Contains entries that provide biographical and career information about seventy-one world authors of long fiction, each with data on dates and places of birth and death, lists of principal works, a critical essay, and a bibliography; arranged alphabetically from A-to-Cap.

Profiling more than 1400 print and electronic sources, this book helps connect librarians and researchers to the most relevant sources of information in genealogy and biography.

"...The Friday Book was the first work of nonfiction by novelist John Barth, author of The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, and Chimera. Taking its title from the day of the week Barth would devote to nonfiction, the three dozen essays discuss a wide range of topics from the blue crabs of Barth's beloved Chesapeake Bay to weighty literary subjects such as Borges, Homer, and semiotics..."--www.amazon.com.

Contains entries for each author with a biography, a list of separately published books, and an essay.

Language "Appealing As Sunlight After a Storm." A sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end. —Henry David Thoreau Prose consists of ... phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. —George Orwell Whether it invokes hard work or merely a hen-house, a good simile is like a good picture—it's worth a thousand words. Packed with more than 16,000 imaginative, colorful phrases—from “abandoned as a used Kleenex” to “quiet as an eel swimming in oil”—the Similes Dictionary will help any politician, writer, or lover of language find just the right saying, be it original or banal, verbose or succinct. Your thoughts will never be "as tedious as a twice-told tale" or "dry as the Congressional Record." Choose from elegant turns of phrases “as useful as a Swiss army knife” and “varied as expressions of the human face”. Citing more than 2,000 sources—from the Bible, Socrates, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and H. L. Mencken to popular movies, music, and television shows—the Similes Dictionary covers hundreds of subjects broken into thematic categories that include topics such as virtue, anger, age, ambition, importance, and youth, helping you find the fitting phrase quickly and easily. Perfect for setting the atmosphere, making a point, or helping spin a tale with economy, intelligence, and ingenuity, the vivid comparisons found in this collection will inspire anyone. Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. —William Shakespeare A face like a bucket —Raymond Chandler A man with little learning is like the frog who thinks its puddle a great sea. —Burmese proverb Peace, like charity, begins at home —Franklin Delano Roosevelt You know a dream is like a river ever changing as it flows. —Garth Brooks Fit as a fiddle —John Ray’s Proverbs He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. —Arthur Miller Ring true, like good china. —Sylvia Plath Music yearning like a God in pain —John Keats Busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. —Pat Conroy Enduring as mother love —Anonymous

DIVReed's passionately involved narrative captures the opening days of the Russian Revolution, the fall of the provisional government, the assault on the Winter Palace, Lenin's seizure of power, and other tumultuous events. /div