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  The Memoirs of a Clumsy Potato -...

  Sami Hall

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  Welcome to the story of Sami – entrepreneur, blêrie influencer and social media content creator. Throughout her time on Earth she has constantly asked herself what she believes to be the most important question in her life: 'Why do these things always happen to me?'
  From almost manslaughtering her teacher's unborn baby, shattering her dad's dream of an athlete spawn and almost being murdered by a goose, she certainly has some stories to tell.
  In The Memoirs of a Clumsy Potato Sami Hall takes you through some of the life events – tough and challenging events – that changed her forever and shaped her into the weird, clumsy, constantly tired potato that we know and love.
  The road hasn't always been easy and there have been several obstacles along the way, but as Sami herself would tell you, it was all part of the journey and that her story is far from finished.
  Enjoy the funny, sad, weird and outlandish stories of Sami's life and take a glimpse into her mind while we explore the million things that cause her to break into lengthy and passionate rants – loadshedding, potholes, and cell signal to name a few, and also get some answers to the internet's most burning questions.
  Okay bye.

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  Chiang Kai-Shek: The Life and...

  Editors Charles River

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  The Republic of China’s most famous leader and general was Chiang Kai-Shek, who rose from humble origins as the son of a local trader to become, as he liked to remind visitors, the ruler over more people than any other world leader. He certainly became one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century, yet today, he is considerably less well-known than many other figures from that period, which was so rife of chaos and tumultuous change. Chiang had come to power at a time when China was rebuilding itself after a period of internal conflict and turmoil, attempting to unify the nation in the face of the Japanese and the man who would become his arch-rival: Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communists. 
  	Chiang’s delicate balancing act required shifting alliances, and his ability to negotiate effectively under the most adverse circumstances continues to make this a difficult period to understand clearly. Even the party that he led, the Kuomintang (KMT), was full of contradictions. The KMT was certainly corrupt and capable of brutality and violent repression of actual or perceived threats, yet it also brought a period of stability and economic growth to an impoverished China, supported women’s rights and land reform, and even established a quota for female members of parliament at a time when no other country in the world had even considered such a thing. After being defeated across mainland China by Mao, Chiang and the KMT moved to the island of Taiwan and presided over the “Taiwan Miracle,” the transition of this island to become one of the industrial and manufacturing leaders of South East Asia. 
  	This is the surprising, fascinating, complex, and sometimes baffling story of Chiang Kai-shek, and the eras of change through which he lived. 

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  Katherine Mansfield - Chapter &...

  Katherine Mansfield

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  Literature is a world of words and wonder, able to take us on almost unimaginable journeys from the wild and fantastic to the grind and minutiae of life. 
   
  An author’s ideas are his building blocks, his architecture of the mind, building a structure on which all else will rest; the narrative, the characters, the words - those few words that begin the adventure. 
   
  In this series we look at some of our leading classic authors across two genres: the short story and the poem.  In this modern world there is an insatiable need to categorise and pigeon-hole everyone and everything.  But ideas, these grains and saplings of the brain, need to roam, to explore and find their perfect literary use vehicle.  Our authors are masters of many literary forms, perhaps known for one but themselves favouring another. 
   
  Story. Poems. Story.  Within these boundaries come all manner of invention and cast of characters.  And, of course, each author has their own way of revealing their own chapter and verse.    
   
  1 - Chapter & Verse - Katherine Mansfield - An Introduction 
  2 - Bliss by Katharine Mansfield 
  3 - Sorrowing Love by Katherine Mansfield 
  4 - Loneliness by Katherine Mansfield 
  5 - A Little Boy's Dream by Katherine Mansfield 
  6 - Fairy Tale by Katherine Mansfield 
  7 - The Candle by Katherine Mansfield 
  8 - Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child by Katherine Mansfield 
  9 - The Wounded Bird by Katherine Mansfield 
  10 - Covering Wings by Katherine Mansfield 
  11 - In the Rangitaki Valley by Katherine Mansfield 
  12 - The Town Between the Hills by Katherine Mansfield 
  13 - Deaf House Agent by Katherine Mansfield 
  14 - Camomile Tea by Katherine Mansfield 
  15 - The Arabian Shawl by Katherine Mansfield 
  16 - The Quarrel by Katherine Mansfield 
  17 - The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield

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  The Golden State Killer Case

  William Thorp

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  In 2018, police announced that they had finally arrested the "Golden State Killer," a man responsible for over 140 burglaries, fifty rapes, and at least thirteen murders committed in California throughout the 1970s and '80s. That man turned out to be a former California police officer, Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. 
   
   
   
  Just two months earlier, the publication of I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara had rocked the world of true crime. Published two years after her death, the book charts McNamara's obsessive search for the prolific criminal who had been known over the years as the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, and the Visalia Ransacker, among other epithets. McNamara is credited with coining the "Golden State Killer" moniker and heightening public awareness of the—at the time—still unsolved case. 
   
   
   
  William Thorp dives into the investigation, exploring the dark side of sunny California, the advances in forensic innovation that made solving this case possible, and the story inside the story—one of an amateur sleuth who dedicated the last years of her life to understanding how one of the country's worst criminals could have spent so many decades undetected.

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  Inside Out

  Patricia Toulson

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  Similar to Jenny Worth’s Call the Midwife, this book reveals a different, still hidden medical field, the world of x-rays. This story follows a shy, sixteen year old girl, as she attemps to become a professional radiographer from 1962 into the 1990’s. All the incidents and cases are true, for they are Patricia Toulson’s real-life memories.She is thrust into the harsh disciplinary world of a general hospital, ruled by barbed tongues of nursing Sisters’ and ridiculed and harrassed by experienced male staff. She experiences horror and tragedy, sadness and joy but also humour abounds in unexpected places. She encounters child abuse, infertility and teenage terminal illness, countered by the wonders of the healing body and the splendor and radiance of pregnancy.

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  Ernest Shackleton and Robert...

  Editors Charles River

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  An earlier wave of explorers led to the opening of the New World, and early polar expeditions saw ancient ships of various nations sail along the coastlines of Greenland and within reach of the Arctic and Antarctic continents. Many 19th century figures approached the polar region with an eye to traversing it. Most notable among them was British explorer Sir James Clark Ross, who took the Erebus and the HMS Terror to the southernmost coastlines of the planet.  
  Some of the explorers who were involved became household names around the world, including British explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton and Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Perhaps the one that has become most closely associated with this period is Robert Falcon Scott. Widely referred to as “Scott of the Antarctic,” Captain Scott became an icon of tenacity in the face of incredible adversity, and his final expedition to the South Pole lives on as an example of the nobility of the human spirit, even in the face of utter disaster. A monument to Scott’s persistence still stands at Observation Point, inscribed with the last line of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” 
  Inevitably, as time passed, modern historians further removed from the romanticization of the expeditions began to more closely (and objectively) scrutinize the explorers and their missions. However, in the case of Scott, that has only furthered his renown, because historians still have wildly different opinions of him, from his personality and leadership to the results of his missions, especially his ill-fated final one. Likewise, Shackleton’s place in history is not the one he set out to make, but his extraordinary deeds have made his contributions to early exploration of Antarctica indelible. Despite the victor’s wreath eventually going to another, Shackleton’s name is essential to any discussion of Antarctic exploration.

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