Double Lives

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Joyce Brabner

The renowned graphic-book author Joyce Brabner's Second Avenue Caper is the true story of a tight-knit group of artists and activists living in New York City in the early 1980s who found themselves on the front lines in the fight against AIDS. Struggling to understand the disease and how they could help, they made a deal with a bona fide goodfella, donned masterful disguises, piled into an "A-Team" van, and set off for the border, determined to save their bedridden friends by smuggling an experimental drug into the United States from Mexico. With their community in crisis and the world turned against them, this impassioned gang of misfits never gave up hope as they searched for ways to raise awareness and beat the plague. Fast-paced, poignant, and beautifully illustrated by the award-winning illustrator Mark Zingarelli, Second Avenue Caper is a heartfelt tribute to the generation that faced down AIDS.

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Joyce Carol Oates

'One of America's greatest and most prolific contemporary literary figures draws on her years of experience with the craft to answer profound questions ranging in topic from inspiration, memory, and self-criticism to what makes a story good, a novel successful, and a writer an artist.A tribute to the brilliant craftsmanship of one of our most distinguished writers, providing valuable insight into her inspiration and her methodJoyce Carol Oates is widely regarded as one of America's greatest contemporary literary figures. Having written in a number of genres -- prose, poetry, personal and critical essays, as well as plays -- she is an artist ideally suited to answer essential questions about what makes a story striking, a novel come alive, a writer an artist as well as a craftsman.In The Faith of a Writer, Oates discusses the subjects most important to the narrative craft, touching on topics such as inspiration, memory, self-criticism, and "the unique power of the unconscious." On a more personal note, she speaks of childhood inspirations, offers advice to young writers, and discusses the wildly varying states of mind of a writer at work. Oates also pays homage to those she calls her "significant predecessors" and discusses the importance of reading in the life of a writer.Oates claims, "Inspiration and energy and even genius are rarely enough to make 'art': for prose fiction is also a craft, and craft must be learned, whether by accident or design." In fourteen succinct chapters, The Faith of a Writer provides valuable lessons on how language, ideas, and experience are assembled to create art.

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Michael Shnayerson

He was one of America's greatest storytellers. The Young Lions; Rich Man, Poor Man; The Girls in their Summer Dresses, novels, essays, dramas, screenplays, and some of the finest short stories of our century: in seventy-one years crowded with accomplishment and contradiction, Irwin Shaw wrote them all. Success came early, but then he had to struggle with the temptations of success. He achieved a greater level of celebrity than most writers of his generation, then had to grapple with the demons that celebrity brings. He was known everywhere for his generosity and charm, but became almost as legendary for his battles -- with the Group Theatre, with The New Yorker, with his book publishers, with competitors such as Hemingway, with his wife in their stormy marriage. - Jacket flap.

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John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi

Find out why John Kerry is "Unfit for Command" as told by the men who served with him. Unfit for Command reveals a John Kerry you don't know -- the true John Kerry that his political image-makers are trying to hide. But the veterans who served with him know better, and in Unfit for Command, they tell their stories, including: How all three of John Kerry's Purple Hearts were for minor injuries, easily treated with band-aids, not requiring a single hour of hospitalization; How captured Americans were tortured in North Vietnamese prisons for not endorsing John Kerry's false testimony -- before the United States Senate -- about alleged American war crimes; How John Kerry carried a typewriter and an 8-mm home movie camera with him to Vietnam so he could record his own exaggerated version of his war exploits and film staged reenactments of his "combat actions" to advance his political career; Why John Kerry's photograph hangs in a place of honor in the Vietnamese Communist "War Remnants Museum" in Ho Chi Minh City. Want to know the real John Kerry? Read Unfit for Command -- and prepare to be shocked. - Jacket.