If you’re going to read James Grippando’s new financial thriller, “Need You Now,” be prepared to scatter bread crumbs. Otherwise, you’ll never find your way back home after wandering through the thicket of aliases, double crosses, back stories and red herrings that litter the narrative path. Indeed, late in the novel, one of the characters resorts to drawing a “plot map” of sorts all over the walls of his one-room New York apartment. Here’s what it looks like: Read full article > >

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James Grippando’s financial thriller “Need You Now”

Jim Shepard’s research helps bring catastrophic fiction to life, though the characters may not survive.

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Jim Shepard, Master of the Historical Short Story

New ‘Toy Story’ Images Invade Net New Toy Story images? But … how? We previously told you that Pixar has created a new short film featuring the characters from Toy Story to play before Cars 2 this summer. The short will follow Ken and Barbie as they unsuccessfully plan a trip to Hawaii, only to have all the other toys band together to give those love-birds the “pretend” vacation of their dreams. Watch it on the big screen this June 24th, and check out both new images over at Entertainment Weekly, one of which you can see in this post. Who Will Be the New Jason Bourne? Well, actually, no one. They won’t be using the character of Jason Bourne in the next Bourne-related movie, The Bourne Legacy, which sounds weird, but apparently they have a plan… Read More Read Comments

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Fanboy Fix: ‘Toy Story’ Short, New Jason Bourne and ‘Inception’ in 3D

Like Joyce’s Dubliners, many of the characters in these stories can’t escape their homeland.

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Stories From an Irish Master

An audaciously contemporary staging strips Verdi’s opera of its period trappings to focus on the characters.

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Opera Review: A Modern ‘Traviata,’ Where Time Keeps Ticking