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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anatomy of a Murder'
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Civil Action'
In America, when somebody does you wrong, you take 'em to court. W. R. Grace and Beatrice Foods had been dumping a cancer-causing industrial solvent into the water table of Woburn, Massachusetts, for years; in 1981, the families of eight leukemia victims sued. However, A Civil Action demonstrates powerfully that--even with the families' hotshot lawyers and the evidence on their side--justice is elusive, particularly when it involves malfeasance by megacorporations. Much of the legal infighting can cause the eyes to glaze. But the story is saved by great characters: the flawed, flamboyant Jan Schlichtmann and his group of bulldogs for the prosecution; Jerome Facher, the enigmatic lawyer for Beatrice, who proves to be more than a match; John J. Riley, the duplicitous, porcine tannery owner; and a host of others. It's impossible not to feel the drama of this methodical book, impossible not to grieve for the parents who lost children, and impossible not to share Schlichtmann's desperation as he runs out of money. A Civil Action reads like one long advertisement for a few well-placed Molotov cocktails. (But that wouldn't make for a very long book, now would it?) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars'
David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Bloom's Guides collection, presents concise critical excerpts from Snow Falling on Cedars to provide a scholarly overview of the work. This comprehensive study guide also features "The Story Behind the Story," which details the conditions under which Snow Falling on Cedars was written. This title also includes a short biography on Guterson and a descriptive list of characters. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Der Prozess'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Der Vorleser'
The theme of the book is the Holocaust and questions of guilt, as it tells the tale of Michael Berg and his affair with Hanna Schmitz, who turns out to have been a guard at Auschwitz and who later hangs herself.
This edition makes the German text accessible to students, providing the full German text, with a substantial Introduction, Commentary, Vocabulary and Bibliography in English.
Bernhard Schlinks novel "Der Vorleser" ("The Reader") has sold over 500,000 copies in Germany, 750,000 in the USA, 200,000 in Britain, and 100,000 in France. It has been translated into 25 languages. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Der Vorleser: Roman'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Jurado'
› Find signed collectible books: 'El Proceso / the Process'
This brilliant writer knew how to create a nightmare world where things happen without any explanation, where the characters fight against a fate which they do´nt understand, where there are effects without any apparent cause and where all happens without any explanation, but even so, it is impossible to escape from the fascination of the plot.. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Firm'
D.W. Moffett uses his youthful voice to outstanding effect in this excellent abridgment of Grisham's bestselling thriller about a Harvard Law grad aggressively recruited by a curiously obscure firm. "We're small and very selective... we screened over two thousand third-year law students at the best schools. Only one letter was sent." They've decided he's their man and to get him they offer top dollar, dangle a BMW, and woo his wife with offers impossible to refuse. But as the wide-eyed youngsters soon discover, there's a catch. Moffett gives an excellent performance, bringing the story to life with vibrant and believable characterizations and a smooth, knowing narrative. (Running time: 3 hours, 2 cassettes) --George Laney [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird'
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. A guide to reading ""To Kill A Mockingbird"" with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird'
Plot synopsis of this classic is made meaningful with analysis and quotes by noted literary critics, summaries of the work's main themes and characters, a sketch of the author's life and times, a bibliography, suggested test questions, and ideas for essays and term papers. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Inherit the Wind'
One of the most moving and meaningful plays in American theatre--based on the famed Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which a Tennessee teacher was tried for teaching evolution--now on Broadway starring Tony Award® Winners Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy, and Directed by Tony Award® Winner Doug Hughes
The accused was a slight, frightened man who had deliberately broken the law. His trial was a Roman circus, the chief gladiators being the two great legal giants of the century. Locked in mortal combat, they bellowed and roared imprecations and abuse. The spectators sat uneasily in the sweltering heat with murder in their hearts, barely able to restrain themselves. At stake was the freedom of every American.
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee were classic Broadway scribes who knew how to crank out serious plays for thinking Americans. . . . Inherit the Wind is a perpetually prescient courtroom battle over the legality of teaching evolution. . . . Were still arguing this caseall the way to the White House.
