Download or read book Bridge of Sighs written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-09-25 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls comes "a magnificent, bighearted” novel (The Boston Globe) about small-town America that follows Louis Charles Lynch (“Lucy”) and his wife of forty years as they prepare to embark on a vacation to Italy. Lucy is sixty years old and has spent his entire life in Thomaston, New York. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he’s had plenty of reasons not to be—chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an “empire” of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation. Lucy's oldest friend, once a rival for his wife's affection, leads a life in Venice far removed from Thomaston. In fact, the exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the “history” he’s writing of his hometown and family. And with his story interspersed with that of Noonan, the native son who’d fled so long ago, the destinies building up around both of them (and Sarah, too) are relentless, constantly surprising, and utterly revealing. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Download or read book Chances Are written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Russo’s] first novel in ten years hits the ball out of the park. . . . You’ll lap up this gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.” —The Boston Globe “A cascade of charm. . . . Russo is an undeniably endearing writer, and chances are this story will draw you back to the most consequential moments in your own life.”—The Washington Post One beautiful September day, three men in their late sixties convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today—Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey is a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-five years later, three lives and that of a significant other are put on displaywhile the distant past confounds the present ina relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are . . . introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga.

Download or read book That Old Cape Magic written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-08-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls delivers his most intimate novel yet: "An astute portrait of a 30-year marriage, in all its promise and pain…. His honest, heartfelt storytelling—like a cooling breeze off a certain New England shoreline—has never felt fresher" (People). For Griffin, all paths, all memories, converge at Cape Cod. The Cape is where he took his childhood summer vacations, where he and his wife, Joy, honeymooned, where they decided he’d leave his LA screenwriting job to become a college professor, and where they celebrated the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. But when their beloved Laura’s wedding takes place a year later, Griffin is caught between chauffeuring his mother’s and father’s ashes in two urns and contending with Joy and her large, unruly family. Both he and she have also brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened? By turns hilarious, rueful, and uplifting, That Old Cape Magic is a profoundly involving novel about marriage, family, and all the other ties that bind. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Download or read book Mohawk written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls comes a wonderfully written novel about a small town in New York whose citizens have fallen on hard times. "Immensely readable and sympathetic.... Mr. Russo has an instinctive gift for capturing the rhythms of small-town life." —The New York Times Mohawk, New York, is one of those small towns that lie almost entirely on the wrong side of the tracks. Dallas Younger, a star athlete in high school, now drifts from tavern to poker game, losing money, and, inevitably, another set of false teeth. His ex-wife, Anne, is stuck in a losing battle with her mother over the care of her sick father. And their son, Randall, is deliberately neglecting his school work—because in a place like Mohawk it doesn't pay to be too smart. In Mohawk, Russo explores these lives with profound compassion and flint-hard wit. Out of derailed ambitions and old loves, secret hatreds and communal myths, he has created a richly plotted, densely populated, and wonderfully written novel that captures every nuance of America's backyard. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Download or read book Straight Man written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. • Now the AMC Original Series Lucky Hank. William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character—he is a born anarchist—and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans. In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions. In short, Straight Man is classic Russo—side-splitting, poignant, compassionate, and unforgettable. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Download or read book Everybody s Fool written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls returns to North Bath, the Rust Belt town first brought to unforgettable life in Nobody’s Fool. Now, ten years later, Doug Raymer has become the chief of police and is tormented by the improbable death of his wife—not to mention his suspicion that he was a failure of a husband. Meanwhile, the irrepressible Sully has come into a small fortune, but is suddenly faced with a VA cardiologist’s estimate that he only has a year or two left to live. As Sully frantically works to keep the bad news from the important people in his life, we are reunited with his son and grandson . . . with Ruth, the married woman with whom he carried on for years . . . and with the hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren’t still best friends. Filled with humor, heart, and hard-luck characters you can’t help but love, Everybody’s Fool is a crowning achievement from one of the great storytellers of our time. Look for Everybody’s Fool, available now, and Somebody’s Fool, coming soon.

