These Silent Mansions

These Silent Mansions
Author: Jean Sprackland
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-02-06
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1448182441

'A refreshingly original meditation... I wish I had written it myself' Literary Review Graveyards are oases: places of escape, peace and reflection. Liminal sites of commemoration, where the past is close enough to touch. Yet they also reflect their living community - how in our restless, accelerated modern world, we are losing our sense of connection to the dead. Jean Sprackland - the prize-winning poet and author of Strands - travels back through her life, revisiting her once local graveyards. In seeking out the stories of those who lived and died there, remembered and forgotten, she unearths what has been lost.

Corduroy Mansions

Corduroy Mansions
Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2010-07-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307379302

CORDUROY MANSIONS - Book 1 In the Corduroy Mansions series of novels, set in London’s hip Pimlico neighborhood, we meet a cast of charming eccentrics, including perhaps the world’s most clever terrier, who make their home in a handsome, though slightly dilapidated, apartment block. Corduroy Mansions is the affectionate nickname given to a genteel, crumbling mansion block in London’s vibrant Pimlico neighborhood and the home turf of a captivating collection of quirky and altogether McCall-Smithian characters. There’s the middle-aged wine merchant William, who’s trying to convince his reluctant twenty-four-year-old son, Eddie, to leave the nest; and Marcia, the boutique caterer who has her sights set on William. There’s also the (justifiably) much-loathed Member of Parliament Oedipus Snark; his mother, Berthea, who’s writing his biography and hating every minute of it; and his long-suffering girlfriend, Barbara, a literary agent who would like to be his wife (but, then, she’d like to be almost anyone’s wife). There’s the vitamin evangelist, the psychoanalyst, the art student with a puzzling boyfriend and Freddie de la Hay, the Pimlico terrier who insists on wearing a seat belt and is almost certainly the only avowed vegetarian canine in London. Filled with the ins and outs of neighborliness in all its unexpected variations, Corduroy Mansions showcases the life, laughter and humanity that have become the hallmarks of Alexander McCall Smith’s work.

A Tomb With a View – The Stories & Glories of Graveyards

A Tomb With a View – The Stories & Glories of Graveyards
Author: Peter Ross
Publisher: Headline
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-09-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 147226780X

A FINANCIAL TIMES, I PAPER AND STYLIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 'In his absorbing book about the lost and the gone, Peter Ross takes us from Flanders Fields to Milltown to Kensal Green, to melancholy islands and surprisingly lively ossuaries . . . a considered and moving book on the timely subject of how the dead are remembered, and how they go on working below the surface of our lives.' - Hilary Mantel 'Ross is a wonderfully evocative writer, deftly capturing a sense of place and history, while bringing a deep humanity to his subject. He has written a delightful book.' - The Guardian 'The pages burst with life and anecdote while also examining our relationship with remembrance.' - Financial Times (best travel books of 2020) 'Among the year's most surprising "sleeper" successes is A Tomb with a View. In a year with so much death, it may have initially seemed a hard sell, but the author's humanity has instead acted as a beacon of light in the darkness.' -The Sunday Times 'Fascinating . . . Ross makes a likeably idiosyncratic guide and one finishes the book feeling strangely optimistic about the inevitable.' - The Observer 'Ross has written [a] lively elegy to Britain's best burial grounds.' - Evening Standard (*Best New Books of Autumn 2020*) 'One of the non-fiction books of the year.' - The i paper (*2020 Best Books for Christmas*) 'Brilliant.' - Stylist (*Best Christmas books for Christmas 2020*) 'Never has a book about death been so full of life. James Joyce and Charles Dickens would've loved it - a book that reveals much gravity in the humour and many stories in the graveyard. It also reveals Peter Ross to be among the best non-fiction writers in the country.' - Andrew O'Hagan For readers of The Salt Path, Mudlarking, Ghostland, Kathleen Jamie and Robert Macfarlane. Enter a grave new world of fascination and delight as award-winning writer Peter Ross uncovers the stories and glories of graveyards. Who are London's outcast dead and why is David Bowie their guardian angel? What is the remarkable truth about Phoebe Hessel, who disguised herself as a man to fight alongside her sweetheart, and went on to live in the reigns of five monarchs? Why is a Bristol cemetery the perfect wedding venue for goths? All of these sorrowful mysteries - and many more - are answered in A Tomb With A View, a book for anyone who has ever wandered through a field of crooked headstones and wondered about the lives and deaths of those who lie beneath.

