Tipping the velvet book6/24/2023 One New Zealand bookshop kept its early copies shrink-wrapped, with a “Restricted to persons aged 18 and over” sticker on them. Some were drawn to it, I’m sure, as a racy curiosity. But the success of the novel among straighter readers took me by surprise. I had hoped that lesbians might like it – and was thrilled when, very quickly, helped along by word of mouth, Tipping the Velvet began to find enthusiastic gay fans. And then there was the plot itself – because, oh dear, how lurid it sounded, how improbable, above all how niche, the tale of a Victorian oyster girl who loses her heart to a male impersonator, becomes her partner in bed and on the music hall stage, and then, cruelly abandoned, has a spell as a cross-dressed Piccadilly prostitute and the sexual plaything of a rich older woman before finding true love and redemption with an East End socialist. There was the fact that I outed myself the moment I began to reveal the plot. There was the awkwardness of explaining the rather risque title. “W hat’s it about?” people sometimes asked me, when they had heard I’d written a novel – and I always had to brace myself, slightly, to answer.
0 Comments
Salem Possessed by Paul S. Boyer6/24/2023 ?Salem Possessed,? wrote Robin Briggs in The Times Literary Supplement, ?reinterprets a world-famous episode so completely and convincingly that virtually all the previous treatments can be consigned to the historical lumber-room.? Not simply a dramatic and isolated event, the Salem outbreak has wider implications for our understanding of developments central to the American experience: the breakup of Puritanism, the pressures of land and population in New England towns, the problems besetting farmer and householder, the shifting role of the church, and the powerful impact of commercial capitalism. From rich and varied sources?many previously neglected or unknown?Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the events of 1692 more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the already massive literature on Salem. Salem Possessed explores the lives of the men and women who helped spin that web and who in the end found themselves entangled in it. Analyzing Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaums book, Salem Possessed leads to the exploration of the pre-existing social and economic divisions within the. The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion, individual and organized, which had been growing for more than a generation before the witch trials. Tormented girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, nineteen bodies swinging on Gallows Hill. The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis6/24/2023 Brinton Stratton as Shasta with the horse Bree (Justin Swain, puppeteer) in ‘The Horse and His Boy.’ Photo courtesy of Logos Theatre. After sharing their grim survivor stories, the boy and the horse decide on the spot to make their getaway together, to a utopian country in the north known as Narnia. The horse, who talks, belongs to that very same nobleman and knows firsthand what an abusive master he is. The boy has just learned that the fisherman whom he calls Father, who periodically beats him, intends to sell him into slavery to a nobleman chum. There comes a heart-touching moment early in The Horse and His Boy when the two titular characters first meet and tell each other why they are desperate to escape. The drowning eyes by emily foster6/23/2023 In Emily Foster's debut novella, apprentice Windspeaker Shina must return her people's power to them before the Dragon Ships destroy. The story made me want to sail the coastline on a boat of my own and see if I could call up a storm. They weren't close, which makes the death worse, according to her. 'The Drowning Eyes is a magic- and wind-filled adventure, peopled with excellent and strong characters.
José saramago baltasar and blimunda6/23/2023 The two immediately fall in love and move in together. She was attending an auto-da-fé, where her mother was being flogged before being sent into exile to Angola, for having visions which the Inquisition definitely did not approve of. He gradually made his way to Lisbon, with a hook where his hand used to be. He was unsure why he was fighting or whom exactly he was fighting for but fight he did, till he was injured in the hand, the hand was amputated, and he was unable to fight any more. Baltasar had been fighting in the War of Spanish Succession. In particular, she can see their wills, as a dark cloud. If she fails to do so, she can see inside people. The eponymous Blimunda takes a piece of bread to bed with her and eats it before opening her eyes in the morning. Saramago’s first novel translated into English will use a theme that we will find in his later novels, namely that physical sight is a metaphor for spiritual insight. Home » Portugal » José Saramago » Memorial do convento (Baltasar and Blimunda) José Saramago: Memorial do convento (Baltasar and Blimunda) An excellent selection for YA collections.” “An atmospheric and engaging piece of historical fiction, this work will haunt and resonate with readers long after it ends. “Like storm clouds banking over a glittering sea, this heady novel by two-time National Book Award finalist Adele Griffin builds to a dark, surprising climax.” Through the alternating perspectives of Jean and Fritz against a backdrop of sunbathing, lobster bakes, and the Bicentennial summer, Adele Griffin captures the angst of feeling like you don’t belong and the urgency of first love with masterly prose and a sharp, intricate wit perfect for fans of E. Soon the girls are competing for much more than a tennis trophy, with higher stakes