Download or read book Hollywood Godfather written by Gianni Russo and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood Godfather is Gianni Russo's over-the-top memoir of a real-life mobster-turned-actor who helped make The Godfather a reality, and his story of life on the edge between danger and glamour. Gianni Russo was a handsome 25-year-old mobster with no acting experience when he walked onto the set of The Godfather and entered Hollywood history. He played Carlo Rizzi, the husband of Connie Corleone, who set her brother Sonny—played by James Caan—up for a hit. Russo didn't have to act—he knew the mob inside and out: from his childhood in Little Italy, where Mafia legend Frank Costello took him under his wing, to acting as a messenger for New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello during the Kennedy assassination, to having to go on the lam after shooting and killing a member of the Colombian drug cartel in his Vegas club. Along the way, Russo befriended Frank Sinatra, who became his son's godfather, and Marlon Brando, who mentored his career as an actor after trying to get Francis Ford Coppola to fire him from The Godfather. Russo had passionate affairs with Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minelli, and scores of other celebrities. He went on to become a producer and starred in The Godfather: Parts I and II, Seabiscuit, Any Given Sunday and Rush Hour 2, among many other films. Hollywood Godfather is a no-holds-barred account of a life filled with violence, glamour, sex—and fun.

Download or read book AdR Book Beyond Fashion written by Anna dello Russo and published by Phaidon Press. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cabinet of curiosities that captures the essence of Anna dello Russo - stylist, editor, and fashion icon like no other Anna dello Russo is one of the fashion world's most fascinating characters, with a truly global profile and a career that continues to take her in groundbreaking directions. Designed as a keepsake box filled with a variety of surprises - a flip book, a life-sized poster, a pack of signature fashion trading cards, a pop-up book, extracts from her personal diary, and much more - this highly covetable object features some of dello Russo's best work and reflects her eccentric personality, creativity, and playful wit.

Download or read book Celluloid Activist written by Michael Schiavi and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celluloid Activist is the biography of gay-rights giant Vito Russo, the man who wrote The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, commonly regarded as the foundational text of gay and lesbian film studies and one of the first to be widely read. But Russo was much more than a pioneering journalist and author. A founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and cofounder of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), Russo lived at the center of the most important gay cultural turning points in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. His life as a cultural Zelig intersects a crucial period of social change, and in some ways his story becomes the story of a developing gay revolution in America. A frequent participant at “zaps” and an organizer of Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) cabarets and dances—which gave the New York gay and lesbian community its first social alternative to Mafia-owned bars—Russo made his most enduring contribution to the GAA with his marshaling of “Movie Nights,” the forerunners to his worldwide Celluloid Closet lecture tours that gave gay audiences their first community forum for the dissection of gay imagery in mainstream film. Biographer Michael Schiavi unravels Vito Russo’s fascinating life story, from his childhood in East Harlem to his own heartbreaking experiences with HIV/AIDS. Drawing on archival materials, unpublished letters and journals, and more than two hundred interviews, including conversations with a range of Russo’s friends and family from brother Charlie Russo to comedian Lily Tomlin to pioneering activist and playwright Larry Kramer, Celluloid Activistprovides an unprecedented portrait of a man who defined gay-rights and AIDS activism. “Schiavi tells a compelling story in this biography—from his re-creation of life on the streets of East Harlem and in Greenwich Village of the 1960s and 1970s to the way he conveys Russo’s excitement about his film research and popular education to his account of the AIDS years in New York City.”—John D’Emilio, Italian American Review “In [Schiavi’s] hands Russo’s life is both fascinating in its own right and a window into a larger milieu of activism during two critical decades.”—Italian American Review Best Special Interest Books, selected by the American Association of School Librarians Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers Finalist, Gay Memoir/Biography, Lambda Literary Awards Finalist, Over the Rainbow Selection, American Library Association

Download or read book The Destiny Thief written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It turns out that Russo the nonfiction writer is a lot like Russo the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He is affably disagreeable, wry, idiosyncratic, vulnerably bighearted, a craftsman of lubricated sentences."—Jay Fielden, New York Times Book Review A master of the novel, short story, and memoir, the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Everybody's Fool now gives us his very first collection of personal essays, ranging throughout writing and reading and living. In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain's value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America's most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo's writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.

Download or read book Super Host written by Kate Russo and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Get ready to smile….[A] sweet story and the perfect antidote to the chaos that’s been 2021.” –the Skimm A deeply funny and shrewdly observed debut novel about being lost in the very place you know by heart. Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize-nominated artist who was once a rising star. Now, at age fifty-five, his wife has left him, he hasn't sold a painting in two years, and his gallery wants to stop selling his work, claiming they'll have more value retrospectively...when he's dead. So, left with a large West London home and no income, he's forced to move into his artist's studio in the back garden and list his house on the popular vacation rental site, AirBed. A stranger now in his own home, with his daughter, Mia, off at art school, and any new relationships fizzling out at best, Bennett struggles to find purpose in his day-to-day. That all changes when three different guests--lonely American Alicia; tortured artist Emma; and cautiously optimistic divorcée Kirstie--unwittingly unlock the pieces of himself that have been lost to him for too long. Warm, witty, and utterly humane, Super Host offers a captivating portrait of middle age, relationships, and what it truly means to take a new chance at life.

