WHEN ARTHUR AND D.W. travel to New York City with their parents, they visit the Statue of Liberty, a museum, and they even see a Broadway show! But D.W. is most excited about visiting Mary Moo-Cow Palace with her Mary Moo-Cow doll. When D.W. doesn’t follow her parents’ rule and goes off by herself, the family must find her. Luckily, Arthur knows just where to find D.W.—Mary Moo-Cow Palace, of course!

Arthur promises to buy ice cream for his little sister, D.W., if she can read ten words. The twosome race to the park, where D.W. is quick to recognize signs such as ZOO, DON'T WALK, POLICE, and ICE CREAM. When she reads WET PAINT before her big brother does, Arthur is in for a colorful surprise!

Brilliantly imagined and irresistibly readable, Arthur & George is a major new novel from Julian Barnes, a wonderful combination of playfulness, pathos and wisdom. Searching for clues, no one would ever guess that the lives of Arthur and George might intersect. Growing up in shabby-genteel nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Arthur is saddled with a dad who is a disgrace and a mum he wishes to protect, and is propelled into a life of action. To his astonishment, his career as a self-made man of letters brings him riches and fame and, in the world at large, he becomes the perfect picture of the honourable English gentlemen. George is irredeemably an outsider, and has no hope of becoming such a picture. Though he’s dogged and logical, a vicar’s son from rural Staffordshire, he is set apart, and he and his family are targeted in his boyhood by a poison-pen campaign. George finds safe harbour in the reliability of rules, and grows up to become a solicitor, putting his faith in the insulating value of British justice. Then crisis upsets the uneasy equilibrium of both men’s lives. Arthur is knocked for a loop by guilt and other dishonourable emotions. George is put to the sorest test, accused of a horrible crime. And from that point on their lives weave together in the most profound and surprising way, as each man becomes the other’s salvation. Arthur & George is a masterful novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race. Most of all, it’s a profound and witty meditation on the fateful differences between what we believe, what we know and what we can prove. George and his father pray together, kneeling side by side on the scrubbed boards. Then George climbs into bed while his father locks the door and turns out the light. As he falls asleep, George sometimes thinks of the floor, and how his soul must be scrubbed just as the boards are scrubbed. Father is not an easy sleeper, and has a tendency to groan and wheeze. Sometimes, in the early morning, when dawn is beginning to show at the edges of the curtains, Father will catechize him. "George, where do you live?" "The Vicarage, Great Wyrley." "And where is that?" "Staffordshire, Father." "And where is that?" "The centre of England." "And what is England, George?" "England is the beating heart of the Empire, Father." "Good. And what is the blood that flows through the arteries and veins of the Empire to reach even its farthest shore?" "The Church of England." "Good, George." And after a while Father will begin to groan and wheeze again. George watches the outline of the curtain harden. He lies there thinking of arteries and veins making red lines on the map of the world, linking Britain to all the places coloured pink: Australia and India and Canada and islands dotted everywhere. He thinks of blood bubbling though these tubes and emerging in Sydney, Bombay, the St. Lawrence Waterway. Bloodlines, that is a word he has heard somewhere. With the pulse of blood in his ears, he begins to fall asleep again. —excerpt from Arthur & George

When the New York Dolls' bassist died suddenly at age 55 in 2004, he left behind not only their timeless music--and many thousands of fans and friends--but a memoir of the Dolls' early years. This distinctive and extroverted voice of an undisciplined showman is presented with an introduction and epilogue by his widow, Barbara. This up close and personal perspective of the band's early days and late nights--including an instance where he locks himself out of the studio in full drag while tripping on LSD--chronicles the glorious, glamorous era of high times, high drama, and low comedy that captures the music, the style, and the life of the all-too-brief existence of the New York Dolls.

Arthur's mother tells him to have a garage sale to get rid of all the junk in his room. But, when his friends offer him really cool trades for his stuff rather than money, he ends up with a whole new set of junk.

Arthur Schwartz is the Big Apple’s official foodie-about-town, a fellow who has fork-and-knived his way through the five boroughs. He knows his knish from his kasha, his bok choy from his bruschetta, his falafel from his frittata. And in Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food, which won the IACP Award for Cookbook of the Year in 2005, he shared his gastronomic expertise, chronicling the city’s culinary history from its Dutch colonial start to its current status as the multicultural food capital of the world. The affordable new paperback edition is chock-full of the same fascinating lore, along with 160 recipes for American classics that either originated or were perfected in New York: Manhattan Clam Chowder, Eggs Benedict, Lindy’s cheesecake. Throughout the book, Schwartz’s text is transporting, taking readers back to Delmonico’s, the Colony, and the Horn & Hardart Automats. Whether revealing how an obscure dish known as Omelet Surprise was transformed into the decidedly chichi dessert Baked Alaska; investigating why some Jewish restaurants came to be known as Roumanian steakhouses; or instructing readers on the way to bake a molten chocolate minicake worthy of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food is the ideal dining companion.

During a class visit to the museum, Arthur needs to make a quick visit to the boys’ lavatory. But a wrong turn leads him into a diorama of life-size models of Pilgrims celebrating the first Thanksgiving . . . just as Mr. Ratburn and his class are about to study it. Will Arthur be in big trouble?