. . Charles Ramsey gives a roller coaster account of his life before, during, and after the dramatic rescue of three kidnapped women in Cleveland . . .Global news media declared him a hero. Well-wishers mobbed him. The Internet made him a viral sensation. It couldn't have happened to a less likely guy. Now, read how it all went down.Ramsey was in the wrong place at the right time when he answered a young woman's cry for help, kicked in his neighbor's locked front door, and got her the hell out of there--leading to the astonishing rescue of three young women--Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight--who had been missing for a decade.Reporters and TV cameras flocked to a neighborhood--and a man--they otherwise would have ignored. Ramsey was ready, with plenty to say."Bro, I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms . . . Dead giveaway." It was a quote that launched a thousand Internet memes . . .In this book Ramsey walks us step-by-step through the day of the rescue and talks about living right next door to Ariel Castro--outwardly charming, secretly a monster.He tells about life before the rescue--growing up a privileged black kid in a white suburb, seeking out trouble over and over, getting kicked out of school, selling drugs, going to prison, and ultimately finding work as a dishwasher and landing by chance on gritty Seymour Avenue.And he shares what it's like to become an instant celebrity, when suddenly everybody wants a piece of you. (For example, he learned the hard way that when a big TV network flies you to New York City for an interview, that doesn't mean they also bought you a ticket back home to Cleveland!)This is a wild, eye-opening tale told with a sharp sense of humor.

    Neale McShane The Birdsville police posting is one of the most remote in Australia. It can be extremely lonely and incredibly busy at the same time. Nothing might happen for weeks or months, then problems come crawling out of the woodwork.There aren't many who can handle the job for long - unless you're Senior Constable Neale McShane, who has single-handedly taken care of this beat the size of the UK for the past ten years. Recently retired from this 'hardship posting', Neale now has a stock of stories and adventures from his life and colourful times living with his family in Birdsville.In recounting these tales to his good friend and bestselling author Evan McHugh, Neale delights us with yarns that could only come from the furthest corner of our country. Here are stories of desert dangers, dead bodies, droughts and floods, drinkers and dreamers - and, of course the infamous Birdsville Races, when the town's population swells from 50 to 500.So if Birdsville has remained just a little too far off the beaten track for you, sit back and let Birdsville come to you.

    Spanning two alphabetically arranged volumes, these commentaries reveal how the songs came to be and the people who inspired them: his devoted parents, Mary and Jim; his songwriting partner, John Lennon; his “Golden Earth Girl,” Linda Eastman; his wife, Nancy McCartney; and even Queen Elizabeth, among many others. Here are the origins of “Let It Be,” “Lovely Rita,” “Yesterday,” and “Mull of Kintyre,” as well as McCartney’s literary influences, including Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, and Alan Durband, his high-school English teacher.With images from McCartney’s personal archives—handwritten texts, paintings, and photographs, hundreds previously unseen—The Lyrics, spanning sixty-four years, becomes the definitive literary and visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

    He's a genuine voice of the people, the bastard child of Woody Guthrie and James Brown, and an elder statesman who has inspired generations of bands. He's won twenty Grammy Awards, an Oscar, two Golden Globes, and is a member of two Halls of Fame.There are dozens of books about Springsteen. What's left to say? Nothing objective, perhaps. But when it comes to music, objectivity is highly overrated. Robert Wiersema has been a Springsteen fan since he was a teenager, following tours to see multiple shows in a row, watching set lists develop in real time via the Internet, ordering bootlegs from shady vendors in Italy. His attachment is deeper than fandom, though: he's grown up with Springsteen's songs as the soundtrack to his life, beginning with his youth in rural British Columbia and continuing on through dreams of escape, falling in love, and becoming a father.Walk Like a Man is the liner notes for a mix tape, a blend of biography, music criticism, and memoir. Like the best mix tapes, it balances joy and sorrow, laughter seasoning the dark-night-of-the-soul questions that haunt us all. Wiersema's book is the story of a man becoming a man (despite getting a little lost along the way), and of Springsteen's songs and life that have accompanied him on his journey.

    Originally conceived for the Vienna Poetry Festival (1998) and performed to great success and a capacity audience at The Royal Festival Hall, London earlier in 1999, this is a special studio recording. It includes five new and unique recordings of his songs 'West Country Girl', 'People Ain't no Good', 'Sad Waters', 'Love Letter', and 'Far From Me'. The Word Made Flesh is a wholly spoken-word piece, re-recorded, originally conceived and executed for the BBC Religious Services Department in 1996.

