James Purdy's Books

James Purdy: Selected Plays

By: James Purdy

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Hailed as a creative genius (TLS) and a singular American visionary (New York Times), James Purdy may be best known for his remarkable novels, but he is also an astonishing playwright who has written nine full-length and twenty short plays. Purdy is one of the few contemporary American writers capable of writing tragedy-Tennessee Williams called him a uniquely gifted man of the theater. This collection presents four riveting and beautifully crafted works: Brice, The Paradise Circus, Where Quentin Goes, and Ruthanna Elder. Each explores a range of emotional and familial tangles, as fathers betray their sons and squander their inheritances, siblings compete for parental affection, and husbands and wives try to salvage meaning from their broken marriages. The plays are written in Purdy's authentic idiom, which Paul Bowles called the closest [we have] to a classical American colloquial.

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Page Count

305

Publisher

Ivan R. Dee

Published Date

ISBN 10

1615780106

ISBN 13

9781615780105

The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

By: James Purdy

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The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

By: James Purdy

Celebrate “an authentic American genius” (Gore Vidal) in James Purdy’s first complete short story collection. The publication of The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy is a literary event that marks the first time all of James Purdy’s short stories—fifty-six in number, including seven drawn from his unpublished archives—have been collected in a single volume. As prolific as he was unclassifiable, James Purdy was considered one of the greatest—and most underappreciated—writers in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. Championed by writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell, Gore Vidal, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, Carl Van Vechten, John Cowper Powys, and Dorothy Parker, Purdy’s vast body of work has heretofore been relegated to the avant-garde fringes of the American literary mainstream. His unique form and variety of style made the Ohio-born Purdy impossible to categorize in standard terms, though his unique, mercurial talent garnered him a following of loyal readers and made him—in the words of Susan Sontag—“one of the half dozen or so living American writers worth taking seriously." Purdy’s journey to recognition came with as much outrage and condemnation as it did lavish praise and lasting admiration. Some early assessments even dismissed his work as that of a disturbed mind, while others acclaimed the very same work as healing and transformative. Purdy's fiction was considered so uniquely unsettling that his first book, Don't Call Me by My Right Name, a collection of short stories all reprinted in this edition, had to be printed privately in the United States in 1956, after first being published in England. Best known for his novels Malcolm, Cabot Wright Begins, Jeremy's Version, and Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Purdy captured an America that was at once highly realistic and deeply symbolic, a landscape filled with social outcasts living in crisis and longing for love, characterized by his dark sense of humor and unflinching eye. Love, disillusionment, the collapse of the family, ecstatic longing, sharp inner pain, and shocking eruptions of violence pervade the lives of his characters in stories that anticipate both "David Lynch and Desperate Housewives" (Guardian). In "Color of Darkness," for example, a lonely child attempts to swallow his father's wedding ring; in "Eventide," the anguish of two sisters over the loss of their sons is deeply felt in the summer heat; and in the gothic horror of "Mr. Evening," a young man is hypnotized and imprisoned by a predatory old woman. These stories and many others, both haunting and hilarious, form a canvas of deep desperation and immanent sympathy, as Purdy narrates "the inexorable progress toward disaster in such a way that it's as satisfying and somehow life-affirming as progress toward a happy ending" (Jonathan Franzen). It may have taken over fifty years, but American culture is finally in sync with James Purdy. As John Waters writes in his introduction, Purdy, far from the fringe, has "been dead center in the black little hearts of provocateur-hungry readers like myself right from the beginning.

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Page Count

743

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0871406691

ISBN 13

9780871406699

The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

By: James Purdy

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The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

By: James Purdy

Collected here for the first time are the complete short stories of “a singular American visionary” (New York Times). The publication of The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy is a literary event that marks the first time all of James Purdy’s short stories—fifty-six in number, including seven drawn from his unpublished archives—have been collected in a single volume. As prolific as he was unclassifiable, James Purdy was considered one of the greatest—and most underappreciated—writers in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. Championed by writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell, Gore Vidal, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, Carl Van Vechten, John Cowper Powys, and Dorothy Parker, Purdy’s vast body of work has heretofore been relegated to the avant-garde fringes of the American literary mainstream. His unique form and variety of style made the Ohio-born Purdy impossible to categorize in standard terms, though his unique, mercurial talent garnered him a following of loyal readers and made him—in the words of Susan Sontag—“one of the half dozen or so living American writers worth taking seriously." Purdy’s journey to recognition came with as much outrage and condemnation as it did lavish praise and lasting admiration. Some early assessments even dismissed his work as that of a disturbed mind, while others acclaimed the very same work as healing and transformative. Purdy's fiction was considered so uniquely unsettling that his first book, Don't Call Me by My Right Name, a collection of short stories all reprinted in this edition, had to be printed privately in the United States in 1956, after first being published in England. Best known for his novels Malcolm, Cabot Wright Begins, Jeremy's Version, and Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Purdy captured an America that was at once highly realistic and deeply symbolic, a landscape filled with social outcasts living in crisis and longing for love, characterized by his dark sense of humor and unflinching eye. Love, disillusionment, the collapse of the family, ecstatic longing, sharp inner pain, and shocking eruptions of violence pervade the lives of his characters in stories that anticipate both "David Lynch and Desperate Housewives" (Guardian). In "Color of Darkness," for example, a lonely child attempts to swallow his father's wedding ring; in "Eventide," the anguish of two sisters over the loss of their sons is deeply felt in the summer heat; and in the gothic horror of "Mr. Evening," a young man is hypnotized and imprisoned by a predatory old woman. These stories and many others, both haunting and hilarious, form a canvas of deep desperation and immanent sympathy, as Purdy narrates "the inexorable progress toward disaster in such a way that it's as satisfying and somehow life-affirming as progress toward a happy ending" (Jonathan Franzen). It may have taken over fifty years, but American culture is finally in sync with James Purdy. As John Waters writes in his introduction, Purdy, far from the fringe, has "been dead center in the black little hearts of provocateur-hungry readers like myself right from the beginning.

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Page Count

571

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0871406950

ISBN 13

9780871406958

James Purdy: Selected Plays

By: James Purdy

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James Purdy: Selected Plays

By: James Purdy

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Page Count

305

Publisher

Ivan R. Dee

Published Date

ISBN 10

1615780106

ISBN 13

9781615780105

Selected Plays

By: James Purdy

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Selected Plays

By: James Purdy

James Purdy's Selected plays will break your damaged little heart."--John Winter."James Purdy's plays have much of the exciting existentiality that infuses his novels and seem content to take drama to interesting places it does not always want to go." -- Edward Albee."James Purdy is an authentic American genius." --Gore Vidal.

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Page Count

304

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1566637988

ISBN 13

9781566637985

A Respectable Ditch

A History of the Trent Severn Waterway, 1833-1920

By: James Thomas Angus

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A Respectable Ditch

A History of the Trent Severn Waterway, 1833-1920

By: James Thomas Angus

The Trent-Severn Waterway took almost ninety years to build, cost over $24 million, and contains some remarkable engineering feats -as well as a few spectacular mistakes. The passage of the first boat through the waterway in July 1920 marked the realizati

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Page Count

478

Publisher

McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published Date

ISBN 10

0773518215

ISBN 13

9780773518216

Kalamazoo County Directory

By: James M. Thomas

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Kalamazoo County Directory

By: James M. Thomas

Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.

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Page Count

374

Publisher

BoD – Books on Demand

Published Date

ISBN 10

3846050970

ISBN 13

9783846050972

Fight Stories, September 1930

By: Robert E. Howard,Jimmy De Forest,James P. Dawson,Charles Francis Coe,Joseph B. Fox,Will H. Greenfield,Arthur J. Burks,Paul L. Anderson

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Fight Stories, September 1930

By: Robert E. Howard,Jimmy De Forest,James P. Dawson,Charles Francis Coe,Joseph B. Fox,Will H. Greenfield,Arthur J. Burks,Paul L. Anderson

This issue features WATERFRONT FISTS by Robert E. Howard, SONS OF SOCK by Paul L. Anderson, SOCKER DOOLEY, FIGHTING GOLFER by Charles Francis Coe, SAY IT WITH HAYMAKERS by Joseph B. Fox, NO BELL TO SAVE HIM by Will H. Greenfield, FIGHTERS ALL by Arthur J. Burks, and fact stories by Jimmy De Forest, James P. Dawson, and Jack Kofoed.

