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  How to Steal a City - The Battle...

  Crispian Olver

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  How to Steal a City is the gripping insider account of this intervention, which lays bare how Nelson Mandela Bay metro was bled dry by criminal syndicates, and how factional politics within the ruling party abetted that corruption.  
  As a former senior state official and local government ‘fixer’, Crispian Olver was no stranger to dodgy politicians and broken organisations. Yet what he found in Nelson Mandela Bay went far beyond rigged contracts, blatant conflicts of interest and garden-variety kickbacks. The city’s administration had evolved into a sophisticated web of front companies, criminal syndicates and compromised local politicians and officials. The metro was effectively controlled by a criminal network closely allied to a dominant local ANC faction. What Olver found was complete state capture – a microcosm of what has taken place in national government. 
  Olver and his team initiated a clean-up of the administration, clearing out corrupt officials and rebuilding public trust. Then came the ANC’s doomed campaign for the August 2016 local government elections. Having lost its way in factional battles and corruption, the divided party went down to a humiliating defeat in its traditional heartland.  
  Olver paid a high price for his work in Nelson Mandela Bay. Intense political pressure and even threats to his personal safety took a toll on his mental and physical health. When his political support was withdrawn, he had to flee the city as the forces stacked against him took their revenge. This is his story.

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  The Last Party - Studio 54 Disco...

  Anthony Haden-Guest

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  A riveting memoir of disco-era nightlife and the outrageous goings-on behind the doors of New York City’s most famous and exclusive nightclub  In the disco days and nights of New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, the place to be was Studio 54. Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli, and Bianca Jagger were among the nightly assortment of A-list celebrity regulars consorting with New York’s young, wild, and beautiful. Studio 54 was a place where almost nothing was taboo, from nonstop dancing and drinking beneath the coke-dusted neon moon to drugs and sex in the infamous unisex restrooms to the outrageous money-skimming activities taking place in the office of the studio’s flamboyant co-owner Steve Rubell. Author Anthony Haden-Guest was there on opening night in 1977 and over the next decade spent many late nights and early mornings basking in the strobe-lit wonder. But The Last Party is much more than a fascinating account of the scandals, celebrities, crimes, and extreme excesses encouraged within the notorious Manhattan nightspot. Haden-Guest brings an entire era of big-city glitz and unapologetic hedonism to breathtaking life, recalling a vibrant New York night world at once exhilarating and dangerous before the terrible, sobering dawn of the age of AIDS.

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  Martin Sharp

  Joyce Morgan

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  This is the beautifully told story of charismatic and unconventional pop artist Martin Sharp, from his lonely privileged childhood to the heady days of the underground magazine Oz to Swinging London and beyond. 
  Sharp blurred the boundaries of high art and low; he drew rock stars and reprobates into his world, collaborated with Eric Clapton, obsessively championed eccentric singer Tiny Tim, was haunted by Sydney's Luna Park and, paradoxically, became a recluse whose phone never stopped ringing.

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  Say Goodbye to That

  Carme Manuel

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  Following the death of her mother, the unnamed heroine of this novel needs to take a long look at herself and decide the kind of future she wants to live in. Bewildered by a world which will never be the same again and a present full of unhappiness, she forces herself to undertake a painful journey into the depths of her soul. 
  Say Goodbye to That a powerfully described journey which evokes the strong memories and episodes of her childhood; the cruel embraces, the sad dolls, the farmyard dogs, the letters of the alphabet, the mud pies, the dark muttered conversations of her family, the constant repression, the dirty water in the drainage ditches, and the painful casting off of relationships. These memories of a long-lost past, sometimes sweet, sometimes traumatic, but always conditioned by an unquestionable love for her family, will be essential in her quest to be reborn and remade in her new life.

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  Twelve Years a Slave - The...

  Solomon Northup

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  In this riveting landmark autobiography that reads like a novel, Academy Award and Emmy winner Louis Gossett, Jr., masterfully transports us to 1840s New York, Louisiana, and Washington, DC, to experience the kidnapping and twelve-year bondage of Solomon Northup, a free man of color. Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853, was an immediate bombshell in the national debate over slavery leading up to the Civil War. It validated Harriett Beecher Stowe’s fictional account of Southern slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which had become the best-selling American book in history a few years earlier, and significantly changed public opinion in favor of abolition. A major motion picture based on the book and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti, and Michael Fassbender is set to release in 2013. This authenticated edition is based on the research of Dr. Sue Eakin, the nationally recognized authority on Solomon Northup.Hard working Solomon Northup, an educated free man of color in 1841, enjoys family life with his wife and three children in Saratoga, New York. He delights his community with his fiddle playing and antic spirit and has positive expectations of everyone he meets.  When he is deceived by “circus promoters” who ask him to accompany them to a musical gig in Washington, DC, his joyful life takes an unimaginable turn. He awakes in shackles to find he has been drugged, kidnapped, and bound for the slave block in the nation’s capital.After Solomon is shipped a thousand miles to New Orleans, he is assigned his slave name and quickly learns that the mere utterance of his true origin or rights as a freeman are certain to bring severe punishment, maybe even death. While he endures the brutal life of a slave in Louisiana’s isolated Bayou Boeuf plantation country, he must learn how to play the system and plot his escape home.For twelve years, his fine mind captures the reality of slavery in stunning detail, and listeners learn about the characters that populated plantation society and the intrigues of the bayou-from the collapse of a slave rebellion resulting in mass hangings due to traitorous slave Lew Cheney to the tragic end of his friend Patsey, brought about by Mrs. Epps’ jealousy of her husband’s sexual exploitation of the pretty young slave.When Solomon finally finds a sympathizing friend who risks his life to secret a letter to the North, a courageous rescue attempt ensues that could either compound Solomon’s suffering or get him back to the arms of his family.

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  Finishing School

  CL Powell

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  Cindy's life has taken her far and wide since her "White Light" experience in 1985. She has recovered from alcoholism, an eating disorder, childhood dysfunction, and many other tragic and personal losses along her cattywampus journey.During one of her meditation practices, she received the message that would become the foundation of her journey: "Nothing and no one outside of you can bring you happiness. Happiness comes from knowing and loving your beautiful self."In her new book, Finishing School, CL Powell discovers a piece that was missing on her life journey - emotional sobriety, a state that beckons you to look within rather than looking outside yourself to fill the holes in your soul. ?Through bare and honest storytelling, Cindy invites readers who are on their journey to return to their natural state, which is calm and peaceful abiding. Overcoming challenges, difficulties, and a life of learning, Cindy follows her inward journey to discover who she really is -- and invites readers to do the same.

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