New Releases by Paul Collins

You have probably felt it. Life speeding up while your plans slow down or stall. Doing the work, putting in the time — but with the nagging sense that you might be focused on the wrong things for where you actually are right now. It is not a you problem. It is a missing-map problem. Most people move through life without a clear picture of what this particular stretch is actually asking of them. Not life in general. This stretch. The young professional trying to figure out what to build first. The new parent recalibrating everything they thought they knew about their time and priorities. The person at midlife who has built something solid — and is now asking whether it is the right thing. The older adult looking back at what they have made and deciding what they want it to mean. You do not fall behind because you stopped trying. You fall behind because no one gave you a map. Life Journey: From Apprenticeship to Mastery and Beyond is that map. Where Are You Right Now? This book is organized around four seasons of life — natural stages, or phases of the craft of life, that most people recognize the moment they are named, because they are already living them. Apprenticeship — Starting Out. You are building the foundation: learning who you are, what you can do, and what kind of life you want to construct. This is where core skills, habits, and values take root. Journeywork — Building Your Life. Career, relationships, finances, family — the real weight of life lands here. This is where you put everything you learned to work and build something that lasts. Masterworks — Doing Your Best Work. You know what you are good at. Now the question is how to direct that strength toward the contribution you are most capable of making. Mentorship — Passing It On. The focus shifts from building to sharing. The richest work of this season is ensuring that what you have learned and created outlives the effort it took to create it. What You Will Walk Away With Skill grows into confidence. Confidence grows into contribution. Contribution grows into something that lasts. That is what this framework gives you. Working through Life Journey, you will: Know exactly where you are right now — and what to focus on, what to set aside, and what this season is asking you to build See what is still available from earlier seasons and how to address it on your own terms Replace scattered self-improvement with a clear, season-specific path Understand how what you already carry grows into the contribution and legacy you are capable of leaving Part of the Life Craft Collection Life Journey is Volume II in the Life Craft Collection by Charles Collins. Life Curriculum (Vol. I) is your personal body of knowledge and skill. Life Journey (Vol. II) is where you are in life and what this season is asking of you. The next question is the one Life Masterpiece (Vol. III, Autumn 2026) answers: what standard are you holding your work to, and what do you want it to produce? Start anywhere. Each book works on its own. Visit the Life Craft link at the top of this page for the complete picture. Who This Book Is For Anyone at a turning point — starting out, raising a family, changing direction, approaching retirement, or asking what comes next People who want a practical guide, not another round of motivation Anyone who suspects they are focused on the wrong things for where they are right now Readers who want something they can return to as life changes Anyone ready to be more intentional about the life they are building Life Journey helps you see what you are building — and shows you how to build it well.

