![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() We looked at two new books, Setara Pracha’s long-awaited and excellent book, The Pathology of Desire in Daphne du Maurier’s Short Stories, and a delightful novel set in Fowey called Into A Cornish Wind by Kate Ryder. In January, we also told you about Fern Britton’s Channel 5 television programme, My Cornwall with Fern Britton, in which she visited Fowey and made particular reference to Daphne. In this new piece, Jo talked about Jamaica Inn, Daphne du Maurier, and her life at the time that she wrote what was to become one of her most famous novels. Jo writes a blog, Return of a Native, which covers many literary names and subjects. We started the New Year with an article from one of our favourite contributors, Jo Wing. A round-up of what’s been happening at the Daphne du Maurer website during the first three months of 2023Ģ023 has started at quite a pace, with lots of exciting information and news relating to Daphne du Maurier. ![]()
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5/23/2023 0 Comments Singapore Sapphire by A.M. Stuart![]() ![]() ![]() She and Curran are soon drawn into a murderous web of treachery and deceit and find themselves face-to-face with a ruthless cabal that has no qualms about killing again to protect its secrets. When another body is dragged from the canal, Harriet feels compelled to help with the case. Harriet's keen eye for detail and strong sense of duty interests him, as does her distrust of the police and her traumatic past, which she is at pains to keep secret from the gossips of Singapore society. When Inspector Robert Curran is put on the case, he realizes that he has an unusual witness in Harriet. ![]() It is unfortunate that she should discover her first client, Sir Oswald Newbold-explorer, mine magnate and president of the exclusive Explorers and Geographers Club-dead with a knife in his throat. Hoping to gain some financial independence, she advertises her services as a personal secretary. Availability: In Stock Now - Click Title to See. Singapore, 1910-Desperate for a fresh start, Harriet Gordon finds herself living with her brother, a reverend and headmaster of a school for boys, in Singapore at the height of colonial rule. Singapore Sapphire (A Harriet Gordon Mystery 1) (Paperback). ![]() Early twentieth-century Singapore is a place where a person can disappear, and Harriet Gordon hopes to make a new life for herself there, leaving her tragic memories behind her-but murder gets in the way. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Each chapter in Life on the Edge opens with an engaging example that illustrates one of life's puzzles - How do migrating birds know where to go? How do we really smell the scent of a rose? How do our genes manage to copy themselves with such precision? - and then reveals how quantum mechanics delivers its answer. ![]() Drawing on recent ground-breaking experiments around the world, they show how photosynthesis relies on subatomic particles existing in many places at once, while inside enzymes, those workhorses of life that make every molecule within our cells, particles vanish from one point in space and instantly materialize in another. Yet, as Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden show in their groundbreaking book, evidence is accumulating that life uses quantum effects for processes ranging from bird navigation and plant. Are we missing a vital ingredient in its creation? Like Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, which provided a new perspective on evolution, Life on the Edge alters our understanding of life's dynamics as Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe Macfadden reveal the hitherto missing ingredient to be quantum mechanics. Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe but how does it work? Even in this age of cloning and synthetic biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. ![]() ![]() ![]() Margot has not taken well to her new home on Venus: she is frail, quiet, and pale, as if “the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair.” Lately, she has begun to panic at the touch of water.Īs the two-hour summer approaches, the schoolchildren read and write short stories about the sun. Unlike most of the children, Margot lived on Earth until five years ago, so while they all speculate about what the sun is like, Margot can actually remember quite well. ![]() ![]() After seven long years, today is the day that scientists predict the sun will make its brief appearance indeed, the rain seems to be slowing. When the story opens, a group of nine-year-old children are gathered excitedly by the window of their underground classroom. Humans live underground in a network of tunnels, eagerly awaiting the very brief summer. The planet is covered with thick jungles and unruly weeds, perpetually caught in a cycle of growth and destruction. The rest of the time, it rains-all day, every day. ![]() Venus has a peculiar climate: every seven years, the sun comes out for just two hours. “All Summer in a Day” takes place on the planet Venus, a generation after the first colonists from Earth arrived there. ![]() ![]() ![]() "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age. ![]() 5/22/2023 0 Comments Shogun novel review![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The other aspect of Shogun I absolutely loved though was the culture clash between western and eastern culture and the way it was portrayed. The plot is engaging, has plenty of riveting action and the politics, however complex, weren't too