Cynthia Kaplan takes us on a hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking journey through her unique, uncensored world her bungled romantic encounters and unsung theatrical experiences; her gadget-obsessed father, her pill-popping therapist, and her eccentric grandmothers; her fearless husband, whom she engages in an ongoing battle over which of them is the most popular person in their apartment; and, of course, her vengeful, power-hungry one-year-old son.Kaplan's voice is a lot like the one in our heads the one that most of us are only willing to listen to late at night . . . maybe while locked in a closet. What a relief it is that someone finally admits that she is afraid of nearly everything; that she is jealous even of people whose lives are on the verge of collapse; and that she has, at times, tried to pass for a gentile.

Bill Parcells was living in self-imposed exile from the National Football League sidelines. The Tuna had earned living-legend status after coaching the Giants, Patriots, and Jets from the skid-row district of the NFL and transforming those teams into champions. The final weeks of the 2002 season found Parcells working as an analyst at the ESPN studios. His heart aching, Parcells was like a televangelist with no cripples to heal. The Tuna urgently yearned for another lost cause.In Dallas, Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones described by author Mike Shropshire as "a man involved in a heroic struggle to overcome what had been diagnosed as a terminal face-lift" was suffering through sleepless nights. Although his once-proud pro football powerhouse traveled beneath a banner that read "America's Team," it had suffered three straight 5-11 seasons. This team was so sick, it had bedsores.After a clandestine meeting aboard Jones's private jet, parked at a New Jersey airport, Parcells agreed to abandon his East Coast roots and travel south to restore life to the Cowboys. The Tuna and Jones needed each other in the worst kind of way, so a shotgun wedding was performed. The pundits of the national media joined hands and shouted, "Parcells and Jones can't stand each other! They're too set in their ways! It'll never work!"As usual, the pundits were wrong. With Parcells the ultimate motivator and so-called Jock Whisperer applying his craft, Dallas rolled to a 10-6 regular-season record and shocked the NFL by making the playoffs. When the Tuna Went Down to Texas details the saga of how this unlikely partnership of men "too brittle for tango lessons, but not yet blind enough for assisted living" amazed the sports world and serves as absolute proof that while the truth is not always stranger than fiction, it's usually a lot funnier.

"John Koethe's The Constructor is a scrupulous, elegant account of the meditative intellect as an instrument continually registering the passage of time. Exquisitely modulated and brutally honest, these poems would be harrowing were they not so seductively beautiful. No one writing in this country today sees as deeply as Koethe into the tears that lie at the heart of things, and no contemporary investigation of the life of the mind may be called complete that does not accommodate the lush intricacy of his terrifying recognitions."-- George Bradley"I prize John Koethe's intimate expanses and unsettling reveries, his tender contemplations and odd mental landscapes. He is an heir to Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery and, like them, he gives us the sensation of thinking itself, of a certain fleeting, daily, solitary consciousness rescued from oblivion and held aloft."-- Edward Hirsch

A timeless and visionary blueprint for conscious living and quantum change as we approach the next century.

Weis was taught football by some of the best minds in the game: Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick. Parcells would give him a life-defining break in 1990 by hiring him as an assistant on the New York Giants staff. For a Jersey guy who loved sports, this was a dream come true, especially when Weis won his first championship in his debut year in the NFL. He'd always wanted to be a sports announcer the next Marv Albert but he'd caught the coaching bug and was now in a position to learn from the best. And he did, following Parcells to the New England Patriots and then to the New York Jets. Under enormous pressure and exacting standards, Weis flourished and later became offensive coordinator.When Parcells stepped down as coach of the Jets, Weis joined his colleague and friend Bill Belichick, who was the newly named Patriots head coach. Together they would thrive, building a storied franchise, a rare modern-day dynasty that won three Super Bowls in four years. Through it all, Weis designed offensive schemes that would befuddle even the best defenses in the NFL, and he coached a number of players to greatness, including Pro Bowlers Ben Coates, Curtis Martin, and, of course, Tom Brady.The chance of a lifetime arrived in December of 2004: Weis was offered the opportunity to lead one of the most prestigious football schools in the country, Notre Dame home of coaching legends Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine, and Lou Holtz. And so began a new chapter in Weis's career. Weis took over a program in dire need of direction, and now he is in the process of building his own legacy with his unique vision.Off the field, Weis faced his other challenges. Seeking to improve his health and lose weight, he decided to get gastric bypass surgery. What he thought would be a routine procedure turned into a nightmare as he nearly bled to death, lapsed into a coma, and was read the last rites. It was a horrifying experience, yet he battled back in inspiring fashion and still demands nothing less of himself despite the long-lasting aftereffects.He has had his joys, too. Weis considers his wife, Maura, his best friend. They have two beautiful children: Charlie, his "best buddy," and Hannah, who he and his wife consider their "guiding angel." Hannah is developmentally delayed and has been the inspiration leading to the establishment of Hannah and Friends, a nonprofit foundation seeking to improve the quality of life for people with special needs. No Excuses is not only illuminating and insightful, it is an extraordinary look inside one of football's greatest minds who has helped shape today's game.

A collection of offbeat, funny, and often moving backstories of the many entertainers and athletes covered by award-winning Newsweek journalist Allison Samuels, Off the Record reveals the inner worlds of today's A-list black celebrities.With anecdotes on everyone from Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O'Neal, Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, and Whitney Houston, this "all-access" book is filled with insightful stories that never made it into the pages of the mainstream press.From her start at CAA's infamous agent training program which included tasks such as blowing up 200 dinosaurs for the lobby when Steven Spielberg made a quick visit, and picking up Ted Danson's half-million-dollar weekly paycheck there was no chore too small. But these humble beginnings gave Samuels access to Hollywood's A-list and led to her eventual focus on the world of black entertainers.

The last time a Philadelphia professional sports team won a championship, Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Return of the Jedi was number one at the box office. No city with all four major sports has gone longer without one. The local NFL franchise, the Eagles, has not won a title since 1960, putting its devoted fans through decades of futility and heartbreak.Peppered with riotous anecdotes about the grandstand brawlers and football lunatics who make Philadelphia one of the most entertaining places in America to watch a game, If Football's a Religion, Why Don't We Have a Prayeris the hilarious day-by-day account of the operatic passion of Eagles fans in the buildup to the team's first Super Bowl appearance since 1981. With outrageous detail and beer-on-your-shoes reporting, New York Times sportswriter and longtime Philly resident Jere Longman reveals what happens when the losingest sports town in America finally has a shot at winning it all.

When she lands a coveted nonpaying, nonspeaking role in a play going on a European tour, Rachel Shukert with a brand-new degree in acting from NYU and no money finally scores her big break. And, after a fluke at customs in Vienna, she gets her golden ticket: an unstamped passport, giving her free rein to find herself on a grand tour of Europe. Traveling from Vienna to Zurich to Amsterdam, Rachel bounces through complicated relationships, drunken mishaps, miscommunication, and the reality-adjusting culture shock that every twentysomething faces when sent off to negotiate "the real world" whatever that may be.

From her fame as the Oscar-winning actress who uttered the famous line in Moonstruck, "I know who I am," to her lauded role as Mrs. Madrigal, the landlord of indeterminate gender in Tales of the City, to being the cousin of Michael Dukakis, presidential candidate, Olympia Dukakis has captured the imagination of a broad audience. Known for her straightforward talk, her lack of pretension, and her ongoing quest to explore ever more aspects of herself and her art, she is a role model for women of all ages.Olympia Dukakis's role in Moonstruck made her a household name, but before that overnight success came twenty-eight years of hard work. For nineteen of those years, she was an integral part of running the Whole Theatre Company in Montclair, New Jersey, while she and her husband raised their three children. She managed to "have it all" -- career, family, home -- before having it all became fashionable.

After forty–six years in upscale Manhattan, after two roaring decades as an investment banker and after nineteen years of marriage, Bill Schoenberg lost it all and ran for the hills. He made a mistake, regrettable and unspeakable; and having fled to his neglected country house in rural New York State to gather his wits, he found a chance to reacquire his self–respect as well – and possibly even redemption. To a man for whom flames existed solely in the kitchens of four–star restaurants, and who had volunteered for nothing in his life, the Harristown Volunteer Fire Company represented an unlikely pursuit – until a fire in his house convinced him otherwise. As Bill struggled to trade his French cuff shirts for flannel, to learn to dress in the back of a moving fire truck and to knock down forest fires, he was also forced to navigate the darker recesses of his mind and dying marriage. His wife may have been having an affair with one of his colorful country neighbors; an angry intruder seemed to be preying on his property; and his own unmentionable secret came closer to the surface the longer he stayed in Harristown. Intelligent and entertaining, funny and frightening, THE GOLDEN HOUR is a unique novel of manhood, neighborhood, and saving the day.