5 Stars * * * * * "...characters leap off the pages. I cared about them...their triumphs and sorrows."—Lucinda E. Clarke, award winning, best-selling author 5 Stars * * * * * "Collins demonstrates remarkable skill in bringing historical America to vivid life through meticulous attention to detail and rich, evocative prose." —K.C. Finn, Amazon and USA Today best-selling author 4 Stars * * * * "If we only knew how much our grandchildren would treasure such a thing, we would all do this." —Susie Helme, The Genizah Codex This gripping fact-based fictional account, composed of three personal journals written as if by Collins'' ancestors nearly two hundred years ago, contains their intimate, emotional stories, firsthand experiences, and traditions of old-world craftsmanship in a world being overtaken by technology. Based on the legacies of two Boston Irish and Italian families, it is a perfect story for fans of historical Irish fiction by authors like Jean Grainger, Andrew Wareham, and Daisy O''Shea, fans of historical Italian fiction by Daniela Sacerdoti and Kate Quinn, and fans of historical biographical fiction and family sagas by writers like Mark Sullivan and Marie Benedict. Forgotten by Time, Rediscovered by Fate "A century after her birth, Jessie (Ambrosini) Collins is laid to rest beside her husband, Joseph Cornelius Collins, in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Milford, Massachusetts. Weeks later, while settling her estate, her children and grandchildren discover an old hope chest filled with the artifacts and memories of her life. Among the curiosities and treasures is a tied bundle containing three handwritten journals, previously unknown to the family. In time, they would come to realize that what they held in their hands was the family legacy—pictures of life passed down by those who lived before—of how it was with them in their time." The Odyssey of Cornelius Collins It is 1845 the first year of the Great Famine in Ireland when fourteen-year-old Cornelius Collins begins a harrowing seven-year struggle for survival. At twenty, he escapes to Liverpool, England, securing a one-way third-class passage aboard a "coffin ship" bound for America. Against all odds, he survives the forty-one-day Atlantic crossing on the packet ship Clara Wheeler, landing in Boston, Massachusetts. There, he is processed and released into the streets alone to face the "land sharks" eager to take what little he possesses, including his life. Fate intervenes, and an Irish American welfare society helps him find work as a bootmaker in the town of Milford. Determined, Cornelius vows to save every penny and send it back to Ireland to support his family. Of Leather & Stone As the decades pass, a highly prized pink granite is discovered in Milford triggering a "granite rush" attracting skilled stonecutters from around the world, including Giuseppe Ambrosini, a master stonecutter from Lombardy, Italy, a region renowned for its stone craftsmen. He comes to America seeking his fortune in the pink granite quarries of Milford. Generations of their two families live through the most radical shift in industrial technology in the history of civilization, the disastrous effects of the American Civil War, widespread labor upheavals, the total collapse of the American economy, and the Irish Rebellion. These events profoundly affect them and their American-born children, who unite their two families in marriage at the height of the Roaring Twenties and in the aftermath of ‘the war to end all wars.’ The Remembering There will be no great fortunes or inheritance, no monumental works of art or science left for future generations. Instead, there will be profound life lessons learned from a lifetime of cutting and shaping leather and stone in Milford’s workshops and quarries. "Theirs is the common fate of common people: living their lives without fanfare, known only to those who worked with them and those who loved them, then forgotten by time—until one day, when they are remembered, and their names are spoken again by the living in THE REMEMBERING."

The Sumerians are widely believed to have created the world’s earliest civilization on the fertile floodplains of southern Iraq from about 3500 to 2000 BCE. They have been credited with the invention of nothing less than cities, writing, and the wheel, and therefore hold an ancient mirror to our own urban, literate world. But is this picture correct? Paul Collins reveals how the idea of a Sumerian people was assembled from the archaeological and textual evidence uncovered in Iraq and Syria over the last one hundred fifty years. Reconstructed through the biases of those who unearthed them, the Sumerians were never simply lost and found, but reinvented a number of times, both in antiquity and in the more recent past.

James Gong is training for his black belt in taekwondo. One night a camera crew turns up at training for an episode of My Life. James is sparring a white belt who gets carried away and hammers James'' foot. Sparks fly in James'' brain and he gasps – all caught on national TV. James responds with a jumping spinning sidekick which obliterates his opponent. This is the beginning of James'' woes at the club, for he has disgraced Mr Cho, the head instructor. Hollywood Productions just loves James'' jumping , spinning sidekick. They decide to star him in their small budget flick, Big Action in Little Town. Unbeknown to James, Hollywood Productions is a scam company that basically produces B grade ‘loser’ movies to offset huge tax bills. Meanwhile James, who lusts after his sister Caitlin’s best friend, Amber, thinks his sudden film career will curry favour. Not so. If anything, Amber shuns him even more. Determined to win the love of his life, James tries to learn how to skate, because he knows that Amber fancies a local skater named Spiros. He only succeeds in showing himself up, but James is pathetically immune to the irony and subtleties of life. He figures that all is well with the world and that he’s making vast progress. To Hollywood Productions’ great horror the flick is so bad that it’s good. People have queued at the premiere and national TV stations have got wind of the huge success of this little budget movie. Big Action in Little Town is going to be a blockbuster!

Tehran was well known to American businessman Jack Devlin until the day everything changed. When radical Islamic students stormed the US embassy on November 4, 1979, Jack narrowly escaped the revolutionary chaos, leaving behind 80 percent of his business and 100 percent of his heart. To get his beautiful girlfriend, Farideh, out of Iran, Jack accepts a devil’s bargain with the CIA and MI6. He must slip back into Tehran, where the militant students are holding dozens of Americans hostage in their own embassy. His part of the bargain is to steal the coveted client ledger of the world’s most powerful arms dealer, Mustafa Khaki, Farideh’s father. Surprised by an additional assignment, Jack is also ordered to strip a KGB defector of details on Russian collusion with Iran and their plan to eliminate the American hostages while infiltrating the highest levels of Ayatollah Khomeini’s government. From the damp cellars of KGB headquarters to the cold chill of British espionage to the blistering heat of the Kuwaiti desert, readers will learn, in an erroneous twist, that not all the turncoats are Russians.

“Well-researched and beautifully written.…Collins knows how to build suspense.” —San Francisco Chronicle On November 23rd of 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city’s richest men simply vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston’s West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor, and leads put the elusive Dr. Parkman at sea or hiding in Manhattan. But one Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never left the Medical School building alive. His shocking discoveries in a chemistry professor’s laboratory engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbery, and dismemberment, it became a landmark case in the use of medical forensics and the meaning of reasonable doubt. Paul Collins brings nineteenth-century Boston back to life in vivid detail, weaving together newspaper accounts, letters, journals, court transcripts, and memoirs from this groundbreaking case. Rich in characters and evocative in atmosphere, Blood & Ivy explores the fatal entanglement of new science and old money in one of America’s greatest murder mysteries.

The concept of stylus phantasticus (or ?fantastic style?) as it was expressed in free keyboard music of the north German Baroque forms the focus of this book. Exploring both the theoretical background to the style and its application by composers and performers, Paul Collins surveys the development of Athanasius Kircher?s original concept and its influence on music theorists such as Brossard, Janovka, Mattheson, and Walther. Turning specifically to fantasist composers of keyboard works, the book examines the keyboard toccatas of Merulo, Fresobaldi, Rossi and Froberger and their influence on north German organists Tunder, Weckmann, Reincken, Buxtehude, Bruhns, Lubeck, Bohm, and Leyding. The free keyboard music of this distinguished group highlights the intriguing relationship at this time between composition and performance, the concept of fantasy, and the understanding of originality and individuality in seventeenth-century culture.

A haunted house, trouble at the zoo, a girl who gets zapped into a computer game, homework-stealing aliens, a pirate war, the loudest kid alive, a princess under a magic spell, racing snails, a family of monsters and much, much more in this collection of seven-minute stories.

Calbaras has knowledge that the dragons of Dracondas desperately want. As payment, they are willing to grant him his wish to become the greatest warlock of all time. But can Calbaras handle this power? Or will it ultimately destroy him?

"Hearteningly strange . . . Collins exhumes little-known figures [and] recounts their perversely inspiring battles against the more logical ways of the world." — The Onion Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck—or perhaps some combination of them all—leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity. Collins brings them back to glorious life. John Banvard was an artist whose colossal panoramic canvasses (one behemoth depiction of the entire eastern shore of the Mississippi River was simply known as "The Three Mile Painting") made him the richest and most famous artist of his day . . . before he decided to go head to head with P. T. Barnum. René Blondot was a distinguished French physicist whose celebrated discovery of a new form of radiation, called the N-Ray, went terribly awry. At the tender age of seventeen, William Henry Ireland signed "William Shakespeare" to a book and launched a short but meteoric career as a forger of undiscovered works by the Bard—until he pushed his luck too far. Collins'' love for what he calls the "forgotten ephemera of genius" give his portraits of these figures and the other ten men and women in Banvard''s Folly sympathetic depth and poignant relevance. Their effect is not to make us sneer or revel in schadenfreude; here are no cautionary tales. Rather, here are brief introductions—acts of excavation and reclamation—to people whom history may have forgotten, but whom now we cannot.

