Life is full of surprises, but family is forever… After their mother’s death, Daisy and Beatriz Davenport found a home with their aunt Stella in the beautiful town of Cape Sanctuary. They never knew what Stella sacrificed to ensure they had everything. Now, with Daisy and Bea grown, it’s time for Stella to reveal a secret that will change their family forever. Bea thought she was done with impulsiveness after her roller-coaster marriage to a rock star ended — especially since it gave her her wonderful eleven-year-old daughter, Marisol. But just as she’s beginning to pursue a new love with an old friend, Bea’s ex-husband resurfaces and turns their lives upside down. Then there’s Daisy — sensible, rational, prudent Daisy. She’s never taken a risk in her life — until she meets a man who makes her question everything she thought she knew about love, life and taking chances. In this heartwarming story, Stella, Bea and Daisy will discover that the path to true happiness is filled with twists and turns, but love always leads them back home.
On holiday with friends, the Hardy boys check out the local haunted house. Deterred by screams and the dilapidated house, the group turn towards home. However, a nearly-fatal motor boat chase in the nearby bay causes the Hardy boys to wonder: is the house really haunted, or is there foul play afoot? This is the second book of the Hardy boys series, first published in 1927. It was rewritten in 1959; this Standard Ebook contains the original 1927 text. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
A lively and revealing behind-the-scenes look at the making of one of history's most controversial and influential movies, drawing on exclusive interviews with the cast and crew. “You’ve always been crazy,” says Louise to Thelma, shortly after she locks a police officer in the trunk of his car. “This is just the first chance you’ve had to express yourself.” In 1991, Thelma & Louise, the story of two outlaw women on the run from their disenchanted lives, was a revelation. Suddenly, a film in which women were, in every sense, behind the wheel. It turned the tables on Hollywood, instantly becoming a classic, and continues to electrify audiences as a cultural statement of defiance. But if the film’s place in history now seems certain, at the time its creation was a long shot. Only through sheer hard work and more than a little good luck did the script end up in the hands of the brilliant English filmmaker Ridley Scott, who saw its huge potential. With Scott on board, a team willing to challenge the odds came together—including the stars Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon and a fresh-faced up-and-coming actor named Brad Pitt, as well as legends like actor Harvey Keitel, composer Hans Zimmer, and old-school studio chief Alan Ladd Jr.—to create one of the most controversial movies of all time. But before icons like Davis and Sarandon got involved, Thelma & Louise was just an idea in the head of Callie Khouri, a thirty-year-old music video production manager, who was fed up with working behind the scenes on sleazy sets. At four a.m. one night, sitting in her car outside the ramshackle bungalow in Santa Monica that she shared with two friends, she had a vision: two women on a crime spree, fleeing their dull and tedious lives—lives like hers—in search of a freedom they had never before been able to realize. But in the late 1980s, Hollywood was dominated by men, both on the screen and behind the scenes. The likelihood of a script by an unheard-of screenwriter starring two women in lead roles actually getting made was remote. But Khouri had one thing going for her—she was so inexperienced she didn't really know she would be attempting the nigh impossible. In Off the Cliff, Becky Aikman tells the full extraordinary story behind this feminist sensation, which crashed through barricades and upended convention. Drawing on 130 exclusive interviews with the key players from this remarkable cast of actors, writers, and filmmakers, Aikman tells an inspiring and important underdog story about creativity, the magic of cinema, and the unjust obstacles that women in Hollywood continue to face to this day.
Five years ago, Don Snyder was teaching English at Colgate University. He was forty years old and had a wife, three children, a new baby on the way, and what seemed like a secure middle-class future. But then Snyder lost his chance at tenure -- and, all of a sudden, he was out of a job. The Cliff Walk is a moving, clear-eyed account of Snyder's agonizing loss and what it feels like to fall, rung by rung, down the socio-economic ladder. Snyder chronicles the denial and disbelief he went through as his hopes of finding another teaching job faded after being rejected for ninety positions. He explains how each painful change -- selling his house, buying groceries with food stamps -- reminded him how much he and his family had taken for granted in their previous life. And he describes how he finally found new hope in a job on a home construction crew in Maine. Working outside for ten hours a day through a vicious winter taught Snyder about his own cowardice and the lies he had come to believe about what a professional life of hard work entitled him to. Written with precision and elegance, The Cliff Walk captures the depth of one family's love and speaks to anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to be out of a job and out in the cold.
From the author of the #1 international bestseller The Orchid House, the mesmerizing story of two Irish families entangled by a tragic past that seems destined to repeat itself To escape a recent heartbreak in New York, Grania Ryan returns to her family home on the rugged, wind-swept coast of Ireland. Here, on the cliff edge in the middle of a storm, she meets a young girl, Aurora Lisle, who will profoundly change her life. Despite the warnings Grania receives from her mother to be wary of the Lisle family, Aurora and Grania forge a close friendship. Through a trove of old family letters dating from 1914, Grania begins to learn just how deeply their families’ histories are entwined. The horrors of World War I, the fate of a beautiful foundling child, and the irresistible lure of the ballet give rise to a legacy of heartache that leaves its imprint on each new generation. Ultimately, it will be Aurora whose intuition and spirit may be able to unlock the chains of the past. Sweeping from Edwardian England to present-day New York, from the majestic Irish coast to the crumbling splendor of a legendary London town house, The Girl on the Cliff introduces two remarkable women whose quest to understand their past sends them toward a future where love can triumph over loss.
The most prodigal, prolific, and visionary director to emerge from post-sixties Hollywood, Robert Altman is a man whose mystique sometimes threatens to overshadow his many critically acclaimed films (including MASH).
The classic military adventure: a gripping tale of honour, duty, and sacrifice during the Afghan war of 1919 in British India. 'A writer who never disappoints one. He has an extraordinary power of treating military disaster in depth and yet with pace, whether on the frontiers of Rome or British India, and of analysing the tensions of command. Gripping as an action story, deeply moving on the individual level, it involves one as an eye-witness from beginning to end.' Mary Renault This classic military adventure is a gripping insight into life on an exposed outpost of the Afghan frontier. Major Charles Sandeman is an unlikely hero: an intellectual soldier, repeatedly passed over for promotion in the British Indian Army. When war suddenly erupts between India and Afghanistan in 1919, Sandeman is caught, as the locals say, 'between the leopard and the cliff'. Facing an uprising of hostile border tribes and mutinies, he must rise to the challenge and lead the retreat of his soldiers in a bleak trek through unforgiving terrain. Brimming with action, suspense, and psychological power, The Leopard and the Cliff is a masterful military adventure which has never felt more prophetic, offering insights into colonialism and tribal divides that haunt the world today. 'Gripping ... Brings out movingly and with skill points of vital importance to an understanding of British India and the Frontier ... Highly dramatic.' Philip Mason
