Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

Publisher: Hyperion
Pub. Date: April 01, 2008
ISBN-13: 9780786865659
Sales Rank: 689
352pp


HomeS ynopsis
Since her first appearance on screen in Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews has played a series of memorable roles that have endeared her to generations. But she has never told the story of her life before fame. Until now.

In Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, Julie takes her readers on a warm, moving, and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America. Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and takes readers to 1962, when Walt Disney himself saw her on Broadway and cast her as the world's most famous nanny.

Along the way, she weathered the London Blitz of World War II; her parents' painful divorce; her mother's turbulent second marriage to Canadian tenor Ted Andrews, and a childhood spent on radio, in music halls, and giving concert performances all over England. Julie's professional career began at the age of twelve, and in 1948 she became the youngest solo performer ever to participate in a Royal Command Performance before the Queen. When only eighteen, she left home for the United States to make her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend, and thus began her meteoric rise to stardom.

Home is filled with numerous anecdotes, including stories of performing in My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison on Broadway and in the West End, and in Camelot with Richard Burton on Broadway; her first marriage to famed set and costume designer Tony Walton, culminating with the birth of their daughter, Emma; and the call from Hollywood and what lay beyond.

Julie Andrews' career has flourished over seven decades. From her legendary Broadway performances, to her roles in such iconic films as The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hawaii, 10, and The Princess Diaries, to her award-winning television appearances, multiple album releases, concert tours, international humanitarian work, best-selling children's books, and championship of literacy, Julie's influence spans generations. Today, she lives with her husband of thirty-eight years, the acclaimed writer/director Blake Edwards; they have five children and seven grandchildren.

Featuring over fifty personal photos, many never before seen, this is the personal memoir Julie Andrews' audiences have been waiting for.

Home Publishers Weekly

Andrews, who has written several children's books (The Great American Mousical; Mandy), both solo and with her daughter, now dances in a different direction with this delightful remembrance of her own childhood and engrossing prelude to her cinematic career. Spanning events from her 1935 birth to the early 1960s, she covers her rise to fame and ends with Walt Disney casting her in Mary Poppins(1963). Setting the stage with a family tree backdrop, she balances the sad struggles of relatives and hard drinkers with mirthful family tales and youthful vocal lessons amid rationing and the London Blitz: "My mother pulled back the blackout curtains and gasped-for there, snuggly settled in the concrete square of the courtyard, was the incendiary bomb." A BBC show led to a London musical at age 12: "My song literally stopped the show. People rose to their feet and would not stop clapping." Her mother's revelation of her true father left her reeling when she was 15, but she continued touring, did weekly BBC broadcasts and was Broadway-bound by 1954 to do The Boyfriend. The heart of her book documents the rehearsals, tryouts and smash 1956 opening of My Fair Lady. Readers will rejoice, since Andrews is an accomplished writer who holds back nothing while adding a patina of poetry to the antics and anecdotes throughout this memoir of bittersweet backstage encounters and theatrical triumphs. (Apr. 1)

The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Pub. Date: April 01, 2008
ISBN-13: 9781400044542
Sales Rank: 27,167
288pp

The Second Plane Synopsis“The English language bows deeper to Amis than anyone else.” The Daily Telegraph (UK)

A master not only of fiction but also of fiercely controversial political engagement, Martin Amis here gathers fourteen pieces that constitute an evolving, provocative and insightful examination of the most momentous event of our time.

At the heart of this collection is the long essay “Terror and Boredom,” an unsparing analysis of Islamic fundamentalism and the West’s flummoxed response to it, while other pieces address the invasion of Iraq, the realities of Iran and Tony Blair’s pallid departure from Downing Street. Amis’s reviews of pertinent books and films, from The Looming Tower to United 93, provide a wide-ranging survey of other responses to these calamitous issues, which are further explored in two short stories: “The Last Days of Mohammed Atta,” and “In the Palace of the End,” narrated by a Middle Eastern tyrant’s double whose duties include epic lovemaking, grotesque torture and the duplication on his own body of the injuries sustained by his alter ego in constant assassination attempts.

Whether lambasted for his refusal to kowtow to Muslim pieties or hailed for his blunt common sense, Amis is indisputably a great pleasure to read–informed, elegant, surprising–and this collection a resounding contemplation of the relentless, manifold dangers we suddenly find ourselves living with.

