This moving historical account, drawn from the memories of those whose lives Dawson touched and from the author’s firsthand knowledge, will both encourage you in your faith and inspire you to action.

    an a June day in 1988, four people are slain in precisely timed attacks at three different locations in the state. Police know who the killers are, but cannot convict them. They also know who is giving the execution orders: a man buried in a Texas grave twelve years ago. Dubbed by the media as the "Mormon Manson," Ervil LeBaron believed he was a prophet chosen by God to purify the Mormon faith. Resurrecting the nineteenth-century Mormon tenets of polygamy and blood atonement, he formed a fanatic religious cult - still in existence - which has left bodies scattered throughout the American Southwest. So strong is LeBaron's hold that, even twelve years after his death, many of his thirteen wives and sixty children are still carrying out his orders. It is those orders that frighten law enforcement officials. Before he died, LeBaron penned a chilling last testament to his family, a death list called The Book of New Covenants. To date, five of those on the list have been murdered, and no one involved in the case believes the bloodshed is over yet. Investigative writer Scott Anderson presents an astonishing portrait of America's most bizarre crime family. In a meticulously researched book, Anderson follows the bloody trail of the LeBaron cult over twenty years, and reveals how it has been served by the controversial and hidden history of the Mormon church. As compelling as the best fiction, The 4 O'Clock Murders is all the more terrifying because it is true.

    Roberts, a man well recognized in the church and the author of many beloved books, was one that could fill countless pages. The son of a “ne’er-do-well,” his life in England reads as if it were straight from a Charles Dickens novel. His family was torn apart when his mother joined the Church and emigrated to America. Left to struggle alone in England with his sister, his life was one of severe trials. Finally, they were able to emigrate and join the other saints gathering in Utah.His tremendous impact in the church comes through his voluminous writings on Church subjects. Interestingly, he was eleven years old before he learned to read, and the discovery of what lies within printed words opened a deep love for knowledge. This passion eventually led to him becoming one of the foremost scholars, writers and religious leaders in the Church.For both the general reader as well as the specialist, this biography of B.H. Roberts will fill a long-standing gap as they come to better know this outstanding man.

    Paul chased adventure wherever he could find it, from his wild ride as a hoodlum teen and his drug-and-alcohol fuelled stint working in a strip club to hauling his way up to the elite echelons of the defence forces.But trouble hunted him down in the form of a brutal shark in February 2009. Paul lost two limbs, and his career as a daredevil navy clearance diver was flung into jeopardy. Drawing on everything his eventful life had taught him, Paul left nothing to chance in his recovery. He fought through excruciating pain, smashing challenge after challenge, and amazing the medical staff with his will to succeed. His inspiring story takes ‘never say die’ to a whole new level.

    Deborah Feldman, author of the explosive New York Times– bestselling memoir Unorthodox, returns with an extraordinary follow-up that traces her new life as an independent young woman and single mother, and her search for an authentic and personal Jewish identity.

    From his eccentric South London working class childhood to running one of the biggest cities in the world, Ken Livingstone delivers the turbulent true story of his life as one of Britain's foremost politicians.

    More than fifty years later, Linda Scott DeRosier has come to believe that you can take a woman out of Appalachia but you can't take Appalachia out of the woman. DeRosier's humorous and poignant memoir is the story of an educated and cultured woman who came of age in Appalachia. She remains unabashedly honest about and proud of her mountain heritage. Now a college profe

    From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry—especially chemical embalming—and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality.

    Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution. There she entertained a steady stream of governors, gangsters, and movie stars until she was arrested at last in 1962. Shortly before she died in 1974, she tape—recorded her memories-the scandalous stories of a powerful woman who had the city's politicians in her pocket and whose lovers included the twenty-five-year-old boy next door, whom she married when she was sixty-four. Combining those tapes with original research, Christine Wiltz chronicles not just Norma's rise and fall but also the social history of New Orleans, thick with the vice and corruption that flourished there—and, like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Philistines at the Hedgerow, resurrects a vanished secret world.

    But for Wylie, the gentle, cropped eared ball of fur, miracles seemed to happen quite regularly. Beaten and abused at the hands of uncaring humans, Wylie suffered terrible injuries that needed urgent treatment. Rescued close to death, with hacked off ears and a severed tail, he was attended to by soldiers who feared he would not last the night. Astonishingly he did, only to return days later with new injuries. However a lifeline came when he was handed over to animal welfare Charity Nowzad and flown to Britain in the hope of finding a new life. But would anyone take a chance on a seemingly undomesticated stray? Luckily for Wylie his biggest adventure yet was about to begin...

