A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Literature & Fiction

Anthony Marra

Literary

Vintage

The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini's Italy to 1940s Los Angeles\nLike many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father's arrest.\nFifteen years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won't speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese-American actor, can't escape the studio's narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria's only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.\nOver the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father's past threatens Maria's carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father's fate--and her own.\nWritten with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life's bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force.

Mercury Pictures Presents

Hogarth Press

Hogarth Publishing

Mercury Pictures Presents (paperback)

John Murray Press

Music Travel Culture was written and designed for the busy 21st century music student. Most of the textbook uses the outline rather than the paragraph approach of presenting information. One of the main purposes of the book is to give students information on instruments and skills needed to become better listeners in all kinds of music. Besides discussing music, the text also adds dimensions of travel and culture while explaining how all three are connected. No textbook would be complete without a discussion of how technology has advanced music, and this subject is included. Unit Nine is also very exciting in that it includes movie, cartoon and video game music.
Music Travel Culture provides interesting reading about composers’ lives, the different style periods and provides pictures with listening examples, all in one neat package. Each text comes with a subscription to Rhapsody, a great listening program. Unit Two gives the instructor and student plenty of hands on information about basic music writing. From Gregorian Chant, to Broadway Shows, modern day artists, this textbook provides lifelong knowledge for the music major and music appreciation student. The approach, organization and contents of this book represent a step forward from the traditional music appreciation text.

An Introduction to Music Travel Culture

Arts & Photography

Music

Kendall/Hunt Publishing

Travel

Hogarth

The Tsar of Love and Techno (Chinese Edition)

Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing, LTD

In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home. When their lifelong neighbor Akhmed finds Havaa hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded. For Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja's world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weaves together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Chinese Edition)

Huazhong University of Science & Technology Press Co.,Ltd

時報出版

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Books by Anthony Marra