Download or read book Peninsula of Lies written by Edward Ball and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peninsula of Lies is a nonfiction mystery, set in haunting locales and peopled with fascinating characters, that unwraps the enigma of a woman named Dawn Langley Simmons, a British writer who lived in Charleston, South Carolina, during the 1960s and became the focus of one of the most unusual sexual scandals of the last century. Born in England sometime before World War II, Dawn Langley Simmons began life as a boy named Gordon Langley Hall. Gordon was the son of servants at Sissinghurst Castle, the estate of Vita Sackville-West, where as a child he met Vita's lover Virginia Woolf. In his twenties, Gordon made his way to New York, where he became an author of society biographies and befriended such grandes dames as the actress Margaret Rutherford and the artist and heiress Isabel Whitney, who left him a small fortune. The money allowed Gordon to buy a mansion in Charleston and fill it with period furniture, providing a stage for him to entertain more great ladies and to climb the social ladder of the Southern gentry to its heights. However, Gordon's world changed instantly in 1968, when at The Johns Hopkins Hospital he underwent one of the first sex-reassignment surgeries, returning to Southern society and scandalizing Charleston as the new Dawn Langley Hall. Dawn Hall furthermore announced that her surgery had been corrective, because she'd actually been misidentified as a boy at birth. Three months later, Dawn raised the stakes in still-segregated Charleston when she arranged her very public marriage to a young black mechanic, John-Paul Simmons. In due course, Dawn appeared around town pregnant; finally, she could be seen pushing a baby carriage with a child -- her daughter, Natasha. National Book Award-winning author Edward Ball (Slaves in the Family) has written a detective story that deciphers the riddle of Dawn Simmons, a once rich and infamous changeling who died in 2000, her sexual identity never determined. Peninsula of Lies is an engrossing narrative of a person who tested every taboo, as well as the confidence of observers in their own eyes.
Download or read book Peninsula of Lies written by Edward Ball and published by . This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," the National Book Award winner for "Slaves in the Family" investigates the strange-but-true life of the mysterious Charleston socialite, Dawn Langley Simmons.
Download or read book Peninsula of Lies written by Edward Ball and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peninsula of Lies is an enthralling investigation of a bizarre life that begins in Kent, England with the birth of an illegitimate baby and ends in south Carolina, USA with a sex-change and a scandal.Edward Ball unwraps a mystery that has fascinated a succession of authors in the past decade. Who was Gordon Langley Hall, the illegitimate son of two servants at Sissinghurst Castle (home of author Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, diplomat, author and politician)? Gordon becomes the recipient of the millions of an American heiress, author of biographies (including the eccentric English actress, Margaret Rutherford, the original screen 'Miss Marple'), and moves to Charleston, south Carolina. There Gordon changes sex and reinvents him/herself as Dawn Langley Hall. The mystery deepens when Dawn marries a young black mechanic (the matrons of the still-segregated Charleston are appalled), appears around the town apparantly pregnant a few months later claims that the daughter she is seen pushing around the town in a pram is actually her own.Edward Ball, who won the American National Book Award for Slaves in the Family, investigates Hall's story and in the final chapter offers his solution.
Download or read book Coves of Departure written by John Seibert Farnsworth and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that has been called "a love song to nature," the author documents the latest decade of his explorations of the Baja peninsula and the Sea of Cortez. While much of the book narrates his experience as a writing professor taking undergraduates on sea kayak expeditions to the Isla Espiritu Santo archipelago each year during spring break, the book also reflects on experiences with a condor restoration project in the Sierra San Pedro Martir, and an altogether different teaching experience based in a field station on Bahia de los Angeles. While the author’s intent is to evoke Baja ecologies in fresh ways, the reader comes to realize that he’s also describing how education can become a transformational experience. A retired scuba instructor who turned to academics and went on to receive his college’s highest teaching award, Dr. Farnsworth believes that education should be a lifelong adventure, and that explorations of the natural world should be animated by reverence and delight.
