Beautiful—but mysterious—needle-felted sculptures of cats are being dropped off at homes, shops and government buildings all around Stony Point, Maine, and no one has a clue as to where they came from or who created them. Even the members of the Hook and Needle Club are stymied.The club members know about the intricacies of the art of needle felting, but no one is accomplished enough to be the giver of the mysterious gifts. So the club, led by Annie Dawson and Alice MacFarlane, must decipher the riddle of the cats.While working on the riddle of the cats, another mystery pushes its way into Annie’s life. Adam Smithfield, a publisher of children’s books from London, has tracked one of his most beloved authors, Candace Caine, to Stony Point. Smithfield asks for Annie’s help, but she senses that his interest in Candace goes deeper than a business connection.If indeed Candace is in Stony Point, is she trying to escape an abusive relationship? Or is Smithfield’s spoken concern for Candace’s well-being genuine? Annie doesn’t know if she wants to find someone who simply doesn’t want to be found. And is there some link between the children’s author and the sudden appearance of the beautiful, needle-felted cats? Join Annie, Alice and the rest of the Hook and Needle Club as they leave no stone unturned in their quest to solve the mystery of The Cats & the Riddle.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARNational book Critics Circle Award Finalist  "Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today."--Michael Ondaatje"This book is amazing--I haven't discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." --Alice Munro              The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is."A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender."--The New York Times Book Review"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday."  --The Village Voice

Anton Chekhov's only collection of crime and mystery stories.Considered one of the greatest dramatists of all time, Anton Chekhov began his literary career as a crime and mystery writer. Scattered throughout periodicals and literary journals from 1880-1890, these early psychological suspense stories provide a fresh look into Chekhov's literary heritage and his formative years as a writer.In stories like "A Night in the Cemetery," "Night of Horror," and "Murder," not only will Chekhov's dark humor and twisted crimes satisfy even the most hardboiled of mystery fans, readers will again appreciate the penetrating, absurdist insight into the human condition that only Chekhov can bring. Whether it is the death of a young amateur playwright at the hands of an editor who hates bad writing, or a drunken civil servant who ends up trapped in a graveyard, these stories overflow with the unforgettable characters and unique sensibility that continue to make Chekhov one of the most...

AliceCOULD BE ANYONE. AliceCOULD BE SOMEONE YOU KNOW. AliceUSES DRUGS. With over a million copies in print, Go Ask Alice has become a classic of our time. This powerful real-life diary of a teenager's struggle with the seductive -- often fatal -- world of drugs and addiction tells the truth about drugs in strong and authentic voice. Tough and uncompromising, honest and disturbing -- and even more poignant today -- Go Ask Alice is page-turning and provocative reading.

The most fucked up memoir you'll ever read. A foul-mouthed memoir about a dysfunctional life. Each chapter recounts a key moment in the author's life through the books she was reading at the time including: • Howard's End, the only text she had read whilst engaging in sexual intercourse.• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, which she had in her bag while on holiday in Tangier when a market trader offered her to buy her from her mother for 30 camels.• Angela's Ashes, her chosen reading material during her breast reduction surgery.• Wild Swans, the book she read the day she decided to have nothing more to do with her mother. It is funny, it is shocking, it is heartbreaking, it is very rude and it is totally unforgettable.

The unknown assailant called her Darling. He raped her in the stairwell of her apartment building, changing Gloria's life forever. She vowed to find him and get revenge. And she did!

The editor of the classic GO ASK ALICE has compiled the poignant journals of a 14-year-old date-rape victim who contracted AIDS and died.

Anton Chekhov was a master whose daring work revolutionized theater, and this was as true of Ivanov, his first full-length play, as of The Cherry Orchard, his last. Building on the success of his acclaimed adaptation of The Seagull, Tom Stoppard returns to Chekhov and the themes of bitter social satire, personal introspection, and the electrifying atmosphere of Russia on the brink of change. In these two new versions, Stoppard brings his crisp and nimble style to two masterpieces of the modern theater. Ivanov is a portrait of a man plagued with self-doubt and despair. Considered one of Chekhov's most elusive characters, he seeks more in life than the selfabsorption and ennui he sees in his contemporaries. Tormented by falling out of love with his dying Jewish wife, Ivanov, on her death, proposes to the young daughter of his neighbor, but, as the wedding party assembles, a final burst of his habitual indecisivness has fatal results.

