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Bad Blood: The Secret Life of the Tour de France
Jeremy Whittle - 2007
The twisting Mediterranean roads, the jerseys, the peloton in full flight - these have become as familiar to him as the lines around his eyes. And then there are the riders: men of almost superhuman capabilities, men who have become his friends, men whose stories he has written day in day out for the past decade. But even the biggest fan can one day wake up to find that he has lost his faith.We all want to believe in our heroes. That's why Jeremy got into cycling. But what happens when you can't? When you've seen too many positive dope tests, when you've been lied to too many times, when your sport is destroying itself from within?Bad Blood is the story of Jeremy Whittle's journey from unquestioning fan to Tour de France insider and confirmed sceptic. It's about broken friendships and a sport divided; about having to choose sides in the war against doping; about how galloping greed and corporate opportunism have led the Tour de France to the brink of destruction. Part personal memoir, part devastating exposé of a sport torn apart by drugs and scandal, Bad Blood is a love letter to one man's past, and a warning to cycling's future.
Mauritius
Theresa Rebeck - 2009
After their mother's death, two estranged half-sisters discover a book of rare stamps that may include the crown jewel for collectors. One sister tries to collect on the windfall, while the other resists for sentimental reasons. In this gripping tale, a seemingly simple sale becomes dangerous when three seedy, high-stakes collectors enter the sisters' world, willing to do anything to claim the rare find as their own.
The Rescue
Steven Konkoly - 2019
Hired by an influential US senator to liberate his daughter from a human-trafficking ring, Decker never anticipated sabotage or that the assault could go so disastrously wrong. The hostage is dead. His team is wiped out, and so are their families, including Decker’s own wife and son—eliminated one by one by the Russian mafia. And he’s survived to take the fall.When he’s inexplicably freed soon into a ten-year sentence in federal prison, Decker suspects another setup. And private investigator Harlow Mackenzie knows he’s right. She has evidence that a power greater than the Russian mob was behind the raid that ruined Decker’s life.The next move in a nationwide cat-and-mouse game of high-level sedition is up to them. Fueled by revenge and an obsession to clear his name, Decker has only one mission: to destroy a growing conspiracy before it’s too late.
The Yellow Boat
David Saar - 1997
They sailed far out to sea. The blue one returned to the harbor. The red one sailed home too. But the yellow boat sailed up to the sun." Benjamin always concluded his bedtime ritual by saying, "Mom, you can be the red boat or the blue boat, but I am the yellow boat." This remarkable voyage of Benjamin was extensively developed and widely produced in America for several years, always to ovations. Cast of 4 men and 3 women.THE YELLOW BOAT is based on the true story of David and Sonja Saar's son, Benjamin, who was born with congenital hemophilia, and died in 1987 at the age of 8 of AIDS related complications. A uniquely gifted visual artist, Benjamin's buoyant imagination transformed his physical and emotional pain into a blaze of colors and shapes in his fanciful drawings and paintings. The story of THE YELLOW BOAT Is a glorious affirmation of a child's life, and the strength and courage of all children. Recommended for children of age 8 and older, parents, families and adults.
Lethal Lawyers
Dale E. Manolakas - 2014
With blue-collar idealism and onerous student loans, first-year associate Sophia Christopoulos covets the firm’s money and power. But her new friendships, love, and success come with the devastating price of disillusionment, murder, and betrayal. When Sophia is hurled into a murder investigation, she is torn between ethics and firm politics, as well as love and truth. Fighting to save her career and life, she becomes the star witness—and then a target. [No courtroom trial]☆ THE GUN TRIAL & THE RUSSIAN Second & Third in Series ☆ REVIEWS: “Warning – don’t start reading until you have time!” “Where John Grisham offers one-dimensional cardboard replicas, Author Dale E. Manolakas delivers with fully-realized characters who explode off the page. Visceral. Sensual. Alive.” “Keeps the reader guessing until the end.” “Wow! Powerful look into the law business!” ❦ Go to Amazon Author's Page for more books [Kindle Unlimited]. ❦ Visit Author's Official Website for more books, free book offers, portals to sale channels, and a sign up [No Spam]. ❦Author's YouTube Channel with book trailers and other offers.
The Entertainer (Plays)
John Osborne - 1957
This play about the life and work of a second-rate music hall comic (brilliantly created by Sir Laurence Olivier in the original production) and staged only eleven months after the opening of Look Back in Anger, secured John Osborne's reputation and has become a classic of 20th century drama.
