The Well of Loneliness

The Well of Loneliness
Author: Radclyffe Hall
Publisher:
Total Pages: 524
Release: 1928
Genre: Censorship
ISBN:

Tells the story of Stephen Gordon, a girl born at the turn of century, and her struggle for acceptance as a lesbian.

The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me

The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me
Author: Sofka Zinovieff
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 670
Release: 2015-03-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 006233896X

Like The Bolter and Portrait of a Marriage, this beguiling, heady tale of a scandalous ménage à trois among England's upper classes combines memoir and biography to re-create an unforgettably decadent world. Among the glittering stars of British society, Sofka Zinovieff's grandparents lived and loved with abandon. Robert Heber-Percy was a dashing young man who would rather have a drink than open a book, so his involvement with Jennifer Fry, a gorgeous socialite famous for her style and charm, was not surprising. But by the time Robert met and married Jennifer, he had already been involved with a man—Gerald, Lord Berners—for more than a decade. Stout, eccentric and significantly older, Gerald was a composer, writer and aesthete—a creative aristocrat most at home in the company of the era's best and brightest minds. He also owned one of Britain's loveliest stately homes, Faringdon House, in Oxfordshire, which under his stewardship became a beacon of sybaritic beauty. Robert and Gerald made an unlikely couple, especially because they lived together at Faringdon House when homosexuality was illegal. And then a pregnant Jennifer moved into Faringdon in 1942, creating a formidable ménage à trois. In this gorgeous, entertaining narrative of bohemian aristocracy, Sofka Zinovieff probes the mysteries of her grandparents and the third man in their marriage: Gerald, the complex and talented heir to a legendary house, its walls lined with priceless art and its gardens roamed by a bevy of doves, where he entertained everyone from Igor Stravinsky to Gertrude Stein. What brought Robert and Jennifer together under his roof, and why did Jennifer stay—and marry Robert? Blending memoir and biography in her quest to lay old ghosts to rest, Zinovieff pieces together the complicated reality behind the scandals of revelry and sexuality. The resulting story, defined by keen insight, deep affection and marvelous wit, captures the glory and indulgence of the age, and explores the many ways in which we have the capacity to love.

Poison for Teacher

Poison for Teacher
Author: Nancy Spain
Publisher: Virago
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2021-04-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0349013977

'Her detective novels are hilarious - less about detecting than delighting, with absurd farce and a wonderful turn of phrase . . . Nancy Spain was bold, she was brave, she was funny, she was feisty' SANDI TOKSVIG Miriam Birdseye, ex-revue star and now professional sleuth, is intrigued when the headmistress of Radcliff Hall arrives at her Baker Street detective agency. A series of bizarre stunts that at first seemed like pranks have taken a sinister turn, and since Mis Lipscoomb found her gym rope half sawn through, she's begun to fear not only for her school, but for her life. This is how Miriam and her friend, Russian ballerina Natasha Nevkorina, find themselves on board the train to a Sussex girls' school, in the unlikely guise of teachers. Before long the detective duo uncovers a blackmail plot, infidelity and a dizzying array of school schisms. And then a teacher is poisoned during the school play; can they discover the culprit before the body count rises? From the pen of Nancy Spain, for whom farce and humour are a lot more fun than a conventional detective novel, the result is a deliciously wild ride. 'An either intense or sombre approach to crime is to Miss Spain foreign: in her world an inspired craziness rules . . . Her wit, her zest, her outrageousness, and the colloquial stylishness of her writing are quite her own' Elizabeth Bowen

The Trials of Radclyffe Hall

The Trials of Radclyffe Hall
Author: Diana Souhami
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 518
Release: 2012-12-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1780878796

Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880 in Bournemouth in a house inappropriately named 'Sunny Lawn'. Her mother drank gin in an attempt to terminate the pregnancy, and her father fled the family home. At the mercy of a violent mother and sexually abusive stepfather, her life changed when at the age of eighteen she inherited her father's estate of £100,000. She was free to travel, pursue women and write - most notably The Well of Loneliness, her famous novel about 'congenital inverts', which was declared 'inherently obscene' by the Home Secretary and banned. In this brilliantly written, witty and satirical biography Diana Souhami brings a fresh and irreverent eye to the life of this intriguing and troubled woman.

