The Magnificent Ambersons

      Booth Tarkington
     The Magnificent Ambersons

SUMMARY:The Magnificent Ambersons, by Booth Tarkington, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Largely overshadowed by Orson Welles’s famous 1941 screen version, Booth Tarkington’s novel The Magnificent Ambersons was not only a best-seller when it first appeared in 1918—it also won the Pulitzer Prize.Set in the Midwest in the early twentieth century—the dawn of the automobile age—the novel begins by introducing the richest family in town, the Ambersons. Exemplifying aristocratic excess, the Ambersons have everything money can buy—and more. But George Amberson Minafer—the spoiled grandson of the family patriarch—is unable to see that great societal changes are taking place, and that business tycoons, industrialists, and real estate developers will soon surpass him in wealth and prestige. Rather than join the new mechanical age, George prefers to remain a gentleman, believing that “being things” is superior to “doing things.” But as his town becomes a city, and the family palace is enveloped in a cloud of soot, George’s protectors disappear one by one, and the elegant, cloistered lifestyle of the Ambersons fades from view, and finally vanishes altogether.A brilliant portrayal of the changing landscape of the American dream, The Magnificent Ambersons is a timeless classic that deserves a wider modern audience. Nahma Sandrow has written extensively about theater and cultural history, including the books Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater and Surrealism: Theater, Arts, Ideas. For many years a professor at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, she has lectured at Oxford University, Harvard University, the Smithsonian, and elsewhere.

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    Operation Tenley

      Jennifer Gooch Hummer
     Operation Tenley

Meet Tenley Tylwyth, an Elemental Teen born with the power to produce weather. Cool? Not really. Elementals make Mother Nature angry. And who can blame her? Humans have been destroying her planet long enough. It's time she got rid of them all together. Tenley, and those like her, are the only things standing in her way—and they don't even know it. It's a Fair One's job to keep Elemental Teens safe. These ancestors of fairies have created a perfect plan to keep kids like Tenley out of harm's way— from afar. But when rookie Fair One, Pennie, allows her charge to use elemental powers once too often, she's forced to travel to Earth—a place where no Fair One wants to go—to save her. Now, Pennie has forty-eight hours to convince Tenley to stop manipulating the weather. But it won't be so easy. Tenley's got away with wind and has no plans to stop using it. But then a field trip provides the perfect opportunity for Mother Nature. She catapults Tenley deep into her...

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    The Visitors

      Sally Beauman
     The Visitors

*Under the tablecloth, Frances's hand reached for mine and clasped it. I knew what it meant, that clasp and the mischievous grateful glance that accompanied it: it meant I was thanked, that there were secrets here. I could accept that. I too had secrets - who doesn't? * Sent abroad to Egypt in 1922 to recover from the typhoid that killed her mother, eleven-year-old Lucy is caught up in the intrigue and excitement that surrounds the obsessive hunt for Tutankhamun's tomb. As she struggles to comprehend an adult world in which those closest to her are often cold and unpredictable, Lucy longs for a friend she can love. When she meets Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist, her life is transformed. As the two girls spy on the grown-ups and try to understand the truth behind their evasions, a lifelong bond is formed. Haunted by the ghosts of her past, the mistakes she made and the secrets she kept, Lucy disinters her past, trying to make sense of what happened all those years ago in Cairo and the Valley of the Kings. And for the first time in her life, she comes to terms with what happened after Egypt, when Frances needed Lucy most.

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    Wild Storm

      Richard Castle
     Wild Storm

Derrick Storm, the guy the CIA calls on when it wants something investigated domestically, is thirty-three thousand feet in the air, returningfrom a rock climbing vacation in the Swiss Alps, when the plane spirals into anose-dive. Storm uses his climbing gear to tether himself to the wing andheroically save the plane and all the people on board. Sadly, Storm isnot available to come to the aid of the three other planes that have crashedunder similar circumstances, killing everyone on board. Interestingly, many of the victims arepowerful people in politics, business and religious groups. The always elusive Jedidiah Jones, leader of the National ClandestineService that has no name, calls on Storm to investigate. Storm determines that an unknown extremisthas secured enough of the rare earth element promethium to create a laser withthe power to shoot down planes from the ground. The problem swiftlybecomes a global one as four more planes crash in the Arabia Desert. Details, intuition and courage lead Storm to Monaco, Panama City and Egypt as he meets beautiful women, rides angry camels and rescues innocentvictims in his valiant effort to track down the maniacal mind behind the terrorism.**

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    Song of Songs

      Beverley Hughesdon
     Song of Songs

A brilliant, deeply-moving saga of one woman's search for love and hope in the shadow of the Great War Lady Helena Girvan was born into privilege: the daughter of a wealthy landowner, she was assured a life of safety and comfort. Until the war descends and ruins everything. Volunteering as an auxiliary nurse in London's gritty East End, Helena quickly loses her naivety, and her illusions. But she has something even more terrifying in store – not only the bloody battlefields of France but deep fears about the safety of the men she loves: her friends, her brothers and her husband. Little does Helena know, however, the war will live on in the form of a man she slowly comes to love with an irresistible sensuality, despite their many differences. This epic and passionate story speaks for a whole generation and continues to speak vividly to us today. Available digitally for the first time, Song of Songs is a heartbreaking modern classic...

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    The Mask Carver's Son

      Alyson Richman
     The Mask Carver's Son

Yamamoto Kiyoki is a Japanese art student, dreaming of studying in Paris with the inspiring and vibrant Impressionist painters. Yamamoto Ryusei is Kiyoki's father. Ryusei's art, carving intricate masks for traditional Japanese theater, has been his refuge from loneliness since the death of his beloved wife, and he is revered as the most inspired artist of his kind. He expects his only son to honor the traditions of his family and his country, not to be seduced by Western ideas of what is beautiful. Ryusei hopes Kiyoki will follow his own distinguished career, creating masks that will become the family's crowning achievement. But what is a father to do when his son's path is not what he had planned? And how can a son honor his father, and yet fulfill his own destiny? READERS GUIDE INSIDE

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    The Girl from the Savoy

      Hazel Gaynor
     The Girl from the Savoy

Presenting a dazzling new historical novel ... The Girl From The Savoy is as sparkling as champagne and as thrilling as the era itself.'Sometimes life gives you cotton stockings. Sometimes it gives you a Chanel gown ...'Dolly Lane is a dreamer; a downtrodden maid who longs to dance on the London stage, but her life has been fractured by the Great War. Memories of the soldier she loved, of secret shame and profound loss, by turns pull her back and spur her on to make a better life.When she finds employment as a chambermaid at London's grandest hotel, The Savoy, Dolly takes a step closer to the glittering lives of the Bright Young Things who thrive on champagne, jazz and rebellion. Right now, she must exist on the fringes of power, wealth and glamor—she must remain invisible and unimportant.But her fortunes take an unexpected turn when she responds to a struggling songwriter's advertisement for a 'muse' and finds herself thrust into London's...

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