<p>It's Manhattan, on the coldest night of the year and six best friends are rushing to celebrate a festive evening Jessie, the hostess, is late for her own party. Sue Carol, a professional "wacktress" (waitress/actress) has left her unfaithful husband. Lisbeth, an ex-Vogue model, is battling her landlord . Nina, the spa owner is fleeing a vegetarian with 'a weird sexual organ'.They are all eager to see the guest of honor, who vanished after becoming pregnant by a glorious one nightstand."You conceived a child with a man you met on the street" accuses Martha, the power realtor. Is the gypsyish Claire, whose income is less than her phone bill, misguided or inspired The debate rages.Who will win - the romantics or the realists How can modern working women triumph in such trying times While the cellphones chime and the biological clocks rewind, the friends enact a timeless ceremony. Witty, perceptive and thoroughly entertaining BEAUTIFUL BODIES is a dazzling comedy of manners.</p>

Beautiful Bodies

Literature & Fiction

Shaine Cunningham, Laura

Contemporary

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

"I have spent the winter at my summer place," begins the narrator of this startlingly original literary chiller. Juliana Durrell Smythe, known for her "female in jeopardy" performances on film, fears her roles are proving prophetic. As an actress, she is accustomed to rescue. In movies, "Having known the comfort of muscled arms, I still expect, without reason, to be carried to safety and, ultimately, to be loved." But confined to her Victorian lake house, Juliana discovers the discrepancies between film and actual jeopardy. "The police have not turned out to be kindly, potential lovers...." She must walk the fault line of fiction and confront the mysterious and violent end of her marriage. An atmosphere of danger descends with the snow. The men who enter Juliana's life seem suspect; her predicament shadowed by the distress of her housecleaner. How much did she see? How much does she know?  Haunted by her past roles and the history of her romantic home, built for a wedding in 1899, Juliana's marital mystery becomes entwined with that of the original Victorian bride's. To survive, she is compelled to connect a nineteenth-century disappearance to the contemporary despair of the lakeside resort. In a snowscape of dazzling beauty, Juliana must enact the role that will save or cost her own life.  Plumbing the secrets of two centuries, Cunningham has written a hypnotic novel that will transport the reader into a brilliantly evoked world. With its hard-chiseled realities and incandescent images, Dreams of Rescue is a new take on a classic form, that shatters convention and will entrance readers long after its stunning finale.

Dreams Of Rescue

Literary

Sleeping Arrangements

<p>Harper Lee: “A beautiful story I shall cherish for years to come.” Laura Shaine Cunningham’s memoir of being orphaned at age eight and raised by two bachelor uncles in the Bronx- “In the glow of Yankee Stadium Twi-Night doubleheaders”, has become one of the most beloved classics of contemporary autobiographical literature. When her single mother dies, her bachelor Uncles Len and Gabe step in- a wildly divergent pair- Uncle Len is a self-styled cross between Sam Spade and Abe Lincoln, who travels on “secret missions”, carrying only a manila envelope- while Uncle Gabe composes and belts out Jewish Gospel songs and proposes to every woman he meets… Len makes popcorn for breakfast and Gabe warps the wooden floor with bleach. Their lives taken on a similar odd angle- and then they are joined by the grandmother, Etka from Minsk who carries her own memoir “Philosophy for Women” and begins most sentences with “Plato and I believe…” To top it off, they get a cocker spaniel puppy who “isn’t a dog but a democrat.” Excerpted in The New Yorker, presented at Selected Shorts, read by Linda Lavin, the book, published first by Alfred Knopf and then by Plume and Riverhead Books (Penguin Putnam), the book soon became a bestseller in the U.S. and was featured in The New York Times magazine, which ran several excerpts, including the popular Uncle Food, Bachelor Uncles, and a Hers column on being raised by men. Her column devoted to her single mother appeared in The New York Observer. Laura may have been raised by two eccentric men who knew nothing about running a household but they knew how to love. Her family story is interwoven with her adventures with her little girl friends as they played forbidden games in the “Babylonian Bronx.” Anne Tyler:” Reads like a novel. You may find yourself sitting very quietly, mulling over the marvels of this truly wonderful book.” Jessica Mitford: “Absolutely delightful…a terrific treat!” Muriel Spark: “A great pleasure…very interesting, moving and amusing.” Chaim Potok: “Wise, sobering and witty.” Critics raved: “Funny, sad…A model memoir… irreverent and generous” - Michiko Kakutani New York Times “Compassion and wit are a rare literary combination but Sleeping Arrangements is illuminated by both” - Los Angeles Times “Cunningham transforms her “Bronx of the emotions” into the ‘Babylonian Bronx’, a world simmering with sex and death and intrigue…Sharp- witted and funny but never mean …"-The Wall Street Journal. “Comic, touching, delightful…the kind of book you buy multiple copies of to send to your mother and best friends…"- People “Reads like a novel…You may find yourself sitting very quietly, mulling over the marvels of this truly wonderful book.” - Anne Tyler, The Baltimore Sun</p>

Biographies & Memoirs

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