Showing results by narrator "Dina Pearlman" in All Categories

Humor is the most celebrated of all Jewish responses to modernity. In this book, Ruth Wisse evokes and applauds the genius of spontaneous Jewish joking - as well as the brilliance of comic masterworks by writers like Heinrich Heine, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, S. Y. Agnon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Philip Roth. At the same time, Wisse draws attention to the precarious conditions that call Jewish humor into being - and the price it may exact from its practitioners and audience.

As one of nine siblings raised in the Deep South, plus-size PI Savannah Reid has experienced her share of family drama. But shotgun weddings and snooty in-laws don't worry her nearly as much as a search for a missing mother and child - especially when it leads to murder....

A cop at the opera.... Wisteria Tearoom owner Ellen Rosings coaxes Detective Tony Aragón to go with her to the Santa Fe Opera, but the magnificent performance of Tosca ends in disaster. In bizarre counterpoint to the opera's plot, the leading man is murdered in his dressing room, and Tony must rush to secure the crime scene. Ellen is left to comfort Vi Benning, a former server at the tearoom who is now an apprentice at the opera and a protégée of the slain singer.

It’s winter. Jane and Lindsay just want to drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and make out with horrible people while they wait to die. They take pride in being scum as they drive around eating cookies and giving hand jobs in parking lots. Like Jane and Lindsay’s sexual experiences, this audiobook will make you laugh and end in a way that isn’t very satisfying.

Some say Demiel ben Yusef is the world’s most dangerous terrorist, personally responsible for bombings and riots that have claimed the lives of thousands. Others insist he is a man of peace, a miracle worker, and possibly even the Son of God. His trial in New York City for crimes against humanity attracts scores of protestors, as well as media and religious leaders from around the world.

Twelve-year-old Barbary is emigrating from Earth to Einstein, an orbital space station. Researchers and diplomats on board the station are preparing to meet the first alien spacecraft to visit the solar system. Barbary wants to stay with her new sister, Heather, and Heather's father Yoshi. But Barbary is keeping a secret, and if her secret is discovered, she could be sent back to Earth.

Rabbi Gabrielle succeeds the senior rabbi at Congregation Ohav Shalom and in this new role must perform a funeral for her favorite Bar Mitzvah boy, now a young man recently murdered in a remote Washington, D.C., park. This death brings her to a ghetto high school where the victim coached its struggling tennis team. An avid tennis player herself, Gabrielle attempts to keep the tennis team going and, because the police are unable to apprehend the murderer, investigates the crime. This brings her into conflict with Washington's thriving gun trade. Pursuit of the killer thrusts Gabrielle into the nation's spotlight, exactly where she doesn't want to be.

FBI special agent Kelly Jones has worked on many disturbing cases in her career, but nothing like this. A mass grave site unearthed on the Appalachian Trail puts Kelly at the head of an investigation that crosses the line - from Massachusetts to Vermont, from wealthy vacationers to poor transients, from a serial killer to a copycat nemesis. Assisted by law enforcement from both states and a forensic anthropologist, Kelly searches for the killers. But as darkness falls, another victim is taken.

For the grand opening weekend, Cece is staging a play featuring the beloved sleuth Miss Marple. Of course, everything goes wrong, including a leading lady who ends up dead. All is not well in Christietown; its secrets are as complicated as the truth behind Agatha Christie's real-life disappearance. The developer, an Englishman who claims to be Dame Agatha's descendent, has ruthless investors breathing down his neck.

Cece Caruso is thrilled that her biography of the legendary Dashiell Hammett is headed for the big screen. Rafe Simic, the actor cast as the lead, may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the money she'll make tutoring him in the ABCs of The Maltese Falcon should be good enough to feed her addiction to vintage Yves St. Laurent. But when the dead body of one of Rafe's old flames is discovered, Cece can't help but ask questions.

