Download or read book The Madonna of the Mountains written by Elise Valmorbida and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A riveting adventure for the soul . . . just the kind of evocative historical fiction I love.”—Sara Gruen, author of At the Water’s Edge and Water for Elephants An epic, inspiring novel about one woman’s survival in the hardscrabble Italian countryside and her determination to protect her family throughout the Second World War—by any means possible Maria Vittoria is twenty-five when her father brings home the man who will become her husband. It is 1923 in the austere Italian mountain village where her family has lived for generations, and the man she sees is tall and handsome and has survived the First World War without any noticeable scars. Taking just the linens she has sewn that make up her dowry and a statue of the Madonna that sits by her bedside, Maria leaves the only life she has ever known to begin a family. But her future will not be what she imagines. The Madonna of the Mountains follows Maria over the next three decades, as she moves to the town where she and her husband become shopkeepers, through the birth of their five children, through the hardships and cruelties of the National Fascist Party Rule and the Second World War. Struggling with the cost of survival at a time when food is scarce and allegiances are questioned, Maria trusts no one and fears everyone—her Fascist cousin, the madwoman from her childhood, her watchful neighbors, the Nazis and the Partisans who show up hungry at her door. As Maria’s children grow up and her marriage endures its own hardships, she must hold her family together with resilience, love, and faith, until she makes a fateful decision that will change the course of all their lives. A sweeping saga about womanhood, loyalty, war, religion, family, food, motherhood, and marriage, The Madonna of the Mountains is a poignant look at the span of one woman’s life as the rules change and her world becomes unrecognizable. In depicting the great cost of war and the ineluctable power of time on a life, Elise Valmorbida has created an unforgettable portrait of a woman navigating both the unforeseen and the inevitable. Advance praise for Madonna of the Mountains “The moral and ethical questions raised propel the story beyond the particulars into the universal.”—Kirkus Reviews “It is a bewitching but entirely unsentimental portrait of one woman’s attempt to keep her family safe in turbulent times.”—The Times (UK), Book of the Month “A solid choice for readers who appreciate layered family sagas.”—Library Journal

Download or read book The Madonna on the Moon written by Rolf Bauerdick and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning journalist transforms his lifelong fascination with the world of the Gypsies into fiction with this exuberant, deeply enchanting debut novel—both whimsical and suspenseful—winner of the European Book Prize, and translated into more than a dozen languages worldwide. November 1957: As Communism spreads across Eastern Europe, strange events are beginning to upend daily life in Baia Luna, a tiny village nestled at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. As the Soviets race to reach the moon and Sputnik soars overhead, fifteen-year-old Pavel Botev attends the small village school with the other children. Their sole teacher, the mysterious and once beautiful Angela Barbulescu, was sent by the Ministry of Education, and while it is suspected that she has lived a highly cultured life, much of her past remains hidden. But one day, after asking Pavel to help hang a photo of the new party secretary, she whispers a startling directive in his ear: “Send this man straight to hell! Exterminate him!” By the next morning, she has disappeared. With little more to go on than the gossip and rumors swirling through his grandfather Ilja’s tavern, Pavel finds curiosity overcoming his fear when suddenly the village’s sacred Madonna statue is stolen and the priest Johannes Baptiste is found brutally murdered in the rectory. Aided by the Gypsy girl Buba and her eccentric uncle, Dimitru Gabor, Pavel’s search for answers leads him far from the innocent concerns of childhood and into the frontiers of a new world, changing his life forever.

Download or read book The Black Madonna written by Davis Bunn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the internationally acclaimed Gold of Kings, Storm Syrrell returns in the compelling story of The Black Madonna. Antiques expert Storm Syrrell heads to Europe to investigate the clandestine trade in religious artifacts. She dismisses superstitious tales of miraculous healings and divine omens. Yet when an obsessive Russian oligarch calls—just as her friend Harry Bennett vanishes—all assumptions must be cast aside. Storm seeks answers in a medieval monastery. There, the scarred visage of an icon provokes ever more startling questions. Is she prepared to confront both earthly and spiritual powers? Storm remains haunted by lessons in love and betrayal that lie just outside her grasp. But hesitation now holds mortal consequences.

