Harcourt

A ship brimming with talent and filled with Cole Porter's incomparable music is cruising along in "Anything Goes" at Chesapeake Music Hall through Nov. 20.Everything about Chesapeake Music Hall director Sherry Kay's production of "Anything Goes" sparkles: the cast she has assembled, the sleek ship set she designed, the costumes she created and her distinctive choreography.Musical director Anita O'Connor has drawn pleasing interpretations of Porter's score from the singers, with emphasis on clear enunciation of his lyrics.

A Kitten Tale by Eric Rohmann Knopf Books for Young Readers / $15.99 / ages 4-8 It's hot and sticky outside, so reading this book about four kittens in the snow might make you wish for winter. Three playful kittens are fearful about the impending snow, and one can't wait to play in it. A beautifully illustrated story about curiosity and overcoming fear is a winner any time of the year. A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever by Marla Frazee Harcourt / $16 / ages 4-8 A tongue-in-cheek story about summertime fun based on Frazee's son's adventures with his best pal as they stay at his grandparents' house and go to nature camp.

PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman made new financial demands on Hollywood producer Jeffrey Lurie late last week that have sent Lurie's negotiators scurrying to close the deal to buy the team, sources said.It is unclear whether Braman's latest moves are merely a last-minute negotiating tactic or whether they are designed to scuttle the deal.Lurie, sources said, still plans to be in Philadelphia tomorrow or Wednesday, when he expects Braman to sign an agreement to sell the Eagles for $185 million, the highest amount ever paid for an NFL team.

Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object By Kathleen Rooney University of Arkansas Press / 200 pages / $22.50 Aside from the thrill (and chill) of getting naked, there's not much to nude modeling. And yet for Kathleen Rooney, this experience has become the basis of a compelling memoir that blends observation, personal revelation and scholarly inquiry. A poet, professor and author of four other books, Rooney supplemented her income for six years as a nude model. As we watch her pose, Rooney examines nude modeling from every angle: historical, sociological and biographical.

I've heard it said that somewhere in Baltimore there is always a soft, gentle breeze.And on these hot days, a cool breeze is a bit of heaven. You may have your own list of where to find one. Here's mine.* The seawall at Fort McHenry. Don't go into the fort itself. It's got high brick walls and is pretty arid.If the air is moving, it'll be at the water's edge where the old stone wall is located, and the two branches (Middle and Northwest) of the Patapsco River divide. Here is definitely great zephyr territory.

An Ocean of Air Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere By Gabrielle Walker Harcourt / 272 pages / $25 In the opening pages of An Ocean of Air, author Gabrielle Walker plunges the reader into the subject of her book - literally. A test pilot hurls himself from the gondola of a helium balloon floating on the black edge of space. As he plummets, he passes through layers of atmosphere: the ionosphere, the stratosphere, the ozone layer, the troposphere. Walker keeps the tension high.

The Florist's Daughter By Patricia Hampl Harcourt / 227 pages / $24 In the middle - "middle-class, Midwestern, midcentury - middle everything" - that was Patricia Hampl's lot in life. The second of two children born to a Czech florist and his Irish wife and raised in St. Paul, Minn., Hampl grew up the way so many of us did - looking for escape, circling right back round to home. She went fishing with her father. She whisked across slicked ice rinks. She listened to her mother's stories.

The Age of Shiva By Manil Suri Norton / 455 pages / $25 The second novel from University of Maryland Baltimore County mathematics professor Manil Suri follows Meera Sawhney from her unhappy 1950s marriage to aspiring singer Dev Arora through to her own son's coming of age. After an impulsive act forces Meera's marriage at 17, her complex, controlling father decries her tying herself (and her family) to the provincial, lower-class Aroras. Meera soon finds herself pulled in different directions by her in-laws' religious orthodoxy, her father's progressivism, her husband's alcoholism and her resentment.

Let Me Finish Roger Angell Harcourt / 320 pages / $25 Roger Angell writes about his own life even better than he writes about baseball, and that's saying something. His new book, Let Me Finish, is a collection of snapshots from a full life, especially his magical childhood spent in New York. It's hard not to feel envious of his good fortune - the summers in Maine, the glamorous magazine jobs and the fact that his stepfather was the graceful author and essayist E.B. White - but Angell is such a gentleman, you hardly mind.

Gotz and Meyer David Albahari (trans. by Ellen Elias-Bursac) Harcourt / 176 pages Throughout Europe's midsection the unquiet ghosts of the Holocaust stalk the memories of survivors, shadow the genealogies of their families and prick the consciences of those who might have done something to stop the genocide, yet didn't - most particularly the many soldiers "just following orders." Among them, Gotz and Meyer. Against this complex backdrop of guilt and memory, loss and retribution, Serbian writer David Albahari positions three characters: Gotz and Meyer, two hapless, noncommissioned SS officers; and an unnamed narrator, a teacher in postwar Belgrade whose family was nearly obliterated by the Nazis and who is determined to pass on the grisly history of the carnage to his students.