Rachel and Dash have a new client. Well, three new clients. A trio of transvestite working girls want Rachel to investigate the death of one of their own. Rosalinda's throat was slashed on Halloween right after the Greenwich Village parade. Finding her killer isn't exactly the NYPD's top priority—and LaDonna, Chi Chi, and Jasmine are terrified that they'll be next.

Lillian Byrd's battered Chevrolet Caprice is convulsing through the last of its death throes; her pet rabbit, Todd, ails; and as usual she's single—and flat broke. For a few extra bucks she signs on to help an old friend, retired police detective Erma Porrocks, renovate her house, but of course nothing ever goes smoothly in the life of Lillian Byrd. The end of her first day on the job yields a partially demolished wall, a mysterious stash of cash, and a fresh corpse. And Lillian's attentions are diverted by the appearance of a drop-dead gorgeous neighbor.

Rachel has just been hired as undercover security at a dog-training symposium at a posh Manhattan hotel. How can the Greenwich Village PI and her pit bull, Dashiell, turn down the hefty fee, plus free room and biscuits at the Ritz? All Rachel has to do is keep the peace among the competitive diva dog trainers who have come with their prize pooches from all corners of the globe.

Set largely in the 1990s, the 12 linked stories in Joel Mowdy’s first book take place in and around Mastic Beach, a community on New York’s Long Island that’s close to the wealthy Hamptons but afflicted by widespread poverty. Mostly in their teens and early 20s, the characters struggle to become independent in various ways, ranging from taking typical low-paying jobs - hotel laundry, janitorial, restaurant, and landscaping work - to highly ingenious schemes, to exchanging sexual favors for a place to stay.

Divorced dog-trainer-turned-private-eye Rachel Alexander and her canine assistant Dash - short for Dashiell - are hired by a man named Dennis Keaton to investigate the hit-and-run death of his friend and neighbor Clifford Cole, whose body was found on an isolated Christopher Street pier. The police are treating the gay painter’s suspicious death as a hate crime, but Dennis insists Cliff hadn’t cruised the waterfront in months. Plus, Magritte, Cliff’s champion basenji - a competitor in the upcoming Westminster Dog Show - may have been a witness to the crime and is now missing.

Seven months after their last encounter, retired FBI agent Jack Kale and Atlanta Police Detective Beth Sturgis are reunited by a new case that pits them against the Sandman, a nearly perfect assassin who leaves no clues, can change his appearance seemingly at will, and has eluded police on four continents for years. Now, it's a race against time to protect the Sandman's next targets - two witnesses scheduled to testify before a grand jury by the end of the week.

After years of paying her dues on the force, Beth Sturgis has earned her place as a detective for the Robbery-Homicide division of the Atlanta PD. Now, she's heading up a major manhunt for a potential serial killer who's working his way inward from the outskirts of the city. The copycat elements in the first crime scene lead Sturgis to retired FBI agent Jack Kale, who was responsible for apprehending and nearly killing the murderer known as the Scarecrow, the same Scarecrow who appears to be this new killer's terrible inspiration.

Sasha Solomon is having a bad day. Fired from her job as PR director at an Albuquerque HMO, she is dealing with an ailing mother and trying to figure out the origins of hallucinations that include conversations with her cat. Sasha heads for Clovis, a small town in southeastern New Mexico, to bid on a project for the Chamber of Commerce. While there, she checks in with her widowed friend Mae King. Mae, a local dairy farmer, is clearly out of sorts and shows Sasha the reason.

"Over the last few years I've started writing a number of stories that, for various reasons, I never finished writing..." So begins Special Problems, the comic tale of Christie Hodges, a writer who can't seem to finish a story. The problem isn't that Hodges has nothing to write about - there's her recent divorce, her paralyzed foot, trouble with her daughter and job - it's that once she starts writing, she can't stop. One problem leads to another, and another.

Author, video artist, underground film actor, and superstar, the incomparable Viva is arguably the most famous of Andy Warhol's protégés - a mainstay at the enigmatic artist's Factory. In her riveting, revelatory, totally uncensored, and scandalously entertaining novel, the Factory doors are blown wide open, exposing a world of sex, drugs, and genius.