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Page Count

133

Publisher

Lulu.com

Published Date

ISBN 10

1312158964

ISBN 13

9781312158962

The Holy Kiss

By: James Smiley Wightman

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The Holy Kiss

By: James Smiley Wightman

Move over Clarice! Meet Detective Shantelle "Stevie" Sanchez who wonders why, at age 33, she's in Jersey City, why she's a cop, why the dream won't go away.and why do men kill women? Another snag is the only man who doesn't repulse her is older, married and a computer cop. In a piercing psychological portrait, this obsessive detective probes the mind of a serial killer who has murdered four black women. They are discovered dangling "like sides of beef" in the 100-year-old subway tubes under the Hudson River. Each has a lip shape and cross burned into her torso. In a discordant mix of history, forensics, profiling, and betrayal, a Task Force works to solve the killings. Stevie impulsively places herself in peril by entering the menacing tunnels to find the killer. The "computer cop" who heads the Task Force overcomes a haunting fear of tunnels born in Viet Nam and follows her. In the subterranean dankness beneath Manhattan, they confront their own frailties as they face the killer's "Holy Kiss" of death in a taunt, tingling and unpredictable end game amidst the 600-volt "hot" rails. Praise for The Holy Kiss "After this book, I didn't take the subways for a month." -Peter Golenbock, best-selling author of The Bronx Zoo. "Characters so real, I began locking my doors." -Psychologist Dr C. Ringold, Psy.D "Convincing and engrossing from page one!" Detective J. Vecchio, NYPD, Ret "Wightman takes standard-issue police-thriller conventions and amplifies them to lurid extremes: The ethnic tensions are more strident, the turf battles between rival police agencies more cutthroat, the scheming of shadowy power-brokers more baroque, the media vultures more cynical, the motivating psycho-sexual perversions more explicit. But the author makes his overdrawn characters both vivid and sympathetic, and tells their story vigorously." -Kirkus Discoveries

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394

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The Holy Kiss

Published Date

ISBN 10

0595396771

ISBN 13

9780595396771

Toxic Legacy

Synthetic Toxins in the Food, Water and Air of American Cities

By: Patrick Sullivan,James J.J. Clark,Franklin J. Agardy,Paul E. Rosenfeld

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Toxic Legacy

Synthetic Toxins in the Food, Water and Air of American Cities

By: Patrick Sullivan,James J.J. Clark,Franklin J. Agardy,Paul E. Rosenfeld

Any professional examination of existing or potential new toxins in a population must account for those already present from past problems and natural conditions.Toxic Legacy provides extensive information on the occurrence of chemical hazards and their potential dangers in combinations in the food, water and air in cities around the United States. The book illustrates consumer preferences for specific food and water products, as well as particular diets and discusses the toxicity and risks associated with our exposure to synthetic chemicals. The authors offer unique guidance to environmental engineers, scientists, process engineers, and planners and specify what steps can be taken to limit exposure to complex chemical mixtures. - Includes strategies for minimizing our exposure to chemical mixtures - Provides detailed analysis of hazards associated with exposure to chemical mixtures from multiple sources - Presents chemical data on the food, water and air for 36 metropolitan areas in the United States

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Page Count

569

Publisher

Elsevier

Published Date

ISBN 10

0080466478

ISBN 13

9780080466477

3 Books to Know: Ghost Stories

By: August Nemo,Charlotte Riddell,Vernon Lee,Sheridan Le Fanu,O. Henry,H. H. Munro,Saki,M. R. James,Rudyard Kipling,Lafcadio Hearn

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3 Books to Know: Ghost Stories

By: August Nemo,Charlotte Riddell,Vernon Lee,Sheridan Le Fanu,O. Henry,H. H. Munro,Saki,M. R. James,Rudyard Kipling,Lafcadio Hearn

Welcome to the 3 Books To Know series, our idea is to help readers learn about fascinating topics through three essential and relevant books. These carefully selected works can be fiction, non-fiction, historical documents or even biographies. We will always select for you three great works to instigate your mind, this time the topic is: Ghost Stories. - 7 Best Short Stories Of Ghost, edited by August Nemo - A Phantom Lover by Vernon Lee - The Uninhabited House by Charlotte Riddell A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them.The "ghost" may appear of its own accord or be summoned by magic. Linked to the ghost is the idea of "hauntings", where a supernatural entity is tied to a place, object or person. In 7 Best Short Stories of Ghost the critic August Nemo selected seven tales that perfectly illustrate this concept. A Phantom Lover has been compared to The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, in that there is a question about whether the ghost of the story was merely a figment of the imagination of two of the characters. In An Uninhabited House, the hauntings are seen through the perspective of the solicitors who hold the deed of the property. Slowly the safer world of commerce and law gives way as the encounter with the supernatural entity becomes more and more unavoidable. This is one of many books in the series 3 Books To Know. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the topic.

