BD Wilson

Weaving social satire, domestic tragedy, and whodunit into a single package, Alan Ball’s first theatrical script dares to blur generic lines and keep us off balance, winking seamlessly from dark, scabrous comedy to deeply moving drama. The Burnham family joins the cinematic short list of great dysfunctional American families, as Lester is pitted against his manic, materialistic realtor wife, Carolyn and his sullen, contemptuous teenaged daughter, Jane.

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The short story format showcases King’s ability to spook readers using the most mundane settings (a yard sale) and comfortable memories (a boyhood fishing excursion). The dark tales collected here are some of King’s finest, including an O. Henry Prize winner and “Riding the Bullet,” published originally as an e-book and at one time expected by some to be the death knell of the physical publishing world.

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Novelist Davies, master of Massey College of the University of Toronto, delivered this volume’s two essays in the Tanner Lectures series at Yale in 1991. In them he surprises, delights and educates with his views of literature’s power to “reveal marvelous things about life.”

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