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Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy

Author : Raymond Foery

Publisher : Scarecrow Press

Page : 145 pages

File Size : 16,54 MB

Release : 2023-06-14

Category : Performing Arts

ISBN : 0810877562

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Book Description

After an unparalleled string of artistic and commercial triumphs in the 1950s and 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock hit a career lull with the disappointing Torn Curtain and the disastrous Topaz. In 1971, the depressed director traveled to London, the city he had left in 1939 to make his reputation in Hollywood. The film he came to shoot there would mark a return to the style for which he had become known and would restore him to international acclaim. Like The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest before, Frenzy repeated the classic Hitchcock trope of a man on the run from the police while chasing down the real criminal. But unlike those previous works, Frenzy also featured some elements that were new to the master of suspense’s films, including explicit nudity, depraved behavior, and a brutal act that would challenge Psycho’s shower scene for the most disturbing depiction of violence in a Hitchcock film. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy: The Last Masterpiece, Raymond Foery recounts the history—writing, preprod



The Masterpiece

Author : Fiona Davis

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 368 pages

File Size : 20,98 MB

Release : 2018-08-07

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1524742961

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Book Description

In this captivating novel, New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis takes readers into the glamorous lost art school within Grand Central Terminal, where two very different women, fifty years apart, strive to make their mark on a world set against them. For most New Yorkers, Grand Central Terminal is a crown jewel, a masterpiece of design. But for Clara Darden and Virginia Clay, it represents something quite different. For Clara, the terminal is the stepping stone to her future. It is 1928, and Clara is teaching at the lauded Grand Central School of Art. Though not even the prestige of the school can override the public's disdain for a "woman artist," fiery Clara is single-minded in her quest to achieve every creative success—even while juggling the affections of two very different men. But she and her bohemian friends have no idea that they'll soon be blindsided by the looming Great Depression...and that even poverty and hunger will do little to prepare Clara for the greater tragedy yet to come. By 1974, the terminal has declined almost as sharply as Virginia Clay's life. Dilapidated and dangerous, Grand Central is at the center of a fierce lawsuit: Is the once-grand building a landmark to be preserved, or a cancer to be demolished? For Virginia, it is simply her last resort. Recently divorced, she has just accepted a job in the information booth in order to support herself and her college-age daughter, Ruby. But when Virginia stumbles upon an abandoned art school within the terminal and discovers a striking watercolor, her eyes are opened to the elegance beneath the decay. She embarks on a quest to find the artist of the unsigned masterpiece—an impassioned chase that draws Virginia not only into the battle to save Grand Central but deep into the mystery of Clara Darden, the famed 1920s illustrator who disappeared from history in 1931.



The Last Masterpiece

Author : Tom Towslee

Publisher : Next Chapter

Page : 353 pages

File Size : 18,23 MB

Release : 2024-06-26

Category : Fiction

ISBN :

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Book Description

After representatives from the world's most prestigious art museums are murdered in the Mexican beach town of Zihuatanejo, John Standard gets entangled in a deadly art heist. Standard is hired to transport a package from the airport to a local hotel. Inside is a lost masterpiece by Rafael, worth an estimated $350 million. When the art dealer is killed, Standard finds himself the custodian of the painting, and a target in a deadly game. Believing that the reclusive billionaire Carlos Strasser is behind the murders, Standard sets out to uncover the truth. The closer Standard gets to Strasser and his ruthless henchman, Heinz Richter, the more dangerous his mission becomes. With lives on the line and millions at stake, Standard must use every ounce of cunning to outmaneuver his powerful adversary. A gripping crime thriller set in Mexico, THE LAST MASTERPIECE is the fifth book in Tom Towslee's John Standard series.



