The acclaimed director of such films as Brideshead Revisited shares the story of his youth and career, providing coverage of such topics as his childhood as the son of star Geraldine Fitzgerald, his relationships with Hollywood elite and the allegations that Orson Welles was his real father.
"Told with brains and heart" —Michelle Gable, New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment "Bristles with charm and curiosity" —Winston Groom, New York Times bestselling author of Forrest Gump "A wholly original and superbly crafted work of art, Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance is a masterpiece of the imagination." —Lori Nelson Spielman, New York Times bestselling author of The Life List and Sweet Forgiveness "Charlotte's Web for grown-ups who, like Weylyn Grey, have their own stories of being different, feared, brave, and loved." —Mo Daviau, author of Every Anxious Wave Ruth Emmie Lang teaches us how to find magic in the ordinary in her magical realism debut Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance. Orphaned, raised by wolves, and the proud owner of a horned pig named Merlin, Weylyn Grey knew he wasn’t like other people. But when he single-handedly stopped that tornado on a stormy Christmas day in Oklahoma, he realized just how different he actually was. As amazing as these powers may appear, they tend to manifest themselves at inopportune times and places, jeopardizing not only his own life, but the life of Mary, the woman he loves. Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance tells the story of Weylyn Grey’s life from the perspectives of the people who knew him, loved him, and even a few who thought he was just plain weird. Although he doesn’t stay in any of their lives for long, he leaves each of them with a story to tell: great storms that evaporate into thin air; fireflies that make phosphorescent honey; a house filled with spider webs and the strange man who inhabits it. There is one story, however, that Weylyn wishes he could change: his own. But first he has to muster enough courage to knock on Mary’s front door.
This is a novel about appearance versus reality – how our lives and relationships appear to others versus how they are experienced, and the complex ways that social class shapes identity, relationships, and the codes of friendship. American Circumstance also provides a window into the replication of wealth, power, and privilege. The novel can be used as supplemental reading in courses across the disciplines that deal with gender, social class, inequality, power, family systems, relational communication, intimate relationships, identity, American culture, narrative or creative writing. It can also be read in book clubs or entirely for pleasure. “American Circumstance is wonderful! The characters and story invite you into a world that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Highly recommended!!” – Carl Leggo, Ph.D., University of British Columbia “American Circumstance kept me up! I wanted to see how the characters’ lives untangled. I loved how Leavy challenged my cultural assumptions. Students will have a lot to talk about as they discover the 'sociology of everyday life' embedded in the fiction.” – Laurel Richardson, Ph.D., The Ohio State University “The characters were so compelling that I couldn’t stop reading ... a great beach read, or class text.” – U. Melissa Anyiwo, Ph.D., Curry College “Leavy writes in an engaging way that helps you ask important questions about class issues in America. This story keeps you interested and wondering why women make the choices they do.” – Margaret A. Robbins, The Journal of Language & Literacy Education “American Circumstance is one of my favorite texts to assign to my sociology students.” – Cheryl Llewellyn, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Lowell Patricia Leavy, Ph.D., is an award-winning independent sociologist and best-selling author.
Moving beyond victimhood and into mastery, is the life-changing premise of Master of Circumstance, a timeless rendition on overcoming victimhood and the insidious snares of negative thinking that debilitate millions of people everyday. This book, written by first-time author James Morgan, was born out of his real-life experiences of growing up poor in a steel town in the Midwest. Never having met his father and raised by a struggling single-mother, James became a byproduct of his environment. In this book, he shares the psychological techniques, mindset shifts, and practical tools he used to get his life on track and out of the victim mindset. He shares in a way that anyone can use to take back control and ownership of their life, no matter how disempowering their current or past circumstances may seem. In his authorial debut, James walks the reader through a poignant narrative on how to shatter the illusions of the victim mindset once and for all, and step into their true power as a master of their circumstances. As the name implies, this book is highly transformational and is the result of decades of James's personal trial and error before he found his true calling in life: becoming a family-focused licensed therapist and counselor. Today, James helps families grow stronger by harnessing the power of accountability while finding relief from blame, guilt, and the traumas of their past. His mission is to help people around the world achieve inner mastery over their lives.
Brilliantly paced, witty, crackling with energy and suspense, >Special Circumstances> is a phenomenal thriller that introduces an electrifying new voice in legal fiction.
Delightful Blend of Love and Laughter in Turano's Sophomore Novel Miss Arabella Beckett has one driving passion: to help the downtrodden women of America. Naturally, she supports the women's suffrage movement and eagerly attends rallies and lectures across the country. On her travels, she makes a simple offer of assistance to a young woman in need that goes sadly awry and lands both ladies in more trouble than they can manage. An independent sort, Arabella is loath to admit she needs help and certainly doesn't need help from an arrogant, narrow-minded knight in shining armor. Mr. Theodore Wilder, private investigator extraordinaire, is on a mission. A mission that began as a favor to his good friend Hamilton Beckett, but swiftly evolved into a merry chase across the country. By the time he finally tracks down Hamilton's sister, Arabella, he is in a less than pleasant mood. When the lady turns out to have radical ideas and a fiercely independent streak, he soon finds himself at his wit's end. When they return home to New York, circumstances force their paths to continue to cross, but the most peculiar feelings growing between them certainly can't be love. When the trouble Arabella had accidentally stirred up seems to have followed her to New York and threatens her very life, the unlikely couple must face the possibility that they might have landed in the most peculiar circumstance of all: love.
