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  Tempest and Sunshine

  Mary Jane Holmes

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  Tempest and Sunshine is the first book written by Mary Jane Holmes. Set in the pre-Civil War south, it follows the struggles and romances of two sisters, as different as night and day; blonde Fanny and dark haired Julia. (Introduction by jedopi)

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  The French Baker's War

  Michael Whatling

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  Absence isn't a hole. It's a presence living inside you, eating its way out.Occupied France, 1943. Returning home from the daily hunt for the rationed ingredients necessary to keep his family pâtisserie open, André Albert finds his four year old son in the street, his wife gone, and a Jewish escapee cowering behind the display case.Without Mireille, the foundation of André's world crumbles. He desperately searches for her, but finds more trouble than answers. Lives are further jeopardized when he agrees to hide Émilie, the escapee, and a Nazi officer shows up to investigate Mireille's disappearance.André will do anything to bring his wife home, catapulting him, their son, and Émilie on a perilous journey impeded by temptation, past trauma, and stunning revelations.The French Baker's War is as relevant today for its themes of duty to strangers and sacrifice for family.Recommended for those who enjoyed The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Book Thief, and The Nightingale.

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  The Novels of Alexander the...

  Mary Renault

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  A New York Times–bestselling trilogy about the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and its leader from an author hailed by Hilary Mantel as “a shining light.” Fire from Heaven is a gripping account of the formative years of Alexander’s life. The story tells of his complex relationship with his parents; of his two great bonds—to his horse, Oxhead, and to his dearest friend and eventual lover, Hephaistion—and of the army he commands when he is barely an adult. Coming of age during the battles for southern Greece, Alexander the Great first takes someone’s life at age twelve and swiftly eliminates his rivals as soon as he comes to power, emerging in this novel as a captivating and complex figure. The iconic Persian Boy centers on the Macedon king as seen through the eyes of his lover and most faithful attendant, the eunuch Bagoas. When Bagoas is very young, his father is murdered and he is sold as a slave to King Darius of Persia. Then, when Alexander conquers the land, he is given Bagoas as a gift, and the boy is besotted. This passion comes at a time when much is at stake—Alexander has two wives, conflicts are ablaze, and plots on his life abound. The result is a riveting account of a great conqueror’s years of triumph and, ultimately, heartbreak. In Funeral Games, a bloody struggle for power rages after the death ofAlexander, leaving an empire that extends from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. The power players include Ptolemy, two father-son teams, and a cadre of influential women—not least of whom is Eurydike, whose plan is to marry Alexander’s disabled brother, Arridaios. Brimming with outsize personalities, brazen plots, and a sweeping sense of history, Funeral Games brings to vivid life the world of Alexander the Great, and the seismic tumult in the wake of his death. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary Renault including rare images of the author. “Mary Renault is a shining light to both historical novelists and their readers. She does not pretend the past is like the present, or that the people of ancient Greece were just like us. She shows us their strangeness; discerning, sure-footed, challenging our values, piquing our curiosity, she leads us through an alien landscape that moves and delights us.” —Hilary Mantel

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  Israel Zangwill - A Short Story...

  Israel Zangwill

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  Israel Zangwill was born in London on 21st January 1864, to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire.  
   
  Zangwill was initially educated in Plymouth and Bristol.  At age 9 he was enrolled in the Jews' Free School in Spitalfields in east London. Zangwill excelled here.  He began to teach part-time at the school and eventually full time.  Whilst teaching he also studied with the University of London and by 1884 had earned his BA with triple honours in philosophy, history, and the sciences. 
   
  His writing earned him the sobriquet "the Dickens of the Ghetto" primarily based on his much lauded novel ‘Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People’ in 1892 and its glimpse of the poverty-stricken life in London's Jewish quarter. 
   
  As a writer he was keen to reflect on his political and social outlooks.  His simulation of Yiddish sentence structure in English aroused great interest. His mystery work, ‘The Big Bow Mystery’ (1892) was the first locked room mystery novel.   
   
