The Confusion Of Karen Carpenter

The Confusion of Karen Carpenter, a book that will make you laugh and cry, is by Coronation Street scriptwriter Jonathan Harvey. Hello. There are two things you should know about me: 1) My name is Karen Carpenter. 2) Just before Christmas my boyfriend left me. I’m not THE Karen Carpenter. I just have the most embarrassing name in Christendom. Particularly as I’m no skinny minny and don’t play the drums. I can’t even sing. I’m tone deaf. I work in a school in the East End. (Where I came third in a ‘Teacher we’d most like to sleep with’ competition amongst the Year 11 boys) My Mum’s driving me mad. She’s come to stay and is obsessed with Scandi crime shows and Zumba. Oh yeah. The boyfriend. After eleven ‘happy’ years he left me. No explanation just a post it on the kettle when I got in from work. I think I’m handling it really well. I don’t think I’m confused at all. What was my name again?

Filled with Jonathan Harvey's trademark wit, warmth and outrageous humour, The History of Us is a novel about friendship and secrets, the choices we make and the consequences we face. Liverpool 1985 Kathleen, Adam and Jocelyn are three teenage friends who bond over an unconventional nativity play. They all have ambitions, they all have dreams. Adam wants to be a writer, Jocelyn wants to sing and Kathleen – well, she wants to be an embalmer. London 2015 Kathleen is a borderline alcoholic, Adam is holding on to a shocking secret and Jocelyn is dead. Where did it all go wrong? How did having the world at their feet turn into having the weight of it on their shoulders?

Rachel and Shirley. Two women from different decades in Jonathan Harvey's The Years She Stole. Somehow their lives are entwined and neither can know the impact one woman will have on the other until it’s way too late . . . 2017 Pregnant Rachel Taylor is enjoying a holiday in Morocco when she gets the phone call to say her mother hasn’t got much time left to live. With a head of mixed emotions she returns to the village where she grew up to say her last goodbyes. It’s true to say their relationship had often been strained and Rachel had never quite understood why. When clearing out her mother’s things she thinks she finds an answer, and her world is changed forever. 1978 Shirley Burke is on a family holiday at Butlin’s when she first sets eyes on Doug, a man considerably older than herself. When his daughter goes missing one night, Shirley’s the one who finds her and returns her to him. When his gratitude turns into something else, Shirley realizes this is her time to shine. But Doug is married, and her young life is about to get very complicated.

From Jonathan Harvey, the award-winning author of All She Wants and the writer of Coronation Street and Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, comes The Girl Who Just Appeared, a comedy with a huge, beating heart. London 2014. Holly Smith has never fitted in. Adopted when just a few months old, she's always felt she was someone with no history, the girl who just appeared. All she has is the address of where she was born - 32B Gambier Terrace, Liverpool. By a bizarre twist of fate Holly discovers that the flat is available to rent. She travels north and moves in. When she finds a biscuit tin full of yellowing papers under the floorboards, she wonders if this might hold the secret to her past. Liverpool 1981. Fifteen-year-old Darren negotiates life with his errant mother and the younger brother he is bringing up. When the Toxteth Riots explode around him Darren finds himself with a moral dilemma that will have consequences for the rest of his life. Flitting between the present and the past, we discover how Darren and Holly's lives become intertwined. Will Holly uncover the secrets of her past? Or will she always feel like the girl who just appeared? 'Gripping and twisty and tender and touching.' – Marian Keyes, author of Rachel's Holiday

Told from the point of view of four family members, The Secrets We Keep, by Coronation Street scriptwriter Jonathan Harvey, is a funny and poignant story. It's hard being that woman, the one whose husband disappeared. It's made me quite famous. I just wish it was for something else. He went out five years ago for a pint of milk and never came back. So here I am with a daughter who blames me for all that's wrong in the world, a son trying his best to pick up the pieces and a gaggle of new neighbours who are over friendly, and incredibly nosy. Then I find a left luggage ticket in the pocket of one of his old coats and suddenly I'm thinking . . . What if he's not dead? What if he's still out there somewhere? You think you have the perfect life, the perfect kids, and then it's all turned inside out. What if I don't like what I find? And is it a chance I'm willing to take?

"The Queer Biopic returns to the historical moment of the AIDS crisis and the emergence of New Queer Cinema to investigate the phenomena of queer biopic films produced during the late 1980s-early 1990s. More specifically, the book asks why queer filmmakers repeatedly produced biographical films of queer individuals living and dead throughout the years surrounding the AIDS crisis. While film critics and historian typically treat the biopic as a conservative, if not cliché, genre, queer filmmakers have frequently used the biopic to tell stories of queer lives. This project pays particular attention to the genre's queer resonances, opening up the biopic's historical connections to projects of education, public health, and social hygiene, along with the production of a shared history and national identity. Queer filmmakers' engagement with the biopic evokes the genre's history of building life through the portrayal of lives worthy of admiration and emulation, but it also points to another biopic history, that of representing lives damaged. By portraying lives damaged by inconceivable loss, queer filmmakers challenge the illusion of a coherent self presumably reinforced by the biopic genre and in doing so, their films open up the potential for new means of connection and relationality. The book features fresh readings of the cinema of Derek Jarman, John Greyson, Todd Haynes, Barbara Hammer, and Tom Kalin. By calling for a reappraisal of the queer biopic, the book also calls for a reappraisal of New Queer Cinema's legacy and its influence of contemporary queer film"--

In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy—the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder. In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer’s rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippines—where imitations of American pop styles flourished—and Karen Carpenter’s home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for her—as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter’s legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters’ sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.

Remarkable and Reassuring Stories from the Spirit World. Written by spiritual medium Jenny Crawford, Spirit of Love is filled with messages of love that will help heal the hearts of those grieving the loss of a loved one. This collection presents true accounts of soul rescue work, guardian angels, and spirit sense of humor. It tells how the spirit world orchestrates meetings between those on both sides of the veil, and how we can all receive spirit communications just by opening our minds and hearts. A question and answer chapter covers everything from animal communication to free will to dream visits from those who have crossed over. Heartwarming and hopeful, these stories will help you gain an understanding of the other side, and enhance your own healing and spiritual growth.