It’s the mid-seventies and Rock is King. Every tavern in the land has live music and every kid who can play wants to be a Rock Star. Captain Nobody and the Forgotten Joyband are in the thick of it. After four years on the road, they know they are close to breaking in to the big city rooms, but has it come too late? Neil isn’t sure. Facing another week playing in yet another small-town bar, he struggles to find strength. As he sorts through his memories of life on the road, can he find the inspiration to go on?

Four women join forces, with conviction, courage ... and style France, April 1940. Orphan Polly Hartford has been sent across oceans to her Aunt Marjorie, known only from letters. When Marjorie dies in suspicious circumstances, Polly is left with her aunt’s loaded pistol in a beautiful Hermès handbag . . . and to the care of Marjorie’s three closest friends: an elegant Comtesse, a gutter-born film star and a big-hearted American heiress. Polly is taken to live at the Hôtel Ritz, where guests and staff believe wealth and prestige protect them from war. But when the Nazis invade, the illusion is shattered. As Paris deteriorates, Polly and her guardians face the horrors of the Occupation with daring, humour, style – even romance – and despite their dangerous secrets, they discover just what they are capable of. As the Liberation approaches, those who survive at the Ritz must face a day of reckoning, but one truth stands tall: at the heart of the Ritz is the soul of resistance. 'Marvellously colourful characters in a tale with so many twists and turns make The Heart of the Ritz a page-turner' J.R. Lonie, bestselling author of The Woman From Saint Germain ‘Luke Devenish is a master of the dramatic cliffhanger’ Daily Telegraph

CBGB was the birthplace of punk and new wave in America in the 1970s. The Ramones, Blondie, Television, Talking Heads and many other groundbreaking bands got their start in the rock club on New York’s Bowery. Years later, CBGB became the cauldron for New York hardcore. Originally issued in 1988 and out of print for decades, This Ain't No Disco is a detailed warts-and-all history, with memories, stories and gossip from dozens of insiders who worked, played or just hung out at CBGB. Written long before the legend overtook the reality — while the club was open and most of the principals alive — this is the real story, told in gritty, outrageous and sometimes hilarious detail.

The American urban scene, and in particular New York's, has given us a rich cultural legacy of slang words and phrases, a bonanza of popular speech. Hot dog, rush hour, butter-and-egg man, gold digger, shyster, buttinsky, smart aleck, sidewalk superintendent, yellow journalism, breadline, straphanger, tar beach, the Tenderloin, the Great White Way, to do a Brodie--these are just a few of the hundreds of popular words and phrases that were born or took on new meaning in the streets of New York. In The City in Slang, Irving Lewis Allen traces this flowering of popular expressions that accompanied the emergence of the New York metropolis from the early nineteenth century down to the present. This unique account of the cultural and social history of America's greatest city provides in effect a lexicon of popular speech about city life. With many stories Allen shows how this vocabulary arose from city streets, often interplaying with vaudeville, radio, movies, comics, and the popular songs of Tin Pan Alley. Some terms of great pertinence to city people today have unexpectedly old pedigrees. Rush hour was coined by 1890, for instance, and rubberneck dates to the late 1890s and became popular in New York to describe the busloads of tourists who craned their necks to see the tall buildings and the sights of the Bowery and Chinatown. The Big Apple itself (since 1971 the official nickname of New York) appeared in the 1920s, though first in reference to the city's top racetracks and to Broadway bookings as pinnacles of professional endeavor. Allen also tells fascinating stories behind once-popular slang that is no longer in use. Spielers, for example, were the little girls in tenement districts who danced ecstatically on the sidewalks to the music of the hurdy-gurdy men and, when they were old enough, frequented the dance halls of the Lower East Side. Following the trail of these words and phrases into the city's East Side, West Side, and all around the town, from Harlem to Wall Street, and into the haunts of its high and low life, The City in Slang is a fascinating look at the rich cultural heritage of language about city life.

Baseball manager Larry Dierker chronicles the experiences he had during the five years he spent managing the Houston Astros.

13 By: Barbara A. Zaloom Michael is a genius. He was clandestinely molded and trained to fulfill a precise function. As a child, he knew neither love nor kindness, and rebelled against his mentor/persecutor as any typical human’s temperament would deem necessary. So when he discovered the true reality of his predetermined and excruciating existence, Michael had a decision to make. Should he run away, hide, cower in continual dread to await his questionable fate? Or should he muster the courage to alter his destiny to what he most desired, an ordinary and meaningful life, despite the difficult obstacles confronting him? If you were Michael, what would you do?

Stevie Stevenson graduates from college and embraces the liberating California lifestyle in award-winning author April Sinclair’s follow-up to her “vivid and brilliant” (San Francisco Review of Books) debut novel Coffee Will Make You Black Growing up black in 1960s Chicago, Jean “Stevie” Stevenson came of age amid the tumult of the civil rights movement, learning to value not just her race and gender but her sexuality as well. Now, nearly a decade later, Stevie is a college graduate enjoying a week of vacation in San Francisco. After getting a taste of the bohemian life, she can’t bring herself to return home to her family and journalism career in Chicago. Instead, she’s determined to spread her wings and discover her true self, experimenting with free love, gay pride, and vegetarianism; forging a friendship with a gay disco queen; and taking a job at the feminist Personal Change Counseling Center. As she falls in and out of love, Stevie takes time to observe both the absurd and the liberating qualities of the West Coast hippie lifestyle—and is constantly reminded that the journey to self-discovery likely has no end point. Written with the same bright wit and endless charm that made Coffee Will Make You Black such a beloved book, Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice is a delightful continuation of Stevie’s story that was hailed by Salon as “ripely funny, unpretentious, and sincere.”

6 of the Roaring Twenties chronicler’s most scintillating short stories, chosen from Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). This inexpensive volume comprises "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "The Ice Palace," "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," "May Day," "The Jelly-Bean," and "The Offshore Pirate."

Don Melbourne began writing short stories when he retired from social work. Much of his work is inspired by real life observations, experiences and events; the stories therefore are wide ranging. You can expect an intriguing mix of humour, fantasy, bloody murder, betrayal, ghostly goings on, insanity, mystery and the downright bizarre. And, oh yes, definitely the unexpected. Don lives in an apartment overlooking a busy canal in the Black Country, England. With partner Jan, he enjoys exploring the fascinating canal network, discovering windmills and participating in that hectic adventure called life.

There was a time when rural comedians drew most of their humor from tales of farmers' daughters, hogs, hens, and hill country high jinks. Lum and Abner and Ma and Pa Kettle might not have toured happily under the "Redneck" marquee, but they were its precursors. In Ain't That a Knee-Slapper: Rural Comedy in the Twentieth Century, author Tim Hollis traces the evolution of this classic American form of humor in the mass media, beginning with the golden age of radio, when such comedians as Bob Burns, Judy Canova, and Lum and Abner kept listeners laughing. The book then moves into the motion pictures of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, when the established radio stars enjoyed second careers on the silver screen and were joined by live-action renditions of the comic strip characters Li'l Abner and Snuffy Smith, along with the much-loved Ma and Pa Kettle series of films. Hollis explores such rural sitcoms as The Real McCoys in the late 1950s and from the 1960s, The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Hee Haw, and many others. Along the way, readers are taken on side trips into the world of animated cartoons and television commercials that succeeded through a distinctly rural sense of fun. While rural comedy fell out of vogue and networks sacked shows in the early 1970s, the emergence of such hits as The Dukes of Hazzard brought the genre whooping back to the mainstream. Hollis concludes with a brief look at the current state of rural humor, which manifests itself in a more suburban, redneck brand of standup comedy.