Alice MacFarlane has once again let her adventurous spirit take her into harm’s way, and it’s up to Annie Dawson to find Alice and pull her out of the dangerous situation.It seems like it was always that way. Back when Annie and Alice were teenagers, Alice seemed to always be getting into one scrape or another. That was when Annie was visiting Stony Point, Maine, and staying with her grandparents, Charlie and Betsy Holden, in their stately Victorian home, Grey Gables. In those innocent days, Alice was the one with the crazy schemes, and Annie was the one who had to judge whether or not the schemes were just too crazy.But those innocent days didn’t leave Alice missing for days.The mystery begins when Annie finds a book in her grandfather’s collection in the attic of Grey Gables—now her home after she inherited it after the death of her grandmother. Written in 1925, the history of the Fuller family includes the story of a mysterious island in South Carolina wrapped up in an ancient curse. When Alice’s friend, Jim Parker—an author and photographer—makes a surprise visit to Stony Point, Annie suggests that Fuller’s Island might make an interesting chapter in his latest book. Annie, Alice and Jim all laugh off the book’s assertion that the island is haunted by ghost dogs after the curse was placed on it by a witch in the 19th century.But it ceases to be fun and games when Alice and Jim go missing after visiting the island. Now it’s up to Annie, Ian Butler—Stony Point’s mayor—and the members of the Hook and Needle Club to save Alice when one of her carefree adventures once again goes awry.

In the follow-up to his National Translation Award-winning collection The Undiscovered Chekhov, translator and scholar Peter Constantine brings us more little-known work from the legendary author's early days as a magazine writer, pseudonymously turning out pieces for Russia's small middle class. These stories are fresh, yet mature, snapshots of the style with which Chekhov would come to be associated, both uproariously tragic and darkly comic, and lit from within by a deep fellow feeling for all of humanity. As his readers have come expect, Constantine has translated this work with a masterly command of both languages' subtleties, capturing the shadings and intricacies of Chekhov's writing that flash and recede like sunlight on an orchard, offering Chekhov's tough and amused perspectives on daily phenomena like love, aging, class, and work. With moments that seem to presage the most contemporary writing, Chekhov's Little Apples reveals one of the world's greatest...

Macbeth, one of the greatest stories ever told . . . in texts?! Imagine: What if that tragic couple, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, had smartphones? A classic is reborn in this fun and funny adaptation of one of Shakespeare's most famous plays! A prophecy from three witches. A social-climbing couple committing a murder most foul. A cover-up that spins way out of control. <3 and h8. The classics just got a whole lot more interesting. ;) tl;dr A Shakespeare play told through its characters texting with emojis, posting photos, checking in at locations, and updating their relationship statuses. The perfect gift for hip theater lovers and teens. A glossary and cast of characters are included for those who need it. For example: tl;dr means too long; didn't read.

A riveting first-person tale of addiction, in the tradition of Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal.The author of this diary began journaling on her sixteenth birthday. She lived in an upper middle class neighborhood in Santa Monica with her mom, dad, and Berkeley-bound older brother. She was a good girl, living a good life...but one party changed everything. One party, where she took one taste--and liked it. Really liked it.Social drinking and drugging lead to more, faster, harder... She convinced herself that she was no different from anyone else who liked to party. But the evidence indicates otherwise: Soon she was she hanging out with an edgy crowd, blowing off school and everything she used to care about, all to find her next high.But what goes up must come down, and everything--from her first swig, to her last breath--is chronicled in the diary she left behind.

Anton Chekhov wrote that "narrative is my legal wife and drama a flamboyant, rowdy, impudent, exhausting mistress." At a time when the Russian stage was dominated by farces, formulaic melodramas, and vaudevilles, Chekhov created plays that focused on characters grappling with moral questions. His works baffled his audiences, but his sensitive explorations of love, loss, and time as well as his portrayal of complex characters and ambiguities, revolutionized the theater with an exhilarating new form of drama.This volume includes new translations, full explanatory notes, a chronology, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary, as well as an introduction by eminent Chekhov scholar Richard Gilman.

