Tyler James

A moving, intimate look at the life of Amy Winehouse by her best friend Tyler James. From a childhood at stage school to her untimely death at just twenty-seven years old, My Amy is a beautiful and devastating portrait of a supremely talented but troubled young star.

Walking through the perilous pitfalls and undulating emotions of your twenties: love, unlove, loss, grief, anxiety and depression, intoxication and sobriety, feeling alone with no purpose to feeling loved and full of passion- all in poetry format. Follow through the emotional ebbs and flows of a summer spent writing through poetry and prose by Tyler James.

When the Cleansing comes, nightmares feel like paradise. With secrets stirring in her that could destroy the world, all Gulamira wants is to escape the prison colony. But in a split-second decision, she throws away her chance at freedom to rescue an orphan girl from enslavement to a brothel. In doing so, she dooms them both. The Cleansing takes them, a prison ship designed to be hell incarnate. This time, she knows there is no escape. If Gulamira is to save the child and herself, she must grapple with a power and a past she has long forsaken. But there are dark forces at work that want to control the dangerous knowledge she holds. If she doesn't do anything, they will. She has no friends and no weapons. She has only herself. Time will tell if that's enough.

He's in prison for an unforgivable crime. She's here to commit one of her own. Nasna, a feared assassin, sneaks into a prison for her latest job, but from the moment she steps inside, everything goes wrong. She's put in a cell far from her target alongside Tsuran, a deserter everyone despises. With the entire prison against them, the two are forced to trust each other and, in order to survive, they must battle giant beasts that lurk in the darkness, insane prisoners that control shadows, and even Death itself. But above all these, they must face the most frightening thing of all: friendship. As exciting as it is heart-wrenching, Promises to the Damned is a tale about being imprisoned by the traumas of our past and of the friendships that can free us. Filled with moments that will make you cheer and others that will make you cry, it's a can't-put-it-down, must-read adventure from beginning to end that will leave you clamoring for more.

A moving, intimate look at the life of Amy Winehouse by her best friend. The death of icon Amy Winehouse at age just twenty-seven rocked the music world. Through the headlines the world thought they watched a car crash: a girl hell-bent on self-destruction. But the truth is far more complicated. Now, her best friend and constant companion Tyler James wants to tell the real story, because she can't. From their first encounter singing together at stage school, through to their wayward teenage years and Amy's dramatic rise to stardom, Tyler was with her through it all. Living with her right up until her death, he was the only one there by her side, day-after-day. He supported her through her career highs--the massive success of Back to Black and her five Grammy wins--and personal lows--her lifelong struggles with addiction, insecurity, and eating disorders. ​ Written with love, My Amy is a heartbreaking look at friendship and fame and provides an illuminating portrait of the woman behind the music--a unique, uncompromising force-of-nature. This is the definitive story of what really happened to Amy Winehouse.

Written with a searing honesty, My Amy is an evocative portrait of unbreakable lifelong friendship – and a devastating study into fame, addiction and self-sabotage.Only one person knows what really happened to Amy, other than Amy herself. He is Tyler James, Amy’s best friend from the age of thirteen. They met at stage school as two insecure outsiders, formed an instant connection and lived together from their late teenage years right up until the day she died, aged just twenty-seven.Tyler was there by her side through it all. From their carefree early years touring together to the creation of the multiple Grammy-winning Back To Black, which she wrote on their kitchen floor. From her volatile marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil through her escalating addictions, self-harm and eating disorders as the toxic nature of fame warped Amy’s reality. For the last three years of her life, Tyler was with her every day when she’d beaten drugs and was close to beating alcoholism too. He also knew better than anyone the real Amy Winehouse who the tabloid-reading public rarely saw – the hilarious, uncompromising force-of-nature busy taking care of everyone else.We all think we know what happened to Amy Winehouse, but we don’t. This definitive insider’s story tells us all, finally, the truth.'Heartbreaking' – The Times

Following on from James Tyler's The Early Guitar: A History and Handbook(OUP 1980) tthis collaboration with Paul Sparks (their previous book for OUP, The Early Mandolin, appeared in 1989), presents new ideas and research on the history and development of the guitar and its music from the Renaissance to the dawn of the Classical era. Tyler's systematic study of the two main guitar types found between about 1550 and 1750 focuses principally on what the sources of the music (published and manuscript) and the writings of contemporary theorists reveal about the nature of the instruments and their roles in the music making of the period. The annotated lists of primary sources, previously published in The Early Guitar but now revised and expanded, constitute the most comprehensive bibliography of Baroque guitar music to date. His appendices of performance practice information should also prove indispensable to performers and scholars alike. Paul Sparks also breaks new ground, offering an extensive study of a period in the guitar's history—notably c.1759-c.1800—which the standard histories usually dismiss in a few short paragraphs. Far from being a dormant instrument at this time, the guitar is shown to have been central to music-making in France, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and South America. Sparks provides a wealth of information about players, composers, instruments, and surviving compositions from this neglected but important period, and he examines how the five-course guitar gradually gave way to the six-string instrument, a process that occurred in very different ways (and at different times) in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Britain.

More than twenty years ago James Tyler wrote a modest introduction to the history, repertory, and playing techniques of the four- and five-course guitar. Entitled The Early Guitar: A History and Handbook (OUP 1980), this work proved valuable and enlightening not only to performers and scholars of Renaissance and Baroque guitar and lute music but also to classical guitarists. This new book, written in collaboration with Paul Sparks (their previous book for OUP, The Early Mandolin, appeared in 1989), presents new ideas and research on the history and development of the guitar and its music from the Renaissance to the dawn of the Classical era. Tyler's systematic study of the two main guitar types found between about 1550 and 1750 focuses principally on what the sources of the music (published and manuscript) and the writings of contemporary theorists reveal about the nature of the instruments and their roles in the music making of the period. The annotated lists of primary sources, previously published in The Early Guitar but now revised and expanded, constitute the most comprehensive bibliography of Baroque guitar music to date. His appendices of performance practice information should also prove indispensable to performers and scholars alike. Paul Sparks also breaks new ground, offering an extensive study of a period in the guitar's history—notably c.1759-c.1800—which the standard histories usually dismiss in a few short paragraphs. Far from being a dormant instrument at this time, the guitar is shown to have been central to music-making in France, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and South America. Sparks provides a wealth of information about players, composers, instruments, and surviving compositions from this neglected but important period, and he examines how the five-course guitar gradually gave way to the six-string instrument, a process that occurred in very different ways (and at different times) in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Britain.

This study identifies and describes the two early types of mandolin and presents the full extent of their repertoires, including works by Handel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Hummel, Beethoven and Sammartini, whose recently-discovered sonata is published here for the first time.