Outros livros que poderiam interessá-lo

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  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow -...

  Washington Irving

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  Washington Irving was born on 3rd April, 1783, the youngest of 11, in New York. 
    
  Irving found his real interests away from school in literature and the theatre.  An outbreak of yellow fever at 15 moved him away from Manhattan and into the surrounding countryside providing valuable settings for later works such as ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. 
   
  By 19 Irving was writing regularly to the New York Morning Chronicle, commenting on the theatrical and social scenes.  When his health began to fail, he was sent on the Grand Tour of Europe.  Bizarrely he ignored most of the great sights on offer to concentrate on developing his social and conversational powers.  His health, though, did improve.  
   
  In 1806, back in New York to study law, he scraped a pass at the bar and then founded with several others the literary magazine Salmagundi. Irving nicknamed the city ‘Gotham City’, a name still in use today.  Moderately successful, the magazine spread Irving’s reputation beyond New York. 
   
  In 1809 while mourning the death of his teenage fiancée Irving finished his first significant book, ‘A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynsasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker’.  It satirised local history, local historians and politics.  It received great critical acclaim. 
   
  Unfortunately his family’s established trading company was now facing great upheavals and Irving was dispatched to England to try to sort it out.  After two years he could see no way out but bankruptcy.  This left him in England with no real employment prospects, and so he returned to writing.  
   
  He sent some short stories back to New York to be published as ‘The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent’.  The first part included ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and was extremely successful.  The sixth part contained ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.  
   
  Beset by literary piracy, with no copyright law at the time, he set about publishing legitimate copies in England to outwit the bootleggers.  From now on Irving published concurrently in America and England in order to render piracy obsolete.  
   
  In August 1824, he published ‘Tales of a Traveller’, which included the famed ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’.  
   
  In 1826, the American Minister to Spain, invited him to Madrid where he could examine the many historical documents that he had access to.  Irving reveled in both the size of the libraries he was granted access to and their rich quality.  Historical works flowed from his pen further enhancing his reputation and fortune.   
   
  Following the completion of ‘Tales of the Alhambra’ in 1832, Irving returned to America after 17 years abroad. He was now a figurehead of American literature and dispensed advice to Edgar Allan Poe amongst others.  Irving also became an advocate for American copyright legislation.  
   
  A later appointment as Minister to Spain in 1842 left him disheartened at the antics of the various political factions he encountered.  It also afforded him no time to write as he had hoped.  
   
  On his return home he began an ‘Author’s Revised Edition’ of his works agreeing an unprecedented deal for 12 per cent of the retail profits.  
   
  Washington Irving died of a heart attack at his ‘Sunnyside’ home on the 28th November 1859 at the age of 76, a few months after completing his five volume George Washington biography, in whose honour he had been named.  
   
  ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ is a story almost everyone has encountered.  An enormous success at the time it is now an undeniable American Spooky classic.

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  Ougat - From a hoe into a...

  Shana Fife

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  There’s an entire generation of South African women who ought to read this book.’ – Sara-Jayne King, author of Killing Karoline 
    
  ‘Ougat is masterfully written – raw, unpretentious, unsettling. Shana Fife captures all the darkness from her body, psyche and life with fearless honesty and transparency.’ – Frazer Barry, award-winning theatre practitioner, writer and musician 
  By the time Shana Fife is 25 she has two kids from different fathers. To the Coloured people she grew up around, she is a jintoe, a jezebel, jas, a woman with mileage on the pussy. She is alone, she has no job and, as she is constantly reminded by her community, she is pretty much worthless and unloveable. How did she become this woman, the epitome of everything she was conditioned to strive not to be? 
  Unsettlingly honest and brutally blunt, Ougat is Shana Fife’s story of survival: of surviving the social conditioning of her Cape Flats upbringing, of surviving sexual violence and depression and of ultimately escaping a cycle of abuse. 
  A powerful, fresh and disarming new voice – Shana’s writing is like nothing you’ve read before.

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  Posting the Word - Chris Harris...

  Chris Harris

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  Posting the Word tells of the story of how Chris Harris, a laicised priest, managed, against all the odds, to set up a successful adult religious education course by distance learning. Life Light Home Study Courses grew over nearly half a century into a facility which has enabled thousands of mostly lay Catholic students to develop their biblical and theological literacy. A very large number of these have moved on to positions of responsibility for RE in schools and parishes.
  
   
  In the background lies a human story which unfolded in a succession of different settings: monastic, seminary, university, school, home and parish. The challenges confronted along this winding road are here described in some detail.
  
   
  Of particular interest is the contribution made by Chris and his wife Heather to the spirituality of Christian married life. Both had a deep appreciation of religious life and sought to lay the foundations of a complementary and equally rich spirituality for married people.
  
   
  Posting the Word offers a fascinating insight into lived Catholicism before and after the Second Vatican Council and also into the history of adult theological education within the Roman Catholic Church.

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  The Greatest Escape - A gripping...

  Neil Churches

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  The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War – organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy.In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place – 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present–day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces.How these three men came together – along with the partisans – to plan and execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest Escape, written by Ralph Churches' son Neil, takes us from Ralph and Les’s capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the escapees on a nail–biting 160–mile journey across the Alps, pursued by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.

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  Surviving Life as a Miracle Child

  Brandon C. Gandy

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  This is a true story about Brandon C. Gandy, who overcame fifteen birth defects, twenty-eight surgeries, a medically induced coma, and cancer, and became the eighth person in the world to have a testicular and kidney transplant. During all of his near-death medical challenges, Brandon persisted; he would remain an athlete and he tackled many different sports. His brave, strong journey sheds light on real-life struggles of what a miracle child has to go through growing up and how he turned his preconceived weaknesses into his ultimate strengths with his endless faith.

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  Mickey - The Cat Who Raised Me

  Helen Brown

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  A witty and warm memoir about growing up with the help of a very special cat—from Helen Brown, internationally bestselling author of Cleo and other tales of the beloved cats in her life . . . 
   
   
   
  Who was the first pet you ever loved? 
   
   
   
  The youngest daughter of an eccentric engineer and a musical theater fanatic, Helen Brown grew up in the New Zealand coastal town of New Plymouth in a crumbling castle overrun by nature, and overshadowed by nearby, beautiful Mount Taranaki. It's 1966, the Pacific islands are being used for atomic bomb testing, and her parents and siblings are swept up in their own lives. Twelve years old, struggling in school, and facing eye surgery—for the second time—Helen feels lonely and lost . . . 
   
   
   
  Until her father gives her a three-month-old, gray-and-brown tiger-striped tabby with extra toes on each paw. Noticing an M design on the cat's forehead, Helen names her new companion Mickey. Inquisitive, rambunctious, clever, and skittish, Mickey disrupts the already quirky household with his mischief. But Helen finds love, joy—and herself—in learning what it means to care for a living creature who needs her as much as she needs him.

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