A ripped-from-the-headlines novel of ambition, music, and innocence lost, perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo and Jason Reynolds! Be bold. Get seen. Be Heard.For seventeen-year-old Denver, music is everything. Writing, performing, and her ultimate goal: escaping her very small, very white hometown.So Denver is more than ready on the day she and her best friends Dali and Shak sing their way into the orbit of the biggest R&B star in the world, Sean "Mercury" Ellis. Merc gives them everything: parties, perks, wild nights -- plus hours and hours in the recording studio. Even the painful sacrifices and the lies the girls have to tell are all worth it.Until they're not.Denver begins to realize that she's trapped in Merc's world, struggling to hold on to her own voice. As the dream turns into a nightmare, she must make a choice: lose her big break, or get broken.Inspired by true events, Muted is a fearless exploration of the dark side of the music industry, the business of exploitation, how a girl's dreams can be used against her -- and what it takes to fight back.

A story of courage and transformation, of the power of friendship and love, and the importance of doing what is right, whatever the cost. 'Muted' centres around a strong, powerful woman who has lost her way in her pursuit of success in business, and an insightful, enigmatic man who wants to help her rediscover what is truly important. Outback horseman Lane Dimity is one of the most powerful social media personalities on the planet. Although unable to speak since the tragedy that took place on his eighth birthday, his words reach out across the world, changing lives. When he learns that more than a thousand stallions have been bred by the U.S. pharmaceutical company, Pilatos Industries, to be used in the development of their new drug, Stablex, he knows he has to do all he can to free them. Unfortunately, the heir to Pilatos, Karen Lawford, will do everything in her power to stop him. Pilatos has gambled its future on the revolutionary new drug, Stablex, and these genetically unique stallions are needed to produce the drug... there are no limits to what they will do to ensure that Lane doesn't interfere. Lane tries to convince Karen that the Pilatos stallions must be given their freedom, but his beliefs are losing the battle against the Pilatos creed of greed, and it is only when she learns the shocking truth of what lies at the heart of the laboratories that there's any chance of change, but is it too late for Lane? Sometimes, you only know how much you love someone once you lose them. An intriguing and inspiring story of love and friendship set against the greed of the corporate world. A story that explores what is important in life, starting with the heart-rending tragedy in the Prologue and journeying around the world with humour and mystery. You don't need to like horses to enjoy the book, but even the most experienced horse people will appreciate the knowledge shared by Lane.

Pete Greig, the acclaimed author of Red Moon Rising, has written his most intensely personal and honest account yet in God on Mute, a book born out of his wife Samie's fight for her life and diagnosis of a debilitating brain tumor. Greig asks the timeless questions of what it means to suffer and to pray and to suffer through the silence because your prayers seem unanswered. This silence, Greig relates, is the hardest thing. The world collapses. Then all goes quiet. Words can't explain, don't fit, won't work. People avoid you and don't know what to say. So you turn to Him and you pray. You need Him more than ever before. But somehow . . . even God Himself seems on mute. In this heart-searching, honest, and deeply profound book, Pete Greig looks at the hard side of prayer, how to respond when there seem to be no answers, and how to cope with those who seek to interpret our experience for us. Here is a story of faith, hope, and love beyond all understanding.

Never judge a book by its cover, one of the world's most common clichés. Though sage advice, the age-old aphorism is rarely followed. Take, for instance, Tori McNabb and Ashton Spencer, two subjects who believe by aesthetics alone, they have no reason to breathe the same air. When startling circumstances align on the campus of Blakewood State University, the two have no choice but to look beyond their exteriors. McNabb is a fighter in life as well as in the ring. She knows what she's capable of and doesn't want to be tested. Her only goal is to never return to Millville, New Jersey while simultaneously flying under the radar as a small fish in the big BSU ocean. Spencer, the most popular athlete on campus is well on his way to success as a professional athlete and is confident the stars have aligned in his favor. Being tested by the underdog is one he'd never fail, or so he thinks. Journey with this unlikely pair inside the pages of their ugly covers. Publisher's Note: "My Muted Love" is book ONE of a THREE book series. It ends on a CLIFFHANGER. This book contains angst, profanity, sexually explicit content, and material related to young adults. If any of these elements is not what you prefer between the pages of a novel, this is not the venture for you.

