Download or read book The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames written by Justine Cowan and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of a foundling. 'Extraordinary ... A fascinating, moving book: part history of the Foundling Hospital and the development of child psychology, part Cowan's own story, and part that of Cowan's mother' LUCY SCHOLES, TELEGRAPH Growing up in a wealthy enclave outside San Francisco, Justine Cowan's life seems idyllic. But her mother's unpredictable temper drives Justine from home the moment she is old enough to escape. It is only after her mother dies that she finds herself pulling at the threads of a story half-told - her mother's upbringing in London's Foundling Hospital. Haunted by this secret history, Justine travels across the sea and deep into the past to discover the girl her mother once was. Here, with the vividness of a true storyteller, she pieces together her mother's childhood alongside the history of the Foundling Hospital: from its idealistic beginnings in the eighteenth century, how it influenced some of England's greatest creative minds - from Handel to Dickens, its shocking approach to childcare and how it survived the Blitz only to close after the Second World War. This was the environment that shaped a young girl then known as Dorothy Soames, who was left behind by a mother forced by stigma and shame to give up her child; who withstood years of physical and emotional abuse, dreaming of escape as German bombers circled the skies, unaware all along that her own mother was fighting to get her back. The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames is a gripping memoir and revelatory investigation into the history of the Foundling Hospital and one girl who grew up in its care - the author's own mother. Praise for The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames: 'As a social history of the Foundling Hospital, this is a fascinating read' SUNDAY TIMES 'Page-turning and profoundly moving' VIRGINIA NICHOLSON 'Part-memoir, part-detective story, The Secret Life Of Dorothy Soames will break your heart then piece it back together again ... Simultaneously exploring her mother's story of escape and the history of the Foundling Hospital, this is an unforgettable read' STYLIST 'A gripping true story' CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE, bestselling author of ORPHAN TRAIN 'Breathtaking' ADRIENNE BRODEUR, bestselling author of WILD GAME

Download or read book A Beautiful Blue Death written by Charles Finch and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2007-06-26 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equal parts Sherlock Holmes and P.G. Wodehouse, Charles Finch's debut mystery A Beautiful Blue Death introduces a wonderfully appealing gentleman detective in Victorian London who investigates crime as a diversion from his life of leisure. Charles Lenox, Victorian gentleman and armchair explorer, likes nothing more than to relax in his private study with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. But when his lifelong friend Lady Jane asks for his help, Lenox cannot resist the chance to unravel a mystery. Prudence Smith, one of Jane's former servants, is dead of an apparent suicide. But Lenox suspects something far more sinister: murder, by a rare and deadly poison. The grand house where the girl worked is full of suspects, and though Prue had dabbled with the hearts of more than a few men, Lenox is baffled by the motive for the girl's death. When another body turns up during the London season's most fashionable ball, Lenox must untangle a web of loyalties and animosities. Was it jealousy that killed Prudence Smith? Or was it something else entirely? And can Lenox find the answer before the killer strikes again—this time, disturbingly close to home?

Download or read book Mrs Sinclair s Suitcase written by Louise Walters and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heartbreaking and deeply compelling debut, Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase is a compulsive page-turner about thwarted love, dashed hopes, and family secrets—book-club fiction at its best. Roberta, a lonely thirty-four-year-old bibliophile, works at The Old and New Bookshop in England. When she finds a letter inside her centenarian grandmother’s battered old suitcase that hints at a dark secret, her understanding of her family’s history is completely upturned. Running alongside Roberta’s narrative is that of her grandmother, Dorothy, as a forty-year-old childless woman desperate for motherhood during the early years of World War II. After a chance encounter with a Polish war pilot, Dorothy believes she’s finally found happiness, but must instead make an unthinkable decision whose consequences forever change the framework of her family. The parallel stories of Roberta and Dorothy unravel over the course of eighty years as they both make their own ways through secrets, lies, sacrifices, and love. Utterly absorbing, Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase is a spellbinding tale of two worlds, one shattered by secrets and the other by the truth.