Pleasures and Follies is an engaging romp from adolescent sexual awakening into full grown adult lust on the part of one Cupidonnet and his half sister, Genovefette, along with a few of their playmates, friends, acquaintances, parents and Genovefette's eventual spouse. There is very little in the realm of physical intimacy that one or the other of these siblings did not experience, or at least witness. Other than attempt to remove obvious errors in the cyberscript, Renaissance E Books has done very little editing. To attempt to correct the spelling and/or punctuation would destroy much of the pleasure of reading the book, for the author uses to good affect coined words and unusual sentence structure. To remove the distinctly British words and expressions would be to destroy the flavor of the work. We do apologize for several passages that by today's standards are "politically incorrect," and hope the reader will understand the mindset of the time in which the book was composed.

What happens when a chance encounter thrusts two very different people from very different backgrounds together? The school is going crazy with Celt Fever; and Alceo Russell is right in the middle of it. He’s on his way to leading his Division I football team to a national title; but something is missing; and to keep his head in the game; he needs to find it. Shy and timid Galynn Pierce is just trying to survive college. Always in the background and always unnoticed Galynn can’t fathom how her life is about to change.

The members of the Hook and Needle Club have made many exciting and adventurous road trips together through the years, but the opportunity to travel to Texas for a needlecraft convention is more than Annie Dawson and her friends can pass up.For Annie, it’s a trip back to her old stomping grounds from her days when she and her late husband, Wayne, ran an automobile dealership. It’s been more than three years since Wayne’s death and since Annie moved to Stony Point, Maine, to take possession of Grey Gables, her late grandmother’s old Victorian home.Now Annie returns to Texas, as Betsy is being honored at the convention for her ground- breaking work as a needlecrafter, and many of her works will be on display at a special exhibit.Accompanying Annie are three of her Hook and Needle Club friends: Mary Beth Brock, Kate Stevens, and Stella Brickson. Everything is going swimmingly until a death in Betsy’s exhibit throws a pall on the road trip, and doubly so when Annie and her friends become part of the short list of suspects.In her first mystery away from the friendly confines of Grey Gables and Stony Point, Annie is drawn into the unseemly incident, and she lends her considerable talent in solving riddles to the handsome police detective assigned to the case.Will the unlikely sleuths help nab a killer, or will they end up caught in the middle with no way to get out? Join Annie, Mary Beth, Kate, and Stella as they deal with death in Texas on this adventurous road trip!

Annie Dawson’s recurring nightmare haunts her, as does the mystery of the rag doll she finds in the attic of her home, Grey Gables. The little doll, accented with the childish embroidery of a small bird on its tiny apron becomes the focus of a mystery unraveling in the small coastal town of Stony Point, Maine. Annie is driven to understand her dreams, calling to her from the echoes of time. Who are the little girls braving a wild New England storm, challenging an age-old curse in a harrowing journey to Butler’s Lighthouse? How are they tied to Grey Gables, first her grandmother’s home and now her own? Annie’s heart tells her to return the little rag doll to its rightful owner, but to whom does it belong? And will the journey to solve the mystery of the rag doll in the attic also lead Annie to a final decision on whether or not she should remain in Stony Point? When Annie came to Stony Point, it was just to tidy up Grey Gables and the rest of her grandmother’s estate—and perhaps to recover from the death of her beloved husband, Wayne. Her family back in Texas wants her to return. But the tapestry of her life in New England has richly blessed her with memories of childhood summers spent in the fishing village. She has slowly stitched a new life, filled with new friends and exciting new experiences. Then ambling into the picture comes Jim Parker, the ruggedly handsome photographer who is researching New England lighthouse legends. Annie’s best friend, Alice MacFarlane, is drawn to Parker and his adventurous spirit. Even if Annie elects to stay in Stony Point, will Alice unexpectedly move on to another chapter in her life? Join Annie and Alice, along with the members of Stony Point’s Hook and Needle Club, as they meet the mystery head-on. They—and you—will be shocked to find the answers to the mystery of the rag doll in the attic, and the key to Annie’s nightmarish journeys up the gale-slicked road to Butler’s Lighthouse.