Loretta’s mother was a trapeze artist in Europe, the star of the famed Rodzirkus circus, before she walked out on her drunken husband and his debts while on tour in Australia. But a life in 1960s suburban Adelaide was always going to be difficult, even if she does land herself the most handsome young barrister of the town, and Leda’s behaviour raises more than a few eyebrows. Leda’s father, handsome barrister Gilbert Lord, has no interest in his past, but hidden in a wardrobe are the journals of his ivory merchant great-great-grandfather who led an expedition to Australia’s desert interior to search for elephants. For Loretta, growing up in her mother’s flamboyant and often outrageous shadow, life is stifling and at times brutal. But the harder she tries to separate herself from her mother, the more she longs for her attention and love—and the more she finds that the past is inextricably woven into her own life and who she is. The Trapeze Act weaves stories of the circus and the doomed ivory expedition through a novel that is at once a heartbreaking tale of the search for acceptance and a celebration of the lustre and magic of life.
**How do you trust the ground when all you've known is flight?** Seventeen-year-old Corey Ryder can't remember a time when she wasn't gliding through the air of Cirque Mystique's big top on a trapeze. When tragedy strikes and Corey narrowly escapes from the burning circus tent she once called home, her life is forced to a sudden stand-still. Now back in high school and trying to fit into small town California, Corey faces living life with two feet firmly on the ground. When her friendship with local golden boy Luke Everett starts to grow into something more, Corey must learn to perform the high-wire act of being true to who you really are. The Greatest Showman meets Gilmore Girls in this romantic, bittersweet and beautiful YA coming of age novel.
Starting in the 1870s, the barns, icehouses, gymnasiums and empty theaters of central Illinois provided the practice sites for aerial performers whose names still command reverence in the annals of American circus history. Meet Fred Miltimore and the Green Brothers, runaways from the Fourth Ward School who became the first Bloomington-born flyers. Watch Art Concello, a ten-year-old truant, become first a world-class flyer, then a famous trapeze impresario and finally Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus's most successful general manager. The entire art of the trapeze--instruction, training, performance and management--became a Bloomington-Normal industry during the tented shows' golden age, when finding a circus flying act without a connection to this area would have been virtually impossible.
“Flying, Falling, Catching is a beacon of hope. It reminds us that despite all the perils and sufferings that surround us, with which we often collide, we can find healing, peace, and awe even in the most unusual detours that life offers. A must read.” — Marina Nemat, Author of international best-seller Prisoner of Tehran "In Carolyn Whitney-Brown's deft hands, Henri’s intentions literally, vividly swing alive. This is a beautiful, moving story about interconnectivity, interdependence, and life's rich, beautiful, complicated pageant. I devoured it in a sitting.” — Lisa Napoli, Author of Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie Henri Nouwen’s real-life story of his surprising friendship with a traveling trapeze troupe. What will we do with our lives, and with whom will we do it? In this story of flying and catching, Nouwen invites us all to let go and fly, even when we are afraid of falling. During the last five years of his life, best-selling spiritual author Henri J. M. Nouwen became close to The Flying Rodleighs, a trapeze troupe in a traveling circus. Like Nouwen’s own life, a trapeze act is full of artistry, exhilarating successes, crushing failures and continual forgiveness. He wrote about his experience in a genre new to him: creative non-fiction. In Flying, Falling, Catching, Nouwen's colleague and friend Carolyn Whitney-Brown presents his unpublished trapeze writings framed by the true story of his rescue through a hotel window by paramedics during his first heart attack. Readers will meet Nouwen as a spiritual risk taker who was transformed through his engagement with these trapeze artists, as well as his participation in the Civil Rights movement, his life in community with people with intellectual disabilities, his personal growth through friendships during the 1990s AIDS pandemic, and other unexpected encounters.
A true life Water for Elephants, Queen of the Air brings the circus world to life through the gorgeously written, true story of renowned trapeze artist and circus performer Leitzel, Queen of the Air, the most famous woman in the world at the turn of the 20th century, and her star-crossed love affair with Alfredo Codona, of the famous Flying Codona Brothers. Like today's Beyonce, Madonna, and Cher, she was known to her vast public by just one name, Leitzel. There may have been some regions on earth where her name was not a household expression, but if so, they were likely on polar ice caps or in the darkest, deepest jungles. Leitzel was born into Dickensian circumstances, and became a princess and then a queen. She was not much bigger than a good size fairy, just four-foot-ten and less than 100 pounds. In the first part of the 20th century, she presided over a sawdust fiefdom of never-ending magic. She was the biggest star ever of the biggest circus ever, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Greatest Show on Earth. In her life, Leitzel had many suitors (and three husbands), but only one man ever fully captured her heart. He was the handsome Alfredo Codona, the greatest trapeze flyer that had ever lived, the only one in his time who, night after night, executed the deadliest of all big-top feats, The Triple--three somersaults in midair while traveling at 60 m.p.h. The Triple, the salto mortale, as the Italians called it, took the lives of more daredevils than any other circus stunt.
