Search results for ""Academy Chicago Publishers""

Ten years ago, publishers, authors, scholars, and the reading public watched anxiously the results of two lawsuits involving the family of John Cheever, famed short story writer, and Academy Chicago Publishers, a small publishing house. At stake was not only a collection of Cheever's lesser-known short stories, valued for their literary merit and historical value, but also the definition of intellectual property. In a dramatic re-telling, Anita Miller draws us into the case, creating vivid portraits of the participants and the tensions between them while also shedding light on key issues of our time.

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Autobiography of the famous flyer which describes her own ambitions to become a pilot and offers advice to others.

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He was told that the color of his skin would keep him out of the big leagues, but Joe Black worked his way up through the Negro Leagues and the Cuban Winter League. He burst into the Majors in 1952 when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the face of segregation, verbal harassment, and even death threats, Joe Black rose to the top of his game; he earned National League Rookie of the Year and became the first African American pitcher to win a World Series game. With the same tenacity he showed in his baseball career, Black became the first African American vice president of a transportation corporation when he went to work for Greyhound. In this first-ever biography of Joe Black, his daughter Martha Jo Black tells the story not only of a baseball great who broke through the color line, but also of the father she knew and loved.

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Roll On, the first book from author Fred Afflerbach, takes readers on an interstate journey with a long-haul trucker. Ubi Sunt is addicted to his life on the road and, if he had his way, he'd continue driving until he no longer could. But forces in his life are threatening to take away Ubi's driving life. To begin with, Ubi's daughter has offered him an ultimatum -to have a role in his grandchildren's lives, he must settle down and drive local. In addition, the company

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Manderino's second novel is a comic gem. At forty, Hank has decided he's through with baseball - a routine pop-up fell on his head and he got the message. Trouble is, baseball is the one thing that's given any meaning to his life. This is the painfully funny story of a man who decides to get a life, but isn't sure how. It's about fathers and sons, heroes and whiners, the wheel of fortune (and Vanna White), baseball and the decline of Western civilization - and why Hall of Famer Nellie Fox always spat in his glove. One reader commented, 'This is a wonderful book: funny and touching. The characters are real and the situations they get into are riveting. The dialogue is great; the voices ring so true. An extremely enjoyable read, even for only casual fans of baseball'.

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When Hitchcock's ""The Birds"", began showing in the summer of 1963 at the Dolton Theater, the starlings of Riverside, Illinois launched their attacks. They were 'black, freckled, oily-looking things' with 'tiny black buttons for eyes.' They carried off Skippy Whalen's baseball cap, pooped on Father Rowley's finger, and attacked a feisty little dog named Tuffy who fought them off. 'I blamed Alfred Hitchcock' says the author, a Catholic grammar school student at the time.In this comic, witty memoir, John Manderino shows us how the pivotal points of his life have been enmeshed with movie moments. ""Crying at Movies"" presents thirty-eight succinct chapters, each bearing the title of a film.""Brief Encounter"", the last chapter, finds our movie-seeking Everyman hiding in his girlfriend's bathroom so she won't see him crying over the final scene. ""Crying at Movies"" is at once a love-letter to an art form and a humorous appreciation of the distinctions between movie scenes and life's realities.

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This panoramic novel hidden from the English-speaking world for more than 50 years begins with the Red Army invasion of Belarus in 1939. Ivan Kulik has just become Headmaster of school number 7 in Hlaby, a rural village in the Pinsk Marshes. Through his eyes we witness the tragedy of Stalinist domination where people are randomly deported to labour camps or tortured in Zovty Prison in Pinsk. The author's individual gift that sets him apart from his contemporaries is the range of his sympathies and his unromantic, unsentimental approach to the sensual lives of females. His debt to Chekhov is obvious in his ability to capture the internal drama of his characters with psychological concision.

