Against all odds, he played on the 1984 U.S. Olympic hockey team as a 17-year-old, and four months later he was drafted in the first round by his hometown Chicago Blackhawks. During an illustrious 16-year career, he played for and alongside some of the greatest franchises and players in history, winning a Stanley Cup with the unforgettable 1994 New York Rangers. Years later, he coached former teammate Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby on the Pittsburgh Penguins before transitioning into the broadcast booth, where he has become one of the most recognizable voices of the sport. He then combined his skills as an analyst with his second passion— horse racing—and became an integral part of NBC’s coverage of thoroughbreds. Away from the spotlight, Olczyk and his wife of three decades raised four adoring children. He was respected and admired by fans, friends, and peers. Life was sweet. Then, at 7:07 pm on August 4, 2017, his entire world turned upside down. In Eddie Olczyk: Beating the Odds in Hockey and in Life, one of the biggest names in American hockey has written an inspiring and entertaining memoir of his life both on and off the ice. From shooting hundreds of tennis balls at a goal in his childhood living room to the ups and downs of his improbable hockey career to rollicking stories from the booth and the backstretch, Olczyk guides readers on his journey toward his ultimate test: a battle against Stage 3 colon cancer. For years, Olczyk’s goal was to be the best husband, father, broadcaster, and handicapper he could be. Today he has a new one: to bring as much awareness and support to those fighting cancer as he possibly can. In this emotional but often hilarious autobiography, you’ll learn why the people who know Eddie Olczyk best might describe him as “tremendously tremendous.”

    These are the true-life diary entries of a prison officer, working in one of the country’s worst correctional facility. The daily stabbings, rapes and murders are just the beginning of a nightmare ride into the darkness of life behind bars. It’s a raw and ruthless look behind the walls in all its brutal honesty. This is maximum-security.

    From this engaging and comprehensive book, both religious and secular readers will gain better understanding of the most successful evangelist in Christian history and the movement he has led for four decades.

    "Ocean Star" is the story of how God found her in the midst of an abusive childhood, became the loving parent she never had, and revealed himself in tangible ways through her amazing life journey. Filled with insightful symbolism, "Ocean Star" will help Christians and non-Christians find hope, humor, and healing in a powerful true story of a broken life made new.

    Fields (1900-1994) began his employment at the White House in 1931, and kept a journal of his meetings with the presidents and their families; he would also meet important people like Winston Churchill, Princess Elizabeth of England, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, presidential cabinet members, senators, representatives, and Supreme Court Justices. He would also witness presidential decision-making at critical times in American history -- the attack on Pearl Harbor, the death of Franklin Roosevelt, the desegregation of the military, and the outbreak of hostilities in Korea. As Fields often told his staff, “...remember that we are helping to make history. We have a small part ... but they can't do much here without us. They've got to eat, you know.” Included are sample menus prepared for visiting heads-of-state and foreign dignitaries.

     Ingrid Bergman emerges as a devoted artist whose refusal to be a caricature caused her endless trouble - but also produced brilliant performances, from her early role opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca to her profound and final appearance as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. In between, there were four children (including actress Isabella Rossellini), three husbands, and passionate affairs with war photographer Robert Capa, Wizard of Oz director Victor Fleming, and Spellbound co-star Gregory Peck. She was perhaps the most international star in the history of entertainment, and, without a doubt, one of the most misunderstood. In a career that spanned six decades, two Academy Awards, and ten Oscar nominations, Bette Davis became one of the greatest screen legends of all time. But, as her epitaph says, "She did it the hard way." She was in constant battles with co-stars, directors, and studios and struggled with addictions to alcohol and cigarettes. She had four stormy marriages, and even her three children brought pain and controversy - one wrote a scathing tell-all book, another had a severe mental disability, and a third was the subject of a prolonged custody battle. But in her iconic film roles, Davis transcended her troubles to leave an indelible mark on American cinema. Possessing none of the glamorous beauty of Greta Garbo, she had something more powerful and lasting: a restless, incandescent energy that made her mesmerizing to watch on the big screen. Katharine Hepburn was far more than an iconic movie star who won four Academy Awards for best actress and made classic films that still rank among the greatest of all time. She also exerted a unique influence on American popular culture, challenging rigid assumptions about how women should behave - and almost single-handedly gave them permission to wear pants. The list of adjectives used to describe Hepburn - bold, stubborn, witty, beautiful - only begin to hint at the complex woman who entranced audiences around the world. So here is the full, epic story of "the patron saint of the independent American female," as one critic described her. Hepburn always lived life strictly on her own terms. And oh, what a life it was. For a time, Elizabeth Taylor was the world's biggest star, but it was her off-screen life - eight stormy marriages, a jewel-encrusted lifestyle, and struggles with weight and various addictions - that provided the most riveting drama. Long before the age of reality television, Taylor showed how fame could take on a volatile life of its own, obscuring the real person behind the media façade. Now, in this compelling biography, we meet the real Elizabeth Taylor as she grows from precocious child star to "the most beautiful woman in the world" to serious actress to pop-culture punch line, and finally, successful entrepreneur, philanthropist, and HIV/AIDS activist. Along the way, she is vilified by fans for stealing singer Eddie Fischer from Debbie Reynolds, becomes trapped in a cycle of destructive affairs with Richard Burton, and desperately tries to recapture the childhood she never had with the eccentric pop star Michael Jackson. "I've always admitted that I'm ruled by my passions," she once said - and those passions make for a gripping, epic tale of tribulation and triumph.

    It is a genuine, firsthand account of a one-year tour that shows how a soldier grew and matured from an awkward, bewildered, inexperienced, eighteen year-old country “bumpkin” from Kentucky, to a tough, battle hardened, fighting soldier. You will laugh, cry and stand in awe at the true life experiences shared in this memoir. The awfulness of battle, fear beyond description, the sorrow and anguish of losing friends, extreme weariness, the dealing with the scalding sun, torrential rain, cold, heat, humidity, insects and the daily effort just to maintain sanity were struggles faced virtually every day. And yet, there were the good times. There was the coming together to laugh, joke, and share stories from home. There was the warmth and compassion shown by men to each other in such an unreal environment. You will see where color, race or where you were from had no bearing on the tight-knit group of young men that was formed from the necessity to survive. What a “bunch” they were! ... then the return to home and all the adjustments and struggles to once again fit into a world that was now strange and uncomfortable. "Call Sign Dracula" is an excellent and genuine memoir of an infantry soldier in the Vietnam War.

    Equal parts revealing memoir and inspirational literature, each chapter reveals a day in the life of a rock star, inviting you into Plumb's personal journey of embracing her life's passion of music and her very real, all-encompassing love for her family and community. Both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving, Need You Now is the story of beautiful and embarrassing moments on stage, the joys and trials of motherhood and unbridled forgiveness. It is the story of soul mates, best friends and a marriage redeemed. And more than anything, Need You Now is the story of love, fresh starts and the relentless message that no matter who you are or what you have done...there is always HOPE.

    He was also an extremely able politician who won the esteem of many statesmen-including Winston Churchill and influential persons in the United States. This biography describes Mussolini's childhood; his education (including his suspension from school for attacking other boys with knives); his World War I experiences and severe wounding; his involvement in, and eventual expulsion from the revolutionary Italian Socialist Party; his numerous love affairs, his early career as a journalist and his rise to power and brutal rule.

    Here, from award-winning historian and journalist Charles Mercer, is the story of the military genius who became a king at twenty told with all the color and drama characteristic of Alexander's time.

    Jimmy Nail has been a household name since Auf Wiedersehen, Pet hit our screens in the 1980s. since then, his career as an actor and a musician has put on him on the silver screen alongside Madonna and given him a No. 1 hit single. Success on this astonishing scale was beyond the wildest dreams of the working class lad whose harsh childhood and brutal schooling put him on a collision course with Strangeways. But a short spell in prison helped propel Nail onwards and upwards. With the support of his friends and family, it wasn't long before Jimmy's unique talents and single-minded determination brought him attention of a different kind - and changed his life for ever. In A Northern Soul, Jimmy Nail tells his own vivid story in this intriguing, inspiring and sometimes confounding account of how one man rose to fame and fortune by refusing to be anything but himself.

    Across five decades, Prine has created critically acclaimed albums--John Prine (one of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time), Bruised Orange, and The Missing Years--and earned many honors, including two Grammy Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting from the Americana Music Association, and induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. His songs have been covered by scores of artists, from Johnny Cash and Miranda Lambert to Bette Midler and 10,000 Maniacs, and have influenced everyone from Roger McGuinn to Kacey Musgraves. Hailed in his early years as the "new Dylan," Prine still counts Bob Dylan among his most enthusiastic fans. In John Prine, Eddie Huffman traces the long arc of Prine's musical career, beginning with his early, seemingly effortless successes, which led paradoxically not to stardom but to a rich and varied career writing songs that other people have made famous. He recounts the stories, many of them humorous, behind Prine's best-known songs and discusses all of Prine's albums as he explores the brilliant records and the ill-advised side trips, the underappreciated gems and the hard-earned comebacks that led Prine to found his own successful record label, Oh Boy Records. This thorough, entertaining treatment gives John Prine his due as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation.

    Marrying each other in pursuit of the finer things in life, their unlikely union was tempestuous from the off, rocked by affairs (with a whole host of society figures, including Cecil Beaton, Diana Mitford and Winston Churchill, amongst others) on both sides, and degenerated into one of London’s bitterest, and most talked about, divorce battles. In this compelling new book, Lyndsy Spence follows the rise and fall of their relationship, exploring their decadent society lives in revelatory detail and offering new insight into some of the mid twentieth century’s most prominent figures.

    So begins Preachin' the Blues, the biography of American blues signer and guitarist Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (1902 - 1988). House pioneered an innovative style, incorporating strong repetitive rhythms with elements of southern gospel and spiritual vocals. A seminal figure in the history of the Delta blues, he was an important, direct influence on such figures as Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. The landscape of Son House's life and the vicissitudes he endured make for an absorbing narrative, threaded through with a tension between House's religious beliefs and his spells of commitment to a lifestyle that implicitly rejected it. Drinking, womanizing, and singing the blues caused this tension that is palpable in his music, and becomes explicit in one of his finest performances, "Preachin' the Blues." Large parts of House's life are obscure, not least because his own accounts of them were inconsistent. Author Daniel Beaumont offers a chronology/topography of House's youth, taking into account evidence that conflicts sharply with the well-worn fable, and he illuminates the obscurity of House's two decades in Rochester, NY between his departure from Mississippi in the 1940s and his "rediscovery" by members of the Folk Revival Movement in 1964. Beaumont gives a detailed and perceptive account of House's primary musical legacy: his recordings for Paramount in 1930 and for the Library of Congress in 1941-42. In the course of his research Beaumont has unearthed not only connections among the many scattered facts and fictions but new information about a rumoured murder in Mississippi, and a charge of manslaughter on Long Island - incidents which bring tragic light upon House's lifelong struggles and self-imposed disappearance, and give trenchant meaning to the moving music of this early blues legend.

    Despite his on-screen persona, Niven wasn’t always the perfect gentleman. He was insecure both privately and professionally and used people to get ahead. But he did, he said, ‘at least try to be a decent man.’ He knew he often failed, although it isn’t easy to find people who ever had a bad word to say about him. In this fascinating biography of the star, Munn looks at the funny stories and the sad underlying truth, from his outrageous days with Errol Flynn and their irrevocable split –‘You always know where you are with Flynn. He always lets you down’ – and numerous affairs with stars and prostitutes, to an attempted suicide, his horrific experiences in war-torn France and the breakdown and blame of his second marriage. This compelling text includes interviews with his second wife, Hjordis, John Huston, Rex Harrison, Laurence Olivier, Loretta Young (they discussed marriage once), Niven’s long-time friend Michael Trubshawe, Peter Ustinov, Ava Gardner and many more.