The Second Plane Publishers Weekly

These chronologically ordered essays and stories on the September 11 attacks proceed from initial bewilderment to coruscating contempt for radical Islam. Novelist Amis (House of Meetings) rejects all religious belief as "without reason and without dignity" and condemns "Islamism" as an especially baleful variant. Amis attacks Islamism's tenets as "[a]nti-Semitic, anti-liberal, anti-individualist, anti-democratic" and characterizes its adherents, from founding ideologue Sayyid Qutb to the ordinary suicide bomber, as sexually frustrated misogynists entranced by a "cult of death." He also takes swipes at Bush and the Iraq war, which he describes as botched and tragically counterproductive, if well intentioned, but scorns those who draw a moral equivalence between Western misdeeds and the jihadist agenda. Amis's concerns are cultural and aesthetic as well as existential: terrorism threatens a reign of "boredom" in the guise of tedious airport security protocols, pedantic conspiracy theories and the dogma-shackled "dependent mind" fostered by Islamist theocracy. As much as Amis's opinions are scathing, blunt and occasionally strident, his prose is subtle, elegant and witty-and certainly never boring. (Apr.)


The Second Plane Biography
Martin Amis carried the nickname of “enfante terrible of British literature” far past his youthful debut at 24. His novels focus on excesses -- drugs, sex, money -- prompting Christopher Buckley to note in The New York Times in 1995 that “his terrain is the junkyard of the human psyche” and “Mr. Amis is his generation’s top literary dog

The Cat Who Smelled Smoke

Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Pub. Date: April 01, 2008
ISBN-13: 9780399154744
Sales Rank: 257


The Cat Who Smelled Smoke Biography
For nearly four decades, cat lover Lilian Jackson Braun has been turning out mysteries in her The Cat Who...series, starring multifaceted sleuth Jim Qwilleran and his two helpful cats, Koko and Yum Yum. Wryly but tamely written, Braun's books prove that quaintness and crime need not be mutually exclusive.

Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Pub. Date: March 25, 2008
ISBN-13: 9781400044597
Sales Rank: 780
400pp

Our Story Begins Synopsis“One of our most exquisite storytellers” (Esquire) gives us his first collection in over a decade: ten potent new stories that, along with twenty-one classics, display his mastery over a quarter century.

Tobias Wolff’s first two books, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs and Back in the World, were a powerful demonstration of how the short story can “provoke our amazed appreciation,” as The New York Times Book Review wrote then. In the years since, he’s written a third collection, The Night in Question, as well as a pair of genre-defining memoirs (This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army), the novella The Barracks Thief, and, most recently, a novel, Old School.

Now he returns with fresh revelations—about biding one’s time, or experiencing first love, or burying one’s mother—that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary: a retired Marine enrolled in college while her son trains for Iraq, a lawyer taking a difficult deposition, an American in Rome indulging the Gypsy who’s picked his pocket. In these stories, as with his earlier, much-anthologized work, he once again proves himself, according to the Los Angeles Times, “a writer of the highest order: part storyteller, part philosopher, someone deeply engaged in asking hard questions that take a lifetime to resolve.”


Our Story Begins Publishers Weekly

Wolff's first story collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs(1981), was a major salvo in the short story renaissance that included Raymond Carver. The 10 spare, elegant new stories here, collected with 21 stories from Wolff's three previous collections, are as good as anything Wolff has done. In most, there is a moment of realization, less a startling epiphany than a distant, gradual ache of understanding, that changes how the character looks at the world. The retired, 41-year-old female Marine of "A Mature Student," compares her female professor's experiences in Communist-era Prague and her own son's service in Iraq. "Deep Kiss" movingly chronicles the fractious results when a teenaged boy, infatuated with a promiscuous classmate, neglects to bond with his dying father. A hilarious description of a brash, ignorant thug in "Her Dog" shows Wolff's gift for demotic speech. In an author's note, Wolff says that since he has never considered any of his stories "sacred texts," he has edited some "clumsy or superfluous" passages in earlier works. In all the stories, Wolff expertly uses irony and empathy to explore facets of contemporary life. (Mar.)


Our Story Begins Biography
Mainly known for his short stories and his autobiographical writing, Tobias Wolff riveted readers and held them fast with his book about growing up with an abusive stepfather, This Boy's Life: A Memoir.

The Open Road

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Pub. Date: March 25, 2008
ISBN-13: 9780307267603
Sales Rank: 223,643
288pp

The Open Road Synopsis
One of the most acclaimed and perceptive observers of globalism and Buddhism now gives us the first serious consideration—for Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike—of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s work and ideas as a politician, scientist, and philosopher.

Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father’s) for the last three decades—an ongoing exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama’s position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province; though he was born in one of the remotest, least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses his everyday humanity.

Moving from Dharamsala, India—the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile—to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West, where the Dalai Lama’s pragmatism, rigor, and scholarship are sometimes lost on an audience yearning for mystical visions, The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas, and the daily challenges of a global icon.