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Leaving her home in Russia for the unknown streets of Detroit, teenager Itkeh Isenberg dreams of a country where 'no one is poor', and where she will be free from the marauding bands of Cossacks that terrorise her town. Idealistic and vivacious, and without ever seeing a map, Itkeh bravely makes her way by cart, train and ship to join her two brothers in America, one of the millions of immigrants travelling westward at the beginning of the twentieth century. Along the way, Itkeh falls in love with Nicholas, a member of the Russian aristocracy and the Christian Orthodox Church who is fleeing from his past, and begins to deliberately ignore Jewish laws to be with him. When they are forced to part at Ellis Island, each promises to write; a twist of fate leaves Itkeh unable to fulfil her promise, however, and Nicholas' letters suspiciously never arrive. It soon becomes apparent that Itkeh's family is preventing their contact, and Itkeh herself begins to struggle with her emotions. This vibrant and poetic telling of Itkeh's story, based upon personal recollections of the author's mother, Edith, follows the choices a young Jewish girl must make when listening to conflicting messages from her heart, her family and her religion.

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This is the 100th anniversary of one of the worst man-made disasters of the 20th century. When the Iroquois Theatre opened in Chicago on 23 November 1903, it was considered one of the grandest structures of its day, a monument to modern design and technology, as well as 'absolutely fireproof'. This was a theatre that would rival any in New York or Paris. Instead it became the funeral pyre for hundreds of victims. Tony Hatch, former CBS reporter and Emmy Award winner, tells the grisly story in meticulous, riveting detail, based on more than forty years of research, including many exclusive interviews with eyewitnesses. In Tinder Box, he tells the Iroquois story as it has never been told before. In a rush to open the theatre on time, corners were cut, and the Iroquois lacked the most basic fire-fighting equipment: sprinklers, fire alarm boxes, backstage telephone, exit signs and functioning asbestos curtain. Some exits, for aesthetic reasons, were hidden behind heavy draperies, doors opened inward and exterior fire escapes were unfinished. But Chicago officials, the theatre owners and managers, the contractor, stagehands -- all looked the other way. Then, on 30 December 1903, disaster struck. The theatre was packed, overcrowded with a standing-room-only audience, mostly women and children who had come to see the popular comedian Eddie Foy perform in the musical fantasy Mr Bluebeard. A short circuit in a single backstage spotlight touched off a small fire that, in minutes, erupted into an uncontrollable blaze. More than 600 people died. Because of the magnitude of the catastrophe and the obvious corruption that allowed it to happen, building and fire laws were changed to prevent it ever happening again. Tinder Box is a riveting history of a traumatic and costly calamity.

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In this charming, beautifully illustrated book -- out of print for more than sixty years -- Samuel McChord Crothers warmly introduces children to the unique world of Dickens children: David Copperfield, the Micawber children, Joe the Fat Boy, Oliver Twist, the Jellyby family -- to name a few. In 13 self-contained chapters, in simple, straightforward prose, Mr Crothers introduces the necessary background, and then gives us the scene itself as Dickens wrote it. The book is illustrated with the work of Jessie Willcox Smith, famous for her romantic and touching paintings and drawings of children.

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Rhiannon Paine, a technical writer for Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley, agreed reluctantly to transfer to their Tokyo branch. She had no idea what she was in for, and neither did her Japanese colleagues. While they coped with her social gaffes, like arriving late to work and blowing her nose in public, Paine struggled with Japanese food––"deviant sea-creatures on rice"––and with the Japanese language, which kept tripping her up with new verb tenses.

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It is the mid-1930s and, in Boston, something not quite kosher is going on at the Classic Clothing Company. Belle Appleman, the young widow recently hired for the Pants department and a long-time devotee of True Detective magazine, jumps at the chance to put her acquired knowledge into practice when the Pants shop steward is murdered. Belle soon learns that "detectiving" can be dangerous, but that doesn't stop her from shooting her questions at everyone from the boss's son's fiancee to the victim's mother.

