"A superb book." THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE When quiet, shy Amelia Jones reads a desperate message that has fallen out of a barrel organ in the antique shop she just bought, she can't forget the words, "They're going to kill me soon..." Armed only with the woman's first name and the note written years before, Amelia begins a journey into the past, a search that takes her from the protective cocoon she's wrapped herself in to a precarious world where nothing is the way it seems, where fear is second nature, and dark secrets just might uncover murder--her own....
Deeply restless in her privileged life as part of Axminster's high society, Juniper Rose escapes to the wild world of the circus and an adventure that will change her life. Juniper will learn who she is-and fast-as being the show's new star attraction embroils her in what threatens to become a serial murder mystery with the potential to ruin everything. In the midst of all this, Juniper encounters the dark and brooding Cassius whose torment pushes her to the end of herself. And there she discovers her undeniable love for the circus-and despite his efforts to be her worst enemy-her equally undeniable attraction for Cassius.
One day, a mysterious stranger arrives at a boardinghouse of the widow Gateau- a sad-faced stranger, who keeps to himself. When the widow's daughter, Mirette, discovers him crossing the courtyard on air, she begs him to teach her how he does it. But Mirette doesn't know that the stranger was once the Great Bellini- master wire-walker. Or that Bellini has been stopped by a terrible fear. And it is she who must teach him courage once again. Emily Arnold McCully's sweeping watercolor paintings carry the reader over the rooftops of nineteenth-century Paris and into an elegant, beautiful world of acrobats, jugglers, mimes, actors, and one gallant, resourceful little girl.
The story of a daring tightrope walk between skyscrapers, as seen in Robert Zemeckis's The Walk, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In 1974, French aerialist Philippe Petit threw a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center and spent an hour walking, dancing, and performing high-wire tricks a quarter mile in the sky. This picture book captures the poetry and magic of the event with a poetry of its own: lyrical words and lovely paintings that present the detail, daring, and--in two dramatic foldout spreads-- the vertiginous drama of Petit's feat. The Man Who Walked Between the Towers is the winner of the 2004 Caldecott Medal, the winner of the 2004 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Picture Books, and the winner of the 2006 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children's Video.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • Colum McCann’s beloved novel inspired by Philippe Petit’s daring high-wire stunt, which is also depicted in the film The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people. Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s. Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.” A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a “fiercely original talent” (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic. “This is a gorgeous book, multilayered and deeply felt, and it’s a damned lot of fun to read, too. Leave it to an Irishman to write one of the greatest-ever novels about New York. There’s so much passion and humor and pure lifeforce on every page of Let the Great World Spin that you’ll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed.”—Dave Eggers “Stunning . . . [an] elegiac glimpse of hope . . . It’s a novel rooted firmly in time and place. It vividly captures New York at its worst and best. But it transcends all that. In the end, it’s a novel about families—the ones we’re born into and the ones we make for ourselves.”—USA Today
Hermine Demoriane is a singer, playwright, actress and performance artist. In this account of her life as a funambulist and her career in the 1970s, she also evokes the spirit of earlier tightrope walkers who pioneered the art - the legendary Blondin, Madame Saqui and others.
"An African tightrope walker who cannot die gets involved with a mysterious society that's convinced the world is ending and is drafted into the fight-to-the-death Tournament of Freaks, where she learns the terrible truth of who and what she really is"--
Poppy dreams of walking the high wire and practices every chance she gets, but when she fails in her first attempt on a real circus wire, she believes she must quit.
The most successful public sector leaders today are ones that have the capacity to lead internally and externally. They are able to see and understand the inherent contradictions in their multiple roles. For instance, appeasing the community with a more humanistic approach to policing, while getting tough on crime; giving the community a greater role in police affairs, but maintaining the autonomy to make unilateral decisions; supporting tough actions against bad cops to appease the community while steadfastly defending the rank and file. These are scenarios that are difficult for police chiefs to reconcile. This book examines how chiefs of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) have attempted to reconcile contradictory objectives. It explores the history of leadership in this famed police department, analyzing the leadership styles of its contemporary chiefs. This book explores the leader's capacity to walk the public leadership tightrope. This exercise is the most important task of any public sector leader. As one of the most highly profiled public agencies in the U.S., the LAPD has embraced many contradictions. The department has been a model of professionalism and misconduct. The LAPD has been at the center of many of the nation's most racially explosive experiences: the 1965 Watts riots, the Rodney King beating and subsequent 1992 riots, and the O.J. Simpson case. Additionally, the Rampart Scandal was one of the biggest police corruption scandals in the nation. Because of its proximity to Hollywood, the contradictory culture of the LAPD has been exposed in television and film. Indeed, America has become familiar with the LAPD through its periodic scandals and by its media and popular culture profile. Specifically written for students of criminal justice and public administration, this book examines the ways in which the LAPD's leaders have attempted to navigate crisis after crisis. The author uses interviews with thirty LAPD officers of various rankings and several Los Angeles residents to tell the LAPD story.
"A superb book." THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE When quiet, shy Amelia Jones reads a desperate message that has fallen out of a barrel organ in the antique shop she just bought, she can't forget the words, "They're going to kill me soon..." Armed only with the woman's first name and the note written years before, Amelia begins a journey into the past, a search that takes her from the protective cocoon she's wrapped herself in to a precarious world where nothing is the way it seems, where fear is second nature, and dark secrets just might uncover murder--her own....