Librarian Livvy Swenson lives by her notebook planner, organizing her life to the nth degree. When she decides her biological clock requires that she now get marrried, Livvy sets about the task with a list of what she requires in a husband. But she's forgotten one requirement--what the Ladies' Prayer Circle of Ophelia, Texas, calls "zing." Miss Daisy Hemphill and her friends pray for the right man for Livvy, but their prayers are answered by bartender Tex Braun.Livvy is attracted to Tex but is positive he can't possibly meet her intellectual requirements.Multi-millionaire Tex Braun is in hiding incognito as a roadhouse bartender to escape a high society gold-digger who wants to hook him. Tex doesn't realize it, but moving in the social circle of the roadhouse opens his eyes to the kind of woman he really wants to spend his life with--one exactly like Livvy Swenson. He's making progress convincing Livvy that he can be all she needs in a man when his ex-finacee tracks him down and announces to everyone in the bar -- including Livvy--that she's pregnant.Tex is caught in the middle of a mess he had never imagined in his wildest dreams. And caught with him is the woman he loves. Winning Livvy back will be one heck of a lot harder than fixin' drinks behind the bar in his Gucci loafers.
The purpose of this work The Butler Wore Guccis is to share with you the unique events that I, a middle-class young American male experienced over a ten-year period. It began with my choice of an unusual summer job when at nineteen, I entered the world of 'service.' From Newport to Westchester to Palm Beach I worked for several of the richest and most idiosyncratic people in America. For better or worse, the stories of my employers and my fellow staff members weave a fascinating and unique insight as to what it meant and means to be rich in America, then and now. Magnificent homes like Marjorie Merriweather Post's Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach and Mrs. Robert R. Young's homes in Newport and Palm Beach (where the duke and duchess of Windsor were frequent guests) add to the flow and texture of my story. Thank you for sharing my journey.
This is the first book in the trilogy, The Trojan Horse in the Belly of the Beast, by Carl Douglass. The two young mental giants who dominate this trilogy could not have come from more different backgrounds if they had been born on separate planets. Though they come from the ends of the earth, the similarities between the two geniuses—math prodigies—are striking and of serious import to the deputy director of the defense intelligence agency of the United States. His task is to undermine and to interdict the secret Iranian project to build nuclear weapons of mass destruction--Project Jahannam Adur [Hell's Fire]. The effort to subvert the planned Iranian holocaust will eventually take more than a decade and a terrible amount of sacrifice, but it could avert a war with the potential to wreak more havoc and loss that WW I and II combined.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Dapper Dan is a legend, an icon, a beacon of inspiration to many in the Black community. His story isn’t just about fashion. It’s about tenacity, curiosity, artistry, hustle, love, and a singular determination to live our dreams out loud.”—Ava DuVernay, director of Selma, 13th, and A Wrinkle in Time NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VANITY FAIR • DAPPER DAN NAMED ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD With his now-legendary store on 125th Street in Harlem, Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the 1980s, remixing classic luxury-brand logos into his own innovative, glamorous designs. But before he reinvented haute couture, he was a hungry boy with holes in his shoes, a teen who daringly gambled drug dealers out of their money, and a young man in a prison cell who found nourishment in books. In this remarkable memoir, he tells his full story for the first time. Decade after decade, Dapper Dan discovered creative ways to flourish in a country designed to privilege certain Americans over others. He witnessed, profited from, and despised the rise of two drug epidemics. He invented stunningly bold credit card frauds that took him around the world. He paid neighborhood kids to jog with him in an effort to keep them out of the drug game. And when he turned his attention to fashion, he did so with the energy and curiosity with which he approaches all things: learning how to treat fur himself when no one would sell finished fur coats to a Black man; finding the best dressed hustler in the neighborhood and converting him into a customer; staying open twenty-four hours a day for nine years straight to meet demand; and, finally, emerging as a world-famous designer whose looks went on to define an era, dressing cultural icons including Eric B. and Rakim, Salt-N-Pepa, Big Daddy Kane, Mike Tyson, Alpo Martinez, LL Cool J, Jam Master Jay, Diddy, Naomi Campbell, and Jay-Z. By turns playful, poignant, thrilling, and inspiring, Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem is a high-stakes coming-of-age story spanning more than seventy years and set against the backdrop of an America where, as in the life of its narrator, the only constant is change. Praise for Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem “Dapper Dan is a true one of a kind, self-made, self-liberated, and the sharpest man you will ever see. He is couture himself.”—Marcus Samuelsson, New York Times bestselling author of Yes, Chef “What James Baldwin is to American literature, Dapper Dan is to American fashion. He is the ultimate success saga, an iconic fashion hero to multiple generations, fusing street with high sartorial elegance. He is pure American style.”—André Leon Talley, Vogue contributing editor and author
Ferris Kingston is a ruthless mafia leader but when Hazel Lincoln is forced to marry him, she hopes to find mercy behind his cold eyes and strong hands. Hazel Lincoln was a nobody without her aunt. Feisty, hot-headed, dreamy, and naive was how she is described often. But to Ferris Kingston, she is a seductress who has intentionally made his nights restless... When a series of incidents force them arranged into marriage none of them ever had an idea what they were getting into. It was like thunder against a volcano... She hated his controlling manners and dominating nature. He was hell-bent on taming her feistiness. To the world, they are the most perfect couple but nobody knows whats happens behind the closed doors of Kingston Manor.....