DANGER ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE: Introducing D.L. Moody -- Fourteen-year-old Casey Watkins wants nothing more than to escape his family's dreary, bare-bones life in the Philadelphia of 1893. When he learns of an opening in Adam Forepaugh's Circus, it seems like the perfect escape, and he convinces his mother and sister to join with him. Then "The Flying Eugenes," a family of trapeze artists, offer Casey a role in their death-defying act, and he is elated. Flying on the trapeze is more exciting than he ever dreamed! The pressure is on-Casey has only a few weeks to learn the act before the circus arrives in Chicago in time for the famous World's Fair. Once in Chicago, the boy is fascinated by D. L. Moody, the dynamic evangelist who preaches to standing-room-only crowds in the circus Big Top Sunday mornings. Casey never imagined that church could be more popular than the circus! But then a dangerous accident leaves him paralyzed with fear, and he runs to Moody looking for a way out. Will the evangelist be able to help him? The circus is counting on him . . . what if he falls?
Loretta’s mother was a trapeze artist in Europe, the star of the famed Rodzirkus circus, before she walked out on her drunken husband and his debts while on tour in Australia. But a life in 1960s suburban Adelaide was always going to be difficult, even if she does land herself the most handsome young barrister of the town, and Leda’s behaviour raises more than a few eyebrows. Leda’s father, handsome barrister Gilbert Lord, has no interest in his past, but hidden in a wardrobe are the journals of his ivory merchant great-great-grandfather who led an expedition to Australia’s desert interior to search for elephants. For Loretta, growing up in her mother’s flamboyant and often outrageous shadow, life is stifling and at times brutal. But the harder she tries to separate herself from her mother, the more she longs for her attention and love—and the more she finds that the past is inextricably woven into her own life and who she is. The Trapeze Act weaves stories of the circus and the doomed ivory expedition through a novel that is at once a heartbreaking tale of the search for acceptance and a celebration of the lustre and magic of life. My mother, whose name was Leda, never shied from telling stories about the Dutch circus pedigree from which she’d sprung. If her ancestors were revealed to be a little unhinged in the process, so be it. I am not being fey when I say some of my ancestors could fly. My middle name, Maartje, comes from Flying Maartje May, the first woman in the world to successfully complete a triple somersault to catch on the flying trapeze, a woman of such reckless grace and beauty that during an 1851 tour of the goldfields, men emerged from the mines to shower her in gold dust. Libby Angel is an Australian poet whose work has appeared in several journals. The Trapeze Act is her first novel. ‘The brutal and tragic circus tales in The Trapeze Act will appeal to fans of Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, while the family drama and Australian history will delight any modern literature reader.’ Books+Publishing ‘Angel’s evocative prose easily captures the eras she describes, and her quirky characters...A colourful tale.’ BookMooch ‘One to pick up early this year...A complex narrative that interweaves circus tales with family heartache.’ ArtsHub ‘The Trapeze Act is not a novel about being in the circus, but about what happens after the circus...the novel follows Loretta’s journey as she grapples with her parents’ past and their influence on her present.’ Guardian ‘A book of whimsy and wit...It’s the pure imaginative feat of The Trapeze Act, and Angel’s joyous, clever use of language that makes it such a rollicking good read. I’m always excited when I hear a poet has made the leap to prose, because sometimes the result bends the rules of what we expect from a novel and creates something new. With The Trapeze Act, Angel has done just that.’ Adelaide Advertiser ‘With the release of The Trapeze Act, 2017 in Australian publishing is off to a great start.’ AU Review ‘Libby Angel weaves captivating stories of the circus throughout this lyrical work about acceptance and the influence of family.’ Sunday Life ‘It is an enriching story of heartbreak and a search for love and acceptance.’ Weekly Times ‘This family drama weaves circus magic, suburban malaise and tales of the Dark Continent in seamless harmony. An impressive debut.’ Qantas Magazine ‘An expertly layered, lyrical rumination on family and identity...Angel has a vivid imagination and poetic skill with language. Her prose is evocative, her strikingly original characters as bright and colourful as they are intense. The Trapeze Act is a compelling portrait of a highly dysfunctional but delightful family. I look forward to seeing more from this talented writer.’ Readings ‘Quixotic and unpredictable and entertaining, like a good circus act.’ ReadPlus ‘The Trapeze Act is a stunning novel—something that should come as no surprise, give that it’s the debut from poet Libby Angel. Angel transitions with ease between voices, eras and writing styles, crafting a lyrically beautiful world populated with fantastic characters...A beautiful debut’ AU Review ‘The Trapeze Act weaves stories of the circus and the doomed ivory expedition through a novel that is at once a heartbreaking tale of the search for acceptance and a celebration of the lustre and magic of life.’ Better Read Than Dead ‘Libby Angel’s The Trapeze Act proves a colourful and striking coming-of-age novel, composed with a poet's sensitivity, flair and finesse.’ Age ‘[Angel’s] poetry shows in her delightful prose, and turn of phrase.’ Otago Daily Times ‘The Trapeze Act tackles questions of identity and belonging through an unapologetically feminist lens...The most evocative moments of the novel take place within Leda’s circus tales of tragedy, imbuing the story with both a sense of abandon and melancholy, as well as the family dynamics that play out within a discombobulated household quite unlike any other.’ Big Issue ‘This short novel captures an essence of Australia and it also examines the question of whether we create our own identity or if our generic heritage is largely responsible for who we become.’ Good Reading ‘Angel’s feisty voice and eye for the idiosyncrasies of 1960s Australia mean this is bloody bonza, mate.’ North & South ‘A well-written and entertaining debut...It is a pleasure to read Angel’s poetic prose.’ Australian Book Review ‘If it sounds fabulously convoluted, that’s because it is—but first-time author-poet Libby Angel expertly shifts between the various story arcs. Of course, it all starts to go horribly wrong, leaving Loretta to find her own way. But Angel’s feisty voice and eye for the idiosyncrasies of 1960s Australia mean this is bloody bonza, mate.’ North & South
A Vogue Best Book of the Year "What Ferrante did for female friends—exploring the tumult and complexity their relationships could hold—Spiegelman sets out to do for mothers and daughters. She’s essentially written My Brilliant Mom." —Slate A memoir of mothers and daughters—and mothers as daughters—traced through four generations, from Paris to New York and back again. For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers—French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly—exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja’s body changed and “began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand,” their relationship grew tense. Unwittingly, they were replaying a drama from her mother’s past, a drama Nadja sensed but had never been told. Then, after college, her mother suddenly opened up to her. Françoise recounted her turbulent adolescence caught between a volatile mother and a playboy father, one of the first plastic surgeons in France. The weight of the difficult stories she told her daughter shifted the balance between them. It had taken an ocean to allow Françoise the distance to become her own person. At about the same age, Nadja made the journey in reverse, moving to Paris determined to get to know the woman her mother had fled. Her grandmother’s memories contradicted her mother’s at nearly every turn, but beneath them lay a difficult history of her own. Nadja emerged with a deeper understanding of how each generation reshapes the past in order to forge ahead, their narratives both weapon and defense, eternally in conflict. Every reader will recognize herself and her family in I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This, a gorgeous and heartbreaking memoir that helps us to see why sometimes those who love us best hurt us most.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A spiritual thought-leader and featured guest on Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday helps us learn to quiet fear and anxiety and discover the powerful wholeness that exists within us all in this inspiring and affirmative guide. Achieving equilibrium in today’s age of anxiety can seem like a near-impossible—even frivolous—task. Panache Desai offers a refreshing, surprisingly unusual approach to meet the challenges of the modern moment and heal the fractured self it produces. For Desai, the soul—whole, unbroken, at peace, and one with the life source—isn’t a destination. It already exists within each of us, just waiting to be revealed. It is not something we have to work to develop—it is our birthright. And when we are in union with our soul, we experience a personal evolution that not only illuminates our individual cosmic purpose but helps us to engage the sense of purpose and presence necessary to remake the world itself. You Are Enough offers a straightforward, non-judgmental, and approachable process of revealing the soul, of coming into alignment and harmony with our true selves. Combining personal narrative, clear and inspiring philosophy, and prescriptive practices, it reveals that the way through is the way in—that the way through fear, self-doubt, and anxiety is accepting and embracing dissonance and emotional and psychological blockages, so that we can approach our lives and the world from a perspective that understands our fears are not who we are. Desai’s goal is simple: to guide readers through radical self-acceptance toward a life of ultimate peace and fulfillment. Beautifully designed, this enlightening volume by a fresh voice shows us that while life may have caused us to forget our power, potential, light, and love, they are always there, just waiting to be discovered.
