Download or read book Trouble in Nuala written by Harriet Dorothy Steel and published by Stane Street Press. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Inspector Shanti de Silva moves with his English wife, Jane, to his new post in the sleepy hill town of Nuala he anticipates a more restful life than police work in the big city entails. However an arrogant plantation owner with a lonely wife, a crusading lawyer, and a death in suspicious circumstances present him with a riddle that he will need all his experience to solve. Set on the exotic island of Ceylon in the 1930s, Trouble in Nuala is an entertaining and relaxing mystery spiced with humour and a colourful cast of characters. Interview with the Author Q. There are so many murder mysteries around, what makes Trouble in Nuala stand out? A. To a great extent its setting in Ceylon, modern-day Sri Lanka, in the days when the island was still a British colony. Then, as now, the island was a fascinating place not just for its wonderful scenery and wildlife but also its mix of peoples who seem to have recovered extraordinarily well from the tragedies of their recent past. The majority are Sinhalese, who see themselves as the original owners of the island. They are followed by the Tamils who migrated over the centuries from Southern India. Add the legacy of the early Portuguese and Dutch settlers and you have a very rich culture. Although the story sits firmly in the mystery genre, at the time when it's set, colonialism also raised issues that my characters have to deal with and that provides an extra layer of interest. Q. What's your connection to the country? A. I've been lucky enough to visit and I fell in love with it straight away. My books are often inspired by my travels and as I'd been planning to write a new detective series for some time, it presented the perfect setting. Q. The mystery genre is usually very plot driven. When you wrote Trouble in Nuala did the characters or the plot come first? A. Shanti de Silva was inspired by various people I met on my travels around Sri Lanka and he took shape in my mind early on. He's pragmatic but principled with a mischievous sense of humour; at times impetuous and occasionally a rebel. As my plots develop though, I usually find that characters deepen and that was certainly the case here as Shanti de Silva and the other characters revealed themselves. Q. So what next? A. A second Inspector de Silva mystery is already well advanced and you can read a sample at the end of Trouble in Nuala. After that, there are plenty more adventures for de Silva queueing up to be written.
Download or read book Dancing for Degas written by Kathryn Wagner and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the City of Lights, at the dawn of a new age, begins an unforgettable story of great love, great art—and the most painful choices of the heart. With this fresh and vibrantly imagined portrait of the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas, readers are transported through the eyes of a young Parisian ballerina to an era of light and movement. An ambitious and enterprising farm girl, Alexandrie joins the prestigious Paris Opera ballet with hopes of securing not only her place in society but her family’s financial future. Her plan is soon derailed, however, when she falls in love with the enigmatic artist whose paintings of the offstage lives of the ballerinas scandalized society and revolutionized the art world. As Alexandrie is drawn deeper into Degas’s art and Paris’s secrets, will she risk everything for her dreams of love and of becoming the ballet’s star dancer?