Download or read book Lies I Told written by Michelle Zink and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grace Fontaine has everything: beauty, money, confidence, and the perfect family. But it's all a lie. Grace has been adopted into a family of thieves who con affluent people out of money, jewelry, art, and anything else of value. Grace has never had any difficulty pulling off a job, but when things start to go wrong on the Fontaines' biggest heist yet, Grace finds herself breaking more and more of the rules designed to keep her from getting caught . . . including the most important one of all: never fall for your mark. Perfect for fans of Ally Carter and Robin Benway, this thrilling, high-stakes novel deftly explores the roles of identity and loyalty while offering a window into the world of the rich and fabulous.
Download or read book Three Truths and a Lie written by Brent Hartinger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When friends Rob, Liam, Mia, and Galen gather for a weekend of fun deep in the forest, one is hiding a lie and not everyone will live to find out which one it is.
Download or read book Big Little Lies written by Liane Moriarty and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Here One Moment and The Husband’s Secret comes the #1 New York Times bestselling novel about the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive. THE INSPIRATION FOR THE AWARD-WINNING HBO® SERIES STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON, NICOLE KIDMAN, SHAILENE WOODLEY, LAURA DERN, ZOË KRAVITZ, AND MERYL STREEP—AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON MAX® A murder...A tragic accident...Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead. Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place. Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.
Download or read book Temple Grove written by Scott Elliott and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deep in the heart of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula lies Temple Grove, one of the last stands of ancient Douglas fir not protected from logging. Bill Newton, a gyppo logger desperate for work and a place to hide, has come to Temple Grove for the money to be made from the timber. There to stop him is Paul, a young Makah environmentalist who will break the law to save the trees. A dangerous chase into the wilds of Olympic National Park ensues, revealing a long-hidden secret that inextricably links the two men. Temple Grove is a gripping tale of suspense and a multilayered novel of place that captures in taut, luminous prose the traditions that tie people to a powerful landscape and the conflicts that run deep among them. Reading guide: http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/books/TEMPLE_GROVE_reading_guide.pdf
Download or read book Slaves in the Family written by Edward Ball and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen years after its hardcover debut, the FSG Classics reissue of the celebrated work of narrative nonfiction that won the National Book Award and changed the American conversation about race, with a new preface by the author The Ball family hails from South Carolina—Charleston and thereabouts. Their plantations were among the oldest and longest-standing plantations in the South. Between 1698 and 1865, close to four thousand black people were born into slavery under the Balls or were bought by them. In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball recounts his efforts to track down and meet the descendants of his family's slaves. Part historical narrative, part oral history, part personal story of investigation and catharsis, Slaves in the Family is, in the words of Pat Conroy, "a work of breathtaking generosity and courage, a magnificent study of the complexity and strangeness and beauty of the word ‘family.'"
Download or read book Disappearing Earth written by Julia Phillips and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year National Book Award Finalist Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize Finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award National Best Seller "Splendidly imagined . . . Thrilling" --Simon Winchester "A genuine masterpiece" --Gary Shteyngart Spellbinding, moving--evoking a fascinating region on the other side of the world--this suspenseful and haunting story announces the debut of a profoundly gifted writer. One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls--sisters, eight and eleven--go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty--densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska--and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused. In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.
