Most Popular Books by Michael Allen

Orchestra Classroom Methods - High School

(Essential Elements). The world's leading strings method just got an update! Essential Elements for Strings offers beginning students sound pedagogy and engaging music, all carefully paced to successfully start young players on their musical journey. EE features both familiar songs and specially designed exercises, created and arranged for the classroom in a unison-learning environment, as well as instrument-specific exercises to focus each student on the unique characteristics of their own instrument. EE provides both teachers and students with a wealth of materials to develop total musicianship, even at the beginning stages. Essential Elements includes free access Essential Elements Interactive (EEi), the ultimate online music education resource. EEi introduces the first-ever, easy set of technology tools for online teaching, learning, assessment, and communication... ideal for teaching today's beginning band and string students, both in the classroom and at home. These new editions include 150+ professionally recorded videos online featuring Essential Elements educators, 50 new copyrighted pop songs available online across all levels, three new song replacements, new color photography, and much more. Best of all, new editions still work side-by-side with previous copies of Essential Elements. Please note: this edition includes piano accompaniments for the songs in the student books. It does not include bonus songs, videos, or online access.

This is a book which will tell you all you need to know about literary agents.A literary agent is someone who represents a writer in negotiating with publishers, film producers, and indeed anyone who wants to make any sort of deal with that writer.The theory is that the agent, who spends all his life negotiating deals, and knows the business inside out, will get a much better result than would the poor ignorant writer if she tried to negotiate on her own behalf. Hence the writer will, in the long run, earn a lot more money through an agent. That's the theory. But is it true in practice? And in today's digital marketplace, where self-publishing costs you nothing, does a writer really need an agent at all?Michael Allen's first novel was published over fifty years ago (1963). He is the author of numerous other novels and short stories (some written under pen-names) which have variously been published in hardback, paperback, and ebook editions, in the UK, USA, France and Denmark. He has also run two small publishing companies.

A novel can make you famous and perhaps even rich. But it has to be the right kind of novel.It has to be a novel that WORKS. And in this book Michael Allen will show you how to write one. A novel that works is one that your target reader will pick up with a sense of anticipation, become interested in within a page or two, and will continue to read till the end ('I could hardly put it down'). At the end, your reader will feel a deep sense of satisfaction. This feeling - ideallyit's a powerful emotion - will be so strong, in fact, that the reader will immediately go online to see what else you have to offer. Not only that, but the reader will tell all her friends what a terrific book she's just read That's what a novel that works is. It may not be an international smash hit, but it will appeal to readers of a particular genre, and it will leave them wanting more.Building on the ideas of great fiction theorists from the past, Michael Allen adds his own fifty years of experience as a writer and publisher to provide a proven technique for success.

Reformed Catholicity: Renewal through Retrieval serves as a manifesto for a catholic and Reformed approach to Christian dogmatics that self-consciously seeks theological renewal through catholic retrieval. This ethos permeates scriptural exegesis and dogmatic reasoning, and this book locates that approach methodologically vis a vis a number of similar projects in the last two generations of biblical, historical, and theological scholarship: the nouvelle théologie's emphasis on ressourcement, the focus upon reception history in the guilds of biblical scholarship and the history of Christianity, Daniel Williams's evangelical ressourcement of "the great Tradition", the Radical Orthodoxy movement, Donald Bloesch's emphasis on consensual Christianity within the world of mainline American theology, Thomas Oden's approach to paleo-orthodoxy and its role in the proliferation of publications regarding ancient and classical resources fortoday's church, the recently publicized movement known as Ressourcement Thomism, etc. This book offers a sketch of a manifesto for doing theology in the catholic conversation and argues that Reformed distinctives take us deeper into the catholic tradition rather than away from it.

The countdown begins... One young girl, alone, holds the fate of the West in her hands. In July, 1980, Sally Denning faced impossible odds in the Olympic women's judo finals in Moscow, with a host country not averse to bribing judges or drugging finalists in order to ensure victory for their own athletes. Devastated by a loss that by all rights should have been a win, and the gold medal, Sally abandons judo -- and the terribly handsome, married coach with whom she is in love -- for a new life far away from international competition and intrigue.Four years later, her past comes crashing into her present. Working for Special Branch at Scotland Yard, Sally discovers that by a remarkable coincidence, her former coach -- now a widower -- works in the same building. But their budding romance is threatened by a terrorist threat that no one but Sally believes is real... Alone in her frantic mission to stop a crime that will rock the world, Sally races across England to stop an audacious attempt to shift the balance of power in the Western world by assassinating the president of the United States and the British prime minister. She knows who it is she hunts but stopping them is a matter of reaching them before the clock reaches zero. And as the seconds tick away, on a hill above a small English church, a hand is poised over a switch that will blow the best hopes of the free world sky-high... Praise for Michael Allen 'A well-crafted, gripping thriller' - Thomas Waugh'Entertainment in the traditional style' - Kirkus Reviews Michael Allen is a well-known author of crime fiction and thrillers and he is best known for his series of whodunits featuring Detective Superintendent Spence, including Spence in Petal Park and Spence at the Blue Bazaar.

