Glamourous Life

Deeply wounded by the betrayal of her fiance, Bambi Ferguson vows never to risk love again and to only look for men who can benefit her financially, a promise that is undermined when she falls in love with Lynx, a young drug dealer. Reprint.

The #1 bestselling author of Natural Born Hustler and Relapse, Nikki Turner gives up the game that could never be sold, only told. The lure of Richmond, Virginia’s streets is too strong for Bambi, a good girl who fell in love with Reggie, a young hustler. Her thug love not only corrupted her but blinded her with the bling and cash that come with living the glamorous life of a gangsta’s girl—until Reggie hit her with a low blow, breaking her heart. From that day forward, Bambi vowed that whoever crossed her would pay—usually with large bills. With the street knowledge she gleaned from her ex as well as her own business savvy, Bambi builds a multimillion-dollar party-planning empire and becomes a first-rate swindler and top-notch gamestress. Then she crosses paths with Lynx, who sees more in Bambi than the gold digger she is rumored to be. He penetrates her tough exterior layer by layer until he captures her heart. But is she just setting herself up to be played once again? BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Nikki Turner's Heartbreak of a Hustler's Wife.

"At the top of her game, Bambi built EventsRUS, from the ground up, doing high end events for anybody who was somebody. Bambi's main goal was to stack more than enough money to ensure that her husband, Lynx, would never have to distribute illegal narcotics another day in his life. But once Lynx is released from prison, all her high hopes and dreams turn into a horrible nightmare. She sadly learns that Lynx has an insatiable love and growing appetite, for his mistress: gambling, that threatens to bring both of them to ruin. Caught between the venture capitalist bankers, the underground financers and having loyalty and love to her man, Bambi has to make life changing decisions and deceptions. And the wrong move could cost her everything"--

Race. God. Two forces that have oppressed David's life from the beginning. As he grows, they follow him, bearing down upon his neck like a yoke. But someone else follows him as well. There is an appointed time for them to meet. Race. God. Growing up biracial is hard for David, being the son of an overbearing black mother and a passive white father. They've pulled him from an all-black world into an all-white one. But someone is there also. There is an appointed time for them to meet. Race. God. David eventually learns to throw the shackles of both away, to lash out against anything racial, or religious. He changes. Grows angrier. hates more. Still, that someone is there, watching. Waiting. Emily. But Emily couldn't wait any longer. Her love for David couldn't be contained until that "appointed" time. She takes matters into her own hands, and makes her presence known. In an attempt to win his love, she dons his clothes and engages in his interests. But sadly, her plan backfires, and everything turns disasterous---and she is left, damaged and alone. Race. God. Emily. Years pass. Time shifts. When they do meet, it is a meeting like no other. The rapture they feel for one another surpasses the drudgedness of their station. For David, life couldn't be imagined without her; and at such a time as this, she is taken away from him. Is it a scrifice, or some unfortunate circumstance? She leaves someone in her stead, to continue with him where she left off. Someone who cares just as much as she had. Someone who loved him from the beginning, just as she had. God. It is only then that David realizes who Emily really was, and how much he'd failed to understand.

Author Rocelia (Glam) Mac firmly believes a person learns from their mistakes, but a wise person learns from the mistakes of others. In Glamorous Life, Not So Glamorous, she tells her story to help others make wiser choices than she did. Speaking frankly about life's challenges, Mac narrates her story beginning as a young girl learning about the world. She tells how she grew up in the Robles Projects with a workaholic mother and two brothers and two sisters who all had a different father. She shares how a rape propelled her to lead a promiscuous life, how she associated with the wrong people and got caught up in the fast lane, and how she fulfilled her role as a single mother. Glamorous Life, Not So Glamorous offers Mac's inspiring memoir, a story of a woman who faced her problems head on and battled later in life to change her path. Rocelia (Glam) Mac currently lives in Tampa, Florida.

Poetry. Women's Studies, "'It's a fine line between Iggy Pop and Jesus, ' and Madigan Somerville takes us on a grand cosmic ride on that fine line between the divine and the sacred. Along that ride, Madigan Somerville never loses her sense of humor and never stops having fun. Like all epic poets before her, she flexes her formidable poetic muscles in fearlessly lush language, infusing this collection with a sweeping grandeur of the full length opera as well as the hilarity of burlesque, in which the cast of characters from Cleopatra to Paul Newman struts in a Felliniesque procession, and Love--both cosmic and earthly--is revealed in all its fierce and lusty splendor. The poems in this book are a rare combination of grace, passion, joy, kindness and generosity that reminds us of how miraculous life can be."--Joanna Sit "Michele Madigan Somerville's GLAMOROUS LIFE catechizes issues that aggravate our care--addiction, feminism, masculinity, motherhood, religion, sex, and violence. She digresses our divine milieu like a graffiti-covered train rambling over and under neighborhoods, revealing wildly complex economic and ethnic strata, progressing through time emerging miraculously new. While these streetwise poems conversate they surreptitiously dissipate male thunder."--Greg Fuchs

A room-by-room journey through some of the most luxurious and glamorous homes in America Dallas-based interior designer Jan Showers returns to the concept ï¬?rst introduced in her bestselling book, Glamorous Rooms. Jan takes the reader through luxurious private residences across the United States room by room. This book invites readers into 20 never-before-photographed homes, in some of America’s most idyllic locales, including a glamorous New York apartment, a London townhouse in Belgravia, an architecturally signiï¬?cant house in Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, a historic residence in Austin, a country estate, a stunning home on Buffalo Bayou in Houston, a duplex apartment at The Mansion Residence in Dallas, and many more.