Sabrina Fair
Samuel Taylor - 1955
It is set on Long Island in the 1950s, and deals with the involvement of a very rich family named Larrabee with Sabrina Fairchild, the daughter of their family chauffeur. She is bright, well-educated, and has just returned from five years in Paris, where she has done a brilliant job as an executive in a U.S. government overseas office. She has come home to find out if she is still in love with the younger Larrabee son, David. The elder son, Linus, a cynical, good-humored tycoon who has taken control of the family fortune, detects Sabrina's feeling for his brother, and for his own amusement lays a trap to bring them together. It works: David falls in love with Sabrina and wants to marry her. At the same time, a rich young Frenchman who has known Sabrina in Paris turns up and asks her to marry him. Faced with this dilemma, Sabrina discovers it is really Linus she wants. After an amusing scene in which Sabrina's father, the chauffeur, makes a rather amazing revelation, Sabrina breaks down Linus' resistance and gets her man. An unusual number of fine character parts for actors: the beautiful mother of wit and perception; the father, whose one passion is attending funerals; the chauffeur who has been dabbling in the stock market and likes his job because it gives him time to read; the smart magazine editor who, as a house guest, is the interested observer. "SABRINA FAIR is a delightful, sparkling hit." Robert Coleman, NY Mirror.
What the Constitution Means to Me (Tcg Edition)
Heidi Schreck - 2021
Decades later, in What the Constitution Means to Me, she traces the effect that the Constitution has had on four generations of women in her family, deftly examining how the United States' founding principles are inextricably linked with our personal lives.
A Feminine Ending
Sarah Treem - 2009
But at the moment, she's living in New York City and writing advertising jingles to pay the rent while her fiancé, Jack, pursues his singing career. So when Amanda's mother, Kim, calls one evening from New Hampshire and asks for her help with something she can't discuss over the phone, Amanda is only too happy to leave New York. Once home, Kim reveals that she's leaving Amanda's father and needs help packing. Amanda balks and ends up (gently) hitting the postman, who happens to be her first boyfriend. They spend the night together in an apple orchard, where Amanda tries to tell Billy how her life got sidetracked. It has something to do with being a young woman in a profession that only recognizes famous men. Billy acts like he might have the answer, but doesn't. Neither does Amanda's mother. Or, for that matter, her father. A Feminine Ending is a gentle, bittersweet comedy about a girl who knows what she wants but not quite how to get it. Her parents are getting divorced, her fiancée is almost famous, her first love reappears, and there's a lot of noise in her head but none of it is music. Until the end. "Ending′ is a promising beginning...the playwright has a sense of humor that brings to mind a budding Wendy Wasserstein and a liberated sense of form that evokes a junior Paula Vogel."-Los Angeles Times "Darkly comic. FEMININE ENDING has undeniable wit." -New York Post. "Appealingly outlandish humor." -The New York Times. "Courageous. The 90-minute piece swerves with nerve and naivete. Sarah Treem has a voice all her own." -Newsday.
The Great God Pan
Amy Herzog - 2013
Ms. Herzog writes with keen sensitivity to the complex weave of feelings embedded in all human relationships, with particular attention to the way we tiptoe around areas of radioactive emotion." - New York Times"Whatever the ideal contemporary American drama is, it has to look a lot like The Great God Pan. It is provocative and subtle, slowly, carefully revelatory, sweetly moving, thought-provoking, funny and insightful." - New York Observer"An intelligent, delicately articulate writer." - Village Voice"A moving and unsettling look at the nature of identity and the vagaries of memory. With subtlety and compassion, Herzog contemplates how well we can really know ourselves." - BackstageJamie's life in Brooklyn seems just fine: a beautiful girlfriend, a burgeoning journalism career, and parents who live just far enough away. But when a possible childhood trauma comes to light, lives are thrown into a tailspin. Unsettling and deeply compassionate, The Great God Pan tells the intimate tale of what is lost and won when a hidden truth is suddenly revealed.Amy Herzog's plays include 4000 Miles (Pulitzer Prize finalist), After the Revolution and Belleville. Ms. Herzog is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whiting Writers' Award, an Obie Award and the Helen Merrill Award for Aspiring Playwrights.
