Waitress Daisy Cusak went into labor right in the middle of the dinner rush. Racked by pain, she couldn't protest the strong arms that carried her to help. Navy pilot Alex Barone became her strength; his calming voice and caring touch helped her deliver her baby. But it wasn't just hormones that made the potent flyboy the star of her fantasies.... Alex wanted her, too--and intended to have her before his leave was up. But Daisy was more powerful than any G-force he'd experienced. She and her newborn daughter targeted Alex's heart, and before he knew it, his days of flying solo were numbered.
The National Book Award Finalist from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose—now the major motion picture Submission “Screamingly funny … Blue Angel culminates in a sexual harassment hearing that rivals the Salem witch trials.” —USA Today It's been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Deliciously risque, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.
Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s Chicago jazz scene, a highly ambitious and stylish literary debut that combines the atmosphere and period detail of Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility with the emotional depth and drama of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, about a talented but troubled singer, her precocious ten-year-old daughter, and their heartbreaking relationship. It is the early 1960s, and Chicago is a city of uneasy tensions—segregation, sexual experimentation, free love, the Cold War—but it is also home to one of the country’s most vibrant jazz scenes. Naomi Hill, a singer at the Blue Angel club, has been poised on the brink of stardom for nearly ten years. Finally, her big break arrives—the cover of Look magazine. But success has come at enormous personal cost. Beautiful and magnetic, Naomi is a fiercely ambitious yet extremely self-destructive woman whose charms are irresistible and dangerous for those around her. No one knows this better than Sophia, her clever ten-year-old daughter. For Sophia, Naomi is the center of her universe. As the only child of a single, unconventional mother, growing up in an adult world, Sophia has seen things beyond her years and her understanding. Unsettled by her uncertain home life, she harbors the terrible fear that the world could end at any moment, and compulsively keeps a running list of practical objects she will need to reinvent once nuclear catastrophe strikes. Her one constant is Jim, the photographer who is her best friend, surrogate father, and protector. But Jim is deeply in love with Naomi—a situation that adds to Sophia’s anxiety. Told from the alternating perspectives of Sophia and Naomi, their powerful and wrenching story unfolds in layers, revealing Sophia’s struggle for her mother’s love with Naomi’s desperate journey to stardom and the colorful cadre of close friends who shaped her along the way. Sophisticated yet poignant, Last Night at the Blue Angel is an unforgettable tale about what happens when our passion for the life we want is at sharp odds with the life we have. It is a story ripe with surprising twists and revelations, and an ending that is bound to break your heart.
A savage journey into the heart of Hunter S. Thompson's Las Vegas with the Good Doctor as tour guide. A Lord-of-the-Rings-like adventure in the city's underground flood channels. A seven-day stay at a seedy motel on East Fremont Street. The stories in My Week at the Blue Angel aren't about Steve Wynn, Cirque du Soleil, or how to play poker, and they aren't set in Caesars Palace, XS Nightclub, or a 2,000-seat showroom. They're about prostitutes, ex-cons, and the homeless, and they're set under Caesars Palace and in trailer parks and weekly motels. In this creative nonfiction collection, Matthew O'Brien--author of Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas--and veteran photographer Bill Hughes show a side of the city rarely seen. A side beyond the neon lights, themed facades, and motel-room doors. A side beyond the barbwire fences, No Trespassing signs, and midnight shadows.
Lucky McGuire is a spirited Navy jet with big dreams. Lucky loves to fly and be with his friends. Lucky dreams of becoming a Blue Angel but doesn't know where his next adventure will take him. Will it be flying in the skies with his buddies or will he be sent to the dreaded aircraft storage yard in the desert? Find out what is in store for Lucky as he chases his dreams!
As a young naval aviator, Dusty Rhodes was shot down by the Japanese on his first combat mission in World War II. Toughing out the rest of the war in POW camps, he wondered if he would ever fly again. But Rhodes was destined to take flying to new heights. As only the third fighter pilot to become leader of the Blue Angels, Raleigh E. "Dusty" Rhodes participated in developing the most famous aerobatics team ever formed. From POW to Blue Angel tells his story - a fast-paced drama teeming with action and human interest and capturing the initiative and tenacity of a true American hero. Jim Armstrong has drawn on extensive interviews with Dusty and his closest colleagues, as well as Dusty's scrapbooks, flight logs, and prison journal, to produce a rare account of the Blue Angels in the late 1940s. Readers will experience the stress of practice and the exhilaration of air shows as Armstrong takes them inside Dusty's cockpit during the team's early years. This was the era when the Blues first found fame, perfecting their trademark diamond formation and barrel roll, as well as transitioning from prop planes to jet aircraft. This book is also a moving account of the brutality Rhodes suffered for three years as a prisoner of war - the beatings, the interrogations, the forced labor - and includes his rare, ground observer's view of the firebombings of Tokyo and Yokohama. Armstrong captures Dusty's exhilaration and uncertainty in returning to a changed postwar America, and also recounts how Rhodes followed his Blue Angels command with a tour as a fighter pilot in Korea.
In Being a Blue Angel, children will meet these heroes in Blue, see what they do and how they live, be inspired by them, and learn how they could one day find themselves Being a Blue Angel. Updated with 2017-2018 team members and other changes. The author worked directly with the Blue Angels and flew with the team as a VIP guest.
