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Amazing Grace Adams
Written by Fran Littlewood
Grace Adams, like many women her age, is one day stuck in traffic. Driving to pick up a cake for her daughter’s sixteenth birthday is different today. As Grace Adams has had enough.
Composed and calm, with deliberation, and without any fuss, she simply leaves her car, and walks away from her own life. As she walks away from the past, she aims to get closer to her own reality.
Her real life? Well, she lives with a child (her daughter) who refuses to acknowledge her mother, by refusing and barring her from the party. Her husband is in the process of a divorce, upset at her too. Grace Adams is getting closer to the nucleus of what has blown her family apart, and with those ties also her domestic bliss, and entire life.
So what could be the most important list this year? It could be your choice in books.
As we start a New Year, they’re many great books to look forward to this year. This January Penguin recommends you buy a copy of Amazing Grace Adams, written by Fran Littlewood. The story begins, with the main character Grace Adams, taking a leap of faith, as she teeters closer to her real life. The one she has missed. As she abandons her car one day, she runs away from her avoidance, of her own life, however messy it may be.
Or perhaps you need some good grounding, and advice on how to change careers? Then you must read ‘The Career Change Guide’ by Rachel Schofield. An ex-BBC News-reader, journalist and now Author, Rachel Schofield has some great perspective on how to change your career. The Debut Author, gives great clarity and urges you to take part in some exercises, that if listened to and observed properly can always give you some insight, along the way, especially when used to highlight what is current in your chosen career change. Always, a great way of finding out things, and comparing and contrasting.
As the New Year begins, what better way to start, than reading some practical advice from Author, Journalist and ex-BBC News-reader Rachel Schofield. Pragmatically, she looks into areas of self-development, and gives candid advice on how to nail career changes, keeping in mind, that the career ladder too, changes dramatically.
The Career Change Guide by Rachel Schofield
Careers are important, and in this day and age, so is understanding what you really want from your career. The Career Change Guide by Rachel Schofield helps give your career plans more clarity, and focus on what you need to prioritize. With a practical toolkit, and a 5 step plan to help you find your dream career, the book helps you organize, or re-organize your goals and ambitions with up-to-date advice. Re-designing your career is a must too, according to The Career Change Guide, with the right tools to help. The book urges you to look at your greatest strengths and skills, which can in turn help you to understand and pinpoint what motivates you, and where your standards lie, especially in terms of your production.
The practicalities of the book, are in the excercises, which if listened to, can increase self-awareness and give you more and more confidence along the way. The advice also can help you to look at, identify and tackle the day to day challenges you will inevitably face with a career change. The book, helps you look at things more pragmatically, leaving emotional confusion behind, and introducing you to a clearer picture of what you want to achieve in terms of your career aspirations.
‘The Career Change Guide will help you make those dreams reality. Rachel Schofield is a journalist, former news presenter and qualified personal development and career coach. She worked for the BBC for over twenty years including reporting for Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ and presenting BBC News, adapting her work to fit around her family life before making her own career pivot into coaching. She lives in London with her family. The Career Change Guide is her first book’.
Author: Rachel Schofield
Biography
At the age of forty something, Rachel Schofield was a well known BBC Newsreader. Born in 1976, Rachel Schofield was born in Winchester, Hampshire. She was a trusted Journalist and Newsreader, who, after leaving St Margarets School in Exeter, moved to Durham University, studied Modern European Languages and started her career working for Purple FM. She then decided to apply for a Broadcast Journalism course at The London College of Printing, The University of the Arts, London which led to a career in the BBC. By 1999, Rachel Schofield was working at BBC Radio Newscastle, and then later on Look North. Her career highlights include BBC Radio Newcastle and BBC Radio 4. Later on, Rachel Schofield married fellow BBC Radio and now TV Presenter Jeremy Vine, who shot to fame, with a well known BBC Radio show, which created ripples everywhere, leading to presenting an early morning debate show on Channel 5, The Jeremy Vine Show. By 2002, Rachel Schofield married Jeremy Vine in Devon, South of England.
As soon as the book arrives within your possession, whether you’re studying it at School, or owning a copy in another way, everybody knows, that a very special experience lies ahead. Romeo and Juliet is one of the world’s most famous stories, and is at the top of the hierachy of books and stories, sharing the top spot with fairy tales like Cinderella, or even modern bestsellers such as Harry Potter.
Reading the greatest Shakespearean play is one of the most important days of everyone’s life, it’s a book or play that brings everyone to the same subject area: tragic love, romance, drama, and death. The play, which is sometimes, classed as a Tragedy, ends in a devastating way, as ‘two star-crossed lovers take their life’. So, experience tells us that any tragedy is not a love story, so why is the most famous Shakespearean play classed as a love story?