Download or read book The Madonna of the Mountains written by Elise Valmorbida and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A riveting adventure for the soul . . . just the kind of evocative historical fiction I love.”—Sara Gruen, author of At the Water’s Edge and Water for Elephants An epic, inspiring novel about one woman’s survival in the hardscrabble Italian countryside and her determination to protect her family throughout the Second World War—by any means possible Maria Vittoria is twenty-five when her father brings home the man who will become her husband. It is 1923 in the austere Italian mountain village where her family has lived for generations, and the man she sees is tall and handsome and has survived the First World War without any noticeable scars. Taking just the linens she has sewn that make up her dowry and a statue of the Madonna that sits by her bedside, Maria leaves the only life she has ever known to begin a family. But her future will not be what she imagines. The Madonna of the Mountains follows Maria over the next three decades, as she moves to the town where she and her husband become shopkeepers, through the birth of their five children, through the hardships and cruelties of the National Fascist Party Rule and the Second World War. Struggling with the cost of survival at a time when food is scarce and allegiances are questioned, Maria trusts no one and fears everyone—her Fascist cousin, the madwoman from her childhood, her watchful neighbors, the Nazis and the Partisans who show up hungry at her door. As Maria’s children grow up and her marriage endures its own hardships, she must hold her family together with resilience, love, and faith, until she makes a fateful decision that will change the course of all their lives. A sweeping saga about womanhood, loyalty, war, religion, family, food, motherhood, and marriage, The Madonna of the Mountains is a poignant look at the span of one woman’s life as the rules change and her world becomes unrecognizable. In depicting the great cost of war and the ineluctable power of time on a life, Elise Valmorbida has created an unforgettable portrait of a woman navigating both the unforeseen and the inevitable. Advance praise for Madonna of the Mountains “The moral and ethical questions raised propel the story beyond the particulars into the universal.”—Kirkus Reviews “It is a bewitching but entirely unsentimental portrait of one woman’s attempt to keep her family safe in turbulent times.”—The Times (UK), Book of the Month “A solid choice for readers who appreciate layered family sagas.”—Library Journal

Download or read book Legend and Lore of the Guadalupe Mountains written by W. C. Jameson and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These tales of the mountains, mines, and characters of the Guadalupe range were collected over many years by the author who has explored the area since he was a boy.

Download or read book Bright Dark Madonna written by Elizabeth Cunningham and published by Monkfish Book Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited paperback edition of the sequel to the best-selling novel The Passion of Mary Magdalen.

Download or read book The Book of Happy Endings written by Elise Valmorbida and published by Cyan Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two childhood sweethearts meet again as adults, a young woman defies tradition, new love grows from the ruins of an earlier relationship, exiles find home in each other, love flourishes late in life, handwritten letters span the distance of oceans . . . We love to hear about love. In a world of bad news and bleak prophecies, it's life-affirming to hear a story with a happy ending. These are true tales of passion and perseverance, chance meetings, unexpected romance, lovers whose stars are un-crossed. There is sorrow here. There are questions, too, but no universal answers - and yet other people's happy endings inspire optimism in all of us. People have told the author about their personal experiences. She has listened to their unique voices and woven heartfelt stories from their words. All the chapters are about love, but together they are about life.

Download or read book The Madonna of Excelsior written by Zakes Mda and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new novel by a towering presence in contemporary South African literature In 1971, nineteen citizens of Excelsior in South Africa's white-ruled Free State were charged with breaking apartheid's Immorality Act, which forbade sex between blacks and whites. Taking this case as raw material for his alchemic imagination, Zakes Mda tells the story of a family at the heart of the scandal -and of a country in which apartheid concealed interracial liaisons of every kind. Niki, the fallen madonna, transgresses boundaries for the sake of love; her choices have repercussions in the lives of her black son and mixed-race daughter, who come of age in post-apartheid South Africa, where freedom prompts them to reexamine their country's troubled history at first hand. By turns earthy, witty, and tragic, The Madonna of Excelsior is a brilliant depiction of life in South Africa and of the dramatic changes between the 1970s and the present.

Download or read book The Mezuzah in the Madonna s Foot written by Trudi Alexy and published by Backinprint.com. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author, who was given sanctuary in Spain for two years during WWII in the time of the Holocaust, offers a fascinating chronicle of 500 years of Jewish life in Spain, capturing both the sweep of history and very personal meaning of Judaism in one of Europe's least explored cultures.

Download or read book Death in the Mountains written by Lisa Clifford and published by Pan Australia. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the true story of the murder of Artemio Bruni, a peasant farmer in the mountains of Casentino, north-eastern Tuscany, in the winter of 1907. Artemio was my husband's great-grandfather. "For reasons not understood by my husband's family, Grandpa Artemio's death was never investigated. It was not reported to the police, nor did Bruna Bruni, Artemio's wife, ever demand justice. How could that be possible, I asked my mother-in-law - was it because of the mafia? 'No, no, you don't understand,' she answered. 'Things were different in the mountains one hundred years ago. Grandpa and Grandma were poor farmers, no one could have cared less about them. Grandpa was a nobody and life was cheap in Tuscany then.'" When Australian author and journalist Lisa Clifford moved to Florence to be with her Italian husband, an unsolved murder in his family became part of her life. The more Lisa found out about it, the more intrigued she became - so much so that she was driven to investigate the tragic events of a century ago. Death in the Mountains is Lisa's brilliant recreation of the life and death of Artemio Bruni, and an evocation of the world of the Tuscan mountains in the early 20th century. It is both a murder mystery and a beautifully observed picture of a lost Italy.

Download or read book The Happy Writing Book written by Elise Valmorbida and published by Laurence King Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-16 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'There are many guides to good writing but none as valuable as this.' Oliver Kamm, author and columnist for The Times Creative writing can enhance wellbeing, which can enhance creative writing, which can enhance wellbeing ... Become a better writer with over 100 inspiring prompts, insights and exercises specially devised by an award-winning author and creative writing teacher. Discover how the practice of creative writing - being expressive, exploring ideas, crafting words, shaping stories - can also deepen your appreciation of life.