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This is the story of the village of Foxton, in Cambridgeshire. The author studied archaeological excavations, oral tradition, manor court rolls, land tax returns, wills, bishops' registers and many other records, in order to build up a picture of the life, work, clothes, food and pastimes of the villagers, from the first traces of human settlement two thousand years ago, to the present day.

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Richard Hoysden's body is discovered in his country flat, apparently a suicide. Missing from the room is a tape of Hoysden's last moments in which he confesses to the murder of a young woman. Lady Drombone, a Member of Parliament and the young man's aunt, hires Carolus to find the tape and help suppress it. He himself insists on reconstructing the confusing circumstances in order to solve the baffling crime.

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A provincial lady slogs through the mud of a collective farm, copes with Soviet trains and hotels and rubs shoulders with robust citizens, at a public beach.

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A sequel to The Honeywood File (originally published in 1929, and reissued by Academy Chicago in 2000), it takes the form of an epistolary novel. Some of the great comic characters inhabit the pages of this book, and like all comedy, they contain more than a grain of truth. The book tells, in the form of letters gleaned from an architect's files, the excitments and and disasters of designing and building a large country house, with the painful aftermath of clearing up the defects and haggling over the bill. What makes this book so enjoyable and instructive is the clever interplay of all the diverse characters in the drama, and the author's sagacious and witty running commentary on their performance. The main protagonists are the hapless young architect James Spinlove; Sir Leslie Brash, his peppery and pompous client; the honest John Grigblay, the builder whose down-to-earth common sense gets the job done despite difficulties. Plus a cast of glorious inventions as Hoochcraft, Potch, Nibnose & Rasper, and Beddy & Tinge, quantity surveyors.

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Considered one of the foremost humorists in England at the turn of the century, W. W. Jacobs (1863-1943) is best known for his masterpiece of horror, ""The Monkey's Paw."" He was the author of thirteen volumes of short stories-all of which were commercially successful-and eighteen of these are included together for the first time in this gripping collection of horror fiction.This book features Gothic narratives, stories of the macabre and supernatural tales. But they are also infused with shrewd and sardonic humor, for which Jacobs was justifiably famous. They demonstrate vividly his masterful instinct for weaving terror and suspense into scenes of ordinary everyday life. His boyhood memories of the South Devon Wharf lend authenticity to the many stories with nautical backgrounds or that feature seamen as protagonists.Because of its immense popularity, ""The Monkey's Paw"" has tended to overshadow a good deal of Jacobs' other work, and it is undoubtedly the most readily recognized and by far the most anthologized story in the collection. But readers will be delighted to know that Jacobs' craftmanship is abundantly apparent in many of his other tales, as they will discover in this new volume. Horror and mystery aficionados will be intrigued and delighted by his range of skillful and witty prose; and they will at last come to appreciate a writer whose other work has been for so long ""lost"" to the general public.

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Carolus Deene becomes involved in his latest adventure when a famous restaurateur is threatened by a protection racketeer and a well-known writer of cookbooks is murdered under extraordinary circumstances.

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Love of Worker Bees first appeared in 1923, and it consists of a remarkable novel and two striking short stories, written by the most famous and gifted Russian woman of the twentieth century. The novel is both a moving love story and a rare graphic portrait of Russian life after the October revolution in 1917. The heroine, Vasilia struggles to come to terms with her passionate love for her husband and the new world that is coming into being around her. The two stories provide more poignant and fascinating insights into the situation of women.

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Here at last is a history of England that is designed to entertain as well as inform and that will delight armchair travellers, tourists or anyone interested in history. No people have engendered quite so much acclaim or earned so much censure as the English: extolled as the Athenians of modern times, yet hammered for their self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. But their history has been a spectacular one. The guiding principle of this book's heretical approach is that ""history is not everything that happened, but what is worth remembering about the past..."". Its chapters deal mainly with 'Memorable History' in blocks of time over the centuries. The final chapter recounts the achievements, personalities and idiocies of the royal family since the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066. Spiced with dozens of hilarious cartoons from ""Punch"" and other publications, ""English History"" is a welcome and amusing tour of a land that has always fascinated Anglophiles and Anglophobes alike.

