Confessions of a Prairie Bitch

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch PDF Author: Alison Arngrim
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061962155
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
For seven years, Alison Arngrim played a wretched, scheming, selfish, lying, manipulative brat on one of TV history's most beloved series. Though millions of Little House on the Prairie viewers hated Nellie Oleson and her evil antics, Arngrim grew to love her character—and the freedom and confidence Nellie inspired in her. In Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, Arngrim describes growing up in Hollywood with her eccentric parents: Thor Arngrim, a talent manager to Liberace and others, whose appetite for publicity was insatiable, and legendary voice actress Norma MacMillan, who played both Gumby and Casper the Friendly Ghost. She recalls her most cherished and often wickedly funny moments behind the scenes of Little House: Michael Landon's "unsaintly" habit of not wearing underwear; how she and Melissa Gilbert (who played her TV nemesis, Laura Ingalls) became best friends and accidentally got drunk on rum cakes at 7-Eleven; and the only time she and Katherine MacGregor (who played Nellie's mom) appeared in public in costume, provoking a posse of elementary schoolgirls to attack them. Arngrim relays all this and more with biting wit, but she also bravely recounts her life's challenges: her struggle to survive a history of traumatic abuse, depression, and paralyzing shyness; the "secret" her father kept from her for twenty years; and the devastating loss of her "Little House husband" and best friend, Steve Tracy, to AIDS, which inspired her second career in social and political activism. Arngrim describes how Nellie Oleson taught her to be bold, daring, and determined, and how she is eternally grateful to have had the biggest little bitch on the prairie to show her the way.

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch PDF Author: Alison Arngrim
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061962155
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
For seven years, Alison Arngrim played a wretched, scheming, selfish, lying, manipulative brat on one of TV history's most beloved series. Though millions of Little House on the Prairie viewers hated Nellie Oleson and her evil antics, Arngrim grew to love her character—and the freedom and confidence Nellie inspired in her. In Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, Arngrim describes growing up in Hollywood with her eccentric parents: Thor Arngrim, a talent manager to Liberace and others, whose appetite for publicity was insatiable, and legendary voice actress Norma MacMillan, who played both Gumby and Casper the Friendly Ghost. She recalls her most cherished and often wickedly funny moments behind the scenes of Little House: Michael Landon's "unsaintly" habit of not wearing underwear; how she and Melissa Gilbert (who played her TV nemesis, Laura Ingalls) became best friends and accidentally got drunk on rum cakes at 7-Eleven; and the only time she and Katherine MacGregor (who played Nellie's mom) appeared in public in costume, provoking a posse of elementary schoolgirls to attack them. Arngrim relays all this and more with biting wit, but she also bravely recounts her life's challenges: her struggle to survive a history of traumatic abuse, depression, and paralyzing shyness; the "secret" her father kept from her for twenty years; and the devastating loss of her "Little House husband" and best friend, Steve Tracy, to AIDS, which inspired her second career in social and political activism. Arngrim describes how Nellie Oleson taught her to be bold, daring, and determined, and how she is eternally grateful to have had the biggest little bitch on the prairie to show her the way.

