It’s a birthday book! It was born from the simple idea that birthdays provide the perfect annual opportunity to preserve a sweet moment in time as your child changes from year to year. So it’s a multi-layered confection: annual touchstone, cherished ritual, and eternal keepsake. This journal provides fun, fast, and casual birthday activities for ages 1-18 as well as space to stick birthday photos and a random picture from each year, amusing and thought-provoking questions to ask your kid, and a time-capsule envelope for stashing away odds and ends (artwork, school papers, hand tracings, birthday cards, invitations, and other memorabilia).From toddler hood to young adulthood to every hood in between, you’ll return to the same four activities for each birthday. The questions prompts, and tone may shift each year, but the essence intentionally remains intact.

    He was forced to choose which path he was going to take: continue the cycle of family poverty or break it. The Mindset is an inspirational memoir of Ace Bowers’ personal transformation from janitor to millionaire. Bowers began his journey uneducated, overweight, addicted to cigarettes, in debt, and depressed. Revealing the skeletons in his closet for the first time set the scene for how he got to the point of cleaning a motel for $6 an hour. Bowers’ detailed accounts of his turbulent and traumatizing childhood illustrated what it is like growing up in a poor, alcoholic, and abusive family. The metamorphosis began as soon as he changed his mindset. Within five years, Bowers was able to completely turn his life around, going from trash to technology. This memoir illuminates step by step his unconventional path to wealth, health, and happiness.

    It includes a history of vampire literature, a professional dominatrix's examination of Rice's erotica, and a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film version of Interview with the Vampire. From the adventures of the Vampire Lestat to those of the Mayfair Witches, from the evocative historical epic Cry to Heaven to the uninhibited erotica of Exit to Eden and the Sleeping Beauty trilogy, The Anne Rice Reader presents a captivating range of perspectives on the imagination of a writer who has enthralled her generation.

    In between mail-outs and making cups of coffee she meets the formidable producer Thelma Holt. Within a fortnight Thelma has stolen her, cancelled her audition for RADA, sent her to evening classes to learn to type, organised a miniscule salary and renamed her. From that moment she becomes Sweetpea. Her days are spent in an eccentric office where Alan Rickman or Vanessa Redgrave might pop in at any moment. Evenings are filled with the adrenaline of an opening-night performance or the chatter of a smart restaurant where casting for the next production is discussed. Existing somewhere between glamour and penury, Sweetpea finds herself surrounded by dynamic personalities and struggling to trust her own creative instincts. Over the years her apprenticeship takes in unusual demands, misbehaving actors, divinely inspired directors and a hot-air balloon ride with British theatre's finest. GET ME THE URGENT BISCUITS is a keenly observed memoir about the vanishing world of London's West End in the 1980s and 1990s, in which a young woman is swept into the orbit of a theatrical impresario. Shrewd, poignant and irresistibly funny, above all it is a coming-of-age story about the search for independence and an ode to the beguiling nature of theatre.

     Whitcomb manages to evade the enemy on Bataan by travelling to Corregidor Island in a small boat. However, his efforts to escape eventually fail and he is captured but later manages to escape at night in an hours-long swim to safety. After weeks of struggle in a snake-infested jungle, he sailed by moonlight down the heavily patrolled coast, only to fall, once again, into the clutches of the enemy. Facing captors, Ed Whitcomb took a desperate chance for freedom. Clenching his fists, he said: “My name is Robert Fred Johnson, mining employee.” This is the story of a man who vowed never to give up. He assumed the identity of a civilian and lived another man’s life for almost two years. Neither hunger, nor beatings, nor the long gray hopelessness of prison life could shake Ed Whitcomb’s determination to escape the enemy and return home to Indiana. 'one of the most frank, and readable personal narratives of service in the Philippines, and escape from Japanese captivity' - Pacific Wrecks Edgar Doud Whitcomb (November 6, 1917 – February 4, 2016) was an American politician, who was the 43rd Governor of Indiana. He enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps in 1940 and was deployed to the Pacific Theater. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in 1941 and made an aerial navigator. He served two tours of duty in the Philippines and was promoted to Second Lieutenant. During the Philippines Campaign, Whitcomb's base was overrun; he was captured by the Japanese and was beaten and tortured by his captors, but was able to escape. Recaptured a few days later, he escaped a second time and was hunted for several more days but was able to evade his pursuers. He escaped by swimming all night through shark-infested waters to an island unoccupied by the Japanese army. He was eventually able to secure passage to China under an assumed name where he made contact with the United States Army and was repatriated in December 1943. Escape from Corregidor, his memoir of war-time experiences, was first published in 1958. He was discharged from active duty in 1946, but he remained in the reserve military forces until 1977 holding the rank of colonel. In retirement Whitcomb still sought adventure, with a six-year, around-the-world sailing trip.

    From being the saviour of a man’s anus to being mistaken for the milkman, Tom describes the complexity and absurdity of today’s medical practice with humour and aplomb. Tom is a junior doctor working in the National Health Service. Tom Parsons is a pseudonym. * Amazon/Kindle/Fiction/Medical, March 2018

    Staff nursing in a ward where she's challenged by an inventory driven ward sister, she reckons it's time to swap such trivialities for life as a district nurse.Independent thinking is one thing, but Jane's about to find that the drama on district can demand instant reaction; and without hospital back up, she's usually the one having to provide it. She meets a rich cast of patients all determined to follow their own individual star, and goes to Edinburgh where Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute's nurse training is considered the cr me de la cr me of the district nursing world.Call Me Sister recalls Jane's challenging and often hilarious route to realizing her own particular dream.

    She is up at 3 a.m. every morning, she spends her days running, lifting weights and working out. She also works as a certified personal trainer at her gym. Feeling better than she did at 40, "Bodybuilding Champion" Ernestine Shepherd shows us that being out of shape as we age truly is merely an option, NOT a mandate! She is a role model not just for senior women everywhere, but for every one of us. She is having the time of her life and constantly shows that "age is nothing but a number." When many folks only see themselves as declining and getting old, she is in the best shape of her life and is a supreme role model to seniors every where and to the rest of us, too. She has a lot to teach us about thriving at any age, if we are but ready and open to learn. What's her secret? What exactly is she doing to defy "normal" aging? How did she transform herself from an average middle-aged woman to bodybuilding diva? Are you ready to go on her life journey and see the world from her eyes? Ready? Ok, let's get determined, dedicated and disciplined to be fit through the eyes of Lady Ernestine Shepherd, and ghostwriter and publisher, Theresa Royal Brown. This book will make you laugh and cry and help you get started on your own fitness journey.

    His humor and short fiction appear in various publications throughout the Southeast.

    For nearly seven decades, Santo Trafficante, Sr. and his son, Santo, Jr. were prominent gangsters on the Tampa crime scene. Santo, Sr. arrived in Tampa in 1902 and settled in the Ybor City area where he slowly began his climb to the top of the Tampa mob scene. Along the way, he became a clever and ruthless gangster who preferred to operate in the shadows. By the mid 1920s, Santo, Sr. had become a powerful force in the Tampa mafia. Two decades later, the U.S. government reported that he was “strongly suspected of having financed important narcotics transactions.” During Tampa’s “Era of Blood” from 1930 through the 1950s, in which several local gangsters were murdered, Santo, Sr. emerged as Tampa’s most powerful mobster. He would remain so until his death in 1954.His successor, Santo, Jr., lead the Tampa mob for more than three decades and became involved in some of history’s most seminal events. They include mob dominance of the gambling scene in pre-Castro Cuba, the CIA plots to kill Castro, the spectacular mob hit of godfather Albert Anastasia in 1957, the famous mob meeting at Apalachin in upstate New York that followed shortly after, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and the development of narcotics networks in Latin America and Southeast Asia, among others. Unlike most other godfathers, Santo, Jr. never spent more than a night in an American jail. When he died in 1987, organized crime expert Ralph Salerno described Santo, Jr.’s death as “the end of an era” and the godfather as “the last of the old time (gangland) leaders.” In vivid prose and concise detail, Chepesiuk weaves the fascinating story of the legendary gangsters, the Trafficantes.“Ron Chepesiuk’s book on the Trafficantes takes the reader behind the headlines to the real story, uncensored and without filters. The book is fast-paced with fascinating factual details told in Chepesiuk's trademark tell-it-as-it-is writing style. A must read for true crime aficionados.”--Elle Andra-Warner, author of several best-selling books, including Edmund Fitzgerald: The Legendary Great Lakes Shipwreck and The Mounties; Robert Service.

    Bartley Gorman was a legend in the brutal world of illegal prize-fighting, and this long-awaited auto-biography, with many unique photographs, lifts the lid on a secret sub-culture.

    The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the twenty-first century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes.Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically. Seeing the Truckers’ albums as roadmaps through a landscape that is half-real, half-imagined, their fellow Southerner Stephen Deusner travels to the places the band’s members have lived in and written about. Tracking the band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to the author’s hometown in McNairy County, Tennessee, Deusner explores the Truckers’ complex relationship to the South and the issues of class, race, history, and religion that run through their music. Drawing on new interviews with past and present band members, including Jason Isbell, Where the Devil Don’t Stay is more than the story of a great American band; it’s a reflection on the power of music and how it can frame and shape a larger culture.

    The book also includes some of her best fiction pieces.

    And the batting prodigy they nicknamed 'Pup' certainly fulfilled his destiny in a stellar 11-year international career of 115 Tests, 8643 runs and 28 centuries.Clarke's rollercoaster four-year reign as Test captain was marked as much by bravery as brilliance - a 5-0 whitewash of England in 2013-14, the 2015 World Cup triumph, and a ten-hour unbeaten 161, batting with a broken shoulder to lead Australia back to the #1 world ranking in 2014.Yet Michael Clarke also sparked fiercer debate than any other Australian sports star.For a decade his personal life, career fortunes and controversies - real or imagined - were splashed across front pages and scrutinised. Was he simply a hard-working, western suburbs kid living every Aussie boy's dream? Or a 21st century cricketer mired in all the trappings of celebrity?In the echo chamber of social media, the truth about Michael Clarke was warped, then lost. Clarke's enigma deepened but he kept his mouth shut and his dignity intact, knowing the chance to tell his extraordinary story would finally come. And now it has.My Story is the real Michael Clarke, standing up and speaking out for the first time.Bucking the conventions of traditional biography to go hard at the big issues, Clarke speaks fearlessly and poignantly about the scandals, rumours and explosive moments of his life; revealing the amazing truths, private pain and personal triumphs that no one realised.It's the incredible story of a remarkable Australian you never really knew. Until now.

    This autobiographical history of Scientology is told by one of L. Ron Hubbard’s staunchest defenders.