Other books that might interest you

• 

  Love And Reciprocity: Wild And Free

  Q. Lee

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Love And Reciprocity: Wild And Free is about uninhibited, erotic, and sensual poetry. Explicit sexual content for Mature Audiences.

  Show book

• 

  HOMER: The Iliad & the Odyssey

  Homer

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Nearly three thousand years after they were composed, The Iliad and The Odyssey remain two of the most celebrated and widely read stories ever told, yet next to nothing is known about their author. He was certainly an accomplished Greek bard, and he probably lived in the late eighth and early seventh centuries BCE Authorship is traditionally ascribed to a blind poet named Homer, and it is under this name that the works are still published. Greeks of the third and second centuries BCE, however, already questioned whether Homer existed and whether the two epics were even written by a single individual. 
  Most modern scholars believe that even if a single person wrote the epics, his work owed a tremendous debt to a long tradition of unwritten, oral poetry. Stories of a glorious expedition to the East and of its leaders’ fateful journeys home had been circulating in Greece for hundreds of years before The Iliad and The Odyssey were composed. Casual storytellers and semiprofessional minstrels passed these stories down through generations, with each artist developing and polishing the story as he told it. According to this theory, one poet, multiple poets working in collaboration, or perhaps even a series of poets handing down their work in succession finally turned these stories into written works, again with each adding his own touch and expanding or contracting certain episodes in the overall narrative to fit his taste.

  Show book

• 

  The Black Man's Lament or How to...

  Amelia Opie

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Amelia Alderson, an only child, was born on the 12th November 1769 in Norwich, England. 
  After the death of her mother on New Year’s Eve 1784 she became her father's housekeeper and hostess. 
  The young Amelia was energetic, attractive, and an admirer of fashion.  She spent much of her youth writing poetry and plays and putting on local amateur theatricals.  At 18 she had published anonymously ‘The Dangers of Coquetry’. 
  Amelia married in the spring of 1798 to the artist John Opie at the Church of St Marylebone, in Westminster, and together they lived in Berners Street where Amelia was already living. 
  Her next novel in 1801 ‘Father and Daughter’, was very popular even though it dealt with such themes as illegitimacy, a socially difficult subject for its times.  From this point on published works were far more regular.  The following year her volume ‘Poems’ appeared and was again very popular.  Novels continued to flow and she never once abandoned her social activism and her call for better treatment of women and the dispossessed in her works.  She was also keenly involved in a love of society and its attendant frills. 
  Encouraged by her husband to write more she published Adeline Mowbray in 1804, an exploration of women's education, marriage, and the abolition of slavery.  
  Her husband died in 1807 and she paused from writing for a few years before resuming with further novels and poems.  Of particular interest was her short poem ‘The Black Man's Lament’ in 1826.  Her life now was in the main spent travelling and working for charities and against slavery.  She even helped create a Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Norwich which organised a parliamentary petition of 187,000 names of which hers was the first name. 
  After a visit to Cromer, a seaside resort on the North Norfolk coast, she caught a chill and retired to her bedroom.  
  Amelia Opie died on the 2nd December 1853 in Norwich.  She was 84.

  Show book

• 

  The Mother's Secret - A...

  Clare Swatman

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  There’s nothing a mother wouldn’t do for her children – even if it means telling a lie… 
  Sisters Georgie and Kate have always been close. Brought up by their mum Jan after the death of their father, this family of women have always been able to rely on each other.  
  Jan loves her daughters with all her heart. She knows some people think she’s an over-protective mother, but they didn’t know what she knows. She has always kept her girls close but now she can feel them slipping away. 
  Secrets have a nasty habit of refusing to stay hidden, and now Georgie and Kate are about to discover that while lies can cause pain, the truth could destroy them all. 
  Two beloved girls. The mother who adores him. The secret that could tear them apart. 
  Bestselling novelist Clare Swatman returns with a heart-breaking, devastating, but ultimately uplifting story about mothers, daughters and the bonds of love. 
  Praise for Clare Swatman: 
  'Before We Grow Old is an unashamedly big, life-affirming, tear-jerking love story. Beautifully told, characters Fran and Will had me from the first page, and crying buckets by the last ! Just gorgeous.' Katy Regan 
  'Before We Grow Old took me on an intense emotional journey, and I cried at the end (and I rarely cry when I'm reading!) The portrayal of the mother and son bond - with its peaks and troughs of intensity and frustration - felt incredibly real, and the dialogue in particular was brilliantly done.' Victoria Scott  
  'A beautifully written tale of enduring love' - Rowan Coleman  
  'Irresistible . . . A delightfully bittersweet story that will appeal to fans of One Day' - Sunday Mirror 'Wonderful' - Sun

  Show book

• 

  Social Acupuncture

  Darren O'Donnell

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Theatre doesn’t have much relevance anymore. Or so acclaimed playwright Darren O’Donnell tells us. The dynamics of unplanned social interaction, he says, are far more compelling than any play he could produce. So his latest show, A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, isn’t really a show; it’s an interactive chitchat about memory, depression, and 9/11, a dazzling whirl of talking streetcars, pizza and schizophrenia. And it’s hilarious.
     
  O’Donnell’s artistic practice has evolved into ‘something as close to hanging out as you can come and still charge admission.’ With his theatre company, Mammalian Diving Reflex, O’Donnell has generated a series of ongoing events that induce interactions between strangers in public; the Talking Creature, Q&A, Home Tours, the Toronto Strategy Meetings and Diplomatic Immunities bring people together in odd configurations, ask revealing questions and prove the generosity,abundance and power of the social sphere.
     
  Social Acupuncture includes the full text of A Suicide-Site Guide to the City and an extensive essay on the waning significance of theatre and the notion of civic engagement and social interaction as an aesthetic.
     
  ‘No other playwright working in Toronto right now has O’Donnell’s talent for synthesizing psychosocial, artistic and political random thoughts and reflections into compelling analyses … The world (not to mention the theatre world) could use more of this, if only to get us talking and debating.’
     
  – The Globe and Mail

  Show book

• 

  Why Fathers Cry at Night - A...

  Kwame Alexander

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This powerful memoir from a #1 New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medalist features poetry, letters, recipes, and other personal artifacts that provide an intimate look into his life and the loved ones he shares it with. In a powerfully intimate and non-traditional (or "new-fashioned") memoir, Kwame Alexander shares snapshots of a man learning how to love. He takes us through stories of his parents: from being awkward newlyweds in the sticky Chicago summer of 1967, to the sometimes-confusing ways they showed their love to each other, and for him. He explores his own relationships—his difficulties as a newly wedded, 22-year-old father, and the precariousness of his early marriage working in a jazz club with his second wife. Alexander attempts to deal with the unravelling of his marriage and the grief of his mother's recent passing while sharing the solace he found in learning how to perfect her famous fried chicken dish. With an open heart, Alexander weaves together memories of his past to try and understand his greatest love: his daughters. Full of heartfelt reminisces, family recipes, love poems, and personal letters, Why Fathers Cry at Night inspires bravery and vulnerability in every reader who has experienced the reckless passion, heartbreak, failure, and joy that define the whirlwind woes and wonders of love.

  Show book