Play It as It Lays is a 1970 novel by the American writer Joan Didion. Time magazine included the novel in its "100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005". About the book, Joan Didion said, "I didn’t think it was going to make it [...] And suddenly it did make it, in a minor way. And from that time on I had more confidence." The book was made into a 1972 movie starring Tuesday Weld as Maria and Anthony Perkins as BZ. Didion co-wrote the screenplay with her husband, John Gregory Dunne.
born December 5, 1934 is an American journalist and writer of novels, screenplays, and autobiographical works. Didion is best known for her literary journalism and memoirs. In her novels and essays, Didion explores the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos; the overriding theme of her work is individual and social fragmentation. In 2005, she won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography for The Year of Magical Thinking.
Sir Ahmad Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (then British) India into a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent. His father adopted the name Rushdie in honour of Averroes. His first career was as a copywriter for an advertising agency. His second novel, Midnight's Children won the 1981 Booker Prize. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses was the center of a major controversy provoking protests from Muslims in several countries. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā calling for his assassination. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States where he has worked for Emory University.
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The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club.
When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case.
As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?
Richard Thomas Osman (28 November 1970) is an English television presenter, producer, novelist, and comedian. He is the author of the crime novels The Thursday Murder Club (2020), The Man Who Died Twice (2021), and The Bullet That Missed (2022).
Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction author. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, she became in 1995 the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Butler was born in Pasadena, California. After her father died, she was raised by her widowed mother. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction.
She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library.