Movie Star Homes

Movie Star Homes
Author: Judy Artunian
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre: Dwellings
ISBN: 9781891661389

From Gloria Swanson's 1918 Hollywood bungalow to Brad Pitt's Beverly Hills estate, this fully-illustrated compendium of celebrity homes profiles the extravagant residences, as well as some stars' humble beginnings.

The Collected Works of Owen Wister

The Collected Works of Owen Wister
Author: Owen Wister
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 1011
Release: 2022-11-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Owen Wister (1860-1938) was an American writer and "father" of western fiction. When he started writing, he naturally inclined towards fiction set on the western frontier. Wister's most famous work remains the novel The Virginian, set in the Wild West. It describes the life of a cowboy who is a natural aristocrat, set against a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War and taking the side of the large land owners. The Virginian paved the way for many more westerns by such authors as Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour, and several others. It is also widely regarded as being the first cowboy novel. Table of Contents: The Dragon of Wantley Lin McLean The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains Philosophy 4: A Story of Harvard University Lady Baltimore Padre Ignacio: or, the Song of Temptation Red Man and White Little Big Horn Medicine Specimen Jones The Serenade At Siskiyuo The General's Bluff Salvation Gap The Second Missouri Compromise La Tinaja Bonita A Pilgrim on the Gila The Jimmyjohn Boss A Kinsman of Red Cloud Sharon's Choice Napoleon Shave-Tail Twenty Minutes for Refreshments The Promised Land Hank's Woman Mother How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee Non-Fiction: Musk-Ox, Bison, Sheep and Goat The Pentecost of Calamity A Straight Deal; Or, The Ancient Grudge

The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness

The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness
Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2014-10-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1595341994

The incomparable Rebecca Solnit, author of more than a dozen acclaimed, prizewinning books of nonfiction, brings the same dazzling writing to the essays in Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness. As the title suggests, the territory of Solnit’s concerns is vast, and in her signature alchemical style she combines commentary on history, justice, war and peace, and explorations of place, art, and community, all while writing with the lyricism of a poet to achieve incandescence and wisdom. Gathered here are celebrated iconic essays along with little-known pieces that create a powerful survey of the world we live in, from the jungles of the Zapatistas in Mexico to the splendors of the Arctic. This rich collection tours places as diverse as Haiti and Iceland; movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring; an original take on the question of who did Henry David Thoreau’s laundry; and a searching look at what the hatred of country music really means. Solnit moves nimbly from Orwell to Elvis, to contemporary urban gardening to 1970s California macramé and punk rock, and on to searing questions about the environment, freedom, family, class, work, and friendship. It’s no wonder she’s been compared in Bookforum to Susan Sontag and Annie Dillard and in the San Francisco Chronicle to Joan Didion. The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness proves Rebecca Solnit worthy of the accolades and honors she’s received. Rarely can a reader find such penetrating critiques of our time and its failures leavened with such generous heapings of hope. Solnit looks back to history and the progress of political movements to find an antidote to despair in what many feel as lost causes. In its encyclopedic reach and its generous compassion, Solnit’s collection charts a way through the thickets of our complex social and political worlds. Her essays are a beacon for readers looking for alternative ideas in these imperiled times.

Literary Life of James K. Paulding

Literary Life of James K. Paulding
Author: William I. Paulding
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2022-02-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 3752564342

Reprint of the original, first published in 1867.