New Releases by Francine Prose

In America, notes acclaimed novelist Francine Prose, we are obsessed with food and diet. And what is this obsession with food except a struggle between sin and virtue, overeating and self-control--a struggle with the fierce temptations of gluttony. In Gluttony, Francine Prose serves up a marvelous banquet of witty and engaging observations on this most delicious of deadly sins. She traces how our notions of gluttony have evolved along with our ideas about salvation and damnation, health and illness, life and death. Offering a lively smorgasbord that ranges from Augustine''s Confessions and Chaucer''s Pardoner''s Tale, to Petronius''s Satyricon and Dante''s Inferno, she shows that gluttony was in medieval times a deeply spiritual matter, but today we have transformed gluttony from a sin into an illness--it is the horrors of cholesterol and the perils of red meat that we demonize. Indeed, the modern take on gluttony is that we overeat out of compulsion, self-destructiveness, or to avoid intimacy and social contact. But gluttony, Prose reminds us, is also an affirmation of pleasure and of passion. She ends the book with a discussion of M.F.K. Fisher''s idiosyncratic defense of one of the great heroes of gluttony, Diamond Jim Brady, whose stomach was six times normal size. "The broad, shiny face of the glutton," Prose writes, "has been--and continues to be--the mirror in which we see ourselves, our hopes and fears, our darkest dreams and deepest desires." Never have we delved more deeply into this mirror than in this insightful and stimulating book.

In the aftermath of a nearby school shooting, a grief and crisis counselor takes over Central High School and enacts increasingly harsh measures to control students, while those who do not comply disappear.

On Writing Short Stories is a unique collection of original essays by seven professional writers. It is the only text of its kind to offer writing advice from such authors, editors, and instructors as Francine Prose, Joyce Carol Oates, Frank Conroy, Andre Dubus, Robert Coles, Tom Bailey, and C. Michael Curtis, with a foreword by Tobias Wolff. These experts give voice--voices--to a dialogue about the art and craft of writing short stories. Respecting writers'' autonomy, On Writing Short Stories does not offer a rigidly systematic apparatus for learning to write short stories. Instead it asks what makes a short story, analyzes various aspects of craft, discusses process and revision, and also pauses to wonder why people write short stories at all. It considers the importance of reading and of peer critique in workshops as integral components of the learning process and offers advice on how to get short stories published. Ideal for courses and workshops in creative writing, On Writing Short Stories also includes an engaging selection of eighteen short stories, both classic and contemporary, for discussion and analysis. These stories stretch the limits of narrative fiction; reading them will help students create a scaffolding for the short story form. Writing exercises are incorporated to help students put the craft into practice for themselves. A list of addresses and editors of magazines, journals, and quarterlies that publish short fiction is also included for writers who are ready to begin submitting their work for consideration.

The most revealing look at breasts. Photographs of breasts are everywhere: in museums, on book covers, in fashion ads, and on posters. Alluring symbols of womanhood, breasts have fascinated generations of image makers. Here, for the first time between two covers, is the breast in photography: the titillating breast, the maternal breast, the aging breast, and the symbolic breast. In Master Breasts, darkly witty political images of the 1970s jostle for space with Edward Weston''s classic nudes; Nan Goldin''s friends share pages with Robert Mapplethorpe''s gorgeously sculptured models. From Alfred Stieglitz''s classic studies of Georgia O''Keeffe to Mary Ellen Mark''s vivid documentary portraits, they are all here. Other artists include Cindy Sherman, Imogen Cunningham, and Sally Mann. A witty and reflective Introduction from the acclaimed novelist and essayist Francine Prose further links the images, while a monologue from Karen Finley''s recent performance piece American Chestnut, "The Detective," reveals a young girl''s anguish about breast-inspired catcalls and jokes and then sardonically calls for similar cultural treatment of the male anatomy. Finally, in Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo''s radically funny play The Story of the Tiger, the benefits of breast-feeding are celebrated as never before.

Though mocked by the rest of the villagers, poor Schmuel the shoemaker turns out to be a very special person.

Explains how a botched mission by two angels created the town of fools known as Chelm.

Because forty days before a baby is born the angels in heaven decide whom it will marry, nothing prevents the wedding of Leah and Chonon from taking place.