    Rose (1815-1899) was a Rocky Mountain trapper and mountain man. No novel was ever written depicting more thrilling encounters with Indians or hair-breadth escapes than were experienced by Isaac Rose and his companions. These are fully recounted in a volume entitled, "Four Years in the Rockies," the authorship of which is accredited to James B. Marsh. It is a work full of interest for all readers. He was nineteen years old when he left his plough and, in company with a companion, Joe Lewis, he made his way to Pittsburg. The boys had cherished the hope of securing employment as stage drivers but, as they found no opening in that direction, they accepted berths at $15 per month as deck hands on a steamboat that was then loading for St. Louis. When they reached the latter city, Rose found employment as a hack driver in a livery stable, and Lewis a job of attending to the horses. Here the boys became acquainted with a number of "Rocky Mountain Boys," as they were called, and became fascinated with their stories of mountain life, of fights with bear and adventures in buffalo, elk and deer hunting, together with skirmishes with the Indians. Soon after this he joined a company formed by Nathaniel Wyeth, which started from Independence for the Rocky Mountains, with an outfit worth $100,000, sixty men and 200 horses and mules heavily loaded with goods. At the Gallatin River Isaac Rose and his party were joined by some trappers belonging to the American Fur Company, one of whom was Kit Carson. For years this noted trapper and Mr. Rose were closely associated in their adventurous life. Later, Mr. Rose became so expert a trapper himself that he won a prize of $300 as a trapper of beaver. In 1836 he had a thrilling experience with Indians, which almost caused the loss of his arm. The author writes: "The hunters and trappers of the far west, at the time when the incidents I am about to relate occurred, were a brave, hardy and adventurous set of men, and they had peculiarities in their characters that cannot be found in any other people. From the time they leave civilization they—metaphorically speaking—carry their lives in their hands. An enemy may be concealed in every thicket or looked for behind every rock. They have not only the wild and savage beasts to contend with, but the still more wily and savage Indian, and their life is one continual round of watchfulness and excitement. Their character is a compound of two extremes— recklessness and caution—and isolation from the world makes them at all times self-reliant. In moments of the greatest peril, or under the most trying circumstances, they never lose their presence of mind, but are ready to take advantage of any incident that may occur to benefit themselves or foil their enemies. "As, in the course of this narrative, we may have occasion to describe some of the trappers who were comrades of Mr. Rose, and who took part in many of his adventures, I wish my readers to be fully aware of the character of these men, and that their camp stories are not all idle boasting. A more hardy, fearless, improvident set of men can nowhere else be found." This book originally published in 1884 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.

    In The Answer Is Never, skating journalist Jocko Weyland tells the rambunctious story of a rebellious sport that began as a wintertime surfing substitute on the streets of Southern California beach towns more than forty years ago and has evolved over the decades to become a fixture of urban youth culture around the world. Merging the historical development of the sport with passages about his own skating adventures in such wide-ranging places as Hawaii, Germany, and Cameroon, Weyland gives a fully realized portrait of a subculture whose love of free-flowing creativity and a distinctive antiauthoritarian worldview has inspired major trends in fashion, music, art, and film. Along the way, Weyland interweaves the stories of skating pioneers like Gregg Weaver and the Dogtown Z-Boys and living legends like Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk. He also charts the course of innovations in deck, truck, and wheel design to show how the changing boards changed the sport itself, enabling new tricks as skaters moved from the freestyle techniques that dominated the early days to the extreme street-skating style of today. Vivid and vibrant, The Answer Is Never is a fascinating book as radical and unique as the sport it chronicles.

