The Doctor can never be alone. He is always supported by a companion. After the success of The Villains of Doctor Who, the editors of that book turn their Tardis towards the Companions of Doctor Who. Popular characters in the world of Doctor Who including Donna, Clara, Amy, Ace and Sarah Jane are all covered by a diverse group of writers who all love and study Doctor Who. Each writer was given the choice of which character to cover and then writes an essay about what that companion brought to the series, the fandom and to the Doctor.

Stranger things do tend to happen in Schenectady—once a booming metropolis nicknamed the “City That Lights and Hauls the World� thanks to the dominating presence of General Electric and the American Locomotive Company, though those days are ancient history. GE has nearly abandoned the city, and ALCO closed up shot over fifty years ago. Hence, the title of this book: Forget It, Jake, It’s Schenectady: A Police Department Under Siege, and the Man Who Led It, a nod to the bleak conclusion of the classic film Chinatown, one of cinema’s most devastating expressions of abject resignation and defeat.A chance meeting between onetime Schenectady Police Chief Gregory Kaczmarek and author David Bushman in a Lyft car that Kaczmarek was driving was the genesis of this book, originally intended to track the rise and fall of a veteran cop with what appear to be two defining traits—an almost inhuman capacity for perseverance and a truly remarkable ability to attract notoriety and criticism. However, as the author’s research—including interviews with over two dozen people who lived through the events depicted in these pages—progressed, the book mutated into something else: a consideration of the recent history of the entire department—both its failures and successes—especially during Kaczmarek’s six-year reign as chief, but also involving such celebrated cases as the arrests and convictions of child killer Marybeth Tinning and serial rapist-murderer Lemuel Smith, who claimed to be controlled by the spirit of his deceased brother.In one of the more notorious cases of police corruption in New York State in recent times, the FBI set its sights on the Schenectady PD in 1999, launching an investigation that would eventually result in the imprisonment of four officers, the suicide of a fifth, and the resignation of Kaczmarek, who himself would wind up behind bars ten years later after copping a plea to criminal possession of cocaine. The events of this period loosely form the basis of the 2012 crime drama The Place Beyond the Pines—a literal translation of the Mohawk word “Schau-naugh-ta-da�—which starred Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, and Eva Mendes and was cowritten by Ben Coccio, who grew up in Schenectady, and Derek Cianfrance, who also directed, and whose wife likewise passed her wonder years there. Much of the blame for these catastrophic events was leveled then—and still is—at Kaczmarek, who spent twenty-seven years on the force, serving as chief from 1998 to 2002 before resigning in the wake of the federal investigation. Kaczmarek—�Kacz� to friends and to enemies, and he had a plethora of both—is the son of a longtime Schenectady police officer who, late in life, married the daughter of a local bookmaker. When Greg Kaczmarek was appointed chief, he was ordered by the mayor, his political benefactor, to hold a press conference publicly denying long-swirling rumors that he was a drug user—which, he insists to this day, he wasn’t at the time, notwithstanding his eventual arrest for possession of cocaine, purchased from the head of a major drug ring who also happened to be a close friend of his stepson. Here you’ll meet quite an assortment of colorful characters—law-enforcement who broke the law, and others who—heroically—didn’t; attorneys who defended the city, sued the city, or built a career on prosecuting those responsible for protecting the city; a public safety commissioner who charmed some, infuriated others (including the mayor, who eventually squeezed him out, reportedly because he was jealous of his popularity), and eventually perished in the September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center; mobbed-up gamblers who paid off cops while battling to up their piece of the pie; drug dealers with names like Slim and Misty Gallo who ran their product all over New York’s Capital Region before finally being taken down by wiretaps.

Few contemporary television shows have been subjected to the critical scrutiny that has been brought to bear on David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks since its debut in 1990. Yet the series, and the subsequent film, Fire Walk With Me, are sufficiently rich that it's always possible for a close analysis to offer something new - and that's what Franck Boulegue has done with Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic. Through Boulegue's eyes, we see for the first time the world of Twin Peaks as a coherent whole, one that draws on a wide range of cultural source material, including surrealism, transcendental meditation, Jungian psychoanalysis, mythology, fairy tales, and much, much more. The work of a scholar who is also a fan, the book should appeal to any hardcore Twin Peaks viewer.

Smart, quirky, female-centric, drenched in pop-culture references—Amy Sherman-Palladino's singular TV voice has won her legions of fans and critical appreciation over the past two decades, thanks to shows like "Gilmore Girls," "Bunheads," and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." Sherman-Palladino—the first woman ever to win Emmy Awards for both comedy writing and directing in a single year—may write about different decades and milieus, but her sensibility is unique and unmistakable throughout. Her greatest contribution may be her pantheon of unforgettable female characters, including Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham), Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel), Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy), Michelle Simms (Sutton Foster), Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein), and Miriam "Midge" Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan). In The Women of Amy Sherman-Palladino, writers from different walks of life—scholars, critics, writers, comedians, dancers—take us on a journey through the worlds of these characters, and how they have influenced their own lives. This is the second book in "The Women of" series, after The Women of David Lynch, published in June 2019. This unique series, covers great female characters in television and film.

A brilliantly researched reinvestigation into the nearly forgotten century-old murder that inspired one of the most seductive mysteries in the history of television and film. In 1908, Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York, beaten to death. The unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost stories, and, almost a century later, the phenomenon of Twin Peaks. Who killed Hazel Drew? Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of personalities-a young, beautiful puzzle with secrets. Perhaps the even trickier question is, Who was Hazel Drew? Seeking escape from her poor country roots, Hazel found work as a domestic servant in the notoriously corrupt metropolis of Troy, New York. Fate derailed her plans for reinvention. But the investigation that followed her brutal murder was fraught with red herrings, wild-goose chases, and unreliable witnesses. Did officials really follow the leads? Or did they bury them to protect the guilty? The likely answer is revealed in an absorbing true mystery that's ingeniously reconstructed and every bit as haunting as the cultural obsession it inspired.

“One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel�—Jean-Antoninette (“Reinette�) Poisson, aka Madame de Pompadour, “The Girl in the Fireplace� What a world of demons Doctor Who has presented us with over the past seven decades: from Daleks and Cybermen to Weeping Angels and the Silence, the greatest villains of the Who-niverse have achieved an iconic status all their own, cementing themselves in the minds of millions of viewers (why else would Parker Brothers have devised a version of Monopoly after them?). If, as the Seventh Doctor once said, "You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies,� the Doctor is great indeed, rescuing the universe time and again from some of the most formidable and terrifying villains in science fiction history. Now, for the first time, an entire anthology of essays is dedicated to deconstructing this gallery of blackguards. Who are the greatest Who villains of all time? Why are they so frightening? And—apologies to Shakespeare—what do they tell us about the villainy of our own fears?