Sing Your Pleasure

Charlene Quinn can't believe her luck when she lands a major contract with L.A.'s hottest record label. Even more thrilling, she'll be laying down tracks with none other than Akil Hutton in his private Miami recording studio. Despite Akil's gruff, take-no-prisoners attitude, Charlene is powerfully attracted to the driven music producer. She never dreams the feeling's mutual…until the night she ends up singing a song of passion in Akil's arms…. His shy, innocent new client isn't Akil's usual type. Until he hears her sing. With her celestial voice and voluptuous body, Akil knows Charlene is headed straight for stardom—and his heart. But the powerhouse producer's holding tight to secrets from his past—ones that may drive his new protégée away. What will it take to keep the angelic singer in his arms forever…long after the last sweet, sensual note fades away?

Always an over-thinker and usually risk-adverse, quirky Bernie Hall tries to sidestep life’s looming challenges. But with help from his uncle Richie’s pup and Woody’s insatiable greed for kitchen sausages, Bernie finally meets his long-term crush. A notebook found in the street, and lavish but mysterious gifts galore, change his lonely life for the better. But why? Bernie must uncover his mysterious benefactor quickly, or who knows what else might happen...

Cultural Studies -- Ethnomusicology Why would a punk band popular only in Indonesia cut songs in no other language than English? If you're rapping in Tanzania and Malawi, where hip hop has a growing audience, what do you rhyme in? Swahili? Chichewa? English? Some combination of these? Global Pop, Local Language examines how performers and audiences from a wide range of cultures deal with the issue of language choice and dialect in popular music. Related issues confront performers of Latin music in the U.S., drum and bass MCs in Toronto, and rappers, rockers, and traditional folk singers from England and Ireland to France, Germany, Belarus, Nepal, China, New Zealand, Hawaii, and beyond. For pop musicians, this issue brings up a number of complex questions. Which languages or dialects will best express my ideas? Which will get me a record contract or a bigger audience? What does it mean to sing or listen to music in a colonial language? A foreign language? A regional dialect? A native language? Examining popular music from a range of world cultures, the authors explore these questions and use them to address a number of broader issues, including the globalization of the music industry, the problem of authenticity in popular culture, the politics of identity, multiculturalism, and the emergence of English as a dominant world language. The chapters are written in a highly accessible style by scholars from a variety of fields, including ethnomusicology, popular music studies, anthropology, culture studies, literary studies, folklore, and linguistics. Harris M. Berger is associate professor of music at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Metal, Rock and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience (1999). Michael Thomas Carroll is professor of English at New Mexico Highlands University. He is the author of Popular Modernity in America: Experience, Technology, Mythohistory (2000) and co-editor, with Eddie Tafoya, of Phenomenological Approaches to Popular Culture (2000).

Recounted in a fast-moving, unrhymed free verse that both pauses and gallops, Ms. Rawlings pulls us back into the landscape and the culture of pre-Attic Greece. She makes us see how this tale might have unfolded if Penelope had been celebrated by Homer. She takes us on adventures that would confound even the cunning Odysseus, and brings herself and her daughters back intact to a husband who has been forever changed and a household that has survived her absence. It is a woman's tale unlike any that has ever been written and a high adventure.

Drop-dead-gorgeous Ethan Chambers loves his life as Hollywood's most eligible--and elusive--bachelor. Plus, the talented actor has just gotten an offer he can't refuse: a starring role on TV's hit medical drama. But it's the show's sultry makeup and wardrobe director who's got his pulse racing--and making him think twice about staying single.

Awaken your spirituality with words you’ve always known, now composed in psalm format, that will echo the depth of your devotion to the Goddess. As any dedicant knows, repetition of the words used in worship, regardless of the feeling behind them, can lead to a robotic performance of what was once meaningful and reverent prayer. The poetic spirit in these psalms will resound in your soul, granting a new vision of your veneration, a fresh approach to your communion with the deity of your choice.