A Fine Romance

In a follow-up to Knock Wood, the Emmy Award-winning actress traces the milestone events of her life, including her first marriage, the birth of her daughter, her work on Murphy Brown and her struggles with widowhood.

The author presents a hand written, illustrated account of her two months exploring the English countryside.

In A Fine Romance, David Lehman looks at the formation of the American songbook—the timeless numbers that became jazz standards, iconic love songs, and sound tracks to famous movies—and explores the extraordinary fact that this songbook was written almost exclusively by Jews. An acclaimed poet, editor, and cultural critic, David Lehman hears America singing—with a Yiddish accent. He guides us through America in the golden age of song, when “Embraceable You,” “White Christmas,” “Easter Parade,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” “My Romance,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “Stormy Weather,” and countless others became nothing less than the American sound track. The stories behind these songs, the shows from which many of them came, and the shows from which many of them came, and the composers and lyricists who wrote them give voice to a specifically American saga of love, longing, assimilation, and transformation. Lehman’s analytical skills, wit, and exuberance infuse this book with an energy and a tone like no other: at once sharply observant, personally searching, and attuned to the songs that all of us love. He helps us understand how natural it should be that Wizard of Oz composer Harold Arlen was the son of a cantor who incorporated “Over the Rainbow” into his Sabbath liturgy, and why Cole Porter—the rare non-Jew in this pantheon of musicians who wrote these classic songs shaped America even as America was shaping them. (Part of the Jewish Encounter series)

"Feminist film theory will soon be a quarter of a century old. It has known the euphoria of the 1970s, experienced the contradictions of the 1980s, and glimpsed the reversals and political gains, which include women of color, of the 1990s." But, Patricia Mellencamp asks, what is the next move? In this challenging look at twenty years of feminist film theory, Mellencamp elaborates on its rich history, drawing on her personal academic life, and offering inventive readings of a remarkable variety of films: recent Hollywood releases like Forest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Thelma and Louise, Basic Instinct, and Silence of the Lambs, and features and independent films made by women, such as The Piano, Angie, Orlando, Bedevil, Daughters of the Dust, Privilege, and Forbidden Love. With a clever sense of irony and wit, Mellencamp poses a question from which her analysis takes off: What did Rapunzel, Cinderella and Snow White forget to tell Thelma and Louise? According to Mellencamp, they forgot what comes after "the end," after the wedding to the prince. So many women's stories, often by choice, stop after the prince whisks the princess away to live happily ever after. This book asks, what does "happily" mean for women? And what does "ever after" cost women? This creative call to shift film feminism's infamous "gaze" from sex and bodies to money and work ascertains where film feminism has been and what it needs to progress. Rather than recycling and regaining the same ground, Mellencamp urges film feminism to explore and claim new territory. Author note: Patricia Mellencamp is Professor of Film and Cultural Theory, Department of Art History, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. She has published several books, including High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Ageand Indiscretions: Avant-garde Film, Video, and Feminism.

Candice Bergen's bestselling 1984 memoir: an “engaging, intelligent, and wittily self-deprecating autobiography” (The New York Times). Candice Bergen was born into the heady Hollywood of the 1950s, where “celebrity offspring” were celebrities unto themselves. And because she was the daughter of Edgar Bergen, vaudeville and radio's greatest dignitary/comedian, her “sibling” was Charlie McCarthy, the impudent dummy beloved of millions. Bergen—much as he loved his daughter—was a man who “kept his emotions pressed and neatly hung,” and was more comfortable speaking to—and through—his brainchild who never had to grow up and leave the paradise that was childhood. Knock Wood is a book all about growing up—about the comedy of expectations that ruled Candice Bergen's early life, about the ironies that attended her exotic rites of passage. She stepped out into a world that offered her a wealth of options: adolescence in Swiss boarding schools; at nineteen, costarring opposite Steve McQueen in The Sand Pebbles; quick entry into the profession of photojournalism; automatic acceptance among the esteemed company of the moment—be it the international jet set, Bel Air in the 1960s, or the world that was radical politics in the 1970s. But always she carried the conviction that her gifts were untested, her luck unearned. Told with wit, self-deprecation, and a rare degree of courage, Knock Wood is the extraordinary record of Candice Bergen's coming of age. It is at once the moving fable of the love between a father and a daughter, of a woman's triumph over self-doubt, and a dazzling journal of America's life and times over the past four decades.

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry’s stunning internationally acclaimed bestseller, is set in mid-1970s India. It tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a “State of Internal Emergency.” Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances – and their fates – become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen. Mistry’s prose is alive with enduring images and a cast of unforgettable characters. Written with compassion, humour, and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured, and powerful novel written by one of the most gifted writers of our time.

SPECIAL EDITION – Meet the Dreamland billionaires! Declan I’m destined to become the next CEO of my family’s media empire. The only problem? My grandfather’s inheritance clause. Fulfilling his dying wish of getting married and having an heir seemed impossible until my assistant volunteered for the job. Our marriage was supposed to be the perfect solution to my biggest problem. But the more we act in love for the public, the more unsure I feel about our contract. Caring about Iris was never part of the deal. Especially not when breaking her heart is inevitable. Iris My plan to marry Declan was simple in theory. Move in together. Throw a wedding. Have a baby. We set rules to prevent any kind of issues. Ones that were never meant to be broken, no matter how much Declan tempts me. But what happens when our fake relationship bleeds into our real one? Falling in love was never an option. At least not for me. Terms and conditions is the second book in a series of interconnected standalones following three billionaire brothers. The first is called The Fine Print.

Our Fine Romance is the true story of two young people growing up separately during the London Blitz of 1940 and their subsequent evacuation into the English countryside. Following their unusual meeting, courtship and marriage they emigrated to "Apartheid" South Africa. Three years and two children later, for financial reasons, they made the risky decision to move to Northern Rhodesia, close to the war ravaged Republic of Congo. During their life there in the 1960's the "Wind of Change" was sweeping through the Colonial African States. Many British territories became independent during this time and, after another child and 10 years in Africa, they decided to start a new life on the West Coast of Canada. With the addition of a fourth child and successful careers in their adopted country, Maureen and Michael are both now retired and living in Vancouver, British Columbia, but a recent turn of events has lead to their biggest challenge yet.