Keith Richards calls him a man of the soil. Others have called him Shaman. He has lived a life full enough for ten men & people want him to have big answers. He could be a red-neck cowboy, a Zen master or simply an old, stoned hippie. Of course, he is really all three, & several other things into the bargain....
With a face that wouldn't look out of place carved into Mount Rushmore, Willie Nelson has done it & seen it all. A dope smoking, whisky drinking, latter-day cowboy with Native American blood, four wives & seven children, Nelson's career spans half a century of American music.
In this revealing, intimate & insightful biography, Graeme Thomson goes beyond the myths, talking with Nelson himself, his band & those who know him best en route to discovering the real Willie Nelson.
Nelson't life has been a never-ending journey of incredible highs & crashing lows. The armfuls of awards huge record sales, famous friends, & creation of Farm Aid & his annual Fourth of July picnis have been achieved in the shadow of his mother's early desertion, penury, three turbulent marriages, drug busts, drinking, bankruptcy, as well as his son's suicide.
The Outlaw brilliantly describes this complex, compelling man, whose life & music reveal & reflect something fundamental at the very heart of twentieth century America, explaining along the way why Willie Nelson is nothing short of a living legend.



...

Given the chance, most people prefer to think in ways that make them feel confident, relaxed, secure, positive & optimistic. So what's stopping them? The simple answer is learned behaviours, usually from negative influences in their life. We all learn by imitation, so if our childhood was marked by criticism from parents & teachers, we tend to develop exaggerated powers of self-criticism. Nothing we do is good enough, & we talk ourselves into believing that nothing ever will be. This cycle of negativity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that saps our will to change things for the better. Gillian Riley's inspirational book gets to the roots of willpower, explaining how it develops & how it can be increased. She offers strategies to overcome negative thoughts & build motivation, thereby improving confidence & self-esteem, two vital components of willpower. These in turn will help you to:--Affirm your sense of self-worth & ability--Improve relationships--Overcome addictive behaviours--Inspire & encourage others--Achieve your dreams--Enhance your life ...

Willy & Hugh are very different but they can both bring something special to their friendship. This classic picture book from master artist, Anthony Browne is now available in mini treasure format.
Mini treasures are delightful mini picture books to treasure forever.
...

Henry Wilt, tied to a daft job & a domineering wife, has just been passed over for promotion yet again. Ahead of him at the Polytechnic stretch years of trying to thump literature into the heads of plasterers, joiners, butchers & the like. & things are no better at home where his massive wife, Eva, is given to boundless & unpredictable fits of enthusiasm
- for transcendental meditation, yoga or the trampoline. But if Wilt can do nothing about his job, he can do something about his wife, in imagination at least, & his fantasies grow daily more murderous & more concrete. After a peculiarly nasty experience at a party thrown by particularly nasty Americans, Wilt finds himself in several embarrassing positions: Eva stalks out in stratospheric dudgeon, & Wilt, under the inspiration of gin, puts one of his more vindictive fantasies into effect. But suspicions are instantly aroused & Wilt rapidly achieves an unenviable notoriety in the role of The Man Helping Police With Their Enquiries. Or is he exactly helping? Wilt's problem
- although he's on the other side of the fence
- is the same as Inspector Flint's: where is Eva Wilt? But Wilt begins to flourish in the heat of the investigation, & as the police stoke the flames of circumstantial evidence, Wilt deploys all his powers to show that the Law can't tell a Missing Person from a hole in the ground.


...

Brilliantly written & bitingly funny, Tom Sharpe's indefatigable hero is pitted against the vices of an aristocratic pervert, the merciless greed of a politician's wife & the seedy underbelly of Britain's medical facilities, deftly exposing the farcical realities of small-town England & America. ...

Wilt is still teaching at the Fenland Tech, attempting to drill English into plasterers, dozing through tedious committee meetings & occasionally getting mildly plastered in ' The Pig in a Poke' with one of his few bearable colleagues. But the even tenor of his days is rudely interrupted when the shadow of drug dealing flickers across the Tech. Suddenly Wilt becomes the target of suspicion. His colleagues believe him to be responsible for triggering a departmental inquiry, & his old adversary Inspector Flint, knowing that he's guilty of something, sees a chance to settle a number of scores. What his wife thinks is... well, what all wives think. But what none of them have reckoned with is Wilt's talent for making new enemies. What starts with an accusation of voyeurism in the staff lavatory (of the wrong gender to boot) leads, more or less directly, to a massive confrontation at a nearby US airbase with the forces of law & order on both sides & Wilt in his usual place -- in the middle. ...

Taking a break from the serialization of his saga Clyde Fans & the design of The Complete Peanuts, critically acclaimed ...

It is the 1970s, & in a small town in Indiana, Anna, a young art student, works alone in her darkroom, mesmerised by the images emerging before her. Photography is her passion, her obsession, until one terrible miscalculation -Thousands of miles away in California, Cerise, a lonely teenager, battles with puberty. As her body betrays her, growing hair & sprouting breasts, which attract attention, she seeks comfort in the most desperate & risky of ways
- Facing the same dilemma, Anna & Cerise make different choices. Choices which shape their lives forever &, many years later, bring them together
- both now mothers, bound by a common bond. & when their lives intersect each woman emerges stronger, inspired by what she sees in the other, changed by what she learns. Utterly engrossing & profoundly moving, Windfalls explores the very essence & complexity of womanhood, & what it is to be a mother.

...