Download or read book It s Gone Dark Over Bill s Mother s written by Lisa Blower and published by Myriad Editions. This book was released on 2019-04-11 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lisa Blower celebrates her characters with stories that they wouldn't want told. She makes the bleak funny, in a voice reminiscent of Alan Bennett, and strikes a new chord in regional and working-class fiction. With a sharp eye and tough warmth, Lisa Blower brings to life the silent histories and harsh realities of those living on the margins. The matriarch dominates these award-winning stories in Lisa Blower's debut collection. From the wise, witty and outspoken Nan of 'Broken Crockery', who has lived and worked in Stoke-on-Trent for all of her 92 years, never owning a passport, to happy hooker Ruthie in 'The Land of Make Believe' or young mum Roxanne in 'The Cherry Tree', she appears in many shapes and forms, and always with a stoicism that is hard to break down. The title is a Potteries saying that means it's looking a bit bleak, a little like rain.
Download or read book Pondweed written by Lisa Blower and published by Myriad Editions. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A love story in the slow lane about loss and getting lost—two childhood sweethearts take a trip via pints, ponds and pitstops to find their future on a road less travelled from Stoke-on-Trent to WalesApparently, we spend almost two weeks of our life completely lost. If you add up all the times you take a wrong turn or find yourself somewhere you don't want to be, it equates to fourteen days of essentially being missing.One Monday afternoon, around three o'clock, pond supplies salesman Selwyn Robby arrives home towing the Toogood Aquatics exhibition caravan and orders his like-wife, Imogen 'Ginny' Dare, to get into the car. He's taking her on a little holiday, he says. To Wales. So begins their road trip west, via blasts from Selwyn's past, and a fortnight's journey of self-discovery for them both. But it's a fishy business towing this caravan, with its saucy mermaid curtains and fully stocked bar, and Ginny must untangle the pondweed to get to the bottom of it, even it does mean unearthing her own murky past to find out.
Download or read book Walking Literary London written by Stephen Browning and published by White Owl. This book was released on 2023-03-23 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Meant for travelers and general readers, this book belongs to adventurers of all sorts, whether on the road or in their minds." - Library Journal London possesses a literary heritage which is unique and in large part unrivalled in any city in the world. In this book, literary London is presented through its authors and literature: William Shakespeare, Andrea Levy, G.A. Henty, Geoffrey Chaucer, P.L. Travers, Samuel Pepys, Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens, Una Marson, Joe Orton, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Phillis Wheatley, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Katherine Mansfield, Harry Potter and Samuel Selvon to name just a very few. The text takes the reader on a series of walks, each of which is original and unique, the result of twenty years’ exploration of this wonderful city by the author. Detailed maps have been specially commissioned. The text is accompanied by over 80 original photographs taken by the author. In these pages you will find the details of hundreds of writers and their works; wherever you walk in the great city of London – even if solely in imagination from an armchair - the experience is going to be extraordinary.
Download or read book Writing Ecofiction written by Kevan Manwaring and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Common People written by Kit de Waal and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working-class stories are not always tales of the underprivileged and dispossessed. Common People is a collection of essays, poems and memoir written in celebration, not apology: these are narratives rich in barbed humour, reflecting the depth and texture of working-class life, the joy and sorrow, the solidarity and the differences, the everyday wisdom and poetry of the woman at the bus stop, the waiter, the hairdresser. Here, Kit de Waal brings together thirty-three established and emerging writers who invite you to experience the world through their eyes, their voices loud and clear as they reclaim and redefine what it means to be working class. Features original pieces from Damian Barr, Malorie Blackman, Lisa Blower, Jill Dawson, Louise Doughty, Stuart Maconie, Chris McCrudden, Lisa McInerney, Paul McVeigh, Daljit Nagra, Dave O’Brien, Cathy Rentzenbrink, Anita Sethi, Tony Walsh, Alex Wheatle and more.
Download or read book Spindles written by Deborah Levy and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2015-10-21 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between sleep and storytelling is an ancient one. For centuries, sleep has provided writers with a magical ingredient – a passage of time during which great changes miraculously occur, an Orpheus-like voyage through the subconscious daubed with the fantastic. But over the last ten years, our scientific understanding of sleep has been revolutionised. No longer is sleep viewed as a time of simple rest and recuperation. Instead, it is proving to be an intensely dynamic period of brain activity: a vital stage in the re-wiring of memories, the learning of new skills, and the processing of problems and emotions. How will storytelling respond to this new and emerging science of sleep? Here, 14 authors have been invited to work with key scientists to explore various aspects of sleep research: from the possibilities of ‘sleep engineering’ and ‘overnight therapies’, to future-tech ways of harnessing sleep’s problem-solving powers, to the challenges posed by our increasingly 24-hour lifestyles. Just as new hypotheses are being put forward, old hunches are also being confirmed (there’s now a scientific basis for the time-worn advice ‘to sleep on a problem’). As these responses show, sleep and the spinning of stories are still very much entwined. Featuring scientific contributions from: Prof Russell G. Foster, Isabel Hutchison, Dr. Simon Kyle, Dr. Penny Lewis, Dr. Paul Reading, Stephanie Romiszewski, Prof Robert Stickgold, Prof Manuel Schabus, Prof Ed Watkins, Prof Adam Zeman, Dr. Thomas Wehr. This project was supported by the Wellcome Trust.
