Mike Denning thinks he's secured a perfect job. Step by step the perfect job becomes his worst nightmare. Twenty-two year old graduate, Mike Denning, takes employment in an experimental town on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. Fascinating location, excellent wages, food and accommodation all paid for, fine seaside summer weather, and a gorgeous young lady boss who happens to be unattached. If only the place weren't so strange. As Mike begins to investigate, he realises he too is being watched. Can he find out what's really going on without putting his life in danger? One thing he does know – he’s stuck on this island with no way of escape. Shades of the mysterious 1960s British television show, The Prisoner, come to mind. Neil A White for Readers' Favorite (5-star review)
Charlie Gibbs’ new job comes with these perks: mountain scenery, sunshine, and sex with an older woman. And murder. In the year 2050, twenty-something IT worker, Charlie Gibbs, has a problem – several problems, in fact. His boss has just been killed in mysterious circumstances. Replacement boss, fifty-year-old Dutch cougar, Ilse Teuling, is writing a sex manual and wants Charlie to help with “the practical work”. Populists have declared a coup; people are seeing visions; the clock is counting down to environmental disaster, and a murderer is on the loose, providing Charlie with the biggest problem of the lot – he’s the intended next victim and he doesn’t know why. Can Charlie simultaneously solve crime, survive political chaos, save the environment, expose a hoaxer and foil a murderer, not forgetting to service the needs of Ilse? Can he keep all his balls juggling and still come out alive? What begins as an untimely death in a small town evolves into an impassioned political movement, a greedy murder plot, and some cross-country sexcapades that will make even the most libertine blush ... But make no mistake, the plot is juicy and the tension is palpable. Jennifer Jackson, Indies Today 5-star review.
In this remarkable memoir former Olympian and Kardashian family member Caitlyn Jenner reveals shocking and heartbreaking stories from her journey to become a transgender woman and fight for the LGBTQ+ community. Imagine denying your core and soul. Then add to it the most impossible expectations that people have for you because you are the personification of The American Male Athlete. Bruce Jenner, the celebrated Olympic icon and later the patriarch of one of the most famous families in the world, seemed to be living a dream life of success, fame, and prosperity. But the all-American image and million-dollar smile belied a lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria, and it wasn't until the sensational Diane Sawyer interview that the public mask of Bruce Jenner was finally retired, and through the memorable Vanity Fair piece by Buzz Bissinger, that Caitlyn Jenner was introduced to the world and set free to exist on her own terms. Since then, Caitlyn has undertaken an arduous emotional and physical odyssey to achieve the completeness she always felt was missing. In The Secrets of My Life, Caitlyn reflects on the inner conflict she experienced growing up in an era of rigidly defined gender identities, and the cruel irony of being hailed by an entire nation as the ultimate symbol of manhood. She recounts her Olympic triumph, her rise to fame, and relates how her sense of frustration and shame grew with the passing years and the lengths to which she had to go to conceal her true self. Caitlyn in turn uncovers the toll that these personal struggles had on her three marriages and, subsequently, the relationships with her children. She also talks candidly about her life in the public eye as a member of the Kardashian clan, what led to her decision to become Caitlyn, and how she, her family, the transgender community, and the rest of the world has since embraced her new life. Filled with incredibly personal and moving stories of struggle and victory, of anxiety and fear, and, finally, of surrender and acceptance, The Secrets of My Life reveals the real Caitlyn Jenner by tracing her long and eventful journey to becoming herself.
This book offers an original and informed critique of a widespread yet often misunderstood condition — nostalgia, a pervasive human emotion connecting people across national and historical as well as personal boundaries. Often seen as merely escapist, nostalgia also offers solace and self-understanding for those displaced by the larger movements of our time. Walder analyses the writings of some of those entangled in the aftermath of empire, tracing the hidden connections underlying their yearnings for a common identity and a homeland, and their struggles to recover their histories. Through a series of comparative reflections upon the representation in literary and related cultural forms of memory, he shows how admitting the past into the present through nostalgia enables former colonial or diasporic subjects to gain a deeper understanding of the networks of power within which they are caught in the modern world — and beyond which it may yet be possible to move. Considering authors as varied as V.S Naipaul, J.G. Ballard, Doris Lessing, W.G. Sebald, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, as well as versions of ‘Bushman’ song, Walder pursues the often wayward, ambiguous paths of nostalgia as it has been represented beyond, but also within, Europe, so as to identify some of those processes of communal and individual experience that constitute the present and, by implication, the future.
