> Books > 19598 media kazuo ishiguro

Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro collects nineteen intervi ... Read more

Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro collects nineteen interviews, conducted over the past two decades on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, with the author of Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day. The interviews collectively address the entirety of this literary artist's career, affording readers of Ishiguro (b. 1954) the most vivid portrait yet of contexts and influences behind novels that have been garnering awards for a quarter-century. The interviews focus on the author's six novels--A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled, When We Were Orphans, and Never Let Me Go--but also treat his short fiction, screenplays, and film adaptations of his novels. The writer's evolving understanding of himself, his Japanese heritage, and his use of English and Japanese history are also discussed at length. Though readers might expect Ishiguro to be reticent, given the nature of his protagonists, his responses are full, thoughtful, and frequently witty. The volume includes interviews from British, French, and American periodicals, a conversation between Ishiguro and acclaimed Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe, and a new interview conducted with the book's editors. Brian W. Shaffer is professor of English and dean of academic affairs for faculty development at Rhodes College. He is the author of The Blinding Torch: Modern British Fiction and the Discourse of Civilization and Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro, among other works. Cynthia F. Wong is associate professor of English at the University of Colorado at Denver. She is the author of Writers and Their Work: Kazuo Ishiguro. Minimize

This edited collection of new and insightful critical essay ... Read more

This edited collection of new and insightful critical essays brings together a wide range of academics whose work stages a forum exploring the key aspects of Kazuo Ishiguro's novels. Featuring an interview with Ishiguro, this groundbreaking book is ideal for anyone studying the work of this major contemporary author. Minimize

Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro collects nineteen intervi ... Read more

Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro collects nineteen interviews, conducted over the past two decades on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, with the author of Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day. The interviews collectively address the entirety of this literary artist's career, affording readers of Ishiguro (b. 1954) the most vivid portrait yet of contexts and influences behind novels that have been garnering awards for a quarter-century. The interviews focus on the author's six novels--A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled, When We Were Orphans, and Never Let Me Go--but also treat his short fiction, screenplays, and film adaptations of his novels. The writer's evolving understanding of himself, his Japanese heritage, and his use of English and Japanese history are also discussed at length. Though readers might expect Ishiguro to be reticent, given the nature of his protagonists, his responses are full, thoughtful, and frequently witty. The volume includes interviews from British, French, and American periodicals, a conversation between Ishiguro and acclaimed Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe, and a new interview conducted with the book's editors. Brian W. Shaffer is professor of English and dean of academic affairs for faculty development at Rhodes College. He is the author of The Blinding Torch: Modern British Fiction and the Discourse of Civilization and Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro, among other works. Cynthia F. Wong is associate professor of English at the University of Colorado at Denver. She is the author of Writers and Their Work: Kazuo Ishiguro. Minimize

In Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro, Brian W. Shaffer provides ... Read more

In Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro, Brian W. Shaffer provides the first critical survey of the life and work of the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day. One of the most closely followed British writers of his generation, the Japanese-born, English-raised and -educated Ishiguro is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, including A Pale View of Hills (1982, Winifred Holtby Prize of the Royal Society of Literature), An Artist of the Floating World (1986, Whitbread Book of the Year Award), The Remains of the Day (1988, Booker Prize), and The Unconsoled (1995, Cheltenham Prize). Ishiguro's reputation also extends beyond the world of English-language readers. His work has been translated into twenty-seven foreign languages, and the feature film version of The Remains of the Day was nominated for eight Academy Awards. Shaffer's study reveals Ishiguro's novels to be intricately crafted, psychologically absorbing, hauntingly evocative works that betray the author's grounding not only in the literature of Japan but also in the great twentieth-century British masters-Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, E. M. Forster, and James Joyce-as well as in Freudian psychoanalysis. All of Ishiguro's novels are shown to capture first-person narrators in the intriguing act of revealing-yet also of attempting to conceal beneath the surface of their mundane present activities-the alarming significance and troubling consequences of their past lives. Minimize

This important new book provides a comprehensive introducti ... Read more

This important new book provides a comprehensive introduction to British fiction from 1979 to the present. The volume outlines the main developments in contemporary fiction and engages with key themes such as cultural identity, gender, myth and history, postcolonialism and urban culture. In a series of lively and accessible essays, key critics introduce a broad range of leading British writers, including Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, Will Self, Pat Barker, Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis and Zadie Smith. Offering an illuminating analysis and contextualiztion of British fiction today, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of contemporary literature. Minimize

ISBN13: 9780679731726. ISBN10: 0679731725. by Kazuo Ishigur ... Read more

ISBN13: 9780679731726. ISBN10: 0679731725. by Kazuo Ishiguro. Published by Random House, Inc.. Edition: 89 Minimize

In Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro, Brian W. Shaffer provides ... Read more

In Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro, Brian W. Shaffer provides the first critical survey of the life and work of the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day. One of the most closely followed British writers of his generation, the Japanese-born, English-raised and -educated Ishiguro is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, including A Pale View of Hills (1982, Winifred Holtby Prize of the Royal Society of Literature), An Artist of the Floating World (1986, Whitbread Book of the Year Award), The Remains of the Day (1988, Booker Prize), and The Unconsoled (1995, Cheltenham Prize). Ishiguro's reputation also extends beyond the world of English-language readers. His work has been translated into twenty-seven foreign languages, and the feature film version of The Remains of the Day was nominated for eight Academy Awards. Shaffer's study reveals Ishiguro's novels to be intricately crafted, psychologically absorbing, hauntingly evocative works that betray the author's grounding not only in the literature of Japan but also in the great twentieth-century British masters-Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, E. M. Forster, and James Joyce-as well as in Freudian psychoanalysis. All of Ishiguro's novels are shown to capture first-person narrators in the intriguing act of revealing-yet also of attempting to conceal beneath the surface of their mundane present activities-the alarming significance and troubling consequences of their past lives. Minimize

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the finest and most accomplished c ... Read more

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the finest and most accomplished contemporary writers of his generation. The short story author, television writer and novelist, included twice in Granta's list of Best Young British Writers, has over the past twenty-five years produced a body of work which is just as critically-acclaimed as it is popular with the general public. Like the writings of Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro's work is concerned with creating discursive platforms for issues of class, ethics, ethnicity, nationhood, place, gender and the uses and problems surrounding artistic representation. As a Japanese immigrant who came to Great Britain in 1960, Ishiguro has used his unique position and fine intellectual abilities to contemplate what it means to be British in the contemporary era. This guide traces the main themes throughout Ishiguro's writing whilst it also pays attention to his short stories and writing for television. It includes a new interview with the author, a preface by Haruki Murakami and discussion of James Ivory's adaptation of The Remains of the Day. Minimize

In this broad-ranging and ambitious intervention in the deb ... Read more

In this broad-ranging and ambitious intervention in the debates over the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of cosmopolitanism, Rebecca L. Walkowitz argues that modernist literary style has been crucial to new ways of thinking and acting beyond the nation. While she focuses on modernist narrative, Walkowitz suggests that style conceived expansively as attitude, stance, posture, and consciousness helps to explain many other, nonliterary formations of cosmopolitanism in history, anthropology, sociology, transcultural studies, and media studies.Walkowitz shows that James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, and W. G. Sebald use the salient features of literary modernism in their novels to explore different versions of transnational thought, question moral and political norms, and renovate the meanings of national culture and international attachment. By deploying literary tactics of naturalness, triviality, evasion, mix-up, treason, and vertigo, these six authors promote ideas of democratic individualism on the one hand and collective projects of antifascism or anti-imperialism on the other. Joyce, Conrad, and Woolf made their most significant contribution to this "critical cosmopolitanism" in their reflection on the relationships between narrative and political ideas of progress, aesthetic and social demands for literalism, and sexual and conceptual decorousness. Specifically, Walkowitz considers Joyce's critique of British imperialism and Irish nativism; Conrad's understanding of the classification of foreigners; and Woolf's exploration of how colonizing policies rely on ideas of honor and masculinity. Rushdie, Ishiguro, and Sebald have revived efforts to question the definitions and uses of naturalness, argument, utility, attentiveness, reasonableness, and explicitness, but their novels also address a range of "new ethnicities" in late-twentieth-century Britain and the different internationalisms of contemporary life. They use modernist strategies to articulate dynamic conceptions of local and global affiliation, with Rushdie in particular adding playfulness and confusion to the politics of antiracism. In this unique and engaging study, Walkowitz shows how Joyce, Conrad, and Woolf developed a repertoire of narrative strategies at the beginning of the twentieth century that were transformed by Rushdie, Ishiguro, and Sebald at the end. Her book brings to the forefront the artful idiosyncrasies and political ambiguities of twentieth-century modernist fiction. (Fall 2007) Minimize

