Frankie Valen's autobiography, "Chasing An Illusive Dream," is a story that contains the drama and pathos that inspired the old cliché, "Truth is stranger than fiction." This story of a pop-singer is about fame and the loss of it, separation from family and children, and a dramatic return to the Lord. "Frankie's story is a story of rags to riches to rags that started back in 1967 but left him with an enduring celebrity status." Linda Stinnett, Derby, KS Informer. This book will help give the reader his family history, and the story of the mistakes and accomplishments he made, and the incredible journey he took. His feelings of rejection at every turn, the constant fear of never being accepted or good enough to make a difference, and yet he experienced fame and fortune, later becoming a gospel recording artist, and traveling with his concert pianist wife Phyllis nationwide for over 18 years in a full-time music ministry. This book attempts to answer such questions such as: Is Frankie related to the famous Mallory/Duracell battery family? Is Frankie related to the singer Richie Valens? Was Daniel Boone Frankie's cousin? Does Frankie share a grandmother with the famous Lucille Ball? What about Frankie being related to the Piper Cub airplane family? Because Frankie never became a major recording artist, it took years of hard work and dedication for him to try and become a household name. Frankie has decided to become very transparent in his desire to reveal his heart to his readers on every page.

“A perceptive and gripping biography” of the enigmatic British explorer, photographer, and author of Arabian Sands (Daily Mail, UK). Wilfred Thesiger, the last of the great gentlemen explorer-adventurers, journeyed for sixty years to some of the remotest, most dangerous places on earth, from the mountains of western Asia to the marshes of Iraq. The author of Arabian Sands, The Marsh Arabs and The Life of my Choice, he was a legend in his own lifetime. Yet his character and motivations have remained an intriguing enigma. In this authorized biography—written with Thesiger’s support before he died in 2003 and with unique access to the rich Thesiger archive—Alexander Maitland investigates this fascinating figure’s family influences, his wartime experiences, his philosophy as a hunter and conservationist, his writing and photography, his friendships with Arabs and Africans amongst whom he lived, and his now-acknowledged homosexuality.

School is murder if you are not a particularly good student. It's also murder if you are a manipulative, coercive vice-principal whom everyone would like to see dead. The problem is the person whom the police suspect of the crime is our innocent heroine.

Satirical and sympathetic, political and personal, A Certain Exposure traces the adolescences of twin brothers Andrew and Brian, culminating in the explosive events leading to Andrew’s tragic death. This is a classic coming-of-age tale doubled across two vividly individual brothers, who struggle to navigate a complex tangle of relationships and coercive forces, cinematically interwoven with the yearnings and fears of an ensemble of mothers, fathers, cousins, friends and lovers both false and true. This wide-ranging debut beautifully presents the resonances and the ghosts of lost possibilities, as well as a gripping story of hope and betrayal.

Your past is just a story you tell... All Ava ever wanted was to forget her past and create a new future for herself, starting her own bakery from the ground up. But when a Shifter walks into her bakery and she can’t get away from him, she looks up into his golden eyes and is immediately drawn to him. But she was no stranger to Shifters, and her brain screamed one thing: RUN! Terrell felt something he hadn't felt in a long time: shame. He'd tried to protect his friend, a woman who spent too much time on the streets, but it wasn't enough and now she was dead. But when he walked into a bakery close to where he had been working, he finds the one thing he never though he’d find on a job; his mate. But as he looks into the woman’s eyes, all he sees is fear and hesitation. Terrell can’t stop until he claims his mate once and for all, and take away all the pain she has felt from her past. But it seems that as he pursues her, so is someone else... USA Today Bestselling Author Becca Fanning is delighted that you're joining her in this new series, featuring all the steam, passion and action you've come to expect from her Fated Mates stories!

Is it possible to hold on to faith in an age of unbelief? Written with personal and pastoral experience, Brian Zahnd extends an invitation to move beyond the crisis of faith toward the journey of reconstruction. As the world rapidly changes in ways that feel incompatible with Christianity, this book provides much-needed hope that a stronger, more confident faith is possible.

Some reputable sociological research indicates that a surprising number of evangelical churchgoers are living out a version of the Christian life that's more informed by the values of the surrounding culture than by the discipleship teachings of Jesus and his apostles. Viewing the cause of this disturbing trend in the church to be a "discipleship deficit" that's exacerbated by a "pneumatological deficit," Gary Tyra has written a book that addresses both. In this work, Tyra encourages evangelical Christians of all stripes to become more fully aware of the tremendous difference it makes when the Holy Spirit is experienced in ways that are real and existentially impactful, rather than merely theoretical, conceptual, and/or ritualistic. Intended to be read by church leaders as well as by students in Christian colleges and seminaries, the message here is that the cure for the ministry malady currently confronting us is the recovery of a robust, fully Trinitarian doctrine of the Spirit. A pneumatological realism, says Tyra, combined with an understanding of just how important a spiritual, moral, and missional faithfulness is to a genuine Christian discipleship, can revitalize the lives of individual Christians and churches, making it possible for them to reach their post-Christian peers for Christ!

Philip L. Simpson provides an original and broad overview of the evolving serial killer genre in the two media most responsible for its popularity: literature and cinema of the 1980s and 1990s. The fictional serial killer, with a motiveless, highly individualized modus operandi, is the latest manifestation of the multiple murderers and homicidal maniacs that haunt American literature and, particularly, visual media such as cinema and television. Simpson theorizes that the serial killer genre results from a combination of earlier genre depictions of multiple murderers, inherited Gothic storytelling conventions, and threatening folkloric figures reworked over the years into a contemporary mythology of violence. Updated and repackaged for mass consumption, the Gothic villains, the monsters, the vampires, and the werewolves of the past have evolved into the fictional serial killer, who clearly reflects American cultural anxieties at the start of the twenty-first century. Citing numerous sources, Simpson argues that serial killers' recent popularity as genre monsters owes much to their pliability to any number of authorial ideological agendas from both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum. Serial killers in fiction are a kind of debased and traumatized visionary, whose murders privately and publicly re-empower them with a pseudo-divine aura in the contemporary political moment. The current fascination with serial killer narratives can thus be explained as the latest manifestation of the ongoing human fascination with tales of gruesome murders and mythic villains finding a receptive audience in a nation galvanized by the increasingly apocalyptic tension between the extremist philosophies of both the New Right and the anti-New Right. Faced with a blizzard of works of varying quality dealing with the serial killer, Simpson has ruled out the catalog approach in this study in favor of in-depth an analysis of the best American work in the genre. He has chosen novels and films that have at least some degree of public name-recognition or notoriety, including Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, Manhunter directed by Michael Mann, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer directed by John McNaughton, Seven directed by David Fincher, Natural Born Killers directed by Oliver Stone, Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates, and American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

Resource book for primary school teachers containing advice on developing extensive language-learning programmes. Includes activities, sample units of work and reference lists.