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A collection of Angela Carter's stories, as yet unpublished in book form. It is divided into two parts. The first is a group of stories inspired by America, including a Gothic extravaganza set in Hollywood. The second section draws upon such sources as fairy tales, the Bible and medieval legend. ... Read more

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Paintings and text capture the strange moods of cats and introduce the alphabet. ... Read more

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Chapters: The Bloody Chamber, Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces, Burning Your Boats, American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, Black Venus. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 28. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Bloody Chamber (or The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories) is an anthology of short fiction by Angela Carter. It was first published in the United Kingdom in 1979 by Gollancz and won the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize. All of the stories share a common theme of being closely based upon fairytales or folk tales. However, Angela Carter has stated: My intention was not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories. The anthology contains ten stories: "The Bloody Chamber", "The Courtship of Mr Lyon", "The Tiger's Bride", "Puss-in-Boots", "The Erl-King", "The Snow Child", "The Lady of the House of Love", "The Werewolf", "The Company of Wolves" and "Wolf-Alice". The tales vary greatly in length, with the novelette "The Bloody Chamber" being "more than twice the length of any of the other stories, and more than thirty times the length of the shortest ." The anthology's contents are also reprinted in Carter's Burning Your Boats. The stories within "The Bloody Chamber" are explicitly based on fairy tales. Carter was no doubt inspired by the works of author and fairytale collector Charles Perrault, whose fairy tales she had translated shortly beforehand. (based on Bluebeard) A teenaged girl marries an older, wealthy French Marquis, whom she does not love. When he takes her to his castle, she learns that he enjoys sadistic pornography and takes pleasure in her embarrassment. She is a talented pianist, and a young man, a blind piano tuner, hears her music and falls in love with...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1025576 ... Read more

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Literature often reflects societal change, but it can also effect change by inspiring people to think in new ways. Four authors who encourage readers to question traditional boundaries are Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Jeanette Winterson and Angela Carter. This book takes an in-depth look at the works of these authors with specific emphasis on how they challenge fundamental ideas about religion and its intersections with history, politics, gender and sexuality.

The study notes both differences and similarities among the four authors, whose writings broadly represent the major themes in contemporary British literature. Divided into two primary sections, the volume first takes a look at Rushdie and Barnes and their stance regarding historical and political issues. The second section concentrates on gender and sexuality in the writings of Winterson and Carter. Among the works examined are Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children; Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot and A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters; Winterson’s Boating for Beginners and Written on the Body; and Carter’s The Passion of New Eve and Heroes and Villains. The final chapter includes a brief survey of other significant figures in postmodern British literature, including Ian McEwan, Fay Weldon and Emma Tennant. ... Read more

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This study fills a major gap in Carter scholarship by examining the interrelations of the ideological constructions and the subversive counter-performances of bodies, texts, identity and femininity - particularly in their connection with the grotesque in Carter's final novel trilogy, "The Passion of New Eve" (1977), "Nights at the Circus" (1984) and "Wise Children" (1992). This work fills a major gap in Carter's reception and enters into dialogue with current post-semiotical theories of the embodied subject by virtue of focusing on the dynamics of the meaning-in-process concomitant with the subject-in-process (Kristeva 1985) and the body-in-process. Through a corporeal narratological method - a close-reading interfacing of semioticized bodies in the text and of the somatized text on the body - the author deciphers how the ideologically disciplined, normativized-neutralized, 'cultural' body and its repressed yet haunting transgressive, corporeal, material 'reality' (are) (de)composed(d by) the Carterian fiction's destabilizing discursive subversions and vibrations surfacing in narrative blind-spots, overwritings, textual ruptures or rhetorical manoeuvres.The terms introduced in my study, body-text, corporeal narratology, corporeagraphic metafiction, bifocal interpretive perspective, autobiografiction, feminist grotesque or self-freaking, trace a more general model for interpreting contemporary creative work by women. These share the Carterian texts characteristics by virtue ofstanding within a marginalized artistic tradition while subverting it internally, intertwining corporeally motivated body-texts and corporeagraphic metafictions criticizing ideological body-disciplines or canonical corpuses, and problematizing (mis)representations of self and other, as well as our mis-self-recognitions in our metamorphic, self-defacing body images. ... Read more

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In social relationships—whether between mates, parents and offspring, or friends—we find much of life’s meaning. But in these relationships, so critical to our well-being, might we also detect the workings, even directives, of biology? This book, a rare melding of human and animal research and theoretical and empirical science, ventures into the most interesting realms of behavioral biology to examine the intimate role of endocrinology in social relationships.