  Zangwill was also involved with narrowly focused Jewish issues as an assimilationist, an early Zionist, and later a territorialist. In the early 1890s he had joined the Lovers of Zion movement in England. In 1897 he joined Theodor Herzl (considered the father of modern political Zionism) in founding the World Zionist Organization.   
   
  Zangwill quit the established philosophy of Zionism when his plan for a homeland in Uganda was rejected and founded his own organisation; the Jewish Territorialist Organization. Its stated goal was to create a Jewish homeland in whatever territory in the world could be found for them.  
   
  Amongst the challenges in his life he found time to write poetry.  He had translated a medieval Jewish poet in 1903 and his volume ‘Blind Children’ in 1908 shows his promise in this new endeavour. 
    
  ‘The Melting Pot’ in 1909 made Zangwill’s name as an admired playwright.  When the play opened in Washington D.C., former President Theodore Roosevelt leaned over the edge of his box and shouted, "That's a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that's a great play."   
   
  Israel Zangwill died on 1st August 1926 in Midhurst, West Sussex. 
   
  1 - Israel Zangwill - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - A Rose of the Ghetto by Israel Zangwill 
  3 - Cheating The Gallows by Israel Zangwill 
  4 - The Converts by Israel Zangwill 
  5 - The Red Mark by Israel Zangwill 
  6 - The Silent Sisters by Israel Zangwill 
  7 - The Tug of Love by Israel Zangwill

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  The Grand Design - A Novel

  John Dos Passos

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  John Dos Passos’s literary response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, The Grand Design critiques the gargantuan growth of bureaucracy in Washington during the Great Depression and World War II. The satiric novel conveys the author’s frustration with federal overreach and the hollow rhetoric that sells it to the people.   “War is a time of Caesars,” writes Dos Passos as he laments the death of idealistic, intelligent enterprises at the desks of elitist administrators. After witnessing the Spanish Civil War claim so many well-intentioned men, he advises caution for America’s New Dealers: “Some things we have learned, but not enough; there is more to learn. Today we must learn to found again in freedom our republic.”

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  The Collected Novels Volume One...

  Pearl S. Buck

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  From the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Good Earth: These three novels are fascinating portraits of women in China.   In 1938, Pearl S. Buck became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature for The Good Earth, which had already earned her the Pulitzer Prize. Upon choosing Buck’s novel for her book club in 2004, Oprah Winfrey said: “Reading Pearl Buck’s writing feels like reading poetry to me. I just love the quiet rhythm of the words. They evoke the simple beauty of the characters and the harsh mystery of China’s ancient culture.” The daughter of missionaries, the New York Times–bestselling author would continue to explore many aspect of Chinese culture in her work, and the three novels collected in this volume represent some of her most compassionate and revealing fiction.  Pavilion of Women: This “vivid and extremely interesting novel,” set in early twentieth-century China, follows an upper-class wife’s quest for personal freedom (The New Yorker). After Madame Wu turns forty, she encourages her husband to take a young concubine so she can finally begin to discover her own mind—and a new world opens up before her as she reads forbidden books and studies English with a progressive former priest.   “Beautifully written . . . A fine, full flavorsome novel.” —Newsweek  Peony: A young Chinese bondmaid in nineteenth-century China falls in love with the son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for. As the couple’s traditions collide, their relationship faces opposition from every side.   “Peony has the vividness of scene and episode and character and the colorful detail that [Buck’s] readers have come to expect of her novels in China.” —New York Herald Tribune  Imperial Woman: In this “richly woven . . . quite absorbing” New York Times bestseller, Buck brings to life the story of Tzu Hsi, the magnetic and fierce-minded woman who rose from concubine to become the working head of the Qing Dynasty and the last empress of China for nearly half a century (The Nation).   “Certainly, no fictioneer could imagine a more incredible woman. . . . Pearl Buck has done a remarkable and painstaking job in recreating her.” —Saturday Review

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