Author: Lee Langley
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448130956
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
A richly imaginative novel of love, loss, time and the rise and fall of a great maritime empire, that sends two thwarted lovers spiralling through the chaos of history. The story begins in 1429 on Madeira, when a peasant girl meets a boy- a Jewish outsider- from a Portuguese sailing ship. Esperança and Emmanuel know they must part when the ship sails. From that first meeting and parting, others follow... Emmanuel is in turn sailor, mapmaker, bookseller, jazz musician; Esperança an illiterate peasant, a rich girl in Faro and a clever, bookish recluse who confronts a murderer in nineteenth-century Lisbon. In twentieth-century London, Esperança is faced with a double incarnation, one of the true Emmanuel and the other a shadow. Over the centuries the couple face peril and tenderness. Each life is short. What survives is love.
Distant Music
Author: Lee Langley
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448130956
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
A richly imaginative novel of love, loss, time and the rise and fall of a great maritime empire, that sends two thwarted lovers spiralling through the chaos of history. The story begins in 1429 on Madeira, when a peasant girl meets a boy- a Jewish outsider- from a Portuguese sailing ship. Esperança and Emmanuel know they must part when the ship sails. From that first meeting and parting, others follow... Emmanuel is in turn sailor, mapmaker, bookseller, jazz musician; Esperança an illiterate peasant, a rich girl in Faro and a clever, bookish recluse who confronts a murderer in nineteenth-century Lisbon. In twentieth-century London, Esperança is faced with a double incarnation, one of the true Emmanuel and the other a shadow. Over the centuries the couple face peril and tenderness. Each life is short. What survives is love.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448130956
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
A richly imaginative novel of love, loss, time and the rise and fall of a great maritime empire, that sends two thwarted lovers spiralling through the chaos of history. The story begins in 1429 on Madeira, when a peasant girl meets a boy- a Jewish outsider- from a Portuguese sailing ship. Esperança and Emmanuel know they must part when the ship sails. From that first meeting and parting, others follow... Emmanuel is in turn sailor, mapmaker, bookseller, jazz musician; Esperança an illiterate peasant, a rich girl in Faro and a clever, bookish recluse who confronts a murderer in nineteenth-century Lisbon. In twentieth-century London, Esperança is faced with a double incarnation, one of the true Emmanuel and the other a shadow. Over the centuries the couple face peril and tenderness. Each life is short. What survives is love.
A Distant Music
Author: BJ Hoff
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN: 0736934499
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
In the first book of the Mountain Song Legacy series readers step into a small Kentucky coal mining town in the late 1800's where hope is found in the hearts of two young girls—the vibrant, red-headed Maggie MacAuley and her fragile friend Summer Rankin. When Jonathan Stuart, the latest in a succession of educators, actually wants to continue teaching in the one-room schoolhouse, then Maggie and Summer know that he is special. So when Jonathan's cherished flute is stolen, the girls try to find a way to restore music to his life. Sorrow and joy follow in the days to come, and through it all Maggie, Jonathan, and a community rediscover the gifts of faith, friendship, and unwavering love.
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN: 0736934499
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
In the first book of the Mountain Song Legacy series readers step into a small Kentucky coal mining town in the late 1800's where hope is found in the hearts of two young girls—the vibrant, red-headed Maggie MacAuley and her fragile friend Summer Rankin. When Jonathan Stuart, the latest in a succession of educators, actually wants to continue teaching in the one-room schoolhouse, then Maggie and Summer know that he is special. So when Jonathan's cherished flute is stolen, the girls try to find a way to restore music to his life. Sorrow and joy follow in the days to come, and through it all Maggie, Jonathan, and a community rediscover the gifts of faith, friendship, and unwavering love.
Distant Music
Author: Charlotte Bingham
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0553813870
Category : Actors
Languages : en
Pages : 580
Book Description
Life was tough in England after the Second World War - at least it was for those who were not part of some particular elite, the fabulously wealthy or the tiny coterie of British film and theatre stars. Little wonder then that Elsie Lancaster, the granddaughter of a theatrical landlady, thinks of nothing else but trying to become one of that shining constellation. Surprising therefore, given their very different origins, that Oliver Plunkett shares the same ambition, for his is the pampered background of old money. Groomed from an early age by his father's theatre-mad butler, there is no other world to which Oliver aspires. No such ambition infuses his best friend, the kooky Coco Hampton. Theatre for her is all about costume, costume, costume. That they all become involved with Portly Cosgrove - sometime manager, and soon-to-be-agent - is part of the inevitable flow of theatrical life, as is the fact that they become emotionally entangled with one another. Come success or failure, the music they dance to is the distant music of fame and fortune, a tune which is often dim and, at other times, tantalisingly clear - only to fade once more.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0553813870
Category : Actors
Languages : en
Pages : 580
Book Description
Life was tough in England after the Second World War - at least it was for those who were not part of some particular elite, the fabulously wealthy or the tiny coterie of British film and theatre stars. Little wonder then that Elsie Lancaster, the granddaughter of a theatrical landlady, thinks of nothing else but trying to become one of that shining constellation. Surprising therefore, given their very different origins, that Oliver Plunkett shares the same ambition, for his is the pampered background of old money. Groomed from an early age by his father's theatre-mad butler, there is no other world to which Oliver aspires. No such ambition infuses his best friend, the kooky Coco Hampton. Theatre for her is all about costume, costume, costume. That they all become involved with Portly Cosgrove - sometime manager, and soon-to-be-agent - is part of the inevitable flow of theatrical life, as is the fact that they become emotionally entangled with one another. Come success or failure, the music they dance to is the distant music of fame and fortune, a tune which is often dim and, at other times, tantalisingly clear - only to fade once more.
A Northern Light
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
Publisher: Clarion Books
ISBN: 035806368X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiance, takes a job at a summer inn where she discovers the truth about the death of a guest. Based on a true story.
Publisher: Clarion Books
ISBN: 035806368X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiance, takes a job at a summer inn where she discovers the truth about the death of a guest. Based on a true story.
Music of a Distant Drum
Author:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691150109
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
The 132 poems, most of which here make their English-language debut, represent the three major languages of medieval Islam--Arabic, Persian, and Turkish--with the remainder from Hebrew. They span more than a thousand years, from the seventh to the early eighteenth century, when poetry, like so much else, was shattered and reshaped by the impact of the West. They range from panegyric and satire to religious poetry and lyrics about wine, women, and love. Lewis begins with an introduction on the place of poets and poetry in Middle Eastern history and concludes with biographical notes on all the poets.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691150109
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
The 132 poems, most of which here make their English-language debut, represent the three major languages of medieval Islam--Arabic, Persian, and Turkish--with the remainder from Hebrew. They span more than a thousand years, from the seventh to the early eighteenth century, when poetry, like so much else, was shattered and reshaped by the impact of the West. They range from panegyric and satire to religious poetry and lyrics about wine, women, and love. Lewis begins with an introduction on the place of poets and poetry in Middle Eastern history and concludes with biographical notes on all the poets.
Gustav Mahler's Symphonic Landscapes
Author: Thomas Peattie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108456548
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The relationship between Gustav Mahler's career as conductor and his symphonic writing has remained largely unexplored territory with respect to his provocative re-invention of the Austro-German symphony at the turn of the twentieth century. This study offers a new account of these works by allowing Mahler's decisive contribution to the genre to emerge in light of his sustained engagement with the musical, theatrical, and aesthetic traditions of the Austrian fin de siècle. Appealing to ideas of landscape, mobility, and theatricality, Thomas Peattie elaborates a richly interdisciplinary framework that draws attention to the composer's unique symphonic idiom in terms of its radical attitude toward the presentation and ordering of musical events. The identification of a fundamental tension between the music's episodic nature and its often-noted narrative impulse in turn suggests a highly original symphonic dramaturgy, one that is ultimately characterized by an abstract theatricality.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108456548
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The relationship between Gustav Mahler's career as conductor and his symphonic writing has remained largely unexplored territory with respect to his provocative re-invention of the Austro-German symphony at the turn of the twentieth century. This study offers a new account of these works by allowing Mahler's decisive contribution to the genre to emerge in light of his sustained engagement with the musical, theatrical, and aesthetic traditions of the Austrian fin de siècle. Appealing to ideas of landscape, mobility, and theatricality, Thomas Peattie elaborates a richly interdisciplinary framework that draws attention to the composer's unique symphonic idiom in terms of its radical attitude toward the presentation and ordering of musical events. The identification of a fundamental tension between the music's episodic nature and its often-noted narrative impulse in turn suggests a highly original symphonic dramaturgy, one that is ultimately characterized by an abstract theatricality.
A Distant Prospect
Author: Annette Young
Publisher: Distant Prospect Publishing
ISBN: 0987435108
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 620
Book Description
In 1928 Sydney, Australia, an Irish school girl finds new hope, after polio and personal tragedy, while playing cello in a string quartet. “The author’s … love for and extensive knowledge of music, fine arts and literature shines through” ... “The landscapes are vast and vivid, the seasons sensory and real, and the emotional journey heart-wrenching.” ... “some of the most profound considerations on the meaning of suffering and understanding others, making allowances for their faults” - GoodReadingGuide.com Publisher description: Australia promised a fresh start for Lucy Straughan and her father when they fled war-torn Ireland. Instead, Lucy was stricken by polio. Having mastered the cello during her prolonged confinement, Lucy is now fifteen, lonely and full of questions. Suddenly she is thrust into a string quartet and meets quixotic Della Sotheby, hot-headed Pim Connolly and precocious Phoebe Raye. The experience transforms each of their lives as they forge friendships and share not a few family secrets. Set against the vivid background of 1920s Sydney, A Distant Prospect is an intimate, hilarious and ultimately deeply moving coming-of-age adventure told with a touch of poetry by a quintessentially Irish narrator.
