As television transformed American culture in the 1950s, critics feared the influence of this newly pervasive mass medium on the nation's literature. While many studies have addressed the rhetorical response of artists and intellectuals to mid-twentieth-century mass culture, the relationship between the emergence of this culture and the production of novels has gone largely unexamined. In A Novel Marketplace, Evan Brier illuminates the complex ties between postwar mass culture and the making, marketing, and reception of American fiction. Between 1948, when television began its ascendancy, and 1959, when Random House became a publicly owned corporation, the way American novels were produced and distributed changed considerably. Analyzing a range of mid-century novels—including Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and Grace Metalious's Peyton Place—Brier reveals the specific strategies used to carve out cultural and economic space for the American novel just as it seemed most under threat. During this anxious historical moment, the book business underwent an improbable expansion, by capitalizing on an economic boom and a rising population of educated consumers and by forming institutional alliances with educators and cold warriors to promote reading as both a cultural and political good. A Novel Marketplace tells how the book trade and the novelists themselves successfully positioned their works as embattled holdouts against an oppressive mass culture, even as publishers formed partnerships with mass-culture institutions that foreshadowed the multimedia mergers to come in the 1960s. As a foil for and a partner to literary institutions, mass media corporations assisted in fostering the novel's development as both culture and commodity.

The Legend of Zelda(TM) is one of the most successful franchises of all time with nearly twenty video games and thirty years of history, but it all started with a gold cartridge... The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia Deluxe Edition honors the game that started it all by recreating the original gold cartridge as faithfully as possible. The book comes with a black polypropylene sleeve, lined with velvet flocking, and a scale instruction booklet with fun, theme-appropriate material inside. The cover is a gold foil paper with gloss lamination and a spot gritty varnish. The details are embossed and debossed. It has gold gilding on the top and foredge, with black gilding on the bottom. This book looks and feels so much like the original cartridge you might find yourself blowing into the bottom before you open it! This 328-page book is an exhaustive guide to The Legend of Zelda, from the original The Legend of Zelda to Twilight Princess HD. A comprehensive collection of enemies and items, potions to poes, an expansion of the lore touched upon in Hyrule Historia, concept art, screencaps, maps, main characters and how they relate, languages, and much, more, including an exclusive interview with Series Producer, Eiji Aonuma! This, the last of The Goddess Collection trilogy, which includes Hyrule Historia and Art & Artifacts, is a treasure trove of explanations and information about every aspect of The Legend of Zelda universe! Celebrate over thirty years of The Legend of Zelda with a heartfelt homage to the origins of this legendary franchise!

This deluxe edition of the runaway international bestseller includes: ·A sneak peek at Book III ·A revealing excerpt of the history of Alagaësia ·Never-before-seen art by the author, including an image of Brom’s elf ring ·A complete and comprehensive list of people, places, things, and dwarf clans Darkness falls. . . . Swords clash. . . . Evil reigns. Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire. Now Eragon must travel to Ellesméra, land of the elves, for further training in magic and swordsmanship, the vital skills of the Dragon Rider. It is the journey of a lifetime, filled with awe-inspiring new places and people, each day a fresh adventure. But chaos and betrayal plague him at every turn, and Eragon isn’t sure whom he can trust. Meanwhile, his cousin Roran must fight a new battle back home in Carvahall–one that puts Eragon in even graver danger. Will the king's dark hand strangle all resistance? Eragon may not escape with even his life. . . .

Paul Bowles’s classic collection of short stories, now available in a a deluxe paperback edition—part of Ecco’s Art of the Story series “All the tales are a variety of detective story,” wrote Bowles of this, his first short story collection, “in which the reader is the detective; the mystery is in the motivation for the charcters’ behavior.” In such stories as “A Distant Episode” and How Many Midnights,” Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed (often horribly transformed) reality. Bowles captures the duality of human frailty and cruelty in these seventeen taut and atmospheric tales, written between 1939 and 1949. Brutal and gorgeous, visceral yet profound, this timeless collection is “one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature. . . at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. . . . His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror without a ruffle” (Tobias Wolff).

More than ten years in the making, this comprehensive single-volume literary survey is for the student, scholar, and general reader. The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature represents a collaborative effort, involving 300 contributors from across the US and Canada. Composed of more than 1,100 signed biographical-critical entries, this Encyclopedia serves as both guide and companion to the study and appreciation of American literature. A special feature is the topical article, of which there are 70.

Lucas Davenport confronts an old nemesis, now a powerful U.S. senator, in this thrilling #1 New York Times-bestselling new novel in the Prey series. Lucas Davenport had crossed paths with her before. A rich psychopath, Taryn Grant had run successfully for the U.S. Senate, where Lucas had predicted she'd fit right in. He was also convinced that she'd been responsible for three murders, though he'd never been able to prove it. Once a psychopath had gotten that kind of rush, though, he or she often needed another fix, so he figured he might be seeing her again. He was right. A federal marshal now, with a very wide scope of investigation, he's heard rumors that Grant has found her seat on the Senate intelligence committee, and the contacts she's made from it, to be very...useful. Pinning those rumors down was likely to be just as difficult as before, and considerably more dangerous. But they had unfinished business, he and Grant. One way or the other, he was going to see it through to the end.

“Chalk up another winner for [John Sandford] and his all-too-human hero” (Richmond Times-Dispatch) in the #1 New York Times bestselling Prey series. After one troubled college-age student disappears and two are found slashed to death, Lucas Davenport finds himself hunting what appears to be a modern-day Jack the Ripper. Unfortunately the clues aren’t adding up—and then there’s the young Goth girl who keeps appearing and disappearing. Where does she come from? Where does she go every night? And why does Lucas keep getting the sneaking suspicion that there is something else going on here? Something very bad, very dark, and as elusive as a phantom…