The Fantasticks: The Complete Illustrated Text Plus the Official Fantasticks Scrapbook and History of the Musical

• Published by Applause Books 168 Pages
• by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones
• Author: Tom Jones

"Richly illustrated, it is ideal for fans of the show, as well as admirers of musical theatre." - Variety * "Anybody who has seen the show (who hasn't?) should read the book" - Entertainment Today * "The perfect present for any Fantasticks fans." - Cleveland Plain Dealer * "A valuable resource. Recommended for all collections." - Choice

Abandoned: A Thriller

• ISBN13: 9780553591347
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

There are rules for dealing with ghosts. Too bad Ree Hutchins doesn't know them.

When her favorite patient at a private mental hospital passes away, psychology student Ree Hutchins mourns the elderly woman's death. But more unsettling is her growing suspicion that something unnatural is shadowing her.

Amateur ghost hunter Hayden Priest believes Ree is being haunted. Even Amelia Gray, known in Charleston as The Graveyard Queen, senses a gathering darkness. Driven by a force she doesn't understand, Ree is compelled to uncover an old secret and put abandoned souls to restâ€"before she is locked away forever....

An ebook exclusive prequel to The Graveyard Queen series.There are rule! s for dealing with ghosts. Too bad Ree Hutchins doesn't know them.

When her favorite patient at a private mental hospital passes away, psychology student Ree Hutchins mourns the elderly woman's death. But more unsettling is her growing suspicion that something unnatural is shadowing her.

Amateur ghost hunter Hayden Priest believes Ree is being haunted. Even Amelia Gray, known in Charleston as The Graveyard Queen, senses a gathering darkness. Driven by a force she doesn't understand, Ree is compelled to uncover an old secret and put abandoned souls to restâ€"before she is locked away forever....

An ebook exclusive prequel to The Graveyard Queen series.Little Boy Lost, Book Two

Jamie is gone.

Brian's secret has been revealed.

Brian McAllister's story continues as he tries to cope with the loss of his best friend and soul mate amid the alienation and ridicule of his classmates. When hatred turns to violence, Brian narrows h! is focus to two goals: surviving and finding Jamie. Along the ! way he m eets Adam, whose life has also been shattered by violence and cruelty. Can Adam fill the hole in Brian's life left by Jamie's absence? The answer will change everything.Little Boy Lost, Book Two

Jamie is gone.

Brian's secret has been revealed.

Brian McAllister's story continues as he tries to cope with the loss of his best friend and soul mate amid the alienation and ridicule of his classmates. When hatred turns to violence, Brian narrows his focus to two goals: surviving and finding Jamie. Along the way he meets Adam, whose life has also been shattered by violence and cruelty. Can Adam fill the hole in Brian's life left by Jamie's absence? The answer will change everything.

On Christmas Eve in 1985, a hunter found a young boy's body along an icy corn field in Nebraska. The residents of Chester, Nebraska buried him as "Little Boy Blue," unclaimed and unidentified-- until a phone call from Ohio two years later led authorities to Eli Stutzman, the b! oy's father.

Eli Stutzman, the son of an Amish bishop, was by all appearances a dedicated farmer and family man in the country's strictest religious sect. But behind his quiet façade was a man involved with pornography, sadomasochism, and drugs. After the suspicious death of his pregnant wife, Stutzman took his preschool-age son, Danny, and hit the road on a sexual odyssey ending with his conviction for murder. But the mystery of Eli Stutzman and the fate of his son didn't end on the barren Nebraska plains. It was just beginning. . .

For FBI Special Agent Smoky Barrett, her colleague’s wedding is cause for celebration. Until a woman staggers down the aisleâ€"incoherent, wearing only a white nightgown. A fingerprint check determines that she’s been missing for nearly eight years. Her coldly efficient captor toyed with her mind and body, imprisoning her, depriving her of any contact with the outside world. As Smoky fits together the pieces of what remains! of the victim’s fractured life, a chilling picture emerges ! of a cer ebral psychopath who doesn’t take murder personally, never makes a mistake, follows his own sinister logic, and has set the perfect trap.
  Cody McFadyen on Abandoned

I build my books around the bad guy. I have from the first. I remember making a conscious decision to build my bad guys a little bit outside the box--the box being the firm reality we all know and agree to be.

Why?

Because it’s a lot more fun to write about serial killers that way.

