It’s not easy being Edie, and at only ten years old, there’s nothing fair about being a middle kid in the Cares family. But you have to be an indomitable character if you want to survive a parentless summer by the seaside with snooty brothers, a show-off sister, a pair of very small half-siblings (that you must take sailing), some stolen things, an oncoming hurricane, and, of course, a mystery that needs solving. With the publication of The New York Review Children’s Collection edition of E.C. Spykman’s classic, Terrible, Horrible Edie, she’s back, standing shoulder to shoulder with all the gutsy girls from American juvenile fiction.

A tad bit spoiled, revved up with rebellion, and filled with a sublime curiosity for sleuthing out the truth, even at her most terrifically terrible and humorously horrible, she charms you into cheering for the troublemaker’s chance to finally save the day—the Edie way.

Called “the most uninhibited youngsters in fiction since Richard Hughes wrote The Innocent Voyage” by The New York Times, Edie and her siblings are back in print after more than 30 years. The Chicago Tribune declared it as “must reading for boys and girls of 10 and up.” Take advantage of this limited 30% discount and acquaint the favorite youngster in your life with the courageous and admirably outright Edie Cares.

The New York Review The New York Review Children’s Collection wholeheartedly endorses the Children’s Book Week, and encourages you to visit your local bookstore or the CBC website to find out about more events in your neighborhood. Children’s Book Week began with the simple message that an appreciation of books and a love of reading can change children’s lives. Supported by publishers, teachers, librarians, and booksellers, as well as young people and their caregivers, it is now in its 91st year, and its organizers, the Children’s Book Council, have once again cultivated a fantastic week long celebration of events and outreach.

Last Thursday, NYRB Classics presented an evening of New York Stories, past and present, at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City for the 2010 PEN World Voices Festival. There, a remarkable panel of Quim Monzó, Darryl Pinckney, Roxana Robinson, and Colm Tóibín tackled the complex relationships that Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Elizabeth Hardwick had with New York City.

For those unable to attend the panel, we are pleased to provide this link to the complete audio of the program. The audio is provided courtesy of New York City’s public radio station, WNYC, and its program, “Talk To Me”, which records and brings cultural conversations to the public.

“Talk to Me” also choose some bon mots from the evening…

On James: “The narrator wanders in the city and wonders how she could possibly inhabit 53rd Street. ‘When I turn into it from Fifth Avenue the vista seems too hideaous.’ ” -Colm Tóibín

On Why Writers Write: “I think all writers really start off feeling like outsiders, and that’s part of why we all write — because we’re trying to reconcile some feeling of marginalization and some feeling of not being at the center of things.” -Roxana Robinson

On Hardwick: “She never went downtown, or to Brooklyn. She was not a bohemian adventurer like Susan [Sontag], off to see the latest avant-garde theater from Poland. And she was not a deep anarch like her best friend Barbara Epstein, who took no shit from cops and was quite prepared to get arrested.” -Darryl Pinckney

Monzó’s First Impression: “My idea of New York comes more from the movies than from novels. The first time I came to New York City, it was 1975 and I felt…I already knew the streets, the buildings. When I went down to catch the train, I already knew all that because I’d already seen all those items all my life.”

“Nightmare Alley combines the creepy world of Tod Browning’s movie ‘Freaks’ with the relentless cynicism of a Jim Thompson novel.” —Time

Born in Baltimore and raised in Brooklyn, William Lindsay Gresham was fascinated by the Coney Island sideshows. Developing an unerring eye for the scene’s details, he deserves to be remembered as one of America’s best chroniclers of the underground. Now available from NYRB Classics, at a limited time 30% discount, his Nightmare Alley is an indelible noir classic on the varieties of deception and the dream of redemption.