Download or read book Bevelations written by Bevy Smith and published by Andy Cohen Books. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bevy knows what's what, and she is the kind of woman you want in your corner. If you don't believe me . . . buy the book." —Whoopi Goldberg "Funny, wise, well-experienced, empathetic, colorful—Bevy brings the spirit of humanity wherever she goes." —Pharrell Williams From the host of the fabulous and popular show Bevelations on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy channel, Bevy Smith’s irreverent and inspiring memoir about learning to live a big, authentic, and unapologetic life—and how you can, too Bevy Smith was living what seemed like a glamorous dream as a fashion advertising executive, blazing a lucrative career for herself in the whitewashed magazine world. She jetsetted to Europe for fashion shows, dined and danced at every hot spot, and enjoyed a mighty roster of lovers. So it came as quite a shock to Bevy when one day, after arriving at her luxury hotel in Milan, she collapsed on the Frette bedsheets and sobbed. Years of rolling with the in-crowd had taken its toll. Her satisfaction with work and life had hit rock bottom. But Bevy could not be defeated, and within minutes (okay, days) she grabbed a notepad and started realizing a truer path—one built on self-reflection and, ultimately, clarity. She figured out how to redirect her life toward meaningful creativity and freedom. In her signature lively and infectious voice (there’s no one like Bevy!), Bevelations candidly shares how she reclaimed her life’s course and shows how we too can manifest our most bodacious dreams. From repossessing her bold childhood nature to becoming her own brand to envisioning her life’s next great destination (which will feature natural hair, important charitable giving, and a midcentury house overlooking the Pacific Ocean), Bevy invites readers along on the route of her personal transformation to reveal how each of us can live our best lives with honesty, joy, and, when we’re in the mood, a killer pair of shoes.

Download or read book Nobody s Child written by Kate Adie and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2009-04-16 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Witty, compelling and never mawkish' Observer 'Written with a sure touch . . . Adie has a natural understanding of what it is like to be unsure of your origins' Sunday Telegraph 'A cracker of a subject . . . (Adie) writes with an engaging, forthright immediacy' New Statesman * * * * * * Bestselling author and BBC reporter Kate Adie writes vividly, inspiringly and from many fascinating perspectives about what it means to be an abandoned child. What's your name? Where were you born? What is your date of birth? Simple questions that we are asked throughout our life - but what if you didn't know the answers? Journalist and presenter of BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent Kate Adie uncovers the extraordinary, moving and inspiring stories of just such children - without mother or father, any knowledge of who they might be, or even a name to call their own. With a curiosity inspired by her own circumstances as an adopted child, Kate shows how the most remarkable adults have survived the experience of abandonment. From every perspective Kate Adie brings us a personal, moving and fascinating insight into the very toughest of childhood experiences - and shows what makes us who we really are.

Download or read book Hereditary Genius written by Sir Francis Galton and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wild Game written by Adrienne Brodeur and published by Harper. This book was released on 2019 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a hot July night on Cape Cod, at the age of 14, Brodeur became a confidante to her mother's affair with her husband's closest friend. Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help, but when the affair had calamitous consequences for everyone involved, Brodeau was driven into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. In her memoir she examines how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. -- adapted from jacket

