Download or read book The Windsor Faction written by D.J. Taylor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If Wallis Simpson had not died on the operating table in December 1936, Edward VIII would not have been King of England three years later. He would have abdicated for “the woman he loves,” but now, the throne beckons. If Henry Bannister’s car had not careened off the Colombo back-road in the summer before the war, Cynthia Kirkpatrick would never have found out about The Faction. It is autumn 1939, and everything in history is just as it was. Except, that is, for the identity of the man in Buckingham Palace and the existence of a secret organization operating at the highest levels of society and determined to derail the war effort against Nazi Germany. From the staff of the newly-founded literary magazine, Duration, hunkered down in their Bloomsbury square, and the country house parties full of renegade Tory MPs, to Tyler Kent, the Embassy cipher clerk with his sheaf of stolen presidential telegrams, the journalist Beverley Nichols deviously at work on an alternative King’s Speech, while a Lancashire lad named Rodney nervously runs errands from his Maida Vale antiques shop to the House of Commons. The Windsor Faction is an ingenious exercise in might-have-been, which assembles a cast of real and imaginary people in a horrifyingly plausible re-invention of history.
Download or read book Orwell written by D. J. Taylor and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Whitbread Biography Award: A “profoundly moving [and] definitive” portrait of George Orwell, author of 1984 and larger-than-life literary genius (The Daily Telegraph). It was not easy to bury George Orwell. After a lifetime of iconoclasm, during which he professed no interest in religion and no affiliation with any church, he asked to be buried in an Anglican churchyard—but none would have him. Orwell’s friends fought for him to have a proper grave, however, and the author of 1984, Animal Farm, and Homage to Catalonia, among other brilliant works of prose, poetry, and journalism, was laid to rest in a quiet country cemetery. Almost immediately, his legacy was in dispute. Orwell did not want any biographies written of him, but that has not stopped scholars from trying. Of all those published since the author’s death in 1950, D. J. Taylor’s prize-winning book is considered the most definitive. Born in India, Orwell spent his forty-six years of life traveling the British Empire and confronting the world head on. From the trenches of Spain to the top of bestseller lists, Taylor presents Orwell fully—as a writer, social critic, and human being.
Download or read book Dominion written by C.J. Sansom and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: C.J. Sansom rewrites history in a thrilling novel that dares to imagine Britain under the thumb of Nazi Germany. 1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany. The global economy strains against the weight of the long German war against Russia still raging in the east. The British people find themselves under increasingly authoritarian rule -- the press, radio, and television tightly controlled, the British Jews facing ever greater constraints. But Churchill's Resistance soldiers on. As defiance grows, whispers circulate of a secret that could forever alter the balance of the global struggle. The keeper of that secret? Scientist Frank Muncaster, who languishes in a Birmingham mental hospital. Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, a spy for the Resistance and University friend of Frank's, is given the mission to rescue Frank and get him out of the country. Hard on his heels is Gestapo agent Gunther Hoth, a brilliant, implacable hunter of men, who soon has Frank and David's innocent wife, Sarah, directly in his sights. C.J. Sansom's literary thriller Winter in Madrid earned Sansom comparisons to Graham Greene, Sebastian Faulks, and Ernest Hemingway. Now, in his first alternative history epic, Sansom doesn't just recreate the past -- he reinvents it. In a spellbinding tale of suspense, oppression and poignant love, Dominion dares to explore how, in moments of crisis, history can turn on the decisions of a few brave men and women -- the secrets they choose to keep and the bonds they share.
Download or read book The New Book of Snobs written by D.J. Taylor and published by Constable. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Hugely enjoyable' AN Wilson, Sunday Times 'Thoughtful, entertaining and enjoyable' Michael Gove, Book of the Week, The Times Inspired by William Makepeace Thackeray, the first great analyst of snobbery, and his trail-blazing The Book of Snobs (1848), D. J. Taylor brings us a field guide to the modern snob. Short of calling someone a racist or a paedophile, one of the worst charges you can lay at anybody's door in the early twenty-first century is to suggest that they happen to be a snob. But what constitutes snobbishness? Who are the snobs and where are they to be found? Are you a snob? Am I? What are the distinguishing marks? Snobbery is, in fact, one of the keys to contemporary British life, as vital to the backstreet family on benefits as the proprietor of the grandest stately home, and an essential element of their view of who of they are and what the world might be thought to owe them. The New Book of Snobs will take a marked interest in language, the vocabulary of snobbery - as exemplified in the 'U' and 'Non U' controversy of the 1950s - being a particular field in which the phenomenon consistently makes its presence felt, and alternate social analysis with sketches of groups and individuals on the Thackerayan principle. Prepare to meet the Political Snob, the City Snob, the Technology Snob, the Property Snob, the Rural Snob, the Literary Snob, the Working-class Snob, the Sporting Snob, the Popular Cultural Snob and the Food Snob.
