2011, ISBN: 9781581173758

Paperback, Hardcover

New York: Ballantine Books, 1997-03-02. Mass Market Paperback. Fair. spine creasing, edge wears, some soiling to page ends; Tommy Phan is a 30-year-old Vietnamese-American detective and… More...

New York: Ballantine Books, 1997-03-02. Mass Market Paperback. Fair. spine creasing, edge wears, some soiling to page ends; Tommy Phan is a 30-year-old Vietnamese-American detective and novelist living in Southern California, and a chaser of the American Dream. He drives home his brand-new Corvette one day to discover a strange doll on his doorstep. It's a rag doll made entirely of white cloth, with no face or hair or clothes. Where the eyes should be, there are two crossed stitches of black thread. Five sets of crossed black stitches mark the mouth, and another pair form an X over the heart. He brings it into the house. That night, he hears an odd little popping sound and looks up to see the crossed stitches over the doll's heart breaking apart. When he picks up the doll, he feels something pulsing in its chest. Another thread unravels to reveal a reptilian green eye --and not a doll's eye, because it blinks. Tommy Phan pursues the thing as it scrambles away into his house -- and then is pursued by it as it evolves from a terrifying and vicious minikin into a hulking and formidable opponent bent on killing him., Ballantine Books, 1997-03-02, 2, Reprise, 2001-11-20. Audio CD. Very Good/Very Good. excellent condition CD in original jewel case with inserts; Producer, record executive, and songwriter David Foster has a long history of trying to wed commercial considerations to the lighter elements of pop music, and in young Josh Groban, whom he adopted as a protégé in late 1998 when the singer was 17, he is trying to get in on the classical crossover market effectively occupied by the likes of Andrea Bocelli, Sarah Brightman, and Charlotte Church (who duets with Groban on "The Prayer" here). Groban has a rich voice that falls somewhere between a low tenor and a high baritone, and Foster has here crafted or commissioned music that will sound classical to the ears of non-classical fans, much of it with lyrics in Italian to complete the effect. "Gira con Me," for example, is a slow ballad that sounds like it may have escaped from a minor opera, but in fact was composed by Foster and songwriter/producer Walter Afanasieff (best-known for his work with Mariah Carey). Groban is also given some ballads in English, with songwriting credits that include such Southern California pop-meisters as Richard Marx, Albert Hammond, Carole Bayer Sager, and Foster's wife, Linda Thompson. The result is an ersatz classical crossover record that won't fool the experts but easily could find its way into households that welcome Celine Dion and other sub-operatic emoters of her ilk. Groban is certainly not to be blamed for taking his chances with Foster instead of staying in college or pursuing a classical career, and his first album is enjoyable even if it doesn't live up to its pretensions. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi, Reprise, 2001-11-20, 3, Gene Leis Guitar brochure/advertisement13.6 x 13.4 inches, 2 pagesGene Leis (April 19, 1920 March 15, 1993) was an American jazz guitarist, teacher, bandleader, composer, producer and entrepreneur. He was known primarily for his publications and recorded guitar courses in the 1960s.Leis was born into a musical family in Sedgwick, Kansas, near Witchita. His parents had a family band and played at local dances, weddings, and other events. When he was nine, he joined the family group on mandolin, an instrument whose neck was small enough for him to play comfortably. In his early teens he took up tenor guitar and began playing with other small groups. His father wanted him to play cello, and Leis negotiated a series of banjo lessons in exchange.During the late 1930s Leis listened to the swing bands of Goodman and to guitarists Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. The introduction of the electric guitar changed the nature of the guitar player in dance bands so that they could play loud enough to be heard over the other instruments. He decided to focus on guitar.In early 1941, this 21-year-old musician enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in Galveston, Texas, and was sent to Muroc Army Air Field, in the desert north of Lancaster, California. Later this airfield would become known as Edwards Air Force Base, but in 1941 it was an airfield used to train bombing and gunnery maneuvers.While at the base, Gene took lessons from Dave Saunders, a student of George M. Smith, a studio and performing guitarist and author of "George M. Smith Modern Guitar Method". These lessons formed the core of Gene's later teaching system. Smith's method focused on teaching players the chord techniques necessary for rhythm playing and improvising in contemporary jazz. His focus was on thoroughly knowing and using chords as the basis for rhythm and chord improvising. Gene would later say, "If you don't know your chords you'll never play enough guitar to be dangerous".Promoted to Staff Sergeant, Gene formed a band, "Gene and his Jive Bombers", composed of GIs and civilians and toured the area for the next three years. Typically, Gene arranged, directed, produced and emceed at these appearances.Later, Gene was sent to India to organize entertainment for various airbases in the China-Burma-India Theater of the war, playing in many different kinds of bands and at one time touring camps for several months with popular movie star and singer Tony Martin. Discharged in December 1945, Technical Sergeant Leis moved to Lancaster, California and started a dance band that played around the local area.At night he worked on a project a teach-yourself guitar course on records.Using records to teach and selling them via mail order was a new idea the old 78's were so brittle they would break when shipped, and they were heavy, which made shipping costly. The new vinyl records were much more forgiving, and the 12" version could hold a lot of play time. In 1955 Columbia Records created the Columbia Record Club, a new division of Columbia Records whose purpose was to test the idea of marketing music through the mail. The public's response proved that mail-order record distribution was an effective way to market music. By the end of 1955, the Columbia Record Club boasted 128,000 members who purchased 700,000 records. This proved to Gene that his idea, teaching guitar to students using recorded courses, could work.As Gene began developing his recorded guitar course, he worked hard to develop certain skills in order to create the kind of quality course he knew students would need. He enrolled in a school of broadcasting to learn to develop his narration skills. He took courses in writing to improve his communication ability. He studied photography for two years. He learned print layout and composition, using a Varitype machine to create his printed text, and laying out all the pages himself.Gene called his project the Nexsus course. Nexus meant, "a connecting link or a connected series". Gene initially sold the course through mail order, taking out ads in magazines like Playboy, Esquire, downbeat, Diner's Club Magazine and True.The Complete Nexus Method Course included 10 records, a 132-page instruction book, a 36-page chord book and three Chord Maps. There was also a Primary Course and an Advanced Course, both based on these materials. In it, Gene taught you how to hold, tune and play the guitar from the basic rudiments to the more intricate chord patterns used in folk, blues, western, pops and ballads. His course centered on the song as the primary way to learning guitar and he often referred to this approach as learning recreational guitar.Tom Scanlan, noted jazz critic for the Army Times and downbeat magazine gave the course a very favorable review, singling out the high quality of the privately produced records and the clarity of Gene's explanations and demonstrations.He quit real estate to work on selling the course full-time, moving to Manhattan Beach, California, and in 1961 he opened Gene Leis Studio, Inc., where he built a recording studio, an office and used the remaining space to store and mail out his courses. The courses proved to be popular; in the first several years, Gene sold over 7,000 courses. Gene received many requests for just the chord book, so he sold the Nexsus Chord Book separately as well.The guitar's popularity soared as it was featured in a variety of popular musical formats: rock and roll groups, folk music artists and the surf music/guitar groups of the late fifties and early sixties. In 1962, with the encouragement and assistance of Jessy Stidham, one of his students, Gene introduced two new albums aimed at a younger market, "Play Guitar: Sounds of Today", designed to teach younger students how to play single string melody without going into a lot of complicated chords. Gene also recorded an album, Beautiful Guitar, playing all the parts himself using a multitrack approach that Les Paul had pioneered earlier. The album included an insert that featured the orchestrations of the 13 songs on the album, for "the guitar player who plays just enough guitar to be dangerous".In 1963 he got his first distributor, in Boston. Within 10 years he had over 30 distributors and was distributing the books himself as well. In 1964, Gene incorporated Gene Leis Distributing with the aim of offering a full range of accessories and instruments. He designed or created a line of guitar amplifiers (which appeared under the names Rodeo Music or Gene Leis), guitars and accessories which were distributed through White Front, Montgomery Ward and other retail stores. He sold over 8,000 amplifiers before leaving the crowded amp market.In 1964 he revised the Chord Book, incorporating many more instructional elements, and called it the "Instructional Chord Book for Guitar". He also created two new books, Teacher's Pet Manuscript and Chord Diagram (Primary and Advanced) for students to write out their own arrangements. By 1965, the Instruction Chord Book had sold over 250,000 copies. In 1966 Gene introduced Guitar for Two, featuring a book and a record that taught learners 16 songs, focusing on teaching single-string melody, and Guitar for Fun, the Guitar for Two package with the Instruction Chord Book.To promote his courses, books and accessories, Gene toured the west coast, making personal appearances where he performed with his sons Larry on drums and Bill on guitar. Their repertoire ranged from rock'n'roll numbers that "resembled a small earthquake" to ballads like "Misty" or "Over the Rainbow". After the mini-concert, while the boys signed autographs and gave out complimentary books, Gene conducted question and answer sessions. These sessions gave Gene valuable insight into what guitar students wanted, and he used these ideas when creating new courses. Gene considered the comments and letters he received from guitar students all over the world his greatest assets.In 1965, Decca Records started a division known as Decca Home Entertainment Products, which for several years imported Japanese acoustic and solid-body electric guitars aimed primarily at the beginner market. Gene acted as an advisor to Decca, who sold over 30,000 of his chord books a year. Similarly, Columbia Record Club, the mail order arm of Columbia Records, bought 50,000 of his courses to pair with a line of guitars that it offered.In 1966, Gene collaborated on the book, A Guitar Manual, with Daniel Mari and Peter Huyn. Published by E&O Mari, the manufacturer of La Bella guitar strings, the book focused on the history, anatomy and use of the guitar. The wood veneer cover design, by George Macias, was unique, and represented the face of a guitar, with the title and author's names visible through a round hole in the center.In 1967, Gene produced two albums for Music Minus One, a company that created recorded courses with one instrumental part missing students could practice soloing against the recorded accompaniment. These two albums included "Let's Duet" (MMO60) and "Learn to Play Guitar" (MMO4018).Also in 1967, Gene became a contributing editor to Bud and Maxine Eastman's fledgling Guitar Player Magazine, serving on the advisory board and contributing articles like Why Don't You Read Music?"By the mid 1970s, Gene had sold over 225,000 of his recorded courses and over 2 million copies of the Instruction Chord Book for Guitar., 3, Theme From ABC Pictures Corp. Motion Picture Lovers and Other Strangerswords by Robb Wilson & Arthur Jamesmusic by Fred Karlinpublished by Pamco Music, Inc. 19718 1/2 x 11 inches, 6 pages"For All We Know" is a soft rock song written for the 1970 film Lovers and Other Strangers, by Fred Karlin, Robb Wilson (Robb Royer) and Arthur James (Jimmy Griffin). Both Royer and Griffin were founding members of the soft-rock group Bread. It was originally performed by Larry Meredith. It is best known for a cover version by American pop duo Carpenters in 1971, which reached No. 3 on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 1 on the US Billboard Easy Listening chart. The song was also a hit for Shirley Bassey at the same time in the United Kingdom. It has since been covered by a large number of artists.The song became a Gold record. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1971.-----------------------------------Robert Wilson "Robb" Royer (born December 6, 1942 in Los Angeles, California) was the bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, and songwriter with Bread from 1968 to 1971. While he was with the band, they had a #5 UK/#1 US hit single with "Make It With You". He was replaced by Larry Knechtel in 1971.In 1970, Royer and Jimmy Griffin, under the pseudonyms Robb Wilson and Arthur James, wrote the lyrics for "For All We Know," featured in the film Lovers and Other Strangers. It won the Academy Award for Best Song.Before co-founding Bread, Royer had been a member of the band The Pleasure Fair, whose only album in 1967 was produced and arranged by David Gates, Royer's future bandmate in Bread.Now living and working in Nashville, his songwriting credits include works for Jimmy Griffin, The Remingtons, Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Michael Montgomery, Randy Travis, Billy Burnette, The Finnigan Brothers (Mike Finnigan) and others.-----------------------------James Arthur Griffin (August 10, 1943 January 11, 2005) was a singer, guitarist, and songwriter, best known for his work with the 1970s rock band Bread. He won an Academy Award for Best Song in 1970 as co-writer of "For All We Know".Griffin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. His musical training began when his parents signed him up for accordion lessons. He attended Kingsbury High School in Memphis and Dorsey and Johnny Burnette were his neighbors and role models. After the Burnette brothers moved to Los Angeles, California to further their music careers, Griffin went there to visit them, and managed to secure a recording contract with Reprise Records.His first album, Summer Holiday, was released in 1963. He had small roles in two films, For Those Who Think Young (1964) and None but the Brave (1965).In the 1960s, Griffin teamed with fellow songwriter Michael Z. Gordon to write songs for such diverse singers as Ed Ames, Gary Lewis, Bobby Vee, Brian Hyland, The Standells, Leslie Gore, Sandy Nelson and Cher. The pair won a BMI award for "Apologize".Griffin met Robb Royer through Maria Yolanda Aguayo (Griffin's future wife). The two hit it off immediately and became life-time collaborators both as performers and writers. Griffin was a staff writer with Viva Publishing and managed to get them to hire Royer as his co-writer in 1967. Viva was resistant to hiring Royer and instead wanted Griffin to write with another staff writer with the company. According to Royer, Griffin convinced Viva to hire Royer by threatening "I will be writing with him. Do you really want to give away half the publishing on all those songs?". James Griffin sang songs that were featured in a few episodes of the TV series 'Ironside' in the late sixties.-----------------------------Frederick James "Fred" Karlin (June 16, 1936 March 26, 2004) was an American composer of more than one hundred scores for feature films and television movies. He also was an accomplished trumpeter adept at playing jazz, blues, classical, rock, and medieval music.Born in Chicago, Illinois, he studied jazz composition with William Russo and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College, where he wrote his String Quartet No. 2 as his honors thesis. Following graduation, he moved to New York City, composing and arranging for various bands, including those of Benny Goodman, Harry James, and Chubby Jackson. During this period he also composed and arranged for documentaries, the Radio City Music Hall orchestra, and television commercials.In 1962, Karlin scored a record album for Columbia of extracts from the comic strip Peanuts, performed by actress Kaye Ballard as Lucy and songwriter Arthur Siegel as Charlie Brown. The innovative score was performed by Karlin entirely on children's musical instruments and toys.Karlin began his film career with Up the Down Staircase in 1967. Following in quick succession were Yours, Mine and Ours (1968), The Stalking Moon (1968), The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), The Baby Maker (1970), Cover Me Babe (1970) and Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). For the latter he wrote the music for the song "For All We Know", which won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Original Song and was a major hit for The Carpenters. The Sandpipers charted with another of his compositions, "Come Saturday Morning." Other Karlin scores were nominated for three Academy Awards, including one for the movie The Little Ark (Based on a novel by Jan de Hartog) in 1972, his wife, Marsha, was also nominated for the same film. His other film scores included The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971), Believe in Me (1971), Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972), Westworld (1973), The Spikes Gang (1974), Chosen Survivors (1974), The Gravy Train (1974), Mixed Company (1974), Mastermind (1976), Baby Blue Marine (1976), Futureworld (1976), Greased Lightning (1977), Mean Dog Blues (1978), California Dreaming (1979), Cloud Dancer (1980) and Loving Couples (1980).However the bulk of Karlin's work was in television. His compositions were nominated for the Emmy Award eleven times, and he won for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1974. Other TV films included The Man Who Could Talk to Kids (1973), Born Innocent (1974), Bad Ronald (1974), The Dream Makers (1975), Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1976), Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn (1977), The Death of Richie (1977), Minstrel Man (1977, for which he received an NAACP Image Award), The Hostage Heart (1977), Christmas Miracle in Caufield, U.S.A. (1977), Lucan (1978), Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979), Vampire (1979), Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980), Miracle on Ice (1981), Bitter Harvest (1981), Inside the Third Reich (1982), Baby Sister (1983), Dadah Is Death (1988), Murder C.O.D. (1990), Her Wicked Ways (1991) and The Secret (1992).Karlin wrote three books about film composition, On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring (1990), Listening to Movies: The Film Lover's Guide to Film Music (1994), and 100 Great Film Scores, which was published posthumously in 2005. He also wrote a reference book detailing and cataloguing the thousands of recordings the Edison Company distributed between 1914 and 1929., Pamco Music, Inc., 1971, 0, New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. Paperback. Very Good. Book. Tommy Phan is a successful detective novelist living the American Dream in southern California. One evening he comes home to find a small rag doll on his doorstep. Its a simple doll, covered entirely in white cloth, with crossed black stitches for the eyes and mouth, and another pair forming an X over the heart. Curious, he brings it inside.That night Tommy hears an odd popping sound and looks up to see the stitches breaking over the dolls heart. And in minutes the fabric of Tommy Phans reality will be torn apart. Something terrifying emerges from the pristine white cloth, something that will follow Tommy wherever he goes. Something that he cant destroy. It wants Tommys life, and he doesnt know why. He has only one ally, a beautiful, strangely intuitive waitress he meets by chanceor by a design far beyond his comprehension. He has too many questions, no answers, and very little time. Because the vicious and demonically clever doll has left this warning on Tommys computer screen:The deadline is dawn., Ballantine Books, 1997, 3, The California sunshine's not quite so bright for three sisters who get dumped in the same weekFinola, a popular LA morning-show host, is famously upbeat until she's blindsided on live TV by the news that her husband is sleeping with a young pop sensation who has set their affair to music. While avoiding the tabloids and pretending she's just fine, she's crumbling inside, desperate for him to come to his senses and for life to go back to normal.Zennie's breakup is no big loss. Although the world insists she pair up, she'd rather be surfing. So agreeing to be the surrogate for her best friend is a no-brainerafter all, she has an available womb and no other attachments to worry about. Exceptwhen everyone else, including her big sister, thinks she's making a huge mistake, being pregnant is a lot lonelierand more complicatedthan she imagined.Never the tallest, thinnest or prettiest sister, Ali is used to being overlooked, but when her fiancé sends his disapproving brother to call off the wedding, it's a new low. And yet Daniel continues to turn up "for support," making Ali wonder if maybefor oncesomeone sees her in a way no one ever has.But side by side by side, these sisters will start over and rebuild their lives with all the affection, charm and laugh-out-loud humor that is classic Susan Mallery.Don't miss The Summer Getaway by Susan Mallerywhere one woman discovers the beauty in chaos in a poignant and heartwarming story about the threads that hold family together., 3, Delacorte Press. Good. 5.1 x 1.2 x 7.6 inches. Hardcover. 2006. 336 pages. Ex-library. Cover worn. <br>Some women shop. Some eat. Dora cures the blues by bingeing on books-reading one after anot her, from Flaubert to bodice rippers, for hours and days on end. In this wickedly funny and sexy literary debut, we meet the begui ling, beautiful Dora, whose unique voice combines a wry wit and v ulnerability as she navigates the road between reality and fictio n. Dora, named after Eudora Welty, is an indiscriminate book jun kie whose life has fallen apart-her career, her marriage, and fin ally her self-esteem. All she has left is her love of literature, and the book benders she relied on as a child. Ever since her la rger-than-life father wandered away and her book-loving, alcoholi c mother was left with two young daughters, Dora and her sister, Virginia, have clung to each other, enduring a childhood filled w ith literary pilgrimages instead of summer vacations. Somewhere a long the way Virginia made the leap into the real world. But Dora isn't quite there yet. Now she's coping with a painful separatio n from her husband, scraping the bottom of a dwindling inheritanc e, and attracted to a seductive book-seller who seems to embody a ll that literature has to offer-intelligent ideas, romance, and a n escape from her problems. Joining Dora in her odyssey is an e lderly society hair-brusher, a heartbroken young girl, a hilariou s off-the-wall female teamster, and Dora's mother, now on the wag on, trying to make amends. Along the way Dora faces some powerful choices. Between two irresistible men. Between idleness and work . And most of all between the joy of well-chosen words and the un tidiness of real people and real life. Editorial Reviews From P ublishers Weekly Kaufman, a former L.A. Times staff writer, and M ack, a former attorney and Golden Globe Award- winning film and T V producer, check in with this solid, thoughtful chick lit debut. Dora, at 35, is a twice-divorced former young reporter on the ri se at the L.A. Times. Second ex-husband Palmer is now head of Son y Pictures, and still supporting her. Dora's depressed, and she o nly leaves the house to stalk Palmer and buy more books. At the b ookstore, she meets elegantly scraggly comp lit Ph.D. Fred, and t hey begin an unlikely courtship. Dora is soon surprised by Fred's invitation to meet his mother, Bea, whom Dora likes instantly, a ll the more so when she learns Bea is also raising Harper, the si x-year-old daughter of Fred's troubled sister. The bond between B ea and Dora gives Dora something she never had with her own, alco holic mother, and helps her make decisions that bring her life ba ck into focus. Dora is the kind of deadpan and imperfect heroine with whom readers can easily identify. Kaufman and Mack mishandle the abrupt ending and epilogue, but are most likely setting up a welcome sequel. (June 6) Copyright ® Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Book list Book lust meets chick lit in this tale of a love-challenged bookworm. Dora, named for Eudora Welty, confesses, I collect new books the way my girlfriends buy designer handbags. Estranged fro m her husband and living in a luxurious L.A. high-rise, she deals with melancholy by taking long baths while drinking wine and rea ding paperbacks. Luckily, her habit must be fed, requiring freque nt trips to the local bookstore, where she meets tall, handsome F red--a starving playwright who ekes out a living by providing boo k-group recommendations to Brentwood housewives. Soon they're inv olved in a heated romance, but things begin to sour when Dora mee ts his family. Then Dora's husband pops up, and confusion creeps in. Dora is a charming character, and readers will appreciate som e of her more neurotic tendencies, such as her debilitating fear of driving on freeways. No literary masterpiece, this cowritten d ebut reads instead like a gossipy e-mail from a witty, intelligen t friend. A list of referenced books and authors is included at t he end. Emily Cook Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review A book with the word Literacy in the titl e? A book with a lot of astute and telling quotes used as a plot device?... Literacy and Longing in L.A. turns out to be the most delightful read of the year.... An absolute romp dotted with the kind of wise sayings you never want to forget.-Liz Smith Kaufman and Mack cultivate a bright, breezy tone.... This is chick ficti on in its purest form, so humor is always plentiful.-The Miami He rald Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack have a lot of nerve! How d are they come up with the brilliant idea to write a novel about a woman who tells her life story through her obsession with books! And how dare they execute it so beautifully?!...The book is shar p, seamless and very, very funny. I wish I had written it.-Sara N elson, author of So Many Books, So Little Time A poignant and w itty tale of life, love and letters in Los Angles...[a] brilliant debut novel.-Karen Quinn, author of The Ivy Chronicles A wonder ful story that completely won me over-insecure bookish Dora will appeal to anyone who has ever found solace or inspiration in read ing. This is chick lit for bookworms, at times breezy, sexy, prof ound...-Denise Hamilton, author of Prisoner of Memory A delightf ully stylish romp through life and love in Southern California in which our heroine offers irrefutable proof that literacy and L.A . are not mutually exclusive. -Judith Ryan Hendricks, author of T he Baker's Apprentice I'm absolutely crazy about Literacy and Lo nging in L.A., which deftly serves up all the best elements of so -called 'chick lit,' lovingly larded with light-hearted, quick-wi tted, absolutely astonishing learning!-Carolyn See, author of Mak ing a Literary Life Funny and charming.... What a pleasing combi nation: books and romance.-Fort Worth Star-Telegram Funny and ch arming.... A bit of chick lit for women who actually love to read .-Arizona Republic About the Author Karen Mack, a former attorne y, is a Golden Globe Award-winning film and television producer. Jennifer Kaufman was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times and is a two-time winner of the national Penney-Missouri Journalism A ward. Their debut novel, Literacy and Longing in L.A., was a #1 L os Angeles Times bestseller and also won the 2006 Southern Califo rnia Booksellers Association Award for Fiction. Excerpt. ® Repri nted by permission. All rights reserved. Master of the Universe All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality, t he story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all a nd at all times, how to escape. -Arthur Christopher Benson (1862- 1925)- Women do different things when they're depressed. Some sm oke, others drink, some call their therapists, some eat. My mothe r used to go ballistic when she and my father had a fight, then s he'd booze for days on end and vanish into her bedroom. My sister was more into the global chill mode; give 'em the silent treatme nt and, in the meantime, gorge on frozen Sara Lee banana cake. An d I do what I have always done-go off on a book bender that can l ast for days. I fall into this state for different reasons. Some times it's after an I hate your fucking guts fight. Other times i t's symptomatic of my state of mind, ennui up to my ears, my life gone awry, and that feeling of dread whenever I'm asked what I'm doing. How can anyone sort all this out? All things considered, I'd rather read. It's the perfect escape. I have a whole mantra for my book binges. First of all, I open a bottle of good red win e. Then I turn off my cell phone, turn on my answering machine, a nd gather all the books I've been meaning to read or reread and h aven't. Finally, I fill up the tub with thirty-dollar bubble bath , fold a little towel at the end of the tub so it just fits in th e crick of my neck, and turn on my music. I have an old powder-bl ue plastic Deco radio near the tub that I bought at a garage sale in Hollywood a few years ago. The oddest thing: the radio only r eceives one AM radio station, which plays jazz standards from the forties and fifties, and it suits me just fine. Within my bathr oom walls is a self-contained field of dreams and I am in total c ontrol, the master of my own elegantly devised universe. The outs ide world disappears and here, there is only peace and a profound sense of well-being. Most of the people in my life take a dim v iew of this . . . what would you call it? Monomania? Eccentricity ? My sister is perhaps the most diplomatic. We both know that I h ave a tendency to lose my tether to reality when I close myself o ff like this. But then she'll joke that I'm really just another b oring bibliomaniac and what I really need is a little fresh air. She always was a whiz with words. She actually informed me that a book she read by Nicholas Basbanes (appropriately called Among t he Gently Mad) states that the first documented use of the word b ibliomania came in 1750 when the fourth earl of Chesterfield sent a letter to his illegitimate son warning him that this consuming diversion with books should be avoided like the bubonic plague. Ho hum. I peel off my clothes and throw them on the floor. As I' m walking to the tub, I glance at the floor-to-ceiling mirror tha t covers the south wall of my bathroom. Oh god. Wait a minute. Yo u know how you look in the mirror and you look the same and you l ook the same and all of a sudden you look ten years older? It's f itting that at age thirty-five I should notice this. My waist is thicker, my breasts saggier, the beginnings of--shit, is that cel lulite on the backs of my thighs? Why is it that you think this a ge thing won't happen to you? Oh, and look at the backs of my elb ows! They look like old-lady wrinkled elbows with a sharp, bony p rotrusion. I've never been able to figure out my looks. I've bee n told I'm striking. But what does that mean? It's something peop le say when they can't give you the usual compliments, like you'r e beautiful. It could be my height that puts them off. I'm almost five foot ten, which has only recently become fashionable. I als o have enormous feet. Size 10 on a good day. When I was young, I hated my tall, too-thin, sticklike figure, which my mother descr ibed as willowy. She'd argue that my looks were special and would be appreciated when I got older. Just give yourself time, she'd say. You'll see. You'll outshine all those other girls with hourg lass figures. I felt like Frankie in The Member of the Wedding: a big freak . . . legs too long . . . shoulders too narrow . . . b elonging to no club and a member of nothing in the world. It was n't just my appearance. I always felt like an oddball, the except ion in a world where I imagined other families were normal and ha ppy. Virginia and I endured the secrets and shame of an absent fa ther and an alcoholic mother, and the few friends I had, I kept a t a distance, always relieved when they didn't come over. The fac t of the matter was that I was embarrassed that my mother couldn' t cope, and in some ways, she passed that on to me. I shut my ey es as I get into the tub. I have purposely made the water scaldin g hot and when I dip my foot in, my toes turn red and start to st ing. Too hot. I add a little cold, letting the water run through my fingers as I listen to a tinny version of Coltrane blasting ou t Love Supreme. Paul Desmond once said that listening to late-nig ht jazz is like having a very dry martini. I think he's right. I stick my foot back in and then ease my body into the water. Stil l too hot. I twist the spigot with my toes, adding more cold. The re. Perfect. I pick up The Transit of Venus, an obscure novel by Shirley Hazzard, whose newest book, The Great Fire, has become a favorite among book clubs. The premise is fascinating. It's about two beautiful orphaned sisters whose lives are as predestined as the rotation of the planets. I try to concentrate. The prose is dense and complex; I have to keep rereading paragraphs. I start t o daydream and lose my place. This isn't working for me. Basicall y, I'm still depressed. Maybe it's just the time of year. It's C hristmas, I'm alone, and my social prospects are nonexistent. Thi s is the season to be somewhere else, and for the majority of my friends, that means packing up the kids and maybe a few of their best friends and migrating to second homes in Maui, Aspen, Cabo, Sun Valley, and the second tier, Palm Springs and Las Vegas. Bei ng in West L.A. in December is like being banished to an isolated retreat or even a rehab center where parties and other forms of merriment are verboten. Not that I'm complaining. If you come fro m the east, the weather here in December is glorious. Right up un til the El Ni-o rains in late January and February, the world is temperate, mild, and forgiving. Natural disasters like fires, flo ods, landslides, and earthquakes don't happen in West L.A. This year I have no plans to go anywhere and I am occasionally nagged by that insidious feeling of missing out. When I was with Palmer, we used to go to the Four Seasons on Maui every year. We'd get t he corner suite and even bribe a beachboy to reserve our lounges every day to avoid getting up at five a.m. like everyone else. (I n truth, most of our friends just had their nannies do it.) Now I hear Palmer is going to St. Barts. He thinks it's younger, hippe r, and more fun, unlike being with me. I used to sit by the pool in the shade and read all day. The phone rings. It's my sister, Virginia. She sounds worried. I know you're there, Dora. Why have n't you returned my calls? If you don't pick up I'm coming over . . . I pick up. I'm okay, I say. You don't sound okay. Are you doing another one of your book-hermit things? Nobody knows me lik e Virginia. I've been a little upset. A little, like twenty-fou r hours little or a little, like three days little? Like three d ays little. Doesn't sound little to me. Do you want me to come o ver? I look around. My place is a shambles. No. Really. I'm fine . I was just going out. I convince her that I'm simply marvelous and she buys it. She just doesn't get it. She has a husband and a baby. Who can blame her? I pick up the Hazzard book and try ag ain. This is so depressing. I have just finished an early chapter about Ted Tice, Paul Ivory, and Caro, and I can already tell the y are all eventually doomed to lives of unspeakable loss and trag edy. For one thing, Paul is, Delacorte Press, 2006, 2.5, William Morrow. Good. 6.13 x 1.04 x 9.25 inches. Hardcover. 1998. 288 pages. Ex-library<br>On a snowy Saturday night in 1979, after making love for the first time, high school senior Karen Ann McN eil confides the dark visions she's been suffering to her boyfrie nd, Richard. Only a few hours later she descends into a coma. Nin e months after that, she gives birth to a daughter, Megan, her ch ild by Richard. Karen remains comatose for the next 18 years. Ri chard and her circle of friends reside in an emotional purgatory throughout the next two decades, passing through careers as model s, film special-effects technicians, doctors and demolition exper ts before finally being reunited while working on a conspiracy-dr iven supernatural series. Upon Karen's reawakening, life grows a s surreal as the television show. Strange, apocalyptic events beg in to occur. Later, amid the world's rubble, Karen, Richard and t heir friends attempt to restore their own humanity. Editorial Re views Amazon Review In this latest novel from the poet laure ate of Gen X--who is himself now a dangerously mature 36--boy doe s indeed meet girl. The year is 1979, and the lovers get right do wn to business in a very Couplandian bit of plein air intercourse : Karen and I deflowered each other atop Grouse Mountain, among t he cedars beside a ski slope, atop crystal snow shards beneath pe nlight stars. It was a December night so cold and clear that the air felt like the air of the Moon--lung-burning; mentholated and pure; hint of ozone, zinc, ski wax, and Karen's strawberry shampo o. Are we in for an archetypal '80s romance, played out against a pop-cultural backdrop? Nope. Only hours after losing her virgini ty, Karen loses consciousness as well--for almost two decades. Th e narrator and his circle soldier on, making the slow progression from debauched Vancouver youths to semiresponsible adults. Sever al end up working on a television series that bears a suspicious resemblance to The X-Files (surely a self-referential wink on the author's part). And then ... Karen wakes up. Her astonishment--w hich suggests a 20th-century, substance-abusing Rip Van Winkle--d ominates the second half of the novel, and gives Coupland free re ign to muse about time, identity, and the meaning (if any) of the impending millennium. Alas, he also slaps a concluding apocalyps e onto the novel. As sleeping sickness overwhelms the populace, t he world ends with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a universal yawn--which doesn't, fortunately, outweigh the sweetness, oddity, and ironic smarts of everything that has preceded it. From Libr ary Journal A high school senior makes love on a ski slope, then mixes drinks and drugs at a wild party and falls into a 17-year c oma. She wakes up to find she has a daughter, delivered nine mont hs into her coma. Her friends all seem diminished by the passage of time. Her boyfriend laments, What evidence have we ever given of inner lives? Not long after, a plague kills off everyone on Ea rth but her friends. Even more bizarre happenings follow, leading to an unconvincing denouement. For the most part, however, Coupl and (Generation X, LJ 10/1/91) has crafted a moving chronicle of the impoverished inner lives of a circle of materially rich young adults of the Nineties. Using punchy sentences filled with hip n ames and brand labels, he succeeds in capturing the weak sense of identity exhibited by a generation that has defined itself in te rms of what it consumes and not what it could achieve.?David Keym er, California State Univ., Stanislaus Copyright 1998 Reed Busine ss Information, Inc. From Booklist I'm Jared, a ghost. Thus begi ns Coupland's latest, a novel that starts out ever so promisingly , only to shift gears and run out of gas two-thirds of the way th rough. The opening line introduces a supernatural element, as Jar ed, former high-school football star of the Sentinel Spartans in Vancouver, recalls collapsing during a game and dying six weeks l ater of leukemia. Now he is haunting a postapocalyptic wasteland. How did the world end? His best friend, Richard, continues the n arration, recounting the story of six close friends reeling from the loss of their friend Jared only to then lose Karen, Richard's girlfriend, who goes into a coma in December 1979 after ingestin g a couple of Valiums and a vodka-and-Tab cocktail, leaving her f riends adrift for 20 years in the moral quagmire of the 1980s and 1990s. When she awakes, a veritable Rip Van Winkle, she has a un ique perspective and can, therefore, be Coupland's mouthpiece for commenting on the state of things and the hollowness at the core of her friends' and everyone else's lives. Coupland excels at de veloping vivid and real characters, but he is best when he sticks to the milieu he knows so well, that of edgy post^-baby boomers. Part Stephen King (The Stand [1990], Dead Zone [1979]), part It' s a Wonderful Life, with a little of his own Generation X (1991) thrown in, Coupland's immensely readable new novel shows him scar ed of the future and sounding the alarm for the millennium. Benja min Segedin From Kirkus Reviews The writer who gave a generation its well-deserved ``X'' returns to the quasi-theological themes of his third novel, Life After God (1994), and again wanders off into spacey, New Age platitudes about death and transcendence. Al though God makes no personal appearances here, He's represented b y the ghost of an 18-year-old football player whose life touched all the aimless souls wandering through this media- literate narr ative. After a gimmicky prologue in the voice of the dead Jared, Coupland soon shifts gears, displaying a new-found maturity and s harpness. Spanning two decades in the close-knit lives of friends in Vancouver, his kinetic text begins with the episode that land s the narrator's girlfriend in her 18-year coma. But whether it w as the mix of pills and booze or Karen's premonition of a dreary future that rendered her comatose, the tragedy reverberates among her pals, whose lives will spiral out of control over the next t wo decades. Her boyfriend, Richard, the narrator, remains a faith ful visitor to her bedside, through his go-go years as a stockbro ker and his bouts of alcoholism. Of course, he must deal with the ir growing daughter, conceived the night before Karen's coma and unaware of her mother for seven years. And Karen's friends, to a person, all feel like losers, despite successful careers as a sup ermodel (Pam) and a doctor (Wendy). Drugs, overwork, and sheer bo redom trouble even the seemingly-centered Linus, who eventually r eturns to Vancouver with all the rest. With everyone sleepwalking through life, Karen miraculously awakes, but her worst visions c ome true--and here the story veers into disaster-movieland, with a sleep-inducing plague overwhelming the planet. Jared returns to teach them about self-sacrifice and the need to change their liv es, relying on all sorts of utopian blather and spiritual nostrum s. Sappy at its core, but showing signs nonetheless of Coupland's evolution as a novelist not wholly dependent on trend- spotting and zeitgeisty patter. (Author tour) -- Copyright ®1998, Kirkus A ssociates, LP. All rights reserved. Review ... Coupland's dialog ue is flip and fresh. (New York magazine) ...a message of hope a nd a challenge to...cynicism. (USA Today) His strongest novel to date. (People) Part Stephen King, part It's a Wonderful Life, w ith a little of his own Generation X thrown in, Coupland's immens ely readable . . . novel shows him scared of the future and sound ing the alarm for the millennium. (Booklist) To call Coupland th e John Bunyon of his set would not be hyperbole, especially in li ght of his newest book, the...fantastical Girlfriend in a Coma, w hich at times approaches a jeremiad worthy of Kurt Vonnegut...[A] rousingly old-fashioned and genuinely spooky morality play. (The Washington Post) About the Author Douglas Coupland is the auth or of twelve novels, including Generation X and Microserfs, and s everal works of nonfiction, including Polaroids from the Dead. He lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. From The Washington Post To call Coupland the John Bunyan of his set would not be hyperbo le, especially in light of his newest book, the monitory and fant astical Girlfriend in a Coma, which at times approaches an eccent ric jeremiad worthy of Kurt Vonnegut. From The Washington Post T o call Coupland the John Bunyan of his set would not be hyperbole , especially in light of his newest book, the monitory and fantas tical Girlfriend in a Coma, which at times approaches an eccentri c jeremiad worthy of Kurt Vonnegut. ., William Morrow, 1998, 2.5, Harlequin Teen. Good. 5.38 x 1.2 x 8.25 inches. Paperback. 2011. 432 pages. Ex-library. Cover worn<br>Savannah Colbert has never k nown why she's so hated by the kids of the Clann. Nor can she den y her instinct to get close to Clann golden boy Tristan Coleman. Especially when she recovers from a strange illness and the attra ction becomes nearly irresistible. It's as if he's a magnet, pull ing her gaze, her thoughts, even her dreams. Her family has warne d her to have nothing to do with him, or any members of the Clann . But when Tristan is suddenly everywhere she goes, Savannah fear s she's destined to fail. For years, Tristan has been forbidden to even speak to Savannah Colbert. Then Savannah disappears from school for a week and comes back...different, and suddenly he can 't stay away. Boys seem intoxicated just from looking at her. His own family becomes stricter than ever. And Tristan has to fight his own urge to protect her, to be near her no matter the consequ ences.... Editorial Reviews About the Author Melissa Darnell is the author of a growing list of adult and YA fiction and nonfict ion books, including The Clann Series #1: Crave, The Clann Series #2: Covet, The Source, and The Ultimate Guide to Making Cheer/Da nce Gear & Gifts. Born in California, she grew up in Jacksonville , Texas and has also called the following states home since then: Utah, West Virginia, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Iowa and Sout h Dakota. She currently lives in Nebraska with her husband Tim an d two children, Hunter and Alexander, where she enjoys watching W hale Wars, Glee and True Blood, designing digital graphic product s for the virtual world of Second Life, and of course writing her latest book. Visit her websites for news, online playlists for e ach of her books, and more at MelissaDarnell and TheClannSeri es. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Savannah The last day I was fully human started off like any o ther April Monday in East Texas. Oh, sure, there were all kinds o f warning signs that my entire world was about to come crashing d own around me. But I didn't recognize them until it was too late. I should have known something major was wrong when I woke up th at morning feeling like utter crap, even though I'd just snagged a full nine hours of sleep. I'd never been sick before, not even with the flu or a cold, so it couldn't be anything like that. Go od morning, dear. Your breakfast is on the table, Nanna greeted m e as I shuffled into the kitchen. As usual, she was the ultimate in contradictions, her voice and smile a Southern mixture of swee tness and steel. Like your favorite old baby blanket wrapped arou nd a mace. Eat up. I'm going to go find my shoes. I nodded and p lopped down into one of the creaky chairs at the table. When it c ame to cooking, Nanna rocked. And she made the absolute best oatm eal in the world, maple and brown sugar with a ton of butter just the way I liked it. But it tasted like flavorless mush today. I gave up after two bites and dumped it in the trash can under the sink seconds before she came back. Finished already? she asked b efore slurping her tea. The sound grated over my nerves. Um, yea h. I set the bowl and spoon in the sink, keeping my back turned s o she couldn't see the blush burning my cheeks. I was a horrible liar. One look at my face and she'd know I'd just thrown out the breakfast she'd made me. And your tea? Oops. I'd forgotten my d aily tea, a blend that Nanna made just for me from the herbs she spent months growing in our backyard. Sorry, Nanna, there's no ti me. I still have to fix my hair. You can do both. She held out m y mug, her cheeks bunched into a bright smile that didn't do much to disguise the snap in her eyes. Sighing, I took the cup with me to the bathroom, setting it on the counter so I could have bot h hands free to do battle with my wild, carrot-colored curls. Dr ink your tea yet? she asked ten minutes later as I finished tamin g my hair into a long ponytail. Nag, nag, nag, I mumbled. I hea rd that, missy, she called out from the dining room, making me sm ile. I chugged the cold tea, set down the empty mug with a loud thump she'd be sure to hear, then headed for my bedroom to grab m y backpack. And nearly fell over while trying to pick it up. Jeez . I must have forgotten to drop off a few books in my locker last week. Using both hands, I hefted a strap onto my shoulder and tr udged back down the hall. Nanna was at the dining table digging through her mammoth purse for her keys. That would take a while. Meet you at the car? I said. She gave an absentminded wave, whic h I took for a yes, so I headed through the living room for the f ront door. As usual, Mom had been on the couch for hours already , talking on her cell phone while drowning in stacks of paperwork and pens she'd be sure to lose under the sofa cushions by the en d of the day. Why she couldn't work at a desk like every other sa fety product sales rep was beyond me. But the chaos seemed to mak e her happy. Even as she ended one call, her phone squalled for attention again. I knew better than to wait, so I just waved good bye to her. Hang on, George. She hit the phone's mute button the n held out her arms. Hey, what's this? No 'good morning, Mom,' no hug goodbye? Grinning, I crossed the room and bent over to hug her, resisting the urge to cough as her favorite floral perfume f looded my nose and throat. When I straightened up again, my back popped and twinged. Was that your back? she gasped. Good grief, you sound worse than your nanna today. I heard that, Nanna yelle d from the dining room. Smothering a smile, I shrugged. Guess I practiced too much this weekend. My beginner ballet and jazz clas ses would be performing in Miss Catherine's Dance Studio's annual spring recital soon. As the days ticked down to my latest impend ing public humiliation, I'd kind of started freaking out about it . I'll say. Why don't you take it a little easier? You've still got two weeks till the recital. Yeah, well, I need every second of practice I can get. That is, if I wanted to improve enough to avoid disappointing my father yet again. You know, killing your self in the backyard isn't going to impress your father, either. I froze, hating that I was so transparent. Nothing impresses him . At least, not enough to earn a visit from him more than twice a year. Probably because I was such a screwup at sports. The man m oved like a ballroom dancer, always light and graceful on his fee t, but I didn't seem to have gotten even a hint of those genes in my DNA. Mom had tried enrolling me in every activity she could t hink of over the years to help me develop some grace and hand-eye coordination...soccer, twirling, gymnastics, basketball. Last ye ar was volleyball. This year it was dance, both at Miss Catherine 's Dance Studio and at my high school. Apparently my father was fed up with my lack of athletic skill, judging by Mom's argument with him over the phone last September when I began dancing. He r eally didn't want me to take dance lessons this year. He must hav e thought they were a waste on someone as uncoordinated as me. I was out to prove him wrong. And so far, failing miserably. Mom sighed. Oh, hon. You really shouldn't worry so much about making him happy. Just dance for yourself, and I'm sure you'll do fine. Uh-huh. That's what you said last year about volleyball. And yet , in spite of taking her advice to just have fun, I'd still ended up hitting a ball through the gym's tile ceiling during a tourna ment. When the broken pieces had come crashing down, they'd almos t wiped out half my team. That had sort of ended the fun of volle yball for me. Mom bit her lip, probably to keep from laughing at the same memory. Found 'em! Nanna sang out in triumph from the dining room. Ready to rock and roll, kid? Sighing, I pulled up m y backpack's slipping strap onto my shoulder again. It scraped at my skin through my shirt, forcing a hiss out of me. Youch. Maybe I should grab an aspirin before we go. Absolutely not. Nanna st rode into the room, keys jingling in her hand. Aspirin's bad for you. Huh? But you and Mom take it all the t- But you don't, Nan na snapped. You've never taken that synthetic crap before, and yo u won't start polluting yourself with it now. I'll make you more of my special tea instead. Here, take my purse to the car and I'l l be right there. Without waiting for a reply, she shoved her fo rty-pound purse into my hands and headed for the kitchen. Great. I'd be late for sure. Again. Why can't I just take an aspirin li ke everyone else in the world? Mom smiled and picked up her phon e. Four very long minutes later, Nanna finally joined me in the car. She thrust a metal thermos into my hand. There, that ought t o fix you right up. Be careful, though. It's hot. I had to nuke i t. I bit back a groan. Nanna hated the microwave. The only butto n she'd learned how to use was the three-minute auto-heat. I'd be lucky if the tea cooled off at all before we reached my school, even if it was a ten-minute drive. We lived in a small, somewhat isolated nest of houses five miles outside of town. As I blew on my tea to cool it, I watched the rolling hills pass by, dotted h ere and there with solitary houses, big round bales of hay, and c ows in all shades of red, brown and black. Out here, the thick pi ne trees that had once covered all of East Texas had been cut bac k to make room for ranches that were now broken only by rows of f ences, mostly of barbed wire, sometimes wide slats of wood turned gray by time and the weather. You could breathe out here. But a s we neared the city limits, the strips of trees became thicker a nd showed up more often, until we passed through a section of not hing but pines just before reaching the junior high and intermedi ate schools. The first traffic-light intersection marked the star t of downtown Jacksonville, where all of a sudden it became nothi ng but streets and business after business, mostly single-story s hops and a few three- and four-story buildings for the occasional bank, hotel or hospital. And more pines winding around and throu gh every area of housing large and small, even butting up against the edges of the basket factory and near the Tomato Bowl, the br ownstone open-air stadium where all the home football and soccer games were held. I used to love my hometown with its cute boutiq ues and shops full of antiques where Nanna sold her crocheted des igns. I even used to love the town's ribbons of pines and the way the wind in the trees added a subtle sighing to the air. When th e fields of grass and hay turned brown and dead in the winter, yo u could always count on the pines to keep Jacksonville colorful a ll year long. But the town's founding families, locally referred to as the Clann due to their Irish ancestry, had ruined it for m e. Now when I heard the wind in the trees, it sounded like whispe ring, as if the trees themselves had joined the town's grapevine of gossips. Those gossips had probably produced the long line of famous actors, singers, comedians and models that Jacksonville's relatively small population of thirteen thousand residents was so proud of. Growing up here, where everybody talked about everybod y else, either made you want to live here forever or run away and become something special just to prove the gossips and the Clann wrong. I wasn't sure I wanted to be famous. But I definitely wa nted to run away. We made the daily turn through the neighborhoo ds that led to Jacksonville High School, the drive made shady by still more pines and a few hardwoods that lined the modest street s. And then the blue-and-yellow home of the JHS Indians exploded into view, its perimeter choked by woods thick and shadowed, and I felt my shoulders and neck tense up. Welcome to my daytime pri son for the next four years, complete with a guard shack and a gu ard who lowered a heavy metal bar across the driveways on the dot of 8:00 a.m. every weekday, forcing you to accept a tardy slip i n order to gain entrance when you were late. Unlike a teacher who might be convinced to let you slide, the guard was notoriously w ithout mercy, ruling our school's entrance as if it were the gate s to some medieval castle. If JHS were a castle, then its royalt y would definitely be the twenty-two equally merciless Clann kids who ruled the rest of the campus. The Clann kids had probably l earned their bullying tactics from their parents, who ran this to wn and a good portion of Texas, inserting themselves into every p ossible leadership role from county and state even to federal gov ernment levels. Local rumor had it that the only way the Clann co uld do this was by using magic, of all things. Which was total bu ll. There was nothing magical about the Clann's power-hungry meth ods. I should know. I'd had more than enough of their kids' idea of magical fun at school. After graduation, I was so out of here. While Nanna pulled up to the curb by the main hall doors, I suc ked down a quick slurp of tea, adding a burnt tongue to my list o f pains for the day. Better take that with you. Nanna nodded at the thermos. You should feel it kick in pretty soon, but you migh t need more later. Okay. Hey, don't forget, today's an A day, an d I have algebra last period, so- So pick you up in the front pa rking lot by the cafeteria. Yeah, yeah. I'm old, not senile. I th ink I can keep up with your alternating A-B schedule. Her twinkli ng green eyes nearly disappeared as her plump cheeks bunched high er into a wry smile. The front parking lot was closer to my last class on A days. The first class in five years that I'd shared w ith Tristan Coleman... Savannah? She shifted the car into Drive then looked at me with raised eyebrows, a silent prod to get movi ng. I climbed out into the pine-scented warmth of the morning, sh ut the door and gave her a wave goodbye. Tristan. His name echo ed through my head, fuzzing up my mind with old memories and emot ions. An answering tingle rippled up the back of my neck and over my scalp. Ignoring it, I stuffed the forbidden thoughts back int o their imaginary box and turned to face the main hall doors. The day was sure to be miserable enough without my stewing over back stabbing traitors like him. Sure enough, I shoved through the ma in hall's heavier-than-normal glass front doors and slammed right into the Brat Twins, two of the Clann's worst members. Yep, the perfect start to a fabulous day., Harlequin Teen, 2011, 2.5, Santa Monica, California, U.S.A.: Piggy Toes Pr. Very Good. 2005. Hard Cover. 158117375X Pop-Up ., Piggy Toes Pr, 2005, 3<

2005, ISBN: 9781581173758

Paperback, Hardcover

Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.: Self Realization Fellowship Pub, 1998. Please email us if you would like further information or if you would like us to send you a picture of the book. … More...

Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.: Self Realization Fellowship Pub, 1998. Please email us if you would like further information or if you would like us to send you a picture of the book. Thanks for looking! . Soft Cover. Very Good. 24mo - over 5" - 5¾" tall., Self Realization Fellowship Pub, 1998, 3, Gene Leis Guitar brochure/advertisement13.6 x 13.4 inches, 2 pagesGene Leis (April 19, 1920 March 15, 1993) was an American jazz guitarist, teacher, bandleader, composer, producer and entrepreneur. He was known primarily for his publications and recorded guitar courses in the 1960s.Leis was born into a musical family in Sedgwick, Kansas, near Witchita. His parents had a family band and played at local dances, weddings, and other events. When he was nine, he joined the family group on mandolin, an instrument whose neck was small enough for him to play comfortably. In his early teens he took up tenor guitar and began playing with other small groups. His father wanted him to play cello, and Leis negotiated a series of banjo lessons in exchange.During the late 1930s Leis listened to the swing bands of Goodman and to guitarists Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. The introduction of the electric guitar changed the nature of the guitar player in dance bands so that they could play loud enough to be heard over the other instruments. He decided to focus on guitar.In early 1941, this 21-year-old musician enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in Galveston, Texas, and was sent to Muroc Army Air Field, in the desert north of Lancaster, California. Later this airfield would become known as Edwards Air Force Base, but in 1941 it was an airfield used to train bombing and gunnery maneuvers.While at the base, Gene took lessons from Dave Saunders, a student of George M. Smith, a studio and performing guitarist and author of "George M. Smith Modern Guitar Method". These lessons formed the core of Gene's later teaching system. Smith's method focused on teaching players the chord techniques necessary for rhythm playing and improvising in contemporary jazz. His focus was on thoroughly knowing and using chords as the basis for rhythm and chord improvising. Gene would later say, "If you don't know your chords you'll never play enough guitar to be dangerous".Promoted to Staff Sergeant, Gene formed a band, "Gene and his Jive Bombers", composed of GIs and civilians and toured the area for the next three years. Typically, Gene arranged, directed, produced and emceed at these appearances.Later, Gene was sent to India to organize entertainment for various airbases in the China-Burma-India Theater of the war, playing in many different kinds of bands and at one time touring camps for several months with popular movie star and singer Tony Martin. Discharged in December 1945, Technical Sergeant Leis moved to Lancaster, California and started a dance band that played around the local area.At night he worked on a project a teach-yourself guitar course on records.Using records to teach and selling them via mail order was a new idea the old 78's were so brittle they would break when shipped, and they were heavy, which made shipping costly. The new vinyl records were much more forgiving, and the 12" version could hold a lot of play time. In 1955 Columbia Records created the Columbia Record Club, a new division of Columbia Records whose purpose was to test the idea of marketing music through the mail. The public's response proved that mail-order record distribution was an effective way to market music. By the end of 1955, the Columbia Record Club boasted 128,000 members who purchased 700,000 records. This proved to Gene that his idea, teaching guitar to students using recorded courses, could work.As Gene began developing his recorded guitar course, he worked hard to develop certain skills in order to create the kind of quality course he knew students would need. He enrolled in a school of broadcasting to learn to develop his narration skills. He took courses in writing to improve his communication ability. He studied photography for two years. He learned print layout and composition, using a Varitype machine to create his printed text, and laying out all the pages himself.Gene called his project the Nexsus course. Nexus meant, "a connecting link or a connected series". Gene initially sold the course through mail order, taking out ads in magazines like Playboy, Esquire, downbeat, Diner's Club Magazine and True.The Complete Nexus Method Course included 10 records, a 132-page instruction book, a 36-page chord book and three Chord Maps. There was also a Primary Course and an Advanced Course, both based on these materials. In it, Gene taught you how to hold, tune and play the guitar from the basic rudiments to the more intricate chord patterns used in folk, blues, western, pops and ballads. His course centered on the song as the primary way to learning guitar and he often referred to this approach as learning recreational guitar.Tom Scanlan, noted jazz critic for the Army Times and downbeat magazine gave the course a very favorable review, singling out the high quality of the privately produced records and the clarity of Gene's explanations and demonstrations.He quit real estate to work on selling the course full-time, moving to Manhattan Beach, California, and in 1961 he opened Gene Leis Studio, Inc., where he built a recording studio, an office and used the remaining space to store and mail out his courses. The courses proved to be popular; in the first several years, Gene sold over 7,000 courses. Gene received many requests for just the chord book, so he sold the Nexsus Chord Book separately as well.The guitar's popularity soared as it was featured in a variety of popular musical formats: rock and roll groups, folk music artists and the surf music/guitar groups of the late fifties and early sixties. In 1962, with the encouragement and assistance of Jessy Stidham, one of his students, Gene introduced two new albums aimed at a younger market, "Play Guitar: Sounds of Today", designed to teach younger students how to play single string melody without going into a lot of complicated chords. Gene also recorded an album, Beautiful Guitar, playing all the parts himself using a multitrack approach that Les Paul had pioneered earlier. The album included an insert that featured the orchestrations of the 13 songs on the album, for "the guitar player who plays just enough guitar to be dangerous".In 1963 he got his first distributor, in Boston. Within 10 years he had over 30 distributors and was distributing the books himself as well. In 1964, Gene incorporated Gene Leis Distributing with the aim of offering a full range of accessories and instruments. He designed or created a line of guitar amplifiers (which appeared under the names Rodeo Music or Gene Leis), guitars and accessories which were distributed through White Front, Montgomery Ward and other retail stores. He sold over 8,000 amplifiers before leaving the crowded amp market.In 1964 he revised the Chord Book, incorporating many more instructional elements, and called it the "Instructional Chord Book for Guitar". He also created two new books, Teacher's Pet Manuscript and Chord Diagram (Primary and Advanced) for students to write out their own arrangements. By 1965, the Instruction Chord Book had sold over 250,000 copies. In 1966 Gene introduced Guitar for Two, featuring a book and a record that taught learners 16 songs, focusing on teaching single-string melody, and Guitar for Fun, the Guitar for Two package with the Instruction Chord Book.To promote his courses, books and accessories, Gene toured the west coast, making personal appearances where he performed with his sons Larry on drums and Bill on guitar. Their repertoire ranged from rock'n'roll numbers that "resembled a small earthquake" to ballads like "Misty" or "Over the Rainbow". After the mini-concert, while the boys signed autographs and gave out complimentary books, Gene conducted question and answer sessions. These sessions gave Gene valuable insight into what guitar students wanted, and he used these ideas when creating new courses. Gene considered the comments and letters he received from guitar students all over the world his greatest assets.In 1965, Decca Records started a division known as Decca Home Entertainment Products, which for several years imported Japanese acoustic and solid-body electric guitars aimed primarily at the beginner market. Gene acted as an advisor to Decca, who sold over 30,000 of his chord books a year. Similarly, Columbia Record Club, the mail order arm of Columbia Records, bought 50,000 of his courses to pair with a line of guitars that it offered.In 1966, Gene collaborated on the book, A Guitar Manual, with Daniel Mari and Peter Huyn. Published by E&O Mari, the manufacturer of La Bella guitar strings, the book focused on the history, anatomy and use of the guitar. The wood veneer cover design, by George Macias, was unique, and represented the face of a guitar, with the title and author's names visible through a round hole in the center.In 1967, Gene produced two albums for Music Minus One, a company that created recorded courses with one instrumental part missing students could practice soloing against the recorded accompaniment. These two albums included "Let's Duet" (MMO60) and "Learn to Play Guitar" (MMO4018).Also in 1967, Gene became a contributing editor to Bud and Maxine Eastman's fledgling Guitar Player Magazine, serving on the advisory board and contributing articles like Why Don't You Read Music?"By the mid 1970s, Gene had sold over 225,000 of his recorded courses and over 2 million copies of the Instruction Chord Book for Guitar., 3, New York: Plume Books - Penguin Group. Fine 2000. Softcover. Online rev. : Boredom and bickering neatly synopsize the typical family car trip. Why revisit such misery in a novel, where weary family discords and the clichéd search for a hidden America all too often harry us along the desperate miles and pages? But meet the Wootens--Lila Mae and her four children--on their trek from Kentucky to California, Route 66 unfurling irresistibly before them during the late days of the Eisenhower era. In Linda Bruckheimer's debut novel, Dreaming Southern, not only is the Wootens' journey full of the requisite kicks, but we elude the nostalgic sentimentality and pat drama that stall most road-trip tales. When Lila's bill-dodging husband phones from California and importunes her to join him posthaste, she packs her bags and announces, "If that man thinks we're gonna drive all the way across country and not see us some beautiful scenery, then he's got another thing coming!" Thus begins weeks of wandering, dictated solely by the inclinations of Lila's restless and generous heart. Incessantly optimistic and instantly drawn to every lost soul along the road, she is intent on making the drive as memorable as possible for her children. Lila's determination grates on the kids, however, teenaged Becky Jean in particular, who struggles to make sense of her mother's exasperating mix of affection and impulsiveness. Less engaging is the book's lengthy final section, where we find Lila 30-plus years later, widowed in Los Angeles, her children alternately distant and doting. And if some of the novel's scenes seem paced more for the screen than the page, throughout we are carried along by the author's gentle evocation of tangled family love, her dead-on eye for the details of pop life, and her conjuration of distant skies and highway wanderers. --Ben Guterson; 0.60 x 7.98 x 5.38; 263 pages; From Publishers Weekly This absorbing, amusing but ultimately frustrating first novel is a picaresque, the story of a journey from Kentucky to California in the late '50s and its parallel interior journey, each more impressive for its digressions than as a shaped totality. Lila Mae Wooten sets out in a swamp-green '53 Packard with her four children to meet husband Roy -he's already made the trip to the Coast in three days, riding on NoDoz and black coffee- because the Wootens are in debt, having invested unwisely in a plan to manufacture an unmarketable flyswatter. Lila Mae invests her time unwisely, too, detouring to Alabama to see a sister she hasn't spoken to in years, then to Minnesota to say hello to a high-school friend, then picking up two runaways, a Native American jewelry maker & waitress, & her son, a teen arsonist. Lila has a big heart, but as they say in the South, her tear ducts are too close to her bladder. The tension in TV writer & Mirabella editor Bruckheimer's novel derives from the contrasting points of view of Lila & her daughter, 16-year-old Becky Jean, who is embarrassed when her mother presents a totally different face to strangers on the road. The setting of pre-interstate America with its wigwam-shaped motor courts, cruel roadside zoos & gaudy if dusty souvenir shops is evocative, as is the music the Wootens sing & listen to. After zigzagging across country, the Wootens & their companions end up lost at the scrubby wilderness edge of the Grand Canyon. We then flash forward to the present for an overlong epilogue intended to tie up all the strings & to augment character development. Yet the novel impresses with its sincerity & the charm of a zany road trip with an interesting crew. Copyright 1998 Reed Dreaming Southern has been called "zany" (Los Angeles Times) , "a sheer delight" (Rita Mae Brown) , and "a remarkable first novel" (Joan Didion) . Extraordinarily accomplished and entertaining…Lila Mae Wooten is one of the most memorable characters in recent fiction…A strange and wonderful hybrid of the road novel, the California Novel and the Southern Gothic. — (Jay McInerney) ., Plume Books - Penguin Group, 2000, 5, Theme From ABC Pictures Corp. Motion Picture Lovers and Other Strangerswords by Robb Wilson & Arthur Jamesmusic by Fred Karlinpublished by Pamco Music, Inc. 19718 1/2 x 11 inches, 6 pages"For All We Know" is a soft rock song written for the 1970 film Lovers and Other Strangers, by Fred Karlin, Robb Wilson (Robb Royer) and Arthur James (Jimmy Griffin). Both Royer and Griffin were founding members of the soft-rock group Bread. It was originally performed by Larry Meredith. It is best known for a cover version by American pop duo Carpenters in 1971, which reached No. 3 on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 1 on the US Billboard Easy Listening chart. The song was also a hit for Shirley Bassey at the same time in the United Kingdom. It has since been covered by a large number of artists.The song became a Gold record. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1971.-----------------------------------Robert Wilson "Robb" Royer (born December 6, 1942 in Los Angeles, California) was the bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, and songwriter with Bread from 1968 to 1971. While he was with the band, they had a #5 UK/#1 US hit single with "Make It With You". He was replaced by Larry Knechtel in 1971.In 1970, Royer and Jimmy Griffin, under the pseudonyms Robb Wilson and Arthur James, wrote the lyrics for "For All We Know," featured in the film Lovers and Other Strangers. It won the Academy Award for Best Song.Before co-founding Bread, Royer had been a member of the band The Pleasure Fair, whose only album in 1967 was produced and arranged by David Gates, Royer's future bandmate in Bread.Now living and working in Nashville, his songwriting credits include works for Jimmy Griffin, The Remingtons, Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Michael Montgomery, Randy Travis, Billy Burnette, The Finnigan Brothers (Mike Finnigan) and others.-----------------------------James Arthur Griffin (August 10, 1943 January 11, 2005) was a singer, guitarist, and songwriter, best known for his work with the 1970s rock band Bread. He won an Academy Award for Best Song in 1970 as co-writer of "For All We Know".Griffin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. His musical training began when his parents signed him up for accordion lessons. He attended Kingsbury High School in Memphis and Dorsey and Johnny Burnette were his neighbors and role models. After the Burnette brothers moved to Los Angeles, California to further their music careers, Griffin went there to visit them, and managed to secure a recording contract with Reprise Records.His first album, Summer Holiday, was released in 1963. He had small roles in two films, For Those Who Think Young (1964) and None but the Brave (1965).In the 1960s, Griffin teamed with fellow songwriter Michael Z. Gordon to write songs for such diverse singers as Ed Ames, Gary Lewis, Bobby Vee, Brian Hyland, The Standells, Leslie Gore, Sandy Nelson and Cher. The pair won a BMI award for "Apologize".Griffin met Robb Royer through Maria Yolanda Aguayo (Griffin's future wife). The two hit it off immediately and became life-time collaborators both as performers and writers. Griffin was a staff writer with Viva Publishing and managed to get them to hire Royer as his co-writer in 1967. Viva was resistant to hiring Royer and instead wanted Griffin to write with another staff writer with the company. According to Royer, Griffin convinced Viva to hire Royer by threatening "I will be writing with him. Do you really want to give away half the publishing on all those songs?". James Griffin sang songs that were featured in a few episodes of the TV series 'Ironside' in the late sixties.-----------------------------Frederick James "Fred" Karlin (June 16, 1936 March 26, 2004) was an American composer of more than one hundred scores for feature films and television movies. He also was an accomplished trumpeter adept at playing jazz, blues, classical, rock, and medieval music.Born in Chicago, Illinois, he studied jazz composition with William Russo and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College, where he wrote his String Quartet No. 2 as his honors thesis. Following graduation, he moved to New York City, composing and arranging for various bands, including those of Benny Goodman, Harry James, and Chubby Jackson. During this period he also composed and arranged for documentaries, the Radio City Music Hall orchestra, and television commercials.In 1962, Karlin scored a record album for Columbia of extracts from the comic strip Peanuts, performed by actress Kaye Ballard as Lucy and songwriter Arthur Siegel as Charlie Brown. The innovative score was performed by Karlin entirely on children's musical instruments and toys.Karlin began his film career with Up the Down Staircase in 1967. Following in quick succession were Yours, Mine and Ours (1968), The Stalking Moon (1968), The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), The Baby Maker (1970), Cover Me Babe (1970) and Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). For the latter he wrote the music for the song "For All We Know", which won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Original Song and was a major hit for The Carpenters. The Sandpipers charted with another of his compositions, "Come Saturday Morning." Other Karlin scores were nominated for three Academy Awards, including one for the movie The Little Ark (Based on a novel by Jan de Hartog) in 1972, his wife, Marsha, was also nominated for the same film. His other film scores included The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971), Believe in Me (1971), Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972), Westworld (1973), The Spikes Gang (1974), Chosen Survivors (1974), The Gravy Train (1974), Mixed Company (1974), Mastermind (1976), Baby Blue Marine (1976), Futureworld (1976), Greased Lightning (1977), Mean Dog Blues (1978), California Dreaming (1979), Cloud Dancer (1980) and Loving Couples (1980).However the bulk of Karlin's work was in television. His compositions were nominated for the Emmy Award eleven times, and he won for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1974. Other TV films included The Man Who Could Talk to Kids (1973), Born Innocent (1974), Bad Ronald (1974), The Dream Makers (1975), Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1976), Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn (1977), The Death of Richie (1977), Minstrel Man (1977, for which he received an NAACP Image Award), The Hostage Heart (1977), Christmas Miracle in Caufield, U.S.A. (1977), Lucan (1978), Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979), Vampire (1979), Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980), Miracle on Ice (1981), Bitter Harvest (1981), Inside the Third Reich (1982), Baby Sister (1983), Dadah Is Death (1988), Murder C.O.D. (1990), Her Wicked Ways (1991) and The Secret (1992).Karlin wrote three books about film composition, On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring (1990), Listening to Movies: The Film Lover's Guide to Film Music (1994), and 100 Great Film Scores, which was published posthumously in 2005. He also wrote a reference book detailing and cataloguing the thousands of recordings the Edison Company distributed between 1914 and 1929., Pamco Music, Inc., 1971, 0, New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. Paperback. Very Good. Book. Tommy Phan is a successful detective novelist living the American Dream in southern California. One evening he comes home to find a small rag doll on his doorstep. Its a simple doll, covered entirely in white cloth, with crossed black stitches for the eyes and mouth, and another pair forming an X over the heart. Curious, he brings it inside.That night Tommy hears an odd popping sound and looks up to see the stitches breaking over the dolls heart. And in minutes the fabric of Tommy Phans reality will be torn apart. Something terrifying emerges from the pristine white cloth, something that will follow Tommy wherever he goes. Something that he cant destroy. It wants Tommys life, and he doesnt know why. He has only one ally, a beautiful, strangely intuitive waitress he meets by chanceor by a design far beyond his comprehension. He has too many questions, no answers, and very little time. Because the vicious and demonically clever doll has left this warning on Tommys computer screen:The deadline is dawn., Ballantine Books, 1997, 3, Santa Monica, California, U.S.A.: Piggy Toes Pr, 2005. Hard Cover. Very Good. Pop-Up., Piggy Toes Pr, 2005, 3<