Download or read book Elsewhere written by Richard Russo and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a personal account of the author's youth, his parents, and the 1950s upstate New York town they struggled to escape, recounting the encroaching poverty and illness that challenged everyday life and the dreams his mother instilled that inspired his career.

Download or read book If I Was Your Girl written by Meredith Russo and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amanda Hardy only wants to fit in at her new school, but she is keeping a big secret, so when she falls for Grant, guarded Amanda finds herself yearning to share with him everything about herself, including her previous life as Andrew.

Download or read book Rope Opera written by Vince Russo and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many have tried to explain the inner workings of wrestling's most turbulent era, but this is the first time someone in the centre of the maelstrom has laid everything bare. Taking readers from the death of WCW to the rise of TNA - the world's fastest growing and most cutting-edge wrestling promotion - Vince has crafted a remarkable storyline about how he came to terms with, and found peace within, the insanity of the squared circle.

Download or read book The Risk Pool written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls comes a wonderfully funny novel set in Mohawk, New York, where Ned Hall is doing his best to grow up, even though neither of his estranged parents can properly be called adult. "Superbly original and maliciously funny." —The New York Times Book Review His father, Sam, cultivates bad habits so assiduously that he is stuck at the bottom of his auto insurance risk pool. His mother, Jenny, is slowly going crazy from resentment at a husband who refuses either to stay or to stay away. As Ned veers between allegiances to these grossly inadequate role models, Richard Russo gives us a book that overflows with outsized characters and outlandish predicaments and whose vision of family is at once irreverent and unexpectedly moving. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Download or read book Empire Falls written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The bestselling author of Nobody's Fool and Straight Man delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace. “Rich, humorous ... Mr. Russo’s most seductive book thus far.” —The New York Times Welcome to Empire Falls, a blue-collar town full of abandoned mills whose citizens surround themselves with the comforts and feuds provided by lifelong friends and neighbors and who find humor and hope in the most unlikely places, in this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo. Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Download or read book Thieves written by Steven Max Russo and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2018-11-12 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Esmeralda works for a housecleaning service during the day and as a restaurant hostess at night. Just out of high school, she is the sole support for her mother and two young siblings. She has drive and ambition. What she doesn’t have is money. She knows of a home in the upscale town of Mendham, NJ, that will be empty for more than a month. The rich people who live there go away the same time every year to spend time at their vacation home. Having cleaned the house, she also knows it contains a fair amount of cash and valuables. One night sitting with Ray, one of her co-workers, she casually mentions a “what if” scenario; Ray tells Skooley, a white trash drifter who recently moved to New Jersey from south Florida, and a plan is hatched. It isn’t long before Esmeralda finds herself trapped by both circumstance and greed, forced to try and defend herself against one of her partners in crime, who she quickly discovers is far more dangerous than she ever thought possible. Praise for THIEVES: “A chilling portrait of a psychopath on a murderous rampage. One hell of a debut for Steve Russo.” —James Hayman, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Bridge “Kudos to Steven Max Russo. I read Thieves in one sitting—it’s propulsive, absorbing, and all too plausible. I warn you, these thieves will steal an entire day or two from you—and you’ll love every minute of it.” —Jonathan Stone, author of Moving Day, The Teller, and Days of Night “Gripping and powerful, Thieves is a dynamite read. Definitely a book you won’t be able to put down.” —Andrew Grant, author of False Witness “With Thieves, Steven Max Russo works the rich tradition of American heist fiction like a pro.” —Wallace Stroby, author of the Crissa Stone series “A stunning debut novel. Steve Russo hits it out of the park with an ingenious, diabolical plot, a unique voice, and complex characters that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page.” —Charles Salzberg, author of Second Story Man and the Shamus Award-nominated Henry Swann mysteries “Steve Russo has written a gripping suspense thriller. He grabs you in the opening scene and doesn’t let go till the heart-pounding climax.” —Peter Leonard, national bestselling author