A young woman leaves Appalachia for life as a classical musician—or so she thinks. When aspiring violinist Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman lands a job with a professional ensemble in New York City, she imagines she has achieved her lifelong dream. But the ensemble proves to be a sham. When the group “performs,” the microphones are never on. Instead, the music blares from a CD. The mastermind behind this scheme is a peculiar and mysterious figure known as The Composer, who is gaslighting his audiences with music that sounds suspiciously like the Titanic movie soundtrack. On tour with his chaotic ensemble, Hindman spirals into crises of identity and disillusionment as she “plays” for audiences genuinely moved by the performance, unable to differentiate real from fake. Sounds Like Titanic is a surreal, often hilarious coming-of-age story. Hindman writes with precise, candid prose and sharp insight into ambition and gender, especially when it comes to the difficulties young women face in a world that views them as silly, shallow, and stupid. As the story swells to a crescendo, it gives voice to the anxieties and illusions of a generation of women, and reveals the failed promises of a nation that takes comfort in false realities.

Violet Jessop's life is an inspiring story of survival. Born in 1887 in Argentina, the eldest child of Irish immigrants, at the age of 21 she became the breadwinner for her widowed mother and five siblings when she commenced a career as a stewardess and nurse on some of the most famous ocean going vessels of the day. Throughout her 40 year time at sea she survived an unbelievable series of events including the sinking of the TITANIC. “One awful moment of empty, misty blackness enveloped us in its loneliness, then an unforgettable, agonizing cry went up from 1500 despairing throats, a long wail and then silence and our tiny craft tossing about at the mercy of the ice field.” For most people one sinking would be enough. But four years later Violet, now a nurse with the British Red Cross, was on board the World War I hospital ship BRITANNIC when it struck a mine and sank to the bottom of the Aegean. To her, this disaster was even more horrifying-- “Just as life seeming nothing but a whirling, choking ache, I rose to the light of day, my nose barely above the little lapping waves. I opened my eyes on an indescribable scene of slaughter, which made me shut them again to keep it out." By the end of her story we have a met a woman who could handle whatever life threw at her with determination and good humor. She knew that only by her own strength of character would she survive. But Titanic Survivor is much more. A unique autobiography for those who want to know how it really felt, a story that could be told only by a Titanic Survivor.

The sinking of the RMS Titanic was a tragedy for all the 1,517 people who died, but the accounts of 13 brides and grooms who joined the ship to celebrate their honeymoons are notably moving. Titanic Love Stories uncovers all the poignant detail behind the contemporary headlines.

The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life. Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?

The acclaimed director of such films as Brideshead Revisited shares the story of his youth and career, providing coverage of such topics as his childhood as the son of star Geraldine Fitzgerald, his relationships with Hollywood elite and the allegations that Orson Welles was his real father.

Award-winning author Iona Grey's next unforgettable historical about true love found and lost and the secrets we keep from one another Selina Lennox is a Bright Young Thing. Her life is a whirl of parties and drinking, pursued by the press and staying on just the right side of scandal, all while running from the life her parents would choose for her. Lawrence Weston is a penniless painter who stumbles into Selina's orbit one night and can never let her go even while knowing someone of her stature could never end up with someone of his. Except Selina falls hard for Lawrence, envisioning a life of true happiness. But when tragedy strikes, Selina finds herself choosing what's safe over what's right. Spanning two decades and a seismic shift in British history as World War II approaches, Iona Grey's The Glittering Hour is an epic novel of passion, heartache and loss. "An absorbing tale of love, loss, and the ties that bind... A sweeping historical saga that captures the desires and dilemmas of the heart." — Booklist

IN the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, the icy waters of the North Atlantic reverberated with the desperate screams of more than 1,500 men, women, and children—passengers of the once majestic liner Titanic. Then, as the ship sank to the ocean floor and the passengers slowly died from hypothermia, an even more awful silence settled over the sea. The sights and sounds of that night would haunt each of the vessel’s 705 survivors for the rest of their days. Although we think we know the story of Titanic—the famously luxurious and supposedly unsinkable ship that struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Britain to America—very little has been written about what happened to the survivors after the tragedy. How did they cope in the aftermath of this horrific event? How did they come to remember that night, a disaster that has been likened to the destruction of a small town? Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished letters, memoirs, and diaries as well as interviews with survivors’ family members, award-winning journalist and author Andrew Wilson reveals how some used their experience to propel themselves on to fame, while others were so racked with guilt they spent the rest of their lives under the Titanic’s shadow. Some reputations were destroyed, and some survivors were so psychologically damaged that they took their own lives in the years that followed. Andrew Wilson brings to life the colorful voices of many of those who lived to tell the tale, from famous survivors like Madeleine Astor (who became a bride, a widow, an heiress, and a mother all within a year), Lady Duff Gordon, and White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay, to lesser known second- and third-class passengers such as the Navratil brothers—who were traveling under assumed names because they were being abducted by their father. Today, one hundred years after that fateful voyage, Shadow of the Titanic adds an important new dimension to our understanding of this enduringly fascinating story.