After being together for 60 years, coming to terms with life without Leon has been a difficult process for June, but she has many treasured memories of their marriage that will never leave her. In this touching memoir, she looks back at their life together. From when, aged 18, she first laid eyes on Leon at teacher training college in 1955; their fight to marry when their parents disapproved; happy memories of 1960s Liverpool; to building a loving home and family together, before finding fame as pensioners. Firm favorites of the Gogglebox show, they were loved for their gentle teasing, Leon's cheeky gags and humorous rants, and June's unerring patience and caring touch. Along the way they've experienced their fair share of highs and lows but as Leon always said: "As long as June's here, I'm all right." They did it all together. Now June shares with us the secret to a truly happy marriage in this wonderful celebration of two lives well lived.
Sweethearts and soulmates for 60 years, June and Leon Bernicoff had a lifetime of love and laughter together. We fell in love with them on Gogglebox, where their warmth, cheeky gags and unending love for each other shone through our screens. When Leon sadly died at Christmas 2017, after spending every day since 1955 with his beloved June, the nation was left heartbroken. In this nostalgic, beautifully written book, June looks back at their time together, sharing treasured memories of a life truly well-lived. She tells of their courtship as students in the 1950s - how they fought to marry despite their parents' disapproval, and just what living in 1960s Liverpool was like. Building a life together, creating a family in their loving home, Liverpool was a place Leon and June would never move from. They experienced their fair share of highs and lows, but always got through everything together. As Leon often reminded himself: 'As long as June's here, I'm all right.' *Previously published as Leon & June: Our Story*
Everyone’s favorite houseguest who never left, Leon Black (played by award-winning comedian JB Smoove on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm) drops his wisdom and good-bad advice for the masses. Learn the secrets Larry David has gleaned from the Falstaff of television. Live your best Leon. Bring the Ruckus. Aristotle. Gandhi. Lao Tzu. Dr. Ruth. Amateurs. For centuries bespeckled dorks have pored over the scrolls of the ancients, read tea leaves, and looked to the stars for philosophy, wisdom, and advice. While some people have probably offered good advice, and others offer bad advice, Leon is here to offer his brand of good-bad advice. These are the musings of a master genius spitting out the secrets of the universe—to help you become just like him. Be forewarned: in opening this tome and Leon’s mind, you need to be prepared for straight talk. The kind of unfiltered blunt straight talk that pounds on your door, invites itself in, makes itself at home, helps itself to your food, security pass code, your expensive organic beet juice, and finally makes itself comfortable on that twin bed in your guest room. All the while you think you’re helping it—but really it’s helping you help yourself! Because that’s how this book doozit. Leon Black, he ain’t wrong...he just ain’t right.
A conductor succumbs to cyanide at the famed Venice opera house, in the first mystery in the New York Times–bestselling, award-winning series. During intermission at the famed La Fenice opera house in Venice, Italy, a notoriously difficult and widely disliked German conductor is poisoned—and suspects abound. Guido Brunetti, a native Venetian, sets out to unravel the mystery behind the high-profile murder. To do so, he calls on his knowledge of Venice, its culture, and its dirty politics. Along the way, he finds the crime may have roots going back decades—and that revenge, corruption, and even Italian cuisine may play a role. “One of the most exquisite and subtle detective series ever.” —The Washington Post “A brilliant writer . . . an immensely likable police detective who takes every murder to heart.” —The New York Times Book Review
The first biography of the massively popular author of Exodus and Trinity, who “was as feisty as any of his fictional creations” (Publishers Weekly). As the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Exodus, Mila 18, QB VII, and Trinity, Leon Uris blazed a path to celebrity with books that readers couldn’t put down. Uris’s thirteen novels sold millions of copies, appeared in fifty languages, and were adapted into equally successful movies and TV miniseries. Few writers equaled his fame in the mid-twentieth century. His success fueled the rise of mass-market paperbacks, movie tie-ins, and author tours. Beloved by the public, Uris was, not surprisingly, dismissed by literary critics. Until now, his own life—as full of drama as his fiction—has never been the subject of a book. Now Ira Nadel traces Uris from his disruptive youth to his life-changing experiences as a marine in World War II. These experiences, coupled with Uris’s embrace of his Judaism and desire to write, led to his unprecedented success and the lavish excesses of a career as a best-selling author. Nadel reveals that Uris lived the adventures he described, including his war experiences in the Pacific (Battle Cry), life-threatening travels in Israel (Exodus), visit to Communist Poland (Mila 18), libel trial in Britain (QB VII), and dangerous sojourn in fractious Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic (Trinity). Nadel also demonstrates that Uris’s talent for writing action-packed yet thoroughly researched novels meshed perfectly with the public’s desire to revisit and understand the tumultuous events of recent history—making him far more popular (and wealthier) than more literary authors—while paving the way for future blockbuster writers such as Irving Wallace and Tom Clancy.