Download or read book Blackmoor written by Edward Hogan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-09-03 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE PAST CAN ALWAYS HAUNT YOU . . . Beth is an albino, half blind, and given to looking at the world out of the corner of her eye. Her neighbours in the Derbyshire town of Blackmoor have always thought she was 'touched', and when a series of bizarre happenings shake the very foundations of the village, they are confirmed in their opinion that Beth is an ill omen. The neighbours say that Beth eats dirt from the flowerbeds, and that smoke rises from her lawn. By the end of the year, she is dead. A decade later her son, Vincent, treated like a bad omen by his father George is living in a pleasant suburb miles from Blackmoor. There the bird-watching teenager stumbles towards the buried secrets of his mother's life and death in the abandoned village. It's the story of a community that fell apart, a young woman whose face didn't fit, and a past that refuses to go away.
Download or read book Unafraid of the Dark written by Rosemary Bray and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1999-03-16 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her deeply affecting, vividly written memoir, Rosemary L. Bray describes with remarkable frankness growing up poor in Chicago in the 1960s, and her childhood shaped by welfare, the Roman Catholic Church, and the civil rights movement. Bray writes poignantly of her lasting dread of the cold and the dark that characterized her years of poverty; of her mother's extraordinary strength and resourcefulness; and of the system that miraculously enabled her mother to scrape together enough to keep the children fed and clothed. Bray's parents, held together by their ambitions for their children and painfully divided by their poverty, punctuate young Rosemary's nights with their violent fights and define her days with their struggles. This powerful, ultimately inspiring book is a moving testimony of the history Bray overcame, and the racial obstacles she continues to see in her children's way.
Download or read book A Dictionary of Catch Phrases written by Eric Partridge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 1315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A catch phrase is a well-known, frequently-used phrase or saying that has `caught on' or become popular over along period of time. It is often witty or philosophical and this Dictionary gathers together over 7,000 such phrases.
Download or read book Black Over Bill s Mother s written by Stephen Burrows and published by . This book was released on 2017-03-03 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of family torn apart, and a rollercoaster adventure through the formative decades of the last century involving the genesis of the Hells Angels, Organised Crime Gangs and the underside of Policing, packed with nostalgia and history.Mary Docker, a single mother in wartime, fights for her own and her twin's survival. The twins have their own problems. A rare genetic 'miracle' means one is black, one white. Their destinies lead them to opposite sides of the law, conflict and betrayal. Elsewhere in Birmingham, Patrick Quinn, a violent child of Irish descent, makes a deal with the devil, a deal that haunts him down the years and draws the twins into a cataclysmic showdown.Set predominantly in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, in Birmingham, Ireland, New York and California, Black Over Bill's Mother's is a huge dose of nostalgia, history and culture. A fast - moving and gripping story of a family falling apart, featuring police, Hells Angels, and gangs in a struggle for supremacy. The plot winds through five decades before a gripping conclusion full of twists and turns.Incorporating genuine historical events and locations, imbued with Brummie language, police slang, music and culture of the times, this book is in the tradition of Peaky Blinders, and could be the next generation.This is a book to appeal to all lovers of historical fiction, family sagas and violent crime thrillers. "If the phrase 'It takes a thief to catch a thief' is only half true, then it would probably take a good cop to write a good crime story. So when you put two cops together with a combined service of more than seventy years at the sharp end, the result should be a bit special. And it is, this would make a cracking holiday read" .....Mike Pryce of the Worcester News (September 2016)The Authors: Michael Layton and Stephen Burrows, both Birmingham authors, are retired police officers with more than seventy years' experience of CID and uniform policing between them. In this novel, they draw upon their knowledge and experiences, to provide a gritty and authentic story grounded in history and personal knowledge. The sequel to Black Over Bill's Mother's, 'Keep Right On', will be published in Spring 2017Michael Layton QPM is the author/co-author of a number of non - fiction books dealing with football violence and police history including 'Hunting the Hooligans' and 'Birmingham's Front Line'. A joint non-fiction book, 'The Noble Cause' puts the spotlight on policing, its methods and training in the 1980's and 1990's. A Facebook Page, 'Bostin Books', details all their books, together with photographs and nostalgia.
Download or read book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
Download or read book Knocked Down written by Aileen Weintraub and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022-03 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A laugh-out-loud memoir about a free-spirited, commitment-phobic Brooklyn girl who, after a whirlwind romance, finds herself living in a rickety farmhouse, pregnant, and faced with five months of doctor-prescribed bed rest because of unusually large fibroids. Aileen Weintraub has been running away from commitment her entire life, hopping from one job and one relationship to the next. When her father suddenly dies, she flees her Jewish Brooklyn community for the wilds of the country, where she unexpectedly falls in love with a man who knows a lot about produce, tractors, and how to take a person down in one jiu-jitsu move. Within months of saying “I do” she’s pregnant, life is on track, and then wham! Her doctor slaps a high-risk label on her uterus and sends her to bed for five months. As her husband’s bucolic (and possibly haunted) farmhouse begins to collapse and her marriage starts to do the same, Weintraub finally confronts her grief for her father while fighting for the survival of her unborn baby. In her precarious situation, will she stay or will she once again run away from it all? Knocked Down is an emotionally charged, laugh-out-loud roller-coaster ride of survival and growth. It is a story about marriage, motherhood, and the risks we take.
