Chorus Skating


Book Description

A middle-aged, out-of-shape spellsinger yearns for one last great adventure, in this rollicking fantasy by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author. Jon-Tom and Mudge are bored. Their adventuring days long behind them, the spellsinger and his once-thieving otter sidekick have settled into a life of tepid domesticity, and they are sick of it. They hunger for an old-fashioned adventure, but there are no more great evils to combat. And so they decide to follow the music. Literally. A drifting cloud of lost chords has taken to floating around Jon-Tom, and following it puts them on the trail of an evil that terrifies the spellsinger. Something is stealing music. Finding out who, and why, is responsible for the silencing of the instruments will put Jon-Tom and Mudge into great peril, at the hands of a selfish elephant, a greedy black bear, and a whirlpool with a filthy sense of humor. Seeking adventure, they’ve stumbled into one turn that may turn out to be their last.




Chorus Skating


Book Description

A new fantasy featuring the Spellsinger and his otter friend who discover a lost chord. But when the lost chord leads them into deadly danger, the world could be plunged into discord and chaos unless the Spellsinger can work his magic. Follows SON OF SPELLSINGER.




Women On Ice


Book Description

The attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships set the stage for a Winter Olympics spectacle: Tonya versus Nancy. Women on Ice collects the writings of a diverse group of feminists who address and question our national obsession with Tonya and Nancy and what this tells us about perceptions of women in twentieth century America.




Primary Education


Book Description




A Nobody's Dream ... Came True


Book Description

When Gordon Crossland was growing up in the 1940’s in Orillia, Ontario, the town was not about to embrace a boy wanting to be a figure skater or ballet dancer. Male figure skaters were so rare that boys’ figures skates were hard to come by. However, Gordon had a dream and luckily, he also had supportive parents who would dye girls’ skates black for him. All he had to do was learn to skate faster than the bullies who tried to trip him on the ice. From these humble beginnings, Gordon, an ever-evolving, passionately committed artist became a top skater with the Ice Follies. He transitioned into highly successful careers of dancing with the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera Ballet Companies in England, as well as choreographing and skating in popular productions world–wide. It’s a journey spotted with moments of hilarity, high drama and occasional deep sorrow. A Nobody’s Dream Came True is a case study of a life in the Arts. It makes no attempt to sugar-coat the demands, difficulties and disappointments.... while fully revelling in the joys and deep fulfillment achieved through perseverance. Gordon’s story captures his dreams and gives readers profound insight into artistic temperament and the ever-burning passion that fuel’s artists’ choices.




Harry B. Smith


Book Description

Harry B. Smith was the most prolific writer for the American musical theatre in history, working with every major American composer between 1880 and 1920. This examination of his work is thus highly instructive of the history of the American musical.




Spellsinger


Book Description

A musician is transported into a land of magic—from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Trek Into Darkness. Jonathan Thomas Meriweather is a typical college student, interested in girls, music, and an occasional taste of reefer. But when a journey through an interdimensional portal lands him in a world of talking animals and ominous sorcery, he finds he is on a very different trip indeed. Here, when he plays a strange instrument called a duar, peculiar things happen: powerful magic that may be the only way to stop a dark force that threatens his new world—and his old one. Reluctantly, he finds himself teaming up with a semi-senile turtle wizard; a thieving, backstabbing otter; and a bewildered Marxist dragon to rally an army for the war about to come. Spellsinger, the first in Alan Dean Foster’s eight-book Spellsinger series, introduces a world of magic and mayhem, where animals are people and plunging ahead no matter what the consequences may be the only way to survive.




Jethro Tull


Book Description

Originally formed by singer-songwriter Ian Anderson in psychedelic 1968, the band Jethro Tull has been recording its own kind of rock and roll and touring the globe for more than three decades. This is a history of the band through the present, written by an acquaintance of several of its members. The book includes a chronology of all of the band's recordings and information on all accompanying tours, with the author's critiques as well as the band's own reminiscences and opinions of each album. Also included are previously unpublished interviews with founder Ian Anderson, long-time band member David Pegg, other band members Glenn Cornick, Andy Giddings and Doane Perry, and more.




Montezuma Strip


Book Description

Detective Angel Cardenas polices the crime-ridden US-Mexico borderlands in five futuristic stories from the New York Times–bestselling author. A century in the future, greed flourishes on the Montezuma Strip, a string of high-tech that follows the old and frayed USA-Mexico border stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. First World technology meets Third World cheap labor, while both the rich and the poor fall into the widening chasm between them. In five stories set among the chaos, Tex-Mex cop Angel Cardenas puts his intuit ability to good use as a living lie-detector. After being blinded on the job and then having his sight restored with an optic nerve transplant, Cardenas uses his heightened intuition to get to the truth, whether it’s figuring out how two genius software designers were killed—with no visible causes of death—in “Sanctuary” or stopping a deadly heavenly vision (that could be a military-ware tactile projection) in “Our Lady of the Machine.” In three more stories—“Heartwired,” “Gagrito,” and “Hellado”—Cardenas learns that in a land where everything and everyone can be bought and sold, even justice has a price. Praise for Alan Dean Foster “A master storyteller.” —SF Site “One of the most consistently and fertile writers of science fiction and fantasy.” —The Times (London)




The Hour of the Gate


Book Description

Marooned in another universe, a musician leads a motley army to save two worlds, in an entertaining tale by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author. Jon-Tom just wanted to go home. Trapped in a world where animals speak and magic is real, the American college student yearned for an ordinary dorm-room life. But here his music has magical power—even if he can’t control it—which may be able to save the world from the army of the Plated Folk, whose sinister queen plans on killing and eating every warm-blooded mammal she can get her pincers on and taking over their lands. The great battle is coming, and Jon-Tom, whose posse includes a wizarding turtle, a cowardly bat, and an otter with a filthy mind, must raise an army to fight it. To find allies they must make an impossible journey, across mountains and rivers no one has ever passed before. Survival will be a miracle—but Jon-Tom is no ordinary musician.