In the past, clergy malfeasance was mentioned only in passing by group members or adherents. The subject was invisible and those who studied it were often stigmatized as hostile to religion itself. Today clergy misconduct is acknowledged as a social problem with growing conceptual and theoretical implications. In Pastoral Misconduct, Anson Shupe and Janelle M. Eliasson-Nannini argue that the history and traditions of black pastoral leadership, coupled with the close identity of many black congregants with their pastor, congregation, and racial subculture, creates opportunity structures that facilitate predatory behavior. Familiarity and mutual identity frequently leads victims to drop their normal levels of wariness. Major denominations and minor sects have been studied, but this unique study by Shupe and Eliasson-Nannini pursues nuances of pastoral bad behavior in a new context. This book is not a tabloid treatment of the American black church. In fact, the black church becomes the vehicle for a major new sociological development: a theory of clergy misconduct in any minority religion.
Jadd is young, gay, rich and famous - indeed, has everything, it seems. His life is dominated by drug-fuelled excess, though also by Peter, his illustrious butler, and his devious mother, Catherine. A mysterious antique mirror arrives, and very soon the boundaries between beliefs, dreams and realities begin to blur. As Jadd grapples with his inner daemons, those around him find themselves pitched into a struggle for his very soul.
Three classic crime novels by a master of the macabre appear here together in hardcover for the first time. Suave, agreeable, and completely amoral, Patricia Highsmith's hero, the inimitable Tom Ripley, stops at nothing--not even murder--to accomplish his goals. In achieving for himself the opulent life that he was denied as a child, Ripley shows himself to be a master of illusion and manipulation and a disturbingly sympathetic combination of genius and psychopath. As Highsmith navigates the mesmerizing tangle of Ripley's deadly and sinister games, she turns the mystery genre inside out and takes us into the mind of a man utterly indifferent to evil. The Talented Mr. Ripley In a chilling literary hall of mirrors, Patricia Highsmith introduces Tom Ripley. Like a hero in a latter-day Henry James novel, Ripley is sent to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal young American back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds himself very fond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him--exactly like him. Suave, agreeable, and utterly amoral, Ripley stops at nothing--certainly not only one murder--to accomplish his goal. Turning the mystery form inside out, Highsmith shows the terrifying abilities afforded to a man unhindered by the concept of evil. Ripley Under Ground In this harrowing illumination of the psychotic mind, the enviable Tom Ripley has a lovely house in the French countryside, a beautiful and very rich wife, and an art collection worthy of a connoisseur. But such a gracious life has not come easily. One inopportune inquiry, one inconvenient friend, and Ripley's world will come tumbling down--unless he takes decisive steps. In a mesmerizing novel that coolly subverts all traditional notions of literary justice, Ripley enthralls us even as we watch him perform acts of pure and unspeakable evil. Ripley's Game Connoisseur of art, harpsichord aficionado, gardener extraordinaire, and genius of improvisational murder, the inimitable Tom Ripley finds his complacency shaken when he is scorned at a posh gala. While an ordinary psychopath might repay the insult with some mild act of retribution, what Ripley has in mind is far more subtle, and infinitely more sinister. A social slight doesn't warrant murder of course--just a chain of events that may lead to it.