This book offers a step-by-step guide, with practical advice and success stories that will help readers to manifest every desire of their heart. The Glamorous Life describes how everything you set your mind to is possible if you believe and are willing to do the work. The author suggests that those who want to live a prosperous and abundant life, must speak life and guard their thoughts. Daniels refers to the mouth as the gatekeeper that curates everything you have or lack in life. She encourages readers of all ages to seek the desires of their hearts explaining that pursuing your best life has no expiration date - you can pursue a new you whenever you're ready. The goal of the book is for readers to recognize that they can live full, meaningful and glamorous lives. After reading The Glamorous Life readers will have the key to unlock the door to a brighter future filled with love, wealth and a life of bliss.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Titled after perhaps Stephen Sondheim's most autobiographical song, from Sunday in the Park with George—Finishing the Hat not only collects his lyrics for the first time, it offers readers a rare personal look into his life as well as his remarkable productions. Stephen Sondheim’s career spanned more than half a century; his lyrics are synonymous with musical theater and popular culture. Sondheim—the winner of seven Tonys, an Academy Award, seven Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize and more—treats us to never-before-published songs from each show, songs that were cut or discarded before seeing the light of day, along with the lyrics for all of his musicals from 1954 to 1981, including West Side Story, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd. He discusses his relationship with his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, and his collaborations with extraordinary talents such as Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Ethel Merman, Richard Rodgers, Angela Lansbury, Harold Prince and a panoply of others. The anecdotes—filled with history, pointed observations and intimate details—transport us back to a time when theater was a major pillar of American culture. Best of all, Sondheim appraises his work and dissects his lyrics, as well as those of others, offering unparalleled insights into songwriting that will be studied by fans and aspiring songwriters for years to come. Accompanying Sondheim’s sparkling writing are behind-the-scenes photographs from each production, along with handwritten music and lyrics from the songwriter’s personal collection. Penetrating and surprising, poignant, funny and sometimes provocative, Finishing the Hat is not only an informative look at the art and craft of lyric writing, it is a history of the theater that belongs on the same literary shelf as Moss Hart’s Act One and Arthur Miller’s Timebends. It is also a book that will leave you humming the final bars of Merrily We Roll Along, while eagerly anticipating the next volume.

In his remarkable memoir, at once frank, audacious, canny, and revealing, Michael Korda, the author of Charmed Lives and Queenie, does for the world of books what Moss Hart did for the theater in Act One, and succeeds triumphantly in making publishing seem as exciting (and as full of great characters) as the stage. Another Life is not just an adventure--the engaging and often hilarious story of a young man making his career--but the insider's story of how a cottage industry metamorphosed into a big business, with sometimes alarming results for all concerned. Korda writes with grace, humor, and a shrewd eye, not only about himself and his rise from a lowly (but not humble) assistant editor reading the "slush pile" of manuscripts to a famous editor in chief of a major publishing house, but also about the celebrities and writers with whom he worked over four decades. Here are portraits--rare, intimate, always keenly observed--of such larger-than-life figures as Ronald Reagan, affable and good-natured but the most reluctant of authors, struggling with his "ghosted" presidential autobiography; Richard Nixon, seen here as a genial, if bizarrely detached, host; superagent Irving Lazar, pursuing his endless deals and dreams of "class"; retired Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, the last of the old-time dons, laboring over his own version of his life in his desert retreat; Joan Crawford, giving Korda her rules for successful living; and countless other greats, near greats, and would-be greats. Here too are famous writers, sometimes eccentric, sometimes infuriating, sometimes lost souls, captured memorably by someone who was close to them for years: Graham Greene, in pursuit of his FBI file and a Nobel Prize; Tennessee Williams, wrestling unsuccessfully with his demons; Jacqueline Susann, facing and conquering the dreaded "second-novel syndrome" after the stunning success of Valley of the Dolls; Harold Robbins (who had to be guarded under lock and key and made to finish his novels), struggling to keep the IRS at bay from the deck of his yacht; Carlos Castaneda, at his most sorcerously charming, described--at last--in detail, as he really was, by one of the few people who knew him well; not to mention Richard Adams, Will and Ariel Durant, Susan Howatch, S. J. Perelman, Fannie Hurst, Larry McMurtry, and many, many more. Parts of this book that have appeared in The New Yorker over the years have brought Korda great acclaim--the chapter about Jacqueline Susann has been made into a major motion picture. Here at last, entertaining and provocative and always hugely readable, is the whole story--a book as engaging and full of life as Korda's highly acclaimed memoir of his family, Charmed Lives, about which Irwin Shaw wrote: "I don't know when I have enjoyed a book more."