The remarkable true story of a turn-of-the-19th century murder and the trial that ensued—a showdown in which iconic political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr joined forces to make sure justice was served—from bestselling author of the Edgar finalist, Murder of the Century. In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic. Waging a fierce battle for its uncertain future were two political parties: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached, their animosity reached a crescendo. But everything changed when a young Quaker woman, Elma Sands, was found dead in Burr''s newly constructed Manhattan Well. The horrific crime quickly gripped the nation, and before long accusations settled on one of Elma’s suitors: a handsome young carpenter named Levi Weeks. As the enraged city demanded a noose be draped around his neck, Week''s only hope was to hire a legal dream team. And thus it was that New York’s most bitter political rivals and greatest attorneys did the unthinkable—they teamed up. Our nation’s longest running cold case, Duel with the Devil delivers the first substantial break in the case in over 200 years. At once an absorbing legal thriller and an expertly crafted portrait of the United States in the time of the Founding Fathers, Duel with the Devil is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.

A view into the tumultuous and creative life of Edgar Allan Poe.

The tenth century dawned in violence and disorder. Charlemagne''s empire was in ruins, most of Spain had been claimed by Moorish invaders, and even the papacy in Rome was embroiled in petty, provincial conflicts. To many historians, it was a prime example of the ignorance and uncertainty of the Dark Ages. Yet according to historian Paul Collins, the story of the tenth century is the story of our culture''s birth, of the emergence of our civilization into the light of day. The Birth of the West tells the story of a transformation from chaos to order, exploring the alien landscape of Europe in transition. It is a fascinating narrative that thoroughly renovates older conceptions of feudalism and what medieval life was actually like. The result is a wholly new vision of how civilization sprang from the unlikeliest of origins, and proof that our tenth-century ancestors are not as remote as we might think.

The “enormously entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) account of a shocking 1897 murder mystery that “artfully re-create[s] the era, the crime, and the newspaper wars it touched off” (The New York Times) AN EDGAR NOMINEE FOR BEST FACT CRIME • “Fascinating . . . won’t disappoint readers in search of a book like Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City.”—The Washington Post On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. The police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era’s most perplexing murder mystery. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus, as their rival newspapers the World and the Journal raced to solve the crime. What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial. The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale—a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that forever changed newspaper journalism.

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When the city of Quentaris is uprooted and sent adrift in the uncharted rift-maze, Tab Vidler strives to adjust to the changes that this brings and to help her city deal with an invasion from the enemy city of Tolrush.

Every good exercise program starts with a method by which training principles are based upon. In Kettlebell Conditioning, Coach Collins has developed the 4-Stage BodyBell(R) Training SystemA'' that allows you to learn the basic strength and swing pattern drills before more complex power orientated movement patterns. The unique shape of the ......

The national bestseller, now in paperback.

"Savor this peculiar history of the way Thomas Paine''s ideas--and his corpse--traveled after he died."-People

The Roman Catholic Church has always been concerned with the quality of the music used in the liturgy, and the essays in this volume trace the church''s efforts, during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, to cultivate a more appropriate liturgical music for its Latin Rite. The task of restoration - expressed, for example, in the chant revival associated with the monks of Solesmes, the efforts of the Cecilian movement, and Pius X''s determination to reform sacred music in the universal church - is a recurring theme in the book. Meanwhile resistance, particularly to the reforms decreed by the pope''s 1903 motu proprio, also finds a voice in the volume. The essays collected here describe selected scenes and episodes from the unending story of imperfect human beings trying to express in their music the perfection of God.

Every piece of exercise equipment serves a purpose, but none more so than the dumbbell, commonly referred to as ''free weights'' or ''hand weights. Held in either one hand or as a pair in both hands whilst performing exercises, dumbbells can be used to create a highly effective and successful exercise program. Now, Dumbbell Training offers readers a revolutionary new way to get the most out of any exercise plan using the tried-and-tested 3-Stage Dumbbell Training System.