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After a grueling and dramatic escape from occupied Poland in 1939, at age eight, Julian and his mother arrive in America in 1941 with big plans. Julian's beautiful, former socialite mother Barbara wants to write a memoir and regain her former social position. Julian just wants to fit his war-damaged psyche into the American way of life. As Barbara climbs her social ladder, she succeeds in opening for herself doors that few manage to open. In the process, she slams in Julian's face the very doors that other parents struggle to open for their children.

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The Whale Chaser is the story of Vince Sansone, the eldest child and only son in a large Italian American family, who comes of age in 1960s Chicago. A constant disappointment to his embittered father - a fishmonger who shows his displeasure with his fists - Vince finds solace by falling in love. Classmate Marie Santangelo, the butcher's winsome daughter, entices him with passionate kisses and the prospect of entering her family's business. Yet he pursues Lucy Sheehan, an older girl with a ""reputation.""When Vince abruptly flees Chicago, he ends up in Tofino, a picturesque fishing town on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. He finds a job gutting fish, then is hired by Tofino's most colorful dealer, Mr. Zig-Zag, and joins the thriving marijuana trade. Ultimately, through his friendship with an Ahousaht native named Ignatius George, he finds his calling as a whale guide.Set in the turbulent decades of the Vietnam War and the drug and hippie counterculture, The Whale Chaser is a powerful story about the possibility of redemption.

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The photographs in this startling collection were taken by German soldiers and civilians during the Third Reich; a few were taken by professionals embedded with the troops. But for the most part, they are the work of amateurs taking snapshots for family and friends.Through these black and white images, we enter the living rooms, the back yards, the boulevards and the killing fields of Nazi Germany. Many of these photos were once in family albums. Some soldiers returned with them after the war and, years later, these photographs were offered for sale by relatives along with their own snapshots of the home front. Other pictures were captured by the Soviets and, after the fall of the USSR, became available on the open market.The author acquired these snapshots from some fifteen countries; he spent more than four years researching, working every day, reviewing more than 100,000 images and selecting nearly 400 for this book. 'Most images,' the author says, 'are accompanied by text that both complements historical research and offers a subjective analysis of each - all in an effort to comprehend, to somehow attempt to understand what is essentially unfathomable.'

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If Tony Gould, head of international banking at the Manhattan Banking Corporation, can prod his fellow bankers to syndicate a one billion dollar loan to the African Republic of Maraka, the rewards will be rich. His bank would rise to the top ranks in the New York banking world, and Tony would be one step closer to replacing Miles Vanderpane as Chairman and CEO. Tony has many obstacles to surmount: Maraka has natural resources, but it is massively corrupt; its elite live like kings while most starve; and multinational coporations routinely bribe the government for a piece of the action. Closer to home, both the bank's Risk Manager, who won't approve the loan, and Vanderpane stand in Tony's way. Often satiric, Skim is a novel grounded in the real world of high-stakes banking. This absorbing story can serve as a cautionary tale as it illuminates the irresponsible behaviors underlying the near collapse of the banking system in 2008.|If Tony Gould, head of international banking at the Manhattan Banking Corporation, can prod his fellow bankers to syndicate a one billion dollar loan to the African Republic of Maraka, the rewards will be rich. His bank would rise to the top ranks in the New York banking world, and Tony would be one step closer to replacing Miles Vanderpane as Chairman and CEO. Tony has many obstacles to surmount: Maraka has natural resources, but it is massively corrupt; its elite live like kings while most starve; and multinational coporations routinely bribe the government for a piece of the action. Closer to home, both the bank's Risk Manager, who won't approve the loan, and Vanderpane stand in Tony's way. Often satiric, Skim is a novel grounded in the real world of high-stakes banking. This absorbing story can serve as a cautionary tale as it illuminates the irresponsible behaviors underlying the near collapse of the banking system in 2008.