The importance of hormones to reproductive behavior—from breeding cycles to male sexual display—is well known. What this book considers is the increasing evidence that hormones are just as important to social behavior. Peter Ellison and Peter Gray include the latest findings—both practical and theoretical—on the hormonal component of both casual interactions and fundamental bonds. The contributors, senior scholars and rising scientists whose work is shaping the field, go beyond the proximate mechanics of neuroendocrine physiology to integrate behavioral endocrinology with areas such as reproductive ecology and life history theory. Ranging broadly across taxa, from birds and rodents to primates, the volume pays particular attention to human endocrinology and social relationships, a focus largely missing from most works of behavioral endocrinology.

Customer Reviews (2)

An outstanding tour of hormones, behavior, and evolution
"Endocrinology of Social Relationships" is the product of two widely respected scholars in the field of human evolutionary biology and behavior.Ellison and Gray collectively bring decades of field and laboratory experience in biological anthropology to bear, resulting in an edited volume that stands alone among its peers.They have compiled an impressive array of contributors who each provide a unique and thorough examination of the subtle yet powerful interplay between hormones and behavior within the context of evolutionary theory.The topics vary widely yet never stray from the central theme of evolutionary biology.The organization of the topics makes for a natural flow from one topic to the next and it is easy to forget that one is reading a text that is rich in technical detail yet written in a manner that is accessible to the motivated reader.As a professor of biological anthropology at Yale University, "Endocrinology of Social Relationships" has become required reading for my graduate seminars in behavioral and evolutionary endocrinology.You won't find a better text on the subject.

Great survey of the effect of hormones on human behavior
Edited by two biological anthropologists, Endocrinology of Social Relationships is a wonderfully thoughtful survey on the effect of hormones on human social behavior, including a critical detour into the effect of hormones on non-human social behavior.

With chapters authored by such influential scientists as Kim Wallen, John Wingfield, Hillard Kaplan, and Sue Carter, ESR applies evolutionary theory and behavioral neuroendocrinology to human social relationships, in particular mating relationships, dominance relationships, maternal care, paternal behavior, and friendship formation. Peter Ellison also advances the very interesting perspective of "reproductive ecology," suggesting that the effects of hormones on sexual behavior can be best understood as a system that evaluates the energy sources available for successful reproduction. The weakest chapter in the book is a rather vague and cursory treatment of the influence of hormones on homosexuality (or "diversity", as the author characterizes it).

If you want to learn about the cutting edge of what is known about the intersection of hormones, evolution, and human social interactions, this is a great place to start. ... Read more

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The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
I bought a second hand hardcover copy.It is perfect with that already read look. Forwarding was excellent. I live in Italy and the book came from Vancouver.5 stars!

Truely the finest piece of gothic literature of the century.
Angela Carters book the Bloody Chamber can only be described as sparkling genious. Carter writes with the combination of the classic fairy tale, and magical realism, incorperating elements of gothic horror,and subversive sexuality. She weaves tales of sinister locations, fearsome monsters,and powerful heroes to leave the reader with a slanted version of an old moral. Her interpretations are brought to life by her powerful descriptions and modern settings. Her stories are proof that this genre can still terrify off screen. The Bloody Chamber is truely one of the finest pieces of gothic liteature of the century.