Download or read book Life of a Klansman written by Edward Ball and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A haunting tapestry of interwoven stories that inform us not just about our past but about the resentment-bred demons that are all too present in our society today . . . The interconnected strands of race and history give Ball’s entrancing stories a Faulknerian resonance." —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review A 2020 NPR staff pick | One of The New York Times' thirteen books to watch for in August | One of The Washington Post's ten books to read in August | A Literary Hub best book of the summer| One of Kirkus Reviews' sixteen best books to read in August The life and times of a militant white supremacist, written by one of his offspring, National Book Award–winner Edward Ball Life of a Klansman tells the story of a warrior in the Ku Klux Klan, a carpenter in Louisiana who took up the cause of fanatical racism during the years after the Civil War. Edward Ball, a descendant of the Klansman, paints a portrait of his family’s anti-black militant that is part history, part memoir rich in personal detail. Sifting through family lore about “our Klansman” as well as public and private records, Ball reconstructs the story of his great-great grandfather, Constant Lecorgne. A white French Creole, father of five, and working class ship carpenter, Lecorgne had a career in white terror of notable and bloody completeness: massacres, night riding, masked marches, street rampages—all part of a tireless effort that he and other Klansmen made to restore white power when it was threatened by the emancipation of four million enslaved African Americans. To offer a non-white view of the Ku-klux, Ball seeks out descendants of African Americans who were once victimized by “our Klansman” and his comrades, and shares their stories. For whites, to have a Klansman in the family tree is no rare thing: Demographic estimates suggest that fifty percent of whites in the United States have at least one ancestor who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan at some point in its history. That is, one-half of white Americans could write a Klan family memoir, if they wished. In an era when racist ideology and violence are again loose in the public square, Life of a Klansman offers a personal origin story of white supremacy. Ball’s family memoir traces the vines that have grown from militant roots in the Old South into the bitter fruit of the present, when whiteness is again a cause that can veer into hate and domestic terror.
Download or read book The Lies of Sarah Palin written by Geoffrey Dunn and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Lies of Sarah Palin, Geoffrey Dunn provides the first full-scale and in-depth political biography of the controversial Republican vice-presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska. Based on more than two-hundred interviews---many of them with Republican colleagues and one-time political allies of Palin's---and more than forty-thousand pages of uncovered documents, Dunn chronicles Palin's troubling penchant for duplicity in grim detail, from her dysfunctional childhood in Wasilla through her contentious run for mayor and her failed governorship of Alaska. He also provides the shocking inside story of her betrayal of running mate John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign and her self-serving resignation as governor in July of the following year. Dunn deftly places Palin in the American tradition of right-wing demagogues---from Huey Long to Joe McCarthy---and details her troubling obsession with Barack Obama as it fuels her own political ambitions and a potential run for the presidency in 2012. The Lies of Sarah Palin is a journalistic tour de force that vividly reveals the Queen of the Tea Party movement as a vengeful and manipulative empress without clothes. This is the definitive book on Sarah Palin.
Download or read book Abomination written by Colleen Coble and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2008-03-14 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Crackles with an ominous electricity, pulling you inside the mind of a killer who is terrifyingly twisted...terrifyingly real. The pages will race by as you read, but I guarantee your heart will race even faster." -T.L. Hines, author of Waking Lazarus A beautiful woman stands by the side of the road, barefoot and bleeding, a child in her arms. Someone just tried to kill her, but she wouldn't recognize him if she saw his face. She doesn't even remember her own name. A suburban cop surveys a kitchen in disarray--a woman and child missing, a chilling note. This crime scene is unlike any he has ever seen. The man who calls himself Gideon waits and plans. He sees himself as a destroyer of evil, one who rids the world of abominations. He has already killed five. He will kill again. And somewhere in the wilderness, in a secret geocache near where the wild swans gather, lies the unspeakable clue that links them all together. Michigan's rugged and beautiful Upper Peninsula is the setting for this absorbing tale of love and loss, beauty and terror, grievous sins and second chances. A deftly woven thriller from the popular author of the Rock Harbor novels.
Download or read book The Rings of Saturn written by W. G. Sebald and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book is like a dream you want to last forever" (Roberta Silman, The New York Times Book Review), now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund The Rings of Saturn—with its curious archive of photographs—records a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne’s skull, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt’s "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII, the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich. W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants (New Directions, 1996) was hailed by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read." It was "one of the great books of the last few years," noted Michael Ondaatje, who now acclaims The Rings of Saturn "an even more inventive work than its predecessor, The Emigrants."
