Thursday, November 17, 2011

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood Movie Mask Knife Poster Print - 24x36

  • decorate your walls with this brand new poster
  • easy to frame and makes a great gift too
  • ships quickly and safely in a sturdy protective tube
  • measures 24.00 by 36.00 inches (60.96 by 91.44 cms)
What chance does a teenage girl have against a maniacal maniac with a machete? Pack your bags and return to Crystal Lake to find out for yourself . . . if you dare! In Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood - Deluxe Edition, young Tina Shepard possesses the gift of telekinesis, allowing her to move things and see the future, using the power of her mind. But when a devious doctor tries to exploit her ability, the gift becomes a hellish curse. Tina unwittingly unchains the merciless, bloodthirsty Jason Voorhees from his watery grave, igniting a bloodbath that ends in the ultimate showdown in strength of mind versus pure evil matter. Experience the legacy of unrelenti! ng terror that never dies!

Special Features: Killer Commentary by director John Carl Buechler and actors Lar Park Lincoln and Kane Hodder
Jason's Destroyer: The Making of Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood
Mind Over Matter: The Truth about Telekinesis
Slashed Scenes Intro
Slashed Scenes
Makeover by Maddy: Need a Little Touch-Up Work, My A**A philosophical quandary: when we truly get a glimpse behind the mask, do we like what we see? This eternal question is directly addressed in chapter 7 of the famed Friday the 13th gross-out series. Here, indestructible killing machine Jason meets his match in the form of a telekinetic teenage girl. Yes, it's "Carrie Goes Camping," although the young lady with special powers might have picked a better vacation spot than Crystal Lake, which has an awful track record for young blondes in tight jeans. This installment is exactly no better or worse than the previous Jason-o-rama! s, with the added bonus of a climax in which the imperturbable! Mr. Voo rhees actually duels someone with supernatural gifts to rival his own. Yes, he does lose his hockey mask (the heroine mind-wills it to pop off), and the results ain't pretty--but then, neither is the Friday the 13th franchise. --Robert HortonA philosophical quandary: when we truly get a glimpse behind the mask, do we like what we see? This eternal question is directly addressed in chapter 7 of the famed Friday the 13th gross-out series. Here, indestructible killing machine Jason meets his match in the form of a telekinetic teenage girl. Yes, it's "Carrie Goes Camping," although the young lady with special powers might have picked a better vacation spot than Crystal Lake, which has an awful track record for young blondes in tight jeans. This installment is exactly no better or worse than the previous Jason-o-ramas, with the added bonus of a climax in which the imperturbable Mr. Voorhees actually duels someone with supernatural gifts to rival his own. Yes,! he does lose his hockey mask (the heroine mind-wills it to pop off), and the results ain't pretty--but then, neither is the Friday the 13th franchise. --Robert HortonOriginal Scores from the Motion Pictures: Friday The 13th, Part VII & VIII by Fred Molin

This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood Movie Mask Knife Poster Print - 24x36

Asterix and the Banquet (Bk. 5)

  • ISBN13: 9780752866093
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

This is going to be the best Thanksgiving ever!

There is a gigantic turkey, Grandma's secret stuffing, green beans, and authentic cranberry sauce, the kind that doesn't come out of a can. And desserts? There are almost too many to count.

Join Nancy and her entire family as they celebrate Thanksgiving in this brand-new storybook, complete with more than thirty swanky stickers.

A worship disorder: this is how Edward T. Welch views addictions. "Will we worship our own desires or will we worship the true God?" With this lens the author discovers far more in Scripture on addictions than passages on drunkenness. There we learn the addict's true condition: like guests at a banquet t! hrown by "the woman Folly," he is already in the grave (Proverbs 9:13-18). Can we not escape our addictions? If we're willing to follow Jesus, the author says that we have "immense hope: hope in God's forgiving grace, hope in God's love that is faithful even when we are not, and hope that God can give power so that we are no longer mastered by the addiction." Each chapter concludes with "Practical Theology," "As Your Face Your Own Addictions," and "As You Help Someone Else."
When the Romans say no, Asterix says yes. So when the soldiers construct a barricade around Asterix’s village to pen everyone in, he and Obelix embark on a trip around the entire country, collecting local specialties along the way. It’s a delicious feast for them, and readers, too.