Think about it. Hannibal Lecter is a lot more interesting than Son of Sam. Hannibal is brilliant, complex, unclassifiable. He kills with finesse and precision. Son of Sam was an unhinged lunatic, blowing people away at random. As a character, Hannibal is much more interesting to write about (and read). Because true serial ki! llers aren’t super villains. They’re disturbed, sordid individuals, driven by hungers and needs that usually destroy them from the inside out. A lot of the time, they’re socially inept, and not very smart. Their depravity is most often senseless. Writing about what they do would be like writing about a great white shark: it eats because it is hungry and it has such big sharp teeth... you can’t sustain an entire novel on pure savagery. So I like for my bad guys to have a reason for what they do, some guiding purpose. Otherwise, all I’m doing is asking you to pull up a chair and watch the feast--and while something in our reptile brains might enjoy seeing a little bit of the feast, we shy away from the full truth of it.

So when I started thinking about Abandoned, the fourth book in my series, I started by thinking about my killer. I wanted to do something different, but what? The killers in the books earlier in the series had all been pretty "hung! ry;" in other words, they were appetite driven. "So what," I t! hought, "about a killer with no appetite at all?"

I actually rejected it at first, but the idea kept swimming back to the forefront. There was something terrifying about the idea of someone operating with such cold clarity. It was haunting me--which is always a good sign! I thought about it a lot and finally realized what (for me at least) makes such a killer so chilling: that kind of coldness relegates us to nothing, nothing at all.

The killer who is purposefully cruel, the killer who drools with excitement, still needs our humanity, at whatever level. There is a validation of our value as sentient, emotional beings, even if that only means they need our fear and our horror. It’s a terrible kind of "mattering," but still, we matter.

In the world of the killer I envisaged, we don’t matter at all. There’s no intentional cruelty, no enjoyment of our suffering, no acknowledgement of the value of our existence. He assigns his victims numbers, because! it’s a more economical use of oxygen than saying their names.

I saw him, he terrified me, and then I wrote him. He lies within the pages of Abandoned. It’s my hope he’ll terrify you as well.--Cody McFadyen

---

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader [Blu-ray]

• Return to the magic and wonder of C
• S
• Lewis' epic world in this third installment of the beloved Chronicles of Narnia fantasy-adventure
• When Lucy and Edmund Pensive, along with their cousin Eustace, are swallowed into a painting and
• The courageous voyagers travel to mysterious islands, confront mystical creatures, and reunite with

Return to the magic and wonder of C. S. Lewis' epic world in this third installment of the beloved Chronicles of Narnia fantasy-adventure series. When Lucy and Edmund Pensive, along with their cousin Eustace, are swallowed into a painting and transported back to Narnia, they join King Caspian and a noble mouse named Reepicheep aboard the magnificent ship The Dawn Treader. The courageous voyagers travel to mysterious islands, confront mystical creatures, and reunite with the Great Lion Aslan and a mission that will determine the fate o! f Narnia itself! The third film based on C.S. Lewis's fantasy books, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader opens three years after the Pevensie children return from battling to restore peace to Narnia in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) are still staying with Eustace (Will Poulter), while Peter and Susan have gotten older and moved on to school and America, respectively. Still as surly and unbelieving as ever, Eustace continues to mock his cousins for their Narnian fantasies. But when water begins spilling into their room from a painting hanging on the wall, all three young people are swept onto the decks of the sailing ship known as the Dawn Treader, which is afloat in the waters of Narnia. This time, there are no wars to be fought in Narnia. But it soon becomes evident that the trio is destined to help King Caspian (Ben Barnes) solve the mystery of the disappearance of the seven lords of Telmar, and prevent! the ongoing sacrifices of large groups of Narnian people to t! he evil green mist. So begins a quest through uncharted waters that will require each of the children to resist temptations like beauty and power, and to conquer the darkness within themselves in order to defeat the threat to Narnia's people. The battle promises to yield unexpected heroes, and through their journey, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and even King Caspian and Reepicheep (voiced by Simon Pegg) each grow and mature. Eventually, Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) will ask each adventurer to make an important choice that will forever influence his or her future. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader features plenty of high adventure, sword-fighting action, and personal peril, and while it fails to fully capitalize on the characters' motivations or to earn viewers' full emotional investment, it is still a solid addition to the Narnia film series. (Ages 7 and older) --Tami Horiuchi

Hostel (Unrated Widescreen Edition)

• 4 commentary tracks, including Director Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino, and Harry Knowles from Aint It Cool News
• "Hostel Dissected" - Behind the scenes featurette
• "Kill the Car!" Multi-angle interactive feature

Well-made for the genre--the excessive-skin-displayed-before-gruesome-bloody-torture-begins genre--Hostel follows two randy Americans (Jay Hernandez, Friday Night Lights, and Derek Richardson, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd) and an even randier Icelander (Eythor Gudjonsson) as they trek to Slovakia, where they're told beautiful girls will have sex with anyone with an American accent. Unfortunately, the girls will also sell young Americans to a company that offers victims to anyone who will pay to torture and murder. To his credit, writer/director Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) takes his time setting things up, laying a realistic foundation that! makes the inevitable spilling of much blood all the more gruesome. The sardonic joke, of course, is that Americans are worth the most in this brothel of blood because everyone else in the world wants to take revenge upon them. This dark humor and political subtext help set Hostel above its more brainless sadistic compatriots, like House of Wax or The Devil's Rejects. In general, though, there's something lacking; horror used to suggest some threat to the spirit--today's horror can conceive of nothing more troubling than torturing the flesh. For aficionados, Hostel features a nice cameo by Takashi Miike, director of bloody Japanese flicks like Audition and Ichi the Killer. --Bret Fetzer