    Michelle Browning is 33, drunk and a former beauty queen who nears death after six years of homelessness. Judith Glynn is divorced with grown children and struggles to support herself in her adopted city. After their first hello, neither woman is the same as they embark on a remarkable journey for two years. This memoir is a raw yet enlightening read that graphically depicts the homeless subculture. But as Judith sets out all alone to rescue Michelle is her fixation worth the sacrifice? At stake is whether Michelle will choose possible death in a gutter over Judith's guiding light back into society. Enrolled in Kindle Book Lending that allows users to lend their book after purchasing to their friends and family for a duration of 14 days. For full details, review the Kindle Book Lending Program.

    Although she is sixteen, she weighs as much as an eight-year-old. We have tried everything the medical system has to offer – psychologists, psychiatrists, family therapists, dieticians, drugs … but nothing has worked. And now here we are, she and I, flying to the other side of the world in a last ditch effort to save her. Anorexia is a difficult thing to get people to understand. Usually they will look at me incredulously. Sometimes they will come right out and say what I know they are thinking: Why can’t you just get her to eat?Anne Tonner is a high achieving human rights lawyer and used to facing battles and winning. But when her 13-year-old daughter Chloe stops eating and is diagnosed with anorexia, she is confronted with the mother of all enemies, one that is completely unfathomable and seemingly incurable. Anne and her family throw everything they have at facing the ‘demon' they name 'Cold Vein'. But some three years later Chloe is still desperately ill and the family is in tatters. In a last ditch effort they travel across the world to attend a ground breaking- clinic in Stockholm, knowing that this might be the only chance Chloe has to survive.Beautifully and engagingly written, Anne’s depiction of the devastating effects of anorexia is honest, tough and compelling. Ultimately uplifting, this story will shed light on one of the most insidious and dangerous mental conditions afflicting modern society today.

    I was making my mark in this all-male field. My appointment book was filled with more and more celebrities. And I was becoming competition for my heroes . . . Behind the scenes of every Hollywood photo shoot, TV appearance, and party in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, there was Carrie White. As the “First Lady of Hairdressing,” Carrie collaborated with Richard Avedon on shoots for Vogue, partied with Jim Morrison, gave Sharon Tate her California signature style, and got high with Jimi Hendrix. She has counted Jennifer Jones, Betsy Bloomingdale, Elizabeth Taylor, Goldie Hawn, and Camille Cosby among her favorite clients. But behind the glamorous facade, Carrie’s world was in perpetual disarray and always had been. After her father abandoned the family when she was still a child, she was sexually abused by her domineering stepfather, and her alcoholic mother was unstable and unreliable. Carrie was sipping cocktails before her tenth birthday, and had had five children and three husbands before her twenty-eighth. She fueled the frenetic pace of her professional life with a steady diet of champagne and vodka, diet pills, cocaine, and heroin, until she eventually lost her home, her car, her career—and nearly her children. But she battled her way back, getting sober, rebuilding her relationships and her reputation as a hairdresser, and today, the name Carrie White is once again on the door of one of Beverly Hills’s most respected salons. An unflinching portrayal of addiction and recovery, Upper Cut proves that even in Hollywood, sometimes you have to fight for a happy ending.

    All his life Don had been too shy, too deeply pained to ask his father or grandparents to tell him the story of the lovely girl named Peggy Snyder--what delighted or troubled her, who her friends were, how she fell in love, what cut short her brief life.But then, nearing his fiftieth birthday and compelled by his father's failing health, Snyder embarked on a quest to find his mother. He traveled many times from his home in Maine down to his mother's small Pennsylvania town to trace her childhood and adolescence. He tracked down Peggy's high school friends, spent time with her teachers, probed the memories of the girls--now elderly women-- who had been her bridesmaids. Detail by detail, Don pieced together the harrowing story of Peggy's final year--her passionate love affair with her husband, the unexpected pregnancy, the sudden illness that consumed her, and the impossible choice she was forced to make.A heartbreaking, overwhelmingly beautiful book, Of Time and Memory is a story of remembering--and reclaiming--the fragile mystery of a beloved life.

    Bret was the good son, the obedient public servant, Kim the itinerant wanderer. In this family of two parent teachers, with its intermittent celebration of “talking recklessly,” there was a code of silence about hard things: “Why tell what hurts?” As childhood pleasures ebbed, this reticence took its toll on Bret, unable to reveal his troubles. Against a backdrop of the 1960s — puritan in the summer of love, pacifist in the Vietnam era — Bret became a casualty of his interior war and took his life in 1988. 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do casts spells in search of the lost brother: climbing the water tower to stand naked under the moon, cowboys and Indians with real bullets, breaking into church to play a serenade for God, struggling for love, and making bail. In this book, through a brother’s devotions, the lost saint teaches us about depression, the tender ancestry of violence, the quest for harmonious relations, and finally the trick of joy.

