Новинки Аллена Курцвейла

The true account of one boy’s lifelong search for his boarding-school bully.

Equal parts childhood memoir and literary thriller, Whipping Boy chronicles prize-winning author Allen Kurzweil’s search for his twelve-year-old nemesis, a bully named Cesar Augustus. The obsessive inquiry, which spans some forty years, takes Kurzweil all over the world, from a Swiss boarding school (where he endures horrifying cruelty) to the slums of Manila, from the Park Avenue boardroom of the world’s largest law firm to a federal prison camp in Southern California.

While hunting down his tormentor, Kurzweil encounters an improbable cast of characters that includes an elocution teacher with ill-fitting dentures, a gang of faux royal swindlers, a crime investigator “with paper in his blood,” and a onocled grand master of the Knights of Malta. Yet for all its global exoticism and comic exuberance, Kurzweil’s riveting account is, at its core, a heartfelt and suspenseful narrative about the “parallel lives” of a victim and his abuser.

A scrupulously researched work of nonfiction that renders a childhood menace into an unlikely muse, Whipping Boy is much more than a tale of karmic retribution; it is a poignant meditation on loss, memory, and mourning, a surreal odyssey born out of suffering, nourished by rancor, tempered by wit, and resolved, unexpectedly, in a breathtaking act of personal courage.

Grade 4-6. This sequel to "Leon and the Spitting Image" (HarperCollins, 2003) offers the same laughs and preponderance of plot points involving saliva. Here, Leon Zeisel, potato-chip collector extraordinaire, works hard to create a voodoo doll powered by spit that will give school bully Lumpkin a turbowedgie. In the meantime, an invigorating and unorthodox new science teacher gets his class involved in a semester of studying Leons beloved snack, and the fifth grader enters the Chipapalooza, a potato-chip trivia and taste-test competition. Leons friends Lily-Matisse and P.W. continue to be his abettors, and he still lives in his mothers hotel with an extended family of employees and often-bizarre animals traipsing through the hallways. Playful drawings throughout, including presidential portrait chips on the endpapers, add greatly to the fun. Kids will enjoy this rollicking comedy.
Ingredients: A trashy beginning, Leon Zeisel, a bully, a purple nurple, a wet Willie, 2 Howlitzers, 3 best friends, a Lumpkin Dunkin', 5 half-baked schemes, 2 Wedgies (1 Turbo; 1 Atomic), a hotel full of animals, a jug of Poop-B-Gone, a bald science teacher, 36 types of potato chips, 12 potato chip experiments, a potato chip museum, 1 human hot fudge sundae, an explosive ending.

Клод Пейдж. Одно из самых таинственных имен бурного XVIII века. Загадочный авантюрист - или великий изобретатель?
Жизнь его была полна приключений и крутых поворотов - от нищеты и безвестности к богатству и славе, от покоя - к смертельной опасности...
По слухам, он обладал поистине сверхъестественной властью над механизмами и... женщинами.
Согласно легенде, одно из его изобретений сыграло поистине мистическую роль в судьбе Марии-Антуанетты...
В чем заключалась его тайна?
Современный исследователь снова и снова пытается отыскать ускользающую истину!
Разгадка скрыта в старинной шкатулке...

Зачем понадобилось эксцентричному старику миллионеру, владеющему уникальной коллекцией старинных рукописей, нанять молодого ученого, чтобы тот восстановил историю жизни давным-давно умершего человека? Каприз? Нелепость? Возможно... Но...

Leon and the Spitting Image is about a hotel full of animals. It's about an evil ice maker. It's about glass eyeballs and human catapults. It's about really old panty hose and Possibly Fake Hair. But mostly it's about Leon Zeisel and his epic quest to survive fourth grade. What's stopping him? Two things. First, there's Miss Hagmeyer. She's a supernaturally strict teacher with ears that resemble giant rotting mushrooms. And then there is Leon's archenemy, Lumpkin the Pumpkin, a human tank with a deadly dodgeball throw known to all as the sidewinder. Luckily, Leon has two friends, Lily-Matisse and P.W., who will stand by him no matter…

Tells of the bizarre adventures of an 18th-century watchmaker and mechanical wizard - Claude Page. Maimed by surgery at the age of 12, his manual dexterity destines him to become one of Europe's most gifted inventors when he acquires the skills of the enamelist and watchmaker.