Monday, October 14, 2024

World of Betty and Veronica #21, 225 pages

 TWO BRAND NEW STORIES! First, in “Snow Way!“ When Betty & Veronica make snowmen in front of Veronica’s mansion, Veronica decides to outdo Betty and make a high-fashion snow-woman. Even though it’s done mostly as a joke, it catches the eye of a Holiday blogger and goes viral. Suddenly Veronica’s on Fashion TV with a whole runway of fashionable snow-people! But can she keep her cool enough to maintain this level of cold-weather celebrity?

Then, in “Expensive Stuffing,” Betty’s volunteering at the local animal rehabilitation center, when she’s tasked with a very special case—the superhero Captain Flag’s beloved pet eagle is sick! Does Betty have the know-how to bring this special super-powered animal back to health?





Archie's Double Digest #114, 125 pages

 




World of Betty and Veronica Jumbo Comics #32, 189 pages

 BRAND NEW STORY! Jaguar and Jughead are being held by a group of super-power squashing gangsters! Can Superteen and Powerteen rescue them without their powers?




The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey by Louise Broden, 95 pages

 In 1940, Hans and Margret Rey fled their Paris home as the German army advanced. They began their harrowing journey on bicycles, pedaling to Southern France with children’s book manuscripts, including what would become the international sensation Curious George, among their few possessions.


Louise Borden combed primary resources, including Hans Rey’s pocket diaries, to tell this dramatic true story. Her collection of archival materials introduce readers to the world of Hans and Margret Rey while Allan Drummond's dramatic and colorful artwork illustrates their wartime trek to a new home.

Now elementary school readers can follow the Rey’s amazing journey in this Young Reader's Edtion. Part travel journal, part gripping biography this volume includes full-color illustrations, original photos, ticket stubs, entries from Hans Rey's diaries, activities, an new afterword, and an interview with the author. The perfect selection for book reports, biography units, and Curious George fans of all ages. 




Happy Medium by Sarah Adler, 556 pages

 A clever con woman must convince a skeptical, sexy farmer of his property's resident real-life ghost if she's to save them all from a fate worse than death, in this delightful new novel from the author of Mrs. Nash's Ashes .


Fake spirit medium Gretchen Acorn is happy to help when her best ( wealthiest) client hires her to investigate the unexplained phenomena preventing the sale of her bridge partner’s struggling goat farm. Gretchen may be a fraud, but she'd like to think she’s a beneficent one. So if "cleansing" the property will help a nice old man finally retire and put some much-needed cash in her pockets at the same time, who's she to say no?

Of course, it turns out said bridge partner isn't the kindly AARP member Gretchen imagined—Charlie Waybill is young, hot as hell, and extremely unconvinced that Gretchen can communicate with the dead. (Which, fair.) Except, to her surprise, Gretchen finds herself face-to-face with the very real, very chatty ghost that’s been wreaking havoc during every open house. And he wants her to help ensure Charlie avoids the same family curse that's had Everett haunting Gilded Creek since the 1920s.

Now, Gretchen has one month to convince Charlie he can’t sell the property. Unfortunately, hard work and honesty seem to be the way to win over the stubborn farmer—not exactly Gretchen's strengths. But trust isn’t the only thing growing between them, and the risk of losing Charlie to the spirit realm looms over Gretchen almost as annoyingly as Everett himself. To save the goat farm, its friendly phantom, and the man she's beginning to love, Gretchen will need to pull off the greatest con of her being fully, genuinely herself.

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

What Time the Sexton's Spade doth Rust by Alan Bradley, 298 pages

 In the absence of adult supervision, Flavia has taken on the mentorship of her “pestilent” younger cousin Undine. Undine too seems fascinated by mayhem. Flavia has nigglings of doubt about her motivations. Has Undine inherited her dead mother’s darkness? Or worse?


A mysterious villager, Major Goodinall, a virtual hermit and former public hangman with stomach-curdling deeds in his past, has been found dead, killed by ingesting poisonous mushrooms.

In her search for the murderer, Flavia becomes entangled with the families of those who have lost relatives to the dead man, only to be led to the most unlikely of suspects.



Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball by Stefan Kanfer, 361 pages

 For more than fifty years Lucille Ball has been television's most recognizable and beloved face. As Lucy Ricardo she was the ultimate screwball housewife, getting herself into and out of scrapes with unmatched comic finesse. Indeed, she was so funny, and so central to the cultural landscape, that we often overlook Ball's role in shaping that as producer of her own show and a cofounder of a major studio, she was a pioneer, rewriting the rules and forging new paths for women in the boardroom and on the sound stage. In Ball of Fire , Stefan Kanfer goes beyond the icon to examine the difficult life and enduring work of the most influential woman in modern American comedy.


Kanfer traces the arc of her career from its unlikely beginnings in a lonely and desolate childhood in upstate New York. There she discovered that making people laugh could ease the pains of a fragmented family life. But she was more than amusing. She was also beautiful, and when Lucy's adolescent attempts to crack Broadway ended in failure, she became a runway model and on a fluke, journeyed out to California to be an extra in one film. That led to another, and another, and another bottom-of-the-bill movie, until she became, in her own words, "The Queen of the B's". Ball of Fire tracks Lucy's pursuit of the superstardom that eluded her on the big screen and follows the actress through a series of disappointing affairs and sorrows until she meets a Cuban conga drummer six years her junior, and falls headlong in love with Desi Arnaz. Working with her husband, Lucille Ball becomes a different kind of comic artist in a program called I Love Lucy , the show that is still running in more than eighty countries around the globe.

Taking us through the development of television both as technology and cultural phenomenon, Kanfer chronicles the difficult birth of the sitcom that changed the world. He details the early executive meetings, the rocky first productions, the shaky first weeks and the unpredicted triumph. We see all of Lucy's behind-the-scenes battles for creative control of the show; her surprising confrontation with the House Un-American Activities Committee when it was discovered that she had once registered to vote as a Communist; her groundbreaking on-air pregnancy; and a series of in-depth analyses of the classic scenes and Chaplinesque slapstick that guarantee her a permanent place in the pantheon of American comedy.

Finally, we see the aftermath of her hard-won the turbulent marriage and painful split from Desi, the man she never stopped loving; her second marriage; and her sad last years out of the limelight and away from the applause.

This is the first biography to examine the legendary Lucille Ball in all her many her personal struggles and the torments that forged a comic genius; and, at last, her posthumous influence on television comedy, on feminist scholars and cultural critics, and on the public at large.