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The Lodger, published in 1913, is based on the Jack the Ripper murders, it is about a London family who suspects that their upstairs lodger is a mysterious killer known as 'The Avenger'. The novel was the basis for four movie adaptions. The first was the silent film version directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927, it was followed by several remakes. The film was remade by Maurice Elvey in 1932, John Brahm in 1944, as ""Man in the Attic"" in 1953, and once again by David Ondaatje in 2009.

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In The Marquise, George Sand reacts against the tradition of the libertine novels of the 19th century by making the Marquise the narrator of the story, thus giving her control of the action. Sand deconstructs the myth of the seducer by making Lelio, the hero, the subject of the Marquise's desire. Pauline's two female protagonists represent diametrically opposed 19th-century female roles. Pauline is trapped by the bourgeois strictures of the time, while her friend, Laurence, an actress and intellectual, is independent both financially and emotionally.

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Design for the Real World has, since its first appearance twenty-five years ago, become a classic. Translated into twenty-three languages, it is one of the world's most widely read books on design. In this edition, Victor Papanek examines the attempts by designers to combat the tawdry, the unsafe, the frivolous, the useless product, once again providing a blueprint for sensible, responsible design in this world which is deficient in resources and energy.

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Welcome to the Dark. We are all familiar with tropes of the horror genre: slasher and victims, demon and the possessed. Bloody screams, haunted visions, and the peddler of wares we aren't sure we can trust. In this young adult horror anthology, fans of Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country, and Horror Noire will get a little bit of everything they loveand a lot of what they fearthrough a twisted blend of horror lenses, from the thoughtful to the terrifying. From haunted, hungry Victorian mansions, temporal monsterinfested asylums, and ravaging zombie apocalypses, to southern gothic hoodoo practitioners and cursed patriarchs in search of Black Excellence, All These Sunken Souls features the chilling creations of acclaimed bestsellers and hot new talents. - - - - - ContributorsKalynn Bayron @KalynnBayronAshia Monet @AshiaMonetLiselle Sambury @LiselleSamburySami Ellis @themoosefJoel Rochester @fictionalfatesJoelle Wellington @joelle_wellingBrent C. Lambert @BrentCLambertDonyae Coles @

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Having lost her husband, her parents, and her two young sons to the Nazi exterminators, Olga Lengyel had little to live for during her seven-month internment in Auschwitz. Only Lengyel's work in the prisoners' underground resistance and the need to tell this story kept her fighting for survival. She survived by her wit and incredible strength. Despite her horrifying closeness to the subject, FIVE CHIMNEYS does not retreat into self-pity or sensationalism. When first published (two years after World War 2 ended), Albert Einstein was so moved by her story that he wrote a personal letter to Lengyel, thanking her for her ""very frank, very well written book"". Today, with 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia, and neo-Nazism on the rise in western Europe, we cannot afford to forget the grisly lessons of the Holocaust. FIVE CHIMNEYS is a stark reminder that the unspeakable can happen wherever and whenever ethnic hatreds, religious bigotries, and racial discriminations are permitted to exist.

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This is a remarkably timely and fascinating personal story of a young man who became a priest and then discovered he was gay. He slowly comes to the realization that the flesh and the spirit need not be at war with each other, and he ultimately decides to leave the priesthood.

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One of the rarest mysteries in the author's Sergeant Beef series, Case with Four Clowns, which has only been published once in the US - more than fifty years ago - is now available in paperback for the first time. It is regarded by critics as one of Leo Bruce's most baffling mysteries. A murder is yet to be committed - that much is certain - but who will be the victim? And who will be the murderer? It is Sgt. Beef's job to discover these facts, if he can, in time to prevent the deed from being done. But when he reaches the small traveling circus where the murder is to take place, he finds that practically everyone there is seething with hatred, each has a motive which might make him a killer; and any one of a dozen people could easily be the victim. The doughty Sgt. Beef has broken some pretty tough cases, and this one - with mystery entagled within mystery - stirs the bulldog within him. The clues are there, but unless the reader is very astute, he or she will overlook them; but Sgt. Beef misses nothing.