Prairie Man

Prairie Man PDF Author: Dean Butler
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 0806543310
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Celebrating its 50th anniversary and still airing in the U.S. and around the world, Little House on the Prairie is one of the most cherished family dramas in television history, and this smart, candid memoir from beloved star Dean “Almanzo” Butler, who played Laura “Half-Pint” Ingalls’ eventual husband, is a must-read for fans, filled with insider stories and anecdotes. Cast just before his twenty-third birthday, Dean Butler joined Little House on the Prairie halfway through its run, gaining instant celebrity and fans’ enduring affection.Ironically, when the late, great Michael Landon remarked that Little House would outlive everyone involved in making it, Butler deemed it unlikely. Yet for four decades and counting, Butler has been defined in the public eye as Almanzo Wilder—a role he views as the great gift of his life. Butler had been cast as a romantic lead before, notably in the made-for-TV movie of Judy Blume’s Forever, opposite Stephanie Zimbalist. But Little House was, and remains, one of the most treasured shows in television history. As the eventual husband of Laura “Half-pint” Ingalls—and the man who would share actress Melissa Gilbert’s first real-life romantic kiss—Butler landed as a central figure for the show’s devoted fans. Now, with wit and candor, Butler recounts his passage through the Prairie, sharing stories and anecdotes of the remarkable cast who were his on-screen family. But that was merely the beginning of a diverse career that includes Broadway runs and roles on two other classic shows—Moondoggie in The New Gidget and Buffy’s ne’er-do-well father, Hank, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Coming of age during a golden era of entertainment, Butler has evolved along with it, and today enjoys success and fulfillment as a director and producer—notably of NBC Golf’s Feherty—while remaining deeply loyal to Little House. The warmth, heart, and decency that fans of Laura and Almanzo fell in love with on Little House echo through this uplifting memoir, a story, in Butler’s words, about “good luck, good television, and the very good—if gloriously imperfect—people who made it so.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder PDF Author: Sallie Ketcham
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136725660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote stories that have defined the American frontier for generations of readers. As both author and character in her own books, she became one of the most famous figures in American children’s literature. Her famous Little House on the Prairie series, based on her childhood in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, and South Dakota, blended memoir and fiction into a vivid depiction of nineteenth-century settler life that continues to shape many Americans’ understanding of the country’s past. Poised between fiction and fact, literature and history, Wilder’s life is a fascinating window on the American West. Placing Wilder’s life and work in historical context, and including previously unpublished material from the Wilder archives, Sallie Ketcham introduces students to domestic frontier life, the conflict between Native Americans and infringing white populations, and the West in public memory and imagination.

The Maquinna Line

The Maquinna Line PDF Author: Norma Macmillan
Publisher: TouchWood Editions
ISBN: 192674151X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A murder, a tryst, a mysterious child. A Victoria aristocrat who obsesses over her Churchill relatives. A repressive Welsh mother with a royalty fixation. A once-carefree Hesquiat girl from Nootka Sound. A dashing Icelandic philanderer. And quiet, steady Julia Godolphin, trying to rise above it all. The lost novel of Norma Macmillan, the Vancouver actress who lived much of her life in New York and Hollywood, is the work of a woman steeped in the American entertainment industry but deeply in love with the history of her native province, which eventually drew her home before her death in 2001. The Maquinna Line: A Family Saga is set on Vancouver Island from 1871 to 1945, with a nod to the meeting of Captain Cook and Chief Maquinna in 1778. It traces the stories of the five families of varied social standing, including two descendents of Chief Maquinna. In the end, they’re all ordinary people trying to find happiness in the face of intrigue, ambition, misunderstanding and changing social and sexual mores.

Reconsidering Laura Ingalls Wilder

Reconsidering Laura Ingalls Wilder PDF Author: Miranda A. Green-Barteet
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496823095
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Contributions by Emily Anderson, Elif S. Armbruster, Jenna Brack, Christine Cooper-Rompato, Christiane E. Farnan, Melanie J. Fishbane, Vera R. Foley, Sonya Sawyer Fritz, Miranda A. Green-Barteet, Anna Thompson Hajdik, Keri Holt, Shosuke Kinugawa, Margaret Noodin, Anne K. Phillips, Dawn Sardella-Ayres, Katharine Slater, Lindsay Stephens, and Jericho Williams Reconsidering Laura Ingalls Wilder: Little House and Beyond offers a sustained, critical examination of Wilder's writings, including her Little House series, her posthumously published and unrevised The First Four Years, her letters, her journalism, and her autobiography, Pioneer Girl. The collection also draws on biographies of Wilder, letters to and from Wilder and her daughter, collaborator and editor Rose Wilder Lane, and other biographical materials. Contributors analyze the current state of Wilder studies, delineating Wilder's place in a canon of increasingly diverse US women writers, and attending in particular to issues of gender, femininity, space and place, truth, and collaboration, among other issues. The collection argues that Wilder's work and her contributions to US children's literature, western literature, and the pioneer experience must be considered in context with problematic racialized representations of peoples of color, specifically Native Americans. While Wilder's fiction accurately represents the experiences of white settlers, it also privileges their experiences and validates, explicitly and implicitly, the erasure of Native American peoples and culture. The volume’s contributors engage critically with Wilder's writings, interrogating them, acknowledging their limitations, and enhancing ongoing conversations about them while placing them in context with other voices, works, and perspectives that can bring into focus larger truths about North American history. Reconsidering Laura Ingalls Wilder examines Wilder's strengths and weaknesses as it discusses her writings with context, awareness, and nuance.

