Sleepless in Soho


Book Description

A true story set in the mid-sixties reflecting the turbulent daily lives of two teenage suburban girlfriends as they begin commuting to London office jobs they hate. After their local dance hall burns down, the girls venture into the West End nightclubs in search of their favourite groups. Their lives become transformed as they make new friends and enter a world of music, boys and drugs. They spend Easter at Brighton among the thousands of Mods and Rockers, enduring a freezing night on the seafront. The girls inevitably clash with their parents as they yearn for more freedom so they eventually rent a flat in a house in London, only to discover that their landlord and landlady are as restrictive as their parents, complaining about the unsuitable hours they keep, and the noise from their music. The complaints culminate in a showdown one afternoon when the girls invite some boys back to the flat including one who is Jamaican. They are confronted by an irate, racist landlord demanding that they tell their black friend to leave the house at once. The girls refuse point blank, so they find themselves evicted instead with immediate effect. Now homeless, the girls comb the advertisements in the local newsagent’s window. Suddenly they are accosted by a suspicious-looking stranger who offers to rent them a bedsit in his house which provides an opportune solution to their problem.




Sleepless in Soho


Book Description

A true story reflecting the turbulent daily lives of two teenage suburban girls in the mid-sixties, as they spread their wings and explore London and the Soho nightclubs. With their new friends they are drawn into an exhilarating world of music, boys and drugs leading to inevitable clashes with their parents which prompts their decision to leave home and move to London.




Sleepless in Hollywood


Book Description

The veteran producer and author of the bestseller Hello, He Lied takes a witty and critical look at the new Hollywood. Over the past decade, producer Lynda Obst gradually realized she was working in a Hollywood that was undergoing a drastic transformation. The industry where everything had once been familiar to her was suddenly disturbingly strange. Combining her own industry experience and interviews with the brightest minds in the business, Obst explains what has stalled the vast moviemaking machine. The calamitous DVD collapse helped usher in what she calls the New Abnormal (because Hollywood was never normal to begin with), where studios are now heavily dependent on foreign markets for profit, a situation which directly impacts the kind of entertainment we get to see. Can comedy survive if they don’t get our jokes in Seoul or allow them in China? Why are studios making fewer movies than ever—and why are they bigger, more expensive and nearly always sequels or recycled ideas? Obst writes with affection, regret, humor and hope, and her behind-the-scenes vantage point allows her to explore what has changed in Hollywood like no one else has. This candid, insightful account explains what has happened to the movie business and explores whether it’ll ever return to making the movies we love—the classics that make us laugh or cry, or that we just can’t stop talking about.




Daring the Bad Boy


Book Description

"Monica Murphy always delivers the swoon-worthy romance that I crave. And Murphy’s latest is no exception with this first love, mature young adult novel: Daring the Bad Boy." -Debbie, I Heart YA Books Annie McFarland is sick of being a shy nobody. A session at summer camp seems like the perfect opportunity to reinvent herself—gain some confidence, kiss a boy, be whoever she wants to be. A few days in, she’s already set her sights on über-hottie Kyle. Too bad her fear of water keeps her away from the lake, where Kyle is always hanging out. Jacob Fazio is at Camp Pine Ridge after one too many screw-ups. Junior counseling seems like punishment enough, but the rigid no-fraternizing-with-campers rules harsh his chill. When a night of Truth or Dare gets him roped into teaching Annie how to swim, she begs him to also teach her how to snag Kyle. Late-night swim sessions turn into late-night kissing sessions...but there’s more on the line than just their hearts. If they get caught, Jake’s headed straight to juvie, but Annie’s more than ready to dare him to reveal the truth. Disclaimer: This Entangled Teen Crush book contains references to drinking, sexual situations, adult language, and an intense bad boy hero who will melt your heart. Each book in the Endless Summer Series is a standalone, full-length story that can be enjoyed out of order. Book #1 - Daring the Bad Boy Book #2 - Keeping Her Secret




