Even the most predictable of us sometimes defy expectations. Other times life plays tricks on us. We find ourselves characters in a farce. As an award-winning actor and comic writer, Rebecca Front has always been fascinated by life's little quirks. Impossible Things Before Breakfast is a collection of true stories about surprising turns of events, bizarre misunderstandings and improbable life lessons. We learn, among other things, how to prepare for a role as a villainous 'she-mountain' when you're five-foot-four, why beach holidays require military-precision planning, and the joys of wearing a cape. Combining elegant writing, wry humour and genuine insight, this brilliant new collection is about lifting the lid on ordinary life and feasting on the impossible.

    We’re each trying to describe what we know about life, to create a collective sense of “safety in numbers.” When we reach the end of our traditional descriptive powers, it’s time to weave collective meaning from poetry, painting, writing, dancing, photographing, filmmaking, storytelling, singing, animating, designing, performing, carving, sculpting, and a million other ways we daily create Order out of the Chaos and share it with each other for comfort.On this journey we need a creative philosophy which will help us find our voice, discover our message, deal with the responses to our work, maintain inspiration, and stay mentally healthy and motivated creators as we strive to find “the meaning in the making.”

    With enormous tasks, like installing a lift, plus the beginnings of lifelong traditions, this much-anticipated follow-up includes many firsts for the Strawbridge family. As Dick and Angel recount stories of the next two years at the château, we start to understand the true extent of the work and skill that it has taken to make this incredible house into a much-loved home.With never-before-told stories of remarkable discoveries, amazing transformations and once-in-a-lifetime celebrations, this book is sure to delight and inspire in equal measure!

    Through the worst years of the Great Depression as many as five thousand laborers toiled twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to erect the huge structure that would harness the Colorado River and transform the American West.Construction of the giant dam was a triumph of human ingenuity, yet the full story of this monumental endeavor has never been told. Now, in an engrossing, fast-paced narrative, Joseph E. Stevens recounts the gripping saga of Hoover Dam. Drawing on a wealth of material, including manuscript collections, government documents, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, and personal interviews and correspondence with men and women who were involved with the construction, he brings the Hoover Dam adventure to life.Described here in dramatic detail are the deadly hazards the work crews faced as they hacked and blasted the dam’s foundation out of solid rock; the bitter political battles and violent labor unrest that threatened to shut the job down; the deprivation and grinding hardship endured by the workers’ families; the dam builders’ gambling, drinking, and whoring sprees in nearby Las Vegas; and the stirring triumphs and searing moments of terror as the massive concrete wedge rose inexorably from the canyon floor.Here, too, is an unforgettable cast of characters: Henry Kaiser, Warren Bechtel, and Harry Morrison, the ambitious, headstrong construction executives who gambled fortune and fame on the Hoover Dam contract; Frank Crowe, the brilliant, obsessed field engineer who relentlessly drove the work force to finish the dam two and a half years ahead of schedule; Sims Ely, the irascible, teetotaling eccentric who ruled Boulder City, the straightlaced company town created for the dam workers by the federal government; and many more men and women whose courage and sacrifice, greed and frailty, made the dam’s construction a great human, as well as technological, adventure.Hoover Dam is a compelling, irresistible account of an extraordinary American epic.

    When overnight success came to the Pointer Sisters in 1973, they all thought it was the answer to their long-held prayers. While it may have served as an introduction to the good life, it also was an introduction to the high life of limos, champagne, white glove treatment, and mountains of cocaine that were the norm in the high-flying '70s and '80s. Ruth Pointer’s devastating addictions took her to the brink of death in 1984. Ruth Pointer has bounced back to live a drug- and alcohol-free life for the past 30 years and she shares how in her first biography. Readers will learn about the Pointer Sisters’ humble beginnings, musical apprenticeship, stratospheric success, miraculous comeback, and the melodic sound that captured the hearts of millions of music fans. They will also come to understand the five most important elements in Ruth’s story: faith, family, fortitude, fame, and forgiveness.

    The sixty-four Companions presented here are representative of that unique generation, a generation without any parallel in history. They come from all walks of life and character. These are stories of real people which can be historically verified. These stories will touch the souls of believers, for they will find in them yet another proof of that conviction that fills their hearts, though it may be denied and its signs effaced by wielders of power in the Muslim lands through treachery and cowardice.