Well, both lovers are undeterred by their warring families, who are keen to keep both apart. They seem to feel that love conquers all, and maybe their stance, on this subject, turns the tragedy itself, into a great love story. Fear takes second stage to love, which liberates both lovers, even from fearing death, as both ultimately take their own lives. In this, it creates a world of possibilities, within our own minds eye, and invites us to think of the tragedy, as a love story too, despite it’s heartbreaking end.
So why is the play classed by so many across the world, as the greatest or best love story in the world, or the best story? Well, first of all, it probably would be the care and attention, and detail William Shakespeare puts into his choice of words, and metaphor. Describing Romeo and Juliet as a pair of star-crossed lovers, adds atmosphere, and drama to the play, and a sense of fate, making things unforgettable, and leaving readers and audiences entranced and starry eyed.
The two lead characters, and protagonists of the play, leave their lives to other people, almost like giving in to their wants, and in essence losing out themselves, in order to please others. This isn’t good, and is not love, but tragedy.
The two lovers, have a great synastry, and awe inspiring love, that reaches the heavens. As their love develops within the play, it coincides with audience and reader anticipation, and also increases with their age, as both are young lovers, and go through teenage life, to death, with the reader.
Best part?: Romeo, Romeo, where four art thou Romeo?
Debut Author, Sunshine Mirza has released a great book. Finally, someone thought of the correct way to present Cinderella, in the form of a paperback book. With a light blue front cover, and two golden fairies sprinkling ‘fairy dust’, the book is everything a girl could dream of. Swarovski crystals, fairy dust, scented golden pumpkins, and pink clouds, it is simply ‘heaven sent’. ‘When I began writing the book, it needed to be a different Cinderella, with a modern outlook, but more importantly, it needed to have style and fashion’. Every girl loves a fairy, dreams to come true, and to meet the man of their dreams, and my book encapsulates all of this.
Midnight, beautiful shoes, and fancy dresses, was just one of the reasons why she wrote the book, she laughed. The Author, claimed she was born in a different era, one where mirrored brushes and fairy tales, went hand in hand.
So is there anything in your book, that would set it apart from other books? She replied that it was ‘good fun’, and incorporated many themes. Midnight, beautiful shoes, and fancy dresses, was just one of the reasons why she wrote the book, she laughed. The Author, claimed she was born in a different era, one where mirrored brushes and fairy tales, went hand in hand. ‘When I was young, you couldn’t find a hairbrush without an ornate mirror attached to the back, always in silver. There’s something about silver mirrors, which I had to include in my version of Cinderella, and when I gave the fairies pictured on the front cover, some golden fairy dust, I knew it would be a book to adore’. My version of Cinderella, looks at the ugly that surrounds us all. What is ugliness anyway? Is it your evil heart, a perspective, or how you look? Many people think a big nose is just ugly, other’s are bothered about being cock-eyed as something ugly. You just can’t say. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In my adaptation, Cinderella has been forced to grow her nose so she looks ugly, by the evil stepmother. She gives her something to eat, which grows her nose long, although this is very subtle in the book, and you just have to work it out. The evil stepmother knew that she may be able to attend the Grand Ball underneath the Stars, and so promptly put a spell on Cinderella. BY the time of the ball, she looked like a wicked witch. In the book, the fairy godmother pushes her nose back with some fairy dust, and Cinderella is saved for the night. It brings up some important truth’s about modern slavery too, and old-fashioned families, and homes. This does all still exist too.
The book, is essentially a fairy tale, but also a great love story. Many people forget that, it’s probably the most well-known love story on the planet, and every girl has a man of her dreams. Meeting at a midnight ball, is a beautiful love story in itself.
Sunshine Mirza’s version Cinderella is available on Amazon Prime, priced at £6.99. She has kindly designed a front cover design for Penguin, and World Book Day 2023, and other artwork found on this website.
If dreams came true! Maybe Penguin could give me a book deal?
Author Sunshine Mirza changes her pen name, and designs a front cover if she were lucky enough to get a book deal from Penguin, featuring a Penguin sitting on ice in the Antarctic, with giant snowflakes. You can read the first few chapters of Sunshine Mirza’s Debut title on Amazon Kindle, or scroll down to the end of this page to read the whole book.
As the Chinese celebrate The Year of the Rabbit, the importance of Astrology, is apparent in many aspects of Chinese culture. As the new lunar year begins on the 21st January 2023, so does a year of looking at things through the eyes of the Chinese astrological animal, known as the rabbit.
Chinese Astrology is very similar to normal Astrology, and has many similar themes, such as including the elements and their influence on each star-sign, like the earth, or water. Penguin selects some of the best books on offer, giving you the best guide to Astrology.