Download or read book The Secrets We Left Behind written by Susan Elliot Wright and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was a summer of love, and a summer of secrets. She has built a good life: a husband who adores her, a daughter she is fiercely proud of, a home with warmth and love at its heart. But things were not always so good, and the truth is that she has done things she can never admit. Then one evening a phone call comes out of the blue. It is a voice from long ago, a man from a past that she has tried so hard to hide. He knows who she really is and what she has done. Now he is dying and he gives her an ultimatum: either she tells the truth, or he will. And so we are taken back to that long hot summer of 1976 to a house by the sea on the southern coast of England, where her story begins and where the truth will be revealed. . . . Told in dual narratives that jump back and forth in time, Elliot Wright has crafted a story with secrets that unfold through the very last page. Compelling, immersive, and thoroughly surprising, The Secrets We Left Behind is a stunning follow up to the author’s acclaimed UK debut The Things We Never Said. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Download or read book Before I Let You Go written by Kelly Rimmer and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Things We Cannot Say, Before I Let You Go explores a hotly divisive topic and asks how far the ties of family love can be stretched before they finally break. “Kelly Rimmer skillfully takes us deep inside a world where love must make choices that logic cannot. Ripped from the headlines and from the heart, Before I Let You Go is an unforgettable novel that will amaze and startle you with its impact and insight.” —Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author of The Bookshop at Water’s End “Before I Let You Go is a heartbreaking book about an impossible decision. Kelly Rimmer writes with wisdom and compassion about the relationships between sisters, mother and daughter…. She captures the anguish of addiction, the agonizing conflict between an addict’s best and worst selves. Above all, this is a novel about the deepest love possible.” —Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author The 2:00 a.m. call is the first time Lexie Vidler has heard her sister’s voice in years. Annie is a drug addict, a thief, a liar—and in trouble, again. Lexie has always bailed Annie out, given her money, a place to sleep, sent her to every kind of rehab. But this time, she’s not just strung out—she’s pregnant and in premature labor. If she goes to the hospital, she’ll lose custody of her baby—maybe even go to prison. But the alternative is unthinkable. As the weeks unfold, Lexie finds herself caring for her fragile newborn niece while her carefully ordered life is collapsing around her. She’s in danger of losing her job, and her fiancé only has so much patience for Annie’s drama. In court-ordered rehab, Annie attempts to halt her downward spiral by confronting long-buried secrets from the sisters’ childhoods, ghosts that Lexie doesn’t want to face. But will the journey heal Annie, or lead her down a darker path? Don’t miss Kelly Rimmer’s next historical suspense, The Paris Agent, coming July 2023! For more by Kelly Rimmer, look for The Things We Cannot Say Truths I Never Told You The Warsaw Orphan The German Wife

Download or read book The Clockmaker s Daughter written by Kate Morton and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of the New York Times bestseller Homecoming—“An ambitious, compelling historical mystery with a fabulous cast of characters…Kate Morton at her very best.” —Kristin Hannah “An elaborate tapestry…Morton doesn’t disappoint.” —The Washington Post "Classic English country-house Goth at its finest." —New York Post In the depths of a 19th-century winter, a little girl is abandoned on the streets of Victorian London. She grows up to become in turn a thief, an artist’s muse, and a lover. In the summer of 1862, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, she travels with a group of artists to a beautiful house on a bend of the Upper Thames. Tensions simmer and one hot afternoon a gunshot rings out. A woman is killed, another disappears, and the truth of what happened slips through the cracks of time. It is not until over a century later, when another young woman is drawn to Birchwood Manor, that its secrets are finally revealed. Told by multiple voices across time, this is an intricately layered, richly atmospheric novel about art and passion, forgiveness and loss, that shows us that sometimes the way forward is through the past.

Download or read book And Now I Spill the Family Secrets written by Margaret Kimball and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best of 2021 List in Comics. 2021 Top of the List Graphic Novel Pick In the spirit of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Margaret Kimball’s AND NOW I SPILL THE FAMILY SECRETS begins in the aftermath of a tragedy. In 1988, when Kimball is only four years old, her mother attempts suicide on Mother’s Day—and this becomes one of many things Kimball’s family never speaks about. As she searches for answers nearly thirty years later, Kimball embarks on a thrilling visual journey into the secrets her family has kept for decades. Using old diary entries, hospital records, home videos, and other archives, Margaret pieces together a narrative map of her childhood—her mother’s bipolar disorder, her grandmother’s institutionalization, and her brother’s increasing struggles—in an attempt to understand what no one likes to talk about: the fractures in her family. Both a coming-of-age story about family dysfunction and a reflection on mental health, AND NOW I SPILL THE FAMILY SECRETS is funny, poignant, and deeply inspiring in its portrayal of what drives a family apart and what keeps them together.