    A ton of secrets, one postcard at a time.

    The candour...is rare and gripping' Matt Dickinson, The TimesIt was the story that shocked the world: Russian athletics was revealed to be corrupt from top to bottom, with institutionalised doping used to help the nation's athletes win medals they did not deserve. But the full story of the couple who blew the whistle has never been told - until now. When Russian anti-doping official Vitaly Stepanov met the young 800m athlete Yuliya Rusanova, for him it was love at first sight. Within two months, they were married. But there was a problem – in fact, there were lots of problems. She admitted she was doping and that everyone else was doping, and she let him know that she came from a dark place …   It could all have brought a very swift end to a very hasty marriage, but gradually the Stepanovs began to realise that whatever you did, the system in Russia was stacked against you. In the end, the only ones they could rely upon were each other. Fully aware of the risks they were taking, they decided to turn the tables on those who had manipulated them and cheated the sporting world.   The result of their investigative work sent shockwaves around the planet and led to Russia’s athletes being banned from world sport, while the Stepanovs themselves had to go into hiding. The Russian Affair is a gripping true-life drama that at times reads like a spy novel and at others like an epic love story. But, at the centre of it all, is a quietly determined couple who knew that if they stood together they could shine a light on a corrupt system and bring it crashing to the ground.

    As a scholar and an adventurer, he traveled widely throughout Europe and Russia associating with rulers and Kings. For a time he was in the service of the army and he became a great political stirrer. But he vacillated between fortune and misfortune, often resorting to gaming and loafing about. But Casanova is of course best known for his womanizing, and the writing in The Venetian Years is remarkably modern, accessible, and funny. It took him 18 years to write his memoirs and another 100 for them to be classified as genuine. Brilliantly brought to life by the effervescent Benedict Cumberbatch, this first volume of Casanova charts his childhood and life as a young man in Italy.

    But not least it is the home and constant muse of a relatively young art: photography. Since the earliest days of the daguerreotype right up to our time, renowned photographers such as Joseph Nicéphore Niepce, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, and Jeanloup Sieff have lived and worked in the city of lights. Over the years a love affair developed between Paris and photography, giving rise to a remarkable record of the metropolis and a telling history of a new art form. This volume takes the reader on numerous walks, camera in hand, through the streets of Paris. Atmospheric black-and-white photos, shot by great photographers over two centuries, reveal the dramatic and the tranquil, the historic and the everyday—in the capitals parks and gardens, boulevards and backstreets, passages and arcades, bistros and nightclubs.

    But for the rest of the world he is different: a charismatic revolutionary who redrew the political map of Latin America and gave hope to those resisting colonialism everywhere. In The Story of Che Guevara Lucia Alvarez de Toledo follows Che from his birth in Rosario and his early years in his parent's mate plantation, to his immortal motorcycle journeys across South America, his role at the heart of Castro's new Cuban government, and through to the unforgiving jungle that formed the backdrop to his doomed campaigns in the Congo and Bolivia. Based on interviews with Che's family and those who knew him intimately, this is an accessible biography that concentrates on the man rather than the icon. With the political developments in Latin America in the twenty-first century, his influence can be seen to be even greater than it was during his lifetime and The Story of Che Guevara is a perfect introduction to an extraordinary man.

    No better introduction to Western painting has ever been produced.' – The Sunday Times

    Two years ago, Breslin was having trouble getting his left eyelid to open and close. This was too peculiar to ignore, so Breslin decided to pay a rare visit to his doctor. As it turned out, the eyelid was a matter of nerves. But extensive testing revealed something unrelated and life-threatening: he had an aneurysm in his brain - a thin, ballooned artery wall that could burst and kill him at any moment unless he opted for a risky surgical procedure. Breslin agreed to the surgery and at age sixty-five, grateful for this miracle (what else could you call it?), began taking stock of his remarkable life.

    In her early nineties, she generously shared her hospitality and wisdom with writer Malte Herwig, who started out as an interviewer but found himself drawn into the role of pupil as Gilot, whom he called “a philosopher of joy,” introduced him to different ways of seeing the world.

    Two pages, with illustrations and biographical/bibliographical information, are devoted to each artist.