In a world where black and white has turned a muddy shade of grey... WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU DISCOVERED THE PATH YOU HAD CHOSEN FOR YOUR LIFE HAD BEEN BASED UPON LIES? "She'd had the dream again, that recurring nightmare which she could never quite put out of her mind." --Marah Edom had acquired all she'd ever dreamed of . . . the job, the car, the Malibu beach home. Yet, all that was overshadowed by a darkness which threatened to consume her. In one mind-altering moment, Marah is forced to confront her own acquiescence as she faces the demons which have haunted her for years.

The most familiar entertainment icons and storylines from the 1950s and 60s remain potent signs that continue to resonate within contemporary American society and culture. Both the political Left and Right invoke the events and memories of those decades, celebrating or condemning the competing social forces embodied in and unleashed during those years. In recent decades, the entertainment industry has capitalized on this trend with films and television shows that take a look back on the 1950s and 1960s with a mixture of nostalgia and criticism. Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban Age explores how the central concerns of the Fifties and Sixties--and resulting treatment in the motion picture media--can be examined and understood through the music of the time period. With its focus on soundtrack and scoring, the book demonstrates that specific television shows and films offer a more nuanced vision of community and conformity than is usually recognized, revealing much about our own current social anxieties.

The result of years of critical analysis of Israeli media law, this book argues that the laws governing Israeli electronic media are structured to limit the boundaries of public discourse. Amit M. Schejter posits the theory of a "mute democracy," one in which the media are designed to provide a platform for some voices to be heard over others. While Israel's institutions may be democratic, and while the effect of these policies may be limited, this book contends that free speech in Israel is institutionally muted to ensure the continued domination of the Jewish majority and its preferred interpretation of what Israel means as a Jewish-democratic state. Analyzing a wide range of legal documents recorded in Israel from 1961 to 2007, Muting Israeli Democracy demonstrates in scrupulous detail how law and policy are used to promote the hegemonic national culture through the constraints and obligations set on electronic media.

In the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of porters carried ivory every year from the African interior to Bagamoyo, a port town at the Indian Ocean. In the opposite direction, they carried millions of meters of cloth, manufactured in the USA, Europe, and India. This book examines the centrality of the caravan trade, both culturally and economically, to Bagamoyo’s development and cosmopolitan character, while also exploring how this history was silenced when Bagamoyo was instead branded as a slave route town in 2006 in an attempt to qualify it for the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Mute Icons challenges fixed aesthetic notions of beauty in architecture as both, disciplinary discourse and a spatial practice within the public realm, by intersecting historic antecedents and present instances within contemporary projects wherein indeterminacy, monolithicity and defamiliarization play a speculative role in constructing withdrawn, irritant and yet engaging architectural images. No longer concerned with narrative excesses or with the "shock and awe" of sensation making; the mute icon becomes intriguing in its deceptive indifference towards context, perplexing in its unmitigated apathy towards the body. Object and building, absolute and unstable, anticipated and strange, manifest and withdrawn, such is the dichotomy of mute icons. Dwelling in the paradox between silence and sign and aiming to debunk a false dichotomy between critical discourse, a pursue of formal novelty and the attainment of social ethics, “Mute Icons” reaffirms the cultural need and socio-political relevance of the architectural image, suggesting a much-needed resolution to the present but incorrect antagonism between formal innovation, social responsibility and economic austerity. Intersecting relevant historical antecedents and polemic theoretical speculations with original design concepts and provocative representations of P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S recent work, the book aspires to stimulate authentic speculations on the real.