The stories and sketches in this collection penetrate to the heart of human experience with the passion and intelligence readers have come to expect of Doris Lessing. Most of the piece are set in contemporary London, a city the author loves for its variety, its diversity, its transitoriness, the way it connects the life of animals and birds in the parks to the streets. Lessing's fiction also explores the darker corners of relationships between women and men, as in the rich and emotionally complex title story, in which she uncovers a more parlous reality behind the facade of the most conventional relationship between the sexes.

More than a star pitcher and accomplished coach, Mel Stottlemyre has a history that serves as a behind-the-scenes tour of five decades of baseball. From Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford to Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry to Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, Stottlemyre connected generations of stars during a remarkable career.In his long-awaited autobiography, Stottlemyre tells his story in colorful detail, from his days as a rookie sensation on the last of the great Mantle teams to those as trusted pitching coach during the Joe Torre administration. Along the way he takes readers inside the clubhouses of champions describing the defiance of the '86 Mets, from manager Davey Johnson on down, and recalling the true grit and selflessness that helped make Torre's Yankees a dynasty from 1996 to 2000.

On January 2, 1678, a fleet of French ships sank off the Venezuelan coast. This proved disastrous for French naval power in the region, and sparked the rise of a golden age of piracy.Tracing the lives of fabled pirates like the Chevalier de Grammont, Nikolaas Van Hoorn, Thomas Paine, and Jean Comte d'Estres, The Lost Fleet portrays a dark age, when the outcasts of European society formed a democracy of buccaneers, settling on a string of islands off the African coast. From there, the pirates haunted the world's oceans, wreaking havoc on the settlements along the Spanish mainland and -- often enlisted by French and English governments -- sacking ships, ports, and coastal towns.More than three hundred years later, writer, explorer, and deep-sea diver Barry Clifford follows the pirates' destructive wake back to Venezuela. With the help of a lost map, drawn by the captain of the lost French fleet, Clifford locates the site of the disaster and wreckage of the once-mighty armada.

Is this a great country or whatYou can bet on the turn of the card or a roll of the dice, but also on the NFL, the NCAA, and which Olsen twin marries first. We bet $80 billion a year, the amount growing wildly as more and more people gain access to this huge American wheel of fortune. No longer quarantined in Las Vegas, gambling has become as local and convenient as our neighborhood cineplex. If there's not a casino around the corner, there's one on your laptop computer.In Jackpot Nation, Richard Hoffer takes us on a headlong tour, alternately horrifying and hilarious, across our landscape of luck. Whether he's trying to win a side of bacon in a Minnesota bar, hustling a paper sack filled with $100,000 in cash across Las Vegas parking lots, poring over expansion plans with a tribal chief in California, or visiting the New York prison cell of a retired bus salesman with a poor understanding of three-game parlays, Hoffer explores with wit and heart our national inclination a cultural predisposition, even to take a chance.

Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor's ear, if the poor are a responsibility they are also an imposition.Set against the vivid backdrop of shambolic modern-day Africa—a continent now primarily populated with wildlife of the two-legged sort—Lionel Shriver's Game Control is a wry, grimly comic tale of bad ideas and good intentions. With a deft, droll touch, Shriver highlights the hypocrisy of lofty intellectuals who would "save" humanity but who don't like people.

Meet Alice Finnegan: thirty-something, single and determined to take control of her own destiny ... even if she is stuck in a series of secretarial temp jobs and living with her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother -- a feisty, funny, former Ziegfeld showgirl. But that's easier said than done when your job counselor can't spell "employment" correctly, your boss has you planning her daughter's wedding, your new boyfriend cares more about his career than caresses, and your dreams of stardom are dashed when a hotshot casting director suggests you get your nose fixed -- and you already have. But even as it seems that Alice's world has gone crazy, and she succumbs to a Mr. Right who turns into a Mr. Not Right Now, she knows that any insanity is only temporary ...