Download or read book The Girl They Left Behind written by Roxanne Veletzos and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping historical romance that is “gripping, tragic, yet filled with passion and hope” (Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author), offering a vivid and unique portrayal of life in war-torn 1941 Bucharest during World War II and its aftermath—perfect for fans of Lilac Girls and Sarah’s Key. On a freezing night in January 1941, a little Jewish girl is found on the steps of an apartment building in Bucharest. With Romania recently allied with the Nazis, the Jewish population is in grave danger so the girl is placed in an orphanage and eventually adopted by a wealthy childless couple who name her Natalia. As she assimilates into her new life, she all but forgets the parents who were forced to leave her behind. As a young woman in Soviet Romania, Natalia crosses paths with Victor—an important official in the Communist regime that she used to know as an impoverished young student. Now they are fatefully drawn into a passionate affair despite the obstacles swirling around them and Victor’s dark secrets. When Natalia is suddenly offered a one-time chance at freedom, Victor is determined to help her escape, even if it means losing her. Natalia must make an agonizing decision: remain in Bucharest with her beloved adoptive parents and the man she has come to love, or seize the chance to finally live life on her own terms, and to confront the painful enigma of her past. The Girl They Left Behind “is a vividly told, beautifully written, impossible-but-true story” (Helen Bryan, internationally bestselling author of War Brides) that you won’t soon forget.
Download or read book Derby Day written by D. J. Taylor and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nominated for the Man Booker Prize, an exquisite tale of romance and rivalry, gambling and greed, from one of England’s finest writers As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all England is heading for Epsom Down—high life and low life, society beauties and Whitechapel street girls, bookmakers and gypsies, hawkers and thieves. Hopes are high, nerves are taut, hats are tossed in the air—this is Derby Day. For months people have been waiting and plotting for this day. Everyone’s eyes are on champion horse Tiberius, on whose performance half a dozen destinies depend. In this rich and exuberant novel, rife with the idioms of Victorian England, the mysteries pile high, propelling us toward the day of the great race, and we wait with bated breath as the story gallops to a finish that no one expects.
Download or read book Talk About Books written by David Peplow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two decades, reading groups have become increasingly popular in the UK and the USA. More and more people seem to be interested in sharing their reading experiences and hearing other readers discuss their views on books, whether this is online, through the mass media, or in face-to-face contexts. In light of this explosion in popularity of reading groups, this ethnographic study focuses on several reading groups based across a variety of settings: public libraries, public houses and in readers' homes. A range of methods are used to investigate the practices of the individual readers and the groups, including participant observation, interviews, and audio-recordings of meetings. Reading groups are found to be highly ritualized and potentially competitive places in which matters of identity and taste are often at stake. The groups studied are conceptualized as communities of practice, and the literary interpretations and evaluations offered within each group are shown to be a product of shared norms established by this group.
Download or read book Lost City Radio written by Daniel Alarcón and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For ten years, Norma has been the on-air voice of consolation and hope for the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios—a people broken by war's violence. As the host of Lost City Radio, she reads the names of those who have disappeared—those whom the furiously expanding city has swallowed. Through her efforts lovers are reunited and the lost are found. But in the aftermath of the decadelong bloody civil conflict, her own life is about to forever change—thanks to the arrival of a young boy from the jungle who provides a cryptic clue to the fate of Norma's vanished husband.
Download or read book Red or Dead written by David Peace and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Editors' Choice "[T]he stuff of great literature." —The New York Times | "Red or Dead is a winner." —The Washington Post The place where the swinging sixties started – Liverpool, England, birthplace of the Beatles – wasn’t so swinging. Amid industrial blight and a bad economy, the port town’s shipping industry was going bust and there was widespread unemployment, with no assistance from a government tightening its belt. Even the Beatles moved to London. Into these hard times walked Bill Shankly, a former Scottish coal miner who took over the city’s perpetually last-place soccer team. He had a straightforward work ethic and a favorite song – a silly pop song done by a local band, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Soon he would have entire stadiums singing along, tens of thousands of people all dressed in the team color red . . . as Liverpool began to win . . . And soon, too, there was something else those thousands of people would chant as one: Shank-lee, Shank-lee . . . In Red or Dead, the acclaimed writer David Peace tells the stirring story of the real-life working-class hero who lifted the spirits of an entire city in turbulent times. But Red or Dead is more than a fictional biography of a real man, and more than a thrilling novel about sports. It is an epic novel that transcends those categories, until there’s nothing left to call it but – as many of the world’s leading newspapers already have – a masterpiece.
