Now And Then Again

Now entering mid-life, Vann Sinclair is ready to do for herself after years of doing for others. But the serene life Vann expected with early retirement turns out to be just a dream. Everything happens for a reason, and Vann soon finds unexpected wonders.

The trade paperback edition of Diane Keaton’s unforgettable memoir includes a new Afterword about the bonds between mother and daughter. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • People • Vogue ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR —Financial Times • Chicago Sun-Times The Independent • Bookreporter The Sunday Business Post Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK. So begins Diane Keaton’s unforgettable memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall, but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother, the loving, complicated, always-thinking Dorothy Hall. To write about herself, Diane realized she had to write about her mother, too, and how their bond came to define both their lives. In a remarkable act of creation, Diane not only reveals herself to us, she also lets us meet in intimate detail her mother. Over the course of her life, Dorothy kept eighty-five journals—literally thousands of pages—in which she wrote about her marriage, her children, and, most probingly, herself. Dorothy also recorded memorable stories about Diane’s grandparents. Diane has sorted through these pages to paint an unflinching portrait of her mother—a woman restless with intellectual and creative energy, struggling to find an outlet for her talents—as well as her entire family, recounting a story that spans four generations and nearly a hundred years. More than the autobiography of a legendary actress, Then Again is a book about a very American family with very American dreams. Diane will remind you of yourself, and her bonds with her family will remind you of your own relationships with those you love the most. Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.

Ever since his dad got rich from an invention and his family moved to a wealthy neighborhood on Long Island, Tony Miglione’s life has been turned upside down. For starters, there’s his new friend, Joel, who shoplifts. Then there’s Joel’s sixteen-year-old sister, Lisa, who gets undressed every night without pulling down her shades. And there’s Grandma, who won’t come down from her bedroom. On top of all that, Tony has a whole bunch of new questions about growing up. . . . Why couldn’t things have stayed the same?

In Then Again, the third installment of Division By Zero, MiFiWriters brings you stories of time. Six different Michigan authors explore the paradoxes and unexpected consequences that come from time travel, alternate realities, or general meddling in the space-time continuum.

The foundational, classic anthology that revived interest in the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God—"one of the greatest writers of our time"—and made her work widely available for a new generation of readers (Toni Morrison). During her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston was praised for her writing but condemned for her independence and audacity. Her work fell into obscurity until the 1970s, when Alice Walker rediscovered Hurston's unmarked grave and anthologized her writing in this groundbreaking collection for the Feminist Press. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive established Hurston as an intellectual leader for future generations of black writers. A testament to the power and breadth of Hurston's oeuvre, this edition—newly reissued for the Feminist Press's fiftieth anniversary—features a new preface by Walker. "Through Hurston, the soul of the black South gained one of its most articulate interpreters." —The New York Times

A time-bending love story between two physicists. Described by The Chicago Sun-Times as "a deft little romantic screwball comedy with a very brainy twist. It brings to mind some of Tom Stoppard's more intellectual theatrical hijinks. But it's also the kind of work that might have beguiled such 1930s and '40s era film directors as Frank Capra and Preston Sturges, who probably would have hired Albert Einstein as a script consultant." "Few new plays require a basic understanding of quantum mechanics - the physics theories of matter and energy - for full appreciation. And when young playwrights are thinking of settings for their plays, they don't normally alight on such less-than-sexy locations as the Fermilab National Particle Accelerator Laboratory in west suburban Batavia. But if originality and intelligence are the most important qualities in attracting audiences to hear new work, Chicago scribe Penny Penniston deserves enormous success with her smart, funny and thoroughly captivating NOW THEN AGAIN ... Penniston has tried to use some of the issues found in and around quantum mechanics (which involves great complexities of chronology and relativity) and apply them to a triangular love relationship ... To describe how all this plays out would ruin the considerable pleasures of the show. Suffice to note that present and past prove to be relative concepts. Penniston's ideas are emotionally warm and intellectually stimulating." -Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune "One thing I particularly like is the spate of unusual new characters that science brings to the stage ... In PROOF and NOW THEN AGAIN, the main characters, all in their twenties, find the pursuit of difficult knowledge no less enlivening and nervous-making than things like their careers, their families, their social graces, their hormones and their heartaches. I can't recall seeing similar types on the stage before ... illuminating an obviously extant kind of life experience I'd never before considered but was delighted to discover." -Bruce Weber, The New York Times "The great thing about all this is that Penniston makes the physics so utterly transparent that you can ride on the love story and even feel like a minor genius, too. She makes physics fun ..." -Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

Moving to America turns H&à's life inside out. For all the 10 years of her life, H&à has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by, and the beauty of her very own papaya tree. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. H&à and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, H&à discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape, and the strength of her very own family. This is the moving story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing as she journeys from one country to another, one life to the next.