Journalist, David Buckley, walks into a murder scene. Only one problem — the murderer doesn't exist, so now Buckley's the chief suspect, and he's on the run. Can he prove his innocence – and his sanity? David Buckley’s obsession with fellow student, Alison Tindell, led to hospitalisation for mental illness. Thirty years on, Buckley, now a successful journalist, receives a phone call from Alison, inviting him to visit. That same evening a murder occurs; Buckley is accused, and Alison, his only alibi, vanishes. The police don’t believe she ever existed. Buckley escapes, travelling the country in a desperate search to find her before the law catches up. But someone intends to find Buckley first, a person he fears more than anyone. Had me hooked from the very first chapter on and it just kept giving ... A wonderful read! You know you are onto something fantastic when you feel sad upon reaching the last page! Alexandra Williams for LoveReading.co.uk (Indie-Books-We-Love)
What if you could live the luxury hotel experience at home, every day? Hotels to Home answers that question by creating a new lifestyle template that bridges the gap between your fondest hotel memories and everyday living. Imagine stepping into your entryway with the eager anticipation as when entering your favorite hotel lobby, defining your family’s hotel brand as a lifestyle strategy, finely orchestrating room service for your household, or celebrating the end of each day with personalized turndown service. Taking what might have once been considered ordinary homelife and making your address a highly coveted destination. Less memoir, more guidebook. Peek into the author’s travel essays and enjoy prompts to excavate your own vacation preferences that reveal a holiday lifestyle at home. Welcome to the Hotels to Home lifestyle!
Slavoj Žižek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements that are sweeping Eastern Europe, provides a virtuoso reading of Jacques Lacan. Žižek inverts current pedagogical strategies to explain the difficult philosophical underpinnings of the French theoretician and practician who revolutionized our view of psychoanalysis. He approaches Lacan through the motifs and works of contemporary popular culture, from Hitchcock's Vertigo to Stephen King's Pet Sematary, from McCullough's An Indecent Obsession to Romero's Return of the Living Dead—a strategy of "looking awry" that recalls the exhilarating and vital experience of Lacan. Žižek discovers fundamental Lacanian categories the triad Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, the object small a, the opposition of drive and desire, the split subject—at work in horror fiction, in detective thrillers, in romances, in the mass media's perception of ecological crisis, and, above all, in Alfred Hitchcock's films. The playfulness of Žižek's text, however, is entirely different from that associated with the deconstructive approach made famous by Derrida. By clarifying what Lacan is saying as well as what he is not saying, Žižek is uniquely able to distinguish Lacan from the poststructuralists who so often claim him.
This book examines Japanese tourism and travel, both today and in the past, showing how over hundreds of years a distinct culture of travel developed, and exploring how this has permeated the perceptions and traditions of Japanese society. It considers the diverse dimensions of modern tourism including appropriation and consumption of history, nostalgia, identity, domesticated foreignness, and the search for authenticity and invention of tradition. Japanese people are one of the most widely travelling peoples in the world both historically and in contemporary times. What may be understood as incipient mass tourism started around the 17th century in various forms (including religious pilgrimages) long before it became a prevalent cultural phenomenon in the West. Within Asia, Japan has long remained the main tourist sending society since the beginning of the 20th century when it started colonising Asian countries. In 2005, some 17.8 million Japanese travelled overseas across Europe, Asia, the South Pacific and America. In recent times, however, tourist demands are fast growing in other Asian countries such as Korea and China. Japan is not only consuming other Asian societies and cultures, it is also being consumed by them in tourist contexts. This book considers the patterns of travelling of the Japanese, examining travel inside and outside the Japanese archipelago and how tourist demands inside influence and shape patterns of travel outside the country. Overall, this book draws important insights for understanding the phenomenon of tourism on the one hand and the nature of Japanese society and culture on the other.