Free Worldwide Delivery : The Remains of the Day : Paperbac ... Read more

Free Worldwide Delivery : The Remains of the Day : Paperback : Faber and Faber : 9780571200733 : 0571200737 : 05 Apr 1999 : An elderly butler is on a five-day motoring trip through the West Country in the 1950s. The climax of his journey is to be a reunion with his former housekeeper. This 1989 Booker Prize-winner attempts to capture a period in British history and draw a portrait of a man in old age. Minimize

Participating in the reframing of literary studies, Cosmopo ... Read more

Participating in the reframing of literary studies, Cosmopolitan Fictions identifies, as "cosmopolitan fiction", a genre of global literature that investigates the ethics and politics of complex and multiple belonging. The fictions studied by Katherine Stanton represent and revise the global histories of the past and present, including the "indigenous or native" narratives that are, in Homi Bhabha's words, "internal to" national identity itself. The works take as their subjects: * European unification* the human rights movement* the AIDS epidemic* the new South Africa. And they test the infinite demands for justice against the shifting borders of the nation, rethinking habits of feeling, modes of belonging and practices of citizenship for the global future. Scholars, teachers and students of global literary and cultural studies, Cosmopolitan Fictions is a book to want on your reading list. Minimize

"This volume is a must for anyone interested in academic pr ... Read more

"This volume is a must for anyone interested in academic problems and will produce the emotion of recognition in those concerned, and the emotion of surprise in those outside the field."-Los Angeles Times "Professors Caplow and McGee have given scholarly respectability to what many a professor has long suspected: Competition in the academic marketplace is as severe as in the business world. [Their book] might come to have the same function for the professor as Machiavelli's work had for ambitious princes."-Midwest Journal of Political Science The Academic Marketplace is a straightforward, hard-hitting expos of the American university. Caplow and McGee consider all the working parts of the system and assess their suitability to the professed purpose. Their report on the actualities, myths, and consequences of routines thus amounts to an anatomy of an institution-an anatomy that does not present a pretty picture. We learn, for example, that the chief criteria used in making appointments are prestige and compatibility, not teaching ability. The authors describe the precipitous decline in teaching loads and then explain how this tendency is related to the new seller's market, on the one hand, and to the extravagantly indeterminate structure of the university as an institution, on the other. Not only is the temper judicious, the facts well gathered and competently marshaled, but the expression of results is invariably lucid. In a new introduction, the authors sort out fact from legend and discern trends, they address the validity of their own research methods and the applicability of their original findings to today's academic marketplace. They observe that the essential commodity offered in the academic marketplace is still the same-the mysterious intangible called prestige, by which universities, colleges, departments, disciplines, fields of inquiry, journals, and ultimately faculty candidates are ranked from high to low, and raised up and cast down accordingly. Theodore Caplow is Commonwealth Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Systems of War and Peace, American Social Trends, and Peace Games. Reece J. McGee is professor of sociology emeritus at Purdue University. He was awarded the American Sociological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Teaching. He is the author of Academic Janus, three textbooks, and numerous articles on the academic profession and teaching. Minimize

`This book appears to fill a substantial gap in the literat ... Read more

`This book appears to fill a substantial gap in the literature at present. There are, quite simply, no books available which engage seriously and competently with the presentation of health issues in the media, and certainly none which focuses on representations of health and illness in as thematically coherent a manner as Seale proposes to do' - Richard Gwyn, University of Cardiff `This is an excellent resource for students. It provides a comprehensive review of secondary literature in the field and is very well researched. Students of sociology of health and illness and in media and communication studies will find the book invaluable' - David Oswell, Goldsmiths College, University of London `This is a comprehensive work on media health, providing an invaluable "toolkit" for understanding health and the media in contemporary society. Seale goes further than previous textbooks, critiquing the "lament" of media health promoters in order to explore the moralisation and commercialisation of media health' - Dr Annette Hill, University of Westminster How are health matters presented by the mass media? How accurate are the messages we are receiving? This book demonstrates how health messages in popular mass media are important influences in our lives, and that they are not neutral, being subject to many determining influences. It demonstrates the importance of mass media for understanding the experience of illness, health and health care, bringing together the latest thinking in the field of media studies and the sociology of health and illness. This book provides a thorough review of research literature on media representations of health, illness and health care, covering their production, characteristic forms and relationships with the everyday lives of media audiences. It brings together both well known and lesser-known studies in the context of an integrated, sociological argument about media and health. Media producers are subject to a variety of influences, from medical lobbies, scientific organizations, and not least the commercial pressure to satisfy media-saturated audiences. These mean that aims of health promoters are not always easily achieved, leading to considerable tensions that require a deeper understanding of media health than has hitherto been applied to them. This book will be essential reading for health educators and promoters, as well as health care providers interested in the cultural aspects of health, sociologists of health and illness, and students and academics of media studies. Minimize

Free Worldwide Delivery : Nocturnes : Hardback : Faber and ... Read more

Free Worldwide Delivery : Nocturnes : Hardback : Faber and Faber : 9780571244980 : 057124498X : 07 May 2009 : Explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the 'hush-hush floor' of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, this title features characters that range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning. Minimize

Historical scholarship - the neglected child of media studi ... Read more

Historical scholarship - the neglected child of media studies - is in the midst of a renaissance, as shown in this collection of papers from a seminar held in May 1999 at the Department of Information and Media Science, University of Aarhus. Since the 1970s, media research has focused on media policy and media politics. Change came with the publication of a three-volume Danish Media History (1996-97), which signaled a need for further and more detailed research within the neglected historical field, especially in light of the importance of the computer in the media landscape. The Aarhus seminar provided the environment for reflection on the theoretical and methodological problems inherent in the writing of media histories and looked at published histories that provide models of empirical research within various media: radio, television and print. Drs. Anderson and Curtin discuss the phenomenon of the aenetworkAe era in the United States and conclude that it is not the natural, inevitable or permanent form of radio and television that will survive there or elsewhere. Dr. Brger provides an outline of a general theory of the media; and Dr. Kolstrup looks at the structure of newspapers from 1800 to 1999, which has survived with minor changes - up to now. Other topics include television fiction, radio history and the influence of computers. Contributions from Nordic, Dutch & American researchers. Minimize

Media Queered is a groundbreaking assessment of minorities ... Read more

Media Queered is a groundbreaking assessment of minorities and the media. Authorities including Larry Gross, Edward Alwood, Lisa Henderson, and Marguerite Moritz join several new scholars to examine four aspects of visibility: history, expertise, popularity, and technology. To supplement this research, media practitioners including journalists working in the gay and mainstream press contribute a unique series of interludes. The first is by Studs Terkel, who interviewed founders of the U.S. homophile movement. Written for scholars, students, and instructors of media and gender studies, Media Queered is also accessible for general readers intrigued by the recent flowering of queer characters, themes, and images in popular culture.AUTHORBIO: Kevin G. Barnhurst received his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. He is Professor and Head of the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where he teaches media theory, political and visual studies, and qualitative research methods. He is an essayist who has written on the homoerotic images of Lewis Hine, as well as a social scientist who has studied queer representations on U.S. National Public Radio. He has served on the board of the Glaad Center for the Study of Media & Society and on campus diversity committees at Syracuse University and UIC. Minimize

Religion is infiltrating the arena of consumer culture in i ... Read more

Religion is infiltrating the arena of consumer culture in increasingly visible ways. We see it in a myriad of forms--in movies, such as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, on Internet shrines and kitschy Web "altars," and in the recent advertising campaign that attacked fuel-guzzling SUVs by posing the question: What would Jesus drive? In Religion, Media, and the Marketplace, scholars in history, media studies, and sociology explore this intersection of the secular and the sacred. Topics include how religious leaders negotiate between the competing aims of the mainstream and the devout in the commercial marketplace, how politics and religious beliefs combine to shape public policy initiatives, how the religious "other" is represented in the media, and how consumer products help define the practice of different faiths. At a time when religious fundamentalism in the United States and throughout the world is inseparable from political aims, this interdisciplinary look at the mutual influences between religion and the media is essential reading for scholars from a wide variety of disciplines. Minimize

Religion is infiltrating the arena of consumer culture in i ... Read more

Religion is infiltrating the arena of consumer culture in increasingly visible ways. We see it in a myriad of forms--in movies, such as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, on Internet shrines and kitschy Web "altars," and in the recent advertising campaign that attacked fuel-guzzling SUVs by posing the question: What would Jesus drive? In Religion, Media, and the Marketplace, scholars in history, media studies, and sociology explore this intersection of the secular and the sacred. Topics include how religious leaders negotiate between the competing aims of the mainstream and the devout in the commercial marketplace, how politics and religious beliefs combine to shape public policy initiatives, how the religious "other" is represented in the media, and how consumer products help define the practice of different faiths. At a time when religious fundamentalism in the United States and throughout the world is inseparable from political aims, this interdisciplinary look at the mutual influences between religion and the media is essential reading for scholars from a wide variety of disciplines. Minimize

When one thinks of the classic adventure-story authors of t ... Read more

When one thinks of the classic adventure-story authors of the pulp fiction era, H. Rider Haggard, Talbot Mundy and Rafael Sabatini may come first to mind. But Arthur O. Friel's stellar contributions - particularly his stories featuring Lourenco and Pedro, two workers on a rubber-tree plantation in the Amazon Jungle. Their adventures in the Amazon's mysterious back-country certainly deserve honorable mention. Here are tales of peril and last-minute rescue, brutal savages and men of honor, snake-worshipping armies and half-ape Lost Races-and many more! For in the shadows of the rain-forest, many evils lurk... human and otherwise! Features a new introduction by Darrell Schweitzer, eight short stories and The Jararaca, a complete novel. Minimize

Free Worldwide Delivery : Nocturnes : Paperback : Faber and ... Read more

Free Worldwide Delivery : Nocturnes : Paperback : Faber and Faber : 9780571245000 : 0571245005 : 18 Mar 2010 : Explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the 'hush-hush floor' of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, this book features characters that range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning. Minimize

Locating Migrating Media details the extent to which media ... Read more

Locating Migrating Media details the extent to which media productions, both televisual and cinematic, have sought out new and cheaper shot locations, creative staff, and financing around the world. The book contributes to debates about media globalization, focusing on the local impact of new sites of media production. The book's chapters also question the role that film and television industries and local and regional governments play in broader economic develop and tax incentive schemes.While metaphors of transportation, mobility, fluidity and change continue to serve as key concepts and frames for understanding contemporary media industries, products and processes, the essays in this book look to local spaces, neighborhoods, cultural workers and stories to ground the global—that is, to interrogate the effect of media globalization before, during and after film and television shooting and onsite production.By locating migrating media, these chapters seek to determine the political, economic and cultural conditions that produce contemporary forms of televisual and cinematic storytelling, and how these processes affect the inhabitants, the "look" and the very geopolitical future of local communities, neighborhoods, cities and regions. The focus on relocated screen production highlights the act of film- and television-making, both aesthetically and economically. To locate migrating media is therefore to determine the political and cultural economies of globalized sets and stages, be they in new studios or on city streets or, perhaps most importantly, in our imaginations. Minimize

The study of media language is increasingly important both ... Read more

The study of media language is increasingly important both for media studies and for discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. In Media Discourse, Norman Fairclough applies the "critical discourse analysis" framework he developed in Language and Power and Discourse and Social Life to media language. Drawing on examples from TV, radio, and newspapers, he focuses on changing practices of media discourse in relation to wider processes of social and cultural change, particularly the tensions between public and private in the media and the tensions between information and entertainment. Norman Fairclough is a professor at the University of Lancaster. The study of media language is increasingly important both for media studies and for discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. In Media Discourse, Norman Fairclough applies the "critical discourse analysis" framework he developed in Language and Power and Discourse and Social Life to media language. Drawing on examples from TV, radio, and newspapers, he focuses on changing practices of media discourse in relation to wider processes of social and cultural change, particularly the tensions between public and private in the media and the tensions between information and entertainment. "Offers a new contemporary approach to media language which connects both with the key issues in modern social theory and with poststructuralist interest in intertextuality and genre mixing. It will be highly useful for media studies courses and adds a dimension to existing issues and theories in textual analysis."—Theo van Leeuwen, London College of Printing and Distributive Trades "This book offers a new contemporary approach to media language which connects both with the key issues in modern social theory and with poststructuralist interest in intertextuality and genre mixing. It will be highly useful for media studies courses and adds a dimension to existing issues and theories in textual analysis."—Theo van Leeuwen, London College of Printing and Distributive Trades Minimize

"John Maeda deconstructs the digital world with the earned ... Read more

"John Maeda deconstructs the digital world with the earned authority of an M.I.T.-trained computer scientist and a card-carrying artist. Being ambidextrous with Eastern and Western cultures, he can see things most of us overlook. The result is a humor and expression that brings out the best in computers and art."--Nicholas NegroponteJohn Maeda is one of the world's leading experimental graphic designers and is quickly becoming a digital culture icon. His early preoccupation with the intersection of computer programming and digital art has resulted in a fascinating, interactive, and stunningly beautiful collection of work. Maeda has pioneered many of the key expressive elements that are prevalent on the web today. Among his most well-known works are The Reactive Square, which features a simple black square on a computer screen that changes shape if one yells at it, and Time Paint, in which paint flies across the screen. He has created innovative, interactive calendars, digital services, and advertisements for companies such as Sony, Shiseido, and Absolut Vodka.This is the first publication to present a complete overview of Maeda's work and philosophy. A glorious visual exploration of ideas and graphic form, Maeda @ Media takes you through Maeda's beginnings in early computerized printouts, to his reactive graphics on CD-ROM, to his dynamic experiments on the web, to his pedagogical approach to digital visual art, and finally to his overarching quest to understand the very nature of the relationship between technology and creativity. Six thematic chapters provide an overview of his entire career and research. But this is not just a catalog of older work: interspersed between each chapter is a new visual essay that has been created exclusively for this publication to underline each of the major themes.Coming together in a massive 480 pages, printed in a dazzling array of color combinations on three different kinds of paper, the result is a manifesto, a finely crafted manual and inspiration sourcebook all in one.With over 1000 illustrations. Minimize

