A Bold and Dangerous Family

A Bold and Dangerous Family
Author: Caroline Moorehead
Publisher: Random House Canada
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2017-08-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 034581407X

From the bestselling author of A Train in Winter, the story of the Rosselli family, whose courage standing up to Mussolini's fascism helped define the path of Italy in the years between the World Wars. "I had a house: they destroyed it. I had a newspaper: they closed it. I had a university chair: I was forced to abandon it. I had—as I still do—dreams, dignity, ideals: to defend them I was sent to prison. I had teachers: they murdered them." —Carlo Rosselli on Italy's fascist regime Italy's Rosselli family were members of the cosmopolitan, cultural elite in Florence at the start of the twentieth century. Led by their fierce matriarch, Amelia Rosselli, they were also vocal anti-fascists. As Mussolini rose to power in Italy following WWI, the Rossellis took leading roles in the rebellion against him, a stance that few in their class would risk. And when Mussolini established a police state whose tactics grew more brutal, the Rossellis and their anti-fascist friends transformed from debaters and critics into activists. As punishment for their participation in revolutionary activities, the Rossellis' homestead was ransacked, one after another of their number was imprisoned, others in the family fled the country to escape a similar fate, and two were eventually assassinated on the orders of Mussolini's government. After the outbreak of WWII, Amelia fled with the remaining members of the Rosselli family to New York City. Their visas were arranged by Eleanor Roosevelt herself. Through the stories of these brave people and their friends, renowned historian Caroline Moorehead delivers an immersive picture of Italy in the first half of the twentieth century. She reveals the rise and fall of Mussolini and his black-shirted Squadristi; the ambivalence of many prominent Italian families to Mussolini and their seduction by his promises; and the bold, fractured anti-fascist movement, so many of whose members died at Mussolini's hands. Continuing "The Resistance Quartet" she began with A Train in Winter and continued with Village of Secrets, Moorehead once again shows us the faces of those who helped the world hold on to its humanity at a time when it seemed all might be lost.

A House in the Mountains

A House in the Mountains
Author: Caroline Moorehead
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2020-01-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0062686380

"Dramatic, heartbreaking and sweeping in scope." —Wall Street Journal The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter returns with the "moving finale" (The Economist) of her Resistance Quartet—the powerful and inspiring true story of the women of the partisan resistance who fought against Italy’s fascist regime during World War II. In the late summer of 1943, when Italy broke with the Germans and joined the Allies after suffering catastrophic military losses, an Italian Resistance was born. Four young Piedmontese women—Ada, Frida, Silvia and Bianca—living secretly in the mountains surrounding Turin, risked their lives to overthrow Italy’s authoritarian government. They were among the thousands of Italians who joined the Partisan effort to help the Allies liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators. What made this partisan war all the more extraordinary was the number of women—like this brave quartet—who swelled its ranks. The bloody civil war that ensued pitted neighbor against neighbor, and revealed the best and worst in Italian society. The courage shown by the partisans was exemplary, and eventually bound them together into a coherent fighting force. But the death rattle of Mussolini’s two decades of Fascist rule—with its corruption, greed, and anti-Semitism—was unrelentingly violent and brutal. Drawing on a rich cache of previously untranslated sources, prize-winning historian Caroline Moorehead illuminates the experiences of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca to tell the little-known story of the women of the Italian partisan movement fighting for freedom against fascism in all its forms, while Europe collapsed in smoldering ruins around them.

A Train in Winter

A Train in Winter
Author: Caroline Moorehead
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2012-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1448156785

A moving and extraordinary book about courage and survival, friendship and endurance – a portrait of ordinary women who faced the horror of the holocaust together. On an icy morning in Paris in January 1943, a group of 230 French women resisters were rounded up from the Gestapo detention camps and sent on a train to Auschwitz – the only train, in the four years of German occupation, to take women of the resistance to a death camp. Of the group, only 49 survivors would return to France. Here is the story of these women – told for the first time. A Train in Winter is a portrait of ordinary people, of their bravery and endurance, and of the friendships that kept so many of them alive. ‘A story of stunning courage, generosity and hope’ Mail on Sunday ‘Serious and heartfelt...profound’ Sunday Times

