Download or read book Those Wild Wyndhams written by Claudia Renton and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three dazzlingly beautiful, wildly rich Wyndham sisters, part of the four hundred families that made up Britain's ruling class, at the center of cultural and political life in late-Victorian/Edwardian Britain. Here are their complex, idiosyncratic lives; their opulent, privileged world; their romantic, roiling age. They were confidantes to British prime ministers, poets, writers, and artists, their lives entwined with the most celebrated and scandalous figures of the day, from Oscar Wilde to Henry James. They were the lovers of great men--or men of great prominence...Mary Wyndham, wilder than her wild brothers; lover of Wilfrid Blunt, confidante of Prime Minister Arthur Balfour (the Balfour Declaration); married to Hugo, Lord Elcho; later the Countess of Wemyss...Madeline Adeane, the quietest and happiest of the three...and Pamela, spoiled, beautiful, of the three, possesser of the true talent, wife of the Foreign Secretary Edward Grey (later Viscount Grey), who took Britain into the First World War. They lived in a world of luxurious excess, a world of splendor at 44 Belgrave Square, and later at the even more vast Clouds, the exquisite Wiltshire house on 4,000 acres, the "house of the age," designed, in 1876, by the visionary architect, Philip Webb; the model for Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton. They were bred with the pride of the Plantagenets and raised with a fierce belief that their family was exceptional. They avoided the norm at all costs and led the way to a blending of aristocracy and art. Their group came to be called The Souls, whose members from 1885 to the 1920s included the most distinguished politicians, artists, and thinkers of their time. In Those Wild Wyndhams, Claudia Renton gives us a dazzling portrait of one of England's grandest, noblest families. Renton captures, with nuance and depth, their complex wrangling between head and heart, and the tragedy at the center of all their lives as the privilege and bliss of the Victorian age gave way to the Edwardian era, the Great War, and the passing of an opulent world.
Download or read book The Day of the Triffids written by John Wyndham and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic postapocalyptic thriller with “all the reality of a vividly realized nightmare” (The Times, London). Triffids are odd, interesting little plants that grow in everyone’s garden. Triffids are no more than mere curiosities—until an event occurs that alters human life forever. What seems to be a spectacular meteor shower turns into a bizarre, green inferno that blinds everyone and renders humankind helpless. What follows is even stranger: spores from the inferno cause the triffids to suddenly take on a life of their own. They become large, crawling vegetation, with the ability to uproot and roam about the country, attacking humans and inflicting pain and agony. William Masen somehow managed to escape being blinded in the inferno, and now after leaving the hospital, he is one of the few survivors who can see. And he may be the only one who can save his species from chaos and eventual extinction . . . With more than a million copies sold, The Day of the Triffids is a landmark of speculative fiction, and “an outstanding and entertaining novel” (Library Journal). “A thoroughly English apocalypse, it rivals H. G. Wells in conveying how the everyday invaded by the alien would feel. No wonder Stephen King admires Wyndham so much.” —Ramsey Campbell, author of The Overnight “One of my all-time favorite novels. It’s absolutely convincing, full of little telling details, and that sweet, warm sensation of horror and mystery.” —Joe R. Lansdale, author of Edge of Dark Water
Download or read book The Mount written by Carol Emshwiller and published by Small Beer Press. This book was released on 2002-08-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Philip K. Dick Award Winner * Best of the Year: Locus, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Book Magazine * Nominated for the Impac Award Charley is an athlete. He wants to grow up to be the fastest runner in the world, like his father. He wants to be painted crossing the finishing line, in his racing silks, with a medal around his neck. Charley lives in a stable. He isn't a runner, he's a mount. He belongs to a Hoot: The Hoots are alien invaders. Charley hasn't seen his mother for years, and his father is hiding out in the mountains somewhere, with the other Free Humans. The Hoots own the world, but the humans want it back. Charley knows how to be a good mount, but now he's going to have to learn how to be a human being.
Download or read book The Wanderers of Time written by John Wyndham and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of science fiction short stories from the master author of THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS. In 1941, Roy Sabre's girlfriend Betty mysteriously disappears. Ten years later he has constructed a time-machine and his first trip is to go back to find her. But his arrival is observed and his machine attacked and damaged as it departs - instead of returning to 1951, it travels to the far future where mankind has disappeared and the Earth is under the control of machines controlled by insects. Roy finds that several other time-travellers, due to damage and malfunction, have been cast forward to the same time . . . Stories included: - "Wanderers of Time" - "Derelict of Space" - "Child of Power" - "The Last Lunarians" - "The Puff-ball Menace"
Download or read book The Wyndham Girls written by Marion Ames Taggart and published by Franklin Classics. This book was released on 2018-10-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Sylvia s Lovers written by Elizabeth Gaskell and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sylvia is a heroine loved by two men of completely different types. The novel follows her development from a wilful, imaginative, but not especially clever girl, to an alert woman who has been matured by her suffering.