(Gay / Anthology / Collections / Contemporary / The Arts / ... Read more

(Gay / Anthology / Collections / Contemporary / The Arts / Exhibitionism / Public Places / Series) Best-selling gay fiction author J. M. Snyder invites you into the glittery and glamorous world of celebrities who seek real love among the stars. Previously available only in electronic format, these steamy novellas have now been combined for a paperback edition! Included are the stories......Beautiful Liar (At fifteen, JT Pierce was the star of a hit TV show and had the world in his hands. Every teenybopper magazine had his face on it; every teenage girl had his poster on her wall. But then the show went on hiatus, and JT wouldn't lower himself to bit parts or commercials. Slowly, his star faded from view. Seven years later, JT is Johnny Thomas, who hopes to jumpstart his career by hiring his former manager, Lou Merrin. He wants to do serious movies, a huge blockbuster or two, and claim one of those coveted Oscars for himself. But Lou cautions Johnny about the paparazzi, who can make or break a star, and he's heard rumors of Johnny's sexuality that might prevent him from landing those desired leading roles. Still, Johnny's nothing if not persistent, and he swears he'll play it straight. Until he meets Brett, a photographer who turns his life--and his heart--upside down. Suddenly the celebrity gossip website Z-23 seems to have exclusive pictures of Johnny, and someone close to him leaks information about an audition that was supposed to be kept quiet. When the photographs surface that Johnny thought were taken in confidence, he realizes he must choose between the career path Lou offers him and the love he wants to share with Brett.)......Beautiful Disaster (Twenty-year-old Corey Evans is one-half of 2ICE, the biggest musical duo on the radio. Pronounced 'twice,' they're number one on the Billboard charts this week with their latest single. To hear their manager tell it, they're number one in download sales, with two albums that have already gone platinum, and currently on their second U.S. tour, which has sold out stadiums across the nation. Despite this, there's an emptiness inside him that Corey can't seem to fill, no matter how many groupies he takes to his bed. He sees this same emptiness mirrored in the eyes of his band-mate, Ian Coltraine, who drowns his evenings after each show with a bottle of whiskey. Ian's the one Corey turns to when he wakes beside an unknown fan, still asleep in his bed and needs help evicting her. He's Corey best friend, the only person on the tour he can confide in, who he really trusts...the one, Corey finally realizes, with whom he is madly, deeply, terribly in love. And he suspects Ian might feel the same. But Corey's recent string of one-night stands makes Ian cautious about his friend's true feelings. He's wanted Corey for so long, and has watched him go through countless fans in search of...what? Ian doesn't know. And he doesn't yet believe Corey when he says Ian might be it. Ian hopes so, but can't bring himself to believe Corey's fickle desire won't be gone in the morning. Can these two young men somehow move beyond Corey's past and Ian's pain to embrace a love they both so desperately desire?) Minimize

Every family has its own story to tell. Be it tragic, heart ... Read more

Every family has its own story to tell. Be it tragic, heartbreaking, or triumphant, each tale forms part of a clan's history and defines its identity. Author John Schissler, Jr. started with an autobiographical essay in his history class in 1964, but didn't really give it much thought. Recently, through his brother's urging, he felt somewhat obliged to reveal their storied past. After a painstaking research, he now comes up with a book that narrates the fascinating history of his family entitled Passage: The Making of an American Family.What started as a school requirement now developed into a detailed memoir of a family's story that impacts the lives of many. Passage chronicles the humble beginnings of John Schissler's family and its struggles to weather the storms of life. Thinking he already had the skeleton of the story, Schissler looked for ways to make the pieces of the tale fall into place. Through the help of his parents, relatives, and friends, he looked for connections, photos, and other evidences to corroborate the existing story he already had. Author Schissler traces his family's roots and finds out that their relatives came from Donaueschingen. Germany, where there are two streams that come together to form the source of the Donau (Danube) river. He believes it is only fitting that his family, who were Donauschwaben, eventually ended up in Wisconsin, which in Native American language means "gathering" or "meeting of the waters."Passage is not merely a story of a clan who survived the horrors of the world war against the innocent; it also serves as a memorial to all the forgotten souls and unsung heroes murdered by Stalin, victims of the "final solution", and other nameless ones who were dumped indiscriminately into mass graves.Accompany John Schissler, Jr. as he revisits family's and his own unforgettable voyage to survival in this remarkable, imagery-filled memoir. Follow their exploits as they sought refuge in a foreign soil that embraced them as if they were its own. Join them as they celebrate diversity in their newfound land, their new home called Amerca. Witness the bonds they formed, the friendships and families they built, the failures that brought forth success, and life's challenges that made them what they are today.According to author Schissler, "War crimes don't necessarily end with the war. This is a true story about an ordinary, World War II European family, who was forced to embark on an extraordinary odyssey fraught with danger, disease, and death to reach the shores of the 'Promised Land'. Shot at by British planes, imprisoned by the Russians, and forced to work in the peat bogs of East Germany, we finally escaped to West Germany where we found temporary asylem until we completed our pilgrimage to Ellis Island. The saga continues with my family's physical, emotional, and social struggles to get a piece of that American Dream and our eventual assimilatinon into that cultural diversity of that melting pot which is America." Minimize