Approx.312 pagesApprox.312 pages - Fully updated self-assessment section – ideal for current examination practice! - Includes useful ''Learning Objectives'' at the start of each chapter. - Pharmacological and disease management information updated in line with current best practice guidelines. - Includes recent research findings. - Discusses key aspects of patient communication – presented in easy ''Communication'' boxes. - Fully updated to include feedback from hundreds of students!

"Wardragon is the culmination of The Jelindel Chronicles in a soaring saga. Finally Jelindel, with her allies, Zimak and Daretor, has tracked the alien mailshirt across two radically different worlds. But the journey is perilous when each step is lined with flying beasts, metal wasps, mercenaries and assassins . . . and the mailshirt linked up with the evil Preceptor to create a deadly enemy. All Jelindel has is a little magic, Zimak’s wit and Daretor’s sword to scrape through and that is not enough. Collins captures a terrifying, tense world with a touch of humour and holds it to the last shattering battle.” ALLAN BAILLIE

A fractured world, 1600-1550 BC -- The rise of the great powers, 1550-1500 BC -- The birth of empires, 1500-1400 BC -- Power and prestige, 1400-1300 BC -- Empires collide, 1300-1200 BC -- Collapse and transformation, 1200-1100 BC -- The threat of chaos, 1100-1000 BC -- Survival and revival, 1000-900 BC -- Expanding horizons, 900-800 BC -- Stability and change, 800-700 BC -- From Babylon to Egypt, 700-00 BC -- A world united, 600-500 BC

Stanas, brewmaster and stable-keeper, is extending the cellar in the Old Tree Guesthouse. A collapse occurs, Stanas is trapped, injured. Nisha Fairsight comes to his aid with her fire magic. In doing so, a pit is uncovered. This pit has been the hiding place for a mysterious statue of two warriors. Nisha s fire magic washes over the statue and it begins to glow. The next day, an exotic warrior comes from the rift caves and demands the statue. Arna Greentower, the proprietor of the Old Tree, and Nisha, refuse, unconvinced by the warrior s claim. Hot on the heels of this, another exotic warrior descends from the rift caves and claims the statue. These two warriors are implacable enemies and are the figures represented on the statue, although they deny this. The two warriors fight a titanic battle, but they are perfectly matched and cannot defeat each other. They part, swearing vengeance, and they go about recruiting armies in Quentaris to win the day. Their powers of oratory are powerful, and many who hear their harangues fall under their spell, including Nisha and Tal. However, Nisha is swept away by one warrior while Tal follows the other. They are on opposite sides! Nisha finally manages to break the spell that holds her. She then must free Tal, Arna and the recovered Stanas as well as other prominent Quentaran citizens (Rad, Storm, the Archon). Nisha goes back to the statue that started the struggle. It is still glowing, even more so as the warriors battle. Nisha uses her fire magic in reverse to cool the statue. The warriors fade and become ghostly, but Nisha cannot hold the statue in its cooled state. It must leave Quentaris. Nisha suggests it is banished into an inimical rift world.

"When Christopher got his new bike he knew it would take him to all kinds of interesting places. But he never thought hed end up thousands of years in the past, in ancient Egypt. Join the young hero in this historical fiction/fantasy as he finds himself battling a fiendish and deadly plot.Genre: Historical Fiction/FantasyReading Age: 12.5 - 13.5 years

Exercise guide for achieving a stronger, leaner and more flexible body. Sydney based personal fitness trainer, Paul Collins, provides step by step instruction for improving posture, balance, coordination, strength and flexibility. More than 50 exercises for the whole body especially for the abdominal and lower back regions.

Tells the story of the Quentaran children stolen by Nordian traders to sell to the dispicable Trollantan rat people. Follows the children''s capture, journey through the Rift caves in tumbrels drawn by the brutish Nordians and their final arrival in the court of the Trollantan rat king, the hideous Rodentia.

When Paolo is thrown in prison for failure to repay the Archon for goods he bought and never received, Kiall and Eena are desperate to save him. The only option is to go fortune hunting, and Kiall has an idea. If he can get on a pirate ship and sneak through the caves, he might be able to steal their gold and save Paolo.