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  Light in the Dark - The Last...

  Robert Marshall

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  An extraordinary true story of survival and courage through the Holocaust. 
   
   
   
  Poland, 1943. It was the last refuge of the desperate, a warren of sewers underneath their city. Above, as the Nazis destroyed the ghetto of the city of Lvov, a small band of Jews escaped into a grim network of tunnels, living for fourteen months with the city's waste, the sudden floods, the fumes and the damp, the rats, the darkness, and the despair. 
   
   
   
  Their only support was a lone sewer worker, an ex-criminal who constantly threatened to leave them. Many died; some falling into the rushing waters of the river, some simply of exhaustion. At one point the survivors found themselves trapped in a chamber, filling to the roof with storm-water. 
   
   
   
  Yet survive they did, even infiltrating the camps above to find their missing relatives. When the Russians liberated Lvov, they emerged from the sewers filthy, bent double, emaciated, unrecognizable . . . but alive. 
   
   
   
  This powerful story based on a long series of interviews, and a hitherto private diary, creates a blazing testimony to human faith and endurance.

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  JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis: The...

  Charles River Editors

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  For more than half a century, the name J.R.R. Tolkien has been synonymous with epic fantasy. Known across the world for his classic The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien both revived interest in fantasy literature and set the standard for the genre. Today he is widely acknowledged as the “Father” of modern fantasy and its most famous author. While Tolkien made Middle Earth famous and vice-versa, his works were influenced by a lifetime of his own personal experiences. His tales concern creatures of myth, yet the plot lines and characters are human at heart. Tolkien drew his inspiration from war, nature, history, love, and language, and through the lens of fantasy he examined bravery, loyalty and friendship. That essential “humanness” at the core of his writing, whether it was displayed by a man, hobbit, or even a tree, struck a chord with readers that continues to resonate today. The Hobbit has been released in more than 40 languages, and The Lord of the Rings has sold more than 150 million copies.   
  Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were good friends before the peaks of their careers, meeting together at Oxford’s University College to read and discuss the unfinished works of the members. Although they discussed readings, they were in essence literary enthusiasts who gathered to celebrate writing and literature, especially fantasy. The Inklings were both important and informal. “Properly speaking, the Inklings was neither a club nor a literary society, though it partook of the nature of both,” said Warren Lewis, a member of the group who also happened to be C.S. Lewis’ older brother. “There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections.” It was a place to simply talk of new ideas and literature in an environment that embraced fantasy, and one of the new ideas was that of mythopoeia, or creating mythology to go along with fiction.

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  The Fish That Ate the Whale -...

  Rich Cohen

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  Named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Times-Picayune The fascinating untold tale of Samuel Zemurray, the self-made banana mogul who went from penniless roadside banana peddler to kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary  When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. Working his way up from a roadside fruit peddler to conquering the United Fruit Company, Zemurray became a symbol of the best and worst of the United States: proof that America is the land of opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures. Zemurray lived one of the great untold stories of the last hundred years. Starting with nothing but a cart of freckled bananas, he built a sprawling empire of banana cowboys, mercenary soldiers, Honduran  peasants, CIA agents, and American statesmen. From hustling on the docks of New Orleans to overthrowing Central American governments and precipitating the bloody thirty-six-year Guatemalan civil war, the Banana Man lived a monumental and sometimes dastardly life. Rich Cohen's brilliant historical profile The Fish That Ate the Whale unveils Zemurray as a hidden power broker, driven by an indomitable will to succeed.

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  It takes a Tsunami

  Rael Levitt

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  When Rael Levitt stepped onto the podium at Quoin Rock Wine Estate in December 2011, he was CEO of the industry-pioneering Auction Alliance and at the pinnacle of a glittering 20-year career. But then disaster struck.After being accused by a powerful billionaire of using a ghost bidder to inflate the bid price, Levitt’s reputation was obliterated. In an echo of the Boxing Day tsunami that he survived in 2004, the self-made entrepreneur was overwhelmed by a media-driven scandal that came at him like a train of killer waves. Once the face of South African auctions, he seemingly sank without a trace. But he was not beaten. A decade later Levitt has a thrilling rise-and-fall-and-rise-again story to tell. The lessons he learnt from suffering catastrophe and finding the tenacity to survive have laid the foundations for success. At once candid and controversial, Levitt’s story is ultimately an uplifting one, revealing that the greater the tsunami, the greater the lesson.

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  Hearing Happiness - Deafness...

  Jaipreet Virdi

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  Weaving together lyrical history and personal memoir, Virdi powerfully examines society’s—and her own—perception of life as a deaf person in America. 
   
  At the age of four, Jaipreet Virdi’s world went silent. A severe case of meningitis left her alive but deaf, suddenly treated differently by everyone. Her deafness downplayed by society and doctors, she struggled to “pass” as hearing for most of her life. Countless cures, treatments, and technologies led to dead ends. Never quite deaf enough for the Deaf community or quite hearing enough for the “normal” majority, Virdi was stuck in aural limbo for years. It wasn’t until her thirties, exasperated by problems with new digital hearing aids, that she began to actively assert her deafness and reexamine society’s—and her own—perception of life as a deaf person in America. 
    
  Through lyrical history and personal memoir, Hearing Happiness raises pivotal questions about deafness in American society and the endless quest for a cure. Taking us from the 1860s up to the present, Virdi combs archives and museums in order to understand the long history of curious cures: ear trumpets, violet ray apparatuses, vibrating massagers, electrotherapy machines, airplane diving, bloodletting, skull hammering, and many more. Hundreds of procedures and products have promised grand miracles but always failed to deliver a universal cure—a harmful legacy that is still present in contemporary biomedicine. 
   
  Weaving Virdi’s own experiences together with her exploration into the fascinating history of deafness cures, Hearing Happiness is a powerful story that America needs to hear.

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  My Brilliant Career - Unabridged

  Miles Franklin

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  Written while she was still a teenager, My Brilliant Career catapulted young Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (writing as Miles Franklin) into worldwide fame. In fact, the sudden popularity of the book in Australia (and the perceived closeness of the plot to her own family history) caused Franklin to withdraw the book from publication until after her death.    
  The story centers on Sybylla Melvyn, a headstrong girl growing up in rural Australia whose family is plunged into debt by their alcoholic father. Young Sybylla's story follows her romance with suitor Harold Beecham, her forced servitude to one of her father's creditors and her attempts to become a famous writer.    
  Long hailed as one of the most popular and celebrated works in Australian literary history, My Brilliant Career is presented here in its original and unabridged format.

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