Author: Robert Westbrook
Publisher: Swan's Nest Canada
ISBN: 1926499034
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
Book Two in Robert Westbrook's epic "Hollywood Noir" Torch Singer Thriller series. “An Almost Perfect Ending ranks alongside the best Hollywood noir. It takes the reader on a journey which leads relentlessly towards a final, fatal conclusion.” Daily Mail Book Two, An Almost Perfect Ending opens with sultry heroine Sonya Saint-Amant at the height of her career—a glittering, triumphant appearance at Ciro’s, the clubhouse for the stars in 1950s Hollywood where everyone wants to claim her as their friend. But in 1954, popular music is undergoing a revolution in which all but the biggest stars will be cast aside. With her looks and popularity fading, Sonya believes she has come up with the perfect plan to save her career . . . if only she can maneuver a tricky path through the many dangers that beset her, a vortex of politics, sex, blackmail, and murder . . . “Pacy and unstoppable, the second book in the The Torch Singer series takes over where the first left off, grabbing your wrist, tugging you along, refusing to let go.” Evening Standard “The Torch Singer exposes the fragility of fame. The higher the edifice the greater the risk that some element of deep-set animal emotion or human baseness will bring everything crashing down . . . and watching it happen is not just compulsive—it’s addictive and unmissable.” Event Magazine “Robert Westbrook is a born storyteller and a bit of a magician.” Ally Sheedy Ambition, blackmail, murder . . . THE TORCH SINGER is an unforgettable journey through the shadowlands of fame.
Author: Robert Westbrook
Publisher: Swan's Nest Canada
ISBN: 1926499018
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
“Robert Westbrook’s novel strips the gilt off the Hollywood Golden Age to reveal the seamier underside. The Torch Singer begins with an ending, a scene of murder and mayhem on St. Valentine’s Night in 1956 Beverly Hills and unravels the many and various threads of the lives and careers that took them there.” Time Out The Torch Singer is a sweeping historical saga that takes the reader from the horrors of Nazi-occupied Poland to the glittery excesses of Hollywood in the 1940’s and 50’s: the rise and fall of Sonya Saint-Amant, a singer who schemes her way to fame and glory breaking all the rules. Book One, An Overnight Sensation, charts the rise of Sonya from the age of 17 in 1940, a girl dreaming of being an understudy at the Krakow Opera when Nazis raid the theater. After witnessing the summary execution of her mother by German soldiers she escapes Poland and makes her way to London. Using guile and beauty, she finds passage to America in 1943 on the Mauretania, a dangerous North Atlantic crossing on a troop ship full of men. As the ship steams north into Arctic waters evading enemy submarines, Sonya almost wins at a high-stakes game of love . . . only to arrive in New York alone and desperate but determined to become a star. “A masterpiece of storytelling. A book of constant intrigue which from the outset creates that delicious paradox of it being immediately clear that nothing is ever quite as it seems.” Daily Mail “Robert Westbrook is a born storyteller and a bit of a magician.” Ally Sheedy The Torch Singer is an unforgettable journey through the shadowlands of fame.
Author: Sarah Ash
Publisher: Spectra
ISBN: 0553900587
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 600
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Book Description
A writer of rare imagination, Sarah Ash lends her unique vision to epic fantasy. In this captivating continuation of her saga, the author of Lord of Snow and Shadows revisits a realm filled with spirits and singers, daemons and kings. . . . Gavril Nagarian has finally cast out the dragon-daemon from within himself. The Drakhaoul is gone—and with it all of Gavril’s fearsome powers. No longer possessed, he is instead being driven mad by the Drakhaoul’s absence. Worse, he has betrayed his blood, his people, and put the ice-bound princedom of Azhkendir at risk—and lost.At the mercy of the victorious Eugene of Tielen, Gavril is sentenced to life in an insane asylum. For the power-hungry Eugene longs to possess a Drakhaoul of his own, and his prisoner seems the best way to achieve that goal. Meanwhile, a shattered empire reunites. But peace is as fragile as a rebel’s whisper—and a captive’s wish to be free. . . . Praise for Prisoner of the Iron Tower “A new fantasy series [that] will leave readers drooling to get their hands on the sequel.”—Publishers Weekly “Solid, wonderful fantasy, sparkling and imaginative!”—Booklist “Ash takes her large and colorful cast of characters from horror to pathos, from triumph to betrayal, smoothly and convincingly. a roller-coaster ride of events and emotions in the best modern fantasy manner.”—Kirkus Reviews
Author: Stacy Linn Holman Jones
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759106598
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
"In this innovative book, Stacy Holman Jones presents torch singing as a much more complicated phenomenon than the familiar trope of a woman lamenting her victimhood. With an ethnographer's eye, she observes the bluesy torch singers, asking if they are possibly performing critiques of the very lyrics they are singing. From this perspective, we see the singer giving expression not only to desire but also to an incipient determination to resist and change. Holman Jones also reveals points of contact in the opposition between spectators and performers, emotion and intellect, and love and power. Instead of interpreting the expression of love as a woman's violent mistake - as willing deception and passive fate - Holman Jones allows us to hear an active search for hope."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Larry David Smith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313067872
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
The torch song has long been a vehicle for expression—perhaps American song's most sheerly visceral one. Two artists in particular have built upon this tradition to express their own unique outlooks on their lives and the world around them. Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello, and the Torch Song Tradition combines biographical material, artist commentary, critical interpretation, and selected exemplars of the writers' work to reveal the power of authorship and the creative drive necessary to negotiate an artistic vision in the complicated mechanisms of the commercial music industry. Author Larry David Smith, as in his Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and American Song, considers the complicated intersection of biography, creative philosophy, artistic imperative, and stylistic tendencies in the work of both Joni Mitchell and Elvis Costello—two songwriters with seemingly nothing in common, one famously confessional and one famously confrontational. Yet, as Smith shows so incisively, they are two personalities that prove fascinatingly complementary. Mitchell and Costello both yielded bodies of work that are cohesive, coherent, and rich in meaning. Both have made historic contributions to the singer-songwriter model, two rebellious respones to the creative and commercial compromises associated with their chosen field, and two distinct thematic responses to the torch song tradition. Smith examines these responses, offering a unique and invaluable exploration of the craft of two of the last century's most towering musical figures.
Author: Tom Tierney
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486447448
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 20
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Book Description
This dazzling paper doll collection pays tribute to 16 lovely ladies of song whose intimate and distinctive vocal deliveries rang with stylish sophistication. From memorable roles in Broadway musicals and show-stopping numbers at the Folies Bergère to brilliant performances in movies and on radio and TV, these celebrated performers are represented by 16 dolls modeling 32 costumes. Included are images of Nora Bayes, Jane Froman, Ruth Etting, Mabel Mercer, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Patti Page, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Josephine Baker, Frances Langford, Jo Stafford, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, and Anita O'Day. Accompanied by wardrobes of satiny sheaths, elegant cocktail dresses, and billowing full-length gowns, the accurately rendered figures of the famed vocalists will delight music lovers, collectors, and paper doll fans of all ages.
Author: Tim Seelig
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781635281064
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
The decision to write my life story began as an exercise to make sense out of it all. But it moved quickly to being a tool that would help me put it all in order. My life has been punctuated by some pretty dramatic events. I wanted it all out there. So take this ride with me; I promise it won't be boring! At the end, I hope you are smiling.
Author: Harvey Fierstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: Otto Penzler
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN: 0307494160
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1170
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Book Description
The biggest, the boldest, the most comprehensive collection of Pulp writing ever assembled. Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train—a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best. Including: • Three stories by Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Dashiell Hammett. • Complete novels from Carroll John Daly, the man who invented the hard-boiled detective, and Fredrick Nebel, one of the masters of the form. • A never before published Dashiell Hammett story. • Every other major pulp writer of the time, including Paul Cain, Steve Fisher, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, and many many more of whom you’ve probably never heard. • Three deadly sections–The Crimefighters, The Villains, and Dames–with three unstoppable introductions by Harlan Coben, Harlan Ellison, and Laura Lippman Featuring: • Plenty of reasons for murder, all of them good. • A kid so smart–he’ll die of it. • A soft-hearted loan shark’s legman learning–the hard way–never to buy a strange blonde a hamburger. • The uncanny “Moon Man” and his mad-money victims.
Author: Amanda Joy
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525518606
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Two sisters must fight to the death to win the crown in this first installment of a gripping, action-packed duology set in an ancient North African-inspired fantasy world. Now in paperback. Sixteen-year-old Eva is a princess, born with the magick of blood and marrow--a dark and terrible magick that hasn't been seen for generations in the vibrant but fractured country of Myre. Its last known practitioner was Queen Raina, who toppled the native royalty and massacred thousands, including her own sister, eight generations ago, thus beginning the Rival Heir tradition. Living in Raina's long and dark shadow, Eva must now face her older sister, Isa, in a battle to the death if she hopes to ascend to the Ivory Throne--because in the Queendom of Myre only the strongest, most ruthless rulers survive. A River of Royal Blood is an enthralling debut set in a lush ancient North African inspired fantasy world that subtly but powerfully challenges our notions of power, history, and identity.
