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Surviving Smoking Mirrors: My Reflection
Surviving Smoking Mirrors: My Reflection is a candid chronicle of Alliey’s tumultuous relationship with Josh, tracing its journey from the beginning to its bitter end, and the myriad challenges she faced along the way. Following the collapse of their marriage, Alliey finds herself entangled in a complex property settlement while enduring ongoing gaslighting and abuse from Josh. Concurrently, Josh plunges into a hedonistic lifestyle.
Amidst these trials, Alliey’s son, Camden, begins to show worrying injuries following visits with Josh, adding to her mounting concerns. As Alliey grapples with supporting Camden, her own battle with anorexia spirals dangerously out of control, threatening to cost her everything. This story is a raw and unflinching exploration of the struggles faced in the aftermath of a tumultuous relationship, highlighting the resilience and determination needed to persevere through adversity.
£9.99 -
The Tale of a Tale
The Tale of a Tale is a companion to The Tale of a Hip (published 2018). It expands on the theme of taking up ballroom dancing seriously in middle age, and the problem of misaligned bones, a limiting factor in many aspects of Pamela’s life, leading ultimately to hip replacement. Despite difficulties, she and John go on to take professional exams in both ballroom and Latin American dancing, and teach for more than twenty years, offering the joy, companionship, and relief from worldly cares they have experienced themselves to a large number of people.
A second strand of the book follows major current events, notably Brexit and COVID-19, and shows an old person’s take on social change, and the march of technology. Controversial issues related to equality and diversity are explored from a then-and-now perspective, with humour, and respect.
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Learning from Albi
Scruffy, deaf, and homeless, life on the streets is tough for young Albi. What could the future possibly hold for an abandoned Spanish Podenco puppy that has been hit by a car and can’t hear? Yet despite a traumatic start, Albi’s life changes when he is rescued, brought to the UK, and fostered by Lois Sinclair, founder of the rescue charity, Gracehounds, and a passionate dog lover who has shared her life and home with numerous canine companions. Before long, Lois and Albi’s lives become interwoven.
With Lois’s nursing background and Albi’s intuitive nature, the pair soon find themselves volunteering in the animal healthcare sector. Albi also develops a reputation as a transition dog, offering support to other dogs and their owners during times of loss.
But Albi is a free spirit. He also has health issues. And while his sensitive nature earns him many friends and admirers, there will be challenges ahead, including surgery. As Albi continues to enrich Lois’s life, questions remain. Albi may have found a forever home but can the love and hope which bind him and Lois sustain him? And does this unique animal have the strength to live the life that every dog deserves?
£7.99 -
The House Is Burning
It’s the 1950s and mounting political unrest consumes Rwanda. With fading monarchy, intensifying colonial rule and whispers of rebellion, countless native families find age-old traditions under attack.
For Abel A. Nkunda’s family, the shifting climate grows increasingly hostile. As powers vie for control around them, they face a painful choice: take flight to save all they cherish or stay to watch it burn.
Venturing into remote wilds in search of refuge, grandparents lead young Abel towards an uncertain future. With each step into the unknown, doubts arise. Can a foreign haven truly preserve their sacred cattle herding heritage from extinction?
Follow the Nkundas’ quest across a changing landscape where long-held customs blink at the brink. Will new mountains shelter this household from escalating threats? Or will the life they knew go up in smoke? Immerse yourself in one family’s struggle to find safe harbour for endangered livelihoods and identity before the house left behind is reduced to ashes.
£8.99 -
Me
Ron Pearson was born in Bramley, Leeds on August 12, 1924. He began writing this book on August 12, 2021, his 97th birthday. After a childhood beset by illness, he left school at 14, and took a job packing parcels in a multiple tailoring factory, not for him. He moved on to packing parcels general muggins at an advertising agency at 50 pence a week, which he loved. His career in advertising was interrupted by a four-and-a-half-year spell in the army on ‘Special Operations’. Returning to civvy street, his career culminated in being appointed Managing Director and then Chairman of one of Yorkshire’s most respected advertising agencies. He was a local actor for almost 50 years including the renowned Bradford Alhambra and Playhouse.
There are some sad moments outnumbered by many hilarious ones. Ron’s beloved wife, Pat, died in 2017 after 66 years of happy marriage.
The list of ‘celebrities’ he has met is impressive, including Princess Margaret, Prince Charles, Hollywood’s Marlene Dietrich, George Raft, Sir Ralph Richardson, George Best, Jackie Charlton, Harry Worth, Alan Bennett etc.
£11.99 -
Reality Sucks
Douglas, living a humdrum life in Spokane, Washington, yearning to escape working as an accountant, borderline suicidal, leaves his life behind to pursue his dream of working in entertainment. Hollywood, full of sin, seduces Douglas, distracting him in many ways. The men in the town are quite intoxicating and he exposes some pretty explicit parts of his life while making the transition to Hollywood. Douglas finds his way to cope living with the craziness of Hollywood, but finds himself overcorrecting his life as it was in Spokane.
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An Ethnographic Study into the Social Organisation of a Small Medium Enterprise a Snapshot from 1983 to 2009
Because of their uniqueness, there cannot ever be enough literature on the organisational life of the Small-Medium Enterprise and its employees, wherever their location and whoever they serve. These legal entities contain an extensive array of social interactions as people form teams, work groups and relationships with others, within the confines of the operational environment and their own personal experience of everyday working life.
This book is about one such limited company and one individual who helped to form the SME which remained commercially successful in the engineering sector for over 30 years.
The working life of the employees in the SME were researched using an ethnographic approach to frame the social and working interactions into Ceremonial Rites. These rites have already been successfully researched by others and the book adds to that body of work.
In the book some rites repeat in a similar manner as has already been discovered. The more modern-day organisations may be able to recognise similar emerging or continuing patterns themselves that were found within the results of the study. Other students now have the opportunity to update and extend this work further in their own qualitative research on Small-Medium Enterprises or Organisational Life.
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War Trauma Chronicles
War Trauma Chronicles is a story that mixes real events of the Lebanese civil war with mythologies, philosophies, and different genres of fictions to create an anti-war book.
The book starts with the earliest memories of a young kid who lived and survived the war. It highlights and studies the effects that war has on a human’s brains, especially children’s.
Even though the story is based on real events, it’s neither a history book nor an autobiography. The timelines are scrambled in an unusual dimension: present, future and past got mixed with reality, fiction, and theories. Nothing is as real as the fact that nothing is real.
£7.99 -
Woman of her Time
Almost everything that life can throw at you is here in this busy London Hospital Doctor’s story: medical dramas, romance, betrayal, and abuse in its varied forms.
Ultimately, the author explains much of it by using her medical knowledge.
Running parallel is the tale of the vicissitudes of the State of Israel from its birth in 1948. Advocacy is used to neutralise its bad press.
Dry humour is maintained throughout. A journal in time of Covid keeps it up to date.
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A Pilot's Ups and Downs
For every 1,000 people who applied to be airline pilots in BEA/BOAC back in the day, about four made it. The other 996, plus their wives, parents, and children, might wonder how their lives could have turned out, so here is the story of one of the four. Besides, the passengers who sit behind that locked door and trust us with their lives must wonder, “What goes on up there, and how does it affect their lives and families?”
My education included the University Air Squadron, then learning to fly at the College sponsored by British Airways. There is a chapter of general information on aviation, then most of the book is an account of my experiences, whether dramatic, disappointing, exciting, or amusing, during my varied career in British Airways. Some incidents occur within the cockpit, others in social interaction outside, and a few come from pilot folklore. I also describe visits to sights around the world, an aspect that draws people to aviation as a career, and interests everyone.
I have added one professional pilot’s opinion on aviation topics in the news, the mysterious Malaysian disappearance, and the Alpine tragedy, and finish with my lifelong interest in designing model aircraft.
£9.99 -
Natasha Thom’s Soul Journey
Why am I here? Who am I? What am I?
In search of answers to these existential questions, Natasha Thom travelled and became involved with inquiring young minds who were and are on the same quest, from Southern Africa to England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, and Russia… living in benders, vans, apartments, trains, churches, and nature… sharing their lives, many of whom, like her, became disillusioned and turned to drugs. Let us not condemn them, as we owe to them an awareness of the changes that are so needed in our world. Let us stop, listen and learn and help and join in the pursuit for change.
Art was life for Natasha Naida Thom, and she recorded her life in the form of art, writing, creating from discarded objects, welding sculptures and constructions, and choreographing dances and plays while traveling.
“I have captured my reflections whilst exploring the world, through the use of art. I feel that art is a means through which mankind can illustrate the few small truths that he does perceive, and so build on them. If change is the flow of life, then art is the picture that represents the way life’s river flows.”
She loved life and found beauty in that which others discarded, loving and encouraging those who society rejected, unlovable and fallen people. She always strove to make her environment better, meaningful, and open to man and animal alike. It is a call to join our Creator God who loves us, and those who want a life with meaning, in the fight to save the humanness of humanity.
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Resilience
A poignant, inspired and assured memoir, Resilience: A Dad’s Journey Through Grief chronicles one father’s intensely personal experience of grief after the passing of his beloved wife. Suddenly a widower and sole parent to three daughters – ages seven, five and four – the author intimately shares his turbulent emotional journey while adjusting to tragedy’s harsh new reality.
This candid, heart-wrenching account provides an authentic window into one man’s personal trauma. By spotlighting the power of inner resilience and maintaining positivity amid adversity, the book carries an uplifting message of hope for any who have endured loss or suffering. His inclination to openly face tribulation makes this grief narrative widely relatable.
While arising from harrowing personal upheaval, the author transforms his poignant tale into a parable of perseverance and grace emerging through life’s darkest moments. His desire to help others reveals that, although pain may carve deep sorrows, the heart always holds hope and inner strength can call us back to life.
£6.99