Ever since the visions of H.P. Lovecraft began to haunt the ... Read more

Ever since the visions of H.P. Lovecraft began to haunt the world, people from all walks of life have celebrated various interpretations of these musings. We are shown a world shroud in darkness that has been materialized by primordial malignant gods who fought one another for control of the Universe and for the worship of the humans who brought to them sacrifices and abominable litanies. But as many have already assumed, this Necronomicon tradition was indeed the product of Lovecraft's imagination, and it only much later became known as the Cthulhu-mythos, a haven for horror-fantasy genre authors. For nearly a century thereafer, the Necronomicon remained a fictional product of dark fantasy until the famous "Simon" folio was presented to the world in 1977. While many readers superimposed the Lovecraftian lore into their interpretation verbatim, this new document did not present rituals by which the malignant Ancient Ones would be unleashed into this world - in fact, it suggested the exact opposite: beneath the foundation of the esoteric mysteries exists a secret and sacred tradition to fight against this very act! As an unfortunate move by its contemporary readership, the "Simonomicon" came under attack as being no more authentic than Lovecraft's own stories. More serious practitioners came to a more educated conclusion: the magickal notebook (or grimoire) was incomplete at best, alluding not to the Enlilite traditions common to the "Sumerians", but rather to a Mardukite tradition that was raised by the "Babylonians" in honor of Marduk, firstborn son of Enki. Then, after the completion of the ARCANUM anthology in 2008, Joshua Free took on the role of "Nabu Maerdechai" and organized a occult research team in dedication to these mysteries called the Mardukite Chamberlains, which set out to uncover the truth behind the veils of centuries of misinformation about the backwaters of human consciousness including very specifically the role of the Anunaki or Sky Gods who appear at the heart of every ancient pantheon. The range of the Mardukite work included lengthy discourses with other related published researchers, unceasing hours in abandoned corners of old libraries and museums, participation in sessions with other practicing occults and even a visit to the "tablet collections" at the University of Pennsylvania. The culminating results were nothing like anyone would have expected: an authentic and verifiable version of the Necronomicon salvaged from the shifting desert sands of time in the Middle East and Egypt, unparalleled by anything already available to True Seekers. It appeared to be the most complete collection of ancient writings on the planet that formed the very foundation of all the human traditions and beliefs that would emerge thereafter. Given this, we concluded that being the ancient source of our modern traditions that have had the meaning washed out of them, this path was the most perfect, complete and logical example we currently have to pursue on this planet! This present edition of the Necronomicon edited by Joshua Free, is not Lovecraftian or Simonian (while it could serve to offer validity to materials from both sources for those who seek it), neither is it "dangerous" or a "hoax" (though those who fear the revelation of these truths for the world will think it the former and label it the later). This edition of the Necronomicon is the single most ancient and pure unaltered lore concerning the hottest topics of our time and all times, including divinity, creation, human origins, aliens, religion, pantheistic magickal traditions, alternate dimensions, portals and the afterlife. In this new millennium of uncertainties, it is most likely that the uncovering of the past will reveal our future. Minimize