Download or read book Out of Darkness written by Ashley Hope Pérez and published by Carolrhoda Lab ®. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Michael L. Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people. "[This] layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town is a pit-in-the-stomach family drama that goes down like it should, with pain and fascination, like a mix of sugary medicine and artisanal moonshine."—The New York Times Book Review "Pérez deftly weaves [an] unflinchingly intense narrative....A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism."―starred, Kirkus Reviews "This book presents a range of human nature, from kindness and love to acts of racial and sexual violence. The work resonates with fear, hope, love, and the importance of memory....Set against the backdrop of an actual historical event, Pérez...gives voice to many long-omitted facets of U.S. history."―starred, School Library Journal
Download or read book Flakes of Dark and Light written by Roy Holland and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2001-02-28 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The title Flakes of Dark and Light is evocative of the sharp flakes of insight and colour which characterise these tales. The tales in the first part mostly depict an African setting and, in fact, are more recent, often suggesting the climate of change and violence that has gripped southern Africa in the last two decades. The stories in the second part were inspired by a more English tradition and, in fact, capture the climate of change that brooded over life during the Thirties and the war years. A contemporary of Ted Hughes, and with many of his stories set in the depressed, sometimes seedy England of the Thirties and Forties which Graham Greene depicted in his early novels, it’s not surprising that Roy Holland’s images and sentences are like flakes that cut like broken glass. A true artist, he does not take sides, but holds up a mirror to show life as it is—orwas—whether in a pre-war England or an Africa ravaged by drought and violence. His tales are snapshots, truthful, sometimes startling, of two quite distinct cultures. However disparate they may seem, one is invariably aware of an underlying tenderness and sympathetic vision in the portrayal of character, regardless of race or background, that binds them together.
Download or read book Lalla written by Stu Stevens and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lalla Bond was a wild, untamed vagabond of a man who lived in the mining village of Annesley in Nottinghamshire. He was a stoutly, independent spirit whose lifestyle was total nonconformity. Lallas bizarre lifestyle surprisingly included literature and music. Willie Pearson, a child of eight or so was almost a miniature edition of Lalla, a younger scarecrow. Based on segments of his own life from childhood until young manhood, our author Wilfrid A. Pearce (a.k.a. Stu Stevens) shares this story in his heart-warming memoir, Lalla. Pearce relates how Lalla became a father figure to young Willie, and despite the age difference, they developed a lasting friendship. Lalla proved to be the most influential educational benefactor in Willies rearing. An education instilled through word and mirrored deed; showing the importance of setting goals for himself as a man. After evaluating and using those goals in developing a tailored lifestyle, Willie would find a productive lifestyle suitable to feeding and fulfilling the needs of his own heart and spirit. A true rendering of two lives seemingly cut from the same mold, Lalla narrates how, with Lallas guidance and influence, Willie found ways to make changes to the impositions life had forced on him. Lalla tells a story filled with both joy and the sadness as these two conflicting independent spirits meet and form a life-long father-son-like bond of love and friendship of the greatest respect.
Download or read book Spy Runner written by Eugene Yelchin and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Spy Runner, a noir mystery middle grade novel from Newbery Honor author Eugene Yelchin, a boy stumbles upon a secret that jeopardizes American national security. It's 1953 and the Cold War is on. Communism threatens all that the United States stands for, and America needs every patriot to do their part. So when a Russian boarder moves into the home of twelve-year-old Jake McCauley, he's on high alert. What does the mysterious Mr. Shubin do with all that photography equipment? And why did he choose to live so close to the Air Force base? Jake’s mother says that Mr. Shubin knew Jake’s dad, who went missing in action during World War II. But Jake is skeptical; the facts just don’t add up. And he’s determined to discover the truth—no matter what he risks. Godwin Books
Download or read book Redemption Ground written by Lorna Goodison and published by Myriad Editions. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her first-ever collection of essays, poet and novelist Lorna Goodison interweaves the personal and political to explore themes that have occupied her working life: her love of poetry and the arts, colonialism and its legacy, racism and social justice, authenticity, and the enduring power of friendship. Taking her title from one of Kingston's oldest markets, a historic meeting place that was almost destroyed by fire, she introduces us to a vivid cast of characters and remembers moments of epiphany—in a cinema in Jamaica, at New York's Bottom Line club, and as she searched for a black hairdresser in Paris and drank tea in London's Marylebone High Street. Enlightening and entertaining, these essays explore not only daily challenges but also the compassion that enables us to rise above them. Goodison's poet's eye, profound vision and glorious combination of metaphysical and post-colonial sensibilities confirm her as a major figure in world literature.