Download or read book The Secret Lies Within written by Anne Beiler and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secret Lies Within in an inside-out look at the trauma and pain so many people experience in this lifetime and how breaking the silence is the first step to freedom. Many people experience trauma or pain and keep it to themselves, letting it become a secret that holds them captive. They live with pain, blame, and shame, unsure of what to do or how to break free. The secrets grow, causing people to become increasingly silent while they hope and pray for better days, struggling to believe they will ever come. The Secret Lies Within is an honest, vulnerable, and courageous narrative about nearly losing everything, breaking the silence of secrets, and finding purpose in pain. Auntie Anne Beiler, founder of the international franchise Auntie Anne’s pretzels, shares her journey through the loss of a child, sexual abuse, and the resulting trauma that haunted her for years, reminding readers they are not alone in their pain. Anne weaves brief stories of other brave individuals throughout her own and presents a picture of hope for those who have experienced trauma. Those with deep secrets of their own are encouraged to break their silence and are shown the power to overcome through confession and reach a whole new level of freedom.
Download or read book The Adventurer s Son written by Roman Dial and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Destined to become an adventure classic." —Anchorage Daily News Hailed as "gripping" (New York Times) and "beautiful" (Washington Post), The Adventurer's Son is Roman Dial’s extraordinary and widely acclaimed account of his two-year quest to unravel the mystery of his son’s disappearance in the jungles of Costa Rica. In the predawn hours of July 10, 2014, the twenty-seven-year-old son of preeminent Alaskan scientist and National Geographic Explorer Roman Dial, walked alone into Corcovado National Park, an untracked rainforest along Costa Rica’s remote Pacific Coast that shelters miners, poachers, and drug smugglers. He carried a light backpack and machete. Before he left, Cody Roman Dial emailed his father: “I am not sure how long it will take me, but I’m planning on doing 4 days in the jungle and a day to walk out. I’ll be bounded by a trail to the west and the coast everywhere else, so it should be difficult to get lost forever.” They were the last words Dial received from his son. As soon as he realized Cody Roman’s return date had passed, Dial set off for Costa Rica. As he trekked through the dense jungle, interviewing locals and searching for clues—the authorities suspected murder—the desperate father was forced to confront the deepest questions about himself and his own role in the events. Roman had raised his son to be fearless, to be at home in earth’s wildest places, travelling together through rugged Alaska to remote Borneo and Bhutan. Was he responsible for his son’s fate? Or, as he hoped, was Cody Roman safe and using his wilderness skills on a solo adventure from which he would emerge at any moment? Part detective story set in the most beautiful yet dangerous reaches of the planet, The Adventurer’s Son emerges as a far deeper tale of discovery—a journey to understand the truth about those we love the most. The Adventurer’s Son includes fifty black-and-white photographs.
Download or read book Lie Down with the Devil written by Linda Barnes and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestseller and multiple award–winning author Linda Barnes returns with the most personal case to date for her popular Boston PI, Carlotta Carlyle. Carlotta, in unfamiliar territory working on her own behalf, finds herself in the middle of a complicated case that has as much to do with the people she loves as the backstreets of Boston, and beyond. For starters, Carlotta wants to know what her on-again, off-again boyfriend Sam Gianelli did to earn himself a secret indictment for murder that's keeping him out of the country. A man with plenty of secrets, he won't tell her anything, much less let her help, and she isn't having any more luck with her old friends at the Boston PD. Sam's exile could be connected to the mob—he is in the family—but she's not buying it. It couldn't be that simple. Nothing involving Sam ever is. Faced with nothing but dead ends, Carlotta goes back to basics and takes a case for a nervous bride-to-be who wants to make sure her fiancé is being faithful. Simple enough, but when her client turns up dead, Carlotta catches the kind of break she wished she hadn't. While nothing is as it seems in Lie Down with the Devil, one thing is clear: Readers know that when they're reading Linda Barnes, they're in the hands of a maestro.