    It's this juxtaposition, the poet's gift for poignant love songs paired with a comedian's timing and self-deprecating wit, that has earned Jann a legion of loyal fans on the stage as well as the page. Two years after the success of her first publication if i knew, don(c)^t you think i'd tell you? (Insomniac Press), acclaimed singer / songwriter and now bestselling author Jann Arden is at it again with her second book, i'll tell you one damn thing, and that's all i know. Little escapes the observant and immensely creative Jann whose musings and entertaining ramblings travel beyond goose poop (if you don't remember, buy the first book) to ponder the state of the world, the state of the States, and the state of her hair (she really is a blonde).

    This is Nick‘s behind-the-scenes account of his encounters with David Cameron, who many wrote off before the shock victory he called his 'sweetest'; Ed Miliband, who turned abuse & ridicule into respect before leading Labour to its worst defeat in a generation; Nick Clegg, who led his party into power and then to humiliation and near oblivion; Nigel Farage, who rose so fast and then fell at the final hurdle; Alex Salmond, whose public clash with Nick led to thousands protesting outside the BBC’s Scottish HQ, and Nicola Sturgeon, whose stunning success as SNP leader has put Scottish independence back on the map.The result is an extraordinary narrative, characterized by Nick Robinson’s trademark insight, analysis and backstage gossip, of an adrenaline-fuelled year which culminated in a captivating election that transformed Britain’s political landscape.

    If there was a sport to play, a party to throw, a celebrity to amaze, a fireworks display to ignite, Plimpton was front and center hurling the pitch, popping the corks, lighting the fuse. And then, of course, writing about it with incomparable zest and style. His books made him a legend. The Paris Review, the magazine he founded and edited, won him a throne in literary heaven. Somehow, in the midst of his self-generated cyclones, Plimpton managed to toss off dazzling essays, profiles, and New Yorker “Talk of the Town” pieces. This delightful volume collects the very best of Plimpton’s inspired brief “excursions.”Whether he was escorting Hunter Thompson to the Fear and Loathing movie premiere in New York or tracking down the California man who launched himself into the upper atmosphere with nothing but a lawn chair and a bunch of weather balloons, Plimpton had a rare knack for finding stories where no one else thought to look. Who but Plimpton would turn up in Las Vegas, notebook in hand, for the annual porn movie awards gala?Among the many gems collected here are accounts of helping Jackie Kennedy plan an unforgettable children’s birthday party, the time he improvised his way through amateur night at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater, and how he managed to get himself kicked out of Exeter just weeks before graduation.The grand master of what he called “participatory journalism,” George Plimpton followed his bent and his genius down the most unbelievable rabbit holes–but he always came up smiling. This exemplary, utterly captivating volume is a fitting tribute to one of the great literary lives of our time.From the Hardcover edition.

    Don’t ask her to forgive and forget.When Kim was just 22, her older brother, Ron Goldman, was brutally killed by O.J. Simpson. Ron and Kim were very close, and her devastation was compounded by the shocking not guilty verdict that allowed a smirking Simpson to leave as a free man.It wasn’t Kim’s first trauma. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she and Ron were raised by their father. Her mother kidnapped her, telling her that her father didn’t love her any more. When she was 14, she was almost blinded from severe battery acid burns on her face during an automobile accident, requiring three reconstructive surgeries.But none of these early traumas compared to the loss of her brother, the painful knowledge that his killer was free, and fact that she could not even grieve privately—her grief was made painfully public. Counseled by friends, strangers, and even Oprah to “find closure,” Kim chose a different route. She chose to fight.Repeatedly, Kim and her family pursued Simpson by every legal means. Foiled over and over again, they ultimately achieved a small measure of justice.Kim’s story is one of tragedy, but also of humanity and, often, comedy. Living life as one of America’s most famous “victims” isn’t always easy, especially as a single mother in the dating market. She often had bizarre first date experiences, with one man even breaking down into tears and inconsolable with grief after realizing who she was.Ultimately Kim’s story is that of an ordinary person thrown into extraordinary circumstances at a very young age, and who had the courage—despite the discouragement of so many—to ignore the conventional wisdom and never give up her fight for justice.

    But then she didn't count on having a gypsy wedding...It's rare for a 'gorger', or non-traveller, to marry into the gypsy community. But after a shocking childhood tragedy, Sam found the comfort she needed from an unxpected source - Patrick and his family of travellers.Gypsy Bride is the heartwarming true story of how an ordinary girl finds herself discovering an extraordinary world. A place where 'grabbing' is a sign a boy fancies you, six-year-olds get spray tans, and christenings, weddings and funerals are jaw-droppingly flamboyant.This love story is more than boy meets girl. It's about a girl who falls in love with a whole race of people and their wonderful ways.