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In 1939, Julian Padowicz says, ""I was a Polish Jew-hater. Under different circumstances my story might have been one of denouncing Jews to the Gestapo. As it happened, I was a Jew myself, and I was seven years old.""Julian's mother was a spoiled beauty, a Warsaw socialite who had no talent for child-rearing and no interest in it. She turned her son over completely to his governess, a good Catholic, whom he called Kiki, and whom he loved with all his heart. Kiki was deeply worried about Julian's immortal soul, explaining that he could go to Heaven only if he became a Catholic.When bombs began to fall on Warsaw, Julian's world crumbled. His beloved Kiki returned to her family in Lodz; Julian's stepfather joined the Polish army and the grief-stricken boy was left with the mother whom he hardly knew.Resourceful and determined, his mother did whatever was necessary to provide for herself and her son: she brazenly cut into food lines and befriended Russian officers to get extra rations of food and fuel. But brought up by Kiki to distrust all things Jewish, Julian considered his mother's behavior un-Christian.In the winter of 1940, as conditions worsened, Julian and his mother made a dramatic escape to Hungary on foot through the Carpathian mountains and Julian came to believe that even Jews could go to Heaven.

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Haile was born in Ethiopia in 1965 and lived there until she was eleven years old. When the Emperor was deposed by a military coup, Haile's father was shot while 'resisting arrest'. Barely surviving, he escaped with his family and settled in central Minnesota where they struggled with the cultural and financial strain of their drastically changed circumstances. Haile grew up in America, attended Williams College and went on to graduate from Harvard Law School. In 2001, she was the first member of her family to return to Ethiopia. Rebecca Haile's book brings into focus the challenges and consequences of three decades of political upheaval in Ethiopia.

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In Kings and Queens of Early Britain, Geoffrey Ashe skilfully weaves all the different accounts, legends, literature, historical documents into one continuous narrative that recreates in intriguing detail all the rulers and events, real or mythical, that are part of the rich tapestry of early history in Britain. The result is a fascinating and very readable account starting with the legendary 'founding of Britain' reputedly by Brutus the Trojan somewhere around 1100 BC and ending with Alfred, the greatest of the Saxon kings, in AD 871.

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At forty, Hank has decided he's through with baseball—a routine pop-up fell on his head and he got the message. Trouble is, baseball is the one thing that's given any meaning to his life. This is the painfully funny story of a man who decides to get a life, but isn't sure how. It's about fathers and sons, heroes and whiners, the wheel of fortune (and Vanna White), baseball and the decline of Western civilization—and why Nellie Fox always spat in his glove.

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Once again murder and other dark doings strike the small city of Fort York, Canada, during World War II and Inspector Albert V. Trethewaynow Regional Officer, Air Raid Precautionis the one man who can solve the mystery. It all begins on January 13th, 1943 when Fort York is in the midst of its most complete wartime blackout. Suddenly there are reports of an eerie flumelike light in the marsh outside the town. Tretheway finds evidence of weird practices that his friend Cynthia Moon identifies as the work of a coven of witches. This is a fitting sequelat once hilarious and bloodchillingto the first Tretheway mystery, "A Good Year for Murder."

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This work includes an introduction by Robert Welsch. On each of his three voyages, Cook kept a log and his reputation rose steadily with each voyage largely because Europeans were fascinated with the romance of discovery as well as reports of sexual licence in Tahiti and other Polynesian islands.

