The evil Shadow Lord is plotting to invade the land of Deltora and enslave its people. All that stands against him is the magic Belt of Deltora with its seven stones of great and mysterious power. When the stones are stolen and hidden in dark, terrible places throughout the kingdom, the Shadow Lord triumphs and Deltora is lost. Armed with only a hand-drawn map to guide them, two unlikely companions set out on a dangerous quest to find the lost stones and rid their land of the Shadow Lord. Here are the first five volumes in this fascinating series: The Forests of Silence; The Lake of Tears; City of the Rats; The Shifting Sands; and Dread Mountain.

    I guess it depends on what I do next." American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it's Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain's future king. And when Bex can't resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.Dating Nick immerses Bex in ritzy society, dazzling ski trips, and dinners at Kensington Palace with him and his charming, troublesome brother, Freddie. But the relationship also comes with unimaginable baggage: hysterical tabloids, Nick's sparkling and far more suitable ex-girlfriends, and a royal family whose private life is much thornier and more tragic than anyone on the outside knows. The pressures are almost too much to bear, as Bex struggles to reconcile the man she loves with the monarch he's fated to become.Which is how she gets into trouble.Now, on the eve of the wedding of the century, Bex is faced with whether everything she's sacrificed for love-her career, her home, her family, maybe even herself-will have been for nothing.

    As Johnny Knoxville so succinctly put it, Nieratko is an asshole, but whether Chris is rescuing a stalker from choking on her own vomit, getting his nose broken for having AIDS (he doesn't) or marrying the one woman that could put up with his insanity, his life sounds so much like a collection of hilarious bar stories it's impossible not to grab a beer and listen to the whole thing.

    "Heaven and Mel" is Eszterhas's explosive, unabridged, no-holds-barred account. It is a Hollywood story but it's not. It is the story of love and hatred, of anti-Semitism and fathers and sons, and of a movie star's tragic sexual obsession. It is the story of God and the Devil, devastating but often hilarious. It is Joe Eszterhas at his best: two-fisted, movingly sensitive, always outrageous.

    Rarely are self-certified wasters called to the battle between good and evil. It’s the job of Jack Connolly, failed television celebrity turned religious messiah to convince Joseph otherwise. As the past, present and future converge, an important question becomes paramount: Is the oncoming apocalypse even real? Add in a new girlfriend who thinks Joseph is someone else entirely and a housemate with an unhealthy Roger Moore obsession and it all starts to get a bit tricky.

    Producer Michael Deeley, an urbane Englishman in Hollywood, had to fight wars to get these movies made, from defending the legendary sex scene of Don't Look Now from a disapproving Warren Beatty to seizing control of Convoy from a cocaine-ridden Sam Peckinpah. This is a no-holds-barred look at the true stories behind some of the greatest cult movies ever made.

    But the secret she has kept all this time is about to be discovered. Erin Harris has always known that she is different from the rest of her family. Over the years she has begun to put the pieces together and now she has to discover who she really is and where she comes from. Nina Harris has always put her marriage and family before everything. But now she must face up to the truth as her daughter is prepared to run off and search for a woman she doesn't know. There is no escaping the past. Kate, Erin and Nina all have to come to terms with what happened so many years before, and to find their own way of dealing with it.

    Eric Lax has been with Woody Allen almost every step of the way. He chronicled Allen's transformation from stand-up comedian to filmmaker in On Being Funny (1975). His international best seller, Woody Allen: A Biography (1991), was a portrait of a director hitting his stride. Conversations with Woody Allen comprised interviews that illustrated Allen's evolution from 1971 to 2008. Now, Lax invites us onto the set--and even further behind the scenes--of Allen's Irrational Man, which was released in 2015, and starred Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone. Revealing the intimate details of Allen's filmmaking process, Lax shows us the screenplay being shaped, the scenes being prepared, the actors, cinematographers, other crew members, the editors, all engaged in their work. We hear Allen's colleagues speak candidly about working with him, and Allen speaking with equal openness about his lifetime's work. An unprecedented revelation of one of the foremost filmmakers of our time, Start to Finish is sure to delight not only movie buffs and Allen fans, but everyone who has marveled at the seeming magic of the artistic process.