Download or read book The Madonna Complex written by Norman Bogner and published by Forge Books. This book was released on 2002-04-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Billionaire financier Teddy Franklin is a force to be reckoned with, an internationally famous power broker whose high-stakes wheeling and dealing send economic tremors from Wall Street to Zurich. He buys and sells corporations at will, and holds the careers of powerful lawyers and politicians in the palm of his well-manicured hand. Nothing, absolutely nothing is beyond Teddy's reach . . . Until he meets her. Beautiful, tantalizing, mercurial, and perverse, Barbara captivates Teddy's imagination and carnal desire like no woman he has ever met. And the more she toys with his feverish attentions, driving him to excruciating heights of animal lust while withholding the darkest, deepest secrets of her heart, the more he craves to totally possess her, body and soul, until his desperate obsession with this one irresistibly sensual and seductive woman drives him to the brink of insanity--and worse.

Download or read book Madonna on the Bridge written by Bert C. Wouters and published by Bookbaby. This book was released on 2018-10-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1942, Danya was asked to do the unthinkable. Already sentenced to death for distributing anti-Fascist literature, German SS Commandant Heinrich Tauber offered her a chance at a reprieve--if she would breed with soldiers under the Lebensborn Program, to produce new Aryan soldiers to replace those Germans killed in Russia. As her wall of resistance weakens against the continuous onslaught from the SS, devilishly handsome and shrewd double agent Arie Habers intervenes and helps her go underground. But will the Gestapo find her? And what kind of fate awaits an escaped prisoner of Fascist Germany?Long ago, in a mountainous region of the Northern Caucasus, lived a people totally lost to history. The ancestors of people from the European Continent, the Circassians, lived in the Caucasus Mountains, on the east shores of the Black Sea. Madonna on the Bridge explores the culture of these long-forgotten people, skillfully weaving it with mysticism and history to form an engrossing tale of love and war.

Download or read book Living with a Wild God written by Barbara Ehrenreich and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed comes a brave, frank, and exquisitely written memoir that will change the way you see the world. Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the most important thinkers of our time. Educated as a scientist, she is an author, journalist, activist, and advocate for social justice. In Living With a Wild God, she recounts her quest-beginning in childhood-to find ""the Truth"" about the universe and everything else: What's really going on? Why are we here? In middle age, she rediscovered the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence, which records an event so strange, so cataclysmic, that she had never, in all the intervening years, written or spoken about it to anyone. It was the kind of event that people call a ""mystical experience""-and, to a steadfast atheist and rationalist, nothing less than shattering. In Living With a Wild God, Ehrenreich reconstructs her childhood mission, bringing an older woman's wry and erudite perspective to a young girl's impassioned obsession with the questions that, at one point or another, torment us all. The result is both deeply personal and cosmically sweeping-a searing memoir and a profound reflection on science, religion, and the human condition. With her signature combination of intellectual rigor and uninhibited imagination, Ehrenreich offers a true literary achievement-a work that has the power not only to entertain but amaze.

Download or read book The Madonnas of Leningrad written by Debra Dean and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2006-03-14 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sublime debut novel, set amid the horrors of the siege of Leningrad in World War II, a gifted writer explores the power of memory to save . . . and betray.

Download or read book The Madonnas of Echo Park written by Brando Skyhorse and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We slipped into this country like thieves, onto the land that once was ours. With these words, spoken by an illegal Mexican day laborer, The Madonnas of Echo Park takes us into the unseen world of Los Angeles, following the men and women who cook the meals, clean the homes, and struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream. When a dozen or so girls and mothers gather on an Echo Park street corner to act out a scene from a Madonna music video, they find themselves caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. In the aftermath, Aurora Esperanza grows distant from her mother, Felicia, who as a housekeeper in the Hollywood Hills establishes a unique relationship with a detached housewife. The Esperanzas’ shifting lives connect with those of various members of their neighborhood. A day laborer trolls the streets for work with men half his age and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; a religious hypocrite gets her comeuppance when she meets the Virgin Mary at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard; a typical bus route turns violent when cultures and egos collide in the night, with devastating results; and Aurora goes on a journey through her gentrified childhood neighborhood in a quest to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican Americans dream of, "the land that belongs to us again." Like the Academy Award–winning film Crash, The Madonnas of Echo Park follows the intersections of its characters and cultures in Los Angeles. In the footsteps of Junot Díaz and Sherman Alexie, Brando Skyhorse in his debut novel gives voice to one neighborhood in Los Angeles with an astonishing— and unforgettable—lyrical power.

Download or read book The Virgin of the Andes written by Carol Damian and published by Grassfield Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 1995 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructs the history of the Virgin of Cuzco who, as a fusion of indigenous Andean and Spanish Christian beliefs and practices, represents both the Virgin Mary and Pachamama. Includes background chapters on Andean and Spanish beliefs and art. Major, mostly original work illuminates multiple aspe