Other books that might interest you

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  The Mad Veteran of Fort Ratonneau

  Ludwig Achim von Arnim

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  Ludwig Achim von Arnim (1781-1831) was a German poet and novelist from a Prussian noble family, and one of the most notable writers in German Romanticism.The Mad Veteran of Fort Ratonneau, written in 1881, is an engaging story which combines humour, sentiment, the eternal struggle between good and evil, and a rattling good storyline all in one.When the Commandant at Marseille learns that an invalid veteran is being transferred to his region, and that this brave soldier has suffered a head injury which causes him to behave like a madman...indeed his own wife believes him possessed by the devil...he decides to appoint him head of a tiny remote fort above the city. This fort is the depository for the regiment's supply of gunpowder. The Commandant also deploys the powder to create fireworks, and one of the tasks of the garrison is to manufacture rockets, roman candles, and Catherine wheels, which will be used for the display at the King's birthday. The invalid veteran turns out to have a great interest in pyrotechnics...and takes on his task with great enthusiasm. But then, one of his psychotic episodes sets in...and a madman in charge of a castle packed with gunpowder threatens the safety of the entire city.After all, what could possibly go wrong?

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  Sailing by Orion's Star

  Katie Crabb

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  The Constellation Trilogy #1 
    
  In the 18th century West Indies, stories hold the ultimate power. Sailors spin yarns about pirates. Newspapers tell tales full of half-truths. Myths spread like whispered wildfire. 
    
  East India Company sailor Nicholas Jerome has no patience for pirates, determined to escape his father's thieving past. After a convict and an enslaved woman escape his grasp with the aid of an aristocrat's mysterious wife, he faces one last chance to save his career. Finding an unexpected home with a new crew, he gains a chosen younger brother in René Delacroix, the son of his wealthy captain and the grandson of Jamaica's cruel governor. 
    
  But there's a storm brewing in the Delacroix household. For René and his best friend Frantz, the Robin Hood tales about legendary pirate Ajani Danso and his famed female quartermaster are a lifeline amidst the governor's abuse. Danso robs greedy merchants, frees slaves, and shelters queer sailors, inspiring the downtrodden across the New World. 
    
  When death and betrayal shatter the lives they knew, René and Jerome each face a choice: obey, or rebel. 
    
  A war for history's favor begins, and as an uprising against colonialism erupts on the ocean, everyone must choose a story to believe in.

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  Northanger Abbey

  Jane Austen

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  Jane Austen's first novel—published posthumously in 1818—tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen's fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about love, life, and the heady power of literature. The satirical novel pokes fun at the gothic novel while earnestly emphasizing caution to the female sex.

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  The Ice Palace - Author of the...

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died.  Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. 
   
  His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.   
   
  In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army.  In 1918, stationed at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama he met and became infatuated and then inseparable from Zelda Sayre.  Initially though she refused to marry him but with the success of ‘This Side of Paradise’, the fame and the flow of money enabled them both to begin a gilded life.  For them this was The Jazz Age.  For Fitzgerald he was already an alcoholic. 
   
  He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names.  The Great Gatsby, often cited as The Great American Novel was published to mixed reviews.  As America moved from the Great Depression to the slaughter of the Second World War his works and himself were seen as far too entwined with the decadent twenties. The world had moved on and he hadn’t.   
   
  Further tragedy was never far from his life. Zelda after years of erratic and now intolerable behaviour was committed to an institution in 1936.  His own sales began to decline and he became a hack for hire in Hollywood, dependent on increasing amounts of booze and the weekly pay check.  His drunken state had often resulted in arrest or hospitalisation, further imperiling his talents.   Despite his contribution to many MGM films he received only one credit. 
   
  The end came all too soon for one of America’s greatest ever writers.  On 21st December 1940, at only 44 years of age in Hollywood, F Scott Fitzgerald succumbed to a heart attack. 
   
  One of Fitzgerald’s short story gems is ‘The Ice Palace’. A Southern girl wants ‘to live where things happen on a grand scale’.  She is engaged to a Yankee but on their visit to The Ice Palace attraction life reveals a very different destiny for her.

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  The Milk of Almonds - Italian...

  Edvige Giunta, Louise DeSalvo

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  “A vast, thoroughly wonderful assortment of poetry, memoirs and stories . . . that defines today’s female Italian-American experience” (Publishers Weekly).   Often stereotyped as nurturing others through food, Italian-American women have often struggled against this simplistic image to express the realities of their lives.   In this unique collection, over 50 Italian-American female writers speak in voices that are loud, boisterous, sweet, savvy, and often subversively funny. Drawing on personal and cultural memories rooted in experiences of food, they dissolve conventional images, replacing them with a sumptuous, communal feast of poetry, stories, and memoir.   This collection also delves into unexpected, sometimes shocking terrain as these courageous authors bear witness to aspects of the Italian American experience that normally go unspoken—mental illness, family violence, incest, drug addiction, AIDS, and environmental degradation.   As provocative as it is appetizing, “this collection of verse and prose pieces . . . reveals the evocative and provocative power of food as event and as symbol, as well as the diversity of these women’s lives and their ambivalence regarding the role of nurturer” (Library Journal).

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  The Glass Shore - Short Stories...

  Sinéad Gleeson

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  NEW PAPERBACK EDITION
  2015 saw the publication of The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, edited by Sinéad Gleeson. The Long Gaze Back was widely acclaimed and went on to win Best Irish-published Book of the Year 2015 at the Irish Book Awards. More importantly, it sparked lively discussion and debate about the erasure of women writers from the literary canon. One question kept arising: where was the equivalent anthology for women writers from the north?
  The Glass Shore, compiled by award-winning editor, broadcaster and critic Sinéad Gleeson, provides an intimate and illuminating insight into a previously underappreciated literary canon. Twenty-four female luminaries — whose lives and works cover three centuries — capture experiences that are both vivid and varied, despite their shared geographical heritage. Unavoidably affected by a difficult political past, this challenging landscape is navigated by characters who are searingly honest, humorous and, at times, heartbreakingly poignant. The result is a collection that is enthralling, stirring and quietly disconcerting. Individually, these intriguing stories make an indelible impact and are cause for reflection and contemplation. Together, they transgress their social, political and gender constraints, instead collectively presenting a distinctive, resolute and impassioned voice worthy of recognition and admiration.
  Featuring stories by: Rosa Mulholland, Erminda Rentoul Esler, Sarah Grand, Alice Milligan, Eithne Carbery, Margaret Barrington, Janet McNeill, Mary Beckett, Polly Devlin, Frances Molloy, Una Woods, Sheila Llewellyn, Linda Anderson, Anne Devlin, Evelyn Conlon, Mary O'Donnell, Annemarie Neary, Martina Devlin, Rosemary Jenkinson, Bernie McGill, Tara West, Jan Carson, Lucy Caldwell and Roisín O'Donnell.

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