Any Last Words? collects the last words of dozens of celebrities. Some are funny, some are touching, and some are heartbreaking. These last words give us a rare insight into the lives of these celebrities. As well as the focus on final words, the book also provides interesting facts about the lives and careers of some of the world's most interesting actors, writers, artists, athletes, politicians, and even criminals. The book is sometimes irreverent, with a dark wit, but at it's heart it is a celebration of the lives of its subjects and the mark that each of them left on the world.
The New York Times bestseller everyone is talking about. If you could read my mind, you wouldn't be smiling. Samantha McAllister looks just like the rest of the popular girls in her junior class. But hidden beneath the straightened hair and expertly applied makeup is a secret that her friends would never understand: Sam has Purely-Obsessional OCD and is consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can't turn off. Second-guessing every move, thought, and word makes daily life a struggle, and it doesn't help that her lifelong friends will turn toxic at the first sign of a wrong outfit, wrong lunch, or wrong crush. Yet Sam knows she'd be truly crazy to leave the protection of the most popular girls in school. So when Sam meets Caroline, she has to keep her new friend with a refreshing sense of humor and no style a secret, right up there with Sam's weekly visits to her psychiatrist. Caroline introduces Sam to Poet's Corner, a hidden room and a tight-knit group of misfits who have been ignored by the school at large. Sam is drawn to them immediately, especially a guitar-playing guy with a talent for verse, and starts to discover a whole new side of herself. Slowly, she begins to feel more "normal" than she ever has as part of the popular crowd . . . until she finds a new reason to question her sanity and all she holds dear.
Nine months after Danny disappeared, his closest friends, Ellie, Rae, and Deenie, deal with their loss very differently but will have to share secrets about the night he disappeared to uncover the truth. Chapters alternate between past and present.
An NYRB Classics Original When the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, Last Words tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre-bending novel is at once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author’s own suicide note. The letters (which, Qiu tells us, can be read in any order) leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and genders—until the genderless character Zoë appears, and the narrator’s spiritual and physical identity is transformed. As powerfully raw and transcendent as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Theresa Cha’s Dictée, to name but a few, Last Words from Montmartre proves Qiu Miaojin to be one of the finest experimentalists and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation.
Markus Novak just wants to come home. An investigator for a Florida-based Death Row defense firm, Novak's life derailed when his wife, Lauren, was killed in the midst of a case the two were working together. Two years later, her murderer is still at large, and Novak's attempts to learn the truth about her death through less-than-legal means and jailhouse bargaining have put his job on the line. Now he's been all but banished, sent to Garrison, Indiana to assess a cold case that he's certain his boss has no intention of taking. As Novak knows all too well, some crimes never do get solved. But it's not often that the man who many believe got away with murder is the one calling for the case to be reopened. Ten years ago, a teenaged girl disappeared inside an elaborate cave system beneath rural farmland. Days later, Ridley Barnes emerged carrying Sarah Martin's lifeless body. Barnes has claimed all along that he has no memory of exactly where -- or how -- he found Sarah. His memory of whether she was dead or alive at the time is equally foggy. Tired of living under a cloud of suspicion, he says he wants answers -- even if they mean he'll end up in the electric chair. But what's he really up to? And Novak knows why he's so unhappy to be in Garrison -- but why are the locals so hostile towards him? The answers lie in the fiendish brain of a dangerous man, the real identity of a mysterious woman, and deep beneath them all, in the network of ancient, stony passages that hold secrets deadlier than he can imagine. Soon Novak is made painfully aware that if he has any chance of returning to the life and career he left behind in Florida, he'll need to find the truth in Garrison first.
A lighthearted look at the stories behind legendary last words—from heartwarming tales of final moments to hilarious last laughs. Last words are never easy—since, let’s face it, they’re mostly spoken by people in the worst health of their lives. But even if they aren’t eloquent, they can offer a glimpse into the speaker’s true self. Some are clever, others are loving, heartbreaking, or occasionally shocking. In Any Last Words?, Joseph Hayden explores the last words of more than two hundred actors, athletes, writers, musicians, politicians, intellectuals, criminals, and more. What was the last thing Bogart said to Bacall? What did Marie Antoinette say to her executioner? What were the final thoughts of great thinkers like Charles Darwin and Marie Curie? Or baseball legends like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle? Joseph Hayden reveals all these stories and much more in a book that you’ll wish would never end.
Some beg for forgiveness. Others claim innocence. At least three cheer for their favorite football teams. Death waits for us all, but only those sentenced to death know the day and the hour—and only they can be sure that their last words will be recorded for posterity. Last Words of the Executed presents an oral history of American capital punishment, as heard from the gallows, the chair, and the gurney. The product of seven years of extensive research by journalist Robert K. Elder, the book explores the cultural value of these final statements and asks what we can learn from them. We hear from both the famous—such as Nathan Hale, Joe Hill, Ted Bundy, and John Brown—and the forgotten, and their words give us unprecedented glimpses into their lives, their crimes, and the world they inhabited. Organized by era and method of execution, these final statements range from heartfelt to horrific. Some are calls for peace or cries against injustice; others are accepting, confessional, or consoling; still others are venomous, rage-fueled diatribes. Even the chills evoked by some of these last words are brought on in part by the shared humanity we can’t ignore, their reminder that we all come to the same end, regardless of how we arrive there. Last Words of the Executed is not a political book. Rather, Elder simply asks readers to listen closely to these voices that echo history. The result is a riveting, moving testament from the darkest corners of society.
Laid out as diary entries of the last nine months of Burroughs's life, "Last Words" spans the realms of cultural criticism, personal memoir, and fiction. Classic Burroughs concerns--literature, U.S. drug policy, the state of humanity, his love for his cats--permeate this poignant portrait of the man, his life, and the creative process.
Compiles farewell utterances from such notables as Douglas Fairbanks, Thomas Edison, John Maynard Keynes, Eugene O'Neill, Huey Long, Malcolm X, Indira Gandhi, and Conrad Hilton.
Embraced worldwide as key spiritual teachers of our times, the Pleiadians are back, with another bold and controversial look at our highest purpose on Earth. Earth: Pleiadian Keys to the Living Library is their handbook to inspired living, calling on us to restore and return value to the human being, and to recognize the Goddess energies and the power of blood as connections to our DNA and our heritage. Using wit, wisdom, and deep compassion, they entice us to explore the corridors of time through the concept of the Game Masters; to awaken the crucial codes for multidimensional perspective; and to redream the Living Library of Earth. Their teachings aare significantly arranged in twelve chapters to trigger a deeper understanding of our ancestral lineage. Earth probes the memories hidden deep within us to reveal our crucial roles in the transformational process unfolding in our times.
