Search results for ""Author Ann Parker""

Sometimes you can't keep your gown out of the gutter…Inez Stannert has reinvented herself—again. Fleeing the comfort and wealth of her East Coast upbringing, she became a saloon owner and card sharp in the rough silver boomtown of Leadville, Colorado, always favoring the unconventional path—a difficult road for a woman in the late 1800s.Then the teenaged daughter of a local prostitute is orphaned by her mother's murder, and Inez steps up to raise the troubled girl as her own. Inez works hard to keep a respectable, loving home for Antonia, carefully crafting their new life in San Francisco. But risk is a seductive friend, difficult to resist. When a skeleton tumbles from the wall of her latest business investment, the police only seem interested in the bag of Civil War-era gold coins that fell out with it. With her trusty derringer tucked in the folds of her gown, Inez uses her street smarts and sheer will to unearth a secret that someone has already killed to keep buried. The more she digs, the muddier and more dangerous things become.She enlists the help of Walter de Brujin, a local private investigator with whom she shares some history. Though she wants to trust him, she fears that his knowledge of her past, along with her growing attraction to him, may well blow her veneer of respectability to bits—that is, if her dogged pursuit of the truth doesn't kill her first

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It’s the end of the seventeenth century. Alix is a middle-class French girl, due to marry a nobleman. Vivien is a rebellious ‘poor’ girl from Delaware. Both have been dealt a bad hand in life. When unexpected events steer them away from the destiny chosen from them, their paths cross when they are swept away to join the crew of a pirate ship named for its figurehead, a Mermaid preparing for war with a sword in one hand and a knife in the other. Finding themselves in the middle of a quest for vengeance, can Alix and Vivien ever find peace? Together they will discover adventure, love and pain. Together they will discover their inner strength. Together, they will become Mermaids.

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This book offers a visual celebration of the Islamic pilgrimage on house facades all over Egypt. Since the seventh century, the Hajj, or Great Pilgrimage to Mecca, has been a lifelong goal of devout Muslims throughout the world. Egyptian pilgrims traditionally celebrate their sacred journey by commissioning a local artist to depict their religious odyssey on the walls of their homes. "Hajj Paintings" is the first visual record of the richness and variety of this naive art form. Photographer Ann Parker and writer Avon Neal spent a decade exploring towns, villages, and isolated farm communities along the Nile, across the Delta, down the Red Sea coast, and into Sinai. On the walls of buildings ranging from alabaster factories to mud-brick farmhouses they found brilliant murals illuminated by the desert sun, portraying beloved icons of the pilgrims' faith and scenes from the Qur'an. Their nearly 150 color photographs and accompanying descriptions record the radiant palette of the mostly self-taught artists.

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