Paige Michaels comes from the kind of wealth that few experience. The daughter of a notoriously successful banker who wielded great political power, she grew up in an extraordinary world peopled by the leaders of tomorrow. Now one mistake rooted in her past is threatening to unravel her perfect life. After years as a stay-at-home mother in New Jersey, Mollie Johnston convinces her husband to move back to New York, to fulfill her dream of living amid the bright lights. Mollie is uncomfortable in her own body and always worried about how others see her. Once she sees how the other half lives, will she come to see herself and her marriage more clearly? Gwen McAndrews is the ultimate New York socialite, and the envy of those impressed by her grandeur, but is there more than meets the eye? Along with Paige, Mollie and Gwen, a cast of characters’ stories are interwoven into the text—parents, children, care-takers, childhood friends, old lovers and spouses. American Circumstance is a novel about appearance versus reality; how people’s lives and relationships look to others versus how they are experienced, and the complex ways that social class shapes identity and relationships. American Circumstance provides a window into the replication of wealth, power and privilege. Through the protagonist’s work with an international women’s organization the novel is underscored with a narrative about how gender, social class and race intertwine on a global scale, and problems are all relative. There are also strong narratives about how family and friends influence identity and the things we say and don’t say to each other. While fictional, American Circumstance is grounded in autoethnographic observations and more than a decade of teaching and research about gender, class, race, identity and relationships. The novel can be used as supplemental reading in courses that deal with gender, social class, power, family systems, relational communication, intimate relationships and/or identity, or it can be read entirely for pleasure.
The main objective of this book is to propose an alternative criminal opportunity theory. The authors build upon social control and routine activities to develop a dynamic, multi-contextual criminal opportunity theory. Emphasizing the importance of contextual explanations of criminal acts, they propose two levels of analysis: individual and environmental. At each level, the theory pivots on three broad organizing constructs--offenders motivated to commit criminal acts, targets such as persons or property suitable as objects of criminal acts, and the presence or absence of individuals or other defensive mechanisms capable of serving as guardians against criminal acts. Crime is profoundly real, possessing qualities that make its occurrence and prevention pressing and persistent matters for individuals and societies. Theory, in contrast, is seen as highly abstract and removed from the seriousness of "real life." Theory almost seems to be a peculiar sport of an academic class. The practically minded, even some academic criminologists, are often perplexed by the seeming obsession some scholars have with theory, which, after all, is nothing more than an explanation of facts. The practically minded, seeing a compelling need to identify the crucial factors that could be used to predict and prevent crime, wonder why anyone would invest precious time and energy into speculating about the abstract, underlying details of why crime occurs when and where it does. The authors contend that every intervention, prevention, and policy is based on some theoretical explanation of the causes of human behavior. The improvement of interventions, preventions, and policies is thus directly related to the improvement of theoretical understandings of the abstract, underlying details of the causes of crime. The development of explanations of events, when properly done, is a crucial component to understanding and possibly improving the "real world." This work does just that.
Visiting the tranquil paradise of the Bahamas, Amanda Blayne finds herself kidnapped, and when an undercover officer arrives out of nowhere, challenging her abductors while claiming to be her lover, she has no choice but to trust him.
In Abducted by Circumstance, David Madden offers his readers a unique experience simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. Carol Seaborg makes a risky visit in zero weather to a lighthouse near her house in The Thousand Islands of New York on the Canadian border. A self-confident, attractive woman of about 55 suddenly appears on the observation deck looking out over frozen Lake Ontario. Carol admires the woman as her ideal. Suddenly, the woman disappears, apparently abducted by a serial rapist and killer, stimulating in Carol an immediate empathy that, enhanced by the power of her imagination, is so great as to make her unique. Carol projects her own emotions, imagination, and intellect into Glenda's experience. To render that empathy and imagination, Madden channels everything that the people around her say and do through Carol's perceptions so intimately that he shifts frequently and without transition into her thoughts, which focus mostly on the abducted woman, whose name newscasters reveal is Glenda Hamilton. As Carol imagines Glenda gradually coping with her abductor, she speaks directly, sometimes out loud, to her, encouraging her, advising her, expressing fear for her. If Carol's external experiences are passive almost to paralysis, her memories reveal that her life has been full of more venturesome relationships and events (she once rode across Greece alone on a bicycle) than most wives and mothers in their late thirties have. Carol's emotions and imagination are highly charged and exquisitely presented. The circumstances and relationships of her past and present predispose Carol to empathize with Glenda. Carol's own life among a crude, remote second husband, a somewhat estranged adolescent son, a bright five-year-old daughter, a father who is a rather cold philosophy teacher, and the strong spiritual presence of her mother who committed suicide, is simple and routine. The events involving Glenda's disappearance take place during the week before Carol's second surgery for breast cancer. Gradually, as she takes late night drives with her little girl, visits her ex-boyfriend's father in a nursing home, drives by her ex-lover's house and business, and visits the campus where her father is a prominent teacher, the reader realizes, some pages before Carol herself does, that she has been abducted by the circumstances of her life. Although it is grounded in the realistic detail of everyday life, Abducted by Circumstance is unique in conception, style, and characterization. Madden immerses the reader in an extraordinarily rich and unforgettable psychological experience. Thoroughly absorbing from start to finish--Abducted by Circumstance explores Carol's troubled psyche with the rare precision and insight that have long distinguished David Madden's fiction.