A Purim Story -- The Megila, through the eyes of the King's Horse

When Elvis Presley decided he wanted to buy a horse in 1966, he didn't want just any horse. "He wanted a Golden Palomino," Priscilla Presley remembers. "He would get up at 3:00 in the morning, go to certain farms and ranches and say, 'Do you have a Golden Palomino for sale?' People would say, 'That was Elvis Presley!" Elvis's legendary love of horses drove him to find the Golden Palomino who would become his beloved companion Rising Sun, and to fill Graceland's stables and Circle G Ranch with horses for family and friends to ride. In the first-ever book dedicated to Elvis's equestrian side, horse lovers Kimberly Gatto and Victoria Racimo share rare stories, interviews, and photographs that shed light on the beautiful, quiet life the King lived when he was with his horses.

A Situationist International roman à clef, written by Guy Debord's first wife, a founder of the movement and one of its influential thinkers. “What do you do, exactly? I have no idea.” “I reify,” he answered. “It's a serious job,” I added. “Yes, it is,” he said. “I see,” Carol observed with admiration. “Serious work, with big books and a big table cluttered with papers.” “No,” said Gilles. “I walk. Mostly I walk.”—from All the King's Horses Michèle Bernstein's novel, All the King's Horses (1960), is one of the odder and more elusive, entertaining, and revealing documents of the Situationist International. At the instigation of her first husband, Guy Debord, Bernstein agreed to write a potboiler to help swell the Situationist International's coffers. When she objected to the idea of practicing a “dead art,” Debord suggested that it would be instead be détournement—the Situationist reuse of media toward different, subversive, ends. Inspired by the pseudo-scandalous success of Roger Vadim's filmed version of Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses and the adolescent Françoise Sagan's bestselling novel Bonjour tristesse, Bernstein lampooned and borrowed from both Sagan and de Laclos, concocting a roman à clef that succeeded on several levels. A moneymaker for the most radical front of the French avant-garde, the novel (by its very success) demonstrated the bankruptcy of contemporary French letters and the Situationist contempt for the psychological novel, while (perhaps unintentionally) holding up a playful mirror to the private lives of two of the Situationist International's most important members.All the King's Horses is a slippery rewrite of Dangerous Liaisons with Debord playing the role of cold libertine, Bernstein as his cohort, and disguised walk-on roles by the likes of the painter Asger Jorn and others. Though Greil Marcus sparked interest in this novel in his 1989 book Lipstick Traces, All the King's Horses remained unavailable until its 2004 republication in France. This Semiotext(e) edition is its first translation into English.

A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction • A Recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize • Longlisted for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence • One of New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Book Named a Best Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly • GQ • The New York Times (Selected by Dwight Garner) • NPR • The Wall Street Journal • San Francisco Chronicle • Refinery29 • Booklist • Kirkus Reviews • Commonweal Magazine "In its poetic splendor and moral seriousness, The Sport of Kings bears the traces of Faulkner, Morrison, and McCarthy. . . . It is a contemporary masterpiece."—San Francisco Chronicle Hailed by The New Yorker for its “remarkable achievements,” The Sport of Kings is an American tale centered on a horse and two families: one white, a Southern dynasty whose forefathers were among the founders of Kentucky; the other African-American, the descendants of their slaves. It is a dauntless narrative that stretches from the fields of the Virginia piedmont to the abundant pastures of the Bluegrass, and across the dark waters of the Ohio River; from the final shots of the Revolutionary War to the resounding clang of the starting bell at Churchill Downs. As C. E. Morgan unspools a fabric of shared histories, past and present converge in a Thoroughbred named Hellsmouth, heir to Secretariat and a contender for the Triple Crown. Newly confronted with one another in the quest for victory, the two families must face the consequences of their ambitions, as each is driven---and haunted---by the same, enduring question: How far away from your father can you run? A sweeping narrative of wealth and poverty, racism and rage, The Sport of Kings is an unflinching portrait of lives cast in the shadow of slavery and a moral epic for our time.

Traces the history of the Clydesdale horse and depicts the training of Clydesdales at the Anheuser-Busch breeding facility

The unlikely king who saved England. Down swept the Vikings from the frigid North. Across the English coastlands and countryside they raided, torched, murdered, and destroyed all in their path. Farmers, monks, and soldiers all fell bloody under the Viking sword, hammer, and axe. Then, when the hour was most desperate, came an unlikely hero. King Alfred rallied the battered and bedraggled kingdoms of Britain and after decades of plotting, praying, and persisting, finally triumphed over the invaders. Alfred's victory reverberates to this day: He sparked a literary renaissance, restructured Britain's roadways, revised the legal codes, and revived Christian learning and worship. It was Alfred's accomplishments that laid the groundwork for Britian's later glories and triumphs in literature, liturgy, and liberty. "Ben Merkle tells the sort of mythic adventure story that stirs the imagination and races the heart?and all the more so knowing that it is altogether true!" ?George Grant, author of The Last Crusader and The Blood of the Moon

It began the day Grandpa escaped. Something very odd has happened to Colin and Sarah's much-loved grandfather. It's as if he has been spirited away and a changeling is inhabiting his body. Raised all their lives on Grandpa's tales of the great heros in Celtic legends, Colin and Sarah feel sure that the Faer Folk are involved. In an attempt to find him again, they follow Grandpa's path, crossing the boundary between the everyday world and the enchantments of the otherworld. Suggested level: secondary.