Everything's rattling, crashing down. I'm choking on dust. I can't breathe... I'm coughing, choking. Sal's screaming ..." On the night of July 30th 1997 a landslide shattered the tranquility of Thredbo Village, sweeping away two ski lodges and burying 19 people beneath tonnes of concrete and mud. In the days that followed, the world mourned as rescuers dragged body after body from the rubble. But out of tragedy sprang an amazing story of survival. Stuart Diver, whose young wife Sally died beside him in the first moments of the slide, had clung to life buried beneath a concrete slab for 65 freezing hours. This is Stuart Diver's story. The story of how one man found the mental and physical strength to live through tragedy and survive against impossible odds. Stuart relives the event that changed his world forever and talks honestly about what went through his mind during his long hours alone beneath the rubble, his painful recovery, and his inspirational attitude to life and the future. And he reveals how the lessons he learned at Thredbo can help each of us find the inner strength to become a survivor. This special edition includes four bonus chapters that covers Stuart's life in the more than ten years since the original publication of Survival.

    As well as exploring the personalities and crises facing these extraordinary people as a family, The Restless Kings follows them as they raced around western Europe, struggling to hold together a vast conglomeration of lands - often through force of arms - whilst constantly harried by the their nominal overlord and arch rival, Philip Augustus, king of France. Although the key events took place over 800 years ago, their significance still resonates today. Whether you're looking for the root causes of Brexit or tension in the Middle East, their origins can be found in the actions of the Angevin kings of England. The Restless Kings will challenge everything you assumed you knew about the medieval world. Above all, it brings to life some of the most remarkable, complex, flawed and brilliant monarchs ever to have sat on the English throne.

    The result was an immediate war as Rufus’s elder brother Robert fought to gain the crown he saw as rightfully his; this conflict marked the start of 400 years of bloody disputes as the English monarchy’s line of hereditary succession was bent, twisted and finally broken when the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, fell at Bosworth in 1485.The Anglo-Norman and Plantagenet dynasties were renowned for their internecine strife, and in Lost Heirs we will unearth the hidden stories of fratricidal brothers, usurping cousins and murderous uncles; the many kings – and the occasional queen – who should have been but never were. History is written by the winners, but every game of thrones has its losers too, and their fascinating stories bring richness and depth to what is a colourful period of history. King John would not have gained the crown had he not murdered his young nephew, who was in line to become England’s first King Arthur; Henry V would never have been at Agincourt had his father not seized the throne by usurping and killing his cousin; and as the rival houses of York and Lancaster fought bloodily over the crown during the Wars of the Roses, life suddenly became very dangerous indeed for a young boy named Edmund.

    They find a safe haven in the isolated Norfolk village where Seb was born. Yet this idyllic rural setting has its own murderous secrets and a terrible crime requires our hero to play the sleuth once more.Even away from London, Seb and Emily are not as safe as they believe - their enemies are closer than they know and danger lurks at every twist and turn. The sixth Sebastian Foxley medieval murder mystery from bestselling author Toni Mount brings the medieval era to life once again.

    A woman most at home among her horses and dogs. And a woman long annealed to heartbreak and sorrow, who has presided over the decline of Great Britain and the decline in prestige of her own Windsor dynasty.Far from being a light, gossipy treatment of a celebrity, Lilibet tells the queen's story from her point of view, letting the reader relive Elizabeth's long and eventful life with all its splendid ceremonies, momentous responsibilities and family clashes. Through it all we glimpse, as never before, the strong and appealing sovereign who has ruled over her people for half a century and more, a ruler of immense wealth, international esteem and high character whose daily life is grounded in the bedrock of common sense.

