Bonfires and Brandy

Joy Stonehouse

Casa editrice: Grosvenor House Publishing

Sinossi

This is an unflinching portrayal of life in a coastal Yorkshire village three hundred years ago with its folk lore, old farming methods, superstitions and traditional remedies.
Mary Jordan shares her damp, chalkstone cottage in Filey Bay with five growing boys and an unsympathetic husband. William Jordan is a farmer and customs officer. In league with the local smugglers, all is well until a keen young excise officer arrives.
Mary's boys don't help matters. Young William bullies and plays cruel tricks on his brothers, enjoys all manner of sports and, mentored by his uncle, learns to shoot… which ends in disaster. Francis falls for a woman eight years his senior. He suffers all the confusion of adolescence, not helped by an increasing obsession with his uncle's puritanical teachings. And then there's 'poor John' who is retarded. He's unable to work like the others but finds simple pleasures in nursing a newborn piglet and learning the ways of shepherding. He becomes Mary's one consolation as she comes to terms with a crucial death in the village – that of their only midwife and healer.

Disponibile da: 24/08/2023.

Lunghezza di stampa: 405 pagine.

Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

The Spy

Suzanne Kamata

Pearl Dubois was a Southern Belle. She was born in New Orleans to a prominent and wealthy family. She was also a magician...and a spy. During the Second World War, Pearl wanted to help the Allied effort. She got a job in the Office of Strategic Services, which later became the CIA. In September of 1944, she began working for William Donovan, the agency’s head. When she translated an important document that revealed the identities of the enemy’s spies, she saw a chance. Why shouldn’t she be the one to take the news to General Patton? Pearl and a willing colleague commandeered a jeep and set off to the dangerous world to find the general. On her way to deliver her precious documents, she saw the devastation of the French countryside by war. She and her companion encountered frightened farmers and their families. The enemy was always near at hand. And then her luck ran out.Captured by the Nazis, keeping her secrets close, this Southern Belle learned the price of espionage as well as patriotism. Her courage and quick wit came into play as well as her magic tricks! But how would she manage? Could she escape? Based on the story of the real-life experiences of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, the first woman to be captured as a spy during WWII, Pearl’s adventures are both inspiring and terrifying.

Mostra libro

Hurtling Wings

L. Ron Hubbard

Speed Kyle, builder of planes... Cal Bradley, daredevil test pilot... and Speed's bombshell daughter... and you've got a winner. The boys need money quick and the answer is the National Air Meet. But there's sabotage in the air and love on the ground — and together they make a very volatile mix, in a tale of fast planes, fast action, and unforgettable women. Rev up your engines and push the throttle forward as the audio version of Hurtling Wings puts a thrilling spin on flying adventure.

Mostra libro

The Vines of Yarrabee

Dorothy Eden

New York Times bestseller: A sweeping romantic saga about the colonization of Australia, from the author of An Important Family.  When Gilbert Massingham chooses Eugenia Lichfield for his bride, he knows the aristocratic beauty is the ideal mistress for his plantation in the Australian wilderness. But the virile, larger-than-life, vineyard-obsessed Gilbert isn’t the husband Eugenia imagined when she left England for this untamed land. Then exiled Irish portrait artist Colm O’Connor and prison refugee Molly Jarvis come into their lives, altering the family’s destiny. As Yarrabee grows into one of Australia’s premier vineyards, a subtle struggle for power begins that will have far-reaching consequences for Eugenia, Gilbert, and their children. Featuring a cast of unforgettable characters, The Vines of Yarrabee presents the vitality and violence of pioneer life and an unusual and moving love story.

Mostra libro

Rock Bottom Tennessee

Kimberly Nixon

Life is hard for Ruby, who grew up in poverty on the wrong side of the mountain on her grandfather's farm, where the sun literally didn't shine. The Appalachian setting isn't her friend as she searches for an easy life at the "tippy-top" with contentment and security. Ruby makes a series of poor decisions, causing her life to tumble into an unexpected outcome.Joseph knew that he always wanted to be a teacher. His family, one of the more prosperous on the mountain, surrounded him with love and support and encouraged him to find happiness with a family of his own.Leon, a former farmhand on her grandfather's farm, darts in and out of Ruby's life on his way toward a life of crime.The Four Winds meets Blind Tiger in this tale set in Prohibition-era Appalachian Tennessee in the early 1900s. The setting and mountain community become other characters of the story. Based on a real-life tale of the author's grandmother, the reader gets immersed in Ruby's choices as she searches for worthiness and belonging. Was the adventure worth the loss of her family? Will Ruby find what she is looking for?"In this gritty tale of danger, daring, and morally ambiguous women, Kimberly Nixon shows her talent for creating flawed but compelling characters. At times both tense and touching, Rock Bottom, Tennessee is powerful in its humanity. With a richly detailed setting, the story captures its era well." ~Kim Lozano, writer and editor"Nixon's original and unflinching prose reveals Ruby Sullivan's hardscrabble odyssey from Appalachian poverty towards self-worth and belonging." - Elizabeth Sumner Wafler, author

Mostra libro

The Strong - A tale from the...

Marcel Schwob

Mayer André Marcel Schwob was born in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine, France on 23rd August 1867 into a cultivated Jewish family.

As a child he devoured the works of Poe and Stevenson in French and then again in English. His attachment to the bizarre and dark was already forming.

His education at the Lycée of Nantes earned him the 1st Prize for Excellence. In 1881, he was in Paris with his maternal uncle to study at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Schwob quickly developed his multilingual abilities and then studied philology and Sanscrit at the École pratique des hautes études before completing his military service in Vannes with the artillery.

After completing a Bachelor of Arts in 1888 he became a professional journalist and worked for the Phare de la Loire, the Événement and L'Écho de Paris.

The 1890’s marked his establishment as a brilliant writer with the publication of six short story collections.

He fell ill in 1896 with a chronic, incurable intestinal disorder. He also suffered recurring bouts of influenza and pneumonia. Intestinal surgery was given several times, at first with success but, by 1900, after two more surgeries, he was told that nothing more could be done for him. Schwob now existed on kefir and fermented milk.

By the turn of the century, despite failing health, and often too ill to write, he embarked on several long travels, including to Vailima in the South Pacific where his literary hero Stevenson had died.

Schwob was regarded as a symbolist writer and a ‘precursor of Surrealism’. He wrote over a hundred short stories, journalistic articles, essays, biographies, literary reviews and analysis, translations and plays.

Marcel Schwob died on 26th February 1905 of Pneumonia. He was 37.

Mostra libro

Blue Desert

Celia Jeffries

2021 IPNE Finalist, Literary Fiction 
 
 
 
2021 Women's Book Awards Sarton Finalist, Historical Fiction 
 
 
 
Alice George is a headstrong young British woman who finds herself living among the Tuareg, a tribe of nomadic warriors. While the outside world faces the catastrophe of World War I, the Tuareg continue to crisscross the Sahara as a matrilineal society in which the men are veiled, and the women hold property—a world in which anything can happen. It is a world well suited to eighteen-year-old Alice, who discovers a life she could never live in corseted England. 
 
 
 
In 1917, Alice returns home to a world completely alien to the one she left in the Sahara. Her silence about that life is finally broken sixty years later when she receives a telegram announcing Abu has died in the desert. "Who is Abu?" her husband asks. "My lover," she replies. Thus, begins a weeklong journey of revelation as Alice lays bare her secrets. 
 
 
 
Can Alice face her demons and open her heart more fully to the life she once lived in the Sahara—a life she has hidden from her husband and herself? Blue Desert is a story of exile, family secrets, and the power of love.

Mostra libro