The definitive story of one American family at the center of a single, shocking act of international terrorism that "manages to capture the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" (Dan Ephron). On October 3, 1985, Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish New Yorker, and his wife boarded the Achille Lauro to celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary with a Mediterranean cruise. Four days later, four Palestinian fedayeen hijacked the Italian luxury liner and took the passengers and crew hostage. Leon Klinghoffer was shot in the head, his body and wheelchair thrown overboard. His murder became a flashpoint in the intractable struggle between Israelis and Arabs and gave Americans a horrifying preview of what it means when terrorism hits home. In this richly reported book, drawing on multiple perspectives, Julie Salamon dispels the mythology that has grown around that shattering moment. What transpired on the Achille Lauro left the Klinghoffer family in the grip of irredeemable sorrow, while precipitating tragic reverberations for the wives and sons of Abu al-Abbas, the Palestinian mastermind behind the hijacking, and the family of Alex Odeh, a Palestinian-American murdered in Los Angeles in a brutal act of retaliation. Through intimate interviews with almost all living participants, including one of the hijackers, Julie Salamon brings alive the moment-by-moment saga of the hijacking and the ensuing U.S.-led international manhunt; the diplomatic wrangling between the United States, Egypt, Italy, and Israel; the long agonizing search for justice; and the inside story of the controversial opera about the Klinghoffer tragedy that provoked a culture war. An Innocent Bystander is a masterful work of journalism that moves between the personal and the global with the pace of a geopolitical thriller and the depth of a psychological drama. Throughout lies the tension wrought by terrorism and its repercussions today.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the pages of Vogue to the runways of Paris, this “captivating” (Time) memoir by a legendary style icon captures the fashion world from the inside out, in its most glamorous and most cutthroat moments. “The Chiffon Trenches honestly and candidly captures fifty sublime years of fashion.”—Manolo Blahnik NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Fortune • Garden & Gun • New York Post During André Leon Talley’s first magazine job, alongside Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decades-long friendship with the enigmatic, often caustic designer. Propelled into the upper echelons by his knowledge and adoration of fashion, André moved to Paris as bureau chief of John Fairchild’s Women’s Wear Daily, befriending fashion's most important designers (Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta). But as André made friends, he also made enemies. A racially tinged encounter with a member of the house of Yves Saint Laurent sent him back to New York and into the offices of Vogue under Grace Mirabella. There, he eventually became creative director, developing an unlikely but intimate friendship with Anna Wintour. As she rose to the top of Vogue’s masthead, André also ascended, and soon became the most influential man in fashion. The Chiffon Trenches offers a candid look at the who’s who of the last fifty years of fashion. At once ruthless and empathetic, this engaging memoir tells with raw honesty the story of how André not only survived the brutal style landscape but thrived—despite racism, illicit rumors, and all the other challenges of this notoriously cutthroat industry—to become one of the most renowned voices and faces in fashion. Woven throughout the book are also André’s own personal struggles that impacted him over the decades, along with intimate stories of those he turned to for inspiration (Diana Vreeland, Diane von Fürstenberg, Lee Radziwill, to name a few), and of course his Southern roots and faith, which guided him since childhood. The result is a highly compelling read that captures the essence of a world few of us will ever have real access to, but one that we all want to know oh so much more about.