The Last Masterpiece

Author : Laura Morelli

Publisher : HarperCollins

Page : 397 pages

File Size : 31,63 MB

Release : 2023-08-01

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0063205971

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Book Description

In a race across Nazi-occupied Italy, two women—a German photographer and an American stenographer—hunt for priceless masterpieces looted from the Florentine art collections. In the summer of 1943, Eva Brunner is taking photographs of Nazi-looted art hidden in the salt mines of the Austrian hinterland. Across the ocean in Connecticut, Josephine Evans is working as a humble typist at the Yale Art Gallery. When both women are called to Italy to contribute to the war effort, neither imagines she will hold the fate of some of the world’s greatest masterpieces torn from the Uffizi Galleries and other Florentine art collections in her hands. But as Italy turns from ally to enemy and Hitler’s plan to destroy irreplaceable monuments and works of art becomes frighteningly clear, each woman’s race against the clock—and against one another—might demand more than they were prepared to give. The Last Masterpiece takes readers on a heart-pumping adventure up the Italian peninsula, where nothing is as it seems and some of the greatest works of art and human achievement are at stake. Who might steal and who might save a work of art—and at what cost? Inspired by the incredible true story of the Monuments Women, the Fifth Army WACs, and the looted Florentine art collections during World War II, the latest historical novel by USA Today bestselling author and art historian Laura Morelli plunges readers into the heart of war-torn Italy.



The Masterpiece

Author : Francine Rivers

Publisher : NavPress

Page : 324 pages

File Size : 11,38 MB

Release : 2018-02-06

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1496418956

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Book Description

A New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller “This character-driven romance will enthrall [Rivers’s] many fans.” —Library Journal The New York Times bestselling author of Redeeming Love returns to her romance roots with this unexpected and redemptive love story, a probing tale that reminds us that mercy can shape even the most broken among us into an imperfect yet stunning masterpiece. A successful LA artist, Roman Velasco appears to have everything he could possibly want—money, women, fame. Only Grace Moore, his reluctant, newly hired personal assistant, knows how little he truly has. The demons of Roman’s past seem to echo through the halls of his empty mansion and out across his breathtaking Topanga Canyon view. But Grace doesn’t know how her boss secretly wrestles with those demons: by tagging buildings as the Bird, a notorious but unidentified graffiti artist—an alter ego that could destroy his career and land him in prison. Like Roman, Grace is wrestling with ghosts and secrets of her own. After a disastrous marriage threw her life completely off course, she vowed never to let love steal her dreams again. But as she gets to know the enigmatic man behind the reputation, it’s as if the jagged pieces of both of their pasts slowly begin to fit together . . . until something so unexpected happens that it changes the course of their relationship—and both their lives—forever. “Rivers deftly threads Roman’s and Grace’s lives together as they tiptoe around their emotional scars, eventually shifting into a dance of tentative steps toward a love neither can resist. Fans of Christian romance will delight in this tale of salvation through love.” —Kirkus Reviews “Richly detailed characters with traumatic pasts are woven together with biblical truths and redemptive themes. . . . This is an amazing, beautifully written tale to be savored and pondered and shared with others.” —Romantic Times “Readers will marvel at Rivers’s storytelling arc encompassing the reconciliation of gritty past misdeeds and the work in progress of a life of forgiveness.” —Booklist “Fans of Francine Rivers will eagerly devour The Masterpiece and find exactly what they are looking for: a beautifully written story of faith, romance, and the power that true freedom can bring.” —Bookreporter



Masterpiece

Author : Elise Broach

Publisher : Macmillan

Page : 305 pages

File Size : 50,8 MB

Release : 2008-09-30

Category : Juvenile Fiction

ISBN : 0805082700

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Book Description

In this follow-up to "Shakespeare's Secret," Broach delivers a fast-paced mystery in which a young boy and a beetle attempt to pull off a staged art heist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Illustrations.



