Art Genre

Most people think genres are simply categories on Netflix or Amazon that provide a helpful guide to making entertainment choices. Most people are wrong. Genre stories aren’t just a small subset of the films, video games, TV shows, and books that people consume. They are the all-stars of the entertainment world, comprising the vast majority of popular stories worldwide. That’s why businesses—movie studios, production companies, video game studios, and publishing houses—buy and sell them. Legendary writing teacher John Truby provides a guide to understanding the major genres of the story world.

Making a living reproducing famous artworks for a popular online retailer and desperate to improve her situation, Claire is lured into a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel, a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a painting - a Degas masterpiece stolen from the Gardner Museum - in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But when that very same long-missing Degas painting is delivered to Claire's studio, she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery. Her desperate search for the truth leads Claire into a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late 19th century may be the only evidence that can now save her life.

The New York Times best-selling novel from Garth Stein - a heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope - a captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life...as only a dog could tell it.

When Olivia Shaw’s mother dies, the sophisticated food editor is astonished to learn she’s inherited a centuries-old English estate—and a title to go with it. Raw with grief and reeling from the knowledge that her reserved mother hid something so momentous, Olivia leaves San Francisco and crosses the pond to unravel the mystery of a lifetime. One glance at the breathtaking Rosemere Priory and Olivia understands why the manor, magnificent even in disrepair, was the subject of her mother’s exquisite paintings. What she doesn’t understand is why her mother never mentioned it.

Naïma knows Algeria only by the artifacts she encounters in her grandparents' tiny apartment in Normandy: the language her grandmother speaks but Naïma can't understand, the food her grandmother cooks, and the precious things her grandmother carried when they fled. But now Naïma will travel to Algeria to see for herself what was left behind—including their secrets. Alice Zeniter's The Art of Losing is a powerful, moving family novel that spans three generations across seventy years and two shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a story of how we carry on in the face of loss.

Lady Sophia Kendall, 32nd in line to the throne of Anglion, is only days away from finding out if she will be blessed - or perhaps cursed - with magic. When a vicious attack by Anglion's ancient enemies leaves the kingdom in chaos, Sophia is forced to flee the court. Her protector by happenstance is Lieutenant Cameron Mackenzie, a member of the royal guard, raised all his life to be fiercely loyal to the Crown.

A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this award-nominated tale about love, life, and baseball. At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths.

Three apparently unrelated art thefts in three separate cities have more in common than anyone imagines. As a renowned art investigator, a police inspector, and a Scotland Yard inspector take up their separate investigations, a trail of bizarre clues and intellectual puzzles reveals forgeries, over-paintings, and double-crosses in an ever-deepening conspiracy.

As soon as she arrives at her family's annual reunion, Laura Bartone realizes that something is not right with her sister. Wrapped up in past events, Caroline is the family's black sheep. When she confronts Laura and their brother with devastating allegations about their mother, the three have a difficult time reconciling their varying experiences in the same house. But a sudden misfortune will lead them all to face the past, their own culpability, and their common need for love and forgiveness.

The Dalai Lama's cat is back - older, a bit wiser and as curious as ever. In this audiobook, the Dalai Lama sets for his lovable feline companion the task of investigating the art of purring. Whether it's the humorous insights gained from a visiting Ivy League Psychology Professor, the extraordinary research of a world-famous biologist, or the life-changing revelations of a mystical yogi, His Holiness's cat encounters a wealth of wisdom about happiness.

Treasure Herring has lost and gained in the past year and a half. After the tragic loss of her parents, she gains a sibling and new family in her big sister, Savvy… but she still feels lost. Then, a handsome but ruggish hooligan she'd only met once reappears and gives her a semblance of belonging. Pierre.

When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be - until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the listener’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.

Ren loves and hates Etta, her best friend since they met at NYU nearly a decade ago. Etta defines Ren's New York. She lavishes her with designer hand-me-downs and takes her along to parties at trust fund lofts and Hamptons estates. But when Etta moves to Barcelona with no warning, Ren is left to face who she is without her, her unremarkable life of shoebox apartment, thankless job, and estranged family.

The Art of Detection is another spellbinding tale starring San Francisco homicide inspector Kate Martinelli. The victim is Sherlock Holmes aficionado Philip Gilbert, whose collection of priceless memorabilia is definitely worth killing for. It's up to Kate and her trusted partner Al Hawkin to follow the clues and bring a rather peculiar murderer to Justice.

Mattie Wallace has really screwed up this time. Broke and knocked up, she's got all her worldly possessions crammed into six giant trash bags and nowhere to go. Try as she might, Mattie can no longer deny that she really is turning into her mother, a broken alcoholic who never met a bad choice she didn't make. When Mattie gets news of a possible inheritance left by a grandmother she's never met, she jumps at this one last chance to turn things around.

Diana Donovan was raised aboard a naval ship on a steady diet of war strategy, so when her orphaned friend, Lucy, is denied a perfectly respectable love match by her controlling guardian, Diana sees an opportunity to put her battle knowledge to use in service of a deserving friend. But Marmaduke Russell is not the middle-aged curmudgeon Diana is expecting. He is a maddeningly cool unmarried gentleman who seems uniquely able to parry her tactics—and infuse her with even more determination to win.

Lillian and her restaurant have a way of drawing people together. There’s Al, the accountant who finds meaning in numbers and ritual; Chloe, a budding chef who hasn’t learned to trust after heartbreak; Finnegan, quiet and steady as a tree, who can disappear into the background despite his massive height; Louise, Al’s wife, whose anger simmers just below the boiling point; and Isabelle, whose memories are slowly slipping from her grasp. And there’s Lillian herself, whose life has taken a turn she didn’t expect....

This imagined retelling of Jho Low’s story, based on real events, gives listeners an insider’s view of the glitzy, glamorous world of wealth and privilege, as well as a close-up look at this enigmatic protagonist’s high-stakes fall from grace. The narrator is quirky yet eloquent, at times thoughtful and other times brash, as he leads readers through the corridors of power, where the line between friend and foe blurs. As secrets unravel and fortunes teeter on the edge, readers get a front-row seat to the dark underbelly of high finance and the price of unchecked ambition and greed.

On the borderland between this world and the world of Quiddity, the sea of our dreams, sits Everville. For years, it has lived in ignorance of the gleaming shore on which it lies. But its ignorance is not bliss. Opening the door between worlds, Clive Barker delivers his characters into the heart of the human mystery; into a place of revelation, where the forces that have shaped our past - and are ready to destroy our future - are at work.

Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music - as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities.