Kidnapped

Kidnapped

Author: Charles Fox

Publisher: Picador USA

Published: 2018-01-09

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1250199522

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Grandson of Getty Oil founder J. Paul Getty, "Little Paul's" life may have been cursed by money and privilege from the moment he was born. Falling in with the wrong people and abandoned by his famous family, Getty was a child of his international jet set era, moving from Marrakesh to Rome, nightclubs to well-appointed drug dens. His was one of the trio of high-profile kidnappings that defined the decade--along with Frank Sinatra, Jr's and Patty Heart's--and permanently memorable for the ear that was mailed to his mother back in the States as evidence of the kidnappers' intentions.Kidnapped is richly reported--including many interviews with Getty himself ranging from the late 1970s to the early 1990s--that raise new angles about the case, such as: how much did Getty acquiesce to the kidnappers and why wouldn't his rich-as-Croesus grandfather pay the ransom, which began at the equivalent of $550,000 in lire and bulged to 3.6 million as the months dragged on. Charles Fox has captured the voices of models and maids, carabinieri and club-owners, drug dealers and drivers alongside the Getty family members themselves to paint an evocative portrait of an era and one of its most misunderstood participants.


Telegraph Avenue

Telegraph Avenue

Author: Michael Chabon

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2012-09-25

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 1443420654

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New York Times Bestseller “A genuinely moving story about race and class, parenting and marriage. . . Chabon is inarguably one of the greatest prose stylists of all time." — Benjamin Percy, Esquire New York Times bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon has transported readers to wonderful places: to New York City during the Golden Age of comic books (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay); to an imaginary Jewish homeland in Sitka, Alaska (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union); to discover The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Now he takes us to Telegraph Avenue in a big-hearted and exhilarating novel that explores the profoundly intertwined lives of two Oakland, California families, one black and one white. In Telegraph Avenue, Chabon lovingly creates a world grounded in pop culture—Kung Fu, ’70s Blaxploitation films, vinyl LPs, jazz and soul music—and delivers a bravura epic of friendship, race, and secret histories. As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there—longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart—half tavern, half temple—stands Brokeland. When ex–NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in America, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complications to the couples' already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of fifteen-year-old Julius Jaffe's life.


Mr. Barry's Etchings

Mr. Barry's Etchings

Author: Daniel Archer

Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Published: 1950-10

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13: 9780822207795

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THE STORY: Judson Barry is an enthusiastic etcher, and as a pastime had made a marvelous imitation of a $50 bill. Barry would never think of doing anything dishonest but his town has been in the hands of political jugglers and is in financial diffi


Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Author: Dylan Allen

Publisher: Dylan Allen Books

Published: 2017-10-06

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13:

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Lucia Vega is on a winning streak. Her book, Throw Away the Key has taken the country by storm. And now it’s being made into a movie. After years of chasing it, she can finally taste freedom. Reece Carras is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Handsome, rich and generous, he’s everything girls like her aren’t supposed to dream of. But dream she does. And in his strong arms she finds a freedom she never even knew existed. Falling in love was the easy part… Cruel twists of fate and torn loyalties will make staying together seem impossible. Sacrifices will have to be made. And they will learn that blood may be thicker than water, But nothing is more powerful than two hearts that beat for each other.


Life Begins at Fifty

Life Begins at Fifty

Author: Helen Carver

Publisher: Archway Publishing

Published: 2014-08-06

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1452515042

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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do." --Mark Twain Ever wondered if there must be more to life than this? Ever thought, "It's now or never"? Ever wanted to travel the world? Me too! At the 'ripe old age' of fifty, I decided I wanted some fun - I wanted to live rather than just exist! I wanted some wild and whacky experiences to tell my grandchildren about in years to come. So, after years of feeling like a hamster in a wheel, juggling work with children, I rebelled in the most spectacular way. I walked away from my job, rented my house out, went off travelling around the world for six months with my nineteen-year-old daughter, and embraced a whole new way of life. I hope you laugh as much as we did at the crazy things that happened to us and the madcap things we tried (white-water rafting, skydiving, hiking up glaciers, jumping off waterfalls and posing naked in front of them, to name a few). I hope it makes you realise that you only get one life, and now is the time to start living it, doing what you really want to and enjoying every precious moment. Follow your dreams--you'll be amazed where they take you! I did, and my life has never been the same since. For more information about Life Begins at Fifty, please go to www.lifebeginsatfifty.info


Fifty Words for Rain

Fifty Words for Rain

Author: Asha Lemmie

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 152474638X

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A Good Morning America Book Club Pick and New York Times Bestseller! From debut author Asha Lemmie, “a lovely, heartrending story about love and loss, prejudice and pain, and the sometimes dangerous, always durable ties that link a family together.” —Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Nightingale Kyoto, Japan, 1948. “Do not question. Do not fight. Do not resist.” Such is eight-year-old Noriko “Nori” Kamiza’s first lesson. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with only these final words. She will not fight her confinement to the attic of her grandparents’ imperial estate. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her skin. The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity. But when chance brings her older half-brother, Akira, to the estate that is his inheritance and destiny, Nori finds in him an unlikely ally with whom she forms a powerful bond—a bond their formidable grandparents cannot allow and that will irrevocably change the lives they were always meant to lead. Because now that Nori has glimpsed a world in which perhaps there is a place for her after all, she is ready to fight to be a part of it—a battle that just might cost her everything. Spanning decades and continents, Fifty Words for Rain is a dazzling epic about the ties that bind, the ties that give you strength, and what it means to be free.


Sachiko

Sachiko

Author: Caren Stelson

Publisher: Carolrhoda Books ®

Published: 2016-10-01

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 1512418846

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A Robert F. Sibert Honor Book A National Book Award Longlist Selection Jane Addams Children's Book Award Flora Stieglitz Straus Award A Booklist Editor's Choice “Magnetic and chilling in its simplicity.”—The New York Times Book Review August 9, 1945, began like any other day for six-year-old Sachiko. Her country was at war, she didn't have enough to eat. At 11:01 a.m., she was playing outdoors with four other children. Moments later, those children were all dead. An atomic bomb had exploded just half a mile away. In the days and months that followed, Sachiko lost family members, her hair fell out, she woke screaming in the night. When she was finally well enough to start school, other children bullied her. Through it all, she sought to understand what had happened, finding strength in the writings of Helen Keller, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Based on extensive interviews with Sachiko Yasui, Caren Stelson shares the true story of a young girl who survived the atomic bomb and chronicles her long journey to find peace. Sachiko offers readers a remarkable new perspective on the final moments of World War II—and their aftermath.The paperback edition includes an afterword with updates on Sachiko’s legacy.