Afterschool

Humboldt County

Barbie Pink 3-Story Dream Townhouse

  • Include a pink personal elevator, and lights and sounds on every level!
  • Roaring fireplace and pop up flat screen tv
  • Ultra-luxurious Barbie signature bathroom
  • Charming light-up tiki lights and outdoor whirlpool tub
  • Sounds include doorbell, kitchen timer, crackling fireplace, shower humming, and flushing toilet.
Enter the world of Barbie! These three stories of fabulousness include a pink personal elevator plus lights & sounds on every level! Enter through the front door to a warm and glowing light-up chandelier, dining area and fully-stocked kitchen. Entertain in the second-level living room with roaring fireplace and pop up flat screen TV, plus an ultra-luxurious Barbie signature bathroom. On the third floor is a posh bedroom suite with canopy bed and balcony with charming light-up tiki lights & outdoor whirlpool tub! Sounds include doorbell, kitchen timer, cra! ckling fireplace, shower humming, and flushing toilet. (Doll not included.)Be a part of Barbie's luxurious lifestyle in her new 3-Story Dream Townhouse. Designed for ages three and up, the Dream Townhouse stands over three feet tall and comes fully furnished -- including lights and sounds on each level! Your child will enjoy having role-playing adventures with Barbie and her friends in this fancy new townhouse.

At a Glance
    Ages: 3+

    Requires:
  • 3 "AA" batteries (not included)
  • Phillips screw! driver
  • Adult assembly
What We Think

Fun factor:
Durability:
Ease of assembly:
Educational factor:
Novelty factor:

The Good: Great new Dream Townhouse for the Barbie lover in your home.

The Challenging: Many of the elevator parts are similar and can be confusing.

In a Nutshell: Fun, new Barbie dream home with plenty of lights, sounds, and activities.
!


The Dream Townhouse is over three feet in height and comes with over 55 pieces an! d accessories. View larger.

Real Sounds and Lights
Barbie's Dream Townhouse is decorated throughout in classic Barbie pink, with lifelike intricate details, lights, and sounds. With over 55 pieces and accessories, the house has five fully furnished, deluxe rooms with chandeliers, tiki lights, a fireplace, and a refrigerator that all light up. Sounds include Barbie "humming" in the shower, the kitchen timer, the doorbell, the fireplace crackling, or the toilet flushing.

Along with the realistic lights and sounds, the townhouse also features a pink, personal elevator -- which easily moves from floor to floor with a pull string, and an outdoor spa area with a whirlpool tub and light-up tiki lamps.

Besides the whirlpool, Barbie can entertain her friends by cooking something in the fully stocked kitchen, watching a movie on her pop-up flat-screen TV, or even just snuggling up by the warm, crackling fireplace.

Hours of Interactive, Role-playing Fun
Barbie's 3-Story Dre! am Townhouse is the play-set for the Barbie lover in your home. The townhouse provides a setting for interactive, role-playing adventures, and includes everything Barbie could need to entertain her guests, or have a quiet night at home by the fire. Your child will love pulling the elevator to each floor, filling up the whirlpool for pool parties, and playing with all of the realistic lights and sounds.

As a side note: While assembling the townhouse, be sure to follow the directions for the elevator carefully, since the parts look similar and could be confusing.

What's in the Box
House pieces, stickers, and over 55 pieces and accessories. (Batteries not included.)




Fall asleep in the luxurious master bedroom... View l! arger.


...or take a dip in the working jacuzzi. View larger.


