Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Hillbilly Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus and Todd Gold
Hillbilly Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus and Todd Gold
Billy Ray Cyrus is an award-winning country music legend whose “Achy Breaky Heart” propelled his debut album, “Some Gave All,” to the top of the charts for a record-breaking seventeen weeks. He’s also father of Miley Cyrus, one of Hollywood’s most successful young stars, who grew up on stage and on screen, most famously as the lead on the Disney Channel’s “Hannah Montana,” where Billy Ray Cyrus played her father. But sometimes the truth is even better than fiction. Now, for the first time, fans can read about Cyrus’s tenacious and inspiring struggle to find his own way to faith, family, and the power of music.
Hillbilly Heart opens during Cyrus’s turbulent childhood in Kentucky, where he sought refuge in music and sports after his parents’ divorce. He was a troublemaker in training, known more for pulling pranks than for following in his preacher grandfather’s much-vaunted footsteps. But when he heard a voice telling him to get a left-handed guitar and start a band, this rebel found his cause. Ten years later, after tirelessly working the club circuit and knocking on the closed doors of music executives from Nashville to Los Angeles, Cyrus finally made a stratospheric breakthrough, becoming a multi-platinum selling artist and taking his rock-and-roll twist on country music to the world’s stage.
Cyrus fans have always been able to piece together the details of his life through his lyrics—the ups and downs, adventures and disappointments—but Hillbilly Heart gives them a front row seat for his most candid performance ever.
Bobby on the Beat by Pam Rhodes
Bobby on the Beat by Pam Rhodes
Pamela Rhodes, one of the first British policewomen, tells her fascinating story in Bobby on the Beat. Back in 1950 Pam became one of the first policewomen in the country. But the force’s new female recruits faced a sceptical public in rural Yorkshire and even before they stepped out on the beat there were the prejudices of older male officers to overcome. Yet from the first Pam was thrust into the front line. From runaway bulls to investigating ladies of the night and cases of vice, her innocent eyes were quickly opened. And soon, spending her days on the streets, she came to know the neighbourhood and the extraordinary characters who lived on the right, as well as wrong, side of the law. In the charming Bobby on the Beat, Pamela Rhodes’ tales of life as a copper provide a fascinating glimpse of country life now long gone – when seeing a bobby on the beat meant all was well. Pamela Rhodes lives in Scarborough, where she was one of the first WPCs in Britain in the 1960s. Her unique story was picked up when she entered the life-story competition run by Penguin and Saga Magazine, in which she placed as a runner-up. This is her first memoir.
The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life by Rod Dreher
The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life by Rod Dreher
THE LITTLE WAY OF RUTHIE LEMING follows Rod Dreher, a Philadelphia journalist, back to his hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana (pop. 1,700) in the wake of his younger sister Ruthie’s death. When she was diagnosed at age 40 with a virulent form of cancer in 2010, Dreher was moved by the way the community he had left behind rallied around his dying sister, a schoolteacher. He was also struck by the grace and courage with which his sister dealt with the disease that eventually took her life. In Louisiana for Ruthie’s funeral in the fall of 2011, Dreher began to wonder whether the ordinary life Ruthie led in their country town was in fact a path of hidden grandeur, even spiritual greatness, concealed within the modest life of a mother and teacher. In order to explore this revelation, Dreher and his wife decided to leave Philadelphia, move home to help with family responsibilities and have their three children grow up amidst the rituals that had defined his family for five generations-Mardi Gras, L.S.U. football games, and deer hunting.
As David Brooks poignantly described Dreher’s journey homeward in a recent New York Times column, Dreher and his wife Julie “decided to accept the limitations of small-town life in exchange for the privilege of being part of a community.”
The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of France (P.S.) by John Baxter
The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of France (P.S.) by John Baxter
John Baxter’s The Perfect Meal is part grand tour of France, part history of French cuisine, taking readers on a journey to discover and savor some of the world’s great cultural achievements before they disappear completely.
Some of the most revered and complex elements of French cuisine are in danger of disappearing as old ways of agriculture, butchering, and cooking fade and are forgotten. In this charming culinary travel memoir, John Baxter follows up his bestselling The Most Beautiful Walk in the World by taking his readers on the hunt for some of the most delicious and bizarre endangered foods of France.
The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of France is the perfect read for foodies and Francophiles, cooks and gastronomists, and fans of food culture.
The Star Caster (The Elicit Novella Series) (Volume 1) by Jamie Loeak and Stacy Loeak
The Star Caster (The Elicit Novella Series) (Volume 1) by Jamie Loeak and Stacy Loeak
Danika wakes up, trapped in a barbed wire cage. All she knows is darkness, fear, and unending questions as to why she was kidnapped. When two strangers walk in, talking about a metamorphosis, Danika seeks to find answers in a handsome stranger, Sterren. Sterren shows Danika the world of the Star Caster, and they find themselves tangled in not only their escape, but in each other as well. When they face their worst enemies together, they grow stronger, and find that they are capable of making their own wishes come true.
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations? Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.
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