Modern Masters

Ray Charles’s Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volumes 1 & 2 are major landmarks in American culture. Charles demonstrated that great songs with signature performances work in all genres. “I Can’t Stop Loving You” was a standard in country, soul and R&B, as he proved. Modern Sounds also brought America together during the Sixties’ civil rights movement. Charles became one of the first recording artists to have ownership and complete control of the masters. Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music has been listed among the greatest albums of all time, along with the Beatles, Dylan, Motown, Springsteen, Hendrix and the Beach Boys.

Philosophies from the Founders of Modern Japanese Martial Arts

Neil Gaiman, Eoin Colfer, and many more join "this magical brew [that] will enchant young adult readers and their elders as well." (Publishers Weekly) In Wizards, today's master fantasists turn their hands to tales of these magical beings, living in both ancient and modern times, as well as in fantasy realms that never were. Featuring stories by New York Times bestselling authors Neil Gaiman, Eoin Colfer and Garth Nix as well as tales from Kage Baker, Peter S. Beagle, Terry Bisson, Orson Scott Card, Terry Dowling, Andy Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, Elizabeth Hand, Nancy Kress, Tanith Lee, Patricia A. McKillip, Mary Rosenblum, Tad Williams, Gene Wolfe, and Jane Yolen.

Nineteen distinctly different, atmospheric tales by modern-day fantasy writers, the likes of Garth Nix, Harry Turtledove, Bruce Coville, Tanith Lee, and Mary Rosenblum, make this a treasure trove for fantasy fans, especially dragon lovers. Cecelia Holland weighs in with a heroine reminiscent of Scheherazade, but here, it’s a dragon demanding the stories. In Jonathan Stroud’s “Bob Choi’s Last Job,” a dragon hunter comes up against a voracious shape-shifter. Liz Williams offers a mannered story in which a mage, summoned to vanquish a worm, encounters the unexpected… All in all, an enticing collection for genre fans. –Sally Estes

The Tiger of Eschnapur first strikes one as being breathtakingly exotic, and then remarkably juvenile. Dashing hero Harald Berger bops two troublesome Gurkha soldiers together like sticks of wood, and charms the beautiful Seetha with schoolboy manners and other pure-of-heart gestures. The action is hearty and direct. There are beautiful scenes shot in India with real tigers, matched with wonderfully naive shots of men in tiger costumes!

A jealous Maharajah discovers that the girl he loves is in love with a visiting German architect, captures her, and threatens to bury her alive as punishment.

Soul Power is a vérité documentary – compiled entirely from footage shot in 1974 – of the astonishing back-to-Africa 3-day music festival “Zaire ‘74”. It was held in Kinshasa ahead of the biggest boxing event of all time: the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle”. Directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, editor of Leon Gast’s Oscar-winning (Best Documentary) When We Were Kings, and sourced from the same archival pool, Soul Power features a legendary line-up of African and African-diaspora musicians – all of whom are at the very peak of their creative powers. Alongside Ali’s wit and wisdom – profoundly lyrical in its own right – vibrant street scenes of downtown Kinshasa, and “fly-on-the-wall” footage of the festival’s staging, rehearsals, and jams, the three nights of concerts (lensed by Albert Maysles and a host of other legendary cameramen) offer electrifying performances by James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers, Sister Sledge, Miriam Makeba, The Spinners, Big Black, The Crusaders, Celia Cruz, and many more.