Download or read book Passage from Nuala written by HARRIET. STEEL and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspector de Silva and Jane embark on a cruise to Egypt to visit the pyramids, excited at the prospect of two weeks of sun, sea and relaxation. With Nuala, and de Silva's duties as a police officer, far behind them, what can possibly spoil their plans? Then a writer is found dead in his cabin, suffocated by newspaper thrust down his throat. Once again, de Silva must swing into action. The Inspector de Silva Mysteriesis a colourful and absorbing series, spiced with humour. Set in Ceylon in the 1930s, it will appeal to fans of traditional and cozy mysteries. What readers say about this series: Pure Enjoyment "Pure enjoyment to read the unfolding of mysteries with happy outcomes set in exotic Ceylon. The good-hearted Shanti is assisted by his capable wife Jane. Together they bring harmony and humour to East meets West. As refreshing as a cup of light Ceylon tea!" Annmarie Wharton A Breath of Fresh Air "What a delightful change of pace. I really liked the characters and the location. It took place during a gentler time without all the cruelty and violence that defines far too much of the books we see being published now. There is more than enough violence surrounding us today without having our escape to the land of books filled with it." Puzzler Wonderful reads. "I have now read the first two books in this series and have enjoyed them immensely. They are easy to read, and yet plot-wise, keep you captivated until the end. The 1930s Ceylonese setting, and its characters are a delight. Highly recommended." DRG "A delightful read - can't wait to devour the next one!" JJ McKay Must read police procedural set in pre-war Sri Lanka/Ceylon "I started reading this series after a quick trip to Sri Lanka. Now I am hooked and read them as fast as they come out. Even if you have never been to Sri Lanka these books evoke an interesting period in history and the low-tech state of forensics in the 1930's. The clash of cultures is interesting as well. I can't say enough good things about this series." S.Smith Layers upon Layers "I don't remember how, exactly, I came upon the Nuala books, but just an hour ago I finished a binge read of all four of them. I love a well-written mystery, and these don't disappoint with their frequent literary allusions, interesting characters, and realistic sets of interpersonal challenges and conflicts.... There's always a new thread to be pulled, and all kinds of insights and events result from each pulling. These are absorbing stories, and I hope there will be more of them." Julie M. Drew
Download or read book Voicing the Popular written by Richard Middleton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does popular music produce its subject? How does it produce us as subjects? More specifically, how does it do this through voice--through "giving voice"? And how should we understand this subject--"the people"--that it voices into existence? Is it singular or plural? What is its history and what is its future? Voicing the Popular draws on approaches from musical interpretation, cultural history, social theory and psychoanalysis to explore key topics in the field, including race, gender, authenticity and repetition. Taking most of his examples from across the past hundred years of popular music development--but relating them to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century "pre-history"--Richard Middleton constructs an argument that relates "the popular" to the unfolding of modernity itself. Voicing the Popular renews the case for ambitious theory in musical and cultural studies, and, against the grain of much contemporary thought, insists on the progressive potential of a politics of the Low.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition written by Sherril Dodds and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook asks how competition affects the presentation and experience of dance.
Download or read book The Years written by Virginia Woolf and published by Modernista. This book was released on 2024-05-30 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Virginia Woolf's masterpiece The Years, we are invited on a journey through the labyrinths of time and the ever-changing landscapes of human existence. With her unique and experimental prose, Woolf creates a poignant portrayal of life's passage, its fleeting moments, and the eternal quest for meaning and understanding. Through a kaleidoscopic narrative style and a stream of consciousness, the author weaves together the story of multiple generations of a family, from late 19th-century England to the modern 20th century. On this journey, we witness the characters' love, sorrow, joy, and doubt, while Woolf skillfully explores themes of time, identity, and the role of women in society. The Years is a deeply philosophical and poetic novel that envelops the reader with its lyrical beauty and thought-provoking reflections. With her sharp observations and pioneering style, Virginia Woolf has crafted a masterpiece that continues to fascinate and challenge generations of readers. VIRGINIA WOOLF [1882–1941] was an English author. With novels like Jacob’s Room [1922], Mrs Dalloway [1925], To the Lighthouse [1927], and Orlando [1928], she became a leading figure of modernism and is considered one of the most important English-language authors of the 20th century. As a thinker, with essays like A Room of One’s Own [1929], Woolf has influenced the women’s movement in many countries.
Download or read book Losing the Hate written by Simon Palmer and published by Simon Palmer. This book was released on 2011-07 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his book, Losing the Hate, Simon Palmer has combined his mastery of storytelling with a raw hard look at the issues one faces as a result of child sexual abuse. It is an honest attempt to shed light on the darkest of subject matters. Simon has offered up his experiences in bone chilling detail, giving the reader a first hand account of his journey from innocence to depravity. His downward spiral is both shocking and heart wrenching, but most of all it is honest. Losing the Hate has been rightfully described as "jaw-dropping." It is brutally raw, and yet, despite the atrocious circumstances, the author manages to mesmerize his readers with a delicate hand and a bountifully open heart. In Simon's own words, "I have lived within this dark cloud for most of my life, with many complex issues still unresolved. There is a feeling of complete and utter loneliness within me, and, in desperation to rid my world of darkness, I have chosen to put my story into words . . . telling the world of my nightmare."