Nightmare Alley

By William Lindsay Gresham
Introduction by Nick Tosches

Stan Carlisle could read people, standing along the sidelines of the main carny attractions where he worked, watching the washed up geek eaten by alcoholism. The clairvoyant with her frightening pack of cards, the strong man with the muscles of a Greek god, the twisted leg acrobat who walked on his arms, and the charming ‘lectric bulb girl whose blazing body defied lightning: they all performed beneath the gaze of the crowd at the Ten-in-One show. The audience oooohed in awe and astonishment, averted their eyes in horrified embarrassment, forever applauding the appalling, falling for the oldest gag in the book, yet always coming back, like ghosts called up from the past, wondering what the future would hold. Stan understood them, saw through them, and knew he could go further. He was a convincer, not a pretender. He was a master with words and could pawn off more than palmistry. He would prophesize, proselytize, see his profits rise. The Great Stanton. If he played his cards right he could leave for much bigger and better things. All he needed was a jumping off point, and from there, a chance to climb.

With a little magic—or was it murder?—a mentalist was born and transformed into a full-blown Spiritualist, greedy for glamour and a wallet full of rich and gullible worshippers. Soon, with hefty donations piling in from a growing congregation—all inspired by fraudulent transmogrifications—the ordained Reverend Stanton Carlisle was at the top of his game. But remember the tarot card of the hanged man, whose downward headed fate is strung up for all to see: fame is known to falter, and a low life is never far from reach.

“Mr. Gresham yanked the reviewer into the midst of his macabre and compelling novel, and kept him a breathless captive until the tour was over. It’s a truly rewarding whirl through his nightmare alley….All of it adds up to Grade-A guignol with a touch of black magic about it…If you enjoy hundred-proof evil-and a cogent analysis of same with your nightcap-then, in the words of the Ten-in-One barker, hurry, hurry, hurry!” —The New York Times

Nightmare Alley inspired a film in 1947 starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell, a graphic novel by the legendary underground cartoonist Spain Rodriguez, and a new musical adaptation now playing at the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles.

NYRB Classics has many reading group guides now available. You can download the PDF for Nightmare Alley here.

 

The One-Straw Revolution
by Masanobu Fukuoka
introduction by Frances Moore Lappé

“The One-Straw Revolution is one of the founding documents of the alternative food movement, and indispensable to anyone hoping to understand the future of food and agriculture.” —Michael Pollan

 

 

The Journal 1837-1861
by Henry David Thoreau
edited by Damion Searls
preface by John R. Stilgoe

“This new edition of Thoreau’s journal should remove any lingering doubt that he spent his own free time worthily. Over twenty-five years, he filled notebooks with observations drawn from his weekly excursions to Pine Hill, Fair Haven Pond, Baker Farm, Martial Miles Meadow, Nut Meadow Brook, and other locations surrounding Concord. Thereabouts, alone or with companions whom he sometimes neglected, he recorded the crickets chirruping, the sparrows sleeping, the shrub oaks shedding, the snow crusting over meadows, the ice cracking along the edge of rivers, the flies buzzing in the sun, and much more.” —The New Republic

 

 

The Education of a Gardener
by Russell Page

“Whatever has happened to garden writing…books that one picks up in the same way that one would a novel or biography for a good read…Going to my bookshelves, I pull down Russell Page’s The Education of a Gardener…belonging to a golden age of garden writing.” —The Times (London)

 

 

The Bear That Wasn’t
by Frank Tashlin

“Mr. Tashlin’s…masterpiece, The Bear That Wasn’t is a genially savage lampoon on the The Civilized People Who Aren’t.” —Los Angeles Times

 

 

Welcome to Doomsday
by Bill Moyers

A passionate call to save the planet from the forces of greed and exploitation, this is essential reading for anyone interested in environmental policy as well as in the growing power of the evangelical movement in the United States.

There are more than a few famous fans who have confessed their admiration of NYRB, and the latest to fall for a Classic was actor Tom Hanks. In the March 15^th issue of Time magazine, Hanks named John William’s Stoner one of his “Top Five Page Turners,” describing it as “simply a novel about a guy who goes to college and becomes a teacher. But it’s one of the most fascinating things that you’ve ever come across.”

With the Time article declaring him “American history’s highest-profile professor, bringing a nuanced view of the past into the homes and lives of countless millions,” we’d like to call out Mr. Hanks for bringing the brilliance of John Williams into the homes and hands of many more readers.