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Page Count

363

Publisher

Tacet Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

8577772330

ISBN 13

9788577772339

Harlequin Romantic Suspense January 2017 Box Set

An Anthology

By: Rachel Lee,Elle James,C.J. Miller,Lara Lacombe

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Harlequin Romantic Suspense January 2017 Box Set

An Anthology

By: Rachel Lee,Elle James,C.J. Miller,Lara Lacombe

Looking for heart-racing romance and breathless suspense? Want stories filled with life-and-death situations that cause sparks to fly between adventurous, strong women and brave, powerful men? Harlequin® Romantic Suspense brings you all that and more with four new full-length titles in one collection! UNDERCOVER IN CONARD COUNTY Conard County: The Next Generation by Rachel Lee Kel Westin is assigned an undercover role to draw out illegal trophy hunters in Conard County, but his feelings for the beautiful yet wary game warden, Desi Jenks, are anything but a front. When signs point to an inside job, can Desi and Kel learn to trust each other before they wind up dead? DEADLY FALL by Elle James Billionaire Andrew Stratford, desperate to keep his small daughter safe, hires tough-as-nails—and sexy-as-hell—Stealth Operations Specialist Dixie Reeves as a nanny to protect his daughter, but sparks begin to fly when they are forced to set aside the walls they’ve hidden behind for years in order to save little Leigha from a mysterious threat. SPECIAL FORCES SEDUCTION by C.J. Miller Alex "Hyde" Flores had hung up her spy gear for good, at least until her currently off-again lover Finn Carter shows up with one last mission in mind. But taking down the drug lord who killed their friend isn’t Finn’s only objective. He’s determined to win Alex back, whatever it takes. DR. DO-OR-DIE Doctors in Danger by Lara Lacombe Dr. Avery Thatcher was sent to investigate a myterious illness at a research base in Antartica. Instead, she finds a deadly new bioweapon—and help in the form of her ex-boyfriend, Dr. Grant Jones, the senior doctor on staff. Will they be able to stop the spread of a deadly disease and face the never-quite-forgotten feelings bubbling back to the surface?

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Page Count

649

Publisher

Harlequin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1488016259

ISBN 13

9781488016257

Scottish Exodus

Travels Among a Worldwide Clan

By: James Hunter

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Scottish Exodus

Travels Among a Worldwide Clan

By: James Hunter

Millions of Scots have left their homeland during the last 400 years. Until now, they have been written about in general terms. Scottish Exodus breaks new ground by taking particular emigrants, drawn from the once-powerful Clan MacLeod, and discovering what happened to them and their families. These people became, among other things, French aristocrats, Polish resistance fighters, Texan ranchers, New Zealand shepherds, Australian goldminers, Aboriginal and African-American activists, Canadian mounted policemen and Confederate rebels. One nineteenth-century MacLeod even went so far as to swap his Gaelic for Arabic and his Christianity for Islam before settling down comfortably in Cairo. This gripping account of Scotland's worldwide diaspora is based on unpublished documents, letters and family histories. It is also based on the author's travels in the company of today's MacLeods - some of them still in Scotland, others further afield. Scottish Exodus is a tale of disastrous voyages, famine and dispossession, the hazards of pioneering on faraway frontiers. But it is also the moving story of how people separated from Scotland by hundreds of years and thousands of miles continue to identify with the small country where their journeyings began.

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Page Count

410

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1845968476

ISBN 13

9781845968472

Book's by James Purdy

James Purdy: Selected Plays

James Purdy: Selected Plays

The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

James Purdy: Selected Plays

James Purdy: Selected Plays

Selected Plays

Selected Plays

A Respectable Ditch

A Respectable Ditch

Kalamazoo County Directory

Kalamazoo County Directory

Fight Stories, September 1930

Fight Stories, September 1930

The Holy Kiss

The Holy Kiss

Toxic Legacy

Toxic Legacy

3 Books to Know: Ghost Stories

3 Books to Know: Ghost Stories

Harlequin Romantic Suspense January 2017 Box Set

Harlequin Romantic Suspense January 2017 Box Set

Scottish Exodus

Scottish Exodus

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