Kathy Levine, the television hostess from the widely viewed cable television shopping network, describes her struggle to find herself, her discoveries about life, and her hard-won successes.
Public radio personality Dean Olsher explores the fascinating history, lore, and addictive appeal of crosswords in this clever and entertaining narrative?featuring the construction of an actual puzzle by professional puzzle writer Francis Heaney.Filled with lively, original reporting,From Square One is a captivating and in-depth exploration of the puzzle world. It delves into the psychology?even the meta- physics?of crosswords. Olsher assesses the claim that solving crosswords helps prevent Alzheimer's and discovers, in fact, that the drive to fill in empty spaces is more likely a mental illness than a cure. Puzzle obsession, while it can be a light- hearted metaphor, can also be indicative of actual addictive behavior.Skeptical of the widely reported claim that more than fifty million Americans do crossword puzzles on a regular basis, longtime crossword enthusiast Dean Olsher does his own research and finds that the estimate is conservative. Along the way, Olsher looks into the origins and traditions of this popu- lar pastime, which made its debut in a New York newspaper in 1913. And, he revives the quest of musical theater legend Stephen Sondheim?who composed crosswords for New York magazine in the 1960s?to introduce American solvers to a British crossword style that demands a love of verbal playful- ness over knowledge of arcane trivia.Informative, engaging, and often surprising, From Square One is a unique and enjoyable cultural history for puzzlers and non-puzzlers alike.
What Tom''s about to find is truly out of this world! It''s the grand opening of APOGEE, the world''s first space hotel, an orbital space station designed expressly for the tourist trade. As Swift Enterprises is a major investor in the project, and provided much of the necessary technology, Tom and Sandy have been invited to be among the first guests to visit! When they arrive at the APOGEE they experience weightlessness, learn about the high-tech nature of the hotel (including the robotic wait and cleaning staff), and play a game of zero-gravity badminton. But as Tom explores the ship he begins to notice some strange happenings. And when a billionaire guest of the hotel turns up missing,Tom suspects foul play....
The first book in the "Bullet Catchers" series features a sexy bodyguard and his reluctant client, a woman who's filling in for her threatened twin.
In Lee's much-anticipated sequel to "All That and a Bag of Chips, " readers meet up again with Craig Bennett, who is still wary of love even years after his affair with Venice Taylor.
Two powerful personalities are on a collision course in this rocket-fast novel about money and power. Tokus Stone is a man caught between what he knows and what he knows is right, between the fortune of crime on the one hand and the conviction of law on the other. Way Jalon, on the other side of the spectrum, rules the city with an iron fist, presiding over an empire of wealth and influence. Armed with a dangerous new secret, he vows to remake the fabric of society by his own standards -- and Tokus Stone will be his perfect gamble. This edge-of-your seat novel traces the lives of a street hustler and an affluent businessman from their sharply contrasting paths to their final confrontation -- a confrontation only one of them will survive.
From New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller—and “the finest in western romance” (RT Book Reviews)—comes a moving and passionate tale of one single mother’s journey to protect her daughters—and her heart.While fleeing from her ex-husband with her two young daughters, Hallie finds herself trapped in a sudden and violent blizzard with a broken-down truck. With nowhere else to turn, she and her daughters seek shelter in a roadside diner. She has no idea that this will set off a chain of events that will change her life forever or that the handsome rancher she meets there will shake the very foundation of everything she believes about hope, love, and second chances. It’s clear that there’s more than just desire between the two but is Hallie ready to open up her heart again? After all, she’s still running from her past so does she even have a chance for the life she’s always dreamed of?
Brilliant new talent Tracy Fobes'' first book, Touch Not the Cat, received overwhelming critical acclaim. "Ms. Fobes'' debut is a stunning novel...clever, evocative, and magical," said Romantic Times. Her new book is as bewitching, a mesmerizing tale of magic -- and a love foretold centuries before....Lucinda Drakewyck, one of a long line of Drakewyck witches, has foreseen her own death. Desperate for answers, she calls upon the magic in her cherished crystal dove, hoping for visions of the warrior whose love would first save her then destroy them both. When wounded Crimean cavalry officer Richard Clairmont walks into her secret forest glen, Lucinda recognizes him as her promised hero. Destiny has determined that only he can rescue her from a ghastly fate, and yet Lucinda fights the attraction between them, knowing if they love, both their lives are forfeit.Richard Clairmont doesn''t believe in love, magic, or even himself. A captain in Her Majesty''s Eleventh Hussars, he charged into the mouth of Hell and returned scarred forever. But from the moment he meets Lucinda Drakewyck, sunshine enters his life, throwing light on the shadows in his heart and making him question the possibility of magic. Together, they must stand against a malevolent presence and test the true power of their love.