    If you have read other books about him, read this one to discover more about his philosophy and spirituality based on his own works. It covers his entire life from birth to death. The Joy of Life distills the personality of Theodore Roosevelt into one medium-sized book. Quotes appear in this book which show him to be funny, hyperactive, energetic, exciting, enthusiastic, entertaining and lovable. His contemporaries say such things as: the more I see him the more and more I love him; work was an entertainment with him there; it was love at first sight; never have we laughed so much as when T.R. was our host. The book shows what motivated him at each stage of his life. During his Police Commissioner days he said to Jacob Riis, author of How the Other Half Lives, "I have read your book and I have come to help." Charging up San Juan hill he realized that he was destined to become a great leader of people like his Rough Riders: a mixed group who included cowboys, Indians, Ivy Leaguers, hispanics, marshals, negroes and Texas Rangers. His greatest effort was in conservation. He preserved millions of acres of land including wildlife refuges, national parks, national monuments and irrigation projects. He accomplished many things in his life but would have obtained a place in history for that alone.

    Julia Gelardi's Born to Rule is the powerful epic story of five royal granddaughters of Queen Victoria, who reigned over the end of their empires, the destruction of their families, and the tumult of the twentieth centuryHere are the stories of Alexandra, whose faith in Rasputin and tragic end have become the stuff of legend; Marie, the flamboyant and eccentric queen who battled her way through a life of intrigues and was also the mother of two Balkan queens and of the scandalous Carol II of Romania; Victoria Eugenie, Spain's very English queen who, like Alexandra, introduced hemophilia into her husband's family---with devastating consequences for her marriage; Maud, King Edward VII's daughter, who was independent Norway's reluctant queen; and Sophie, Kaiser Wilhelm II's much maligned sister, daughter of an emperor and herself the mother of no less than three kings and a queen, who ended her days in bitter exile.Using never before published letters, memoirs, diplomatic documents, secondary sources, and interviews with descendents of the subjects, Julia Gelardi's Born to Rule is an astonishing and memorable work of popular history.

    This book helps to restore full humanity to these six fascinating women by applying the insights of feminist scholarship. Here they appear not as stereotypes, not simply as victims, but as lively, intelligent noblewomen doing their best to survive in a treacherous court. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived takes a revisionist look at 16th-century English politics (domestic and otherwise), reinterpreting the historical record in perceptive new ways. For example, it shows Ann Boleyn not as a seductress, but as a sophisticate who for years politely suffered what we would now label royal sexual harassment. It presents evidence that the princess Anne of Cleves, whom Henry declared ugly and banished from his bed, was in fact a pretty woman who agreed to the king's whim as her best hope for happiness.

    Because it was extremely difficult to verbalize the events to her own children years later, her adult family knew very little of the details until 30 years after her passing in 1967. That is when her granddaughter discovered her writings and promised to tell the story of what she endured.

    What did they have in common? For a while they were crowned in gold, cosseted in silk, and flattered by courtiers. But in the end, they spent long nights in dark prison towers and were marched to the scaffold where they surrendered their heads to the executioner. And they are hardly alone in their undignified demises. Throughout history, royal women have had a distressing way of meeting bad ends—dying of starvation, being burned at the stake, or expiring in childbirth while trying desperately to produce an heir. They always had to be on their toes and all too often even devious plotting, miraculous pregnancies, and selling out their sisters was not enough to keep them from forcible consignment to religious orders. From Cleopatra (suicide by asp), to Princess Caroline (suspiciously poisoned on her coronation day), there's a gory downside to being blue-blooded when you lack a Y chromosome.Kris Waldherr's elegant little book is a chronicle of the trials and tribulations of queens across the ages, a quirky, funny, utterly macabre tribute to the dark side of female empowerment. Over the course of fifty irresistibly illustrated and too-brief lives, Doomed Queens charts centuries of regal backstabbing and intrigue. We meet well-known figures like Catherine of Aragon, whose happy marriage to Henry VIII ended prematurely when it became clear that she was a starter wife—the first of six. And we meet forgotten queens like Amalasuntha, the notoriously literate Ostrogoth princess who overreached politically and was strangled in her bath. While their ends were bleak, these queens did not die without purpose. Their unfortunate lives are colorful cautionary tales for today's would-be power brokers—a legacy of worldly and womanly wisdom gathered one spectacular regal ruin at a time.

