Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Literature & Fiction

The Three Little Pigs and the Perils of Subsidized Housing, Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling, Hillary the Snow Queen - these rehabilitated "classics" and many more would be required bedtime reading under the regime of President Gingrich, or "Uncle Newt," as he likes his little pals to call him. Yes, all the orphans at the new Boy's Town, their bellies full of ketchup, will be enraptured by these GOP fairy tales celebrating the Contract with America and cautioning youngsters about the evil Welfare State of long ago. These bedtime stories could keep you awake all night. Narrator Arte Johnson won an Emmy for his work on the classic TV show, Laugh-In.

Terrorists are holding America under siege, and their method is as ingenious as it is deadly. Using commercial aircraft purchased from a failing domestic airline, they drop bombs on unsuspecting and critical targets - including the busy airports of Los Angeles and Dallas/Fort Worth. When the nation begins to panic, the President orders Lieutenant General Robert Blocker to reestablish security in the skies before the fallout hits the White House. Blocker's response to the crisis is drastic - until the terrorists strike again in Denver, then Memphis.

Despite their adulation and success, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift's lives were both cut short and their potential likely not fully realized. Unfinished Lives 2 envisions their lives in our world if these two most beloved, 20th century celebrities had lived. Each penned by a professional entertainment journalist, these vividly imaginative "biographies" are thoughtful, honest, heartfelt... and entirely within the realm of possibility.

Two noted journalists take us into the "futures" of Elvis Presley and Judy Garland to paint a picture of their lives had they not died so young. These vividly imaginative "biographies" are thoughtful, honest, heartfelt... and entirely within the realm of possibility.

In Downtown, we meet Michael Barnes, a Florida orange grower who finds himself in a Wall Street bar in New York City with a couple of hours to kill. It's a couple of hours that almost kill him, as he's swindled, robbed, framed for murder and hunted down by an assassin in one of the wildest, scariest, funniest, fastest 24 hours ever packed into one novel.

A hilarious but heartrending diary that chronicles the trials and tribulations of a 30-year-old woman during her first year of adjustment following divorce. In a simple and down-to-earth style, Mary Sheldon paints a brilliant portrait of a sensitive woman in transition, capturing the frustations of learning how to live all over again.

In the hustle of modern technology it might seem odd to discover an angel surfing the Internet, but what an interesting paradox that would be. Here, in Andrew M. Greeley's fine tale of young love and faith, Toby Tobin considers the peculiar terms of his great-uncle's will. Ten million dollars, a required visit to Ireland, ending a Tobin family feud, and a request to court his eight cousin once removed, Sara Elizabeth Anne Tobin.

In these two unabridged lectures, Elizabeth McNamer gives scholarly glimpses into the most compelling moments of two of Shakespeare’s classic plays: Hamlet and Macbeth. Hamlet, because he is given much to philosophizing, fails to act. And this sweet procrastination becomes the downfall of the sweet prince of Denmark. Macbeth, who has murdered his way to the crown, finds there only a murderer’s reward.

An exciting mystery anthology of short stories by assorted writers including Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton.

DEA agent Kevin Grady discovers that the CIA is turning a blind eye to its allies' drug smuggling in order to further its own ends - and CIA officer Jack Lind is at the center of this conspiracy. Lind allows Panamanian policeman Manuel Noriega to become the country's dictator, ignoring his ties to the Medellin cocaine cartel in order to use Panama as a base for an anti-Communist crusade.

"Isn't so and so a snob?" he asks. "She won't even admit she liked Grease." Looking for an author who ponders the imponderable, expresses the inexpressible, describes the indescribable, and leaves no burning issue of American popular culture or world concern unexamined? Well, you'll find him in Mark Leyner. On this recording, Leyner, one of the most gifted and original young American writers around, reads 6 prose pieces from his first published book.

These passages from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson on religion and spiritual philosophy reveal a metaphysical thought that is quintessentially American and universally relevant to the spiritual needs of today's world. It is seldom that an American philosopher is found among the gurus, mystics, and masters present in the spiritual milieu. Emerson combined the spiritual intuition of the East with the philosophical acumen of the West.

Little Saigon, Westminster, California, 1993. Anh, a diminutive, self-promoting, brash, Vietnamese beauty, supports her ever-extending family on tips from a gambling lawyer. Upon his disappearance, Anh turns to his secretary Jana, a tough, self-sufficient Anglo in need of money as desperately as Anh. Together they set up a bogus law practice in Little Saigon in which Anh supplies the clients while Jana plays lawyer.

For President Spencer Jefferson Lee—the great-great-grandson of both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee—it's politics as usual. On one side, the lily-white Senate wants quid pro quo; on the other, the all black House has an agenda of its own. But whatever their differences, the powers-that-be agree on one thing: Utter separations between the races is the key to peace and prosperity. To love someone of the opposite race is to court disaster; to act on that love is to become officially nonexistent.

Lisa Kron invites her audience on a roller coaster ride through the Kron family album in 2.5 Minute Ride. Rising and falling between high hilarity and deep disquiet, Kron demonstrates with disarming simplicity that humor and horror can share the same human moment. Kron's' performance switches back and forth between her journey to Auschwitz with her septuagenarian father, a Holocaust survivor; her Michigan family's annual pilgrimage to a Sandusky, Ohio amusement park, and more.

In "Front Man", an aging screenwriter cast adrift in a youth-oriented Hollywood culture finds a scary way to make it back into the business. In "Nothing Will Hurt You", a father is obsessed by his daughter's murder and will stop at nothing to avenge her. In "Resurrection", a son is determined to preserve and care for a father in cryogenic sleep. David Morrell is a consummate storyteller, investing his tales with passion, sympathy, and irresistible narrative drive.

Flying Japan's secret weapon, a high-tech stealth jet, is Cassidy's best friend from the Air Force Academy, Captain Jiro Kimura. Defending Russia from undersea in an outdated diesel submarine is Captain Pavel Saratov. Filled with dramatic, compelling scenes of battles in the air and on the sea, Fortunes of War is an epic novel of three heroes, three countries, and a world in the balance.

Connor McKnight, former acolyte of film, Zen, and Japanese literature, is not unaware that these avocations are wildly different tfrom his present occupation (fledgling celebrity journalist). Meanwhile, his longtime girlfriend, the fashion model Philomena, seems curiously remote, and soon decamps for the West Coast.

Fresh from solving the mystery of who killed Michael Collins in Irish Gold, Dermot Michael Coyne and Nuala Anne McGrail are reunited in Chicago. An accountant by day, Nuala sings in a local pub at night, while dreaming of making it big. Dermot compares Nuala to Irish lace-"thin and delicate and pretty, and just a little bit complicated."But their courtship in once again interrupted, this time by one of Nuala's "spells". Nuala is fey, as they say in the Old Country, and she occasionally has visions from the past.

A wealthy man with a critically ill wife seeks the help of Matthew Hiller, a gifted doctor with a thriving practice. But in addition to the difficult professional challenge, Matthew finds himself facing the toughest emotional crisis of his life, since he met the lovely patient, Silvia, years ago, when both were young doctors healing the sick in Africa.