Hold On to Your Dreams is the first biography of the musician and composer Arthur Russell, one of the most important but least known contributors to New York's downtown music scene during the 1970s and 1980s. With the exception of a few dance recordings, including "Is It All Over My Face?" and "Go Bang! #5", Russell's pioneering music was largely forgotten until 2004, when the posthumous release of two albums brought new attention to the artist. This revival of interest gained momentum with the issue of additional albums and the documentary film Wild Combination. Based on interviews with more than seventy of his collaborators, family members, and friends, Hold On to Your Dreams provides vital new information about this singular, eccentric musician and his role in the boundary-breaking downtown music scene. Tim Lawrence traces Russell's odyssey from his hometown of Oskaloosa, Iowa, to countercultural San Francisco, and eventually to New York, where he lived from 1973 until his death from AIDS-related complications in 1992. Resisting definition while dreaming of commercial success, Russell wrote and performed new wave and disco as well as quirky rock, twisted folk, voice-cello dub, and hip-hop-inflected pop. “He was way ahead of other people in understanding that the walls between concert music and popular music and avant-garde music were illusory,” comments the composer Philip Glass. "He lived in a world in which those walls weren't there." Lawrence follows Russell across musical genres and through such vital downtown music spaces as the Kitchen, the Loft, the Gallery, the Paradise Garage, and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Along the way, he captures Russell's openness to sound, his commitment to collaboration, and his uncompromising idealism.

Ricky Andrews

London 1899 Gertrude Melrose is preparing for a New Year party when her brother enters her room. She knows he wants money from her and refuses at once. She loves her brother but he is in with a disreputable crowd and losing heavily at the gaming tables. He has already gambled away his inheritance and she cannot allow him to do that with hers. A few days later the Melrose family is devastated when demands are made on them to settle Edward's huge debts. It will mean the loss of their house and almost everything they own. Edward is disowned by his father and banished from their lives.

On the eve of his ninetieth birthday, literary legend Ruskin Bond brings to readers a heartfelt letter capturing his most cherished memories and experiences. Penning his thoughts with sincerity and grace, the writer reflects upon love, loss, friendship, frailties, solitude and companionship—the bittersweet experience of human existence. Reminiscing tales of his boyhood and youth, the author urges us to learn from mistakes, embrace empathy and hold on to our dreams through life’s vicissitudes. Complemented with poignant art, this book is a timeless collection of learnings on the journey called life.

This heartwarming picture book reassures children that a parent’s love never lets go—based on the poignant lyrics of JJ Heller’s beloved lullaby “Hand to Hold.” “May the living light inside you be the compass as you go / May you always know you have my hand to hold.” With delightful illustrations and an engaging rhyme scheme, this book offers the promise of security and love every child’s heart longs to know. From skipping stones and counting stars to climbing trees and telling stories, every moment is wrapped snugly in the certain warmth of a parent’s presence and God’s blessing. With poignancy and joy, this bedtime read captures the unconditional love parents want their children to know but so often fail to express amid the chaos of daily life.

"[A] mordant debut novel....examines what it means to covet the lives of others, no matter the cost."—The New York Times "Tense, twisty, and packed with shocks."—Riley Sager, New York Times bestselling author of Survive The Night Six friends. One college reunion. One unsolved murder. Ten years after graduation, Jessica Miller has planned her triumphant return to her southern, elite Duquette University, down to the envious whispers that are sure to follow in her wake. Everyone is going to see the girl she wants them to see—confident, beautiful, indifferent. Not the girl she was when she left campus, back when Heather Shelby's murder fractured everything, including the tight bond linking the six friends she'd been closest to since freshman year. But not everyone is ready to move on. Not everyone left Duquette ten years ago, and not everyone can let Heather's murder go unsolved. Someone is determined to trap the real killer, to make the guilty pay. When the six friends are reunited, they will be forced to confront what happened that night—and the years' worth of secrets each of them would do anything to keep hidden. Told in racing dual timelines, with a dark campus setting and a darker look at friendship, love, obsession, and ambition, In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is an addictive, propulsive read you won't be able to put down. "Beautiful writing, juicy secrets, complex female characters, and drumbeat suspense—what more could you want from a debut thriller?"—Andrea Bartz, author of Reese's Book Club pick We Were Never Here

God has a dream for you, and if you will seek Him, He will reveal and guide you to it. Living your dreams isn't easy. It takes persistence and tenacity, along with faith in yourself, in God, and in the vision He has given you. In this small book, Jentezen Franklin gives you a powerful message of hope: you can do it! The question is not can you dream, but do you have the courage to act on it? Is there a dream in your heart? Has life buried it? Have others told you it's too late? Don't you believe it! Using personal experiences and examples from biblical characters who pursued their dreams to the end, Franklin shows you how to find and walk out your God-given vision for your life.

This Element is an excerpt from Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters (ISBN: 9780132287517) by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson. Available in print and digital formats. Discover your lifelong obsession: the passion that creates meaning you’ll never want to escape from! Whether it’s British Airways, Coca-Cola, or NASA, whenever the old guard takes its eye off the prize, Richard Branson feels a moral obligation to set the big guy’s platform on fire. You have to admire billionaires like this. What keeps them so passionately involved even after they’ve long since “arrived”?

As the 1970s gave way to the 80s, New York's party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by its creativity, intensity, and hybridity. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor chronicles this tumultuous time, charting the sonic and social eruptions that took place in the city’s subterranean party venues as well as the way they cultivated breakthrough movements in art, performance, video, and film. Interviewing DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, and dancers, Tim Lawrence illustrates how the relatively discrete post-disco, post-punk, and hip hop scenes became marked by their level of plurality, interaction, and convergence. He also explains how the shifting urban landscape of New York supported the cultural renaissance before gentrification, Reaganomics, corporate intrusion, and the spread of AIDS brought this gritty and protean time and place in American culture to a troubled denouement.