Download or read book 17 Carnations written by Andrew Morton and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of the Netflix series The Crown, a meticulously researched historical tour de force about the secret ties among Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, the Duke of Windsor, and Adolf Hitler before, during, and after World War II. Andrew Morton tells the story of the feckless Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, his American wife, Wallis Simpson, the bizarre wartime Nazi plot to make him a puppet king after the invasion of Britain, and the attempted cover-up by Churchill, General Eisenhower, and King George VI of the duke's relations with Hitler. From the alleged affair between Simpson and the German foreign minister to the discovery of top secret correspondence about the man dubbed "the traitor king" and the Nazi high command, this is a saga of intrigue, betrayal, and deception suffused with a heady aroma of sex and suspicion. ,br> For the first time, Morton reveals the full story behind the cover-up of those damning letters and diagrams: the daring heist ordered by King George VI, the smooth duplicity of a Soviet spy as well as the bitter rows and recriminations among the British and American diplomats, politicians, and academics. Drawing on FBI documents, exclusive pictures, and material from the German, Russian, and British royal archives, as well as the personal correspondence of Churchill, Eisenhower, and the Windsors themselves, 17 CARNATIONS is a dazzling historical drama, full of adventure, intrigue, and startling revelations, written by a master of the genre.
Download or read book A Boy in Winter written by Rachel Seiffert and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early on a gray November morning in 1941, a small Ukrainian town is overrun by the SS. Penned in with his fellow Jews, a father anxiously awaits word of his two sons, while a young woman, come to fetch her sweetheart away from the invaders, must confront new and harsh truths about those closest to her. At the same time, a German engineer, here to avoid a war he considers criminal, is faced with an even greater crime unfolding behind the lines and no one but himself to turn to. And in the midst of it all, a boy determined to survive must throw in his lot with strangers. As their stories weave together, each of these characters comes to know the compromises demanded by survival, the oppressive power of fear, and the possibility of courage in the face of terror.
Download or read book Unquiet Souls written by Angela Lambert and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1984 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thius book describes the rise, and fall, of the Souls, an elite groups that flourished in England from the 1880s until the First World War. Its members included Arthur Balfour, George Curzon, Willy Grenfell, George Wyndham, Alfred Lyttelton, Harry Cust and Hug, Lord Elcho. Some of its most influential members were women: Margot Asquith and the Tennant sisters, Ettie Grenfell, Lady Elcho and the Duchess of Rutland. The Souls adorned and scandalized society, cultivating an enjoyment of books, games, leisure and hsopitality in London and on country-house weekends. Above all they enjoyed each other. Unconventional and high spirited, they brough elegance, wit and exuberance of sentiment to all the engaged in, from the creation of thei own special language to their endless flirtations and complicated love affairs. The arrival of World War I say many of them off to fight for England and many died. The frivolity of their earlier lives was over.--From the dust jacket.
Download or read book Rainbow Warrior written by Gilbert Baker and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1978, Harvey Milk asked Gilbert Baker to create a unifying symbol for the growing gay rights movement, and on June 25 of that year, Baker's Rainbow Flag debuted at San Francisco's Gay Liberation Day parade. Baker had no idea his creation would become an international emblem of freedom, forever cementing his place and importance in helping to define the modern LGBTQ+ movement. Rainbow Warrior is Baker's passionate personal chronicle, from a repressive childhood in 1950s Kansas to a harrowing stint in the US Army, and finally his arrival in San Francisco, where he bloomed as both a visual artist and social justice activist. His fascinating story weaves through the early years of the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, where he worked closely with Milk, Cleve Jones, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Baker continued his flag-making, street theater and activism through the Reagan years and the AIDS crisis. And in 1994, Baker spearheaded the effort to fabricate a mile-long Rainbow Flag—at the time, the world's longest—to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City. Gilbert and parade organizers battled with the newly elected Mayor Giuliani for the right to carry it up Fifth Avenue, past St. Patrick's Cathedral. Today, the Rainbow Flag has become a worldwide symbol of LGBTQ+ diversity and inclusiveness, and its rainbow hues have illuminated landmarks from the White House to the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House. Gilbert Baker often called himself the "Gay Betsy Ross," and readers of his colorful, irreverent and deeply personal memoir will find it difficult to disagree.
Download or read book The Chrysalids written by John Wyndham and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a post-apocalyptic Labrador, the survivors live by strict religious beliefs and practice eugenics to maintain "normality." Mutations are considered blasphemies and punished. David, a telepathic boy, befriends Sophie, who has a secret mutation. As they face persecution, they escape to the lawless Fringes. With the help of telepaths and society in "Sealand," they evade hunters, find rescue and plan to return for Rachel, another telepath left behind in Waknuk.
Download or read book The World According to Fannie Davis written by Bridgett M. Davis and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As seen on the Today Show: This true story of an unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and their life in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s highlights "the outstanding humanity of black America" (James McBride). In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee, borrowed $100 from her brother to run a numbers racket out of her home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis's mother. Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, and granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for thirty-four years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts." A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" and provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time.
Download or read book By the Bog of Cats written by Marina Carr and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the mysterious landscape of the bogs of rural Ireland, Carr's lyrical and timeless play tells the story of Hester Swane, an Irish traveller with a deep and unearthly connection to her land. Tormented by the memory of a mother who deserted her, Hester is once again betrayed, this time by the father of her child, the man she loves. On the brink of despair, she embarks on a terrible journey of vengeance as the secrets of her tangled history are revealed. 'A piece of poetic realism steeped in the past... Carr has an extraordinary ability to move between the mythic and the real.' Guardian 'A great play... a great work of poetry... the word should soon carry across both sides of the Atlantic.' Independent By the Bog of Cats premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1998. It was revived at Wyndham's Theatre, London, in November 2004.
Download or read book At Hawthorn Time written by Melissa Harrison and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exquisite and intimate novel about four people's lives and our changing relationship with nature, for fans of Jon McGregor and Robert Macfarlane.
Download or read book Tom s Midnight Garden written by Philippa Pearce and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tom is not prepared for what is about to happen when he hears the grandfather clock strike thirteen. Outside the back door is a garden, which everyone tells him does not exist."--Page 4 de la couverture.
Download or read book Jacqueline Bouvier written by John H. Davis and published by Wiley. This book was released on 1998-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Acclaim for Jacqueline Bouvier John Davis's intimate memoir of his beloved first cousin ""Readers longing for a dignified and elegant approach to Jackie's early years will enjoy this biographical gem by John H. Davis."" --Boston Herald ""Goes a long way to highlight the formative influence of her privileged back-ground and her warm relationship with her father, the philandering Jack (Black Jack) Bouvier."" --Los Angeles Times ""Re-creates a colorful, fast-fading slice of American life as it flourished in the shadows of toll hedges and long lineages."" --The Miami Herald ""The most charming and reliable in the batch of Jackie books] is Davis's memoir."" --The Atlanta Journal and Constitution ""Entertaining, a guilty pleasure."" --The Associated Press ""This tender memoir of Jackie's early years sheds much light on the future woman we all wanted to know but never could."" --The Star-Ledger (Newark)
Download or read book When Women Ruled the World Making the Renaissance in Europe written by Maureen Quilligan and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this game-changing revisionist history, a leading scholar of the Renaissance shows how four powerful women redefined the culture of European monarchy in the glorious sixteenth century. The sixteenth century in Europe was a time of chronic destabilization in which institutions of traditional authority were challenged and religious wars seemed unending. Yet it also witnessed the remarkable flowering of a pacifist culture, cultivated by a cohort of extraordinary women rulers—most notably, Mary Tudor; Elizabeth I; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Catherine de’ Medici—whose lives were intertwined not only by blood and marriage, but by a shared recognition that their premier places in the world of just a few dozen European monarchs required them to bond together, as women, against the forces seeking to destroy them, if not the foundations of monarchy itself. Recasting the complex relationships among these four queens, Maureen Quilligan, a leading scholar of the Renaissance, rewrites centuries of historical analysis that sought to depict their governments as riven by personal jealousies and petty revenges. Instead, When Women Ruled the World shows how these regents carefully engendered a culture of mutual respect, focusing on the gift-giving by which they aimed to ensure ties of friendship and alliance. As Quilligan demonstrates, gifts were no mere signals of affection, but inalienable possessions, often handed down through generations, that served as agents in the creation of a steep social hierarchy that allowed women to assume political authority beyond the confines of their gender. “With brilliant panache” (Amanda Foreman), Quilligan reveals how eleven-year-old Elizabeth I’s gift of a handmade book to her stepmother, Katherine Parr, helped facilitate peace within the tumultuous Tudor dynasty, and how Catherine de’ Medici’s gift of the Valois tapestries to her granddaughter, the soon-to-be Grand Duchess of Tuscany, both solidified and enhanced the Medici family’s prestige. Quilligan even uncovers a book of poetry given to Elizabeth I by Catherine de’ Medici as a warning against the concerted attack launched by her closest counselor, William Cecil, on the divine right of kings—an attack that ultimately resulted in the execution of her sister, Mary, Queen of Scots. Beyond gifts, When Women Ruled the World delves into the connections the regents created among themselves, connections that historians have long considered beneath notice. “Like fellow soldiers in a sororal troop,” Quilligan writes, these women protected and aided each other. Aware of the leveling patriarchal power of the Reformation, they consolidated forces, governing as “sisters” within a royal family that exercised power by virtue of inherited right—the very right that Protestantism rejected as a basis for rule. Vibrantly chronicling the artistic creativity and political ingenuity that flourished in the pockets of peace created by these four queens, Quilligan’s lavishly illustrated work offers a new perspective on the glorious sixteenth century and, crucially, the women who helped create it.
