Where the Angels Lived by Margaret McMullan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

“Someone should write a book,” my mother says, sipping iced coffee. “Not about the drama of that time, during the war, but about what it does to the person who’s left with all of it, the person who feels it but doesn’t quite know it all.”

Where The Angels Lived
One Family’s Story of Exile, Loss, and Return

By Margaret McMullan

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The moment she discovers the existence of Richard, a long-lost relative, at Israel’s Holocaust Museum, Margaret McMullan begins an unexpected journey of revelation and connectivity as she tirelessly researches the history of her ancestors, the Engel de Jánosis. Propelled by a Fulbright cultural exchange that sends her to teach at a Hungarian University, Margaret, her husband and teenage son all eagerly travel to Pécs, the land of her mother’s Jewish lineage. After reaching Pécs, a Hungarian town both small and primarily Christian, Margaret realizes right then and there how difficult hergoing to be. Heart-wrenching, passionate and insightful, WHERE THE ANGELS LIVED (Calypso Editions, 13: 978-1-944593-08-7, $17.95, Original Trade Paperback) by Margaret McMullan beautifully documents the relentless determination of a woman picking up the pieces of her family’s fragmented history throughout the Hungarian Holocaust.

“The destruction of the Jews in the country districts of Hungary was a simple business. The Germans made good use of their experience gained annihilating between three to four million Polish, German and Austrian Jews.”

In WHERE THE ANGELS LIVED, Margaret quickly discovers just how distinguished and influential her relatives appear to have been before the Holocaust. However, no one seems to recall the man whose name she saw that day in Israel: Richard Engel de Jánosi. With the help of students, strangers, and long-lost relatives, Margaret slowly pieces together bits of information about Richard’s past she never would have found without venturing to her family’s homeland.

While Margaret’s research starts to reap its own rewards, the road to discovery still comes at a price.  Back in the United States, Margaret’s father is sick and her mother is looking frailer every time they Skype. Despite her parents’ deteriorating health, there is much more work to be done abroad.

 “Remembering the dead, especially family members is important. I know this.”

As Margaret struggles to discover why Richard’s existence is wiped from Pécs history, her journey soon becomes her mother’s journey, a nation’s journey, and even perhaps, all of our journeys to reconnect with an inexplicable past.

Sitting there in the pew carved of Moravian oak, I start to shake. I curse every last Hungarian who deported or murdered my family. See? Look at me. My mother got out and she had me and I had a son. You didn’t end us.”

Historical, authentic and family-oriented, WHERE THE ANGELS LIVED tells the tale of a somewhat parallel universe that exists even in the 21st century—dealings with Soviet-style bureaucracy; skepticism; anti-Semitism; and ironically the same sort of isolation and rejection Margaret’s Jewish Hungarian family experienced in 1944 before they were forced into concentration camps. Straddling memoir and reportage, past and present, this story reminds us all that we can escape a country, but we can never escape history.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Margaret McMullan is the author of eight award-winning books including the novel, In My Mother’s House and the anthology, Every Father’s Daughter. Her work has appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, among others. She received a NEA Fellowship and a Fulbright in Hungary to research her new book, Where The Angels Lived: One Family’s Story of Loss, Exile, and Return.

 

Asshole Attorney by Douglas J. Wood

Asshole Attorney Cover
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ASSHOLE ATTORNEY
Musings, Memories, and Missteps in a 40 Year Career
By Douglas J. Wood

“Doug, I been practicin’ law for fifty years. And I learned a long time ago, there ain’t no such word as ‘attorney’ or ‘lawyer’. It’s ‘asshole attorney’ or ‘fuckin’ lawyer.’”

Author and entertainment attorney Douglas J. Wood heard this statement from a southern lawyer nearly forty years ago—and it was these words that provided him with the inspiration to write ASSHOLE ATTORNEY: Musings, Memories, and Missteps in a 40 Year Career (June 26th, 2018; Plum Bay Publishing House; ISBN 9780998861722).

ASSHOLE ATTORNEY takes readers on a journey from Wood’s younger years when he was a self-proclaimed “Army Brat,” having moved to eight different homes throughout his childhood. One particularly devastating move for young Doug was when his family relocated from the beautiful beaches of Hawaii to Rutherford, NJ, where he developed his hatred for snow and faced the reality that the “green water in the Passaic River was no comparison to the gin clear waters of Oahu.”

Later, after a college career which included a car accident, a fake ID, and a sympathetic cop, Wood admits he is lucky to be alive and glad that he was able to pursue his legal career with “twenty-four law school rejections under my belt.” Despite that string of rejections and an average GPA in college, Wood tested extremely high on the LSATs.
As luck would have it a brand-new law school opened – the twenty-fifth he applied to – and accepted him on the spot during a phone interview.

“I was a college student who really screwed up, but God and an angel were on my shoulder…I was given a second chance. Most people are not.”

Doug’s madcap journey includes his many insane stories working with out-of-control rock stars; dealing with international crises in the dark alleys of Eastern Europe; life-threatening adventures with businessmen; evading Paris authorities; surviving helicopter crashes; leaping on business opportunities that were unheard of at the time; and a partnership in one of the world’s leading law firms. Throughout the memoir, Wood balances his “asshole attorney” adventures with fond stories about his parents, siblings, wife, children, friends and colleagues.