Superintendent Spence investigates the murder of a playboy.

Lady Dinnister of Marlby Manor may be elderly, but there's lot of life in her yet... Her heirs try to convince her to sell her vast estate and give them their inheritance early, to save on taxes of course. But Lady Dinnister can't bear to give up her home and turns them down flat. That's when the "accidents" start... When a barbed bouquet of red roses pierces her palm, she attributes this to poor presentation on the florist's part. When the front wheel falls off her Rolls-Royce, she believes it to be a mechanical mishap. But when her hairdryer turned into a lethal weapon, Lady Dinnister finally decides someone is trying to kill her... Only she wasn't the one who ended up dead. Was it the buxom cook who moonlighted as a nude model? The dashing chauffeur who was driven by ambition? The spoilt grandchildren? Detective Ben Spence, assisted by his able partner, Inspector Laurel, thinks it is much more likely to be one of the greedy relatives. Someone has carried out an ingenious crime. But if the killer is so clever, why is the wrong victim mouldering in their grave? Spence at Marlby Manor is a suspenseful murder mystery that casts suspicion on everyone and everything. Michael Allen was born in Peterborough in 1939 and was educated at Oundle and Queens' College, Cambridge. Between leaving school and going to Cambridge, he worked for six months on the staff of the New York Herald Tribune in New York. He now works as an Area Administrator at the University of Bath, and lives with his wife and two children at Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire.

If you want to sell more fiction, you need to make your reader feel more emotion. And here's a book that tells you how to do it.Emotion is what holds the reader to the page('I couldn't put the book down'), and it's the emotion conveyed by the final few pages that prompts a reader to go looking for anything else that you've written. Such readers will also recommend a book to their friends. Beginning with a survey of what science can tell us about emotion, Michael Allen goes on to provide a working theory of emotion that writers can use to improve their skills. He then offers a comprehensive catalogue of emotions which will prove valuable to any writer. In short, this is a straightforward and practical guide to making your fiction more effective and popular.Michael Allen can draw on over fifty years of experience as a writer and publisher. He is the author of numerous novels and short stories (some written under pen-names), which have variously been published in hardback, paperback, and ebook editions, in the UK, USA, France and Denmark.

Viewpoint, in fiction, is the point of view from which a story is told. As such, it is one of the most important weapons in a writer's armoury. Does the author tell the story as if she were a god, looking down on all the characters and seeing their innermost thoughts? Or is the narrator one of the major characters in the story? Or even a minor character?The way in which a writer handles the point of view is what sorts out the professionals from the amateurs. It has an amazingly powerful influence over the extent to which you can grab, and hold, your reader's attention - which is why the subtitle of this book is How to tell your story in the most effective way. Michael Allen's first novel was published in 1963. He is the author of numerous other novels and short stories (some written under pen-names) which have variously been published in hardback, paperback, and ebook editions, in the UK, USA, France and Denmark. He has also had work successfully produced on stage, television, and radio. He is a former director of two publishing companies.

A writer's style is one of the three key factors in writing successful fiction. A distinctive and effective style of writing can be a valuable asset in making your fiction more memorable.The aims of this book are therefore to enable a writer to identify the strengths and weaknesses of her present writing style; to suggest ways in which that style might be improved; and to show how style can be used to reveal character and thus heighten emotion.A Writer's Guide to Style is one of Michael Allen's series of seven practical, down-to-earth guides for writers. This one will be most relevant to those who write fiction, whether short stories or novels, but non-fiction writers will also find it useful.Michael Allen's first novel was published over fifty years ago (1963). He is the author of numerous other novels and short stories (some written under pen-names) which have variously been published in hardback, paperback, and ebook editions, in the UK, USA, France and Denmark. He is also the author of about a dozen non-fiction books.