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Walking on the sand before breakfast, Carolus Deen's cousin Fay, who was staying on the Suffolk coast, has come upon the head of Lilliane Bomberger, the celebrated and universally detested novelist. The body was buried in the sand with only the head protruding; at least one tide had washed over it. Before this frustrating case ends, three murders are committed. This is vintage Bruce, mixing thrills and chills with unique humour.

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In 1941 as the Nazi hordes swept eastward into the Soviet Union, the desperate call went out for women to join the Russian air force. Women responded and flew incessant bombing runs; the Germans, who came to dread them, called them 'night witches'.

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Elizabeth Barrett was inspired by a flash of true genius when she rushed into the drawing-room and said that here, where we live and work, is the true place for the poet. With her passionate interest in social questions, her conflict as artist and woman, her longing for knowledge and freedom (Aurora Leigh) is the true daughter of her age. -- Gardner Taplin, from the Introduction.

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Introduction by Anita Miller. This novel about the divergent lives of two sisters which spans the Victorian and Edwardian periods is a 20th-century classic. Recently included in the list of the greatest 20th-century novels.

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Carolyn Heilbrun, in Writing a Woman’s Life, states that books about the real lives of women aren’t written often enough. Women of Privilege is an attempt to fill that gap. The book describes three generations of women at Grasmere - a country estate in Rhinebeck, New York - who suffered because of the patriarchal attitudes of the men in their lives. On the surface, everything seemed enviable; below the surface were mental illness, alcoholism, the yearning for divorce, and questions about sexual identity. The book traces the decline of a once privileged Hudson River Valley family where the neighbors were Vanderbilts, Delanos, and Roosevelts. Based on diaries and journals, and written by a family descendant, it combines biography and memoir with social history. Written by the great-great granddaughter of Sarah Minerva Schieffelin, the book is part biography, part memoir, and part social history. Based on journals and diaries that span more than a hundred years, Women of Privilege reveals how easy it is to create a family myth, when there is money to keep up appearances. Written with skill and grace, this is an insightful exploration of how the absence of human warmth can harm a child, and of how little inherited money matters in the end.

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The amazing tale of “County” is the story of one of America’s oldest and most unusual urban hospitals. From its inception as a “poor house” dispensing free medical care to indigents, Chicago’s Cook County Hospital has been renowned as a teaching hospital and the healthcare provider of last resort for the city’s uninsured. Ansell covers more than thirty years of its history, beginning in the late 1970s when the author began his internship, to the “Final Rounds” when the enormous iconic Victorian hospital building was replaced. Ansell writes of the hundreds of doctors who underwent rigorous training with him. He writes of politics, from contentious union strikes to battles against “patient dumping,” and public health, depicting the AIDS crisis and the Out of Printening of County’s HIV/AIDS clinic, the first in the city. And finally it is a coming-of-age story for a young doctor set against a backdrOut of Print of race, segregation, and poverty. This is a riveting account.

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In July, 2005, Representative John Conyers, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, commissioned this report after President Bush failed to answer a letter from 122 members of Congress and a half million Americans about the truth of the Downing Street Memos. This book is replete with evidence that the run-up to the Iraq War was laced with Administration lies and distortions, to make it appear that the US was threatened. As the Downing Street Memos say: ""...the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy""...This unique compilation also includes information about torture in Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo and other detention centres in direct violation of the Geneva Convention, as well as information about unauthorised domestic spying by the National Security Agency. Ambassador Joseph C Wilson - author of the ""New York Times"" best-seller ""The Politics of Truth"" - was sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the Bush Administration charge that Saddam Hussein had bought 'yellow cake' for his alleged nuclear weapons program. Mr. Wilson ascertained that there was no truth to the charge. His wife, Valerie Plame, a career undercover operative for the CIA, was later outed by members of the White House staff in apparent retaliation for Ambassador Wilson's finding. Readers of this crucial report will understand at last that the erosion of Americans' rights as to war, privacy, and freedom of speech, presents a threat to our security and our liberty.

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