hard to follow. Still, the slow trust and later tentative friendship that builds between Blackthrone and Toranaga were what kept me reading this book deep at night. There were other great povs: Mariko, a Japanese woman serving as Blackthorne's interpreter, is a resourceful, fascinating character who shines even brighter in a society dominated by men. In deciding Blackthorne could prove useful for his own goals, Toranaga allows him to live and thrive. Then, he catches the interest of Lord Toranaga, the eponymous Shogun of the book, a brilliant strategist and politician who is on his own quest for power. Pilot) by the Japanese unable to twist their tongues around the Ls and Rs of his name and he struggles with his sudden lack of freedom and trying to keep his crew safe. Blackthorne is soon renamed Anjin-san (Mr. ![]() The man in question is John Blackthorne, a driven and bold naval pilot who gets stranded on the coast of Japan and taken captive by the locals. Yet, it stays at heart the story of one man, which is what made me really fall for this novel. The book has multiple povs and delves deep into 1600 feudal Japan with reasonable historical accuracy. Shogun is a gripping, ridiculously ambitious novel with the vast scope and political maneuvering of Game of Thrones and Stephen King's character growth. ![]() 5/22/2023 0 Comments One book sarah crossan![]() ![]() ![]() Little details like this make the reader realise how hard life must be for Grace and Tippi. ![]() When Grace has the flu, Tippi is confined to bed beside her even though she is perfectly healthy. Some times their personalities clash but they can’t stay annoyed with each other for long as each relies on the other to help them walk, sit down, and lots of other things. And when Tippi wants to drink and smoke Grace finds herself longing to have complete control of her own body and not have to share it. We feel her resentment when Tippi eats more and more and Grace finds herself getting chubbier when it’s not her fault. This novel is written from Grace’s point of view, which is effective as we learn to see the world from her eyes. But now, they are growing up and they are developing different opinions and don’t always agree. But to Grace and Tippi, it’s all they’ve ever known and they’ve adjusted to it. To say the least it would be tiring and difficult and frustrating. Just think - eating together, sitting on the same chair and being constantly by their side. I imagine it as being a little like doing a three legged race with a friend, except not for a few minutes but for life. This makes things which most of us find simple – walking, playing sports – a real challenge. ![]() Their upper bodies remain separate, but their lower bodies begin to merge at the intestines so they share a pair of legs between them. ![]() 5/22/2023 0 Comments White magic elissa washuta![]() ![]() She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life― Twin Peaks, the Oregon Trail II video game, a Claymation Satan, a YouTube video of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham―to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule. ![]() In this collection of intertwined essays, she writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning. ![]() ![]() Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, "starter witch kits" of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Bracingly honest and powerfully affecting, White Magic establishes Elissa Washuta as one of our best living essayists. ![]() 5/22/2023 0 Comments The devil wears black by lj shen![]() ![]() ![]() pushed the building entrance door open, ignoring his plea.įunny, I’d always thought it’d feel divine to dismiss him the way he’d dismissed me. The one time he looked at me with anything but frost, and I was completely immune to it. He was still on the first step, his eyes burning a hole through my back. I fished for my keys in my little clutch, stomping my way up the stairs. But what if your enemy is also the man you love? What ensues is a chain of events that detonates Maddie’s life-and when Chase’s walls come down, they both are forced to face reality. So even though he’s the man who broke her heart, playing his fiancée shouldn’t be hard, especially if it means she gets to watch the arrogant devil squirm a bit. But he only wants to fulfill his father’s last wish. When her ex, Chase Black, storms back into her life with an outrageous request, her immediate reaction is to refuse him. Maddie Goldbloom stitched up a plan to ensure everything in her life was perfect-from a career in fashion to a chic NYC apartment to a pediatrician boyfriend. Shen, vient de paraître!ĭécouvrez un extrait (VO) un peu plus loin! ![]() THE DEVIL WEARS BLACK, la toute dernière romance de L.J. ![]() “An expert at the dark and sexy anti-hero, Shen brings her seductive prose to an irresistible ‘second chance romance’.”- Oprah Magazine ![]() 5/22/2023 0 Comments Joan of arc book mark twain![]() ![]() ![]() It shows that Twain as Louis de Conte, chronicler and minstrel, faithfully retold Joan's story from his sources. The study focuses upon the historical and literary merits of Twain's Joan through a detailed analysis of Twain's notations in his French and English sources (Berkeley). It points to Twain as an unacknowledged historian and scholar who, despite his biases and misgivings from his previous books and from his sources, fashioned Joan's story for an American audience while he stayed abroad in Florence and Paris with his family. This study shows in Twain's Joan a mosaic work of French history and American folk humor. ![]() |