Sweethearts since childhood, Ellie Hogan and her husband, John, are content on their farm in Ireland—until John, a soldier for the Irish Republican Army, receives an injury that leaves him unable to work. Forced to take drastic measures in order to survive, Ellie does what so many Irish women in the 1920s have done and sails across a vast ocean to New York City to work as a maid for a wealthy socialite. Once there, Ellie is introduced to a world of opulence and sophistication, tempted by the allure of grand parties and fine clothes, money and mansions . . . and by the attentions of a charming suitor who can give her everything. Yet her heart remains with her husband back home. And now she faces the most difficult choice she will ever have to make: a new life in a new country full of hope and promise, or return to a life of cruel poverty . . . and love.

“Q, Quentina Elizabeth Deveril, is the love of my life.” Shortly before his wedding, the unnamed hero of this uncommon romance is visited by a man who claims to be his future self and ominously admonishes him that he must not marry the love of his life, Q. At first the protagonist doubts this stranger, but in time he becomes convinced of the authenticity of the warning and leaves his fiancée. The resulting void in his life is impossible to fill. One after the other, future selves arrive urging him to marry someone else, divorce, attend law school, leave law school, travel, join a running club, stop running, study the guitar, the cello, Proust, Buddhism, and opera, and eliminate gluten from his diet. The only constants in this madcap quest for personal improvement are his love for his New York City home and for the irresistible Q.A unique literary talent, Evan Mandery turns the classic story of transcendent love on its head, with an ending that will melt even the darkest heart.

New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie makes her mark with this absorbing, finely hued tale of suspense—a deeply atmospheric and twisting mystery full of deadly secrets, salacious lies, and unexpected betrayals involving the mysterious drowning of a Met detective—an accomplished rower—on the Thames.When a K9 search-and-rescue team discovers a woman's body tangled up with debris in the river, Scotland Yard superintendent Duncan Kincaid finds himself heading an investigation fraught with complications. The victim, Rebecca Meredith, was a talented but difficult woman with many admirers—and just as many enemies. An Olympic contender on the verge of a controversial comeback, she was also a high-ranking detective with the Met—a fact that raises a host of political and ethical issues in an already sensitive case.To further complicate the situation, a separate investigation, led by Detective Inspector Gemma James, Kincaid's wife, soon reveals a disturbing—and possibly related—series of crimes, widening the field of suspects. But when someone tries to kill the search-and-rescue team member who found Rebecca's body, the case becomes even more complex and dangerous, involving powerful interests with tentacles that reach deep into the heart of the Met itself.Surrounded by enemies with friendly faces, pressured to find answers quickly while protecting the Yard at all costs, his career and reputation on the line, Kincaid must race to catch the killer before more innocent lives are lost—including his own.

Dann is grown up now, hunting for knowledge and despondent over the inadequacies of his civilization. With his trusted companions—Mara's daughter, his hope for the future; the abandoned child-soldier Griot, who discovers the meaning of love and the ability to sing stories; and the snow dog, a faithful friend who brings him back from the depths of despair—Dann embarks on a strange and captivating adventure in a suddenly colder, more watery climate in the north.

Elvis has left the building . . . and his shoes have followed suit! No holiday in tiny Salt Lick, Texas, is more revered than January 8th—Elvis's birthday! To commemorate the grand occasion, Hogg's Drive-In—where the King enjoyed many a burger on the road to fame and fortune—is displaying an “actual” pair of Elvis's blue suede shoes. That is, until some heel without a soul swipes them right out of their display case.Debbie Sue Overstreet and Edwina Perkins-Martin—the shoe-loving Domestic Equalizers—are shocked that someone would perpetrate such a dastardly crime. So the plucky detecting duo agrees to help the town's inept sheriff track down the royal blue loafers. And being majestic multitaskers, the ladies might even be able to squeeze in some matchmaking as well.Mix-ups, mayhem, the threat of gunplay, and shocking octogenarian secrets revealed—it's all in a day's work for the Domestic Equalizers, the two best friends whose motto is: Don't get mad . . . get evidence!