Download or read book Delayed Rays of a Star written by Amanda Lee Koe and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR Best Book of the Year A dazzling debut novel following the lives of three groundbreaking women--Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl--cinema legends who lit up the twentieth century At a chance encounter at a Berlin soirée in 1928, the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captures three very different women together in one frame: up-and-coming German actress Marlene Dietrich, who would wend her way into Hollywood as one of its lasting icons; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star, playing bit parts while dreaming of breaking away from her father's modest laundry; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director of propaganda art films would first make her famous--then, infamous. From this curious point of intersection, Delayed Rays of a Star lets loose the trajectories of these women's lives. From Weimar Berlin to LA's Chinatown, from a bucolic village in the Bavarian Alps to a luxury apartment on the Champs-Élysées, the different settings they inhabit are as richly textured as the roles they play: siren, victim, predator, or lover, each one a carefully calibrated performance. And in the orbit of each star live secondary players--a Chinese immigrant housemaid, a German soldier on leave from North Africa, a pompous Hollywood director--whose voices and viewpoints reveal the legacy each woman left in her own time, as well as in ours. Amanda Lee Koe's playful, wry prose guides the reader dexterously around murky questions of identity, complicity, desire, and difference. Intimate and clear-eyed, Delayed Rays of a Star is a visceral depiction of womanhood--its particular hungers, its oblique calculations, and its eventual betrayals--and announces a bold new literary voice.

Download or read book These Precious Days written by Ann Patchett and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

Download or read book The Victoria Vanishes written by Christopher Fowler and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s a case tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. A lonely hearts killer is targeting middle-aged women at some of England’s most well-known pubs—including one torn down eighty years ago. What’s more, Arthur Bryant happened to see one of the victims only moments before her death at the pub that doesn’t exist. Indeed, this case is littered with clues that defy everything the veteran detectives know about the habits of serial killers, the methodology of crime, and the odds of making an arrest. Now, with the public on the verge of panic and their superiors determined to shut the PCU down for good, Detectives Bryant and May must rise to the occasion in defense of two great English traditions—the pub and the Peculiar Crimes Unit. That’s easier said than done. A lost funeral urn, the eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, the Knights Templars, the secret history of pubs, and the discovery of an astounding religious relic may be enough to convince one of the pair to take back his resignation letter. But with Bryant consulting a memory specialist and May encountering a brush with mortality, do the Peculiar Crimes Unit’s two living legends have enough life left to stop a murderous conspiracy…and a deadly cupid targeting one of their own.

Download or read book A Nurse s Story written by Louise Curtis and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving, honest and inspiring – this is a nurse’s true story of life in a busy A&E department during the Covid-19 crisis. Working in A&E is a challenging job but nurse Louise Curtis loves it. She was newly qualified as an advanced clinical practitioner, responsible for life or death decisions about the patients she saw, when the unthinkable happened and the country was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The stress on the NHS was huge and for the first time in her life, the job was going to take a toll on Louise herself. In A Nurse’s Story she describes what happened next, as the trickle of Covid patients became a flood. And just as tragically, staff in A&E were faced with the effects of lockdown on society. They worried about their regulars, now missing, and saw an increase in domestic abuse victims and suicide attempts as loneliness hit people hard. By turns heartbreaking and heartwarming, this book shines a light on the compassion and dedication of hospital staff during such dark times. 'An important memoir that we all need to read right now.' – Closer

Download or read book HONEST written by Lucien Young and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2023-10-19 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *The memoirs of Boris Johnson, complete and unabridged, including all the great material he had to take out for being either too incendiary or too obviously made up* Ghostwritten by Lucien Young, while Boris was sunbathing on a donor's private island. Offering a comprehensive account of his meteoric rise (and even more meteoric fall) we follow Boris from Eton and the Bullingdon club, via stints in journalism and as London mayor, before finally making it into Number 10 via slick and sophisticated campaign tactics such as lying and hiding in a fridge. It will outline in bonce-combusting detail the up and downs - but mostly ups! - of his tenure in Downing Street, from Getting Brexit Done and battling the Wizards of Woke, to nearly dying because he shook too many hands. This is BoJo as you've never seen him before.

Download or read book Bryant May Strange Tide written by Christopher Fowler and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London’s most brilliant but unconventional detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, must plumb the depths of a particularly murky mystery. The Peculiar Crimes Unit faces its most baffling case yet—and if Bryant and May can’t rise to the challenge, the entire unit may go under. Near the Tower of London, along the River Thames, the body of a woman has been discovered chained to a stone post and left to drown. Curiously, only one set of footprints leads to the tragic spot. “The Bride in the Tide,” as the London press gleefully dubs her, has the PCU stumped. Why wouldn’t the killer simply dump her body in the river—as so many do? Arthur Bryant wonders if the answer lies in the mythology of the Thames itself. Unfortunately, the normally wobbly funhouse corridors of Bryant’s mind have become, of late, even more labyrinthine. The venerable detective seems to be losing his grip on reality. May fears the worst, as Bryant rapidly descends from merely muddled to one stop short of Barking, hallucinating that he’s traveled back in time to solve the case. There had better be a method to Bryant’s madness—because, as more bodies are pulled from the river’s depths, his partner and the rest of the PCU find themselves in over their heads. Fiendishly fun and rich in London lore, Bryant and May: Strange Tide is Christopher Fowler at his best, delivering more twists and turns than the Thames itself. Praise for Christopher Fowler’s ingenious novels featuring the Peculiar Crimes Unit “Fowler, like his crime-solvers, is deadpan, sly, and always unexpectedly inventive.”—Entertainment Weekly “An imaginative funhouse of a world where sage minds go to expand their vistas and sharpen their wits.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “[Fowler] takes delight in stuffing his books with esoteric facts; together with a cast of splendidly eccentric characters [and] corkscrew plots, wit, verve and some apposite social commentary, they make for unbeatable fun.”—The Guardian “Mr. Fowler’s small but ardent American following deserves to get much larger.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “The most delightfully, wickedly entertaining duo in crime fiction.”—The Plain Dealer “Captivating.”—The Seattle Times “Dazzling.”—The Denver Post “Thrilling.”—Chicago Tribune

Download or read book Just drink the bleach surviving one year of Covid Lockdown and False news written by tudor lomas and published by tudor lomas, Jemstone Books. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions died, health-care systems were overwhelmed and our deepest values challenged. The pandemic of 2020-21 took us to the edge, it destroyed our way of life and it undermined trust. On 8th March 2020 I shut myself away (a Brit in Amsterdam) before anyone else we know (we had co-morbidities and didn't want to die!) I searched for help from the victims of Spanish flu. I didn’t find much so I wrote this warts-and-all 'lived experience' for my young grandson, so he'd know what we went through and how the world changed -- the chaos, the confusion, the fear and the frequent stupidities. The chapter titles summarise the shifting story of surviving the virus, the lockdown and the destabilising torrent of false-news. It’s a day by day running journal of what happened, what we got wrong and what it means to us now, written with the author's young grandson in mind! Thirty-one chapters covering the key 15 months to mid-summer 2021. . . . "vivid, gripping first-hand account; essential reading" -- Jonathan Burton . . . . "upbeat, lively; philosophical reflection of a pivotal year!" -- Dr Kit Byatt . . . . "The structure and chapter outline are brilliant and enticing" -- Steve Richards . . . . "extremely readable and profound" -- Joanna Czechowska . .

Download or read book Microverses written by Dylan Riley and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Microverses comprises over a hundred short essays inviting us to think about society - and social theory - in new ways. Lockdown created the conditions for what Adorno once termed 'enforced contemplation'. Dylan Riley responded with the tools of his trade, producing an extraordinary trail of notes exploring how critical sociology can speak to this troubled decade. Microverses analyses the intellectual situation, the political crisis of Trump's last months in office, and love and illness in a period when both were fraught with the public emergency of the coronavirus. Riley brings the theoretical canon to bear on problems of intellectual culture and everyday life, working through Weber and Durkheim, Parsons and Dubois, Gramsci and Lukcs, MacKinnon and Fraser, to weigh sociology's relationship to Marxism and the operations of class, race and gender, alongside discursions into the workings of an orchestra and the complicatedness of taking a walk in a pandemic. Invitations rather than finished arguments, the notes attempt to recover the totalising perspective of sociology - the ability to see society in the round, as though from the outside - and to recuperate what Paul Sweezy described as a sense of the 'present as history'.

Download or read book I Love Jesus But I Want to Die written by Sarah J. Robinson and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

Download or read book Elton John written by Gillian G. Gaar and published by Motorbooks International. This book was released on 2024-01-30 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This re-release of Elton John at 75 (2022) celebrates the rocker’s life in a beautifully produced retrospective detailing 75 key releases and life events.

Download or read book The Knackered Mother s Wine Club written by Helen Mcginn and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This ... guide to wine is the perfect accopmpaniment to a knackered mother's frantic life. ... The advice pairs well with a ... schedule of work, kids and grown-up time. On offer are reliable recommendations for Sunday roasts, wines to impress, sparkling wine for children's parties (because adults need something fizzy too) and post-bedtime decompresssion, as well as tips on what to offload on the school raffle."--Back cover.

Download or read book B A Year in Plagues and Pencils written by Edward Carey and published by Gallic Books. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author and illustrator Edward Carey presents a paean to connection at a time of isolation: a year of daily lockdown drawings posted on social media from his home in Texas. 'This book contains magic' A.L. Kennedy In March 2020, as lockdowns were imposed around the world, author and illustrator Edward Carey published a sketch on social media with a plan to keep posting a drawing a day from his family home in Austin, Texas, until life returned to normal. One hundred and fifty pencil stubs later, he was still drawing. Carey's hand moved with world events, chronicling pandemic and politics. It reached into the past, taking inspiration from history, and escaped grim reality through flights of vivid imagination and studies of the natural world. The drawings became a way of charting time, of moving forward, and maintaining connection at a time of isolation. This remarkable collection of words and drawings from the acclaimed author of Little and The Swallowed Man charts a tumultuous year in pencil, finding beauty amid the horror of extraordinary times.

Download or read book Wife Daughter Self written by Beth Kephart and published by Forest Avenue Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wife | Daughter | Self investigates identity and the writing life through the perspective of one of the nation’s top memoir teachers and critics. How are we shaped by the people we love? Who are we when we think no one else is watching? How do we trust the choices we make? The answers shift as the years go by. The stories remake themselves as we remember. Curiously, inventively, Beth Kephart reflects on the iterative, composite self in her new memoir—traveling to lakes and rivers, New Mexico and Mexico, the icy waters of Alaska and a hot-air balloon launch in search of understanding. She is accompanied, often, by her Salvadoran-artist husband. She spends time, a lot of time, with her widowed father. As she looks at them she ponders herself and comes to terms with the person she is still becoming. At once sweeping and intimate, Wife | Daughter | Self is a memoir built of interlocking essays by an acclaimed author, teacher, and critic.

Download or read book Crazy Sweet Creations written by Ann Reardon and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to Cook That Dessert Cookbook: Pastries, Cakes and Sweet Creations “How to Cook That is the most popular Australian cooking channel in all the world, and it’s not hard to see why.” ―PopSugar Editors' pick: Best Cookbooks, Food & Wine #1 Best Seller in Chocolate Baking, Confectionary Desserts, Pastry Baking, Garnishing Meals, Holiday Cooking, Main Courses & Side Dishes, Cookies, Cooking by Ingredient, and Pie Baking Offering a fun-filled step-by-step dessert cookbook, Ann Reardon teaches you how to create delicious and impressive pastries, cakes and sweet creations. Join food scientist Ann Reardon, host of the award-winning YouTube series How to Cook That, as she explores Crazy Sweet Creations. An accomplished pastry chef, Reardon draws millions of baking fans together each week, eager to learn the secrets of her extravagant cakes, chocolates, and eye-popping desserts. Her warmth and sense of fun in the kitchen shines through on every page as she reveals the science behind recreating your own culinary masterpieces. For home cooks and fans who love their desserts, cakes, and ice creams to look amazing and taste even better. Take your culinary creations to influencer status. You’ll also: Learn to make treats that get the whole family cooking Create baked goods that tap into beloved pop culture trends Impress guests with beautiful desserts Readers of dessert cookbooks like Dessert Person, Sally's Cookie Addiction, Tartine, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Joshua Weissman: An Unapologetic Cookbook, or 100 Cookies will love How to Cook That: Crazy Sweet Creations.

Download or read book Notes on Grief written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the globally acclaimed, best-selling novelist and author of We Should All Be Feminists, a timely and deeply personal account of the loss of her father: “With raw eloquence, Notes on Grief … captures the bewildering messiness of loss in a society that requires serenity, when you’d rather just scream. Grief is impolite ... Adichie’s words put welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided” (The Washington Post). Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page—and never without touches of rich, honest humor—Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria. In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book—a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever—and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie's canon.

Download or read book The Gift of an Ordinary Day written by Katrina Kenison and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2009-09-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition, with boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, and an attempt to find a deeper sense of place—and a slower pace—in a small New England town. This is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with teenagers—holding on, letting go. Poised on the threshold between family life as she's always known it and her older son's departure for college, Kenison is surprised to find that the times she treasures most are the ordinary, unremarkable moments of everyday life, the very moments that she once took for granted, or rushed right through without noticing at all. The relationships, hopes, and dreams that Kenison illuminates will touch women's hearts, and her words will inspire mothers everywhere as they try to make peace with the inevitable changes in store.

Download or read book AVA SHOW written by CECILY ANNE. PATERSON and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: