"My all-time favorite. Astonishing." (Stephen King) Down the Rabbit Hole is the first book in the Echo Falls mystery series by bestselling crime novelist Peter Abrahams. Perfect for middle school readers looking for a good mystery. Welcome to Echo Falls, home of a thousand secrets. In Down the Rabbit Hole, eighth grader Ingrid Levin-Hill is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or at least her shoes are. And getting them back will mean getting tangled up in a murder investigation as complicated as the mysteries solved by her idol, Sherlock Holmes. With soccer practice, schoolwork, and the lead role in her town's production of Alice in Wonderland, Ingrid is swamped. But as things in Echo Falls keep getting curiouser and curiouser, Ingrid realizes she must solve the murder on her own—before it's too late. "Deft use of literary allusions and ironic humor add further touches of class to a topnotch mystery," said School Library Journal. "Intriguing twists." Publishers Weekly agreed: "The fresh dialogue and believable small-town setting will tempt fans to visit Echo Falls again." The next book in this Edgar Award-nominated series in Behind the Curtain, followed by Into the Dark.
'Epic... Wilson writes captivatingly with humour...anyone with an interest in eastern European sport will be consulting this book for years to come' FINANCIAL TIMES 'This fascinating and perceptive travelogue includes a fine collection of anecdotes too colourful for fiction' SUNDAY TIMES 'A blissful book, lovingly and stylishly written' DAILY TELEGRAPH From the war-ravaged streets of Sarajevo, where turning up for training involved dodging snipers' bullets, to the crumbling splendour of Budapest's Bozsik Stadium, where the likes of Puskás and Kocsis masterminded the fall of England, the landscape of Eastern Europe has changed immeasurably since the fall of communism. Jonathan Wilson has travelled extensively behind the old Iron Curtain, viewing life beyond the fall of the Berlin Wall through the lens of football. Where once the state-controlled teams of the Eastern bloc passed their way with crisp efficiency - a sort of communist version of total football - to considerable success on the European and international stages, today the beautiful game in the East has been opened up to the free market, and throughout the region a sense of chaos pervades. The threat of totalitarian interference no longer remains; but in its place mafia control is generally accompanied with a crippling lack of funds. In BEHIND THE CURTAIN Jonathan Wilson goes in search of the spirit of Hungary's 'Golden Squad' of the early fifties, charts the disintegration of the footballing superpower that was the former Yugoslavia, follows a sorry tale of corruption, mismanagement and Armenian cognac through the Caucasuses, reopens the case of Russia's greatest footballer, Eduard Streltsov, and talks to Jan Tomaszewski about an autumn night at Wembley in 1973...
Beginning in the 1930s, men and a handful of women came from India's many communities-Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others--to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, "the original fusion music." They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name "Bollywood," but the musicians themselves remain, in their own words, "behind the curtain"--the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres. Now, Gregory D. Booth offers a compelling account of the Bollywood film music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In a rare insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, Booth explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film music industry. On the basis of a fascinating set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creator and performers. Booth also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s-90s as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India. Featuring an extensive companion website with video interviews with the musicians themselves, Behind the Curtain is a powerful, ground-level view of this globally important music industry.
Cultures clash and passion ignites in the novel that will leave you begging for more—from the bestselling author of The Affair and Looking Inside. There’s something about this woman… On a break between overseas jobs, journalist Asher Gaites returns to his hometown of Chicago—and allows his friends to persuade him to check out a hot new singer. At a downtown jazz club, he’s soon transfixed by the lyrical voice and sensuous body of a woman who performs behind a thin, shimmering veil... …That could bring a man to his knees. The veil gives Moroccan-American Laila Barek the anonymity she needs since she has never been able to reconcile her family’s values with her passion for music. But one man is inexplicably drawn to her. And when Asher confronts her on a subway platform after a gig, he’s shocked to recognize the woman who walked away from him nine years ago... Laila has never been able to forget the touch, the feel, the taste of Asher. And despite the doubt and fear that wind their way into their lives, they must trust the heat of their desire to burn down the walls the world has placed between them… MATURE AUDIENCE
Describes, in text and look-through and pull-up illustrated panels, the onstage and backstage activities during a performance of the opera "Hansel and Gretel."