Toe to Toe
Deborah Leblanc - 2015
After losing her job when the Garmin factory shuts down, Nonie is left with major money issues—as in, she has none. Desperate, she has to turn to the one place she’s avoided working since dropping out of college--her family’s funeral home.It wasn’t that Nonie feared the dead. In fact the opposite was true. She sees them—literally, and had been seeing the dead ever since she can remember. She tried telling her parents about it when she was a child, but they’d vehemently dismissed it to imaginary friends, so she’d stopped talking about it. There were only two people who actually knew Nonie’s secret and knew she was the real deal. One was Buggy Mouton, her best friend since kindergarten, and the other was Guy Skinard, whom Nonie considered her one true love since the day she’d laid eyes on him in high school. Buggy now worked at MeeMaw’s Café off of Main in Clay Point, and Guy, as usual, remained ever at her side—the only difference being he’d died in a freak boating accident nine years ago. Still the prankster even in death, Guy loved causing chaos, especially with men Nonie occasionally dated. She could only imagine what mayhem he might stir up while mirroring her at the funeral home and mingling with the newly departed.Only hours into the first day of her new job, pandemonium engulfs the funeral home, and much to Nonie’s surprise, it has nothing to do with Guy. It’s brought on by the family they’re serving. Seventy-two–year-old Dover Fontenot, the Major of Clay Point, dies in a car accident after indulging in a little extra-curricular activity—only the activity wasn’t with his wife , Hazel. And when Dover’s mistress, Anna Mae Turner, shows up at the funeral home for the visitation hell’s gates rip open and Broussard’s Funeral Home suddenly turns into a geriatric war zone.Amidst the flying hairpieces, canes and curses, Nonie’s best friend, Buggy, decides to drop by the funeral home with news she can’t wait to share. A cable network in New Orleans wants to put together a paranormal investigation team and have them check out purported haunted locations in Louisiana. For every location with solid filming potential, each member of the team gets a five hundred dollar pay check. And Buggy knows without question that if anyone can sniff out the ‘restless’ dead, it’s Nonie.Knowing nothing about paranormal investigation, but lured by the sound of the adventure and the dollar signs circling through her head, Nonie agrees to become part of the Boo Krewe, the name Buggy has formally given the makeshift team.The lure of money may be one thing, but what Nonie doesn’t realize is that occasionally the dead, so excited that someone can actually see and hear them, decide to follow her home, into her bed—the bathroom—the shower. And adding to this new-found frustration, Nonie barely finishes her first investigation when she gets a visit from Anna Mae Turner—the mayor’s former mistress—now dead, as well, and harassingly insistent that Nonie bring her killer to light.Nonie quickly learns that the ‘gift’ she’s carried since birth is really a giant wart on the butt of life—and no amount of Compound W is going to make it go away!
Stuff Happens
David Hare - 2005
. . And it's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."Such was Donald Rumsfeld's response on April 11, 2003, following the infamous looting and pillaging of Baghdad. In David Hare's powerful new play chronicling the extraordinary process leading to the American invasion of Iraq, this statement provides entrée into the melee of diplomacy, political power, and terrorist vendetta still making headlines around the world. Using direct quotes meticulously culled from interviews and public appearances, combined with the playwright's nuanced reimagining of what went on behind closed doors, Hare has fashioned a historical narrative and human drama that presents the Iraqi conflict in all of its haphazard notoriety. Stuff Happens uses a uniquely evenhanded approach to a deeply contested invasion--seen from the perspective of international leaders and journalists, as well as Iraqi refugees--and raises a series of provocative questions regarding the most heartfelt and manipulative machinations of domestic and international politik.
Best Poems of the Brontë Sisters
Emily Brontë - 1846
It is less well known that the sisters also composed a considerable amount of fine poetry. This volume contains forty-seven poems by all three sisters. Selections include Charlotte's "Presentiment," "Passion," two poems on the deaths of her sisters, and six more. There are twenty-three poems by Emily (considered the best poet of the three), including "Faith and Despondency" and "No Coward Soul Is Mine." The works of all three sisters share the qualities of intelligence, awareness, and heartfelt emotion, expressed in simple, highly readable verse. Gathered in this handy, inexpensive collection, the poems represent a superb introduction to a lesser-known aspect of the Brontës' literary art.
The Mighty Boosh: The Complete Radio Series
NOT A BOOK - 2004
. . Here are all six episodes of the BBC Radio 4 series, complete and uncut, from the winners of the Perrier Best Newcomer Award. In Episode 1, a mysterious character called The Phantom is stealing animals from the zoo. Howard and Vince go on a mission to find the thief and the sinister figure behind the plot. In Episode 2, tired of Bob Fossil's management, Howard and Vince venture into the zoo's Jungle Room in search of former zoo boss Tommy Nookah, (Howard's idol), who disappeared there long ago. Episode 3 sees Vince forming a rock band, but after annoying the guitarist Dave and driving him to quit, he calls on Howard to overcome the Spirit of Jazz and join them. In Episode 4, when keeper Joey Moose is savagely bitten, Howard and Vince investigate and discover Bob Fossil is breeding mutant animals to sell to wealthy Japanese businessmen. Episode 5 finds Bob Fossil sending Vince to Spain and Howard to the Arctic to collect more animals for the zoo. Our heroes end up back together facing the perils of the tundra. In Episode 6, Howard and Vince take Tony the prawn to the Zoo for Animal Offenders. Along the way they meet a mysterious hitchhiker, and end up in the bizarre world of "The People of the Box." Starring Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, with Rich Fulcher, Lee Mack, and Richard Ayoade. 3 CDs, 178 minutes