Download or read book The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames written by Justine Cowan and published by Harper. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting family drama evocative of Angela's Ashes and The Glass Castle, about a woman who discovers the shocking secret at the center of her mother's life. Justine had always been told that her mother came from royal blood. The proof could be found in her mother's elegance, in the uppercrust London accent she had never shed--and in a cryptic letter hinting at her claim to a country estate. But beneath the polished veneer lay a fearsome, unpredictable temper that drove Justine from home the moment she was old enough to escape. Years later, when her mother sent her an envelope filled with secrets from a past that had never been spoken about, Justine buried it in the back of an old filing cabinet. After her mother's death, overcome with grief, Justine found herself drawn back to that envelope. Its contents revealed a mystery that would stretch back to the early years of World War II and lead her across the Atlantic Ocean to discover a truth she could scarcely imagine. Her mother did not grow up among London's elite, but had been raised in the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, commonly known as the Foundling Hospital. Established in the eighteenth century to raise "bastard" children to clean chamber pots for England's ruling class, the Foundling Hospital was tied to some of the most influential historical figures and events. From its role in the development of solitary confinement and human medical experimentation to the creation of the British Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts, the Hospital's impact on Western culture continues to reverberate. It was also the environment that shaped a young girl then known as Dorothy Soames, who bravely withstood years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of a sadistic headmistress--a resilient child who dreamed of escape as German bombers reigned death from the skies, unaware that her own mother was fighting to get her back. Heartbreaking, surprising, and unforgettable, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames is the true story of one woman's quest to understand the secrets that had poisoned her mother's mind, and her startling discovery that her family's fate had been sealed centuries before. --Christina Baker Kline, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train

Download or read book The Unmarried Mother written by Sheila Tofield and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sheila Tofield tells her moving true story about being a single mother in 1950s Britain, in The Unmarried Mother. 'A searing, honest testimony' Lesley Pearse Sheila grew up in Rotherham, the daughter of an uncaring mother who made her believe she was useless, stupid and - most painfully of all - unlovable. As a young woman, her worst childhood fears were confirmed when her fiancé broke off their engagement without an explanation. Heartbroken and vulnerable, Sheila was easy prey to the worst type of man - a man who turned his back on her when she told him she was carrying his child. In Fifties Britain, an unmarried, pregnant girl received,not sympathy but censure and contempt. Shunned by most of her family, Sheila ended up in a Church of England home for unmarried mothers, with no apparent alternative than to give up her child for adoption. But when she held her newborn daughter in her arms for the first time, Sheila knew she had to do the unthinkable: bring up her baby on her own in a society that would condemn her for it. Sheila Tofield is a proud grandmother living in Chichester and The Unmarried Mother is her first book. Her touching story was picked up by Penguin when she entered the hugely successful life story competition with Saga Magazine.

Download or read book Black White Just Right written by Marguerite W. Davol and published by Albert Whitman & Company. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This simple story celebrates how the differences between one mother and father blend to make the perfect combination in their daughter. As this little family moves through the world, the girl notes some of the ways that her parents are different from each other, and how she is different from both of them. With each difference she lists, she highlights the ways that their individual characteristics join together to make her family. The fact that her mother is African American and her father is white is just one of the many interesting things that make this little girl and her family "just right."

Download or read book Rabbit written by Patricia Williams and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work "An absolute must-read" – Shondaland “[Rabbit] tells how it went down with brutal honesty and outrageous humor” – New York Times They called her Rabbit. Patricia Williams (aka Ms. Pat) was born and raised in Atlanta at the height of the crack epidemic. One of five children, Pat watched as her mother struggled to get by on charity, cons, and petty crimes. At age seven, Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At twelve, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior. By thirteen, she was pregnant. By fifteen, Pat was a mother of two. Alone at sixteen, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive. Rabbit is an unflinching memoir of cinematic scope and unexpected humor. With wisdom and humor, Pat gives us a rare glimpse of what it’s really like to be a black mom in America.

Download or read book The Last Foundling written by Tom Mackenzie and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-03-13 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deeply moving memoir from one of the last children to be taken in by the Foundling Hospital, London. When she fell pregnant in London in 1938, Jean knew that she couldn’t keep her baby. The unmarried daughter of an elder in the Church of Scotland, she would shame her family if she returned to the north in such a condition. Scared and alone in a city on the brink of war, she begged the Foundling Hospital to give her baby the start in life that she could not. The institution, which had been providing care for deserted infants since the eighteenth century, allowed Jean to nurse her son for nine weeks, leaving her heartbroken when the time came to let him go. But little Tom knew nothing of her love as he grew up in the Foundling Hospital – which, during years of the Second World War, was more like a prison than a children’s home. Locked in and subject to public canings and the sadistic whims of the older boys, there was no one to give him a hug, no one to wipe away his tears. A true story of desertion and neglect, this is also a moving account of survival from one of the very last foundlings. It stands as a testament to the love that ultimately led a family back together.

Download or read book Rajaji Tiger Reserve written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: