Download or read book The Times Lives Less Ordinary Obituaries of the eccentric unique and undefinable written by Nigel Farndale and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the lives of some of the most fascinating and unconventional characters of recent times, with 80 obituaries carefully curated from The Times archive. Be they dons, pop stars, vicars, MPs, rugby players or aristocrats, each has marched to the beat of their own drum and led a life far from ordinary.

Download or read book The Pleasure Express written by Sara Sheridan and published by Arrow Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the final months of British rule spiral to a close, Kate, one of Hong Kong's most expensive call girls, and Rosie, her housemate and fellow-courtesan, live the glamorous, whirlwind life of the elite, but there are darker undercurrents which threaten to consume them. And when the unthinkable happens, they know they have to take action--

Download or read book The Times Great Lives written by and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Times obituaries have given readers throughout the world an instant picture of a life for over 150 years. The Times Great Lives is a selection of 124 of these pieces, each obituary has been updated and reproduced in their entirety, by Anna Temkin, The Times assistant obituaries editor.

Download or read book The Rabbit Hutch written by Tess Gunty and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2023-06-27 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • The standout literary debut that everyone is talking about • "Inventive, heartbreaking and acutely funny."—The Guardian A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME, NPR, Oprah Daily, People Blandine isn't like the other residents of her building. An online obituary writer. A young mother with a dark secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents — neighbors, separated only by the thin walls of a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial center of Vacca Vale, Indiana. Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch. Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, Blandine shares her apartment with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands, all, like her, now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them, all searching for meaning in their lives. Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom. "Gunty writes with a keen, sensitive eye about all manner of intimacies―the kind we build with other people, and the kind we cultivate around ourselves and our tenuous, private aspirations."—Raven Leilani, author of Luster

Download or read book The Times Great Lives A Century In Obituaries written by and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2010-02-18 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Times obituaries have given readers throughout the world an instant picture of a life for over 150 years. For many it is the first port of call in the newspaper. The Times Great Lives is a selection of over 100 of these pieces, reproduced in their entirety, by the current obituaries editor of The Times, Ian Brunskill.

Download or read book The Dictator s Muse written by Nigel Farndale and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '[A] riveting novel... a fast-paced, brilliantly constructed thriller, in which the fates of the three young British protagonists hang in the balance at the end of every chapter' A. N. Wilson, SPECTATOR It is the early 1930s, and Europe is holding its breath. As Hitler's grip on power tightens, preparations are being made for the Berlin Olympics. Leni Riefenstahl is the pioneering, sexually-liberated star film-maker of the Third Reich. She has been chosen by Hitler to capture the Olympics on celluloid but is about to find that even his closest friends have much to fear. Kim Newlands is the English athlete 'sponsored' by the Blackshirts and devoted to his mercurial, socialite girlfriend Connie. He is driven by a desire to win an Olympic gold but to do that he must first pretend to be someone he is not. Alun Pryce is the Welsh communist sent to infiltrate the Blackshirts. When he befriends Kim and Connie, his belief that the end justifies the means will be tested to the core. Through her camera lens and memoirs, Leni is able to manipulate the truth about what happens when their fates collide at the Olympics. But while some scenes from her life end up on the cutting room floor, this does not mean they are lost forever... 'Profound and moving... a beautifully written evocation of turbulent times' Daily Express 'A novel rich in historical detail, but wearing its research lightly, and the story is told in a French Lieutenant's Woman kind of way, veering from the present to the past with superb flair... this novel has an uncomfortable prescience, with a plot twist at the end which is ingenious. - IRISH INDEPENDENT 'A masterly exploration of conflicting loyalties ... Sharply characterised, richly atmospheric and completely engrossing' John Preston, author of The Dig ------------------ Readers love The Dictator's Muse: ***** 'An addictive, all-consuming read' ***** 'Flows beautifully with love, hopes, desires and propaganda of the time. Fascinating, engaging and terrifying' ***** 'Thoughtful, well researched and atmospheric with engaging characters' ***** 'I can't recommend this book highly enough'

Download or read book Redemption Song written by Chris Salewicz and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 965 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With exclusive access to Strummer's friends, relatives, and fellow musicians, music journalist Chris Salewicz penetrates the soul of an rock 'n roll icon. The Clash was--and still is--one of the most important groups of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Indebted to rockabilly, reggae, Memphis soul, cowboy justice, and '60s protest, the overtly political band railed against war, racism, and a dead-end economy, and in the process imparted a conscience to punk. Their eponymous first record and London Calling still rank in Rolling Stone's top-ten best albums of all time, and in 2003 they were officially inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Joe Strummer was the Clash's front man, a rock-and-roll hero seen by many as the personification of outlaw integrity and street cool. The political heart of the Clash, Strummer synthesized gritty toughness and poetic sensitivity in a manner that still resonates with listeners, and his untimely death in December 2002 shook the world, further solidifying his iconic status. Salewicz was a friend to Strummer for close to three decades and has covered the Clash's career and the entire punk movement from its inception. He uses his vantage point to write Redemption Song, the definitive biography of Strummer, charting his enormous worldwide success, his bleak years in the wilderness after the Clash's bitter breakup, and his triumphant return to stardom at the end of his life. Salewicz argues for Strummer's place in a long line of protest singers that includes Woody Guthrie, John Lennon, and Bob Marley, and examines by turns Strummer's and punk's ongoing cultural influence.

