Last Chain on Billie

Last Chain on Billie

Author: Carol Bradley

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2014-07-22

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1250025702

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The “powerful and haunting” biography of a star circus elephant who rebelled against her handlers and finally found freedom (Jane Goodall). Against the backdrop of a glittering but brutal circus world, Last Chain on Billie charts the history of elephants in America, the inspiring story of Tennessee’s Elephant Sanctuary, and the spellbinding tale of a resilient elephant who survived a decade of captivity. Left in the wild, Billie the elephant would have been free to wander the jungles of Asia with her family. Instead, traders captured her as a baby and shipped her to America, where circus trainers taught her to carry humans, stand on a tub and balance on one leg. For decades, Billie crisscrossed the country under miserable conditions—chained, beaten, and forced to perform stunts under harsh lights and blaring music. Finally, she got a lucky break. As part of the largest elephant rescue in American history, Billie wound up at a sanctuary for performing elephants in Tennessee. But, overcome with anxiety, she withdrew from the rest of the elephants and refused to let anyone remove a chain still clamped around her leg. Her caregivers began to wonder if Billie could ever escape her emotional wounds.


Last Chain On Billie

Last Chain On Billie

Author: Carol Bradley

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2014-07-22

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1250025699

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Chronicles the story of a psychologically traumatized zoo and circus elephant who was removed and rehabilitated as part of the largest government elephant rescue in United States history.


Tarra & Bella

Tarra & Bella

Author: Carol Buckley

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2009-09-08

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 069815374X

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A friendship unlike any other! After retiring from the circus, Tarra became the first resident of the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. When other elephants moved in and developed close friendships, only Tarra remained alone—until the day she met a stray mixed-breed dog named Bella. From then on, the two were inseparable. Color photographs of Tarra and Bella at home in the Elephant Sanctuary deftly illustrate this inspiring story of inter-species companionship.


Billie Morgan

Billie Morgan

Author: Joolz Denby

Publisher: Ignite Books

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0956778666

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Shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2005, 'Billie Morgan' is a blistering thriller and an exhilarating read. Billie is in her forties, but now her youth is about to catch up with her...


The Beautiful Lost

The Beautiful Lost

Author: Luanne Rice

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2017-06-27

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1338111086

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From NY Times bestselling author Luanne Rice, a sweeping story of a girl and boy, both troubled in different ways, who take off on a whirlwind road trip. Here are three things to know about Maia:1. Ever since her mother left, Maia's struggled with depression -- which once got so bad, she had to go to an institution for a while. She doesn't want to go back.2. Maia's sure that if she finds her mother, if the two of them can talk about whale songs and constellations, then everything will be okay again.3. She's in love with Billy, the handsome, brooding boy who lives in the group home in town. He doesn't seem to know that Maia exists... until now.When Maia sets off on a road trip in search of her mom, Billy unexpectedly comes along. They drive up the East Coast, stopping along the way for lobster rolls and lighthouses. Maia learns that Billy has dark secrets of his own -- and wants to outrun his past, too. But what will the future hold if they reach their destination?From internationally bestselling author Luanne Rice, this is a sweeping, stunning story about the surprising directions our hearts can take.


Lady Sings the Blues

Lady Sings the Blues

Author: Billie Holiday

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2006-07-25

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0767923863

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Perfect for fans of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, this is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred memoir of the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation—a fiftieth-anniversary edition updated with stunning new photos, a revised discography, and an insightful foreword by music writer David Ritz Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Billie Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith albums), to her emergence on Harlem’s club scene, to sold-out performances with the Count Basie Orchestra and with Artie Shaw and his band, this revelatory memoir is notable for its trenchant observations on the racism that darkened Billie’s life and the heroin addiction that ended it too soon. We are with her during the mesmerizing debut of “Strange Fruit”; with her as she rubs shoulders with the biggest movie stars and musicians of the day (Bob Hope, Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and more); and with her through the scrapes with Jim Crow, spats with Sarah Vaughan, ignominious jailings, and tragic decline. All of this is told in Holiday’s tart, streetwise style and hip patois that makes it read as if it were written yesterday.


Charming Billy

Charming Billy

Author: Alice McDermott

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2009-11-24

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1429929707

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Charming Billy is the winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Fiction. Alice McDermott's striking novel, Charming Billy, is a study of the lies that bind and the weight of familial love, of the way good intentions can be as destructive as the truth they were meant to hide. Billy Lynch's family and friends have gathered to comfort his widow, and to pay their respects to one of the last great romantics. As they trade tales of his famous humor, immense charm, and consuming sorrow, a complex portrait emerges of an enigmatic man, a loyal friend, a beloved husband, an incurable alcoholic.


Last Chance Texaco

Last Chance Texaco

Author: Rickie Lee Jones

Publisher: Atlantic Books

Published: 2021-04-08

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1611858887

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A Book of the Year in Rolling Stone, Uncut, Mojo, The Telegraph and the Glasgow Herald This troubadour life is only for the fiercest hearts, only for those vessels that can be broken to smithereens and still keep beating out the rhythm for a new song. Last Chance Texaco is the first-ever no-holds-barred account of the life of two-time Grammy Award-winner Rickie Lee Jones, in her own words. It is a tale of desperate chances and impossible triumphs, an adventure story of a girl who beat the odds and grew up to become one of the most legendary artists of her time, turning adversity and hopelessness into timeless music. With candour and lyricism, the 'Duchess of Coolsville' (Time) takes us on a singular journey through her nomadic childhood, to her years as a teenage runaway, through her legendary love affair with Tom Waits, and ultimately her longevity as the hardest working woman in rock and roll. Rickie Lee's stories are rich with the infamous characters of her early songs - 'Chuck E's in Love,' 'Weasel and the White Boys Cool,' 'Danny's All-Star Joint' and 'Easy Money' - but long before her notoriety in show business, there was a vaudevillian cast of hitchhikers, bank robbers, jail breaks, drug mules, a pimp with a heart of gold, and tales of her fabled ancestors. In this electrifying and intimate memoir by one of the most remarkable, trailblazing and tenacious women in music are never-before-told stories of the girl in the raspberry beret, a singer-songwriter whose music defied categorization and inspired pop culture for decades.


Under and Alone

Under and Alone

Author: William Queen

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2007-06-26

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0812969529

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In 1998, William Queen was a veteran law enforcement agent with a lifelong love of motorcycles and a lack of patience with paperwork. When a “confidential informant” made contact with his boss at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, offering to take an agent inside the San Fernando chapter of the Mongols (the scourge of Southern California, and one of the most dangerous gangs in America), Queen jumped at the chance, not realizing that he was kicking-starting the most extensive undercover operation inside an outlaw motorcycle gang in the history of American law enforcement. Nor did Queen suspect that he would penetrate the gang so successfully that he would become a fully “patched-in” member, eventually rising through their ranks to the office of treasurer, where he had unprecedented access to evidence of their criminal activity. After Queen spent twenty-eight months as “Billy St. John,” the bearded, beer-swilling, Harley-riding gang-banger, the truth of his identity became blurry, even to himself. During his initial “prospecting” phase, Queen was at the mercy of crank-fueled criminal psychopaths who sought to have him test his mettle and prove his fealty by any means necessary, from selling (and doing) drugs, to arms trafficking, stealing motorcycles, driving getaway cars, and, in one shocking instance, stitching up the face of a Mongol “ol’ lady” after a particularly brutal beating at the hands of her boyfriend. Yet despite the constant criminality of the gang, for whom planning cop killings and gang rapes were business as usual, Queen also came to see the genuine camaraderie they shared. When his lengthy undercover work totally isolated Queen from family, his friends, and ATF colleagues, the Mongols felt like the only family he had left. “I had no doubt these guys genuinely loved Billy St. John and would have laid down their lives for him. But they wouldn’t hesitate to murder Billy Queen.” From Queen’s first sleight of hand with a line of methamphetamine in front of him and a knife at his throat, to the fearsome face-off with their decades-old enemy, the Hell’s Angels (a brawl that left three bikers dead), to the heartbreaking scene of a father ostracized at Parents’ Night because his deranged-outlaw appearance precluded any interaction with regular citizens, Under and Alone is a breathless, adrenaline-charged read that puts you on the street with some of the most dangerous men in America and with the law enforcement agents who risk everything to bring them in.