The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen

The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen PDF Author: Nicholas Christopher
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0375897860
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
This richly-detailed historical novel from master storyteller Nicholas Christopher features an unforgettable hero: Nicolo Zen is all alone in 1700s Venice, save for his clarinet, which a mysterious magician had magicked, allowing its first player to perform expertly. Soon Nicolo is a famous virtuoso, wealthy beyond his dreams. But he can't stop wondering if he earned the success or if it's due to the magician's spell. So he has the spell removed to test his own talents and capabilities. And throughout it all, he continues to think about the girl he met in Venice, what she might be doing and if she's safe from harm. With a guest appearance by composer Vivaldi, and brimming with fascinating period details, this is a compelling coming-of-age story full of universal themes teens will instantly recognize. The love story will conjure memories of Romeo and Juliet, perfect for teens who love stories set in other times, but without a paranormal storyline (as long as you don't count a magician who dresses all in white and can be in two places on once . . . ).

The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen

The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen PDF Author: Nicholas Christopher
Publisher: Ember
ISBN: 037586492X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
A richly detailed historical novel from master storyteller Nicholas Christopher that School Library Journal calls " A] lush tale of music, magic, and intrigue" Nicol Zen is all alone in 1700s Venice, save for his clarinet, which a mysterious magician had enchanted, allowing its first player to perform expertly. Soon Nicol is a famous virtuoso, wealthy beyond his dreams, but he can't stop wondering if he earned the success himself--or what might happen if the spell were removed. And throughout it all, he continues to think about the girl he met in Venice, what she might be doing and if she's safe from harm. With a guest appearance by composer Vivaldi, and brimming with fascinating period details, this is a compelling coming-of-age story full of universal themes and a love story that will conjure memories of Romeo and Juliet, perfect for teens who love stories set in other times, and a magician who dresses all in white and can be in two places at once. . . .

On Jupiter Place

On Jupiter Place PDF Author: Nicholas Christopher
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 161902909X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 97

Book Description
Best known as a novelist, Nicholas Christopher began publishing poems in The New Yorker in his twenties, and has published eight collections, praised over the years by poets and critics as being among America's most important poets. Reviewing his selected poems, Crossing the Equator, published eight years ago, The Washington Post said, "To read his richly honed and sensuous work, which has so much tensile strength, is to visit other worlds and then to return to our own disturbed by time, but also refreshed and reawakened." On Jupiter Place is his first book since that collection, and it contains material that is perhaps his most personal, autobiographical and intimate work yet. Beautifully made and carefully constructed, one might be reminded of Keats thinking that his poems were "little machines" of feeling. And everywhere in this book are moments of disorientation, where the wonder of the poem transcends understanding and leads its readers back into themselves slightly startled and richer for the effort. As Merwin has written, "his poems are vibrant with light and the surprise of recognition. He shows us again and again the luminous nature of the familiar." The Washington Post, reviewing his Crossing the Equator: New & Selected Poems, reported that "Nicholas Christopher is a fabulist...His fiction often puts me in mind of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, two time–travelers who are his great precursors. His poetry tends to build on the work of Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop and James Merrill. Like them, he has a taste for the exotic, the faraway, the displaced, the imaginary.

A Trip to the Stars

A Trip to the Stars PDF Author: Nicholas Christopher
Publisher: Dial Press
ISBN: 0307799883
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Book Description
“A large, lavishly inventive novel . . . an American descendant of The Arabian Nights . . . erudite and artful entertainment.”—The New York Times Book Review At a Manhattan planetarium in 1965, ten-year-old Enzo is whisked away from his young adoptive aunt, Mala. His abductor turns out to be a blood relative: his great-uncle Junius Samax, a wealthy former gambler who lives in a converted Las Vegas hotel surrounded by a priceless art collection and a host of fascinating, idiosyncratic guests. In Samax’s magical world, Enzo receives a unique education and pieces together the mystery of his mother’s life and the complicated history of his adoption. Back in New York, Mala only knows that Enzo has disappeared. After a yearlong search proves fruitless, she enlists in the Navy Nursing Corps and on a hospital ship off Vietnam falls in love with a wounded B-52 navigator, who disappears on his next mission. Devastated again, Mala embarks on a restless, adventurous journey around the world, hoping to overcome the losses that have transformed her life. Fusing imagination, scholarship, and suspense with remarkable narrative skill, Nicholas Christopher builds a story of tremendous scope, an epic tale of love and destiny, as he traces the intricate latticework of Mala’s and Enzo’s lives. Each remains separate from each other but tied in ways they cannot imagine—until the final miraculous chapter of this extraordinary novel. “A writer of remarkable gifts.”—The Washington Post Book World “This labyrinthine novel . . . is animated by an encompassing lust for beauty.”—The New Yorker “[Nicholas] Christopher is North America’s García Márquez; Borges with emotional weight. . . . This is one of those rare books that, by connecting the stars, catches you in its web.”—The Globe and Mail Includes an excerpt of Nicholas Christopher’s Tiger Rag

Alive in Shape and Color

Alive in Shape and Color PDF Author: Lawrence Block
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 168177609X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
In his brilliant follow-up to In Sunlight or In Shadow, Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology as inventive as it is alluring, including Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, David Morrell, and Jeffery Deaver. Even before Lawrence Block could rest on his laurels from In Sunlight or In Shadow, a question arose. What would he do for an encore? Any number of artists have produced evocative work, paintings that could trigger a literary response. But none came to mind who could equal Hopper in turning out canvas after canvas. If no single artist could take Hopper’s place, how about a full palette of them? Suppose each author was invited to select a painting from the whole panoply of visual art—From the cave drawings at Lascaux to a contemporary abstract canvas on which the paint has barely dried. And what a dazzling response! Joyce Carol Oates picked Le Beaux Jours by Balthus. Warren Moore chose Salvador Dali’s The Pharmacist of Ampurdam Seeking Absolutely Nothing. Michael Connelly, who sent Harry Bosch to Chicago for a close look at Nighthawks, has a go at The Garden of Earthly Delights by Harry’s namesake Hieronymous Bosch. S. J. Rozan finds a story in Hokusai’s The Great Wave, while Jeffery Deaver’s "A Significant Find” draws its inspiration from—yes—those prehistoric cave drawings at Lascaux. And Kristine Kathryn Rusch moves from painting to sculpture and selects Rodin. In artists ranging from Art Frahm and Norman Rockwell to René Magritte and Clifford Still, the impressive concept goes on to include Thomas Pluck, Sarah Weinman, David Morrell, Craig Ferguson, Joe R. Lansdale, Jill D. Block, Justin Scott, Jonathan Santlofer, Gail Levin, Nicholas Christopher, and Lee Child, with each story accompanied in color by the work of art that inspired it.

Tiger Rag

Tiger Rag PDF Author: Nicholas Christopher
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 1400069211
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Descending into alcoholism in the face of her husband's unfaithfulness, her daughter's rehab difficulties and her estranged mother's death, Dr. Ruby Cardillo enlists her daughter to accompany her on a whirlwind trip up the East Coast to discover her family's ties to a long-rumored Edison cylinder recording of jazz musician Buddy Bolden.

In Sunlight or In Shadow

In Sunlight or In Shadow PDF Author: Lawrence Block
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681772884
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
A truly unprecedented literary achievement by author and editor Lawrence Block, a newly-commissioned anthology of seventeen superbly-crafted stories inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper, including Jeffery Deaver, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Lee Child, and Robert Olen Butler, among many others. "Edward Hopper is surely the greatest American narrative painter. His work bears special resonance for writers and readers, and yet his paintings never tell a story so much as they invite viewers to find for themselves the untold stories within." So says Lawrence Block, who has invited seventeen outstanding writers to join him in an unprecedented anthology of brand-new stories: In Sunlight or In Shadow. The results are remarkable and range across all genres, wedding literary excellence to storytelling savvy. Contributors include Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, Craig Ferguson, Nicholas Christopher, Jill D. Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Justin Scott, Kris Nelscott, Warren Moore, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, and Lawrence Block himself. Even Gail Levin, Hopper’s biographer and compiler of his catalogue raisonée, appears with her own first work of fiction, providing a true account of art theft on a grand scale and told in the voice of the country preacher who perpetrated the crime.

Somewhere in the Night

Somewhere in the Night PDF Author: Nicholas Christopher
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439137617
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
Film noir is more than a cinematic genre. It is an essential aspect of American culture. Along with the cowboy of the Wild West, the denizen of the film noir city is at the very center of our mythological iconography. Described as the style of an anxious victor, film noir began during the post-war period, a strange time of hope and optimism mixed with fear and even paranoia. The shadow of this rich and powerful cinematic style can now be seen in virtually every artistic medium. The spectacular success of recent neo-film noirs is only the tip of an iceberg. In the dead-on, nocturnal jazz of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, the chilled urban landscapes of Edward Hopper, and postwar literary fiction from Nelson Algren and William S. Burroughs to pulp masters like Horace McCoy, we find an unsettling recognition of the dark hollowness beneath the surface of the American Dream. Acclaimed novelist and poet Nicholas Christopher explores the cultural identity of film noir in a seamless, elegant, and enchanting work of literary prose. Examining virtually the entire catalogue of film noir, Christopher identifies the central motif as the urban labyrinth, a place infested with psychosis, anxiety, and existential dread in which the noir hero embarks on a dangerously illuminating quest. With acute sensitivity, he shows how technical devices such as lighting, voice over, and editing tempo are deployed to create the film noir world. Somewhere in the Night guides us through the architecture of this imaginary world, be it shot in New York or Los Angeles, relating its elements to the ancient cultural archetypes that prefigure it. Finally, Christopher builds an explanation of why film noir not only lives on but is currently enjoying a renaissance. Somewhere in the Night can be appreciated as a lucid introduction to a fundamental style of American culture, and also as a guide to film noir's heyday. Ultimately, though, as the work of a bold talent adeptly manipulating poetic cadence and metaphor, it is itself a superb aesthetic artifact.

A Trip To The Stars

A Trip To The Stars PDF Author: Nicholas Christopher
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743203305
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 516

Book Description
"A Trip to the Stars" begins in Manhattan when ten-year-old Loren is kidnapped from his young adoptive aunt, Mala, and over the next 15 years travels to realms both real and imaginary. Fusing imagination, scholarship, and suspense with remarkable narrative skill, Christopher creates an epic tale of love and destiny.

Under a Painted Sky

Under a Painted Sky PDF Author: Stacey Heather Lee
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399168036
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
"In 1845, Sammy, a Chinese American girl, and Annamae, an African American slave girl, disguise themselves as boys and travel on the Oregon Trail to California from Missouri"--