A Voice Above the Linn


Book Description




Walk With Me: New York


Book Description

From photographer Susan Kaufman, an intimate celebration of the beauty and charm of New York City For some people, New York City exists only in their imaginations, a big-screen beacon of wonder and twenty-four seven delight. For others, it’s a dream destination: the diverse urban center where they will finally feel they belong. And still for many, it’s the place they already call home. No matter how you view New York, longtime fashion editor and photographer Susan Kaufman will help you see the city with fresh, appreciative eyes. As she travels with her camera through New York, Susan Kaufman invites readers to see the city as she does: from the sidewalk. She explores the beauty of the city found in its charming townhouses, decorated shops, lovely parks, shop facades, and serene streetscapes. New York may be known as the city that never sleeps, but beneath the bustle, there’s a soulful side, with its own quiet power and universal allure. Walk with Me New York invites readers to appreciate the streets and buildings that have made the world’s most iconic city survive centuries of change yet retain its vitality and aspirational magnetism.




Congo Tales


Book Description

"The Congo Basin in Central Africa harbors approximately one quarter of the world's rainforests. Second in size only to that of the Amazon, the heart of this rainforest is populated by communities whose lives are vastly different from much of the rest of the world. This stunning photo series is part of the Tales of Us project, which sets out to demonstrate that the powerful but fragile ecosystems and the mythologies of the peoples who call them home are inextricably linked. In this book, local Congolese living in the Mbomo District staged and enacted the oral history of the Congo for fine art photographer Pieter Henket under the canopy of the ancient rainforest from which these stories sprang." --Page 4 of cover.




Nightwalking


Book Description

A captivating literary portrait of London explored at night by some of the city’s most iconic writers throughout history “Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night,” wrote the poet Rupert Brooke. Before the age of electricity, the nighttime city was a very different place to the one we know today – home to the lost, the vagrant and the noctambulant. Matthew Beaumont recounts an alternative history of London by focusing on those of its denizens who surface on the streets when the sun’s down. If nightwalking is a matter of “going astray” in the streets of the metropolis after dark, then nightwalkers represent some of the most suggestive and revealing guides to the neglected and forgotten aspects of the city. In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Beaumont shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations and the feverish ramblings of opium addict Thomas De Quincey; and, among the lamp-lit literary throng, the supreme nightwalker Charles Dickens. We discover how the nocturnal city has inspired some and served as a balm or narcotic to others. In each case, the city is revealed as a place divided between work and pleasure, the affluent and the indigent, where the entitled and the desperate jostle in the streets. With a foreword and afterword by Will Self, Nightwalking is a fascinating literary exploration of the writers who traverse the city at night and the people they meet.




Hello Life


Book Description

"In Hello Life, Andrea Koenig has created two enchanting characters who have that singular characteristic of literary art: They are at once utterly unique and resonantly universal. We follow Gwen and Lila in their search for self and learn much about ourselves. This is a book rich in story and brimming with humanity."-Robert Olen Butler Gwen is newly motherless and of high school age. She needs help. She moves in with Mrs. Parker and another teenage girl she's looking after, Lila Abernathy-"Leukemia Girl." Lila's problem is cancer; Gwen's is pregnancy. Her 37-year-old boyfriend spends most of his time smoking pot in the van that doubles as his home, and his routine hasn't changed since he knocked her up. Gwen is facing life fast. She has to. Hello Life is utterly satisfying, a book you fall into like a comfortable bed. It is blissful to read something so engaging, so heartfelt and hardheaded, recounting the contentious but strong bond that develops between two waifs. They quarrel and bicker to divert attention from their real troubles of abiding loneliness and rootlessness. Gwen has an urgent feeling that she had better grow up quickly, given her situation, and Lila must grow up quickly because she might simply not have much life left. Gwen is sloppy and sexual, Lila, orderly and finicky. But different as they are, what they individually face connects them far more than their differences. What they're confronting is life unbuffered, and it's smacked them right in the kisser. Andrea Koenig is the author of a novel, Thumbelina, published by Scribner in the United States and Simon & Schuster in the United Kingdom. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oklahoma State University. She makes her home in Tulsa.




Street Cops


Book Description

Jill Freedman brings you the world of NYC cops at eh beginning of the 1980's. It's gritty and sometimes harsh, but always honest and dignified when protraying the lives of these men and women. This amazing photographer got amazing access, before there was a "COPS" on TV.