2005, ISBN: 9781581173758

Hardcover

Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.: Self Realization Fellowship Pub, 1998. Please email us if you would like further information or if you would like us to send you a picture of the book. … More...

Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.: Self Realization Fellowship Pub, 1998. Please email us if you would like further information or if you would like us to send you a picture of the book. Thanks for looking! . Soft Cover. Very Good. 24mo - over 5" - 5¾" tall., Self Realization Fellowship Pub, 1998, 3, New York: Plume Books - Penguin Group. Fine 2000. Softcover. Online rev. : Boredom and bickering neatly synopsize the typical family car trip. Why revisit such misery in a novel, where weary family discords and the clichéd search for a hidden America all too often harry us along the desperate miles and pages? But meet the Wootens--Lila Mae and her four children--on their trek from Kentucky to California, Route 66 unfurling irresistibly before them during the late days of the Eisenhower era. In Linda Bruckheimer's debut novel, Dreaming Southern, not only is the Wootens' journey full of the requisite kicks, but we elude the nostalgic sentimentality and pat drama that stall most road-trip tales. When Lila's bill-dodging husband phones from California and importunes her to join him posthaste, she packs her bags and announces, "If that man thinks we're gonna drive all the way across country and not see us some beautiful scenery, then he's got another thing coming!" Thus begins weeks of wandering, dictated solely by the inclinations of Lila's restless and generous heart. Incessantly optimistic and instantly drawn to every lost soul along the road, she is intent on making the drive as memorable as possible for her children. Lila's determination grates on the kids, however, teenaged Becky Jean in particular, who struggles to make sense of her mother's exasperating mix of affection and impulsiveness. Less engaging is the book's lengthy final section, where we find Lila 30-plus years later, widowed in Los Angeles, her children alternately distant and doting. And if some of the novel's scenes seem paced more for the screen than the page, throughout we are carried along by the author's gentle evocation of tangled family love, her dead-on eye for the details of pop life, and her conjuration of distant skies and highway wanderers. --Ben Guterson; 0.60 x 7.98 x 5.38; 263 pages; From Publishers Weekly This absorbing, amusing but ultimately frustrating first novel is a picaresque, the story of a journey from Kentucky to California in the late '50s and its parallel interior journey, each more impressive for its digressions than as a shaped totality. Lila Mae Wooten sets out in a swamp-green '53 Packard with her four children to meet husband Roy -he's already made the trip to the Coast in three days, riding on NoDoz and black coffee- because the Wootens are in debt, having invested unwisely in a plan to manufacture an unmarketable flyswatter. Lila Mae invests her time unwisely, too, detouring to Alabama to see a sister she hasn't spoken to in years, then to Minnesota to say hello to a high-school friend, then picking up two runaways, a Native American jewelry maker & waitress, & her son, a teen arsonist. Lila has a big heart, but as they say in the South, her tear ducts are too close to her bladder. The tension in TV writer & Mirabella editor Bruckheimer's novel derives from the contrasting points of view of Lila & her daughter, 16-year-old Becky Jean, who is embarrassed when her mother presents a totally different face to strangers on the road. The setting of pre-interstate America with its wigwam-shaped motor courts, cruel roadside zoos & gaudy if dusty souvenir shops is evocative, as is the music the Wootens sing & listen to. After zigzagging across country, the Wootens & their companions end up lost at the scrubby wilderness edge of the Grand Canyon. We then flash forward to the present for an overlong epilogue intended to tie up all the strings & to augment character development. Yet the novel impresses with its sincerity & the charm of a zany road trip with an interesting crew. Copyright 1998 Reed Dreaming Southern has been called "zany" (Los Angeles Times) , "a sheer delight" (Rita Mae Brown) , and "a remarkable first novel" (Joan Didion) . Extraordinarily accomplished and entertaining…Lila Mae Wooten is one of the most memorable characters in recent fiction…A strange and wonderful hybrid of the road novel, the California Novel and the Southern Gothic. — (Jay McInerney) ., Plume Books - Penguin Group, 2000, 5, New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. Paperback. Very Good. Book. Tommy Phan is a successful detective novelist living the American Dream in southern California. One evening he comes home to find a small rag doll on his doorstep. Its a simple doll, covered entirely in white cloth, with crossed black stitches for the eyes and mouth, and another pair forming an X over the heart. Curious, he brings it inside.That night Tommy hears an odd popping sound and looks up to see the stitches breaking over the dolls heart. And in minutes the fabric of Tommy Phans reality will be torn apart. Something terrifying emerges from the pristine white cloth, something that will follow Tommy wherever he goes. Something that he cant destroy. It wants Tommys life, and he doesnt know why. He has only one ally, a beautiful, strangely intuitive waitress he meets by chanceor by a design far beyond his comprehension. He has too many questions, no answers, and very little time. Because the vicious and demonically clever doll has left this warning on Tommys computer screen:The deadline is dawn., Ballantine Books, 1997, 3, Santa Monica, California, U.S.A.: Piggy Toes Pr, 2005. Hard Cover. Very Good. Pop-Up., Piggy Toes Pr, 2005, 3<

ISBN: 9781581173758

Piggy Toes Pr. Board book. GOOD. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. Possible ex lib… More...

Piggy Toes Pr. Board book. GOOD. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. Possible ex library copy, will have the markings and stickers associated from the library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included., Piggy Toes Pr, 2.5<

ISBN: 9781581173758

Piggy Toes Pr. Used - Good. . . All orders guaranteed and ship within 24 hours. Your purchase supports More Than Words, a nonprofit job training program for youth, empowering youth to t… More...

Piggy Toes Pr. Used - Good. . . All orders guaranteed and ship within 24 hours. Your purchase supports More Than Words, a nonprofit job training program for youth, empowering youth to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business., Piggy Toes Pr, 2.5<