The Not So Wicked Stepmother, A Book for Children and Adults : Books
Book Description
Olivia & Maria are two young sisters who are coping with the recent divorce of their parents. Later, when their dad begins dating again, the sisters decide to make sure he’s dating someone who is right for them too. When Dad does meet that someone, Olivia and Maria are happy. Then Dad announces his plan to remarry. Now the girls must cope with the experience of having a stepmother. Will she be like the wicked stepmother in the story, Cinderella?

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The Thorn Birds 2 – The Missing Years : DVDs
The phenomenally popular The Thorn Birds was one of TV’s hardest acts to follow, so it’s a surprise that The Missing Years turned out as well as it did. Produced 13 years after the original 1983 miniseries, this is not a sequel but an “in-betweener,” filling part of the 19-year gap in The Thorn Birds and beginning in war-torn Rome in 1942, where Father Ralph de Bricassart (Richard Chamberlain) is struggling to rescue Italian refugees after the latest wave of bombing. He is sent back to Australia to investigate the potential for refugee relocation there, and is reunited with his former lover Meggie Cleary (now played by Amanda Donohoe, replacing Rachel Ward), whose beloved farm Drogheda is in the grip of a two-year drought. Their still-powerful love must remain unspoken, however, because Meggie has reconciled with her estranged husband Luke (Simon Westaway, assuming Bryan Brown’s role), and is about to be engaged in a heated custody battle for her son Dane, whose father is actually (and secretly) Father Ralph.

These family secrets, and the turbulent emotions of Meggie’s teenaged daughter Justine, create enough familial tension to fill The Missing Years with the kind of ripe, involving melodrama that fueled the original miniseries. Accepted on its own merits, this is a respectable, above-average TV production, bolstered by the fine performances of Chamberlian and especially Donohoe, who intelligently plays Meggie with warmth, inner torment, and plucky tenacity, making the role fully her own. The sweeping wall-to-wall score is excessively manipulative in its attempt to elevate The Missing Years to Gone with the Wind proportions, and some viewers may question the integrity of a plot (bearing no relation to Colleen McCullough’s bestselling novel) that forces a noble priest to solve his dilemma with a vengeful fistfight. Still, this is an eminently watchable TV romance that can stand on its own, without the long shadow of its much-beloved predecessor. –Jeff Shannon

Description
What happened to Father Ralph de Bricassart and Meggie Cleary O’Neill during the mystery years not covered in the original 1983 smash-hit miniseries? Now every fan can be in the know. “The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years” provides the spellbinding answer. The time is World War II. De Bricassart heroically rescues refugees in Rome, then is sent by the Vatican to the sprawling Australian sheep ranch he though he had left behind forever. There, a fateful reunion with Meggie leads to new temptations and a profound crisis: Meggie may lose custody of the beloved son concieved during the season of forbidden love she shared years earlier with de Bricassart.

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Masada – The Complete Miniseries : VHS
This 1981 television miniseries, based on Ernest K. Gann’s historical novel The Antagonists, is a dramatization of a documented revolt by nearly a thousand Jerusalem Jews against Roman oppressors in A.D. 72 to 73. Following a city-wide siege by Rome’s soldiers, Jewish Zealots move into a fortress in the mountains of Masada, from which they present a defense strong enough to convince the enemy to negotiate. Peter O’Toole, in all his golden dignity, plays Cornelius Flavius Silva, commander of the Roman legions, and Peter Strauss is Zealot leader Eleazar ben Yair. Both are outstanding as representatives from each side trying, in good faith, to find a way out of the deadlocked situation. Unfortunately, neither realizes that Rome has no intention of yielding, resulting in one of the greatest tragedies in Jewish history. A strong cast of character actors–David Warner, Barbara Carrera, Timothy West, and Anthony Quayle–is rewardingly watchable, the action and sets are persuasive without overwhelming the story’s human dimension, and direction by Boris Sagal (The Omega Man) is crisp and enthralling. This was a pleasure to watch when it was first broadcast, and it holds up very well today. –Tom Keogh

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