Into the Dangerous World

Into the Dangerous World
Author: Julie Chibbaro
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2015-08-18
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0698170466

At a family meeting, Ror declares her purpose: She is an artist. But she doesn’t really know what that means. Raised on a commune, she’s never attended a day of school, and has seen little of the outside world. What she knows best is drawing. To her, it’s like breathing; it’s how she makes sense of the world. When her father torches the commune—and himself—Ror’s life changes. She, her mother and sister end up in a homeless residence in Manhattan, where she runs into trouble—and love—with Trey, the leader of Noise Ink, a graffiti crew. On the city’s streets, and in its museums and galleries, Ror finds herself pulled in different directions. Her father wanted her to make classic art. Noise Ink insists she stay within their lines. Her art teacher urges her to go to college. What does she want? Ror’s journey is a seamless blend of words and pictures, cinematic in its scope--a sharp-edged, indelible work of art that will live inside your head.

Circling the Sun

Circling the Sun
Author: Paula McLain
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2015-07-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345534190

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, BOOKPAGE, AND SHELF AWARENESS • “Paula McLain is considered the new star of historical fiction, and for good reason. Fans of The Paris Wife will be captivated by Circling the Sun, which . . . is both beautifully written and utterly engrossing.”—Ann Patchett, Country Living This powerful novel transports readers to the breathtaking world of Out of Africa—1920s Kenya—and reveals the extraordinary adventures of Beryl Markham, a woman before her time. Brought to Kenya from England by pioneering parents dreaming of a new life on an African farm, Beryl is raised unconventionally, developing a fierce will and a love of all things wild. But after everything she knows and trusts dissolves, headstrong young Beryl is flung into a string of disastrous relationships, then becomes caught up in a passionate love triangle with the irresistible safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and the writer Baroness Karen Blixen. Brave and audacious and contradictory, Beryl will risk everything to have Denys’s love, but it’s ultimately her own heart she must conquer to embrace her true calling and her destiny: to fly. Praise for Circling the Sun “In McLain’s confident hands, Beryl Markham crackles to life, and we readers truly understand what made a woman so far ahead of her time believe she had the power to soar.”—Jodi Picoult, author of Leaving Time “Enchanting . . . a worthy heir to [Isak] Dinesen . . . Like Africa as it’s so gorgeously depicted here, this novel will never let you go.”—The Boston Globe “Famed aviator Beryl Markham is a novelist’s dream. . . . [A] wonderful portrait of a complex woman who lived—defiantly—on her own terms.”—People (Book of the Week) “Circling the Sun soars.”—Newsday “Captivating . . . [an] irresistible novel.”—The Seattle Times “Like its high-flying subject, Circling the Sun is audacious and glamorous and hard not to be drawn in by. Beryl Markham may have married more than once, but she was nobody’s wife.”—Entertainment Weekly “[An] eloquent evocation of Beryl’s daring life.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

Bold Spirit

Bold Spirit
Author: Linda Lawrence Hunt
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307425061

In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America. Hoping to win the wager and save her family’s farm, Helga and her teenaged daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a revolver, and Clara’s curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern Washington. Their route would pass through 14 states, but they were not allowed to carry more than five dollars each. As they visited Indian reservations, Western boomtowns, remote ranches and local civic leaders, they confronted snowstorms, hunger, thieves and mountain lions with equal aplomb. Their treacherous and inspirational journey to New York challenged contemporary notions of femininity and captured the public imagination. But their trip had such devastating consequences that the Estby women's achievement was blanketed in silence until, nearly a century later, Linda Lawrence Hunt encountered their extraordinary story.

