New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Berg takes us to Chicago at the time of World War II in this wonderful story about three sisters, their lively Irish family, and the men they love. As the novel opens, Kitty and Louise Heaney say good-bye to their boyfriends Julian and Michael, who are going to fight overseas. On the domestic front, meat is rationed, children participate in metal drives, and Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller play songs that offer hope and lift spirits. And now the Heaney sisters sit at their kitchen table every evening to write letters–Louise to her fiancé, Kitty to the man she wishes fervently would propose, and Tish to an ever-changing group of men she meets at USO dances. In the letters the sisters send and receive are intimate glimpses of life both on the battlefront and at home. For Kitty, a confident, headstrong young woman, the departure of her boyfriend and the lessons she learns about love, resilience, and war will bring a surprise and a secret, and will lead her to a radical action for those she loves. The lifelong consequences of the choices the Heaney sisters make are at the heart of this superb novel about the power of love and the enduring strength of family.

February 1964: The Beatles step onto the tarmac at JFK International Airport and turn the country on its head. It's the advent of rock and roll's uninterrupted reign, youthful rebellion, and overt teenage sex. It's also the deathblow for the pop music of another generation -- the songs of Pat Boone and Georgia Gibbs -- and all its perky, white-bread conformity. Not two years later, Karen Schoemer is born, and comes of age with rock and roll. While her parents might enjoy the new music, the cultural upheaval passes them by, and they cling to the promises made by the music they loved as teenagers, the sweet, innocent 1950s pop of Patti Page, Frankie Laine, and the like. But having courted and wed against a backdrop of ideals peddled by this music -- finding true love, living happily ever after -- Schoemer's parents, like so many people, are crushed by disappointment when love doesn't deliver what the songs promised. Fifties pop falls quickly off the charts; their marriage eventually falls apart. In Great Pretenders, a lively, provocative blend of memoir and music criticism, former Newsweek pop music critic Karen Schoemer tries to figure out what went so wrong, way back in the hazy past, for her parents' marriage and for the music of their youth. To find the answers, she embarks on a strange, lonely journey in search of some of the brightest stars of the 1950s. Schoemer's search started when, twenty years after her parents' divorce, the new Connie Francis box set appeared on her desk at Newsweek. Now a successful rock critic dispensing post-punk opinions to the hipoisie, she was about to toss aside this relic when she was struck by the cover image of Francis, which bore an uncanny resemblance to her own mother; on a whim, she played one of the CDs. For all their cloying, simplistic sentimentality, songs like "Where the Boys Are" had an undeniable power -- "the sound of every teenage girl in every bedroom on every lonely Saturday going back a thousand years." It was the music of her parents' long-lost adolescence, and much to her surprise, it moved her. Thus Schoemer, arbiter of Gen X cool, found herself falling into the saccharine thrall of 1950s pop music, that pariah of the rock establishment. Even as her colleagues tried to steer her away from the terminally uncool genre, she tracked down seven former pop idols of the late 1950s and early 1960s: Connie Francis, Fabian, Pat Boone, Patti Page, Tommy Sands, Georgia Gibbs, and Frankie Laine. As she became privy to their inner lives and immersed herself in their music, Schoemer revised her own notions about the fifties at the same time that she explored her family's vexed dynamic. The result is a wonderful romp through an unappreciated chapter in music history and, more important, through her own past. Full of humor, insight, and unflinching honesty, Great Pretenders bucks the received wisdom, explores the intersections of our private lives and pop culture, and broadens our understanding of a crucial moment in our history.

This volume explores various kinds of love and the way music reflects them. It is about romantic love, ethnic pride and love, love and the media, and various other loves we have, especially love for popular culture. Throughout, special focus is given to the role jazz plays, as well as other forms of African and African American music, including hip hop, and, especially, the blues.

Sidney Homan defines a pivotal line as “a moment in the script that serves as a pathway into the larger play ... a magnet to which the rest of the play, scenes before and after, adheres.” He offers his personal choices of such lines in five plays by Shakespeare and works by Beckett, Brecht, Pinter, Shepard, and Stoppard. Drawing on his own experience in the theatre as actor and director and on campus as a teacher and scholar, he pairs a Shakespearean play with one by a modern playwright as mirrors for each other. One reviewer calls his approach “ground-breaking.” Another observes that his “experience with the particular plays he has chosen is invaluable” since it allows us to find “a wedge into such iconic texts.” Academics and students alike will find this volume particularly useful in aiding their own discovery of a pivotal line or moment in the experience of reading about, watching, or performing in a play.

Musical.ly megastar and recording artist Baby Ariel tells the inspiring story behind her empire of more than 35 million fans. Full of revealing personal anecdotes, advice, doodles, and never-before-seen photos! Ariel is all about opening up and being goofy, funny, and completely herself. In her debut book, she talks about every step of her amazing journey: from the good (like being on the cover of Billboard, filming music videos for her original songs, and meeting her amazing fans) to the bad (like overcoming anxiety, handling breakups, and dealing with haters and bullies). Through it all, Ariel has learned one important lesson that she wants her fans to learn, too: You gotta be you, babies. Fierce, funny, and real, Dreaming Out Loud goes behind the scenes in the life of one of today’s most popular influencers, giving you Baby Ariel like you’ve never seen her before.

The beloved New York Times bestselling author tells the poignant love story of caring for her parents in their final years in this beautifully written memoir. “I’ll Be Seeing You moved me and broadened my understanding of the human condition.”—Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much Is True Elizabeth Berg’s father was an Army veteran who was a tough man in every way but one: He showed a great deal of love and tenderness to his wife. Berg describes her parents’ marriage as a romance that lasted for nearly seventy years; she grew up watching her father kiss her mother upon leaving home, and kiss her again the instant he came back. His idea of when he should spend time away from her was never. But then Berg’s father developed Alzheimer’s disease, and her parents were forced to leave the home they loved and move into a facility that could offer them help. It was time for the couple’s children to offer, to the best of their abilities, practical advice, emotional support, and direction—to, in effect, parent the people who had for so long parented them. It was a hard transition, mitigated at least by flashes of humor and joy. The mix of emotions on everyone’s part could make every day feel like walking through a minefield. Then came redemption. I’ll Be Seeing You charts the passage from the anguish of loss to the understanding that even in the most fractious times, love can heal, transform, and lead to graceful—and grateful—acceptance.