5/13/2023 0 Comments Pins by Jessica McHughI could almost smell the blood at times! I loved Birdie's voice, her sarcasm and humour made her character real and I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a gritty read. The writing is very visual and descriptive leaving confusion as to what is happening. fans of horror, pulp, hard crime, depictions of very beautiful young women, hot dialogue and fast, pulpy tales won't be disappointed! - Mark Barry, Green Wizard Publishing, UK PINS is a great vel, well written, well paced and absorbing. From Jessica McHugh, author of the steampunk adventure The Sky: The World and the bestselling psychological thriller Rabbits in the Garden, PINS is a post-modern coming of age thriller certain to titillate as much as terrify with a candid look at a dancer trying to find herself on a blood-drenched stage. But learning how to strip for strangers isn't Birdie's only obstacle, especially when fellow dancers start turning up dead. Eva Birdie Finch is fed up with the slim pickings in local employment, and the gentlemen's club/bowling alley called Pins seems to be the only option left. Luckily, strip clubs are always looking for new blood. Telemarketing is a drag, and serving jobs are exhausting.
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5/13/2023 0 Comments Olga knipperIn June 1904 she took Chekhov to a spa in Badenweiler, Germany in a last-ditch effort to cure him he died there two weeks later. They exchanged hundreds of letters, in which the author affectionately called his wife “My Doggie” and urged her to fight director Konstantin Stanislavsky over the staging of his plays. By mutual (albeit unhappy) consent the relationship was marked by long separations, with Knipper continuing her career in Moscow while Chekhov remained in the warmer climate of Yalta for his health. Chekhov was a lifelong bachelor and his marriage to Knipper in 1901 stunned the Russian literary community, not least because it was known that he was seriously ill with tuberculosis. The actress and the playwright fell in love during rehearsals but kept the affair secret for years. Its landmark 1898 production of Chekhov’s “The Seagull”, with Knipper in the major role of Arkadina, put the company on the map. In 1897 she joined the newly-formed Moscow Art Theatre following three years of acting instruction with its co-founder, director and drama coach Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Olga Leonardovna Knipper was born in Glazov, Murtiza Province, Russia, into a family of German background. She also created the role of Vasilisa in Maxim Gorky’s play “The Lower Depths” (1902). She was the wife of playwright and author Anton Chekhov, who wrote the roles of Masha in “Three Sisters” (1901) and Madame Ranevskaya in “The Cherry Orchard” (1904) for her. 5/13/2023 0 Comments The hundred secret senses reviewWhat a different history China has from the way I view my place in U.S. While reading the sections that took place in China I felt quite clearly the weight of thousands of years of tradition and responsibility punctuated by interference from outside forces. I appreciate the way that Tan approaches the issue of the assumptions we make about other individuals, other cultures, and ourselves and what makes a life worth living.I couldn't see China quite as clearly as I would have liked but more clearly than I think I have while reading any other book about China. Tan does an excellent job introducing cultural differences in thought and perspective, particularly about loyalty and responsibility, and how those differences come together in individuals at the intersection of two or more cultures. This novel centers on the complicated relationship between two sisters and about the many ghosts, past and present, that influence our decisions. Reading this book made me want two things: to visit China and to not eat anything at all while I'm in China. 5/13/2023 0 Comments This is not my hat bookOn Monday morning, the 75th Caldecott Medal will go to the artist of "the most distinguished" American children's book of 2012. The association also awarded the 2013 Newbery Medal, for "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children," to Katherine Applegate's The One And Only Ivan. This year's other honor books include Laura Vaccaro Seeger's Green, Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown's Creepy Carrots, Toni Buzzeo and David Small's One Cool Friend, and Mary Logue and Pamela Zagarenski's Sleep Like A Tiger. Klassen also illustrated the recognized "honor book," or runner-up, Extra Yarn. As Horn Book Magazine's Robin Smith writes, "Klassen manages to tell almost the whole story through subtle eye movements and the tilt of seaweed and air bubbles." Some expected the association to pass on This Is Not My Hat because its predecessor, 2011's I Want My Hat Back, failed to win the award in 2012. The American Library Association has awarded the 2013 Caldecott Medal to Jon Klassen for This Is Not My Hat, which follows a little fish who tries to get away with stealing a small, blue hat from a slumbering big fish. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title This Is Not My Hat Author Jon Klassen 5/13/2023 0 Comments Ghost map by steven johnsonOne of the first physicians to understand and use chloroform and ether, he became a physician to Queen Victoria, helping her deliver her innumerable children with far less pain. He was born poor in Northern England and had to get an education by force of intellect and character. John Snow was a true outsider to Victorian professional medicine. The excitement of the book is how one man understood how to cure this plague and how he used a new way to display information to do so. The book is about something as messy as information, excrement, and how its disposal caused an outbreak of cholera in Victorian London. The Ghost Map shows how information actually works in the world. In my days as an Information management consultant, I believed, as did all my colleagues, that if people were just shown correct and feasible information they would act in accordance with it – they would follow where it led. 5/12/2023 0 Comments Looking for JJ by Anne CassidyKnowing about Alice’s past makes it so much easier for me to understand why she committed a murder. Her relationship with the bossy, arrogant Michelle and the shy, mouse-like Lucy is also very well shown. Cassidy doesn’t make it difficult for us to see Jennifer’s pre-school adoration of her gorgeous mother, her fear of being abandoned and finally, the more mature Jennifer learning to cope on her own. Through flashbacks, we get an insight into the Berwick Waters’s case and Jennifer’s childhood. While reading the book, we gradually learn about Alice’s dangerous past as Jennifer Jones, finding out that she killed another child. This one sentence provides information about what the book is about and the instant we read it, it makes us intrigued. “Three children walked away from the edge of town one day – but only two of them came back…” is the sentence written at the backside of Anne Cassidy’s book called Looking for JJ. The novel is a great example of it being possible, with the author making it easy for us to understand Alice’s case. Can people change? Is it possible for people to make a fresh start after doing something horrible? Will a criminal who has committed a serious crime ever be able to change if given a chance to start over with a clean state? Those are the questions that Alice Tully, the main character of one of Anne Cassidy’s novels, keeps asking herself. 5/12/2023 0 Comments The first salute tuchmanPraise for The First Salute Nothing in a novel could be more thrilling than the moment in this glorious history when French soldiers arrive see a tall, familiar figure: George Washington. By turns lyrical and gripping, The First Salute is an exhilarating account of the birth of a nation. She sheds new light on the key role played by the contending navies, paints a magnificent portrait of George Washington, and recounts in riveting detail the decisive campaign of the war at Yorktown. Tuchman places the Revolution in the context of the centuries-long conflicts between England and both France and Holland, demonstrating how the aid to the American colonies of both these nations made the triumph of independence possible. In The First Salute, one of Americas consummate historians crafts a rigorously original view of the American Revolution. Tuchman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the classic The Guns of August, turns her sights homeward with this brilliant, insightful narrative of the Revolutionary War. 8 pages of color, 8 pages of photos, 7 maps. About the Book Tuchman turns to America with a fresh new view of the events that led from the first foreign salute to the American Nationhood in 1776 to the last campaign of the Revolution five years later-the moment that inaugurated the existence of a new nation, and announced the coming of a democratic age to the Old World. 5/12/2023 0 Comments Transatlantic mccannWhen I go to church, I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip to tell me, 'We don't allow niggers in here!'" No delicate nose is deformed in my presence … I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. I employ a cab – I am seated beside white people – I reach the hotel – I enter the same door – I am shown into the same parlour – I dine at the same table – and no one is offended. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man. Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchical government. "Eleven days and a half gone and I have crossed three thousand miles of the perilous deep. He described his feelings in a stirring letter, later published in his second great autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom: I n 1845, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, born a slave and then still technically the chattel of a Maryland landowner, arrived in Ireland. 5/12/2023 0 Comments Fever 1793 authorAs the chapters progress more people in the city dies, and the church bell tolls for each. Many people seem to want to blame the illness on anything but the fever, including Mattie’s mother because they know how the disease devastated the city only thirty years before. Conversations in the coffeehouse turn to gossip concerning the origins of the illness, and debates about whether it is really Yellow Fever. Soon it is learned that Polly has died from a sudden illness. On this day, Polly, the serving girl is late for work in the coffeehouse. Mattie’s father died in an accident when she was just a little girl, the coffeehouse is a respectable business for a widow and her father-in-law to run. She is the coffeehouse cook, and Mattie thinks of her as a best friend. Eliza, an African American, is free like most blacks in Philadelphia. Mattie, lives over a coffeehouse with her mother (Lucille), grandfather, a parrot, and a cat. As usual she has slept in and needs to hurry to get to her chores in the garden. Set in colonial, Philadelphia, the story begins with 14-year old Matilda (Mattie) Cook waking up to the sounds of the street noise and the buzzing mosquitos. Mattie’s daydreaming days are interrupted by an epidemic of Yellow Fever, and she needs to find the strength to pull things back together. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.īonus: Appendix: Historical accounts and contexts – 1793 in Philadelphia. 5/12/2023 0 Comments The book of life sojourner truthNow, in a masterful blend of scholarship and sympathetic understanding, eminent black historian Nell Irvin Painter goes beyond the myths, words, and photographs to uncover the life of a complex woman who was born into slavery and died a legend. Like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, she is regarded as a radical of immense and enduring influence yet, unlike them, what is remembered of her consists more of myth than of personality. Straight-talking and unsentimental, Truth became a national symbol for strong black women-indeed, for all strong women. Sojourner Truth: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist, figure of imposing physique, riveting preacher and spellbinding singer who dazzled listeners with her wit and originality. A monumental biography of one of the most important black women of the nineteenth century. |