The Open Road Publishers Weekly

This is a brilliant pairing of writer and subject. Iyer has known the Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of Tibet, for more than 30 years, thanks to a long-ago connection between the writer's father, an Oxford don born in India, and a young Dalai Lama. And so the acute global observer Iyer, a travel writer, essayist and novelist, has long followed the fortunes of the astute globalist Tibetan Buddhist, who travels the world but can never go home to his Chinese-occupied country. This is not a biography but an extended journalistic analysis of someone deep enough for several lifetimes, as Tibetan Buddhists believe. Iyer organizes his observations by smart descriptions of aspects of the Dalai Lama's work and character: icon, monk, philosopher, politician. This allows him to plumb different sides of His Holiness, whom he demythologizes even as he expresses a clear-eyed respect for the leader's achievements. Iyer reminds readers of paradoxes: the Dalai Lama is highly empirical, yet holds beliefs such as reincarnation that defy observation. He is a public figure who is diligent about elaborate and private religious practices. Like its subject, the aim of this book is ultimately simple: behold the man. (Apr. 3)


The Open Road Biography
Pico Iyer is the author of six works of nonfiction and two novels. He has covered the Tibetan question for Time, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications for more than twenty years.

Maps & Legends

Publisher: McSweeney's Publishing
Pub. Date: March 28, 2008
ISBN-13: 9781932416893
Sales Rank: 67,801
200pp

Maps & Legends Synopsis
Michael Chabon's sparkling first book of nonfiction is a love song in 16 parts — a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection. His own fiction, meanwhile, is explored from the perspective of personal history: post-collegiate desperation sparks his debut, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; procrastination and doubt reveal the way toward Wonder Boys; a love of comics and a basement golem combine to create the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; and an enigmatic Yiddish phrasebook unfurls into The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

Maps & Legends Publishers Weekly

You would hardly think, reading Chabon's new book of essays, that he won the Pulitzer Prize for a book about comics. Rather, he is bitter and defensive about his love for genre fiction such as mysteries and comic books. Serious writers, he says, cannot venture into these genres without losing credibility. "No self-respecting literary genius... would ever describe him- or herself as primarily an 'entertainer,' " Chabon writes. "An entertainer is a man in a sequined dinner jacket, singing 'She's a Lady' to a hall filled with women rubber-banding their underwear up onto the stage." Chabon devotes most of the essays to examining specific genres that he admires, from M.R. James's ghost stories to Cormac McCarthy's apocalyptic work, The Road.The remaining handful of essays are more memoir-focused, with Chabon explaining how he came to write many of his books. Chabon casts himself as one of the few brave souls willing to face ridicule-from whom isn't entirely clear, though it seems to be academics-to write as he wishes. "I write from the place I live: in exile," he says. It's hard to imagine the audience for this book. Chabon seems to want to debate English professors, but surely only his fellow comic-book lovers will be interested in his tirade. (Apr.)

Maps & Legends Biography
Although his novels and short stories have varied in setting -- from the 1940s New York of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay to the contemporary Pittsburgh of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh -- all of Michael Chabon’s witty and understated books feature memorable, deftly-drawn characters trying to find their place in the world.

Hollywood Crows

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Pub. Date: March 25, 2008
ISBN-13: 9780316025287
Sales Rank: 1,369
352pp

Hollywood Crows Synopsis
When LAPD cops Hollywood Nate and Bix Rumstead find themselves caught up with bombshell Margot Aziz, they think they're just having some fun. But in Hollywood, nothing is ever what it seems. To them, Margot is a harmless socialite, stuck in the middle of an ugly divorce from the nefarious nightclub-owner Ali Aziz. What Nate and Bix don't know is that Margot's no helpless victim: the femme fatale is setting them both up. But Ms. Aziz isn't the only one with a deadly plan.
In HOLLYWOOD CROWS, Wambaugh returns once again to the beat he knows best, taking readers on a tightly plotted and darkly funny ride-along through Los Angeles with a cast of flawed cops and eccentric lowlifes they won't soon forget.


Hollywood Crows Publishers Weekly

Gallows humor and the grim realities of street police work coexist uneasily in this less than stellar follow-up to Hollywood Station(2006) from MWA Grand Master Wambaugh. Nathan Weiss, known as Hollywood Nate for his acting ambitions, and his friend Bix Ramstead are now assigned to the LAPD's Community Relations Office, which handles quality-of-life issues and whose members are referred to as Crows. Weiss and Ramstead both become ensnared by a stunning femme fatale, Margot Aziz, who's in the middle of a contentious divorce. Aziz is trying to gain the upper hand over her husband, who operates a seedy nightclub but stays on the good side of law enforcement with well-timed donations to police charities. Aziz's scheming follows a fairly predictable path, and there's not much suspense about the outcome. Through the eyes of an eccentric collection of beat cops, Wambaugh gives a compelling picture of what policing is like under the federal monitor appointed to oversee the real LAPD after the Rampart corruption scandal, but characterizations are on the thin side and some readers may find the callous cruelty off-putting. (Mar. 25)


Hollywood Crows Biography
Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective sergeant, is the bestselling author of seventeen prior works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Choirboys and The Onion Field. In 2004, he was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in southern California.