A loving dark twist on beautiful fairytales and folklore....
Angela Carter wields a deliciously decadent pen once again in The Bloody Chamber. This slim volume is packed with familiar tales retold with a dark gothic twist, each tempered with a saucy wit and the ability to impart newmeaning onto old standards. Heroines are erotic, independant and canny, andtheir victories contain a bite, an edge that places these tales outside thetraditional happy ending. Stories are beautifully overblown and hyperreal.The Bloody Chamber is stunning in its delicacy and sly, subtle humour thattempers even the darkest tale. This world is very female , where theinstigators of action and solvers of perilous events are mothers,daughters, wives and wild girls. Carter's workis too beautiful todescribe - she needs to be read again and again, and each time, a new shadecan be seen to her impressive legacy. She is an addictive read. ... Read more

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A collection of short stories which tear through the archives of cinema, of art and of the subconscious. A young Lizzie Borden visits the circus; a pianist makes a Faustian pact in a fly-blown Southern brothel; and a transfigured Mary Magdalene steps out of the canvases of Donatello and de la Tour. ... Read more

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The book is a comparative study of the short stories of three contemporary women writers of different nationalities ?Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood and Suniti Namjoshi ? both at the thematic level as well as narrative level focusing on the elements of feminism and fairytales in their short stories.These writers have reworked traditional fairy tale narratives to counter the destructive tendencies of patriarchal values and the prevailing male-female arrangements and present an alternative female paradigm by bringing women to the centre and erasing the margins. Focusing on women, these writers attempt to shift them from object position to the subject position and in this way restore the displaced power of the muted half of humanity. They have attempted to emphasize that the old traditional myths about male and female, no longer prevail and that the subject has been re-defined thus dismantling phallocentric structures. They question sexual politics, challenging society's gender arrangements and attempt to dethrone the myth of femininity, the construct of patriarchy and thus re-order the world. ... Read more

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When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her to the Louvre . . . to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria . . . to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own — scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected.
Soon, Kat’s friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring her back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has good reason: a powerful mobster’s priceless art collection has been stolen and he wants it returned. Only a master thief could have pulled off this job, and Kat’s father isn’t just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.
For Kat there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it’s a spectacularly impossible job? She’s got two weeks, a teenage crew, and, hopefully, just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family’s (very crooked) history — and with any luck, steal her life back along the way. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (52)

Couldn't Connect With the Characters
I was a bit apprehensive about reading this book because it's basically about teen theives stealing art- and I was concerned that it would be totally unrealistic, but I was wrong. Although Heist Society has a strong plot, I felt the characters all fell flat. The whole book revolves around Katarina and her mission to steal some paintings. She enlists the help of Hale (her sort-of love interest), Gabrielle (her nemesis and cousin), Simon (boy genius), Angus and Hamish (childhood buddies), Marcus (Hale Family butler), and finally Nick (a pick-pocket). I couldn't relate to most of the characters, escpecially not Kat. I didn't understand her or her motives, and seeing as how she was the main character- that isn't good. The only characters that I felt had any real heart in them were Angus and Hamish. All the other character's personalities felt forced. I also didn't like how it was told in the thrid-person, and that may be the reason why I didn't understand Kat like I could have. I believe first person is always the best. Overall, I didn't really like it the book. But I will say that the whole idea of teen theives is a new and refreshing idea for a book.

Carter has pulled off an exceptionally clever read
Crime is in Katarina Bishop's blood. Her parents, her uncle, and everyone she knows are successful con artists, always looking forward to the next heist. Sick of that life, Kat scams her way into a prestigious boarding school, hoping to leave it all behind. But she's forced back into that world when several invaluable paintings are stolen from Arturo Taccone, a dangerous man bent on vengeance, who accuses Kat's father of being behind the theft. Kat knows her father is innocent, but Taccone wants only one thing: his stolen property returned. And with her father being constantly tailed by Interpol, that leaves Kat and her group of friends to pull off the impossible.

Heist Society is much like an Ocean's Eleven for teens, and it has many of the same excellent elements--intelligence, friendship, quick thinking, and familial drama--that made Carter's Gallagher Girls series so popular. Though at first Heist Society seems to lack the charm and charisma of Carter's sharp teen spies, the quirky, humorous characters, their easy camaraderie and the dilemma Kat faces will quickly win readers over. Carter packs in a lot of tension and suspense when Taccone gives Kat a deadline to return the paintings, and she must figure out how to give him what he wants while staying a step ahead of him and come out on top. Carter also addresses morals in the book, adding the enigma of a Romani Visily and playing the idea of returning stolen art and artifacts to their rightful owners.

Kat's team is full of clever tricks and will keep readers laughing, as well as intrigued as Kat has a different relationship with each one. Kat's feelings for newcomer Nick are a little confusing at first, but everything becomes clearer in the end with a most impressive heist and the requisite unexpected twists. Carter leaves Heist Society with an open ending, hinting at more books to come. Overall, though it is perhaps a little more serious than her other books, Carter has pulled off an exceptionally clever read.

larceny in the heart, grifting in the soul - Kat returns to the fold
I can, I guess, see why Ally Carter's HEIST SOCIETY draws in the teen girl crowd; this book, after all, is tailored for them. The premise is certainly attention-catching, especially if you're into heist and caper stories. HEIST SOCIETY affects the off-handed elan and cool of, say, OCEAN'S ELEVEN and succeeds at certain levels. To me, that book cover suggests a sort of callback to Audrey Hepburn circa BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. HEIST SOCIETY is a brisk and breezy read, and pretty good. But there are some issues.

I don't know that there are other books out there that feature teens more worldly and self-possessed than 15-year-old Katarina Bishop and the young crew she establishes. Kat, a larcenous prodigy, comes from a family of elite professional thieves, except that three months ago she abandoned that life of crime, her final con (or so she thought) that of enrolling herself into the prestigious Colgan boarding school. But - as they say - just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in...

Kat is lured back to the family business when her master thief of a dad becomes the primary suspect for the audacious theft of a private collection of paintings. Or Kat's family thinks so, as well as several Interpol agents. Kat's father denies having done the caper, but what really galvanizes Kat into action is that the seriously sinister hombre Arturo Taccone also believes her father to be the culprit. Taccone gives Kat a two week deadline to recover the paintings or dot dot dot... Two meager weeks for Kat not only to learn where the vanished paintings have gotten to but also to gather her own thieving crew to break in and steal them. There's no question that this is by far her most ambitious heist, and this with three months of rust on her.

There's, naturally, a fun, sophisticated element in Kat's jet-setting and globe-gallivanting ways, and it doesn't hurt that her former and once again teen partner-in-crime, Hale, is rich as Croesus. I also enjoyed the thieves' mythos which Ally Carter constructs around Katarina, and I particularly love the notion of legendary aliases which had been floating around forever in the thieves' world, aliases that ambitious thieves assume when they take on an epic caper. I will say that Carter maybe could have better developed her characters. Pretty much all the roles in the book are likable but feel straight out of stock casting. One particular character shows up late in the game, and Carter writes him in such a way that he seems only to serve as a foil for Hale and to introduce an added element of mystery. Out of all of Kat's interactions, the most fascinating for me is her dealings with the shady mobster Arturo Taccone. Speaking as a dude, I'm not so into Kat's teen romantic complications. I don't particularly find Hale dreamy or swoony or dashing. But the girls are eating up that aspect, so mission accomplished for the writer. At least, it's not as despicably icky as what's been going down in Twilight.

Ally Carter has also written the Gallagher Girls spy series, and HEIST SOCIETY was a fun enough read that I'm planning on checking out those other books. Thieves and con men are some of my favorite characters to read about or see films about, and so this book was never gonna get the bum's rush from me. There's also a bit of a history lesson as Carter instructs the reader on a point of artistic atrocity committed by the Nazi regime during World War II. Some things about the book bugged me, like the shallow characterization, as mentioned, but also that not enough time is spent on the big heist itself. And maybe security at London's imposing Henley museum isn't quite as impregnable as first made out to be. Kat herself, for a gifted thief and mastermind, doesn't do enough on page except rack up flying mileage, not with a deus ex machina like Hale hanging around. I will say that when the heist finally goes down, boy, there are some taut moments. But they don't really achieve the suspense and sudden reverses of OCEAN'S ELEVEN or THE ITALIAN JOB, if that's what you're comparing this to. Also, I thought there would be some sort of payoff with Uncle Eddie who had ordered Kat not to meddle, but there was nothing there.

We never do learn the identity of the mysterious Visily Romani, and maybe that could lead into the sequel (and I'm guessing there will be a sequel). HEIST SOCIETY isn't shabby at all, a fun, lightweight caper novel. Perfect for a day at the beach or a lazy Sunday spent on the porch. Give it a try, grab some iced tea, go prop your feet up, maybe on a Twilight book.