Tartarus

Tartarus PDF Author: Eric Andrews-Katz
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc
ISBN: 1626397473
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Long ago, the Olympian Gods conquered and nearly destroyed an earlier race known as the Titans. Echidna, Mother of Monsters, was imprisoned in Tartarus. Centuries later, she has escaped. Entering the modern world, Echidna finds the old Gods are gone, and vows to destroy every descendant of the Olympians. In the contemporary Pacific Northwest, Adrian and Annelise have lived comfortably—unaware of their Olympian birthright and its significance. When Adrian is introduced to Zack, sparks fly and their initial contact slowly turns to romance. Echidna unleashes a brutal attack and Zack reveals his Divine lineage. Now he must teach the twins about their own heritage, and how to wield their unique powers for the battle to come. The final battle between Titans and Olympians will be held in the Underworld. Modern weapons have no place and only magic can prevail.

Prairie Fires

Prairie Fires PDF Author: Caroline Fraser
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1627792775
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie books Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls—the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser—the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series—masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books. The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder’s real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children’s books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading—and achieving fame and fortune in the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters. Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder’s dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day.

If This Were Fiction

If This Were Fiction PDF Author: Jill Christman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496233220
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
If This Were Fiction is a love story--for Jill Christman's long-ago fiancé, who died young in a car accident; for her children; for her husband, Mark; and ultimately, for herself. In this collection, Christman takes on the wide range of situations and landscapes she encountered on her journey from wild child through wounded teen to mother, teacher, writer, and wife. In these pages there are fatal accidents and miraculous births; a grief pilgrimage that takes Christman to jungles, volcanoes, and caves in Central America; and meditations on everything from sexual trauma and the more benign accidents of childhood to gun violence, indoor cycling, unlikely romance, and even a ghost or two. Playing like a lively mixtape in both subject and style, If This Were Fiction focuses an open-hearted, frequently funny, clear-eyed feminist lens on Christman's first fifty years and sends out a message of love, power, and hope.

Bright Lights, Prairie Dust

Bright Lights, Prairie Dust PDF Author: Karen Grassle
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1647423147
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Karen Grassle, the beloved actress who played Ma on Little House on the Prairie, grew up at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in a family where love was plentiful but alcohol wreaked havoc. In this candid memoir, Grassle reveals her journey to succeed as an actress even as she struggles to overcome depression, combat her own dependence on alcohol, and find true love. With humor and hard-won wisdom, Grassle takes readers on an inspiring journey through the political turmoil on ’60s campuses, on to studies with some of the most celebrated artists at the famed London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, and ultimately behind the curtains of Broadway stages and storied Hollywood sets. In these pages, readers meet actors and directors who have captivated us on screen and stage as they fall in love, betray and befriend, and don costumes only to reveal themselves. We know Karen Grassle best as the proud prairie woman Caroline Ingalls, with her quiet strength and devotion to family, but this memoir introduces readers to the complex, funny, rebellious, and soulful woman who, in addition to being the force behind those many strong women she played, fought passionately—as a writer, producer, and activist—on behalf of equal rights for women. Raw, emotional, and tender, Bright Lights celebrates and honors womanhood, in all its complexity.

Blast From the Past

Blast From the Past PDF Author: Toni L. P. Kelner
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
ISBN: 1625671261
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
In Agatha award-winner Toni L. P. Kelner’s third Where Are They Now? mystery, savvy celebrity reporter and part-time sleuth, Tilda Harper, must go off-script to stop a movie star murder. A Reel Killer When entertainment journalist Tilda Harper is invited to the Cape Cod set of an upcoming action film, she finds there’s just as much drama behind-the-scenes as on the screen. Celebrity stalkers and pushy paparazzi are bad enough, but now it seems that someone wants to shut down the production and its handsome lead... permanently. Rising star John Laryea has come a long way from The Blastoffs, the popular children’s show that launched his career. Pharos could be his breakout hit, but only if he can survive the deadly action off-camera. When a suspicious accident nearly ends John’s career and his life, it’s up to Tilda to figure out who has it in for the Hollywood hunk. It won’t be easy—Tilda’s list of suspects is longer than a blockbuster credit roll. Is it one of the cagey studio execs? A disgruntled screenwriter? An outraged fanboy? Or is one of John’s former Blastoffs costars eager for a lethal reunion? With the help of an old flame, Tilda tries to stop a killer before they can make John’s next scene, his last.