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  Knockin’ Doorz Down

  Carlos Eduardo Vieira

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  Knockin' Doorz Down is the inspirational story of one man's heroic struggle against inner demons that nearly destroy him, though he ultimately recovers and finds a unique pathway to redemption and peace.Successful entrepreneur and race car driver Carlos Vieira was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the youngest of three siblings. When he was a young child, his working-class parents immigrated to California, where they thrived as sweet potato farmers in the town of Livingston and provided their children with solid values and a strong work ethic. As a teenager, Carlos is popular and athletic, all set to join the family farming business, but when he yields to the allure of recreational drug use, his dreams and goals fade into the back- ground. There follows a series of unexpected challenges that land him in serious jeopardy.In this cautionary tale, we see how the isolation of addiction affects every aspect of Carlos's existence. Although he attempts a conventional path, the dark side continually dominates as he slowly spirals down, pursuing the party lifestyle for more than a decade.Here are the binges, the excesses, the relapses, the rehabs, the arrests, the nights in jail, and the multiple resolutions to recover. But when Carlos hits bottom, at the age of thirty-four, he vows to stop once and for all.So begins his slow journey back to a drug- free, productive life. Through it all, he offers a timeless message: no matter what you may be struggling with--family challenges, addiction, financial issues, health struggles, or relationship problems--you can pull yourself from the brink, knock down a new door, and create a brand-new life, becoming the person you were always meant to be.

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  Crooks: The Stories Behind the...

  Paul Williams

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  For almost forty years, Paul Williams has chronicled the life and crimes of some of Ireland's most notorious godfathers, killers and thieves. In Crooks he brings his readers for a ride-along, taking us behind the scenes of his most notorious scoops, describing the run-ins he's had with unsavoury, dangerous criminals and the high price of his line of work. 
   
  From pursuing the General to death threats from PJ 'The Psycho' Judge, exposing the Westies and tracking the Kinahan cartel, Paul's extraordinary career doubles as an eyewitness account of the evolution of organized crime in Ireland.

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  Outsider Agent

  Anthony Arismendi

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  Anthony Arismendi moved to the United States from Venezuela as a teenager in the mid-seventies with the dream of becoming a US citizen and an FBI agent—despite the fact that he couldn’t speak a word of English.Transplanted from the dangerous streets of Caracas, Arismendi’s unconventional thinking and out-of-the-box approach to life landed him in plenty of comical, often precarious situations. Still, he adapted his survival skills to a new culture, one harrowing day at a time, overcoming homelessness, prejudice, and poverty to achieve the impossible.Profoundly inspirational, Arismendi’s unique blend of hard work, perseverance, and mysticism in the face of relentless adversity reminds us that our reservoirs of courage and determination run far deeper than we know—and that we should never give up on our dreams, no matter how out of reach they might seem.

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  Convergence

  Gregg Owen, Jonathan Dixon

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  This story seems impossible. But every word is true. 
  Convergence is the account of a vicious double homicide in 1970s Chicago and a trial that almost didn't happen. 
  This is a different kind of true crime book. It isn't a mystery, because the killer was arrested right away. It's not a police story, although Convergence is there at every step of their investigation. It's not a defense lawyer's story. 
  This is a story from the other side of the courtroom. 
  Convergence is the story of Gio Messina and Delphine Moore's murders and the trial that followed, but this time told from the perspective of the prosecution. You are there to witness how a case is built, how it's brought to court, and how it unfolds when the trial starts. You see what happens when power and money try and keep the trial from starting at all. You follow the prosecution from the courtrooms of Chicago to rural Tennessee looking for new evidence to replace the evidence that's vanished. 
  You're introduced to the choreography of the courtroom: listening in on the careful strategizing, understanding the thought behind what a jury hears, and getting a close view of what's involved in how it's presented. Most importantly, you're introduced to Mike Goggin and Gregg Owen, the two prosecutors who fought to have the case heard. Goggin and Owen had set a record for convictions that still stands. They refused to let the Messina and Moore murders break it. 
  Convergence is a historical snapshot of a time when Chicago was changing, and a timeless picture of how justice is sought and found.

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  At Christmas Time - From their...

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia.  
  His family life was difficult; his father was strict and over-bearing but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’.  
  At school Chekhov was distinctly average. At 16 his father mis-managed his finances and was declared bankrupt. His family fled to Moscow. Chekhov remained and eked out a living by various means, including writing and selling short sketches to newspapers, to finish his schooling. That completed and with a scholarship to Moscow University obtained he rejoined his family. 
  He was able to help support them by selling satirical sketches and vignettes of Russian lifestyles and gradually obtained further commissions. In 1884, he qualified as a physician and, although it earned him little, he often treated the poor for free, he was fond of saying ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.’ 
  His own health was now an issue as he began to cough up blood, a symptom of tuberculosis.  Despite this his writing success enabled him to move the family into more comfortable accommodation.  
  Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’.  His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.  
  He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887.   
  In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate north of Moscow. Here his medical skills and money helped the peasants tackle outbreaks of cholera and bouts of famine. He also built three schools, a fire station and a clinic.  It left him with less time for writing but the interactions with real people gained him detailed knowledge about the peasantry and their living conditions for his stories.  
  His most famous work, ‘The Seagull’ was received disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg. It was later restaged in Moscow to highlight its psychological aspects and was a huge success. It led to ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘The Three Sisters’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’.  
  Chekhov suffered a major lung hemorrhage in 1897 while visiting Moscow. A formal diagnosis confirmed tuberculosis and the doctors ordered changes to his lifestyle.  
  Despite a dread of weddings the elusive literary bachelor quietly married the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had met at rehearsals for ‘The Seagull’, on 25th May 1901. 
  By May 1904 with his tuberculosis worsening and death imminent he set off for the German town of Badenweiler writing cheerful, witty letters to his family and assuring them his health was improving.  
  On 15th July 1904 Anton Chekhov died at Badenweiler.  He was 44.

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  Ayn Rand - Writing a Gospel of...

  Alexandra Popoff

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  A deeply researched biography of the prominent and divisive writer Ayn Rand, whose pro-capitalist novels and nonfiction have influenced three generations of Americans 
   
  Biographer Alexandra Popoff traces the life and creative achievement of Ayn Rand (1905–1982), one of America’s most provocative writers and whose best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have enjoyed impressive longevity. Born into a Jewish family in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Rand (then Alisa Rosenbaum) lived through the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Civil War, and the onset of Soviet totalitarian dictatorships––experiences that made her profoundly anticommunist. When in 1926 Rand escaped from Stalinist Russia to realize her talent in America, she was also determined to expose the Communist system. 
   
  Through her apprenticeship in Hollywood, where she worked as a scriptwriter, to her first anti-Communist novel, We the Living, Rand doggedly pursued her goal, battling the Soviet belief system, along with its precepts of collectivism and statism. She defended American capitalism, individualism, prosperity, and creativity; her literary heroes were talented high achievers. While Marx had declared war on capitalism and prophesied the triumph of the proletariat, Rand, whose family was dispossessed by the Bolsheviks, glorified the wealth-creator and held the masses in contempt. In Atlas Shrugged, her most controversial novel, she promoted laissez-faire capitalism and the morality of rational self-interest. She envisaged apocalypse in America if it followed the socialist path.

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