Books about Bridegroom from Amazon.com

This Library of America volume gathers all the long fiction published by the beloved Mississippi writer Eudora Welty. Throughout her long and storied career, Welty has been most famous, perhaps, for her short stories. But it's in her novels that she attempted some of her most ambitious and powerful creations: the idiosyncratic fable that is The Robber Bridegroom, drawing on legends, local history, folktale, and myth; the underrated, wickedly funny short novel The Ponder Heart; and Losing Battles, a familial epic 15 years in the making and begun in bits and pieces while Welty cared for her sick mother. In a strange inversion of the author's usual career trajectory, Welty's only attempt at a roman à clef came late in life, with the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Optimist's Daughter, the quiet, moving, largely autobiographical story of a woman coming to grips with her father's death. The novels alone earn Welty a place as one of the finest writers our century has produced; taken together with the Library of America companion volume, Stories, Essays, & Memoir, it's a body of work that William Maxwell calls "beyond human power of praising." Welty rarely strayed for long from the place of her birth, but her fiction is as capacious as the human heart itself. Like Faulkner, she has taken her own corner of Mississippi and made it encompass the world..
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It's the little things that kill us, as that master of the miniature Ha Jin well knows. Not oppression in general, but the tea thrown at us by railroad policemen; not failure, but the old flame who fails to visit; not grief, but the peanuts our kindergarten teacher stole from our pockets In The Bridegroom, such moments run surprisingly deep, as if they traced the grooves history has left on individual hearts. The book's 12 tales capture a China in transition, en route from Maoism to market-friendly socialism, from isolation to increasing contact with the West. "I never thought money could make so much difference," says the narrator of "An Entrepreneur's Story," who's been transformed from black-market lowlife to new-economy hero. He wins respect and gets the girl, but it all feels too easy somehow, and he revenges himself by lighting his kerosene stove with bank notes.

Other characters navigate this sea change with similar bewilderment. The professor mistaken for "The Saboteur" thinks news articles about the end of the cultural revolution mean he can reason with the police (wrong!), while the bridegroom of the title story is hauled off to jail for so-called hooliganism rooted in "Western capitalism and bourgeois lifestyle"--that is, loving other men. "What a wonderful husband he could have been if he were not sick," his father-in-law thinks. In the story that deals most explicitly with the conflict between East and West, an American chain named Cowboy Chicken sets up shop in Muji City. The new order isn't that different from the old one, thinks one of the Chinese workers: "We nicknamed Mr. Shapiro 'Party Secretary,' because just like a Party boss anywhere he didn't do any work. The only difference was that he didn't organize political studies or demand we report to him our inner thoughts." In the end, as often happens, greed begets revolution--but whose greed? When the workers at Cowboy Chicken go on strike, jealous of one of their coworker's paychecks, they're replaced by an African American woman who teaches English at a nearby college and her students, who sing "We Shall Overcome" while they wipe tables.

But as in Jin's National Book Award-winning novel, Waiting, even the broadest political and cultural ironies are painted with an extraordinarily light-handed brush. Despite their apparent simplicity, these stories run deep; it's as if some 19th century master had wandered into our midst, writing prose whose unruffled surface recalls the virtues of the very long view. Like Chekhov, another great miniaturist and the writer he most resembles, Jin understands that humor is compassion, that a well-honed appreciation for the absurd is sometimes the best and most honest way to honor failed lives. While his characters attempt to balance the needs of the self and the demands of the state, we see less what is foreign to us than what is native to the human heart. --Mary Park.
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Award-winning author Joan Johnston concludes her Captive Hearts series with another winner, The Bridegroom. Wrongfully accused and deported to an Australian penal colony, Clay Bannister, Earl of Carlisle, vows revenge on the men responsible for his suffering: Cedric Ambleside, who framed him, and Alastair Wharton, the Duke of Blackthorne, who believed the trumped-up evidence and had Carlisle charged. After escaping the convict ship and making his fortune at sea, Carlisle returns to Regency London 11 years later to find his name cleared by Blackthorne, the same man who accused him. However, even the return of his title and his estates in England and Scotland cannot make Carlisle forget the loss of his wife and unborn son during his imprisonment--or the men who put him in prison. Unable to relinquish the darkness of his past, Carlisle woos Blackthorne's beautiful, headstrong daughter Regina, then presses her into marriage with the intent of abandoning her once she produces an heir. But the recalcitrant Reggie has in mind something else entirely. Carlisle finds his revenge difficult to exact when the instrument of that vengeance, his lovely new wife, refuses to cooperate. Reggie is determined that she will have both a loving husband and her father in her life, even if it kills her. And it might. Cedric Ambleside, embittered and hunted, will stop at nothing to keep Carlisle from finding him, even if it means murdering Reggie and once again framing Carlisle for the crime. As the threats to Reggie's well-being mount, Carlisle finds himself unable to contemplate his life without her, but it may be too late. --Alison Trinkle.
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This is not your father's wedding ..

From choosing china patterns and invitation designs to color schemes and reception halls, today's grooms are expected to play a much more active role in wedding planning than when their dads walked down the aisle.

The Clueless Groom's Guide offers the 3 million men who get married each year lighthearted commiseration, guidance, and a distinctly male take on the entire process of planning a traditional wedding. Filled with humorous but useful advice and information on wedding issues, this essential guide covers:

• Buying the ring that'll make her say yes
• Dealing with the future in-laws in a way that will preserve the groom's sanity
• Planning the budget without draining anyone's account
• Negotiating a guest list with the bride, her family, and his family
• Navigating the all-important bachelor party
• And much more !

This charmingly illustrated book will not only help guys understand what they're in for--but give them a sorely needed chuckle along the way.

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From bended knee to the altar Â…

This unique guide covers all the details aspiring husbands need to know, such as choosing a best man, assisting with the wedding budget, making reservations for the rehearsal dinner, paying the clergy fee, buying groomsmen gifts, and more. In addition, this latest edition features a new chapter on ways to wow the bride. Also includes updated coverage on honeymoon destinations and helpful information on the roles and responsibilities of the best man and groomsmen..
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