Books with author William E. Manci

[Read by Christopher Lane]The Day of the Locust meets The Devil in the White City and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in this juicy, untold Hollywood story: an addictive true account of ambition, scandal, intrigue, murder, and the creation of the modern film industry.By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.In a fiendishly involving narrative, bestselling Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to uncover the story of the enigmatic Taylor and the diverse group of people who surrounded him - including three beautiful, ambitious actresses; a grasping stage mother; a devoted valet; and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet. And overseeing this entire landscape of intrigue was Adolph Zukor, the brilliant and ruthless founder of Paramount Pictures, locked in a struggle for control of the industry and desperate to conceal the truth about the crime. Along the way, Mann brings to life Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties: a sparkling yet schizophrenic town filled with party girls, drug dealers, religious zealots, newly minted legends, and starlets already past their prime - a dangerous place where the powerful could still run afoul of the desperate.A true story recreated with the suspense of a novel, Tinseltown is the work of a storyteller at the peak of his powers - and the solution to a crime that has stumped detectives and historians for nearly a century.

The award-winning author presents a provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America's greatest and most influential families--the Roosevelts--exposing heretofore unknown family secrets and detailing complex family rivalries with his signature cinematic flair.Drawing on previously hidden historical documents and interviews with the long-silent illegitimate branch of the family, William J. Mann paints an elegant, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts' rise to power and prestige was actually driven by a series of intense personal contest that at times devolved into blood sport. His compelling and eye-opening masterwork is the story of a family at war with itself, of social Darwinism at its most ruthless--in which the strong devoured the weak and repudiated the inconvenient. Mann focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt, who, he argues, experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her Uncle Theodore cruelly destroy her father, Elliott--his brother and bitter rival--for political expediency. Mann presents a fascinating alternate picture of Eleanor, contending that this worshipful niece in fact bore a grudge against TR for the rest of her life, and dares to tell the truth about her intimate relationships without obfuscations, explanations, or labels.Mann also brings into focus Eleanor's cousins, TR's children, whose stories propelled the family rivalry but have never before been fully chronicled, as well as her illegitimate half-brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, who inherited his family's ambition and skill without their name and privilege. Growing up in poverty just miles from his wealthy relatives, Elliott Mann embodied the American Dream, rising to middle-class prosperity and enjoying one of the very few happy, long-term marriages in the Roosevelt saga. For the first time, The Wars of the Roosevelts also includes the stories of Elliott's daughter and grandchildren.Deeply psychological and finely rendered, The Wars of the Roosevelts illuminates not only the enviable strengths but also the profound shame of this remarkable and influential family.

Joey’s Little Monster is about Joey’s journey to a land of dreams, where imagination lets him build his own world and his own rules. Little Joey is taken to this world with a little monster Dewdrop he finds in his room at night. Together they go on an adventure that every kid will enjoy. This is a book intended for an audience of children from ages 4-8. The book is filled with wonderful illustrations that portray Joey’s adventures.

When a teenager discovers his father is working on a secret government project with aliens from the planet Tarizon, the project is compromised and Peter Turner must accept exile or be killed. Tarizon is recovering from a series of super volcanic eruptions that nearly destroyed all life on the planet. It is slowly recovering ecologically but the political situation is volatile. The fight is between the Purists who want to rid Tarizon of a growing mutant population and eliminate all non-human intelligent life-forms, and the Loyalists who want to restore the Supreme Mandate that guarantees freedom and basic rights for all humans and other sentient beings. Videl Lai has become Chancellor in a tainted election. Once in power, he renounces Tarizon's constitution, The Supreme Mandate, and orders the extermination of all non-human life forms. The Loyalist party anticipating Videl's rise to power, has been planning a civil war to restore rule under the Supreme Mandate and stop the genocide. But the Loyalist Party is weak and there is little hope it will be able to defeat Videl Lai and his formidable army. The only hope seems to be a prophecy that foretells of the arrival of a Liberator from Earth who would lead a revolt to rid Tarizon of a ruthless dictator. Peter, much to his shock and dismay, soon learns that many on Tarizon believe that he is this Liberator and is expected to lead the revolution against Videl Lai and free the Nanomites, Mutants and Seafolken from bondage.

Videl Lai is dead and Tarizon’s cataclysmic civil war is over, or so most people think, until Tarizon’s Intergalactic Fleet refuses to surrender. Then Videl Lai’s adopted son, Evohn Cystrom, masterminds the escape of Rupra Bruda, recognized to be the father of the Purist movement. As the Fleet defiantly leaves it’s moon base on Clarion, Cystrom informs Chancellor Lorin Boskie that they intend to travel to Earth, conquer it, and someday come back and destroy Tarizon. The Chancellor, at great personal political risk, puts together a rag-tag armada of Earth Shuttles to try to beat the Purists to Earth and warn the American government of the impending invasion. The odds of the Loyalist armada reaching earth before the Purists, or even surviving the trip against the powerful Purist fleet, are long but Commander General, Leek Lanzia, is determined to save Earth and destroy the Purists once and for all.