    . . Mr. Colletti's book might be even more groundbreaking [than Moneyball] in some ways: It's a nearly unprecedented opportunity to see what running a baseball franchise looks like through the eyeballs of an actual general manager. . . [Colletti] has a gift for entertaining storytelling. . . These are stories modern general managers rarely tell, except in late-night gatherings at their favorite bars with people they know and trust. So to read them here, told in such colorful detail, makes you feel as if Ned Colletti has just invited you to plop down on the next bar stool." --Wall Street Journal "Ned Colletti is a baseball treasure with fascinating stories to tell from inside the game. The Big Chair is your all-access pass. After reading this book, you will not only understand the job of a general manager better but also the game of baseball itself."--Tom Verducci, author of The Cubs Way and co-author of The Yankee YearsAn unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look at the career of famed former Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager (a position also known as "The Big Chair"), whose tenure spanned nine of the most exciting and turbulent years in the franchise's history.During his tenure with the Dodgers, Colletti had the highest winning percentage of any general manager in the National League. In The Big Chair, he lets readers in on the real GM experience from his unique vantage point--sharing the inner workings of three of the top franchises in the sport, revealing the out-of-the-headlines machinations behind the trades, the hires and the deals; how the money really works; how the decision-making really works; how much power the players really have and why--the real brass tacks of some of the most pivotal decisions made in baseball history that led to great success along with heartbreak and failure on the field. Baseball fans will come for the grit and insight, stay for the heart, and pass it on for the wisdom.Ned Colletti began his MLB career with his beloved hometown team, the Chicago Cubs, more than 35 years ago. He worked in Chicago for a dozen years and was in the front office when the Cubs won the National League East in 1984 and 1989, after which he moved on as director of baseball operations for the SF Giants. By 1996, he became the Assistant GM for the Giants, before being hired as the GM in Los Angeles in 2006. There he oversaw the Dodgers through the highly publicized and acrimonious divorce battle between Frank and Jamie McCourt that culminated in the equally highly publicized sale of the team. He was present at the press conference where Don Mattingly, having just watched his team eliminated from the playoffs, used the post-season conference to vehemently discuss his lack of a contract extension. He brought marquee names like Greg Maddux and Clayton Kershaw to LA, as well as marquee drama with the likes of Manny Ramirez and Yasiel Puig; hired future Hall of Famer Joe Torre as manager; and oversaw fourteen Dodgers playoff wins. And these are just a few of the highlights.Colletti serves up a huge dish of first-hand experiences with some of the biggest names in baseball history (Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux, Don Mattingly, Don Zimmer, Tommy Lasorda, Scott Boras, Vin Scully, and more). From his humble early years living in a Chicago garage to his path to one of the most prestigious positions in professional sports, his very public and illustrious career has left a permanent handprint in the history of America's sport--and now he's ready to share the insight only those who have sat in The Big Chair have ever seen.

    On programmes such as My Word! and My Music his distinctive voice became familiar to millions as he displayed an astonishingly well-stocked mind and a genius for ad libbing and outrageous puns. Later, working at the BBC and then at London Weekend Television, he produced some of the best television comedy of the 1960s and 70s. He has written highly successful books for children, and two bestselling anthologies of humour.Frank Muir recalls, in glorious detail, a happy 1920s childhood in the seaside town of Ramsgate, where he was born in his grandmother's pub in Broadstairs, and in London, where he attended an inexpensive but excellent school of a kind no longer to be found. He remembers his very first joke at the age of six, when he knew that his destiny was to make people laugh. He also knew from an early age that he wanted to write, but it took a childhood illness for him to discover that humour and writing could be combined. The death of his father forced him to leave school at the age of fourteen and work in a factory making carbon paper. Then, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the RAF as an air photographer and his memories of the war years, as might be imagined, are engagingly different from the usual kind. It was during those years, with their rich fund of comic material, that he began his career as scriptwriter and performer. At his demob in 1945 he moved naturally to London and the Windmill Theatre, that remarkable breeding ground of talent where new comedians like Jimmy Edwards and Alfred Marks vied with nude girls for the attention of the audience. In story after story he recalls the lost world of London in the 1940s and early 50s, when the laughter and creative ideas seemed to explode out of post-war shabbiness and austerity. Then came the BBC, the legendary partnership with Denis Norden, and half a century of fulfilling the boyhood ambition of that Kentish lad. 'All I ever wanted to do was to write and amuse people.'

    . . . "For a long time, Edie thought she had escaped. It started in an Appalachian trailer park, where a young girl dreamed of becoming a doctor. But every day, Edie woke up to her reality: a poverty-stricken world where getting out seemed impossible. Where, at twelve years old, she taught herself to drive a truck so she could get her drunk daddy home from the bar. Where the grownups ate while the children went hungry. Where, when the family trailer burned down, she couldn't be caught squawlin' over losing her things--she just had to be grateful anyone had remembered to save her at all.And at the center of it all, there was her daddy. She never knew when he would show up; she learned the hard way that she couldn't count on him to protect her. But it didn't matter: All she wanted was to make him proud. Against all odds, Edie "made doctor," achieving everything that had once seemed beyond her reach. But her past caught up with her--and it would take her whole life burning down once again for Edie to be finally able to face the truth about herself, her family, and her relationship with God. Readers of The Glass Castle will treasure this refreshing and raw redemption story, a memoir for anyone who has ever hungered for home, forgiveness, and the safe embrace of a father's love.