Pro-Wrestling's secrets and greatest moments are immortalized in this graphic novel from legendary wrestling personality Jim Cornette. A true-story style anthology, these insider tales will show the lengths that wrestlers went to uphold "kayfabe" (the old carny term for the presentation of legitimate conflict), as well as the noteworthy cultural, racial, and economic effects these events and characters had on society. This is the graphic novel that old school wrestling fans have been waiting their entire lives for: a no-holds-barred representation of the moments that wrestling insiders couldn't talk about for years.
This exclusive collection of photographs spanning the past two decades of Broadway theater captures stars behind the scenes, from Elizabeth Taylor prepping for her entrance in The Little Foxes to Cabaret's Alan Cumming meditating outdoors.
Behind The Curtain: Volume 2 Please note, this is Volume 2 December 1968 saw a landmark court case in the appropriately named township of Credit River, Minnesota, USA. First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly was an epic courtroom drama and although unsurprisingly, not widely reported either at the time or subsequently, is actually extremely significant. Jerome Daly a lawyer by profession, defended himself against the bank's attempted foreclosure on his $14,000 mortgage on the grounds that there was no 'consideration' for the loan. 'Consideration' in legalese, refers to 'the item exchanged' and is an essential element of any legal contract. Daly contended that the bank offered 'no consideration' for his loan on the grounds that they had 'created the money out of thin air' by bookkeeping entry and had therefore not suffered a loss (another relevant point of law) by his refusal or inability to pay back the money. The proceedings were recorded by Justice William Drexler, who had given no credence whatsoever to the defence, until Mr. Morgan, the bank's president, took to the witness stand. To Drexler's and indeed everyone else present's great surprise, Morgan casually admitted under questioning from Daly's lawyer, that the bank routinely 'created money out of thin air' for all its loans and mortgages and that this indeed was standard practice in all banks. Presiding Justice, Martin Mahoney declared that, "It sounds exactly like fraud to me," accompanied by nods and murmurs of assent from all around the courtroom. In his summation of the case, Justice Mahoney reported that... "Plaintiff (the bank) admitted that it, in combination with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, did create the entire $14,000.00 in money and credit upon its own books by bookkeeping entry. That this was the consideration used to support the Note dated May 8, 1964 and the Mortgage of the same date. The money and credit first came into existence when they created it. Morgan admitted that no United States Law or Statute existed which gave him the right to do this. A lawful 'consideration' must exist and be tendered to support the Note." So, the court duly rejected the bank's claim for foreclosure and the defendant kept his house. The implications of this case therefore, should have been far-reaching. If bankers are indeed extending credit without consideration (which they most definitely are) i.e. without backing their loans with real money they actually have stored in their vaults and were entitled to lend, any judicial decision declaring their loans void, would topple the entire worldwide financial and banking system. Since this precedent, many other defendants have attempted to have mortgages and loans nullified using the same defence as Daly, but there has been extremely limited success only. In fact, one judge said, strictly 'off the record, ' "If I let you do that, you and everyone else, it would bring the whole banking system down. I cannot let you go behind the bar of the bank. . . . We are not going "behind that curtain!"" Well suffice to say, we certainly are going on a highly revealing trip ' "behind the curtain!," ' so strap-in and be prepared for the ride of your life, as we investigate the sordid and murky history of the world of banking and high finance and the people who run it... with an iron fist encased in a velvet glove. This book is an indictment, not just of the totally corrupt financial system that today permeates the whole world, but also of the people that control it. Their crimes against humanity are legion and so far-reaching that their insidious influence now extends into and corrupts virtually every element of society and it is these so-called 'banksters' - banker-gangsters, who are responsible for all the death, destruction and misery in the world today.
Eclectic and impassioned, a collection that affirms the power of the written word.' – Observer The Boy Behind the Curtain is a portrait of a life, a place and a man. In this deeply personal collection of true stories and essays Tim Winton shows how moments from his childhood and life growing up have shaped his views on class, faith, fundamentalism, the environment, and – most pressingly – how all his experiences have made him a writer. From unexpected links between car crashes and faith, surfing and writing, to the story of his upbringing in the changing Australian landscape, The Boy Behind the Curtain is an impassioned, funny, joyous, astonishing collection of memories, and Winton's most personal book to date.
