White Elephant

White Elephant
Author: Trish Harnetiaux
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-10-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501199919

A crackling Christmas mystery that combines murder and blackmail at a holiday office party, in a mashup reminiscent of Big Little Lies and Clue. There are only a few rules in a White Elephant gift exchange: 1) Everyone brings a wrapped, unmarked gift. 2) Numbers are drawn to decide who picks first. 3) Gifts don’t need to be pricey—and often they’re downright tacky. But things are a little different in Aspen, Colorado, at the office holiday party for the real estate firm owned by Henry Calhoun and his wife Claudine. Each Christmas sparks a contest among the already competitive staff to see who can buy the most coveted gift: the one that will get stolen the most times, the one that will prove just how many more commissions they earned that year than their colleagues. Designer sunglasses, deluxe spa treatments, front row concert tickets—nothing is off the table. And the staff is even more competitive this year as Zara, the hottest young pop star out of Hollywood, is in town and Claudine is determined to sell her the getaway home of her dreams. Everyone is puzzled when a strange gift shows up in the mix: an antique cowboy statue. At least the sales agents are guessing it’s an antique—otherwise it’d be a terrible present. It’s certainly not very pretty or expensive-looking. In fact, the gift makes sense only to Henry and Claudine. The statue is the weapon Henry used to commit a murder years ago, a murder that helped start his company and a murder that Claudine helped cover up. She swore that no one would ever be able to find the statue or trace it to their crime. So which of their employees did? And why did they place it in the White Elephant? What could possibly be their endgame? Over the course of the evening, Henry and Claudine race to figure out who could have planted the weapon, and just what the night means for the secrets they’ve been harboring. Further adding to the drama is a snowstorm that closes nearby roads—preventing anyone from leaving, as well as keeping law enforcement from the scene. And by the end of this crazy night, the police will most definitely be required…

White Elephants

White Elephants
Author: Chynna T. Laird
Publisher: Eagle Wings Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2011-02-01
Genre: Sensory integration dysfunction in children
ISBN: 9780982624326

Family life in the author's childhood home was not pretty, yet no one seemed to notice, and no one did anything about it. As an adult, she took up the challenge to find out what might have helped her mother fight her battle of self-destruction.

White Elephants

White Elephants
Author: Emer Crooke
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781910820285

Grand, awe-inspiring and beautiful, the `Big House' is widely viewed as a jewel in the Irish landscape today. Despite this, the relationship between the country house and the state has long been complex and nuanced. Houses such as Castletown, Mote Park, and Shanbally Castle have faced sometimes insurmountable threats to their survival since the founding of the Free State. Against a backdrop of civil war and social upheaval, the fledging government of 1922 was unwilling to accept the burdensome gifts of these extravagant but ineffectual `white elephants' at a time when much of the population lived in poverty. From the 1920s to the 1970s, hundreds of former landlords' residences - often seen as symbols of British oppression - were sold on, demolished or simply abandoned to ruin. Despite the significant change that took place in terms of the perception of these houses as part of the national heritage, the relationship between the state post-independence and the country house has not been examined in detail to date. Analysing previously unused government records, White Elephants illustrates the complex attitudes of politicians such as Erskine Childers, Sean Moylan and Charles J. Haughey to the country house and the crucial role of senior civil servants in determining their fates. The actions of the Office of Public Works and the Land Commission are here analysed and weighed, while the effects of land division and the alienation of the Anglo-Irish class are seen through the often-revealing lens of Department of the Taoiseach and Department of Finance files. These previously unmined sources uncover the more personal history and attitudes behind decisions for demolition or salvation.Drawing on case studies of significant Irish houses including Bishopscourt, Derrynane, Dunsandle, Hazelwood, Killarney, Muckross and Russborough, White Elephants tracks the compelling development of the Irish country house from burden to heritage site, running in parallel with the development of Ireland from a fledgling state to taking its place in the international community of the EEC in 1973.

The Elephant from Baghdad

The Elephant from Baghdad
Author: Mary Tavener Holmes
Publisher: Two Lions
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Elephants
ISBN: 9780761461111

Relates the story, told by a monk named Notker the Stammerer, of how the Emperor Charlemagne sent an ambassador to Baghdad, the center of the Muslim world, to learn about the great ruler in the East, Haroun al Rashid. Includes notes on the factual basis of the story.

Hills Like White Elephants

Hills Like White Elephants
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 15
Release: 2023-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504083768

A couple’s future hangs in the balance as they wait for a train in a Spanish café in this short story by a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize–winning author. At a small café in rural Spain, a man and woman have a conversation while they wait for their train to Madrid. The subtle, casual nature of their talk masks a more complicated situation that could endanger the future of their relationship. First published in the 1927 collection Men Without Women, “Hills Like White Elephants” exemplifies Ernest Hemingway’s style of spare, tight prose that continues to win readers over to this day.

Ballet of the Elephants

Ballet of the Elephants
Author: Leda Schubert
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 46
Release: 2006-04-04
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781596430754

Describes the circus and the ballet of fifty elephants and dancers choreographed by George Ballanchine in 1942.

Ivory's Ghosts

Ivory's Ghosts
Author: John Frederick Walker
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2010-01-19
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 155584913X

“[A] tour de force examination of the history of ivory . . . and the demise of the elephant and human decency in the process of this unholy quest.” —The Huffington Post Praised for the nuance and sensitivity with which it approaches one of the most fraught conservation issues we face today, John Frederick Walker’s Ivory’s Ghosts tells the astonishing story of the power of ivory through the ages, and its impact on elephants. Long before gold and gemstones held allure, ivory came to be prized in every culture of the world—from ancient Egypt to nineteenth-century America to modern Japan—for its beauty, rarity, and ability to be finely carved. But the beauty came at an unfathomable cost. Walker lays bare the ivory trade’s cruel connection with the slave trade and the increasing slaughter of elephants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the 1980s, elephant poaching reached levels that threatened the last great herds of the African continent, and led to a worldwide ban on the ancient international trade in tusks. But the ban has failed to stop poaching—or the emotional debate over what to do with the legitimate and growing stockpiles of ivory recovered from elephants that die of natural causes. “Ivory’s Ghost is essential reading for anyone concerned with conservation and with the tenuous future of one of the most magnificent creatures our earth has ever seen.” —George B. Schaller, author of A Naturalist and Other Beast

Champak English

Champak English
Author: Delhi Press Magazines
Publisher: Delhi Press Magazines
Total Pages: 60
Release: 2018-10-15
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN:

Champak is the largest read children’s magazine in India. It is published in eight languages and has a total circulation of more than 300,000 copies. The magazine is known for its fascinating tales on animal characters that not only leave deep imprint on the minds of its young readers but also impart them with knowledge and values they treasure for the rest of their lives