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"Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Cutting a Dash, The Radio Series That Inspired the Hit Bo" by Lynne Truss Length: 1 hour and 9 min. ISBN: 0-14-280082-1 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

In 2002, Lynne Truss presented Cutting a Dash, a well-received BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation, which led to the writing of the UK number-one best seller Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Presented here for the first time in America is the original landmark BBC Radio 4 program in its entirety.

Through sloppy usage and low standards on the Internet, in e-mail, and now “txt msgs”, we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are.

Tags: eats, shoots & leaves: cutting a dash, the radio series that inspired the hit book, lynne truss, arts & entertainment, bbc, punctuation

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"Amazing Peace and Other Poems" by Maya Angelou Length: 29 min. ISBN: New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

Listen to Grammy Award-winning poet Maya Angelou read her newest work, “Amazing Peace”, as well as some of her best-loved poems in this unique and inspiring audio collection.

“Amazing Peace” is a beautiful and deeply moving poem from Maya Angelou. Here she inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up our holidays and the world. “Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers, look heavenward,” she writes, “and speak the word aloud. Peace.”

“Amazing Peace” is Maya Angelou’s radiant affirmation of the goodness of life and is a touching celebration of the “Glad Season” that will resonate with people of all faiths.

Also included in this program is her Grammy Award-winning reading of “On the Pulse of Morning”, the poem that she created for the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton in January 1993. Nearly 13 years later this poem remains just as profound a listening experience.

Additionally, the program includes the four poems that make up Phenomenal Woman. The poems are among the most acclaimed of Maya Angelou’s body of work. They celebrate women with a majesty that has inspired and touched the hearts of millions. Together with “Amazing Peace” and “On the Pulse of Morning”, this is a beautiful and unique collection of Maya Angelou’s writing read aloud in her distinctive and sonorous voice.

Maya Angelou, poet, writer, performer, teacher, and director, was raised in Stamps, Arkansas, and then moved to San Francisco. In addition to her best-selling biographies, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she has also written a memoir with recipes, Hallelujah! The Welcome Table; five poetry collections, including I Shall Not Be Moved and Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?; and many other celebrated poems.

Tags: amazing peace and other poems, maya angelou, arts & entertainment, audibleoriginals, poetry & drama, students, on the pulse of morning, christmas tree lighting, phenomenal woman, glad season, poem, poetry

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"My Life So Far" by Jane Fonda Length: 21 hours and 35 min. ISBN: 1-4159-1999-2 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

She is one of the most recognizable women of our time. America knows Jane Fonda as an actress and an activist, a feminist and a wife, a workout guru and a role model. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, Fonda reveals that she is so much more. From her youth among Hollywood’s elite and her early film career to the challenges and triumphs of her life today, Jane Fonda reveals intimate details and universal truths that she hopes “can provide a lens through which others can see their lives and how they can live them a little differently.”

Fonda divides her “life so far” into three “acts”, writing about her childhood, first films, and marriage to Roger Vadim in Act One. At once a picture emerges: a child born to the acting legend Henry Fonda and the glamorous society princess Frances Seymour. But these early years are also marked by profound sadness: her mother’s mental illness and suicide when Jane is 12 years old, her father’s emotional distance, and her personal struggle to find her way in the world as a young woman.

By her second act, Fonda lays the foundation for her activism, even as her career takes flight. She highlights her struggle to live consciously and authentically while remaining in the public eye as she recounts her marriages to Tom Hayden and Ted Turner, and examines her controversial and defining involvement with the Vietnam War. As her film career grows, Fonda learns to incorporate her roles into a larger vision of what matters most in her life, and in the process she wins two Academy Awards, for Klute and for Coming Home.

In Fonda’s third act, she is prepared to do the work of a lifetime, to begin living consciously in a way that might inspire others who can learn from her experiences.

Surprising, candid, and wonderfully written, Jane Fonda’s My Life So Far is filled with universal insights into the personal struggles of women living full and engaged lives.

Tags: my life so far, jane fonda, arts & entertainment, bios & memoirs, workout guru, activist, philathropy, actress, marriage, ted turner

• My Life So Far

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"Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" by Neal Gabler Length: 10 hours and 10 min. ISBN: 0-7393-4029-8 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

Seven years in the making and meticulously researched - Gabler is the first writer to be given complete access to the Disney archives - this is the full story of a man whose work left an ineradicable brand on our culture but whose life has largely been enshrouded in myth.

Gabler shows us the young Walt Disney breaking free of a heartland childhood of discipline and deprivation and making his way to Hollywood. We see the visionary, whose desire for escape honed an innate sense of what people wanted to see on the screen and, when combined with iron determination and obsessive perfectionism, led him to the reinvention of animation. It was Disney, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films - most notably Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi - who transformed animation from a novelty based on movement to an art form that presented an illusion of life.

The author also reveals a wounded, lonely, and often disappointed man, who, despite worldwide success, was plagued with financial problems, suffered a nervous breakdown, and at times retreated into pitiable seclusion in his workshop, making model trains. Gabler explores accusations that Disney was a red-baiter, an anti-Semite, and an embittered alcoholic. Yet whatever his personal failings, Disney appealed to millions by demonstrating the power of wish fulfillment and the triumph of the American imagination.

Tags: walt disney: the triumph of the american imagination, neal gabler, arts & entertainment, bios & memoirs, history, disney world, disneyworld disneyland, disney empire, mickey mouse, snow white, pinocchio, fantasia, dumbo, bambi, animation

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"Peter Pan in Scarlet" by Geraldine McCaughrean Length: 7 hours and 16 min. ISBN: 0-7435-6453-7 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

This is the first-ever authorized sequel to J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan!

Set in the 1930s, when the devastating effects of World War I are still resonating throughout the world, Peter Pan in Scarlet takes listeners on an unforgettable journey fraught with danger. All is not well. Dreams and nightmares are leaking out of Neverland as it chafes against the Here and Now, wearing holes in the fabric in between. Somehow, Time is moving on where Time was never meant to go. Fearing for Peter Pan’s life, Wendy and the Lost Boys find their way back to Neverland with the help of the fairy Fireflyer, only to discover adventure waiting in ambush and their worst nightmares coming true in the most unexpected ways!

The Special Trustees of Great Ormand Street Hospital for Children, who own the copyright to Peter Pan, marked that work’s centenary by authorizing the creation of a new novel that would share the same characters as the original and bring as much pleasure to children and adults around the world as has Peter Pan. The result of a worldwide search to find just the right author for this special sequel is Peter Pan in Scarlet by the renowned and multi-award-winning Geraldine McCaughrean.

Tags: peter pan in scarlet, geraldine mccaughrean, arts & entertainment, kids, parents & family, tim curry, wendy, john, michael, lost boys, captain hook, smee, pirates, neverland, time, nightmares, dreams, here and now, fairy, fairies, fireflyer, tinkerbell, tinker bell, fire flyer, fairy dust, flying, sequel, authorized, pirates, indians, mermaids, hideout, nana, darling, j. m. barrie