Download or read book The First Vietnam War written by Shawn F. McHale and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shawn McHale explores why the communist-led resistance in Vietnam won the anticolonial war against France (1945–54), except in the south. He shows how broad swaths of Vietnamese people were uneasily united in 1945 under the Viet Minh Resistance banner, all opposing the French attempt to reclaim control of the country. By 1947, resistance unity had shattered and Khmer-Vietnamese ethnic violence had divided the Mekong delta. From this point on, the war in the south turned into an overt civil war wrapped up in a war against France. Based on extensive archival research in four countries and in three languages, this is the first substantive English-language book focused on southern Vietnam's transition from colonialism to independence.
Download or read book The Catholic Koufax written by Bill Gleeson and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a small town on the Jersey side of the Palisades, the desperate lonliness of adolescence and a strange mix of race and culture collide during the turbulent 60's. Bill Gleeson has fashioned a big city play just a few miles from Manhattan, a short boat ride across the Hudson River. Whitey Larkin is a fish out of that flawed murky water, an orphan boy, shy and sensitive, struggling to be heard, struggling to find his place in the world. In his way is the comic character of his Aunt Nuala, the half wicked, mostly conflicted step parent determined to raise him up right in a volatile era. Equally memorable is the character of Larkin, the unemployed bumbling husband, Whitey's adopted father. Throw in an escaped Nazi fresh off an Argentinian banana boat that sets the whole cast spinning in comic circles, and you've got that rare combination of a play, one that is both moving and laugh out loud funny.
Download or read book The Iceberg written by Marion Coutts and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The work of an exceptional woman artist, writing from the inside about the things women have always done: nursing, nurturing, loving.” —The Guardian Winner of the Wellcome Book Prize, and finalist for every major nonfiction award in the UK, including the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Biography Award, The Iceberg is artist and writer Marion Coutts’ astonishing memoir; an “adventure of being and dying” and a compelling, poetic meditation on family, love, and language. In 2008, Tom Lubbock, the chief art critic for The Independent was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The Iceberg is his wife, Marion Coutts’, fierce, exquisite account of the two years leading up to his death. In spare, breathtaking prose, Coutts conveys the intolerable and, alongside their two-year-old son Ev—whose language is developing as Tom’s is disappearing—Marion and Tom lovingly weather the storm together. In short bursts of exquisitely textured prose, The Iceberg becomes a singular work of art and an uplifting and universal story of endurance in the face of loss. “Dazzling, devastating . . . In her plain-spoken retelling of the commonplace human experience of illness and loss, Coutts achieves something truly extraordinary—she’s created one of the most haunting and achingly honest explorations of grief in recent memory.” —Los Angeles Times
Download or read book The Beautiful Indifference written by Sarah Hall and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Fierce and sensuous.' Guardian'Exquisitely crafted.' Sunday Telegraph'Astonishing . . . A writer of rare vision and talent.' Sunday TimesFrom the speed and heat of summer London, to the heathered fells and lowlands of Cumbria with their history of smouldering violence, to an eerily still lake in the Finnish wilderness, Sarah Hall evokes landscapes with extraordinary precision and grace.The characters within these territories are real-life survivors, but whether it's a frustrated housewife seeking extreme experience or a young woman contemplating the death of her lover, dark devices and desires rise to the surface. And the human body, too - flawed, visceral, and full of emotional conflict - provides a sensuous frame for each unfolding drama.Uniquely disturbing and deeply erotic, this collection confirms Sarah Hall as one of the greatest writers of her generation.
Download or read book Crying in H Mart written by Michelle Zauner and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
Download or read book The Blood Knight written by Greg Keyes and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2007-05-01 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] sophisticated and intelligent high fantasy epic.”—Publishers Weekly The legendary Briar King has awakened, spreading madness and destruction across a land devastated by a royal family’s fall from power through treachery and dark magic. Half-remembered prophecies may point to the young princess Anne Dare, rightful heir to the throne of Crotheny, as the world’s only hope. But a mysterious assassin stalks her, so skilled that even Anne’s friend and protector Cazio cannot stand against him, nor can her sworn defender, the young knight Neil MeqVren. Though Anne herself is the conduit of fearsome powers beyond her understanding and control, it is time for girl to become woman, princess to become queen. Anne must stop running and instead march at the head of an army to take back her kingdom . . . or die trying. Praise for The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone “A graceful, artful tale . . . a snare ofterse imagery and compelling characters that grips tightly and never lets up.”—Elizabeth Haydon, author of The Assassin King, on The Briar King “There is adventure and intrigue, swordplay anddark sorcery aplenty.”—Realms of Fantasy, on The Charnel Prince
Download or read book A Slip of a Girl written by Patricia Reilly Giff and published by Holiday House. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heart-wrenching novel in verse about a poor girl surviving the Irish Land Wars, by a two-time Newbery Honor-winning author. For Anna, the family farm has always been home... But now, things are changing. Anna's mother has died, and her older siblings have emigrated, leaving Anna and her father to care for a young sister with special needs. And though their family has worked this land for years, they're in danger of losing it as poor crop yields leave them without money to pay their rent. When a violent encounter with the Lord's rent collector results in Anna and her father's arrest, all seems lost. But Anna sees her chance and bolts from the jailhouse. On the run, Anna must rely on her own inner strength to protect her sister--and try to find a way to save her family. Written in verse, A Slip of a Girl is a poignant story of adversity, resilience, and self-determination by a master of historical fiction, painting a haunting history of the tensions in the Irish countryside of the early 1890s, and the aftermath of the Great Famine. A Junior Library Guild Selection A Bank Street Best Book of the Year
Download or read book Cold Case in Nuala written by Harriet Steel and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-05-07 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's January 1941 and the day of Nuala's famous motor rally. Excitement is at full throttle, but matters take a dark turn when that same evening, human remains are found buried in a lonely corner of a local tea plantation. Inspector de Silva has a cold case to solve. Add a playboy racing driver, a missing Bugatti and a family scandal hushed up years ago into the mix and he has plenty to think about. You can be sure that whatever happened in the past, now de Silva's in the driving seat, you're in for a gripping ride.
Download or read book Offstage in Nuala written by Harriet Steel and published by . This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this third installment of The Inspector de Silva Mysteries, there's great excitement when a professional theatre company comes to Nuala. However matters take a dark turn when the company's actor manager is murdered. Inspector de Silva has a new case to solve and he has to consider some very unpalatable motives for the crime. He will need all his persistence, coupled with his wife, Jane's, invaluable help to unmask the villain of the piece."--Amazon.com.
Download or read book Becoming Lola written by Harriet Steel and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-04-28 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Becoming Lola is the true story of an extraordinary woman who resolutely defied the conventions of her day, determined to wring every drop of excitement from life and love.Born in 1821 in modest circumstances, Eliza Gilbert, as she then was, became the nineteenth century's most notorious adventuress.At sixteen, she ruined herself in the eyes of society when, to avoid an abhorrent arranged marriage, she ran away with one of her mother's admirers. He married her, but she abandoned any chance of forgiveness when she refused to be trapped in an unhappy union and left him.Many women would have vanished into increasingly desperate obscurity, but Eliza was no ordinary woman. She reinvented herself as Lola Montez, a Spanish aristocrat fallen on hard times. In that guise, she blazed like a firecracker through the courts of Europe and beyond, reputedly taking hundreds of lovers, including King Ludwig of Bavaria and the composer, Franz Liszt. She was a dancer, an actress, an intrepid traveller and, by the time of her early death, the second most famous woman in the world after Queen Victoria.'Throughout Becoming Lola I had to remind myself that the story was based on historical fact. It is a fascinating journey following a woman's single-minded determination to get the very best for herself at all costs.' Historical Novel Society'A fascinating read. Lola was such a gutsy character, and Harriet Steel has captured her times and adventures very vividly. It's a must read if you like wild women and strange adventures.' Beth Webb, Author of the Star Dancer trilogy