This self-made man from a log cabin-the great orator, the Emancipator, the savior of the Union, the martyr-was arguably our greatest president; but it takes a master storyteller like Thomas Keneally, author of the award-winning novel that inspired the film Schindler's List, to bring alive the history behind the myth. Acclaimed for his recent Civil War biography, American Scoundrel, Keneally delves with relish-and a keen, fresh eye-into Lincoln's complicated persona.
Abraham Lincoln depicts all the amazing man's triumphs, insecurities, and crushing defeats with uncanny insight: his early poverty and the ambition that propelled him out of it; the shaping of the man and his political philosophy by youthful exposure to Christianity, slavery, and business; his tempestuous marriage and his fatherly love. We see him, elected to the presidency by a twist of fate, unswerving in the grim day-to-day conduct of the war as his vision and acumen led the country forward. Abraham Lincoln is an incisive study of a turning point in our history and a revealing portrait of its pivotal figure, his greatness etched even more clearly in this very touching human story. Views: 467
The story of Stephen Desmonde, an English painter who struggles for recognition in a conventional world, sacrificing everything for his passion for art. The title is a reference to John Keats' 1818 poem, Endymion, which begins, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." Views: 467
"I think people marry far too much; it is such a lottery, and for a poor woman--bodily and morally the husband's slave--a very doubtful happiness." --Queen Victoria to her recently married daughter Vicky.
Headstrong, high-spirited, and already widowed, Isabella Walker became Mrs. Henry Robinson at age 31 in 1844. Her first husband had died suddenly, leaving his estate to a son from a previous marriage, so she inherited nothing. A successful civil engineer, Henry moved them, by then with two sons, to Edinburgh's elegant society in 1850. But Henry traveled often and was cold and remote when home, leaving Isabella to her fantasies.
No doubt thousands of Victorian women faced the same circumstances, but Isabella chose to record her innermost thoughts - and especially her infatuation with a married Dr. Edward Lane - in her diary. Over five years the entries mounted-passionate, sensual, suggestive.
One fateful day in 1858 Henry chanced on the diary and, broaching its privacy, read Isabella's intimate entries. Aghast at his wife's perceived infidelity, Henry petitioned for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Until that year, divorce had been illegal in England, the marital bond being a cornerstone of English life. Their trial would be a cause celebre, threatening the foundations of Victorian society with the specter of "a new and disturbing figure: a middle class wife who was restless, unhappy, avid for arousal. Her diary, read in court, was as explosive as Flaubert's Madame Bovary, just published in France but considered too scandalous to be translated into English until the 1880s.
As she accomplished in her award-winning and bestselling "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher," Kate Summerscale brilliantly recreates the Victorian world, chronicling in exquisite and compelling detail the life of Isabella Robinson, wherein the longings of a frustrated wife collided with a society clinging to rigid ideas about sanity, the boundaries of privacy, the institution of marriage, and female sexuality. Views: 465
In this hilarious follow-up to Employment Interview With A Vampire, it’s clear to Deidre that her vampire boss, Nathaniel, needs to get a life...or at least an undead life. Unfortunately, her efforts to gain him a friend will catch the attention of a vampire hunter. Armed with a walker, a fanny pack filled with stakes and a 40-year-old quest for vengeance, Silas may just prove Nathaniel's match.Being a vampire's housekeeper definitely has its downsides. The walls bleed. The ghosts play pranks, and the boss can get murderously angry if his prune juice runs low.In this hilarious follow-up to Employment Interview With A Vampire, Deidre struggles to keep her sanity and her patience in the face of her boss's many "peculiarities". Nathaniel is unliving proof that tempers don't necessarily sweeten with age; he stubbornly clings to his gramophone, denounces the Internet as witch magic and is still fuming over the passage of the nineteenth amendment. To Deidre, one thing is clear. Nathaniel needs to get a life...or at least an undead life. When Deidre takes it upon herself to expand her curmudgeon boss's social circle, she has no way of knowing that her efforts will bring a vampire hunter calling.Armed with a walker, a fanny pack filled with stakes and a 40-year-old quest for vengeance, Silas may just prove Nathaniel's match. Will the battle between Nathaniel and the vampire hunter be a fight to the death, or will someone break a hip first? And what happens to Deidre if the prune juice runs out? Find out in this satirical short story. (Approximately 6,700 words) Views: 465
It is the late 18th century and Sicilian nobleman Vitello Scarpia finds himself penniless and in disgrace on the streets of Rome. After leaving his home in pursuit of a military career, his fiery passion has seen him expelled from the Spanish royal guard and left to seek his fortune in Italy; a fortune inseparably bound to the Pope, whose rule is put in question by the French Revolution.
Scarpia enrolls in the papal army and is soon taken up by a countess eager to have a handsome young officer at her side. She introduces Scarpia into Roman society, and he is both enthralled and agitated by its mix of religiosity, sophistication, decadence, and intrigue. Then, on a mission to Venice, he meets the gifted, beautiful singer Floria Tosca. And as the armies of revolutionary France advance into Italy, and war and revolution engulf the whole peninsula, these two lives become entwined.
Steeped in factual detail and exploring the lives--part historical, part fictional--of figures from Puccini's famous opera, Scarpia shines a light into dusty corridors of history and dark corners of the human soul. Views: 464
A savage satire of the United States in the throes of insanity, this blisteringly funny novel tells the story of a noble ship, the Glory, and the loud, clownish, and foul Captain who steers it to the brink of disaster.When the decorated Captain of a great ship descends the gangplank for the final time, a new leader, a man with a yellow feather in his hair, vows to step forward. Though he has no experience, no knowledge of nautical navigation or maritime law, and though he has often remarked he doesn't much like boats, he solemnly swears to shake things up. Together with his band of petty thieves and confidence men known as the Upskirt Boys, the Captain thrills his passengers, writing his dreams and notions on the cafeteria wipe-away board, boasting of his exemplary anatomy, devouring cheeseburgers, and tossing overboard anyone who displeases him. Until one day a famous pirate, long feared by passengers of the Glory but revered by the Captain for how... Views: 464
The Game is a lush and disturbing novel portraying a sibling rivalry which compels the reader to reconsider the uses and misuses of imagination. when they were little girls, Cassandra and Julia played a game in which they entered an alternate world modeled on the landscapes of Arthurian romance. Now the sisters are grown, and hostile strangers--until a figure from their past, a man they once both loved and suffered over, reenters their lives. Views: 463
A Miami man witnesses a hit-and-run—and winds up as live bait for drug smugglers—in this crime novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of Bad Monkey.
Chris Meadows’s charmed life as an up-and-coming architect in Coconut Grove has kept him far removed from Miami’s bloody drug trade. But his comfortable existence comes crashing down around him when Chris witnesses the hit-and-run death of an ex-girlfriend by a car full of drug smuggling gangsters.
Now caught up in southern Florida’s brutal underground cocaine war, Meadows is in a fight for his life—to evade not only the hit men seeking to silence him, but also the crooked Miami cops who would rather exploit than protect him.
This is the very first suspense thriller written by the New York Times–bestselling author of Razor Girl and Sick Puppy and Bill Montalbano, a writing team praised for its “fine flair for characters and settings” (Library Journal). Those who enjoy Hiaasen’s other Florida thrillers, the Doc Ford novels by Randy Wayne White, or Netflix’s Narcos will want to discover these early crime fiction gems.
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From the New York Times bestselling author of Enders Game comes a brand-new series following a teen who wakes up on an abandoned Earth to discover that he's a clone!Laz is a side-stepper: a teen with the incredible power to jump his consciousness to alternate versions of himself in parallel worlds. All his life, there was no mistake that a little side-stepping couldn't fix. Until Laz wakes up one day in a cloning facility on a seemingly abandoned Earth. Laz finds himself surrounded by hundreds of other clones, all dead, and quickly realizes that he too must be a clone of his original self. Laz has no idea what happened to the world he remembers as vibrant and bustling only yesterday, and he struggles to survive in the barren wasteland he's now trapped in. But the question that haunts him isn't why was he created, but instead, who woke him up...and why? There's only a single bright spot in Laz's new life: one other clone... Views: 462
#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with her twentieth gripping novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, whose examinations, fifteen years apart, of unidentified bodies ignite a terrifying series of events.On the way to hurricane-ravaged Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a call from the Charleston coroner. The storm has tossed ashore a medical waste container. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Tempe recognizes many of the details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she travels to Montreal to gather evidence. Meanwhile, health authorities in South Carolina become increasingly alarmed as a human flesh-eating contagion spreads. So focused is Tempe on identifying the container victims that, initially, she doesn't register how their murders... Views: 461
In three “immensely intelligent stories about the decay of passion” (The Sunday Herald Times [London]), Simone de Beauvoir draws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises.
Enthralling as faction, suffused with de Beauvoir’s remarkable insights into women, The Woman Destroyed gives us a legendary writer at her best. Views: 461
Indulge in a lyrical, sensual feast. Karin Cox's eloquent poems will linger with you for days, reminding you of the beauty of language and the nostalgia of days gone by. Ranging in topic from whimsy to love poems to erotica, to an examination of nationality and what it means to be human, this collection features something for every lover of the written word.If the poet's job is to provide a reflection of an entire world in a single teardrop, Karin Cox's haunting anthology, "Growth", does so admirably. This collection of her finest poems—some previously published in anthologies around the world, others new; some rhyming, some free form—delivers beautiful sentiments, melancholy moments and some delightfully lyrical figurative language, all the while charting the poet's personal growth over several years.While introspective, Karin's work avoids self-obsession by interspersing political and broader global themes with the personal. What results is a whimsical anthology that brings to mind the challenges of just being human and fitting into a world that sometimes feels like a tight squeeze. A must-read for lovers of the English language and a wonderful gift for poetry aficionados, "Growth" will continue to bloom in the reader's mind long after the last page has been turned. Views: 461
