Award-winning music journalist and author Stuart Nicholson takes the listener on an entertaining journey from jazz's early stirrings in America’s south through to the present day, when almost every country in the world has its own vibrant jazz scene. En route we meet a host of jazz heroes past and present, from Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis, to Keith Jarrett and Kamasi Washington. Each chapter is accompanied by a playlist designed to provide a stimulating and enjoyable ent...

Is Jazz Dead? examines the state of jazz in America at the turn of the twenty-first century. Musicians themselves are returning to New Orleans, Swing, and Bebop styles, while the work of the '60s avant-garde and even '70s and '80s jazz-rock is roundly ignored. Meanwhile, global jazz musicians are creating new and exciting music that is just starting to be heard in the United States, offering a viable alternative to the rampant conservatism here. Stuart Nicholson's thought-provokin...

Stuart Nicholson's biography of Ella Fitzgerald is considered a classic in jazz literature. Drawing on original documents, interviews, and new information, Nicholson draws a complete picture of Fitzgerald's professional and personal life. Fitzgerald rose from being a pop singer with chart-novelty hits in the late '30s to become a bandleader and then one of the greatest interpreters of American popular song. Along with Billie Holiday, she virtually defined the female voice in jazz, and coun...

Australians have invested an enormous amount of emotional and physical capital in their sporting systems and structures. While Australian sport has many times been dissected from a historical and cultural perspective, there is little detailed analysis of sport's relationship with government. The book focuses on sport policy, and examines the ways in which government has affected the development of Australian sport since 1919. The text identifies the political, economic and cultural context...

This popular anthology explores karma from many points of view, including Christianity, Judaism, Hindu yogic philosophy, and Buddhism. Essays by psychologists, scientists, and philosophers.

Christmas is a time for giving, for receiving. . . and for murder. We've collected ten Christmas stories, old and new, that will spike your eggnog, trim your tree, and hopefully add a dash of spice to your Christmas cheer. Included are:"A Christmas Pit," by John Gregory Betancourt"A Reversible Santa Claus," by Meredith Nicholson"A Stake of Holly," by Lillian Stewart Carl"Believing in Santa," by Ron Goulart"Death Will Trim Your Tree," by Liz Zelvin...

Shortlisted for the Australian Society for Sports History (ASSH) Biennial Book PrizeUnlike every other sport that has captured the nation’s interest, Australian football is not a copy, a clone, or a hand-me-down of European culture. Rather, it is a game with special qualities, which arose from a distinctive series of events in the fledgling colony of Victoria, grew rapidly, and is now the most dominant sport in the country: a social, commercial, cultural and—for ma...

This volume features 25 novels by some of the top writers of young adult mystery fiction from the 20th century. With more than 2,900 pages of classic crimes, here are the complete Mary Louis Gay series, the complete Madge Sterling series, the complete Penny Nichols series, and many more! Included are:THE MYSTERY OF THE SECRET BAND, by Edith LavellTHE MYSTERY AT DARK CEDARS, by Edith LavellTHE MYSTERY OF THE FIRES, by Edith LavellTHE BLUE ENVELOPE, by Roy Snell

When the Happiness Club comes to town, Maisie Sue sees it as an opportunity to rediscover romance, Jock McLean regards it with suspicion, and Jemima and Dave look forward to taking part in new activities with their friends. Amaryllis and Chief Inspector Smith go along to keep an eye on developments on their patch. As for Christopher, he misses the start of the excitement because of a prior engagement - walking the Fife Coastal Path with a figure from his past.But before anyone has h...

Can anyone ever really change? Christopher and Amaryllis ask themselves this question when a young man comes to the door of their holiday caravan one wet evening.The attempt to answer it takes them and their friends on a dangerous journey from a Pitkirtly ice-cream shop to a knitting club and then to a cattery before they reach a dangerous conclusion in an old railway yard.A Pitkirtly mystery

Talmage Powell (1920-2000) was one of the all-time great mystery writers of the pulp magazines (and later the digest mystery magazines). He claimed to have written more than 500 short stories, and we have no reason to doubt him -- we are working on a bibliography of his work and have documented 373 magazine stories so far...and who knows how many are out there under pseudonyms or buried in obscure magazines? He wrote his first novel, The Smasher, in 1959. He went on to pen 11 more novels u...

Reunited in Death is a sequel to the quirky Crime in the Community, which is already available from Smashwords.Reunited in Death was a quarter finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for 2011 and received the following comments in a review by Publisher's Weekly:'An unlikely cast of endearingly eccentric characters distinguish this offbeat mystery set in Pitkirtly, an appropriately quirky town on the Scottish coast....Memorable characters, delightful word pictures -- a...