Anne Sherwood has made her life into a safe, orderly garden. She draws the plants of London''s famous Kew Gardens, an entirely suitable occupation for a widowed lady in Queen Victoria''s England. Then a compelling invitation takes her to Ireland, to sketch a recently discovered tree...a golden sapling with unusual qualities and even more mysterious origins. Determined to learn more, Anne finds herself confronting Michael McEvoy, an enigmatic figure who prefers the lonliness of the wild to society and its entrapments.Michael''s heart beats to the rhythm of the land. The ebb and flow of the seasons and the cadence are his calendar and clock. When the prim Englishwoman arrives, he is stunned to discover her conventional exterior hides a kindred spirit, one as sensitive as he to growing things...his perfect mate. But, as much as he longs to make her his, they must first expose the origin''s of the sapling and the dangerous corruption of nature that it represents...
From award-winning wine expert Tyler "Dr. Vino" Colman comes this innovative guide to pairing the perfect wine with every season and occasion.
Whatever good or service you''re selling, five likely customers are worth a hundred random names. No one can help you find new business by finding those five -- or five hundred, or fifty thousand -- best-qualified customers better than Bill Good.For over a decade, Bill Good''s guide to increasing new business by finding the right prospective customers has been an invaluable resource to people in every imaginable profession involving selling. Now completely revised and updated to include lessons on how email, fax machines, and the Internet can be incorporated into an effective prospecting and selling campaign, it is the most valuable tool a salesperson can own.Anyone who does any prospecting or selling by phone -- from securities, insurance, and real estate to fund-raising -- knows the frustrations and rejections inherent in "cold calling." Many people come to fear it. But why should this be so? Certainly there are people out there who need and want the product you''re selling. If only you could more efficiently generate a list of just those people, weed out the hopeless cases, and launch a simple and highly effective campaign to win them to your side. Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success shows you how to do just that. Bill Good draws on all he''s learned from a long, successful career teaching companies and individual entrepreneurs how to create successful prospecting campaigns. He jettisons the stale, old-school, don''t-believe-a-customer-who-says-no philosophy for a plan of attack that finds good prospects while quickly screening out unqualified, uninterested customers. From the first contact to the final close, Bill Good will help you design a complete, customized prospecting campaign.In this new revised edition, bursting with fresh ideas for incorporating new media and new technologies into his proven campaign strategies, Bill Good has updated a classic and given salespeople everywhere a book they can''t afford to live without.
There have been books about dogs since books began -- manuals on training and raising them, stories featuring dogs, and memoirs seen through the eyes of dogs. Lately, there has been a rash of books that purport to tell us what dogs are thinking, such as the bestselling What Dogs Are Thinking.This is a book about a Jewish boy and his sled dogs -- also a couple of wolves, a parrot or two...and Pinkwater''s uncle...and his father. Daniel Pinkwater, prodigious author of books for children, popular commentator on National Public Radio, and dog trainer to the stars, is unclear about what dogs are thinking. In fact, he appears to be completely baffled by them. He considers himself lucky that his dog does not foul the carpet, bite people, or run in traffic. Unlike every other dog book ever written, this one does not make the reader feel more stupid than the author.
The epic 1966 gridiron showdown--an all-time college football classic that would change the sport forever--featured a dozen all-Americans, a score of future pros, and a coach who will always be linked with his final decision in the first nationally televised, nationally-obsessing mega-Game. Few things would ever be the same after the fall of 1966, as network TV and the NCAA realized that football plus TV added up to a gold mine. 8 pages of photographs.
THE ELECTRIFYING NATIONAL BESTSELLERPARADISE COUNTYLeft bankrupt after her billionaire father''s sudden death, Alexandra Haywood returns to Shelby County, Kentucky -- that bit of Southern splendor known as Paradise County -- to sell the family''s magni?cent horse farm. Part of her mission is to ?re Joe Welch, the sexy, stubborn farm manager who worked hard for the Haywoods while raising his children. But Joe refuses to be ?red, and he and Alex clash. They also fall for each other -- hard. Just as their attraction ?ares, a shocking murder with ties to the past rocks the county -- and cuts close to home when Joe''s teenage son, Eli, and Alex''s wild-spirited younger sister, Neely, vanish. Now, the evil that lurks beneath Paradise County raises its gruesome head -- and Alex is targeted as the next victim.
When legendary Red Sox hitter Ted Williams died on July 5, 2002, newspapers reviewed the stats, compared him to other legends of the game, and declared him the greatest hitter who ever lived. Richard Ben Cramer, Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed biographer of Joe DiMaggio, decodes this oversized icon who dominated the game and finds not just a great player, but also a great man.In 1986, Richard Ben Cramer spent months on a profile of Ted Williams, and the result was the Esquire article that has been acclaimed ever since as one of the finest pieces of sports reporting ever written. Given special acknowledgment in The Best American Sportswriting of the Century and adapted for a coffee-table book called Ted Williams: The Seasons of the Kid, the original piece is now available in this special edition, with new material about Williams''s later years. While his decades after Fenway Park were out of the spotlight -- the way Ted preferred it -- they were arguably his richest, as he loved and inspired his family, his fans, the players, and the game itself. This is a remembrance for the ages.
Alana loves her dog-walking job, but it blows her mind to see how pampered these pooches are. Her newest clients actually feed their poodle steak and treat her to massages at a doggie spa! Alana can''t make heads or tails of why anyone would do this -- or why she complains to hunky handyman Connor and not her boyfriend, Sammy. When Sammy starts keeping her on an awfully tight leash, Alana wonders whether Connor might be a better match for her. But Alana''s puppy love comes to a screeching halt when she learns that Connor isn''t who she thought he was. Is Alana barking up the wrong tree with him, too?
From the former First Lady of Egypt, New York Times best-selling author, crusader for women’s rights, and widow of the slain Nobel Peace Prize winner Anwar Sadat, comes a timely, clear-eyed examination of the defining issues of the Middle East.
Wedged between the hustle of New York and the grandeur of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia is America's smallest big city, America's biggest small city, and America's most American city. It is also a city in flux. Bruce Buschel is a native Philadelphian who revisits his hometown and, in doing so, revisits his personal history and the city's complex identity. Buschel was born on Broad Street, his father died on Broad Street; he flunked out of college, sold cameras, and purchased drugs on Broad Street; he wrote for a newspaper on Broad Street, touched JFK's left hand on Broad Street, and met his second wife when she worked on Broad Street. On his thirteen-mile walk down the boulevard, Buschel talks to everyone from the old Italian tailor down the corner from the Chinese Mennonite pastor to the Jewish funeral home director across the street from Bilal, the Muslim restaurateur. On Broad Street, he finds livestock just a few steps from Joe Frazier's gym. The newly dubbed "Gayborhood" is just a stone's throw from the home of the heartbreaking Eagles. A world-class ballet rehearses at the Rock School while outcast rockers practice at the Paul Green School. The gas station attendant on Broad Street may be a recent immigrant, but he has already adopted the brusque manners and terse responses of a fourth-generation Philadelphian. Naturally, William Penn oversees the whole insecure, glorious mess from his perch atop City Hall. After 9/11, Americans were drawn to Philly's authenticity and history. After decades of decay, something positive is happening, and dyspeptic Philadelphians are trying to adjust. A lot has changed since Buschel grew up there, but he hasn't managed to shake the attitudes instilled in childhood -- mere mention of the '64 Phillies (and one of the greatest collapses in baseball history) still stings. He has retained his irreverent sense of humor, his distrust of authority, his ambivalence about New York, his disdain for New Jersey, and, above all, his sense of loyalty -- if not outright love -- for his native city.
To The Washington Post, he's "The Last Political Showman of the 20th Century." Bill Clinton has called him "the real Slick Willie." Ronald Reagan's secretary of state George Shultz called this famously liberal politician "a man of his word" and endorsed his successful candidacy for mayor of San Francisco. Indeed Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both called upon him for advice and help. He is Willie L. Brown, Jr., and he knows how to get things done in politics, how to work both sides of the aisle to get results. Compared to him, Machiavelli looks meek. And drab. In Basic Brown, this product of rural, segregated Texas and the urban black neighborhoods of San Francisco tells how he rose through the civil rights movement to become the most potent black politician in America through his shrewd understanding and use of political power and political money. He adapts the lessons he has learned so they can be used by anyone -- black, female, male -- intent on acquiring political power. And this master of the political deal demonstrates why deals are not enough, and that political power grows only when public good is being done. Willie Brown shows how some of the most far-reaching and socially advanced legislation in American history -- like gun control, legalized abortion, gay rights, and school funding -- was carried out under his guidance and on his watch, and tells of the ingenuity, the political machinations, and the personal perseverance that were required to enact what now seems to many to be obvious legislation. These are stories of breathtaking, sometimes hilarious ruses and gambits that show that even the most high-minded legislation needs the assistance of the skills of a shark, which is what Willie Brown often sees himself as. Basic Brown is a compendium of insights and stories on the real forces governing power in American political life that will leave you looking at politics anew. It is also the inspiring and funny story of the rise of a gawky teenager in mail-order shoes and trousers who rose to entertain royalty and schoolchildren, superstars and supersize egos, the saintly and the scholarly, while working to transform and open American politics. If you ever wanted to learn how to be slick, a shark, a do-gooder, and a man of your word, Willie L. Brown, Jr., is the storyteller for you.
She''s a cut above the average sleuth....Reyn Marten Sawyer is a San Antonio hair stylist with a head for solving murders!Dye Young, Stay PrettyReyn is getting conditioned to normal life after untangling the murder of her beloved mentor. So she''s a little frosted by a late-night call from wealthy Alexandra Barrister, desperate for Reyn''s help with a hair crisis. She arrives at the imposing Barrister estate -- and wishes she was packing more than a hot brush when she finds the body of Alexandra''s socialite mother, arranged with her hair standing on end, cemented into place by a killer with a macabre style sense. Reyn suspects she''s being framed by Alexandra, and even handsome detective Jackson Scythe may not be able to save her scalp...unless they go undercover to undo a killer with a whole new twist on having a bad hair day.
How do you explain color to the blind? Music to the deaf? Pain to the unfeeling? You can''t. That''s why I''ll never understand fear... No matter how much my survival depends on it.
A quirky coming-of-age tale about a boy who has only one goal: save the world.
Finn and his mystery-writer uncle head to Iceland in search of the Haunted City of Tquuli, where Finn''s archaeologist parents were last seen before their odd disappearance eight years ago. Finn doesn''t believe the creepy legends about the Haunted City and the ancient Vikings who lived there -- until a member of the rock-climbing expedition vanishes from inside a sleeping bag...one that was dangling a hundred feet from the base of an icy cliff! Then another climber disappears, leaving a trail of footprints that abruptly end in a field of snow. Is it modern-day murder, or the revenge of phantom Viking warriors?
From Nirvana and R.E.M. to Green Day and Belly, alternative bands are dominating the airways. This book looks at the hottest bands on the alternative music scene--their history, influences, concert personas, and distinctive styles. This is their sound--the sound of drums pounding and guitars wailing--the sound of rock''n''roll. Includes 50 photos.
GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! scream the headlines in July 1987, announcing the discovery of gold in the Yukon. Fourteen-year-old James Erickson, alone in the world after his father''s death, is mesmerized when he sees the first ship of prospectors enter the San Francisco harbor. Caught up in the gold fever, he books passage on a steamer up to Alaska. In Alaska, James meets Tip, a skinny boy who turns out to be a girl—and the only person James trusts to be his partner. Together they embark on a treacherous trek over the mountains and down the river, battling rapids, con men, and the cold. When their survival skills—and their dedication to each other—are tested, James and Tip wonder whether their exhausting journey will be worth it. Is their fortune waiting just beyond the next bend? And what are they willing to risk to find out?
The third in Sharie Kohler’s sexy werewolf series, following the sultry paranormal novels Marked By Moonlight, and Kiss of a Dark Moon. Psychic Chloe Ferguson has spent her life hiding from the emotions other people feel, until a pack of bloodthirsty lycans brutally attacks her and places her in a cell with a dangerous, starved, half-breed werewolf. Suddenly, she is overcome with terror, fury, and desire. What’s even more frightening than being on the fast track to becoming a lycan herself is her own blood-burning need for her darkly sexy cellmate. Half-breed Sebastian Santiago is more animal than human when Chloe is tossed into his cell. His enemies expect him to feed on her for survival, but the beautiful woman with the tender eyes of a wounded animal ignites a hunger in him that has nothing to do with his body’s need for food…and everything to do with his dark appetite to possess her, body and soul.
Most manufacturing companies with batch-and-queue "push" production systems have been blindsided by today''s consumer who expects quality products and services delivered on demand and customized to individual taste. In The Perfect Engine, manufacturing experts Anand Sharma and Patricia E. Moody describe for the first time how leading "pull" production pioneers build to order by reducing inventory, decreasing cycle time, minimizing floor space, and eliminating waste. Drawing on scores of examples and detailed case studies of three leaders in the demand economy field -- Maytag, Pella, and Mercedes-Benz -- Sharma and Moody demonstrate how these companies achieved astonishing results using the pathbreaking LeanSigmaSM Transformation. Combining lean production and quality elements from the famous Six Sigma process, LeanSigma produces annual productivity gains of 15 percent to 20 percent. In addition, the authors show, inventory turns more than quadruple; cycle times drop by more than 70 percent; and floor space reductions of 30 percent to 50 percent are not uncommon. Sharma and Moody provide immensely readable explanations of key technical aspects of the process--for example, how cell-based one-piece flow can replace batch-and-queue with dramatically improved lead times and inventory turnover. A chapter on a revolutionary design technique the authors call Design for LeanSigma or 3P (product and production preparation) shows how to build flexibility into the product design and the production systems at very low risk, which will be especially helpful when forecasts and customer orders deviate from original projections, as they usually do. Further, the Design for LeanSigma method is devised to produce profitability at short-term volume projections, which makes it a perfect tool for the new demand economy. Essential, timely, and important, The Perfect Engine is perfect reading for this new manufacturing era.
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