Download or read book Queen City Memoirs written by John Bendt and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2023-07-13 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Not everything is what it appears to be," John Benedict, a gay man, learns the hard way after moving to youth and beauty-obsessed Southern California. He hopes to find love after the breakup of his eleven-year relationship but wonders, At forty years old, is it too late for me? A fun, carefree life as a writer with new friends, country western dancing, and romance is soon shattered when a love-triangle betrayal along with financial disaster lead to life-changing consequences. Several men come and go in his life, each bringing their lessons. He loves fearlessly, always searching for spiritual answers and happiness, along the way finding out that he has a lot of growing up to do. John struggles against sex and relationship addiction and works hard to heal himself while building a new life. But disillusioned by go-nowhere dates, painful traps, and abortive relationships, he makes a choice to stop looking for love but instead revels in the single life of sex clubs and party drugs. Though independent and living life to the fullest, he eventually realizes that something is missing. Will he ever find lasting love and the elusive healthy relationship he has been longing for? Queen City Memoirs is a chronicle of our times around the turn of the twenty-first century and beyond. It is set against the backdrop of the history of same-sex marriage--from an impossible dream, through a growing global consciousness, then culminating in 2008 when gays and lesbians were at last able to marry in California, only to have our civil rights voted away.
Download or read book Queen City Jazz written by Kathleen Ann Goonan and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-05-30 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queen City Jazz "A dizzying novel that takes full advantage of the creative potential of nanotech." --The New York Times In Verity's world, nanotech plagues decimated the population after an initial renaissance of utopian nanotech cities. Growing up on an isolated farm, she finds her happy life changing course when Blaze, the only young man in the community and Verity's best friend, is shot. With Blaze's body wrapped in a nanotech cocoon, Verity sets off on a quest to the Enlivened City of Cincinnati. It is a place of legend, where huge bio-engineered bees carry information through the streets and enormous nanotech flowers burst from the tops of strange buildings. It is the place where Blaze might be brought back from the brink of death. But Cincinnati is a city of dreams turned into nightmares, endlessly reliving the fantasies of its creator, a city that Verity must rule--or die.
Download or read book Memoirs of an Ex Prom Queen written by Alix Kates Shulman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-03-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sardonic portrayal of one white, middle-class Midwestern girl's coming-of-age, this novel takes a wry and prescient look at a range of experiences treated at the time as taboo or trivial.
Download or read book Diary of a Drag Queen written by Crystal Rasmussen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2020 Life's a drag... Why not be a queen? 'Stories like the one where you shagged a 79-year-old builder and knocked over his sister's ashes while feeding him a Viagra. Or the time you crashed your car because you were giving a hand job in barely moving traffic and took your eye off the car in front. That's the kind of dinner-party ice-breaker I'm talking about.' Northern, working-class and shagging men three times her age, Crystal writes candidly about her search for 'the one'; sleeping with a VIP in an attempt to become a world famous journalist; getting hired and fired by a well-known fashion magazine; being torn between losing weight and gorging on KFC; and her need for constant sexual satisfaction (and where that takes her). Charting her day-to-day adventures over the course of a year, we encounter tucks, twists and sucks, heinous overspending and endless nights spent sprinting from problem to problem in a full face of make-up. This is a place where the previously unspeakable becomes the commendable - a unique portrayal of the queer experience. (c) 2019, Crystal Rasmussen (P) 2019 Penguin Audio
Download or read book Queen of the Fall written by Sonja Livingston and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2015-04 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether pulled from the folds of memory, channeled through the icons of Greek mythology and Roman Catholicism, or filtered through the lens of pop culture, Sonja Livingston’s Queen of the Fall considers the lives of women. Exploring the legacies of those she has crossed paths with in life and in the larger culture, Livingston weaves together strands of memory with richly imagined vignettes to explore becoming a woman in late 1980s and early 1990s America. Along the way, the award-winning memoirist brings us face-to-face with herself as an inner-city girl—trying to imagine a horizon beyond poverty, fearful of her fertility and the limiting arc of teenage pregnancy. Livingston looks at the lives of those she’s known: friends who’ve gotten themselves into “trouble” and disappeared never to be heard from again, girls who tell their school counselor small lies out of necessity and pain, and a mother whose fruitfulness seems, at times, biblical. Livingston interacts with figures such as Susan B. Anthony, the Virgin Mary, and Ally McBeal to mine the terrain of her own femininity, fertility, and longing. Queen of the Fall is a dazzling meditation on loss, possibility, and, ultimately, what it means to be human. Watch a book trailer
Download or read book Queen of America written by Luis Alberto Urrea and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At turns heartbreaking, uplifting, fiercely romantic, and riotously funny,this novel from a Pulitzer Prize finalist tells the unforgettable story of a young woman coming of age and finding her place in a new world. Beginning where Luis Alberto Urrea's bestselling The Hummingbird's Daughter left off, Queen of America finds young Teresita Urrea, beloved healer and "Saint of Cabora," with her father in 1892 Arizona. But, besieged by pilgrims in desperate need of her healing powers, and pursued by assassins, she has no choice but to flee the borderlands and embark on an extraordinary journey into the heart of turn-of-the-century America. Teresita's passage will take her to New York, San Francisco, and St. Louis, where she will encounter European royalty, Cuban poets, beauty queens, anxious immigrants and grand tycoons -- and, among them, a man who will force Teresita to finally ask herself the ultimate question: is a saint allowed to fall in love?
