Download or read book Learwife written by J. R. Thorpe and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear, this breathtaking debut novel tells the story of the most famous woman ever written out of literary history. "I am the queen of two crowns, banished fifteen years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone. I am fifty-five years old. I am Lear's wife. I am here." Word has come. Care-bent King Lear is dead, driven mad and betrayed. His three daughters too, broken in battle. But someone has survived: Lear's queen. Exiled to a nunnery years ago, written out of history, her name forgotten. Now she can tell her story. Though her grief and rage may threaten to crack the earth open, she knows she must seek answers. Why was she sent away in shame and disgrace? What has happened to Kent, her oldest friend and ally? And what will become of her now, in this place of women? To find peace she must reckon with her past and make a terrible choice - one upon which her destiny, and that of the entire abbey, rests. Giving unforgettable voice to a woman whose absence has been a tantalising mystery, Learwife is a breathtaking novel of loss, renewal and how history bleeds into the present.
Download or read book King Lear written by Jeffrey Kahan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-04-18 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare’s original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises ‘the play’ is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink
Download or read book Jane Smiley s A Thousand Acres written by Susan Elizabeth Farrell and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2001-09-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuum Contemporaries will be a wonderful source of ideas and inspiration for members of book clubs and readings groups, as well as for literature students.The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to 30 of the most popular, most acclaimed, and most influential novels of recent years. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question. The books in the series will all follow the same structure:a biography of the novelist, including other works, influences, and, in some cases, an interview; a full-length study of the novel, drawing out the most important themes and ideas; a summary of how the novel was received upon publication; a summary of how the novel has performed since publication, including film or TV adaptations, literary prizes, etc.; a wide range of suggestions for further reading, including websites and discussion forums; and a list of questions for reading groups to discuss.
Download or read book Some Luck written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes the first volume of an epic trilogy that takes us on a literary adventure through cycles of birth and death, passion and betrayal that will span a century in America. “Intimate.... Miraculous.... Staggering.... A masterpiece in the making.” —USA Today 1920, Denby, Iowa: Rosanna and Walter Langdon have just welcomed their firstborn son, Frank, into their family farm. He will be the oldest of five. Each chapter in this extraordinary novel covers a single year, encompassing the sweep of history as the Langdons abide by time-honored values and pass them on to their children. With the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change through the early 1950s, we watch as the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: one moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis. Later still, a girl we’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own.
Download or read book Moo written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-08-24 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes “an uproariously funny and at the same time hauntingly melancholy portrait of a college community in the Midwest" (The New York Times). In this darkly satirical send-up of academia and the Midwest, we are introduced to Moo University, a distinguished institution devoted to the study of agriculture. Amid cow pastures and waving fields of grain, Moo’s campus churns with devious plots, mischievous intrigue, lusty liaisons, and academic one-upmanship, Chairman X of the Horticulture Department harbors a secret fantasy to kill the dean; Mrs. Walker, the provost's right hand and campus information queen, knows where all the bodies are buried; Timothy Monahan, associate professor of English, advocates eavesdropping for his creative writing assignments; and Bob Carlson, a sophomore, feeds and maintains his only friend: a hog named Earl Butz. Wonderfully written and masterfully plotted, Moo gives us a wickedly funny slice of life.
Download or read book Perestroika in Paris written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals—and a young boy—whose lives intersect in Paris in this "feel-good escape” (The New York Times). Paras, short for "Perestroika," is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and—she's a curious filly—wanders all the way to the City of Light. She's dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city's lush green spaces, nourished by Frida's strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather nears, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? Jane Smiley's beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom.
Download or read book Ten Thousand Acres written by Patrice Newell and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We farm with new ambitions, never forgetting that there is no degree of separation between us and nature This unique and beautiful book pleads for a more personal knowledge of Australia's ancient, fragile landscape - a re-evaluation of one of the oldest relationships of all. Few countries have undergone so rapid a change in land use as Australia since European settlement. On her biodynamic farm in the Hunter Valley, Patrice Newell has spent twenty years trying to slow down that relentless pace of change, and to heal some of the wounds caused by past practices. Ten Thousand Acres is the story of those years. It plays homage to land as the source of life and food, community and culture - as a living mantle rather than real estate.
Download or read book Private Life written by Jane Smiley and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As her husband's obsessions with science take a darker turn on the eve of World War II, Margaret Mayfield is forced to consider the life she has so carefully constructed. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres.
Download or read book San Francisco s Golden Gate Park written by Chris Pollock and published by Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co.. This book was released on 2001 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This gorgeous book captures the wonders of this park by the bay. Filled with color photos and historical documents documenting the park's illustrious and colorful past.
Download or read book Early Warning written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winner: the second installment, following Some Luck, of her widely acclaimed, best-selling American trilogy, which brings the journey of a remarkable family with roots in the Iowa heartland into mid-century America Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of post–World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the Cold War and the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and ’70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth—for some—of the early 1980s, the Langdon children each follow a different path in a rapidly changing world. And they now have children of their own: twin boys who are best friends and vicious rivals; a girl whose rebellious spirit takes her to the notorious Peoples Temple in San Francisco; and a golden boy who drops out of college to fight in Vietnam—leaving behind a secret legacy that will send shock waves through the Langdon family into the next generation. Capturing a transformative period through richly drawn characters we come to know and care deeply for, Early Warning continues Smiley’s extraordinary epic trilogy, a gorgeously told saga that began with Some Luck and will span a century in America. But it also stands entirely on its own as an engrossing story of the challenges—and rewards—of family and home, even in the most turbulent of times, all while showcasing a beloved writer at the height of her considerable powers.