Blindness (Harvest Book)

  • ISBN13: 9780156007757
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately ex! hilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.
In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape. So begins Portuguese author José Saramago's gripping story of! humanity under siege, written with a dearth of paragraphs, li! mited p unctuation, and embedded dialogue minus either quotation marks or attribution. At first this may seem challenging, but the style actually contributes to the narrative's building tension, and to the reader's involvement.

In this community of blind people there is still one set of functioning eyes: the doctor's wife has affected blindness in order to accompany her husband to the asylum. As the number of victims grows and the asylum becomes overcrowded, systems begin to break down: toilets back up, food deliveries become sporadic; there is no medical treatment for the sick and no proper way to bury the dead. Inevitably, social conventions begin to crumble as well, with one group of blind inmates taking control of the dwindling food supply and using it to exploit the others. Through it all, the doctor's wife does her best to protect her little band of blind charges, eventually leading them out of the hospital and back into the horribly changed landscape of the! city.

Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes them over the precipice. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence and amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once-civilized, urban dwellers become ragged nomads traveling by touch from building to building in search of food. The devil is in the details, and Saramago has imagined for us in all its devastation a hell where those who went blind in the streets can never find their homes again, where people are reduced to eating chickens raw and packs of dogs roam the excrement-covered sidewalks scavenging from corpses.

And yet in the midst of all this horror ! Saramago has written passages of unsurpassed beauty. Upon bei! ng told she is beautiful by three of her charges, women who have never seen her, "the doctor's wife is reduced to tears because of a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, mere grammatical categories, mere labels, just like the two women, the others, indefinite pronouns, they too are crying, they embrace the woman of the whole sentence, three graces beneath the falling rain." In this one woman Saramago has created an enduring, fully developed character who serves both as the eyes and ears of the reader and as the conscience of the race. And in Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human. --Alix Wilber

A Low Down Dirty Shame

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

  • Condition: New
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most memorable short stories. The protagonist, Benjamin Button, is born an old man and ages in reverse until he becomes a baby and then finally vanishes from the earth. In a short introduction to the story, Fitzgerald wrote: "This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain's to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. By trying the experiment upon only one man in a perfectly normal world I have scarcely given his idea a fair trial. Several weeks after completing it, I discovered an almost identical plot in Samuel Butler's 'Note-books.'" The title story was the inspiration for the MAJOR MOTION PICTURE of the same name and remains one of Fitzgerald's most haunting and beautiful tales.

Fitzgerald's talent for short fiction is on ! display in this selection of four of his finest tales, chosen from two collections: Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). In addition to the title story are "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," a coming-of-age story about a daring young flapper; "The Jelly-Bean," a story of disillusionment and love lost; and "Dalyrimple Goes Wrong," a case of a character torn between self and society."The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most memorable short stories. The protagonist, Benjamin Button, is born an old man and ages in reverse until he becomes a baby and then finally vanishes from the earth. In a short introduction to the story, Fitzgerald wrote: "This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain's to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. By trying the experiment upon only one man in a perfectly normal world I have scarcely given his idea a fair trial. Several! weeks after completing it, I discovered an almost identical p! lot in S amuel Butler's 'Note-books.'" The title story was the inspiration for the MAJOR MOTION PICTURE of the same name and remains one of Fitzgerald's most haunting and beautiful tales.