Download or read book Our Island Story written by H. E. Marshall and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Island Story is the "history" of England up to Queen Victoria's Death. Marshall used these stories to tell her children about their homeland, Great Britain. To add to the excitement, she mixed in a bit of myth as well as a few legends.
Download or read book Landfalls written by Naomi J. Williams and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gripping story of a dramatic eighteenth-century voyage of discovery from Naomi J. Williams In her wildly inventive debut novel, Naomi J. Williams reimagines the historical La Pérouse expedition, a voyage of exploration that left Brest in 1785 with two frigates, two hundred men, and overblown Enlightenment ideals and expectations, in a brave attempt to circumnavigate the globe for science and the glory of France. Deeply grounded in historical fact but refracted through a powerful imagination, Landfalls follows the exploits and heartbreaks not only of the men on the ships but also of the people affected by the voyage-natives and other Europeans the explorers encountered, loved ones left waiting at home, and those who survived and remembered the expedition later. Each chapter is told from a different point of view and is set in a different part of the world-ranging from London to Tenerife, Alaska to remote South Pacific islands and Siberia, and eventually back to France. The result is a beautifully written and absorbing tale of the high seas, scientific exploration, human tragedy, and the world on the cusp of the modern era. By turns elegiac, profound, and comic, Landfalls reinvents the maritime adventure novel for the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The October Faction Vol 1 written by Steve Niles and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a Netflix Original Series! Meet the Allan family in this tale about the typical challenges that a very atypical family encounters while fending off the attacks of vampires, werewolves, demons, and more. From Steve Niles, the co-creator of 30 Days of Night, and artist Damien Worm comes a series about retired monster hunter Fredrick, his wife Deloris, and their two children Geoff and Vivian. As Fredrick works to put his monster hunting days behind him, his two kids insist on joining the family business. But ghosts from the past refuse to stay dead and conspiring forces lurk in the shadows all leading to a massive showdown with foes supernatural and natural alike! Collects issues #1–6.
Download or read book Red White Royal Blue written by Casey McQuiston and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Instant NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestseller * * GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD WINNER for BEST DEBUT and BEST ROMANCE of 2019 * * BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR* for VOGUE, NPR, VANITY FAIR, and more! * What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales? When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn't always diplomatic. "I took this with me wherever I went and stole every second I had to read! Absorbing, hilarious, tender, sexy—this book had everything I crave. I’m jealous of all the readers out there who still get to experience Red, White & Royal Blue for the first time!" - Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners "Red, White & Royal Blue is outrageously fun. It is romantic, sexy, witty, and thrilling. I loved every second." - Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six
Download or read book Killings written by Calvin Trillin and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1984.
Download or read book The Silo Effect written by Gillian Tett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning columnist and journalist describes how businesses that structure their teams into functional departments, or "silos," actually hinder work, cripple innovation, restrict thinking and force normally smart people to ignore risks and opportunities. --
Download or read book Bring Up the Bodies written by Hilary Mantel and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2012 Man Booker Prize Winner of the 2012 Costa Book of the Year Award The sequel to Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Wolf Hall delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head? Bring Up the Bodies is one of The New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2012, one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Best Books of 2012 and one of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2012
Download or read book Enchantments written by Kathryn Harrison and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK “Part love story, part history, this novel is a tour de force [told] in language that soars and sears.”—More St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin’s body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his family. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputin’s healing powers, Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to her son, the headstrong prince Alyosha, who suffers from hemophilia. Soon after Masha arrives at the palace, the tsar is forced to abdicate, and the Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha find solace in each other’s company. To escape the confinement of the palace, and to distract the prince from the pain she cannot heal, Masha tells him stories—some embellished and others entirely imagined—about Nikolay and Alexandra’s courtship, Rasputin’s exploits, and their wild and wonderful country, now on the brink of an irrevocable transformation. In the worlds of their imagination, the weak become strong, legend becomes fact, and a future that will never come to pass feels close at hand. Praise for Enchantments “A sumptuous, atmospheric account of the last days of the Romanovs from the perspective of Rasputin’s daughter, [told] with the sensuous, transporting prose that is Kathryn Harrison’s trademark.”—Jennifer Egan “[A] splendid and surprising book . . . Harrison has given us something enduring.”—The New York Times Book Review “[Harrison delivers] this oft-told moment with shocking freshness. . . . Masha re-invents our ideas of Rasputin, and the world of Nicholas and Alexandra is imbued with a glow whose fierceness is governed by the imminence of its loss.”—Los Angeles Times “A mesmerizing novel.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Bewitching . . . Harrison sets historic facts like jewels in this intricately fashioned work of exalted empathy and imagination, a literary Fabergé egg. . . . [A] dazzling return to historical fiction.”—Booklist (starred review) Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.
