Brian McDonald

Following a near death experience, Harold Carey develops the ability to faultlessly memorise information about antiques. But Harry is facing financial ruin, due to the scheming of his corrupt bank manager, a neighbouring landowner, and a violent crime boss who need his smallholding in order to develop a giant business park. Harry’s situation is further complicated by the involvement of the Intelligence Services, who commissioned a psychologist to develop subliminal memory techniques, which Harry was accidently exposed to while in a coma. After several attempts to pressure Harry into selling, the local police get involved. Corrupt police officers, in the pocket of another criminal organisation, leads to a deadly reckoning between the rival gangs. Harry’s friends rally round, and with the arrival of a hitherto unknown sibling, resolve to help Harry overcome his problems.

For nearly two decades, Invisible Ink has been the go-to guide for storytellers worldwide. Used by industry giants like Pixar Animation Studios, Cirque du Soleil, Microsoft, Sony Interactive, Disney Feature Animation, and many more, this book has cemented Brian McDonald's reputation as a globally respected expert in storytelling. This updated 2nd Edition brings even more invaluable insights from the award-winning filmmaker and writer. For the first time, McDonald shares new concepts from his acclaimed classes, including a deep dive into "writing from the inside out," the core principle of building stories from the message you want to convey. Learn to craft compelling narratives, engaging characters, and impactful dialogue, all rooted in the natural way people tell stories. Brian McDonald, a sought-after speaker, story consultant and cohost of the award-winning podcast You Are a Storyteller, teaches you how to harness the power of natural storytelling without confusing jargon. Join thousands of readers who have used McDonald's techniques to create stories that resonate and endure.

Wielding his massive experience from film, TV, comics, and more, Brian McDonald lays out a history of storytelling and shows the reader how the best tales tug at our truest biological instinct: the need to survive. Readers will see how different forms of survival - physical, emotional, spiritual - inform the arc of character development in a way that makes them more complex and compelling. And how plot and circumstance must then force the protagonist to meet their worst nightmare. Toby Cypress’s electric art guides the reader through the underworld, visualising each narrative masterpiece, and bringing the ideas to life.

Seen through the eyes of four generations of a firefighter family, Five Floors Up is on one level the story of the modern New York City Fire Department. From the days just after the horse-drawn firetruck, to the devastation of the 1970s when the Bronx was Burning, to the unspeakable tragedy of 9/11, to the culture-busting department of today, a Feehan has worn the shoulder patch of the FDNY. The tale especially shines the spotlight on the career of William M. Feehan. “Chief” Feehan is only person to have held every rank in the FDNY including being New York City's 28th Fire Commissioner. He died in the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. But Five Floors Up is at root an intimate look at a firefighter clan, the selflessness and bravery of not only those who face the flames, but the family members who stand by their sides. Alternately humorous and harrowing, rich with anecdotes and meticulously researched and reported, Five Floors Up takes us inside a world few of us truly understand, and documents an era that is quickly passing us by.

The author has sought in this book to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of European Union foreign policy making. His main conclusions are that the the Union policy making machinery needs to be considerably strengthened to face up to the increased challenges of today. The reliance on a consensus in foreign policy making will no longer suffice and that more majority voting will become essential. Moreover policy making will increasingly need to rely on principle which will be the best way to arrive at a common approach given the divided nature of the interests and historical backgrounds of the member states of the Union. Finally while soft power and engagement have constituted the main thrust of European policy, this will no longer suffice in a world in which we are seeing the emergence of powerful autocracies and military threats.This will increase the need for more hard power and the consolidation of European military forces which will strengthen our military alliances.

Before he runs out of time, Irish bon vivant Malachy McCourt shares his views on death - sometimes hilarious and often poignant - and on what will or won't happen after his last breath is drawn. During the course of his life, Malachy McCourt practically invented the single's bar; was a pioneer in talk radio, a soap opera star, a best-selling author; a gold smuggler, a political activist, and a candidate for governor of the state of New York. It seems that the only two things he hasn't done are stick his head into a lion's mouth and die. Since he is allergic to cats, he decided to write about the great hereafter and answer the question on most minds: What's so great about it anyhow? In Death Need Not Be Fatal, McCourt also trains a sober eye on the tragedies that have shaped his life: the deaths of his sister and twin brothers; the real story behind Angela's famous ashes; and a poignant account of the death of the man who left his mother, brothers, and him to nearly die in squalor. McCourt writes with deep emotion of the staggering losses of all three of his brothers, Frank, Mike, and Alphie. In his inimitable way, McCourt takes the grim reaper by the lapels and shakes the truth out of him. As he rides the final blocks on his Rascal scooter, he looks too at the prospect of his own demise with emotional clarity and insight. In this beautifully rendered memoir, McCourt shows us how to live life to its fullest, how to grow old without acting old, and how to die without regret.

In his book, DEATH NEED NOT BE FATAL, McCourt explores the role death has played and continues to play in his life and in the world. From the dead babies and starving children in the Limerick of his childhood, to Angela's famous ashes, to the deaths of McCourt's brothers Frank and Mike - and McCourt's own impending demise - the Grim Reaper has been a constant companion and reminder of what is important, and what's not.McCourt writes that, as he draws closer to death, his perception of death has become crystal clear. When it occurs, he does not plan to pass away, pass on, or cross over. He's not going to make the supreme sacrifice or come to an untidy end; he is not going to be laid to rest, meet his maker, or go to his eternal reward. He is not going to breath his last, bite the dust, kick the bucket, or buy the farm; he's not going to turn up his toes, join the silent majority, become a landowner, take a dirt nap, push up daisies, play a harp, take a taxi, give up his ghost, feed the worms, enter the sweet hereafter, or shuffle off the mortal coil. He plans to die.

Pro SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services opens the door to delivering customizable, web-enabled reports across your business at reasonable cost. Reporting Services is Microsoft’s enterprise-level reporting platform. It is included with many editions of SQL Server, and is something you’ll want to take advantage of if you’re running SQL Server as your database engine. Reporting Services provides a full set of tools with which to create and deploy reports. Create interactive reports for business users. Define reporting models from which business users can generate their own ad hoc reports. Pull data from relational databases, from XML, and from other sources. Present that data to users in tabular and graphical forms, and more. Reporting Services experts Brian McDonald, Rodney Landrum, and Shawn McGehee show how to do all this and much more in this third edition of their longstanding book on the topic. Provides best practices for using Reporting Services Covers the very latest in new features for SQL Server 2012 Your key to delivering business intelligence across the enterprise

Decades before the Krays, London was plagued by gang warfare as vicious and terrifying as anything that was to come. Territorial tribes fought pitched battles for honour and pride. This first ever history of these intriguing street mobs traces them from Jonathan Wild, the original gang leader and archetype for Dicken's Fagin, to sprawling super-mobs like the Titanic from east London and the infamous Elephant and Castle Gang. 'Gangs of London' is a riveting journey through the violent underbelly of one of the world's great cities.

The affluent suburb of Cheshire, Connecticut, seemed like the perfect place for Dr. William Petit and his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, to raise their two lovely daughters... Until July 23, 2007, when, according to police, two ex-cons invaded the Petit home hoping to embark on a routine robbery-one that would ultimately prove deadly. What unfolded at 300 Sorghum Mill Drive was a tragic and horrifying sequence of events that shocked a community and made headlines across the nation. Before the morning was over, Mrs. Hawke-Petit and one of her daughters would be sexually assaulted, the entire house would go up in flames, and only Dr. Petit-his head bloodied, his legs bound-would manage to escape with his life. With the help of neighbors and local police, the two suspects were soon found and captured. Now, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes await trial for murder IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.

Elizabeth Lochtefeld was a glowing, charismatic and driven woman who'd built a million-dollar fortune in Manhattan before settling into a new life in one of America's most elite resort communities. She'd planned to dedicate the rest of her life to charity-and to marry and finally start a family of her own. When Lochtefeld met thrity-seven year-old Tim Toolan-- a tall, strapping, handsome, and Columbia graduate and Wall Street ace who'd made it to Vice President at Smith Barney-she thought she'd found Mr. Right. She told friends she was in love. She hinted at marriage. But soon she saw past the Golden Boy facade, finding a deeply troubled man with a history of erratic bahavior -- a man given to violent mood swings who'd been fired from his position at Smith Barney after trying to steal an $80,000 Roman bust from a Park Avenue antiques show. Two days after she ended the affair, she lay dead on the floor of her Nantucket cottage.This is the story of love gone terribly wrong.