Collected Tales and Fantasies of Lord Berners

Collected Tales and Fantasies of Lord Berners
Author: Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson Baron Berners
Publisher: Turtle Point Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 1999
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

The legendary eccentric English writer (1883-1950) presents an unforgettable cast of characters starring in a collection of gem-like works of short fiction.

Everything I Never Told You

Everything I Never Told You
Author: Celeste Ng
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0143127551

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Winner of the Alex Award and the Massachusetts Book Award • Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Grantland Booklist, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, School Library Journal, Bustle, and Time Our New York The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts “A taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense.” —O, the Oprah Magazine “Explosive . . . Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family.” —Entertainment Weekly “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

The Clockmaker's Daughter

The Clockmaker's Daughter
Author: Kate Morton
Publisher: Atria Books
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2019-05-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 145164941X

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of the New York Times bestseller Homecoming—“An ambitious, compelling historical mystery with a fabulous cast of characters…Kate Morton at her very best.” —Kristin Hannah “An elaborate tapestry…Morton doesn’t disappoint.” —The Washington Post "Classic English country-house Goth at its finest." —New York Post In the depths of a 19th-century winter, a little girl is abandoned on the streets of Victorian London. She grows up to become in turn a thief, an artist’s muse, and a lover. In the summer of 1862, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, she travels with a group of artists to a beautiful house on a bend of the Upper Thames. Tensions simmer and one hot afternoon a gunshot rings out. A woman is killed, another disappears, and the truth of what happened slips through the cracks of time. It is not until over a century later, when another young woman is drawn to Birchwood Manor, that its secrets are finally revealed. Told by multiple voices across time, this is an intricately layered, richly atmospheric novel about art and passion, forgiveness and loss, that shows us that sometimes the way forward is through the past.

Dark Testament: and Other Poems

Dark Testament: and Other Poems
Author: Pauli Murray
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2018-09-04
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1631494848

With the cadences of Martin Luther King Jr. and the lyricism of Langston Hughes, the great civil rights activist Pauli Murray’s sole book of poems finally returns to print. There has been explosive interest in the life of Pauli Murray, as reflected in a recent profile in The New Yorker, the publication of a definitive biography, and a new Yale University college in her name. Murray has been suddenly cited by leading historians as a woman who contributed far more to the civil rights movement than anyone knew, being arrested in 1940—fifteen years before Rosa Parks—for refusing to give up her seat on a Virginia bus. Celebrated by twenty-first-century readers as a civil rights activist on the level of King, Parks, and John Lewis, she is also being rediscovered as a gifted writer of memoir, sermons, and poems. Originally published in 1970 and long unavailable, Dark Testament and Other Poems attests to her fierce lyrical powers. At turns song, prayer, and lamentation, Murray’s poems speak to the brutal history of slavery and Jim Crow and the dream of racial justice and equality.

The Equivalents

The Equivalents
Author: Maggie Doherty
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0525434607

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD In 1960, Harvard’s sister college, Radcliffe, announced the founding of an Institute for Independent Study, a “messy experiment” in women’s education that offered paid fellowships to those with a PhD or “the equivalent” in artistic achievement. Five of the women who received fellowships—poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, painter Barbara Swan, sculptor Marianna Pineda, and writer Tillie Olsen—quickly formed deep bonds with one another that would inspire and sustain their most ambitious work. They called themselves “the Equivalents.” Drawing from notebooks, letters, recordings, journals, poetry, and prose, Maggie Doherty weaves a moving narrative of friendship and ambition, art and activism, love and heartbreak, and shows how the institute spoke to the condition of women on the cusp of liberation. “Rich and powerful. . . . A love story about art and female friendship.” —Harper’s Magazine “Reads like a novel, and an intense one at that. . . . The Equivalents is an observant, thoughtful and energetic account.” —Margaret Atwood, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)