Fitzgerald's talent for short fiction is on display in this selection of four of his finest tales, chosen from two collections: Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). In addition to the title story are "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," a coming-of-age story about a daring young flapper; "The Jelly-Bean," a story of disillusionment and love lost; and "Dalyrimple Goes Wrong," a case of a character torn between self and society."The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a 1921 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in Colliers Magazine, and subsequently anthologized in his book Tales of the Jazz Age (occasionally published as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories). Developed for years by the late Hollywood mogul Ray Stark, the rights and sto! ry development were purchased from the Ray Stark Estate and adapted for a 2008 film of the same name directed by David Fincher. â€" Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. More e-Books from MobileReference - Best Books. Best Price. Best Search and Navigation (TM) All fiction books are only $0.99. All collections are only $5.99Designed for optimal navigation on Kindle and other electronic devices Search for any title: enter mobi (shortened MobileReference) and a keyword; for example: mobi ShakespeareTo view all books, click on the MobileReference link next to a book title Literary Classics: Over 10,000 complete works by Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Dickens, Tolstoy, and other authors. All books feature hyperlinked table of contents, footnotes, and author biography. Books are also available as collections, organized by an author. Collections simplify book access through categorical, alphabetical, and chronological indexes. They offe! r lower price, convenience of one-time download, and reduce cl! utter of titles in your digital library. Religion: The Illustrated King James Bible, American Standard Bible, World English Bible (Modern Translation), Mormon Church's Sacred Texts Philosophy: Rousseau, Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Engels Travel Guides and Phrasebooks for All Major Cities: New York, Paris, London, Rome, Venice, Prague, Beijing, Greece Medical Study Guides: Anatomy and Physiology, Pharmacology, Abbreviations and Terminology, Human Nervous System, Biochemistry College Study Guides: FREE Weight and Measures, Physics, Math, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Statistics, Languages, Philosophy, Psychology, Mythology History: Art History, American Presidents, U.S. History, Encyclopedias of Roman Empire, Ancient Egypt Health: Acupressure Guide, First Aid Guide, Art of Love, Cookbook, Cocktails, Astrology Reference: The World's Biggest Mobile Encyclopedia; CIA World Factbook, Illustrated Encyclopedias of Birds, Mammals"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a 1921 short stor! y by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in Colliers Magazine, and subsequently anthologized in his book Tales of the Jazz Age (occasionally published as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories). Developed for years by the late Hollywood mogul Ray Stark, the rights and story development were purchased from the Ray Stark Estate and adapted for a 2008 film of the same name directed by David Fincher. â€" Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. More e-Books from MobileReference - Best Books. Best Price. Best Search and Navigation (TM) All fiction books are only $0.99. All collections are only $5.99Designed for optimal navigation on Kindle and other electronic devices Search for any title: enter mobi (shortened MobileReference) and a keyword; for example: mobi ShakespeareTo view all books, click on the MobileReference link next to a book title Literary Classics: Over 10,000 complete works by Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Conan Doyle, Jule! s Verne, Dickens, Tolstoy, and other authors. All books featur! e hyperl inked table of contents, footnotes, and author biography. Books are also available as collections, organized by an author. Collections simplify book access through categorical, alphabetical, and chronological indexes. They offer lower price, convenience of one-time download, and reduce clutter of titles in your digital library. Religion: The Illustrated King James Bible, American Standard Bible, World English Bible (Modern Translation), Mormon Church's Sacred Texts Philosophy: Rousseau, Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Engels Travel Guides and Phrasebooks for All Major Cities: New York, Paris, London, Rome, Venice, Prague, Beijing, Greece Medical Study Guides: Anatomy and Physiology, Pharmacology, Abbreviations and Terminology, Human Nervous System, Biochemistry College Study Guides: FREE Weight and Measures, Physics, Math, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Statistics, Languages, Philosophy, Psychology, Mythology History: Art History, American Presidents, U.S. History, Encyclope! dias of Roman Empire, Ancient Egypt Health: Acupressure Guide, First Aid Guide, Art of Love, Cookbook, Cocktails, Astrology Reference: The World's Biggest Mobile Encyclopedia; CIA World Factbook, Illustrated Encyclopedias of Birds, MammalsThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who ages in reverse: He is born seventy years old and becomes younger as the years progress. This faithful graphic-novel adaptation chronicles Benjamin Button's many adventures: He falls in love with a woman who ages normally (this causes complications), starts a family, and establishes a successful business. In his later years, he attends Harvard and plays on their football team. By the time he is an old man, Benjamin Button resembles a baby. 'And then he remembered nothing. Through the noons and nights he breathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and dar! kness.'