Chicago Tribune
Powerful . . . a crackling good courtroom play . . . [that] provides two of the juiciest roles in American theater.
Copley News Service
[This] historical drama . . . deserves respect.
The Columbus Dispatch [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Inherit the Wind'
The accused was a slight, frightened man who had deliberately broken the law. His trial was a Roman circus. The chief gladiators were two great legal giants of the century. Like two bull elephants locked in mortal combat, they bellowed and roared imprecations and abuse. The spectators sat uneasily in the sweltering heat with murder in their hearts, barely able to restrain themselves. At stake was the freedom of every American. One of the most moving and meaningful plays of our generation. "a tidal wave of a drama." -- New York World-Telegram And Sun [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Matar UN Ruisenor/to Kill a Mockingbird'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'
John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has been heralded as a "lyrical work of nonfiction," and the book's extremely graceful prose depictions of some of Savannah, Georgia's most colorful eccentrics--remarkable characters who could have once prospered in a William Faulkner novel or Eudora Welty short story--were certainly a critical factor in its tremendous success. (One resident into whose orbit Berendt fell, the Lady Chablis, went on to become a minor celebrity in her own right.) But equally important was Berendt's depiction of Savannah socialite Jim Williams as he stands trial for the murder of Danny Hansford, a moody, violence-prone hustler--and sometime companion to Williams--characterized by locals as a "walking streak of sex." So feel free to call it a "true crime classic" without a trace of shame. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil: A Savannah Story'
John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has been heralded as a "lyrical work of nonfiction," and the book's extremely graceful prose depictions of some of Savannah, Georgia's most colorful eccentrics--remarkable characters who could have once prospered in a William Faulkner novel or Eudora Welty short story--were certainly a critical factor in its tremendous success. (One resident into whose orbit Berendt fell, the Lady Chablis, went on to become a minor celebrity in her own right.) But equally important was Berendt's depiction of Savannah socialite Jim Williams as he stands trial for the murder of Danny Hansford, a moody, violence-prone hustler--and sometime companion to Williams--characterized by locals as a "walking streak of sex." So feel free to call it a "true crime classic" without a trace of shame. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midwives'
On a violent, stormy winter night, a home birth goes disastrously wrong. The phone lines are down, the roads slick with ice. The midwife, unable to get her patient to a hospital, works frantically to save both mother and child while her inexperienced assistant and the woman's terrified husband look on. The mother dies but the baby is saved thanks to an emergency C-section. And then the nightmare begins: the assistant suggests that maybe the woman wasn't really dead when the midwife operated:
Did she perform at least eight or nine cycles as my mother said, or four or five as Asa recalled? That is the sort of detail that was disputable. But at some point within minutes of what my mother believed had been a stroke, after my mother concluded the cardiopulmonary resuscitation had failed to generate a pulse or a breath, she screamed for Asa and Anne to find her the sharpest knife in the house.In Midwives, Chris Bohjalian chronicles the events leading up to the trial of Sibyl Danforth, a respected midwife in the small Vermont town of Reddington, on charges of manslaughter. It quickly becomes evident, however, that Sibyl is not the only one on trial--the prosecuting attorney and the state's medical community are all anxious to use this tragedy as ammunition against midwifery in general; this particular midwife, after all, an ex-hippie who still evokes the best of the flower-power generation, is something of an anachronism in 1981. Through it all, Sibyl, her husband, Rand, and their teenage daughter, Connie, attempt to keep their family intact, but the stress of the trial--and Sibyl's growing closeness to her lawyer--puts pressure on both marriage and family. Bohjalian takes readers through the intricacies of childbirth and the law, and by the end of Sibyl Danforth's trial, it's difficult to decide which was more harrowing--the tragic delivery or its legal aftermath.