The Family Trade

The Family Trade
Author: Charles Stross
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429914874

A bold fantasy in the tradition of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, The Merchant Princes is a sweeping new series from the hottest new writer in science fiction! Miriam Beckstein is happy in her life. She's a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine in Boston, making good money doing what she loves. When her researcher brings her iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme, Miriam thinks she's found the story of the year. But when she takes it to her editor, she's fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she has uncovered. Before the day is over, she's received a locket left by the mother she never knew-the mother who was murdered when she was an infant. Within is a knotwork pattern, which has a hypnotic effect on her. Before she knows it, she's transported herself to a parallel Earth, a world where knights on horseback chase their prey with automatic weapons, and where world-skipping assassins lurk just on the other side of reality - a world where her true family runs things. The six families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the scenes, a mixture of nobility and criminal conspirators whose power to walk between the worlds makes them rich in both. Braids of family loyalty and intermarriage provide a fragile guarantee of peace, but a recently-ended civil war has left the families shaken and suspicious. Taken in by her mother's people, she becomes the star of the story of the century-as Cinderella without a fairy godmother. As her mother's heir, Miriam is hailed as the prodigal countess Helge Thorold-Hjorth, and feted and feasted. Caught up in schemes and plots centuries in the making, Miriam is surrounded by unlikely allies, forbidden loves, lethal contraband, and, most dangerous of all, her family. Her unexpected return will supercede the claims of other clan members to her mother's fortune and power, and whoever killed her mother will be happy to see her dead, too. Behind all this lie deeper secrets still, which threaten everyone and everything she has ever known. Patterns of deception and interlocking lies, as intricate as the knotwork between the universes. But Miriam is no one's pawn, and is determined to conquer her new home on her own terms. Blending the creativity and humor of Roger Zelazny, the adventure of H. Beam Piper and Philip Jose Farmer, and the rigor and scope of a science-fiction writer on the grandest scale, Charles Stross has set a new standard for fantasy epics. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Family Reminders

Family Reminders
Author: Julie Danneberg
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2009
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1580893201

In 1890s Cripple Creek, Colorado, when young Mary McHugh's father loses his leg in a mining accident, she tries to help, both by earning money and by encouraging her father to go back to carving wooden figurines and playing piano.

Time at War

Time at War
Author: Nicholas Mosley
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1448211247

Although Nicholas Mosley has written two volumes of family biography and a volume of memoirs, he has, until now, avoided writing about his World War Two experiences. The son of Sir Oswald Mosley who, as the leader of the British Union of Fascists, had been jailed with his second wife, Diana (one of the Mitford sisters), early on in the war ostensibly as a security risk. Despite this, Nicholas was dispatched to join his regiment, the Rifle Brigade, as the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula. He came of age in the forcing house of war, surrounded by the constant threat of capture by the Germans. At one point in the Italian campaign this very nearly happened. How Nicholas got away and survived is an example of how sometimes fact can be more bizarre than fiction. Time at War is both an absorbing memoir and an intriguing account of a relationship unlike any other in World War Two. How do you live your life as a soldier fighting the Axis powers when your father is the self-proclaimed British fascist leader?

The Dangerous Art of Blending In

The Dangerous Art of Blending In
Author: Angelo Surmelis
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2018-01-30
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0062659022

~Lambda Literary Award finalist for the best LGBT YA novel of 2018~ A raw, powerful, but ultimately uplifting debut novel perfect for fans of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe from debut author Angelo Surmelis. Seventeen-year-old Evan Panos doesn’t know where he fits in. His strict immigrant Greek mother refuses to see him as anything but a disappointment. His quiet, workaholic father is a staunch believer in avoiding any kind of conflict. And his best friend, Henry, has somehow become distractingly attractive over the summer. Tired, isolated, scared—Evan finds that his only escape is to draw in an abandoned monastery that feels as lonely as he is. And yes, he kissed one guy over the summer. But it’s Henry who’s now proving to be irresistible. Henry, who suddenly seems interested in being more than friends. And it’s Henry who makes him believe that he deserves more than his mother’s harsh words and terrifying abuse. But as things with Henry heat up, and his mother’s abuse escalates, Evan has to decide how to find his voice in a world where he has survived so long by being silent. This is a powerful and revelatory coming-of-age novel based on the author’s own childhood, about a boy who learns to step into his light.