The Brothers Bishop

Tommy and Nathan Bishop are as different as two brothers can be. Carefree and careless, Tommy is the golden boy who takes men into his bed with a seductive smile and turns them out just as quickly. No one can resist him--and no one can control him, either. That salient point certainly isn't lost on his brother. Nathan is all about control. At thirty-one, he is as dark and complicated as Tommy is light and easy, and he is bitter beyond his years. While Tommy left for the excitement of New York City, Nathan has stayed behind, teaching high school English in their provincial hometown, surrounded by the reminders of their ruined family history and the legacy of anger that runs through him like a scar. Now, Tommy has come home to the family cottage by the sea for the summer, bringing his unstable, sexual powder keg of an entourage--and the distant echoes of his family's tumultuous past--with him. Tommy and his lover Philip are teetering on the brink of disaster, while their married friends, Camille and Kyle, perfect their steps in a dance of denial, each partner pulling Nathan deeper into the fray. And when one of Nathan's troubled students, Simon, begins visiting the house, the slow fuse is lit on a highly combustible mix. During a heady two-week party filled with drunken revelations, bitter jealousies, caustic jabs, and tender reconciliations, Tommy and Nathan will confront the legacy of their twisted family history--their angry, abusive father and the tragic death of their mother--and finally, the one secret that has shaped their entire lives. It is a summer that will challenge everything Nathan remembers and unravel Tommy's carefully constructed facade, drawing them both unwittingly into a drama with echoes of the past. . .one with unforeseen and very dangerous consequences. "There are undercurrents of tragedy and emotional scarring at work that take the story to disturbing places. . .Yates puts his novel together like a one-two punch and makes it readable. . .you can't put it down." --Edge Magazine

Classic story of the Five Chinese Brothers who use their extraordinary abilities to save the life of the First Chinese Brother, unfairly condemned to death for the accidental drowning of a selfish and naughty boy.

Mende is a diocese in south-central France where, in the 1260s, scribes of Bishop Odilon de Mercoeur created an extensive court book or register of litigated cases. Their intention was to develop an archive for the use of the chancery as well as to preserve the causae of the episcopal court. These records would later be used by Guillaume Durand the Younger to construct a version of the past which verified episcopal secular lordship and sovereignty in response to mounting intrusion by the king of France. For all of its importance to the history of religion in France, the court book of Mende has received little attention by historians and medieval scholars. In this study, Jan K. Bulman examines the interrelationships between the written records of the ecclesiastical court, the preservation of historical memory, and the defense of episcopal seigneurial rights. Bulman shows how the bishops of Mende followed a singular strategy to defend against loss of autonomy, one that was unique in its reliance on archival records, ancient charters, and narrative hagiography. Richly presented and comprehensively researched, this will be an indispensable work for scholars of religion and the history of medieval France.

The reissue of this definitive biography heralds the one-hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight. Brilliant, self-trained engineers, the Wright brothers had a unique blend of native talent, character, and family experience that perfectly suited them to the task of invention but left them ill-prepared to face a world of skeptics, rivals, and officials. Using a treasure trove of Wright family correspondence and diaries, Tom Crouch skillfully weaves the story of the airplane's invention into the drama of a unique and unforgettable family. He shows us exactly how and why these two obscure bachelors from Dayton, Ohio, were able to succeed where so many better-trained, better-financed rivals had failed.