Debut novelist Pinter turns in a stellar performance, taking to the suspense-thriller field with great confidence and greater promise. Disappointed to find that his new job with the prestigious New York Gazette is all pap pieces and obits, 24-year-old freshman journalist Henry Parker jumps at the chance to work with the paper's top reporter on a where-are-they-now look at the scum of New York. Arriving at the apartment of ex-con Luis Guzman with some follow-up questions, Henry finds a scene right out of Goodfellas: a big guy pistol-whipping a terrified Guzman and his wife.
Still relatively fresh out of J-school but already a hot scribe at the New York Gazette, Henry Parker (from Pinter's The Mark) files another hair-raising story in the Big Bad Apple. This time the juicy journo's on the trail of the Boy, a sharpshooting serial killer who kills his prey using an antique Winchester 1873, the gun that won the West. The first victim is celebrity diva Athena Paradis, and the killer leaves a note quoting a piece of Henry's. Henry's research reveals a bizarre connection between Henry and a long-dead outlaw of the American West, and, as victims pile up, Henry wonders if the Boy is out for vengeance.
Pinter's ambitious third Henry Parker novel opens as Daniel Linwood, 11, suddenly reappears on his family's front porch five years after being kidnapped. Parker, a young but seasoned New York Gazette reporter, snags an exclusive interview with Daniel and his overjoyed mother. But Daniel appears to have no recollection of his missing years, and something he absentmindedly says in the interview deeply rattles Parker—convincing him there's a sinister undercurrent to this feel-good story.
A Christmas Story - Jean Shepherd (Audiobook, M4B)
It's never easy to adapt a holiday classic, especially one that's best known now as a movie rather than as an assortment of radio addresses. This production, however, does an admirable job, using sound effects, mellow Christmas music and Cavett's wry, relaxed narration to draw out the down-home charm of Depression-era Indiana. Listeners will feel almost as if they're standing next to Ralphie Parker as he waits anxiously in line at Goldblatt's department store to ask "the Man, the Connection, Santa Claus himself" for a Red Ryder BB gun.
Henry Parker and the English Civil War - The Political Thought of the Public's Privado
This is the first full study in fifty years of the author of the most celebrated political tract of the early years of the English Civil War, Observations upon Some of His Majesties Late Answers and Expresses. Professor Mendle situates each of Parker's significant tracts in its polemical, intellectual, and political context. He also views Parker's literary work in the light of his career as privado, or intimate advisor, to leading figures of the parliamentary leadership. Parker emerges as a fierce opponent of clerical pretension, a strikingly brutal critic of the common law mind, and a leading proponent of parliamentary absolutism.
