The Accidental Life

An Amazon Best Book of 2016 A celebration of the writing and editing life, as well as a look behind the scenes at some of the most influential magazines in America (and the writers who made them what they are). You might not know Terry McDonell, but you certainly know his work. Among the magazines he has top-edited: Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. In this revealing memoir, McDonell talks about what really happens when editors and writers work with deadlines ticking (or drinks on the bar). His stories about the people and personalities he’s known are both heartbreaking and bitingly funny—playing “acid golf” with Hunter S. Thompson, practicing brinksmanship with David Carr and Steve Jobs, working the European fashion scene with Liz Tilberis, pitching TV pilots with Richard Price. Here, too, is an expert’s practical advice on how to recruit—and keep—high-profile talent; what makes a compelling lede; how to grow online traffic that translates into dollars; and how, in whatever format, on whatever platform, a good editor really works, and what it takes to write well. Taking us from the raucous days of New Journalism to today’s digital landscape, McDonell argues that the need for clear storytelling from trustworthy news sources has never been stronger. Says Jeffrey Eugenides: “Every time I run into Terry, I think how great it would be to have dinner with him. Hear about the writers he's known and edited over the years, what the magazine business was like back then, how it's changed and where it's going, inside info about Edward Abbey, Jim Harrison, Annie Proulx, old New York, and the Swimsuit issue. That dinner is this book.”

‘I haven’t laughed so much at a book for a long time.’ Whispering Stories Book Blog, 5 stars Sometimes one moment can change your life forever...

A New Orleans senior district attorney and his lawyer wife are caught up in a faith-testing courtroom battle involving the rights of infants born alive during abortions.

From Sunday Times bestselling author Paige Toon comes the first novel in a witty new series, perfect for fans of Geek Girl and Girl Online! Meet Jessie, small-town girl turned wild child… Jessie has never known her real dad, and when her mum dies she thinks any hope of finding him is gone. As she goes off the rails and her life devolves into a wild mess, her stepdad announces that her father is Johnny Jefferson—legendary rock star and former hell-raiser. Still dealing with her loss, and now the daughter of a superstar, Jessie is sucked into the LA lifestyle—paparazzi, parties, and hot guitar-wielding boys included. But is Johnny up to the job of fatherhood? And, more importantly, is Jessie ready for life in the spotlight? “Fun and flirty, Jessie Jefferson is a top-notch series YA fans should grab ASAP.” —Maximum Pop!

In the 1970s, William Hill asks seventeen-year-old Margaret Wilcox from Saratoga Springs to marry him. With no alternatives in sight, Margaret says yes to a life modeled on the pattern created by the women before her. Fifteen years later, the opportunity to dabble in her repressed aspirations leads her to take on a secret identity and explore the life that might have been. Margaret is soon tangled up in her double life more than she expected and finds herself trapped in a dead end from which she can no longer escape. The truth, which could set her free, keeps eluding her as someone else is receiving the clues she needs to see the full picture. As the betrayals pile up and the secrets unravel, Margaret finds herself now a middle-aged woman with a choice to make: own her life, or stay hidden behind a wall of social expectations.An Accidental Life is an enticing novel exploring how well we know ourselves and others. It raises thought-provoking questions around identity, truth, and commitment, in a highly readable and relatable way. It is straightforward, unapologetic and oh so human. Advance Praise for "An Accidental Life": "A great read. A story about missed opportunities and what "could have been" It was a book to get lost in." - Lauren Murrey - Net Galley Review. "I have recommended this book to several friends and will continue to do so!"-J. Carrow- Reader review.""I was glued to the metaphorical pages."-Alexis Aumagamanaia- @littlelionslibrary"Loved it!" Rebecca Graf- Reedsy Discovery"I would read more by this author." -Bookstack Reviews

An Accidental Life is a portrait of a man who played a significant role in the history of education and health in the Caribbean. Harold Drayton's passionate and meticulous memoir offers, first, a precious account of colonial British Guiana. He maps the impacton him of his home, into which his birth was an accident, the influence of his working-class autodidact stepfather, of his schools, and of war and politics in the 1940s.

Lucy Arigho's first encounter with Greg Millar is far from promising, but she soon realises he possesses a charm that is impossible to resist. Just eight whirlwind weeks after their first meeting, level-headed career girl Lucy is seriously considering his pleas to marry him and asking herself if she could really be stepmother material. But before Lucy can make a final decision about becoming part of Greg's world, events plunge her right into it. On holiday in the South of France, things start to unravel. Her future stepchildren won't accept her, the interfering nanny resents her, and they're stuck in a heat wave that won't let up. And then there's Greg. His behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre and Lucy begins to wonder whether his larger-than-life personality hides something darker--and whether she knows him at all.

A New York Times bestseller—a dazzling and inspirational survey of how art can be found and appreciated in everyday life Michael Kimmelman, the prominent New York Times writer and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, is known as a deep and graceful writer across the disciplines of art and music and also as a pianist who understands something about the artist's sensibility from the inside. Readers have come to expect him not only to fill in their knowledge about art but also to inspire them to think about connections between art and the larger world - which is to say, to think more like an artist. Kimmelman's many years of contemplating and writing about art have brought him to this wise, wide-ranging, and long-awaited book. It explores art as life's great passion, revealing what we can learn of life through pictures and sculptures and the people who make them. It assures us that art - points of contact with the exceptional that are linked straight to the heart - can be found almost anywhere and everywhere if only our eyes are opened enough to recognize it. Kimmelman regards art, like all serious human endeavors, as a passage through which a larger view of life may come more clearly into focus. His book is a kind of adventure or journey. It carries the message that many of us may not yet have learned how to recognize the art in our own lives. To do so is something of an art itself. A few of the characters Kimmelman describes, like Bonnard and Chardin, are great artists. But others are explorers and obscure obsessives, paint-by-numbers enthusiasts, amateur shutterbugs, and collectors of strange odds and ends. Yet others, like Charlotte Solomon, a girl whom no one considered much of an artist but who secretly created a masterpiece about the world before her death in Auschwitz, have reserved spots for themselves in history, or not, with a single work that encapsulates a whole life. Kimmelman reminds us of the Wunderkammer, the cabinet of wonders - the rage in seventeenth-century Europe and a metaphor for the art of life. Each drawer of the cabinet promises something curious and exotic, instructive and beautiful, the cabinet being a kind of ideal, self-contained universe that makes order out of the chaos of the world. The Accidental Masterpiece is a kind of literary Wunderkammer, filled with lively surprises and philosophical musings. It will inspire readers to imagine their own personal cabinet of wonders.