    As Aimee grew in her relationship with God these meanings started to form into poetic messages that would follow the one minute of the song that was played on the radio show. The same song can give different messages according to the atmosphere, Aimee’s feeling and what was needed at the moment. It would follow the same idea from the one-minute clip of the song that was played as well as a key word, phrase or name of the song included to tie it together. As a rule, Aimee regularly asked the holy spirit for assistance in remembering what she originally thought when first heard a particular song and would expand as necessary with what came to mind. As these poems were of great help to Aimee herself and after seeing how others appreciated them when they were posted in social media or heard on the radio, we decided to make it more available, in the hopes that they can comfort more people by including them in a book. Aimee says: “If the holy spirit helped me, then it can help others.”

    It is twenty-three years since Jeanie suddenly disappeared. They had been close when Jeanie lived in Samoa with her bullying husband and gentle father. But why is Jeanie hiding her identity? Elena is intrigued to discover Jeanie has a daughter who is unaware of her Samoan ancestry. There are family secrets here - possibly dangerous ones - that Elena is determined to uncover.Inheritance is a novel of contrasts: the tropical beauty and exuberance of Samoa in the 1960s; and the dark violence that arises from the conflict between truthfulness and love.

    Julia, the girl you went out with last night, has been TAKEN HOSTAGE. What will you do? Will you go to the police and ask for help? Will you burst into the hideout, killing everyone in sight, then tell Julia that she shouldn’t misinterpret this as some sort of big commitment? Or will you unplug your phone and just get really, really drunk? The choice is yours!You awake to the sound of the phone ringing.“Hello?”You hear a man’s voice. It is muffled. “We’ve got Julia.”“Wait, what do you mean?”“We have kidnapped your girlfriend. If you ever want to see her again---”“Whoa, she’s not my girlfriend,” you say. “I just met her. I mean, I had a good time with her and all, but I wanna take it slow with this one, I think.”“We understand,” the voice says. “But she’s new to the city, and presently, you’re all she has. Give us fifty thousand dollars by tomorrow or we’ll blow her head off.”If you want to go and ask your parents if you can borrow fifty thousand dollars, go to page 173.If you want to have sex with your ex-girlfriend, consider getting back together with her, then think better of it, go to page 183.BE VERY CAREFUL! You’re directing the story and the CHOICES you make can result in MURDER, GRADUATE SCHOOL ENROLLMENT, TORTURE, MARRIAGE, POST-APOCALYPTIC SLAVERY, UNWANTED PREGNANCY, even TEMPING! It’s YOUR STORY and YOUR LIFE. All you’ve got to do is decide which page you want to turn to. JUST MAKE A CHOICE!

    Sometimes wacky, sometimes profound, the title is always entertaining, with the odd bit of sleaze.

    Weirdsville U.S.A. charts Lynch’s work from his experimental art school years and the midnight movie hit Eraserhead, the mainstream success of The Elephant Man and the commercial failure of Dune, the birth of Weird Americana with Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks and the neo-noir mystery Lost Highway, to the present day and the film The Straight Story and TV series Mulholland Drive.

    It has been celebrated for its beauty and mystery, its realistic depiction of space travel and dazzling display of visual effects, the breathtaking scope of its story, which reaches across millions of years, and the thought-provoking depth of its meditation on evolution, technology and humanity's encounters with the unknown. 2001 has been described as the most expensive avant-garde movie ever made and as a psychedelic trip, a unique expression of the spirit of the 1960s and as a timeless masterpiece. Peter Krämer's insightful study explores the complex origins of the film, the unique shape it took and the extraordinary impact it made on contemporary audiences. Drawing on new research in the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts London, Krämer challenges many of the widely-held assumptions about the film. He argues that 2001 was Kubrick's attempt to counter the deep pessimism of his previous film, Dr Strangelove (1964), which culminates in the explosion of a nuclear 'doomsday' device, with a more hopeful vision of humanity's future, facilitated by the intervention of mysterious extra-terrestrial artifacts. This study traces the project's development from the first letter Kubrick wrote to his future collaborator Arthur C. Clarke in March 1964 all the way to the dramatic changes Kubrick made to the film shortly before its release by MGM in April 1968. Krämer shows that, despite – or, perhaps, because of – Kubrick's daring last-minute decision to turn the film itself into a mysterious artifact, 2001 was an instant success with both critics and general audiences, and has exerted enormous influence over Hollywood's output of science fiction movies ever since. The book argues that 2001 invites us to enjoy and contemplate its sounds and images over and over again, and, if we are so inclined, to take away from it an important message of hope.

    To appreciate this, though it is necessary to look at what happens on the screen without bringing preconceptions to bear.