Cute caper
Heist Society by Ally Carter
Disney-Hyperion Books, 2010
287 pages
YA; Contemporary; Suspense
4/5 stars

Summary: Kat thought she was out.But now she's back in and has to pull off the biggest con of her life in order to protect the people she loves.

Thoughts: I had read a couple of books by Ally Carter (The Gallagher Girls series) but they came out so far apart that I kept forgetting what had happened in the meantime (okay it was only like a year but I did enjoy them and didn't want to wait).Then I read some reviews of this describing it as more young YA so I thought I wouldn't like it.I was surprised though because I loved this!

It was such a cute book-Kat was a great heroine (once you move past the moral implications of a her being raised to be a thief).She's loyal to her family and is anxious about being a thief.She returns to crime partly because her family is threatened and she will do what she can in order to protect them, including breaking in to one of the most secure art museums of all.

Great secondary characters-Hale, Gabrielle, Angus, Hamish, Simon, Uncle Eddie, her father, Nick, and the terrifying Arturo.It's always important to me to see fun characters around the main one.These didn't have much depth but they were distinguishable and they had their own motivations.Hale is a particular standout as a potential love interest for Kat.I would have liked more love story but that's not always necessary for a book so I'll let it go.

Overall: Thrilling caper with a bit of history mixed in.

Cover: Great cover-I love the font on "Heist," and the picture reflected in her glasses; the model also seems age-appropriate.

fun and light, with some endings to be desired
this book like other aly carter books was extremly well written, untill the ending. It was fun and entertaing with a fun plot twist. I enjoyed the book but felt like the ending was leaving room for a sequel. (this acounts for the missing star) i would recomend either getting it from the library or getting it for less than $7 as it needs an (hopefully exsisting sequel) to make it complete ... Read more

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This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: The Company of Wolves, the Curious Room, the Holy Family Album. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: The Company of Wolves is a 1984 gothic fantasy-horror film directed by Neil Jordan, and starring Sarah Patterson and Angela Lansbury. The film is based on the werewolf stories in Angela Carter's short story collection The Bloody Chamber ("The Company of Wolves", "Wolf-Alice" and "The Werewolf"). Carter herself co-wrote the screenplay with director Neil Jordan, based on her own short stories and also her earlier adaptation of "The Company of Wolves" for radio. Carter's first draft of the screenplay, which contains some differences from the finished film, has been published in her anthology The Curious Room (1996). Set in modern times, the film takes place within the dreams of a young girl: Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson). Rosaleen dreams that she lives in a fairytale forest with her parents (Tusse Silberg and David Warner) and sister (Georgia Slowe), but one day her sister is killed by wolves. While her parents are mourning, Rosaleen goes to live with her grandmother (Angela Lansbury), who knits a bright red shawl for her granddaughter to wear. The superstitious old woman gives Rosaleen an ominous warning, to beware men whose eyebrows meet. Rosaleen returns to the village where her parents live, but finds that she must deal with the advances of an amorous boy (Shane Johnstone). Rosaleen and the boy take a walk through the forest, but the boy discovers that the village's cattle have come under attack from a wolf. The villagers set out to hunt the wolf, but once caught and killed, the wolf's corpse transforms into that of a human being. Rosaleen later takes a basket of goods through the woods to her grandmother's cottage, but on...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1495709 ... Read more

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Drawing on many aspects of contemporary feminist theory, this lively collection of essays assesses Angela Carter's polemical fictions of desire. Carter, renowned for her irreverent wit, was one of the most gifted, subversive, and stylish British writers to emerge in the 1960s. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good Stuff for Carter Fans
Is she or isn't she -- a feminist?This is one of the books you need to have on criticism of Carter. Flesh and the Mirror, ed by Lorna Sage, and Critical Essays on Angela Carter, ed Lindsay Tucker, are a must for looking at Carter critically.I also recommend (for a brief introduction to the several works) Lorna Sage's Angela Carter.I am confident that with the academic interest that has been circling Carter in recent years that she will be an addition to our canon in the future.Happy Reading! ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on March 22, 2000. The length of the article is 8259 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Signifying Passion: Angela Carter's Heroes and Villains as a Dystopian Romance.(Critical Essay)
Author: Eva C. Karpinski
Publication: Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2000
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 11Issue: 2Page: 137

Article Type: Critical Essay

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more