The film adaptation of the story starring Brad ! Pitt (as Benjamin Button) and directed by David Fincher (who also directed Pitt in Fight Club and Seven) opens on December 19, 2008. This adaptation will allow fans of the film to experience the original source material in a fresh and fun graphic-novel format.The inspiration for the major motion picture starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchettâ€"plus eighteen other stories by the beloved author of The Great Gatsby

IN THE TITLE STORY, a baby born in 1860 begins life as an old man and proceeds to age backward. F. Scott Fizgerald hinted at this kind of inversion when he called his era “a generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.” Perhaps nowhere in American fiction has this “Lost Generation” been more vividly preserved than in Fitzgerald’s short fiction. Spanning the early twentieth-century American landscape, this original collection captures, with Fitzgerald’s signature blend of enchantment an! d disillusionment, America during the Jazz Age.

In his short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, F. Scott Fitzgerald provides a humorous and touching journey that reveals what it's like to be born old and age in reverse.

With art by Calef Brown, this collector's edition presents this classic story in illustrated form for the first time.

A 2-CD collection from the acclaimed major motion picture featuring the compelling original score by Alexandre Desplat plus classic music by Louis Armstrong, The Platters and Bix Beiderbecke.

Bobby (Widescreen Edtion)

  • (Drama) A re-telling of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968. The film follows 22 individuals who are all at the hotel for different purposes but share the common thread of anticipating Kennedy's arrival at the primary election night party, which would change their lives forever. This historic night is set against the backdrop of the cultural issues gr
(Drama) A re-telling of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968. The film follows 22 individuals who are all at the hotel for different purposes but share the common thread of anticipating Kennedy's arrival at the primary election night party, which would change their lives forever. This historic night is set against the backdrop of the cultural issues gripping the country at the time, including racism, sexual inequality and class differences.In the final quarter o! r so of Bobby, writer-director-actor Emilio Estevez finally starts tightening his grip on the viewer as we head inexorably toward the film's climax: the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen. In the course of these scenes--among them Kennedy's acceptance speech after winning the California Democratic presidential primary (the senator is seen only in file footage), his death at the hands of gunman Sirhan Sirhan, and the chaos and despair that ensued--Estevez steadily ratchets up the sense of tension and dread. Knowing exactly what's coming, while the characters onscreen don't, is excruciating, as is our grief at hearing RFK's own words, so eloquent, so hopeful and inspiring, as we watch the horrible events unfold and wonder what might have been (sure it's manipulative--but it works). But the rest of Bobby isn't nearly as compelling. Nor is it really about Kennedy, despite its obvious adulation of the man whom many thought would ! defeat Richard Nixon in the '68 general election. In the tradi! tion of, say, an Irwin Allen disaster flick, we're invited into the lives of nearly two dozen folks, most of them at least partly fictional, who were at the Ambassador Hotel that June day, including guests, staff (kitchen workers, switchboard operators, management, etc.), campaign workers, reporters, and more. There are lots of movie stars in the cast, and some of them (Sharon Stone, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy) are very good. But caring about the quotidian minutiae of these people's existences is a chore, and Estevez crams so many issues into his story (the Vietnam war, drugs, alcoholism, voting irregularities, adultery, racism, immigration, communism… even L.A. Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale's streak of consecutive shutouts) and tries so obviously to establish parallels between then and now that too much of the movie feels gratuitous and forced. A warts-and-all film about Robert Kennedy's extraordinary life and career would be welcome. Unfortunately, Bobby isn't it. --Sa! m Graham

