New Memoirs

Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we know is a shadow of the fascinating reality. It is all too easy to forget that he composed an empire's worth of music, and navigated the imperial Russian court to great advantage. In this iconoclastic biography, celebrated author Simon Morrison recreates Tchaikovsky's complex world.

In this penetrating study narrated by leading British voice artist Tanya S. Bartlett, Michael Norris tells the complete story behind Dickens' writing of the book. Norris dives deep into his topic to discover the altruistic angels and monetary demons which drove Dickens, the public debates and rancor which informed him, and the terrible childhood memories which both haunted and inspired him.

Everyone knew it was crazy to try to extract oil and natural gas buried in shale rock deep below the ground. Everyone, that is, except a few reckless wildcatters - who risked their careers to prove the world wrong. Things looked grim for American energy in 2006. Oil production was in steep decline and natural gas was hard to find. The Iraq War threatened the nation’s already tenuous relations with the Middle East. China was rapidly industrializing and competing for resources.

This book continues Chicken Soup for the Soul's focus on inspiration and hope in these difficult times. These inspirational stories remind us that each day holds something to be thankful for - whether it is having the sun shine or having food on the table. Power outages and storms, health scares and illnesses, job woes and financial insecurities, housing challenges and family worries test us all. But there is always a silver lining.

They are icons of the literary world whose soaring works have been discussed and analyzed in countless classrooms, homes, and pubs. Yet for most listeners, the living, breathing human beings behind the classics have remained unknown - until now. In this utterly captivating audiobook, Dr. Elliot Engel, a leading authority on the lives of great authors, illuminates the fascinating and flawed members of literature's elite. In lieu of stuffy biographical sketches, Engel provides fascinating anecdotes.

In March 2011, a major police investigation was opened in the search for missing Swindon local, Sian O'Callaghan. When taxi driver Christopher Halliwell was arrested, Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher didn't expect what happened next. After the body of another missing girl, Becky Godden-Edwards, was uncovered, the police had two murders on their hands and one suspect, but how many more unsolved murders could Christopher Halliwell be responsible for?

In 2010, a brave whistleblower alerted the police to Dr. Stan Li's corrupt pain management clinic in Queens, New York. Li spent years supplying more than 70 patients a day with oxycodone and Xanax, trading prescriptions for cash. Emergency room doctors, psychiatrists, and desperate family members warned him that his patients were at risk of death, but he would not stop.

Wearing the colour red and having the patch with the emblem of the mighty bulldog on your back was what ex-Mongrel Mob leader Tuhoe 'Bruno' Isaac called being True Red. "Because all levels of society hated us we created a new society of hatred symbolised by the bulldog. Its ferocious habits were engraved on our hearts", Tuhoe says, "If you weren't a mobster you weren't worth knowing." He lived this way for 17 years. However, constantly living for the bash, beer, prison and the possibility of dying in a pool of blood eventually saw Tuhoe search for another way of doing life.

Today's extremist violence surges into our lives from what seems like every direction - vehicles hurtling down city sidewalks; cyber-threats levied against political leaders and backed up with violence; automatic weapons unleashed on mall shoppers, students, and the faithful in houses of worship. As varied as the violent acts are the attackers themselves - neo-Nazis, white nationalists, the alt-right, InCels, and Islamist jihadists, to name just a few.

Whether you’re facing your own hip replacement surgery or want to train for something like a triathlon, or you simply find yourself facing extreme challenges in your own life, this book is your guide to putting steel in your bones and doing what you may never have thought was possible.

After a tumor bursts in Mike Scalise's brain, leaving him with a hole in the head and malfunctioning hormones, he must navigate a new alien world of illness maintenance. His mother, who has a chronic heart condition and a flair for drama, becomes a complicated model as she competes with him for the status of "best sick person". The Brand New Catastrophe is a moving, funny exploration of how we define ourselves by the stories we choose to tell.

When Helena Andrews heard this declaration on Saturday Night Live, her first reaction was How daaare you? But after a commercial break and some thought, she decided to poke at the stereotype that says "successful" and "bitch" are synonyms. Unafraid and frank, she comes to realize that being a bitch is sometimes the best way to be—except, of course, when it's not.

From Marine sniper Jake Wood comes a riveting memoir of leading over 100,000 veterans to a life of renewed service, volunteering to battle, hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, pandemics, and civil wars, and inspiring onlookers as their unique military training saved lives and rebuilt our country.

In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of 10 children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial an extraordinary four times in order to get a conviction, to the horror of many in the legal community. Louisa protested her innocence until the end.

Describes how two highly decorated former detectives, Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, were convicted of murdering eight people on the orders of a vicious mob boss.

Burned-out after years of doing development work around the world, William Powers spent a season in a 12-foot-by-12-foot cabin off the grid in North Carolina, as recounted in his award-winning memoir Twelve by Twelve. Could he live a similarly minimalist life in the heart of New York City? To find out, Powers and his wife jettisoned 80 percent of their stuff, left their 2,000-square-foot Queens townhouse, and moved into a 350-square-foot "micro-apartment" in Greenwich Village.

Lawrence Weschler sets Oliver Sacks' brilliant table talk and extravagant personality in vivid relief, casting himself as a beanpole Sancho to Sacks' capacious Quixote. We see Sacks rowing and ranting and caring deeply; composing the essays that would form The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; recalling his turbulent drug-fueled younger days; helping his patients and exhausting his friends; and waging intellectual war against a medical and scientific establishment that failed to address his greatest concern: the spontaneous specificity of the individual human soul.

امتاز غورباتشوف منذ طفولته بمهاراته التنظيمية العالية وتفانيه الكبير أثناء العمل، وأبدى ميلًا للعمل في المجال السياسي، ومع تقدمه في السن ازداد شغفه بالعمل السياسي وأصبح عضوًا بارزًا في الحزب الشيوعي الأمر الذي يعني انخراطه في المجال السياسي في سنٍّ مبكرة جدًا وسرعان ما ترقى في المسؤوليات الحزبية ليصبح أصغر رؤساء حكومات الأقاليم في البلاد عام 1970.

Ray Walker had a secure career in finance until a wine-tasting vacation ignited a passion that he couldn't stifle. Ray neglected his work, spending hours poring over ancient French winemaking texts, learning the techniques and the language, and daydreaming about vineyards. After Ray experienced his first taste of wine from Burgundy, he could wait no longer. He quit his job and went to France to start a winery - with little money, a limited command of French, and virtually no winemaking experience.

In 1986, fresh out of college, Paul Downs opened his first and last business: a small company that built custom furniture. With no idea how to run a business or how to build custom furniture, Downs spent a year teaching himself the business, and in 1987 he hired his first employee. That was when things got complicated.