Other books that might interest you

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  Dimestore - A Writer's Life

  Lee Smith

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  In her first work of nonfiction, Lee Smith deploys the wit, wisdom, and graceful prose for which she is beloved to conjure her early days in the small coal town of Grundy, Virginia--and beyond.  
  For the inimitable Lee Smith, place is paramount. For forty-five years, her fiction has lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before has she written her own story. Set deep in the rugged Appalachian Mountains, the Grundy of Lee Smith's youth was a place of coal miners, mountain music, and her daddy's dimestore. It was in that dimestore--listening to customers and inventing life histories for the store's dolls--that she began to learn the craft of storytelling. Even though she adored Grundy, Smith's formal education and travels took her far from Virginia, though her Appalachian upbringing never left her.  
  Dimestore's fifteen essays are crushingly honest, always wise, and superbly entertaining. Smith has created both a moving, personal portrait and a broader meditation on embracing one's heritage. Hers is an inspiring story of the birth of a writer and a poignant look at a way of life that has all but vanished.

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  All Because of a Love Note - How...

  Natalie June Reilly

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  Two words saved my life, two modest, but mighty words—THANK YOU! The most compelling chapter of my story began with a Love Note, one simple handwritten gesture of love, hope and gratitude. 
  My purpose was handed to me in the shape of an envelope, a simple, paper container with a sealable flap that holds a little bit of hope for our everyday heroes. As it turned out, a life of stationery was my destiny, not a stationary life. And it all began on the heels of a broken heart. 
  For the better part of my life, I dreamed of and even prayed for an epic love story, and this is a love story on so many levels. I just never expected it to come at such a great toll. But then again, if you look back through the course of history, the greatest love stories always do. 
  Natalie June Reilly is a freelance writer and every bit her mother's daughter. She is the founder of Nothing but Love Notes, a movement that has inspired a generation of love and gratitude. Somewhere along the way, she unearthed her happy ending, landing the beach, the boy and now the book. None of this would have been possible, if not for God's grace, a mother's love and a handwritten Love Note.

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  Interview with Mike Payne An

  Mike Payne, Paul Andrews

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  Award-winning international cartoonist & illustrator Mike Payne is the creator of many successful characters and concepts known all around the world. Over a billion greetings cards featuring his designs have been sold to date, and he is perhaps best known for being the creator of Tatty Teddy from the 'Me to You' concept.
  
  Mike drew the loveable charcoal bear with the blue nose under his pen name Miranda for 17 years before moving to pastures new in 2004. This engaging interview sees Mike talk candidly about his life and career, from his time as a public servant through to concepts he is working on today. As well as discussing his creations such as Tatty Teddy and Charlie's Ark, Mike also covers his time as the resident cartoonist for Sky News, his fascinating lectures and his passion for acting. This is a rare chance to hear the world-renowned artist and much sought-after public speaker talk openly and honestly about his life and his work.
  
  ©2017 Oak Tree Press (P)2017 Oak Tree Press

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  If Jesus Was a Rapper

  Cellus Hamilton

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  If you’ve ever listened to music created by Cellus Hamilton, you are aware that he is much more than a rapper. His lyrics are multidimensional, revealing him to be a sort of scholarly visionary. Because music is often subject to the listener’s interpretation, interviews have been the closest outlet we have towards understanding the complexities that exist within Mr. Hamilton. Here in his book, “If Jesus Was a Rapper”, he lays his heart bare. 
  As the businessman, family-man, and clergyman aspects of Hamilton are revealed in his memoir, his life and journey through the music industry teach us more about Jesus than many straightforward theologians have. His personality, creativity, and boldness work together to present him as a wholistic human artist who is deeply in love with Jesus. 
  While Hamilton seems to intentionally target the Christian creative, his rags-to-riches story easily connects to us all. By the end of the book, Jesus will likely be your new favorite rapper.

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  Proust & His Banker - In Search...

  Gian Balsamo

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  This study explores the surprising relationship between Proust’s creative genius, his financial extravagance, and the steady hand that kept him afloat. 
   
  What Marcel Proust wanted from life most of all was unconditional requited love, and the way he went after it—smothering the objects of his affection with gifts—cost him a fortune. To pay for such extravagance, he engaged in daring speculations on the stock exchange. The task of his cousin and financial adviser, Lionel Hauser, was to make sure these speculations would not go sour. In Proust and His Banker, Gian Balsamo examines this vital, complex relationship and reveals that the author’s liberal squandering of money provided the grist for many of the fictional characters and dramatic events he wrote about. 
   
  Focusing on hundreds of letters between Proust and Hauser among other archival and primary sources, Balsamo provides a fascinating window into the writer’s creative process, his financial activities, and the surprising relationship between the two. Successes and failures alike provided material for Proust’s fiction, whether from the purchase of an airplane for the object of his affections or the investigation of a deceased love’s intimate background.  
   
  Over the course of their fifteen-year collaboration, the banker saw Proust squander three-fifths of his wealth. To Hauser the writer was a virtuoso in resource mismanagement. Nonetheless, Balsamo shows, we owe it to the altruism of this generous relative, who never thought twice about sacrificing his own time and resources to Proust, that In Search of Lost Time was ever completed.

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  The Plantagenets - Digitally...

  Ben Hubbard

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  This recording has been digitally produced by DeepZen Limited, using a synthesised version of an audiobook narrator’s voice under license. DeepZen uses Emotive Speech Technology to create digital narrations that offer a similar listening experience to human narration.  
   
  For almost 350 years the Plantagenet family held the English throne – longer than any dynasty in English history – and yet its origins were in Anjou in France, French remained the mother tongue of England’s monarchs for 300 years, and only in its family’s final decades did English rather than French become the language the king used in official correspondence. 
   
  Furthermore, although the family managed to remain in power for so long, this was not without kings being deposed, ransomed and imprisoned, or without sons plotting against their fathers for the throne and wives turning against their husbands. 
   
  The Plantagenets is an accessible book that tells the whole narrative of the dynasty, from the coronation of Henry, Count of Anjou, in 1145 to the fall of Yorkist Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. But in charting the fortunes of the family, the book explores not only military victories and defeats across Europe, on crusade and in the British Isles, but how England and its neighbours changed during that time – how the authority of Parliament increased, how laws were reformed, how royal authority could struggle with that of the Roman Catholic Church, how the Black Death affected England, and how universities were founded and cathedrals built. 
   
  The Plantagenets is an expertly written account of a people who have long captured the popular imagination.

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