Four Christmases

• Every Christmas happily unmarried Brad and Kate escape divorced parents and exasperating relatives by getting on a plane. This year a fog rolls in, the airport shuts down and the couple is forced to celebrate four family Christmases in one hectic, hilarious day. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon lead an all-star cast in a comedy brimming with good cheer and great laughs -- as well as the answer t

A couple struggles to visit all four of their divorced parents on christmas day. Studio: New Line Home Video Release Date: 11/24/2009 Starring: Reese Witherspoon Robert Duvall Run time: 120 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Seth GordonWhen your significant other tells you you both need an exit "safe word" before you enter his dad's Christmas gathering, you know you're not in Bedford Falls. But while Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon may not be It's a Wonderful Life's George and Mary Baile! y, Four Christmases is a modern holiday classic in its own right. For one thing, every family neurosis and dysfunction have taken root in the four families of Vaughn and Witherspoon's characters, Brad and Kate--and the sleek yuppie façade each has built with the other is about to come tumbling down. There are real belly laughs as the couple unexpectedly has to spend holidays with their four extended family groups. "I don't want to speak ill of your mother on Christmas," growls Howard (Robert Duvall) to son Brad, while Brad's bullnecked ultimate-fighter brothers are rassling everything in sight, "but she's nothing but a common street whore." Brad may cringe, but Kate's own family is about to mortify her in abundant ways, from her randy "Gram-Gram" and about-to-pounce cougar mom Mary Steenburgen ("I feel like a Saudi prince in here," marvels Brad as all of Kate's female relatives drape themselves over him), to the revelation to Brad that Kate used to be--how to put th! is--a bit on the chubby side. If the plot isn't full of surpri! ses, the quips are nonstop and the acting believable and charming. The supporting cast also includes Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, Jon Favreau and Dwight Yoakam in a memorable turn as the mega-church pastor Steenburgen's character is involved with. It's a comic Christmas blessing, and there'll be no need to say "mistletoe"--at least not till the viewers are home with their own families. --A.T. Hurley

Birth

• In this mesmerizing and suspenseful film, a woman (Kidman) becomes convinced that a ten-year-old boy is the reincarnation of her dead husband.Running Time: 100 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R Age: 794043783821 UPC: 794043783821 Manufacturer No: N7838

Â"Well-researched and engaging . . . Birth is a clever, almost irreverent look at an enduring everyday miracle. (A-)” —Entertainment Weekly
Â"Wonderful. Packed full of information, a brilliant mixture of ancient wisdom and modern science.” —Kate Mosse, author of the New York Times best seller, Labyrinth
Â"Birth is a power-packed book. . . . A lively, engaging, and often witty read, a quirky, eye-opening account of one of life’s most elemental experiences.” —The Boston Globe
Published to widespread acclaim, Tina Cassidy’s smart, engaging book is the first world hi! story of childbirth in fifty years. From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents an intelligent, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we’re born the way we are. Women have been giving birth for millennia but that’s about the only constant in the final stage of the great process that is human reproduction. Why is it that every culture and generation seems to have its own ideas about the best way to give birth? Cassidy explores the physical, anthropological, political, and religious factors that have and will continue to influence how women bring new life into the world.

In this mesmerizing and suspenseful film, a woman (Kidman) becomes convinced that a ten-year-old boy is the reincarnation of her dead husband.

DVD Features:
DVD ROM Features
Theatrical Trailer

As directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) and dimly lit by cinematographer Harris Savides, Birth is a ! melancholy chamber piece, its pensive mood sustained by nearly! sub-son ic nuances in a fine, thematically developed score by Alexandre Desplat. All of these fine qualities are well-matched by the somber performance of Nicole Kidman, playing a still-grieving widow of 10 years, about to remarry when a 10-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) arrives to announce that he is her dead husband, reincarnated and full of convincing answers to personal marital questions. Rather than go for Sixth Sense-like chills and thrills, Glazer approaches Birth as a conundrum with no clear-cut solution, and his directorial style is so subdued, so deliberately understated, that most of the story's dramatic impact is sacrificed to oppressively dour atmosphere. If it doesn't lull you to sleep, Birth might hold your attention as a strange, subtle thriller in miniature scale. With its delicate, mature approach to the processes of grieving and recovery, however, Birth rewards attentive viewers attuned to the film's ultra-low-key wavelength, and it's gu! aranteed to provoke interesting post-movie discussions. Lauren Bacall, Danny Huston, Anne Heche, and Arliss Howard lead an esteemed supporting cast. --Jeff Shannon