The Last Stone

Author : Mark Bowden

Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Page : 377 pages

File Size : 14,78 MB

Release : 2019-04-02

Category : True Crime

ISBN : 0802147313

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Book Description

The true story of a cold case, a compulsive liar, and five determined detectives, from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author and “master journalist” (The Wall Street Journal). On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyons, ages ten and twelve, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, DC As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The investigation was shelved, and the mystery endured. Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware. The acclaimed author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968 had been a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper at the time of the original disappearance, and covered the frantic first weeks of the story. In The Last Stone, he returns to write its ending. Over months of intense questioning and extensive investigation of Welch’s sprawling, sinister Appalachian clan, five skilled detectives learned to sift truth from determined lies. How do you get a compulsive liar with every reason in the world to lie to tell the truth? The Last Stone recounts a masterpiece of criminal interrogation, and delivers a chilling and unprecedented look inside a disturbing criminal mind. “One of our best writers of muscular nonfiction.” —The Denver Post “Deeply unsettling . . . Bowden displays his tenacity as a reporter in his meticulous documentation of the case. But in the story of an unimaginably horrific crime, it’s the detectives’ unwavering determination to bring Welch to justice that offers a glimmer of hope on a long, dark journey.” —Time



The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

Author : Dominic Smith

Publisher : Sarah Crichton Books

Page : 305 pages

File Size : 46,3 MB

Release : 2016-04-05

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0374714045

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Book Description

“Written in prose so clear that we absorb its images as if by mind meld, “The Last Painting” is gorgeous storytelling: wry, playful, and utterly alive, with an almost tactile awareness of the emotional contours of the human heart. Vividly detailed, acutely sensitive to stratifications of gender and class, it’s fiction that keeps you up at night — first because you’re barreling through the book, then because you’ve slowed your pace to a crawl, savoring the suspense.” —Boston Globe A New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice A RARE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING LINKS THREE LIVES, ON THREE CONTINENTS, OVER THREE CENTURIES IN THE LAST PAINTING OF SARA DE VOS, AN EXHILARATING NEW NOVEL FROM DOMINIC SMITH. Amsterdam, 1631: Sara de Vos becomes the first woman to be admitted as a master painter to the city’s Guild of St. Luke. Though women do not paint landscapes (they are generally restricted to indoor subjects), a wintry outdoor scene haunts Sara: She cannot shake the image of a young girl from a nearby village, standing alone beside a silver birch at dusk, staring out at a group of skaters on the frozen river below. Defying the expectations of her time, she decides to paint it. New York City, 1957: The only known surviving work of Sara de Vos, At the Edge of a Wood, hangs in the bedroom of a wealthy Manhattan lawyer, Marty de Groot, a descendant of the original owner. It is a beautiful but comfortless landscape. The lawyer’s marriage is prominent but comfortless, too. When a struggling art history grad student, Ellie Shipley, agrees to forge the painting for a dubious art dealer, she finds herself entangled with its owner in ways no one could predict. Sydney, 2000: Now a celebrated art historian and curator, Ellie Shipley is mounting an exhibition in her field of specialization: female painters of the Dutch Golden Age. When it becomes apparent that both the original At the Edge of a Wood and her forgery are en route to her museum, the life she has carefully constructed threatens to unravel entirely and irrevocably.



Laura Rider's Masterpiece

Author : Jane Hamilton

Publisher : Grand Central Publishing

Page : 178 pages

File Size : 11,67 MB

Release : 2009-04-09

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0446551244

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Book Description

Laura and Charlie Rider have been married for twelve years. They share their nursery business in rural Wisconsin, their love for their animals, and their zeal for storytelling. Although Charlie's enthusiasm in the bedroom has worn Laura out, although she no longer sleeps with him, they are happy enough going along in their routine. Jenna Faroli is the host of a popular radio show, and in Laura's mind is "the single most famous person in the Town of Dover." When Jenna happens to cross Charlie's path one day, and they begin an e-mail correspondence, Laura cannot resist using Charlie to try out her new writing skills. Together, Laura and Charlie craft florid, strangely intimate messages that entice Jenna in an unexpected way. The "project" quickly spins out of control. The lines between Laura's words and Charlie's feelings are blurred and complicated, Jenna is transformed in ways that deeply disturb her, and Laura is transformed in her mind's eye into an artist. The transformations are hilarious and poignant, and for Laura Rider, beyond her wildest expectations.



Klara and the Sun

Author : Kazuo Ishiguro

Publisher : Vintage

Page : 273 pages

File Size : 43,61 MB

Release : 2021-03-02

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0593318188

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Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” (The Associated Press). • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?