    'The Other Tudors' examines the extraordinary untold tales of the women who Henry loved but never married, the mistresses who became queens and of his many children, both acknowledged and unacknowledged.

    Endowed with English royal blood on her mother's side, she was betrothed in infancy to Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII of England, an alliance that greatly benefited both sides. Yet Arthur died weeks after their marriage in 1501, and Catherine found herself remarried to his younger brother, soon to become Henry VIII. The history of England-and indeed of Europe-was forever altered by their union.Drawing on his deep knowledge of both Spain and England, Giles Tremlett has produced the first full biography in more than four decades of the tenacious woman whose marriage to Henry VIII lasted twice as long (twenty-four years) as his five other marriages combined. Her refusal to divorce him put her at the center of one of history's greatest power struggles, one that has resonated down through the centuries- Henry's break away from the Catholic Church as, bereft of a son, he attempted to annul his marriage to Catherine and wed Anne Boleyn. Catherine's daughter, Mary, would controversially inherit Henry's throne; briefly and bloodily, she returned England to the Catholicism of her mother's native Spain, foreshadowing the Spanish Armada some three decades later.From Catherine's peripatetic childhood at the glittering court of Ferdinand and Isabella to the battlefield at Flodden, where she, in Henry's absence abroad, led the English forces to victory against Scotland to her determination to remain queen and her last years in almost monastic isolation, Giles Tremlett vividly re-creates the life of a giant figure in the sixteenth century. Catherine of Aragon will take its place among the best of Tudor biography.

    

    She was at the very center of the rich culture and clashing politics of the twelfth century. Richest marriage prize of the Middle Ages, she was Queen of France as the wife of Louis VII, and went with him on the exciting and disastrous Second Crusade. Inspiration of troubadours and trouveres, she played a large part in rendering fashionable the Courts of Love and in establishing the whole courtly tradition of medieval times. Divorced from Louis, she married Henry Plantagenet, who became Henry II of England. Her resources and resourcefulness helped Henry win his throne, she was involved in the conflict over Thomas Becket, and, after Henry’s death, she handled the affairs of the Angevin empire with a sagacity that brought her the trust and confidence of popes and kings and emperors. Having been first a Capet and then a Plantagenet, Queen Eleanor was the central figure in the bitter rivalry between those houses for the control of their continental domains, a rivalry that excited the whole period: after Henry’s death, her sons, Richard Coeur-de-Lion and John Lackland (of Magna Carta fame), fiercely pursued the feud up to and even beyond the end of the century. But the dynastic struggle of the period was accompanied by other stirrings: the intellectual revolt, the struggle between church and state, the secularization of literature and other arts, the rise of the distinctive urban culture of the great cities. Eleanor was concerned with all the movements, and closely connected with all the personages; she knew every city from London and Paris to Byzantium, Jerusalem, and Rome.Amy Kelly’s story of the queen’s long life—the first modern biography—brings together more authentic information about her than has ever been assembled before and reveals in Eleanor a greatness of vision, an intelligence, and a political sagacity that have been missed by those who have dwelt on her caprice and frivolity. It also brings to life the whole period in whose every aspect Eleanor and her four kings were so intimately and influentially involved. Miss Kelly tells Eleanor’s absorbing story as it has long waited to be told: with verve and style and a sense of the quality of life in those times, and yet with a scrupulous care for the historic facts.

    The public not only found Laurel's serene simpleton and Hardy's pompous buffoon hilarious, but they also thought of them as friends. Laurel and Hardy may have been nitwits, but they were loveable nitwits.Another Nice Mess: The Laurel and Hardy Story explores the lives and careers of Laurel and Hardy. The book examines how the comedians teamed up and it explains why, nearly half a century after their deaths, their films continue to enchant people all over the world.Raymond Valinoti, Jr.. is a resident of Berkeley Heights, NJ. He has a Master's in Library Science from Rutgers University and is a freelance researcher. His articles on film have been published in the magazines Midnight Marquee and Films of the Golden Age. He also writes film reviews for an online news publication, The Alternative Press.