Blow

• There?s no money in a ?real job.? So George Jung deals pot. Lots of it. The blue-collar kid dubbed Boston George spirals up from there, into the riches and excesses of the huge cocaine cartels. And crashes hard. Johnny Depp portrays George, the ambitious outlaw who, perhaps more than any American, transformed powder cocaine from relative obscurity in the U.S. into a 1970s/80s feeding frenzy. Penel

Based on a true story, Blow gives us a fast-paced look at the quick rise and fall of George Jung (Johnny Depp) who became a premier importer of Colombian cocaine, in the turbulent 1970's, forever changing the face of drugs in America.A briskly paced hybrid of Boogie Nights and Goodfellas, Blow chronicles the three-decade rise and fall of George Jung (Johnny Depp), a normal American kid who makes a personal vow against poverty, builds a marijuana empire in the '60s, multiplies hi! s fortune with the Colombian Medellín cocaine cartel, and blows it all with a series of police busts culminating in one final, long-term jail sentence. "Your dad's a loser," says this absentee father to his estranged but beloved daughter, and he's right: Blow is the story of a nice guy who made wrong choices all his life, almost single-handedly created the American cocaine trade, and got exactly what he deserved. As directed by Ted Demme, the film is vibrantly entertaining, painstakingly authentic... and utterly aimless in terms of overall purpose.

We can't sympathize with Jung's meteoric rise to wealth and the wild life, and Demme isn't suggesting that we should idolize a drug dealer. So what, exactly, is the point of Blow? Simply, it seems, to present Jung's story as the epitome of the coke-driven glory days, and to suggest, ever so subtly, that Jung isn't such a bad guy, after all. Anyone curious about his lifestyle will find this film amazing, and th! ere's plenty of humor mixed with the constant threat of violen! ce and p aranoid anxiety. Demme has also populated the film with a fantastic supporting cast (although Penélope Cruz grows tiresome as Jung's hedonistic wife), and this is certainly a compelling look at the other side of Traffic. Still, one wishes that Blow had a more viable reason for being; like a wild party, it leaves you with a hangover and a vague feeling of regret. --Jeff Shannon

Hurt Locker [Blu-ray]

• Condition: New
• Format: Blu-ray
• AC-3; Color; Dolby; DTS Surround Sound; Dubbed; Subtitled; Widescreen

Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (summit) Release Date: 01/12/2010 Run time: 131 minutes Rating: RThe making of honest action movies has become so rare that Kathryn Bigelow's magnificent The Hurt Locker was shown mostly in art cinemas rather than multiplexes. That's fine; the picture is a work of art. But it also delivers more kinetic excitement, more breath-bating suspense, more putting-you-right-there in the danger zone than all the brain-dead, visually incoherent wrecking derbies hogging mall screens. Partly it's a matter of subject. The movie focuses on an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, the guys whose more or less daily job is to disarm the homemade bombs that have accounted for most U.S. casualties in Iraq. But even more, the film's extraordinary tension derives from th! e precision and intelligence of Bigelow's direction. She gets every sweaty detail and tactical nuance in the close-up confrontation of man and bomb, while keeping us alert to the volatile wraparound reality of an ineluctably foreign environment--hot streets and blank-walled buildings full of onlookers, some merely curious and some hostile, perhaps thumbing a cellphone that could become a trigger. This is exemplary moviemaking. You don't need CGI, just a human eye, and the imagination to realize that, say, the sight of dust and scale popped off a derelict car by an explosion half a block away delivers more shock value than a pixelated fireball.

The setting may be Iraq in 2004, but it could just as well be Thermopylae; The Hurt Locker is no "Iraq War movie." Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal--who did time as a journalist embed with an EOD unit--align themselves with neither supporters nor opponents of the U.S. involvement. There's no politics here. War is just the ! job the characters in the movie do. One in particular, the sup! remely r esourceful staff sergeant played by Jeremy Renner, is addicted to the almost nonstop adrenaline rush and the opportunity to express his esoteric, life-on-the-edge genius. The hurt locker of the title is a box he keeps under his bunk, filled with bomb parts and other signatory memorabilia of "things that could have killed me." That none of it has killed him so far is no real consolation. In this movie, you never know who's going to go and when; even high-profile talent (we won't name names here) is no guarantee. But one thing can be guaranteed, and that is that almost every sequence in the movie becomes a riveting, often fiercely enigmatic set piece. This is Kathryn Bigelow's best film since 1987's Near Dark. It could also be the best film of 2009. --Richard T. Jameson