Download or read book The Blasphemer written by Nigel Farndale and published by Crown. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astonishing, ambitious and masterful new novel, with echoes of Birdsong, that reads at the pace of a thriller. On its way to the Galápagos Islands, a light aircraft crashes into the sea. Zoologist Daniel Kennedy is confronted with a stark Darwinian choice. Should he save himself, or Nancy, the woman he loves? But how can one moment of betrayal ever be forgiven? And after he escapes the plane and swims for help, who is the elusive figure who guides him away from certain death? Back in London, Daniel thinks he finds the answer; it is connected with his great grandfather and the first horrific day of Passchendaele. But as the past collapses into the present, the fissures in his relationship with Nancy show through. Until he is given a second chance to prove his courage and earn her forgiveness. The Blasphemer is a novel that speaks to the head as well as the heart of the reader.

Download or read book Lila written by Robert Pirsig and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2013-11-06 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this bestselling new book, his first in seventeen years, Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, takes us on a poignant and passionate journey as mysterious and compelling as his first life-changing work. Instead of a motorcycle, a sailboat carries his philosopher-narrator Phaedrus down the Hudson River as winter closes in. Along the way he picks up a most unlikely traveling companion: a woman named Lila who in her desperate sexuality, hostility, and oncoming madness threatens to disrupt his life. In Lila Robert M. Pirsig has crafted a unique work of adventure and ideas that examines the essential issues of the nineties as his previous classic did the seventies.

Download or read book A Life Less Ordinary written by Baby Halder and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When she was very young, Baby Halder was abandoned by her mother and left with a cruel, abusive father. She was married off at twelve to a man twice her age who beat her. At fourteen, she was a mother herself. Her early life was marked by overwhelming challenges and heartbreak until, exhausted and desperate, she fled with her three children to Delhi, to work as a maid in some of the city's wealthiest homes. Expected to serve her employers' every demand, she faced a staggering workload that often left her no time to care for her own children. But she never complained, for such is the lot of the poor in modern-day India. Written without a trace of self-pity, A Life Less Ordinary is a shocking look deep inside a world of poverty and subjugation that few outsiders know about—and an inspiring true story of one remarkable woman's strength, courage, and determination to soar above her circumstances.

Download or read book Poor Economics written by Abhijit V. Banerjee and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics upend the most common assumptions about how economics works in this gripping and disruptive portrait of how poor people actually live. Why do the poor borrow to save? Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs? In Poor Economics, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two award-winning MIT professors, answer these questions based on years of field research from around the world. Called "marvelous, rewarding" by the Wall Street Journal, the book offers a radical rethinking of the economics of poverty and an intimate view of life on 99 cents a day. Poor Economics shows that creating a world without poverty begins with understanding the daily decisions facing the poor.

Download or read book Empty Mansions written by Bill Dedman and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic. Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms.

Download or read book Haw Haw written by Nigel Farndale and published by Pan Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Joyce - Lord Haw Haw - was hanged as a traitor in Wandsworth Prison in January 1946. Nigel Farndale presents a compelling and disturbing portrait of a traitor, drunkard, womaniser, brawler and unashamed anti-Semite, while exposing the truth behind his very public trial. Originally published: London: Macmillan, 2005.

Download or read book A Life Less Ordinary written by Zoe Ellison and published by CICO Books. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate glimpse of the artistry of two women whose beautiful, evocative, and carefully curated interiors are crafted from what they find around them. An intimate glimpse of the artistry of two women whose beautiful, evocative, and carefully curated interiors are crafted from what they find around them. Zoe Ellison and Alex Legendre have created a beautiful shopping and interiors experience with their unique store i gigi—a haven of beautiful gifts and unique pieces for your home. The muted, earthy color palette is chic and modern and yet utterly timeless, allowing their pieces to fit seamlessly into any home. In this, their first book, they share their secrets and open their hearts as they describe the journey they have taken, what makes them tick, and their philosophy, friendship, inspirations, ideas, and interiors. i gigi is a destination store, selling the idea of a beautiful yet practical and achievable lifestyle. Their interiors feature reclaimed and revamped pieces and rooms that have been created on a shoestring. With stunning photography throughout, this is a truly fascinating look into their world.

Download or read book Jimmy Page written by Chris Salewicz and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth biography of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page by the acclaimed biographer of Bob Marley and Joe Strummer, based upon the author's extensive research and interviews The original enigmatic rock star, Jimmy Page is a mass of contradictions. A towering presence in the guitar world and one of the most revered rock guitarists of all time, in private he is reclusive and mysterious, retiring and given to esoteric interests. Over the decades he has exchanged few words to the press given the level of his fame, and an abiding interest in the demonic and supernatural has only made the myth more potent. But in the midst of this maelstrom, who was Jimmy Page? Rock journalist Chris Salewicz has conducted numerous interviews with Page over the years and has created the first portrait of the guitarist that can be called definitive, penetrating the shadows that surround him to reveal the fascinating man who dwells within the rock legend.

Download or read book Words in Revolution written by Anna M. Lawton and published by New Academia Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2005 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her extensive Introduction, Lawton has highlighted the historical development of the movement and has related futurism both to the Russian national scene and to avant-garde movements worldwide.

Download or read book Scientific Babel written by Michael D. Gordin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-13 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious mechanism: the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with footnotes—not offering background information, but presenting quoted material in its original language. The result is stunning: as we read about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war, economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science, and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses that the dominance of English entails. Few historians of science write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey with him will be disappointed.