He had an extraordinary Broadway career, wrote 90 novels and story collections, and among his immortal characters are Jeeves and the Empress of Blandings. McCrum's magisterial biography chronicles the achievements and shadows of a gilded life.

In this, the second novel in P.G. Wodehouse's delightful Jeeves series, the family fumbles through a comedy of errors that is set in motion by a marriage proposal and a downward spiral of miscommunication and crossed wires. This hilarious novel contains many of the most beloved scenes and set pieces from the series. A must-read for Wodehouse fans and lovers of top-notch humor writing.

Nominated, 2024 Edgar Allan Poe Award in the category of best critical/biographical, Mystery Writers of America Shortlisted, 2024 Agatha Awards - Best Mystery Nonfiction, Malice Domestic Posthumous Winner - 2023 IFCA Book Prize, International Crime Fiction Association Narrative innovation is typically seen as the domain of the avant-garde. However, techniques such as nonlinear timelines, multiple points of view, and unreliable narration have long been part of American popular culture. How did forms and styles once regarded as “difficult” become familiar to audiences? In Perplexing Plots, David Bordwell reveals how crime fiction, plays, and films made unconventional narrative mainstream. He shows that since the nineteenth century, detective stories and suspense thrillers have allowed ambitious storytellers to experiment with narrative. Tales of crime and mystery became a training ground where audiences learned to appreciate artifice. These genres demand a sophisticated awareness of storytelling conventions: they play games with narrative form and toy with audience expectations. Bordwell examines how writers and directors have pushed, pulled, and collaborated with their audiences to change popular storytelling. He explores the plot engineering of figures such as Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Hitchcock, Dorothy Sayers, and Quentin Tarantino, and traces how mainstream storytellers and modernist experimenters influenced one another’s work. A sweeping, kaleidoscopic account written in a lively, conversational style, Perplexing Plots offers an ambitious new understanding of how movies, literature, theater, and popular culture have evolved over the past century.

Includes 27 of the finest papers presented at The Centenary of Cinema conference in June 1995

This text offers readers a look at the time when sound was a vexing challenge for filmmakers and the source of contentious debate for audiences and critics. The author presents a view of the talkies' reception, amongst other issues.

What the most exceptional bosses and employees do differently—and how they make the workplace better for everyone. “Some nights I go out and play a piece perfectly. Then, the next night, I play it better.” —Jean-Pierre Rampal, legendary flautist In this provocative, insightful book, nationally syndicated columnist Dale Dauten explores how the best bosses, employees, and suppliers think, learn, and communicate differently—and how this benefits both the organizations they work for and the individuals they work with. What does it take to be a workplace genius? Dauten, drawing from his experience with hundreds of “better than perfect” workers, explores the behaviors and different ways of thinking that make them shining stars—similar to the exceptional performers in music, sports, science, and other fields. He also reveals why they elevate everyone around them, and how we can find our inner genius to make a difference in our workplaces, and in the world.

In Eisenstein Rediscovered Ian Christie and Richard Taylor present the first true East-West symposium on Eisenstein with an unparalleled diversity of views and methodologies. Two newly discovered texts by Eisenstein are here translated fro the first time, and all the contributors make extensive use of material only recently available - variant scripts, drawings, diaries and other writings - to probe behind the familiar facade. The `new' Eisenstein that emerges is in all respects a more engaging and contemporary figure than is traditionally perceived, his wit, eroticism and exlectic passions defining a distinctively modern sensibility whose rediscovey is long overdue.

Semiotic Encounters: Text, Image and Trans-Nation aims at opening up scholarly debates on the contemporary challenges of intertextuality in its various intersections with postcolonial and visual culture studies. Commencing with three theoretical contributions, which work towards the creation of frameworks under which intertextuality can be (re)viewed today, the volume then explores textual and visual encounters in a number of case studies. While (a) the dimension of the intertextual in the traditional sense (as specified e.g. by Genette) and (b) the widening of the concept towards visual and digital culture govern the structure of the volume, questions of the transnational and/or postcolonial form a recurrent subtext. The volume’s combination of theoretical discussions and case studies, which predominantly deal with ‘English classics’ and their rewritings, film adaptations and/or rereadings, will mainly attract graduate students and scholars working on contemporary literary theory, visual culture and postcolonial literatures.

The definitive edition of the letters—many previously unpublished—of England’s greatest comic writer. P. G. Wodehouse wrote some of the greatest comic masterpieces of all time. So, naturally, we find the same humor and wit in his letters. He offers hilarious accounts of living in England and France, the effects of prohibition, and how to deal with publishers. He even recounts cricket matches played while in a Nazi internment camp (Wodehouse wanted to show the stiff upper lip of the British in the toughest situations). Over the years, Wodehouse corresponded with relatives, friends, and some of the greatest figures of the twentieth century: Agatha Christie, Ira Gershwin, Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The letters are arranged chronologically with intersecting sections of biography written by Sophie Ratcliffe. This is the only book you will need to understand the man behind the characters.