than either of them can imagine. Then Fritz, a girl from outside the gilded gates who humiliated Jean in the island’s tennis championship last year, falls for Gil herself. So when Gil Burke, a handsome newcomer with uncertain ties to one of the most powerful families in the exclusive enclave of Sunken Haven, notices Jean, she is smitten. Jean, a privileged, sometimes cruel, often insecure, and always envious girl, is accustomed to living in her glamorous older sister’s shadow. A riveting tale of romantic suspense with a shocking twist ending set within the gates of a Fire Island colony of the super rich. This essay explores the history of the Slavery A bolition A ct loan, including its material and financial continuity into the present. The British government has remained conspicuously silent on the matter-hoping the public will overlook what is hidden in clear sight. Up until now, there has been no notice taken of the public debt legacy in the United Kingdom of 180 years of slavery, nor any reckoning with its social and ethical implications. In 2015, the total redemption value of the debt bundle that contained the Slavery Abolition Act loan reached 218,338,715.22. The loan was re-bundled with other government debt many times, and never cancelled or repudiated. Freedom of Information Act requests show that, in February 2015, the UK government paid 11,098 accounts when it finally redeemed the Slavery Abolition Act loan. This study examines childhood and slavery in Jamaica from the onset of improved conditions for the islands slaves to the end of all forced or coerced labor. The bonds were likely sold onwards on securities markets soon afterwards, providing the Rothschild syndicate with financial profits. (1) The loan was provided by the Rothschild syndicate, and the interest rate was set at a favourable rate for the lender. This loan was contracted by the government in 1835 in order to pay 15 million (approximately 200 billion in today's money, in terms of public debt burden) in cash compensation to slave-owners and their beneficiaries. Abstract : The British government redeemed the Slavery Abolition Act loan in February 2015. A Waltz with Traitors by A.L. Sowards6/22/2023 At risk is the future of Czechoslovakia, the fate of Russia-and their hearts. Neither Filip nor Nadia expect real love, not when the legion has to take over the longest railroad in the world-and then hold it against Bolshevik counterattacks, partisan sabotage, allied intrigue, and a set of brutal Siberian winters. But when Filip proposes a sham marriage to ensure her safe passage across Siberia, she takes it. This well researched book carries the reader into an overwhelming world of war and chaos. When Nadia takes refuge with the Czechoslovak Legion, the last thing she expects is an ally. Sowards has written a masterpiece in A Waltz With Traitors. But Nadia is determined to elude the Bolshevik agent who destroyed her family and find a way to survive in this changed world. Her family is dead, her lands are confiscated, and her aristocratic world is gone forever. With the fall of the tsar, Nadia Linskaya’s life is in ruins. Their goal: leave the chaos of Russia, sail to France, and help the Allies defeat the Central Powers, thereby toppling a hated empire and winning an independent Czechoslovakia. Now he and others like him have formed the Czechoslovak Legion. She weaves a beautiful, tragic tale around the true story of the Czechoslovakian Legion, who were hoping to march to France to join the allies and gain. So at the first opportunity, he defected to the Russians. GuideShadi al Hroub, A Dictionary for United MethodistsAlan K. Description Czech soldier Filip Sedlák never wanted to fight for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Deep by James Nestor6/22/2023 The free divers were Nestor's way into an exhilarating and dangerous world of deep-sea pioneers, underwater athletes, scientists, spear fishermen, billionaires and ordinary men and women who are poised on the brink of some amazing discoveries about the ocean. Sometimes they emerge unconscious, or bleeding from the nose and ears, and sometimes they don't come up at all. He had stumbled on one of the most extreme sports in existence: a quest to extend the frontiers of human experience, in which divers descend without breathing equipment, for hundreds of feet below the water, for minutes after they should have died from lack of oxygen. Covering a diving championship in Greece on a hot and sticky assignment for Outside magazine, James Nestor discovered free diving. Anita blake in order6/22/2023 The fact that Jean-Claude and she actually ended up dating. Is there something about her that really surprised you over the years (or a reaction from readers)? I loved horror and monster movies since I was a little girl, so I thought What if I put in a world where all the monsters are real and you just wake up tomorrow and you have to deal with it? Apparently I did give myself enough toys to play with. I hoped the series would have legs, and so I wanted to give myself enough toys. (laughs) I thought I would get bored if it was just straight mystery. I may have overcompensated just a little. If they killed anybody, they had to feel very guilty about it, and there was no sex or it was sanitized and offstage. Though they were strong characters, the female detectives in their series very rarely cussed. The male detectives in their books could cuss and kill people if they were defending themselves and have sex and nobody thought anything of it. HAMILTON: I found hardboiled detective fiction for the first time. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How and when did the idea for Anita first come to you? |