Download or read book Return to the Hundred Acre Wood written by David Benedictus and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-10-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visit our all-new Pooh website! It was eighty years ago, on the publication of The House at Pooh Corner, when Christopher Robin said good-bye to Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. Now they are all back in new adventures, for the first time approved by the Trustees of the Pooh Properties. This is a companion volume that truly captures the style of A. A. Milne-a worthy sequel to The House at Pooh Corner and Winnie-the-Pooh. Listen to award-winning narrator Jim Dale reading the Exposition to Return to the Hundred Acre Wood. Also available from Penguin Audio.
Download or read book Good Faith written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2003-04-22 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes a “smashing...fascinating” novel (The New York Times Book Review) that conjures all the American obsessions of the 1980s: sex, greed, envy, real estate, and the American dream. In her subversively funny and genuinely moving new novel, Jane Smiley nails down several American preoccupations with the expertise of a master carpenter. Forthright, likable Joe Stratford is the kind of local businessman everybody trusts, for good reason. But it’s 1982, and even in Joe’s small town, values are in upheaval: not just property values, either. Enter Marcus Burns, a would-be master of the universe whose years with the IRS have taught him which rules are meant to be broken. Before long he and Joe are new best friends—and partners in an investment venture so complex that no one may ever understand it. Add to this Joe’s roller coaster affair with his mentor’s married daughter. The result is as suspenseful and entertaining as any of Jane Smiley’s fiction.
Download or read book True Blue written by Jane Smiley and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True Blue is a beauty, a dappled gray, and when Abby gets to take him to her family's ranch, she can hardly believe her luck. The horse needs a home: his owner—a woman brand new to the riding stable--was tragically killed in a car crash and no one has claimed him. Daddy is wary, as always. But Abby is smitten. True Blue is a sweetheart, and whenever Abby calls out, "Blue, Blue, how are you?" he whinnies back. But sometimes True Blue seems...spooked. He paces, and always seems to be looking for something. Or someone. Abby starts to wonder about True Blue's owner. What was she like? What did she look like? One moonlit night, Abby could swear she hears a whisper in her ear: "He's still my horse." Filled with riding scenes and horse details, this newest middle-grade novel from a Pulitzer Prize-winner offers a mysterious and suspenseful almost-ghost story.
Download or read book Horse Heaven written by Jane Smiley and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2000 with total page 936 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's not true," says a character in Jane Smiley's funny, passionate, and brilliant new novel of horse racing, "that anything can happen at the racetrack," but many astonishing and affecting things do -- and in Horse Heaven, we find them woven into a marvelous tapestry of joy and love, chicanery, folly, greed, and derring-do. Haunting, exquisite Rosalind Maybrick, wife of a billionaire owner, one day can't quite decide what it is she wants, and discovers too late that her whole life is transformed . . . Twenty-year-old Tiffany Morse, stuck in her job at Wal-Mart, prays, "Please make something happen here . . . This time, I mean it," and something does . . . Farley, a good trainer in a bad slump; Buddy, a ruthless trainer who can't seem to lose even though he knows that his personal salvation depends upon it; Roberto, an apprentice jockey who has "the hands" but is growing too big for his dream career with every passing day; Leo the gambler and his earnest son, Jesse, who understands everything about his father's "system" except why it doesn't work; Elizabeth, the sixty-two-year-old theorist of sex and animal communication, and her best friend, Joy, the mare manager at the ranch at the center of the universe--all are woven together by the horses that pass among them: two colts and two fillies who begin with the promise of talent and breeding, and now might or might not achieve stardom. There are the geldings -- Justa Bob, the plain brown horse who always wins by a nose, a lovable claimer who passes from owner to owner on a heart-wrenching journey down from the winner's circle; and the beautiful Mr. T., raced in France and rescued in Texas, who is discovered to have some unusualand amazing talents. And then there is the Jack Russell terrier, Eileen, a dog with real convictions -- and the will to implement them. The strange, compelling, sparkling, and mysterious universe of horse racing that has fascinated generations of punters and robber barons, horse-lovers and wits, has never before been depicted with such verve and originality, such tenderness, such clarity, and, above all, such sheer exuberance.
Download or read book One Hundred Sixty Acres of Dirt written by Marsha Arzberger and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This colorful history of pioneer life in Arizona sheds light on the experiences of the homesteader families who founded the Kansas Settlement. In 1909, fifteen families left their homes in Kansas to claim homesteads a thousand miles away in a remote region of the Arizona Territory. In this beautiful but unforgiving new home, they would realize their dream of owning their own land. They named their new community Kansas Settlement. Those who persevered met the challenges, raised their families, and prospered. Their determination was inspiring and left a legacy of courage. In One Hundred Sixty Acres of Dirt, author Marsha Arzberger tells the tales of these remarkable people—farmers, cowboys, pioneer women, and schoolmarms—drawn from personal journals and family scrapbooks. A descendent of one of the original Kansas Settlement families, Arzberger vividly recounts their journey West, as well as their dealings with rustlers, droughts, Apaches, and straying husbands. This carefully researched account captures the daily lives, joys, and tragedies of Arizona’s Kansas Settlement.
Download or read book Ordinary Love and Good Will written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-01-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These exquisite twin novellas chronicle the difficult choices that reshape the lives of two very different families. In Ordinary Love, Smiley focuses on a woman’s infidelity and the lasting, indelible effects it leaves on her children long after her departure. Good Will portrays a father who realizes how his son has been affected by his decision to lead a counterculture life and move his family to a farm. As both stories unfold, Smiley gracefully raises the questions that confront all families with the characteristic style and insight that has marked all of her work.
Download or read book Acres of Diamonds written by Russell H. Conwell and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russell H. Conwell Founder Of Temple University Philadelphia.