Download or read book The Queen s Fortune written by Allison Pataki and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping novel about the extraordinary woman who captured Napoleon’s heart, created a dynasty, and changed the course of history—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Traitor's Wife, The Accidental Empress, and Sisi “I absolutely loved The Queen’s Fortune, the fascinating, little-known story of Desiree Clary—the woman Napoleon left for Josephine—who ultimately triumphed and became queen of Sweden.”—Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls As the French revolution ravages the country, Desiree Clary is faced with the life-altering truth that the world she has known and loved is gone and it’s fallen on her to save her family from the guillotine. A chance encounter with Napoleon Bonaparte, the ambitious and charismatic young military prodigy, provides her answer. When her beloved sister Julie marries his brother Joseph, Desiree and Napoleon’s futures become irrevocably linked. Quickly entering into their own passionate, dizzying courtship that leads to a secret engagement, they vow to meet in the capital once his career has been secured. But her newly laid plans with Napoleon turn to sudden heartbreak, thanks to the rising star of Parisian society, Josephine de Beauharnais. Once again, Desiree’s life is turned on its head. Swept to the glittering halls of the French capital, Desiree is plunged into the inner circle of the new ruling class, becoming further entangled with Napoleon, his family, and the new Empress. But her fortunes shift once again when she meets Napoleon's confidant and star general, the indomitable Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. As the two men in Desiree’s life become political rivals and military foes, the question that arises is: must she choose between the love of her new husband and the love of her nation and its Emperor? From the lavish estates of the French Riviera to the raucous streets of Paris and Stockholm, Desiree finds herself at the epicenter of the rise and fall of an empire, navigating a constellation of political giants and dangerous, shifting alliances. Emerging from an impressionable girl into a fierce young woman, she discovers that to survive in this world she must learn to rely upon her instincts and her heart. Allison Pataki’s meticulously researched and brilliantly imagined novel sweeps readers into the unbelievable life of a woman almost lost to history—a woman who, despite the swells of a stunning life and a tumultuous time, not only adapts and survives but, ultimately, reigns at the helm of a dynasty that outlasts an empire.
Download or read book Forbidden Fruit written by Peter Bronson and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history Newport Kentucky and Cincinnati's playground known as Sin City, from the underworld takeover in 1936 to the tragic Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in 1977 that killed 165 people.
Download or read book A brief Memoir of Queen Charlotte with authentic anecdotes and a poetical appendix written by Thomas WILLIAMS (Calvinist Preacher.) and published by . This book was released on 1819 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dancing with the Queen Marching with King written by Sam Aldrich and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he was twenty-five, Sam Aldrich danced with Queen Elizabeth II in London. By the time he was thirty-seven, he was marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. Recounting the journey between and beyond those two points, and musing over the irony of the contrast they represent, is the subject of this remarkable and entertaining memoir. After a cosseted childhood in New York's silk stocking district, including weekends on Long Island's Gold Coast and summers in Dark Harbor, Maine, Aldrich was expected to follow in his father's footsteps and pursue a career in high finance. "Dancing with the queen of England was just a small function of the privileged life and family into which I was born," he writes, "and events such as this would be a regular part of my upper-class, well-traveled social life." Instead, and to his parents' chagrin, he chose decades of hard work in the public sector, serving as deputy police commissioner in New York City, director of the New York State Division for Youth, executive assistant to Governor Nelson Rockefeller, president of the Brooklyn Center of Long Island University, and commissioner of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, before entering teaching full-time at midlife. Illustrated with photographs from Aldrich's personal collection, this lively memoir offers personal insights into New York State politics and history. Whether working to develop an effective system for rehabilitating juvenile offenders in New York City, trying to find an environmentally sound means for development in the Hudson River Valley, or teaching public policy at SUNY's Empire State College, Aldrich shows what it means to follow one's passions and interests, and to take the gifts one has been given and use them to try to make this world a better place.
Download or read book Queen of the Air written by Dean N. Jensen and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Leap of Faith written by Queen Noor and published by Orion Publishing Group. This book was released on 2004 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic and inspiring story of one woman's incredible journey into the heart of a man and his nation. Born into a distinguished Arab-American family, Lisa Halaby was a strongly independent young woman. After studying architecture at Princeton, her work on projects in the Middle East gave her a profound understanding both of the links between the environment and social problems, and also of the tumultuous history of the Arab nations. Then, in 1974, her life took a very different turn, when her father introduced her to the world's most eligible bachelor, King Hussein of Jordan. After a whirlwind romance, she became Noor Al Hussein, Queen of Jordan. With eloquence and honesty, Queen Noor speaks of the obstacles she faced as a young bride and of her successful struggle to create a role for herself as a humanitarian activist. She tells of her heartbreaking miscarriage and the births of her four children, along with her continuing support for King Hussein's campaign to bring peace to the Arab nations. But most of all this is a love story - an honest and engaging portrait of a truly remarkable woman and the man she married.
Download or read book Firefly Lane written by Kristin Hannah and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2008-02-05 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah comes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . . now a #1 Netflix series! In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable. So begins Kristin Hannah's magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives. From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness. Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn't know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she'll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she'll envy her famous best friend. . . . For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship—jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test. Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone's Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it's the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It's about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you—and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you'll never forget . . . one you'll want to pass on to your best friend.
Download or read book Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth from the Year 1581 Till Her Death written by Thomas Birch and published by . This book was released on 1754 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Daughter of the Queen of Sheba written by Jacki Lyden and published by HMH. This book was released on 1997-10-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This account of growing up with a mentally ill mother “belongs on a shelf of classic memoirs, alongside The Liars’ Club and Angela’s Ashes” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). As an NPR correspondent, Jacki Lyden visited some dangerous war zones—but her childhood was a war zone of a different kind. Lyden’s mother suffered from what is now called bipolar disorder or manic depression. But in a small Wisconsin town in the sixties and seventies she was simply “crazy.” In her delusions, Lyden’s mother was a woman of power: Marie Antoinette or the Queen of Sheba. But in reality, she had married the nefarious local doctor, who drugged her to keep her moods in check and terrorized the children to keep them quiet. Holding their lives together was Lyden’s hardscrabble Irish grandmother, a woman who had her first child at the age of fourteen and lost her husband in a barroom brawl. In this memoir, Lyden vividly captures the seductive energy of her mother’s delusions and the effect they had on her own life. She paints a portrait of three remarkable women—mother, daughter, and grandmother—revealing their obstinate devotion to one another against all odds, and their scrappy genius for survival. “What distinguishes Daughter of the Queen of Sheba from any other book about dysfunctional parents . . . and turns this exotic memoir into compelling literature is the dreamy poetry of Lyden’s prose. In graceful imagery as original (and occasionally as highly wrought) as her mother’s costumes, Lyden—a senior correspondent for National Public Radio—loops and loops again around the central fact of her mother’s manic depression and how that illness shaped Lyden’s life growing up with two younger sisters, a scrappy Irish grandmother (whose memory she holds like ‘a cotton rag around a cut’), a father who left, and a hated stepfather.” —Entertainment Weekly
Download or read book Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth from the Year 1581 Till Her Death written by Thomas Birch and published by . This book was released on 1754 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hideaway written by James Houston and published by M&S. This book was released on 2000-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than thirty years James Houston has been flying to Vancouver, then taking a little plane north and west to the airport at Sandspit on the Queen Charlotte Islands. After the ferry ride to Skidegate, he takes the single road running north on Graham Island and settles down in his small cottage by the bridge over the Tlell River. There he fishes, writes, draws, roams around, and rejoices that he and his wife, Alice, have found the perfect place. People go misty-eyed when they recall the Queen Charlottes, those distant islands in the Pacific within sight of Alaska that are miraculously temperate and see little snow. The glaciers of the Ice Age passed the islands by, leaving a treasure trove for botanists and biologists. Today, the warming Japan current still protects its shores. Among its many delights are spectacular wildlife of all kinds. On land are many deer, river otters, and the largest black bears in the world. Its waters shelter giant crabs, salmon, and killer whales. And the air is filled with remarkable birds, especially the ravens and bald eagles that are everywhere. Special landscapes include moss-hung rainforests that remind us that this is Emily Carr country, sheer cliffs that plunge straight into the Pacific, miles of empty beaches piled with sculptured driftwood, Guinness-black forest pools and thundering seascapes, and even a secret Haida mountain that provides the rare carving stone known as argillite. These are the islands of Haida Gwaii, of course, and James Houston has always had an affinity for native people, whether with Ojibway friends in his Ontario boyhood or with Inuit in the North. His book tells the history of the Haida, the coming of theEagle and the Raven clans, and the rich culture they developed in this land of plenty. Then came the bloody sea otter fur trade with sometimes ruthless sea captains two centuries ago and later the smallpox that wiped out 80 per cent of the Haida population, with social effects that have lasted to this day. Houston also tells us about totem poles and potlatches, two traditions that he has seen being revived. And while many old Haida legends adorn his book, there are also fine modern characters, including the old Haida visitor who sang a song to her river "chez Houston, and the Houstons' friend Teddy Bellis, who liked to offer their big-city guests a snack of "smoked dog." From a visit to the awesome power of the crumbling poles at the deserted village of Ninstints in the south all the way to the site of a crab fishing tragedy on North Beach, the book covers the range of the archipelago. But James Houston is a fanatical fly fisherman and his love of fishing on his doorstep - and dramatic tales of salmon or trout caught or lost by him, or Alice, or their friends - runs through the book. So, too, does their beloved Tlell River, which ebbs and flows with the tide a mere twenty feet from his window. As he and Alice arrive and open up the old green cottage, their excitement will affect everyone whose family has ever had a special summer place, a hideaway. Reading this book is almost as good as being there.
