywood responded by appealing to richer and more educated viewers. Around the same time, European ideas about the director as artist, an easing of censorship, and the development of art-house cinemas, film festivals, and the academic field of film studies encouraged the idea that some American movies--and not just European ones--deserved to be considered art.




Fresh from the Farm 6pk


Book Description




The Abyssinian


Book Description

A young French doctor braves the wilds of 17th century Abyssinia to cure the country's sick king and gain an ally for Louis XIV. On his success rides a knighthood and the hand of a beautiful woman. Adventure, love and cultural differences by a French doctor who served with Médecins sans Frontières.




The Abbess of Castro


Book Description

'The Abbess of Castro' is a novella by Stendhal which recounts the untimely tragic romance between the daughter of the wealthiest man in Lazio and a penniless gangster. It may be a tale of star-crossed lovers set in Italy, but this novella is so much more than an alternative Romeo and Juliet. Beneath the surface lies an eye-opening tale of political machinations that Machiavelli would be proud of, violent family feuds and swashbuckling adventures. Claimed to be translated from 16th Century manuscripts, 'The Abbess of Castro' packs an extra punch with its extremely unsympathetic view on warfare and an acute critique on ardent individuals undone by passion. Stendhal is widely regarded to be an eminent example of Romantic Realism throughout his work and directly influenced the world-famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy in his depictions of war, especially in Tolstoy's works 'Sevastopol Sketchers', 'The Invaders', 'The Cossacks' and 'Youth and Childhood'. Stendhal (1783-1842), the pseudonym of Marie-Henry Beyle, was a French writer. A pioneer of literary realism and master of the psychological portrayals of his characters, he is best known for his novels 'The Red and the Black' (1830) and 'The Charterhouse of Parma' (1839).




The Sex-Starved Marriage


Book Description

'Not tonight, darling, I've got a headache...' An estimated one in three couples suffer from problems associated with one partner having a higher libido than the other. Marriage therapist Michele Weiner Davis has written THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE to help couples come to terms with this problem. Weiner Davis shows you how to address pyschological factors like depression, poor body image and communication problems that affect sexual desire. With separate chapters for the spouse that's ready for action and the spouse that's ready for sleep, THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE will help you re-spark your passion and stop you fighting about sex. Weiner Davis is renowned for her straight-talking style and here she puts it to great use to let you know you're not alone in having marital sex problems. Bitterness or complacency about ho-hum sex can ruin a marriage, breaking the emotional tie of good sex.




Yvain


Book Description

The twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes is a major figure in European literature. His courtly romances fathered the Arthurian tradition and influenced countless other poets in England as well as on the continent. Yet because of the difficulty of capturing his swift-moving style in translation, English-speaking audiences are largely unfamiliar with the pleasures of reading his poems. Now, for the first time, an experienced translator of medieval verse who is himself a poet provides a translation of Chrétien’s major poem, Yvain, in verse that fully and satisfyingly captures the movement, the sense, and the spirit of the Old French original. Yvain is a courtly romance with a moral tenor; it is ironic and sometimes bawdy; the poetry is crisp and vivid. In addition, the psychological and the socio-historical perceptions of the poem are of profound literary and historical importance, for it evokes the emotions and the values of a flourishing, vibrant medieval past.




Rafael Viñoly Architects


Book Description

KEYNOTE: The definitive monograph highlighting the global works of the visionary hailed by The New York Times' Herbert Muschamp as "the most elegant architect now practicing in the United States." For nearly half a century Rafael Vinoly has been driven by the belief that the responsibility of architecture is to elevate the public realm. While his early work in Argentina transformed the landscape of his native continent, his first major projects in New York--the John Jay College of Criminal Justice--and in Tokyo--the International Forum--established Vinoly as an international presence in architecture, whose buildings sustain a structural originality that transcends passing fads. This monograph features a chronological sampling of Vinoly's best work in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The large and small-scale projects encompass courthouses, private residences, athletic facilities, performing arts centers, museums, and educational buildings. Illustrated with photographs, plans, and drawings, and accented by Vinoly's personal reflection on his career, this volume brings together the achievements of one of today's most internationally acclaimed architects. AUTHOR: Rafael Vinoly was born in Uruguay and by the age of twenty was founding partner of Estudio de Arquitectura, which would become one of the largest design studios in Latin America. In 1983 he founded Rafael Vinoly Architects PC, a New York based firm that now has offices in London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Abu Dhabi. Philip Jodidio has published numerous books on contemporary architecture, including Architecture: Art and Architecture: Nature. He lives in Grimentz, Switzerland. ILLUSTRATIONS 500 colour illustrations