Readers will be charmed by Wood’s candor and humor and will laugh aloud at his sharp, witty commentary in ASSHOLE ATTORNEY as he navigates the pathways of his life and the jungles of his 40-year profession.

About Plum Bay Publishing House
Plum Bay Publishing is an independent publishing house and hybrid self-publisher. Their goal is to publish titles that will have a positive impact in the world, and provide information and knowledge for all audiences, large and small.

About the Author
Douglas J. Wood is the author of the award-winning Samantha Harrison political trilogy – Presidential Intentions, Presidential Declarations, and Presidential Conclusions. His non-fiction books include the popular text Please Be Ad-Vised: A Legal Reference Guide for the Advertising Executive, now in its seventh edition, and 101 Things I Want to Say…the Collection, a book of fatherly advice to his children. A partner at Reed Smith LLP, he has over 40 years of experience practicing entertainment and media law. He works in New York, lives in New Jersey with his wife of 44 plus years, and is currently working on a new novel about cyberwar and financial terrorism scheduled to be published in 2019. For more information, visit his website www.douglasjwood.com.

ASSHOLE ATTORNEY | Musings, Memories, and Missteps in a 40-Year Career
By Douglas J. Wood | Plum Bay Publishing House | Publication Date June 26th, 2018
ISBN 9780998861722 | Hardcover, Paperback and E-Book | Price $22.99, $14.99, $9.99 | 240 Pages

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Gold Standard by Kym Gold

 

Gold Standard by Kym Gold

Case Summary: Kym was known as the co-founder of True Religion Jeans and the owner of a multi-million dollar estate.  Her memoir was about her life, how she built her business, and what happened next.

Goal: Brand Kym as an advocate for women-in-business, expert, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.

Result Examples: Kym was asked to be a guest on MSNBC, Reuters, and Home and Family.  She was also asked to keynote at conferences and speak at fashion design schools about how she built her business.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

GOLD STANDARD: How to Rock the World and Run an Empire

By Kym Gold,
Co creator of True Religion Brand Jeans

“I had struggled, worked, begged, borrowed, and well everything but stolen, to make these jeans and the company a reality. And now, according to our sales numbers, they would be on three out of five people throughout the world.”  —From Gold Standard, on the creation of True Religion

Gold Standard

How to Rock the World and Run an Empire

By: Kym Gold

She kept silent for seven years, but now Kym Gold is revealing in a new memoir how she lost her marriage and the brand she created on Valentine’s Day in 2007.  Revealing storytelling combined with savvy advice and inspiration for women in business, Kym Gold shares all in her book GOLD STANDARD: How to Rock the World and Run an Empire (Skyhorse Publishing; September 15, 2015; $24.99; ISBN: 978-1-63450-128-6). From her brief marriage to TV producer Mark Burnett of Survivor fame, to selling T-shirts on Venice Beach, to creating a multimillion-dollar denim wear company, Gold gives us a no-holds-barred account of the challenging, life-altering occurrences that come from the fame and fortune of creating a successful fashion empire.

Growing up as a triplet amidst actors and celebrities in the Los Angeles area, Kym always felt the need to find her voice, create her own unique style, and listen to her intuition. She started her first company by buying and dying irregulars from clothing stores and selling them on the beach. Soon after her marriage to fabric salesman Jeff Lubell, they launched True Religion Brand Jeans, which catapulted into success and soon became a publicly traded company.

While True Religion’s popularity rose, behind the scenes was a different story: Kym’s marriage to Lubell was falling apart. The board of trustees was secretly going behind her back to have her pushed out of the company, diluting her importance in the company by erasing her existence as a cofounder and calling her “wife of the company’s cofounder.” On that fateful Valentine’s Day morning in 2007 when a messenger came by to serve her divorce papers, Gold had the entire company ripped out from underneath her within hours:

I could feel the rage building inside of me. Locking me out of the company meant that everyone knew about this ahead of time. Everyone knew what was going down except me. I was devastated.

Never one to stay off her feet for long, Gold invested her time in the creation of her next fashionable feat, Babakul and opportunities to sell her new clothing line on national home shopping networks. Gold mixes her compelling personal journey with savvy business advice, such as: if you are a creative, build up your business acumen; never open mail on a Friday; take time to cherish your success; and fight to get women on your board of directors.

Motivating readers to fight for their beliefs and listen to their guts, GOLD STANDARD provides a behind-the-scenes view of how women must educate themselves and fight to protect their interests in business.

ABOUT KYM GOLD:
Kym Gold is the cofounder of designer jeans brand True Religion, which she left in 2007. She is also the creator of notable clothing brands including Bella Dahl, Hippie Jeans, and Babakul, and her fashion has been worn by celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and Jennifer Lopez. Now, Gold works as a fashion business, marketing and branding consultant in the Los Angeles area. She has three children and lives in Malibu. Gold Standard is her first book.

ABOUT SKYHORSE PUBLISHING:
Skyhorse Publishing is an independent book publishing company founded in 2006. Headquartered in New York City, its distributor is Perseus Book Group.  Each year they publish an eclectic list of titles across fiction, history, politics, business, humor, and more. For more information, visit www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

GOLD STANDARD:
How to Rock the World and Run an Empire
By Kym Gold with Sharon Soboil
Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date: September 15th, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63450-128-6
Hardcover, Price: $24.99
192 Pages

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