Narrated by a now adult Connie, Midwives moves back and forth in time, fitting vital pieces of information about what happened that night like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into its complicated plot. As Connie looks back on her mother's trial, she is still trying to understand what happened--not on the night of the disaster--but in the months and years that followed. --Margaret Prior [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder'
Here at last is the account of the O.J. Simpson case that no one else has dared to write, that no one else could write. In Outrage, the famed prosecutor of Charles Manson and bestselling author of Helter Skelter goes to the heart of the trial that divided the country and made a mockery of justice. Vincent Bugliosi, who never lost a murder case, brilliantly outlines the five reasons why O.J. Simpson got away with murder: the worst possible jury, a sloppy and incomplete prosecution, a fatal change of venue, judicial error that allowed the defense to play the race card, and a weak summation and rebuttal that barely addressed the defense's frame-up and conspiracy theories. He reveals:
--The offer Marcia Clark and Bill Hodgman should never have refused.
--The bluff that saved the defense's cardboard case.
--What Deputy Sheriff Jeff Stuart overheard when Rosey Grier visited Simpson in jail.
--The 17 words Johnnie Cochran used to cover his argument that could have been his undoing if caught.
--Why the jurors never heard Simpson's first police interview-- filled with self-incriminating statements that alone could have convicted him of murder.
1. What mistake in jury selection could have cost Marcia Clark the trial--even before she argued the case?
2. What did Simpson do to make sure the gloves wouldn't fit?
3. How did Judge Ito's behavior towards Marcia Clark prejudice the jury?
4. Why did the prosecutors suppress Simpson's "smoking gun"?
5. How did Johnnie Cochran con the jury?
6. Who might really have suggested that Simpson try on the evidence gloves? [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Reader'
Oprah Book Club® Selection, February 1999: Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"
The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people--parents, grandparents, even lovers--who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany's pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence. --R. Ellis [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Runaway Jury'
The Runaway Jury [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shadow of Cain'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Snow Falling on Cedars'
Fighting the distrust and prejudice of his neighbors on a remote island in Puget Sound, a Japanese-American man who spent time in an internment camp during World War II, finds himself on trial for murder. The histories of the accused and the victim, both fishermen and residents of the small town of San Piedro, unfold as newspaperman Ishmael Chambers embarks on a quest for the truth. Lonely and war-scarred, Chambers strives for justice and inner strength, while coming to terms with his ill-fated love for Hatsue Miyamoto, the wife of the accused. Evocative and beautifully written, Snow Falling on Cedars won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Snow Falling on Cedars'
Fighting the distrust and prejudice of his neighbors on a remote island in Puget Sound, a Japanese-American man who spent time in an internment camp during World War II, finds himself on trial for murder. The histories of the accused and the victim, both fishermen and residents of the small town of San Piedro, unfold as newspaperman Ishmael Chambers embarks on a quest for the truth. Lonely and war-scarred, Chambers strives for justice and inner strength, while coming to terms with his ill-fated love for Hatsue Miyamoto, the wife of the accused. Evocative and beautifully written, Snow Falling on Cedars won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Time to Kill'
This addictive tale of a young lawyer defending a black Vietnam war hero who kills the white druggies who raped his child in tiny Clanton, Mississippi, is John Grisham's first novel, and his favorite of his first six. He polished it for three years and every detail shines like pebbles at the bottom of a swift, sunlit stream. Grisham is a born legal storyteller and his dialogue is pitch perfect.
The plot turns with jeweled precision. Carl Lee Hailey gets an M-16 from the Chicago hoodlum he'd saved at Da Nang, wastes the rapists on the courthouse steps, then turns to attorney Jake Brigance, who needs a conspicuous win to boost his career. Folks want to give Carl Lee a second medal, but how can they ignore premeditated execution? The town is split, revealing its social structure. Blacks note that a white man shooting a black rapist would be acquitted; the KKK starts a new Clanton chapter; the NAACP, the ambitious local reverend, a snobby, Harvard-infested big local firm, and others try to outmaneuver Jake and his brilliant, disbarred drunk of an ex-law partner. Jake hits the books and the bottle himself. Crosses burn, people die, crowds chant "Free Carl Lee!" and "Fry Carl Lee!" in the antiphony of America's classical tragedy. Because he's lived in Oxford, Mississippi, Grisham gets compared to Faulkner, but he's really got the lean style and fierce folk moralism of John Steinbeck. --Tim Appelo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."
Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Trial'
The story of The Trial's publication is almost as fascinating as the novel itself. Kafka intended his parable of alienation in a mysterious bureaucracy to be burned, along with the rest of his diaries and manuscripts, after his death in 1924. Yet his friend Max Brod pressed forward to prepare The Trial and the rest of his papers for publication. When the Nazis came to power, publication of Jewish writers such as Kafka was forbidden; Kafka's writings, many of which have distinctively Jewish themes, did not find a broad audience until after World War II. (Hannah Arendt once observed that although "during his lifetime he could not make a decent living, [Kafka] will now keep generations of intellectuals both gainfully employed and well-fed.") Among the current crop of Kafka heirs is Breon Mitchell, the translator of this edition of The Trial. Rather than tidying up Kafka's unconventional grammar and punctuation (as previous translators have done), Mitchell captures the loose, uneasy, even uncomfortable constructions of Kafka's original story. His translation technique is the only way to convey the comedy and confusion of this narrative, in which Josef K., "without having done anything truly wrong," is arrested, tried, convicted and executed--on a charge that is never disclosed to him. --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Trial ; Metamorphosis ; In the Penal Colony: Three Theatre Adaptations from Franz Kafka'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Lector/ the Reader'
Un adolescente conoce a una mujer madura con la que inicia una relacion amorosa. Antes de acostarse juntos, ella siempre le pide que le lea fragmentos de Goethe, Schiller y otros, hasta que un dia ella desaparece. Siete anos despues, el joven, que estudia derecho, acude al juicio de cinco mujeres acusadas de crimenes nazis y descubre que una de ellas es su antigua amante. Una deslumbrante novela sobre el amor, la culpa, el horror y la piedad. / A teenage boy meets an older woman with whom he begins a love affair. Before making love, she always asks him to read him fragments of Goethe, Schiller, Tolstoy and Dickens. The ritual continues until one day she disappears without a trace. Seven years later, the young man, who studies law, is present at the trial of five women accused of Nazi crimes and discovers that one of them is his past lover. This is a dazzling novel about love, blame, horror and mercy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Legitima Defensa / the Runaway Jury'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Matar UN Ruisenor/to Kill a Mockingbird'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Proceso / the Trial'
This brilliant writer knew how to create a nightmare world where things happen without any explanation, where the characters fight against a fate which they do´nt understand, where there are effects without any apparent cause and where all happens without any explanation, but even so, it is impossible to escape from the fascination of the plot.. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Schnee, Der Auf Zedern Fallt'
David Guterson ist ein junger amerikanischer Autor, der gleich mit seinem ersten Roman einen Volltreffer gelandet hat. Schauplatz der Handlung ist eine kleine Insel im Puget Sound, an der Nordwestküste der USA. Ganz nebenbei bemerkt, auch David Guterson lebt dort mit seiner Familie.
Den Rahmen des Romans bildet eine Gerichtsverhandlung. Es ist das Jahr 1954 und der Lachsfischer Kabuo, japanischer Abstammung, ist des Mordes angeklagt. Er soll seinen früheren Freund Carl Heine umgebracht haben. Der Journalist Ishmael Chambers ist Beobachter und Berichterstatter des Prozeßverlaufs. Er kennt die beiden Hauptpersonen schon sein ganzes Leben.
Mit der heutigen Frau des Angeklagten verbindet ihn eine Jugendliebe, doch der Zweite Weltkrieg hat die ehemaligen Freunde auseinandergerissen. Die Japaner auf der Insel, die sich als Amerikaner fühlten und auf der Seite der Amerikaner in den Krieg ziehen wollten, wurden von diesen zurückgewiesen und in Internierungslager gebracht. Auch neun Jahre nach Kriegsende sind die damals geschlagenen Wunden noch nicht vernarbt.
David Guterson beschreibt das schwierige Verhältnis zwischen Amerikanern und Japanern mit sehr leisen Tönen, bedächtig, behutsam und informativ. Der Roman ist kein Reißer und verlangt das Zuhören, das genaue Hinhören. Das Erzähltempo gleicht den Schneeflocken, die langsam auf die Zedern außerhalb des Gerichtssaals herabgleiten. --Manuela Haselberger [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Der Vorlesor'
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