Everybody's Nuts California Pistachios Salt & Pepper 3 lbs

  • 3 pounds of delicious California Pistachios
  • Perfectly seasoned with salt and pepper
  • Kosher with the "circle U" symbol
Funny and inspiring, this widely acclaimed comedy takes an original look at just how far some people will go for fame! Jean is an ordinary family man and factory worker who is certain that his only child, Marva, is destined to become a famous singing star. If only Jean could catch a break ... and if only Marva could be discovered! A truly hilarious treat honored with an Academy Award(R) nomination as Best Foreign Language Film (2000) -- you'll be delighted to follow the unexpectedly outrageous steps Jean takes to make his dream a reality!This terrific, heartfelt Belgian comedy won a much-deserved Academy Award® nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 2000. Jean dreams of giving his daughter Marva a better life than the endless slog in the factory for whic! h he fears she's destined. He does everything he can to launch her to singing stardom, but Marva, shy and overweight, finds the contests she enters humiliating and can barely conceal her contempt for Jean (as well as the songs he composes for her). Then fate comes along in the guise of beautiful singing star Debbie and a few sleeping pills Jean has handy. For all its broad comedy plotting, Everybody's Famous has a shining, gentle spirit and offers a touching portrait of proud fatherhood, including moving little moments such as Jean sitting on the concrete and listening through a window just to hear his daughter sing. This movie is so charming you can't help but enjoy it. --Ali DavisGifted artist Gerald Murphy and his elegant wife, Sara, were icons of the most enchanting period of our time; handsome, talented, and wealthy expatriate Americans, they were at the very center of the literary scene in Paris in the 1920s. In Everybody Was So Young--one of the ! best reviewed books of 1995--Amanda Vaill brilliantly portrays! both th e times in which the Murphys lived and the fascinating friends who flocked around them. Whether summering with Picasso on the French Riviera or watching bullfights with Hemingway in Pamplona, Gerald and Sara inspired kindred creative spirits like Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Nicole and Dick Diver in Tender is the Night were modeled after the Murphys). Their story is both glittering and tragic, and in this sweeping and richly anecdotal portrait of a marriage and an era, Amanda Vaill "has brought them to life as never before" (Chicago Tribune).Gerald and Sara Murphy were the golden couple of the Lost Generation. Born to wealth and privilege, they fled the stuffy confines of upper-class America to reinvent themselves in France as legendary party givers and enthusiastic participants in the modernist revolution of the 1920s. He became an important painter; she made everyday life a work of art. Their friends F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest ! Hemingway, and John Dos Passos all based fictional characters on the Murphys; Picasso painted them; and Calvin Tomkins rekindled their glamour for a younger generation in his affectionate 1971 portrait, Living Well Is the Best Revenge. Amanda Vaill's vivid new biography builds on Tomkins's work to provide a full-length account of the Murphys' remarkable life together.

As well as good times, that life included suffering endured with great courage. The Murphys' teenage sons died within two years of each other in the mid-1930s--one suddenly, one after a long battle with tuberculosis--and the Depression forced Gerald to resume the uncongenial work of managing his family's business. Vaill's sensitive rendering reveals the moral substance that enabled this stylish couple to survive heartbreak. But it's her marvelous evocation of those magical expatriate years that lingers in the memory. The wit and imaginative panache with which the Murphys lived sparkles ! again, recapturing a splendid historical moment. As Sara late! r said, "It was like a great fair, and everybody was so young." --Wendy Smith This terrific, heartfelt Belgian comedy won a much-deserved Academy Award® nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 2000. Jean dreams of giving his daughter Marva a better life than the endless slog in the factory for which he fears she's destined. He does everything he can to launch her to singing stardom, but Marva, shy and overweight, finds the contests she enters humiliating and can barely conceal her contempt for Jean (as well as the songs he composes for her). Then fate comes along in the guise of beautiful singing star Debbie and a few sleeping pills Jean has handy. For all its broad comedy plotting, Everybody's Famous has a shining, gentle spirit and offers a touching portrait of proud fatherhood, including moving little moments such as Jean sitting on the concrete and listening through a window just to hear his daughter sing. This movie is so charming you can't help but enjoy i! t. --Ali DavisSpicy, but not too overwhelming. It might be your most addictive flavor. From Lost Hills California. Kirkland Signature