Publisher: Distant Prospect Publishing
ISBN: 0987435108
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 620
Book Description
In 1928 Sydney, Australia, an Irish school girl finds new hope, after polio and personal tragedy, while playing cello in a string quartet. “The author’s … love for and extensive knowledge of music, fine arts and literature shines through” ... “The landscapes are vast and vivid, the seasons sensory and real, and the emotional journey heart-wrenching.” ... “some of the most profound considerations on the meaning of suffering and understanding others, making allowances for their faults” - GoodReadingGuide.com Publisher description: Australia promised a fresh start for Lucy Straughan and her father when they fled war-torn Ireland. Instead, Lucy was stricken by polio. Having mastered the cello during her prolonged confinement, Lucy is now fifteen, lonely and full of questions. Suddenly she is thrust into a string quartet and meets quixotic Della Sotheby, hot-headed Pim Connolly and precocious Phoebe Raye. The experience transforms each of their lives as they forge friendships and share not a few family secrets. Set against the vivid background of 1920s Sydney, A Distant Prospect is an intimate, hilarious and ultimately deeply moving coming-of-age adventure told with a touch of poetry by a quintessentially Irish narrator.
A Distant Melody (Wings of Glory Book #1)
Author: Sarah Sundin
Publisher: Revell
ISBN: 1441207759
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432
Book Description
Never pretty enough to please her gorgeous mother, Allie will do anything to gain her approval--even marry a man she doesn't love. Lt. Walter Novak--fearless in the cockpit but hopeless with women--takes his last furlough at home in California before being shipped overseas. Walt and Allie meet at a wedding and their love of music draws them together, prompting them to begin a correspondence that will change their lives. As letters fly between Walt's muddy bomber base in England and Allie's mansion in an orange grove, their friendship binds them together. But can they untangle the secrets, commitments, and expectations that keep them apart? A Distant Melody is the first book in the WINGS OF GLORY series, which follows the three Novak brothers, B-17 bomber pilots with the US Eighth Air Force stationed in England during World War II.
Publisher: Revell
ISBN: 1441207759
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432
Book Description
Never pretty enough to please her gorgeous mother, Allie will do anything to gain her approval--even marry a man she doesn't love. Lt. Walter Novak--fearless in the cockpit but hopeless with women--takes his last furlough at home in California before being shipped overseas. Walt and Allie meet at a wedding and their love of music draws them together, prompting them to begin a correspondence that will change their lives. As letters fly between Walt's muddy bomber base in England and Allie's mansion in an orange grove, their friendship binds them together. But can they untangle the secrets, commitments, and expectations that keep them apart? A Distant Melody is the first book in the WINGS OF GLORY series, which follows the three Novak brothers, B-17 bomber pilots with the US Eighth Air Force stationed in England during World War II.
Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Author: Manu Herbstein
Publisher: Moritz HERBSTEIN
ISBN: 150804080X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 473
Book Description
"I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, here and here, I am still a free woman." During a period of four hundred years, European slave traders ferried some 12 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. In the Americas, teaching a slave to read and write was a criminal offense. When the last slaves gained their freedom in Brazil, barely a thousand of them were literate. Hardly any stories of the enslaved and transported Africans have survived. This novel is an attempt to recreate just one of those stories, one story of a possible 12 million or more.Lawrence Hill created another in The Book of Negroes (Someone Knows my Name in the U.S.) and, more recently, Yaa Gyasi has done the same in Homegoing. Ama occupies center stage throughout this novel. As the story opens, she is sixteen. Distant drums announce the death of her grandfather. Her family departs to attend the funeral, leaving her alone to tend her ailing baby brother. It is 1775. Asante has conquered its northern neighbor and exacted an annual tribute of 500 slaves. The ruler of Dagbon dispatches a raiding party into the lands of the neighboring Bekpokpam. They capture Ama. That night, her lover, Itsho, leads an attack on the raiders’ camp. The rescue bid fails. Sent to collect water from a stream, Ama comes across Itsho’s mangled corpse. For the rest of her life she will call upon his spirit in time of need. In Kumase, the Asante capital, Ama is given as a gift to the Queen-mother. When the adolescent monarch, Osei Kwame, conceives a passion for her, the regents dispatch her to the coast for sale to the Dutch at Elmina Castle. There the governor, Pieter de Bruyn, selects her as his concubine, dressing her in the elegant clothes of his late Dutch wife and instructing the obese chaplain to teach her to read and write English. De Bruyn plans to marry Ama and take her with him to Europe. He makes a last trip to the Dutch coastal outstations and returns infected with yellow fever. On his death, his successor rapes Ama and sends her back to the female dungeon. Traumatized, her mind goes blank. She comes to her senses in the canoe which takes her and other women out to the slave ship, The Love of Liberty. Before the ship leaves the coast of Africa, Ama instigates a slave rebellion. It fails and a brutal whipping leaves her blind in one eye. The ship is becalmed in mid-Atlantic. Then a fierce storm cripples it and drives it into the port of Salvador, capital of Brazil. Ama finds herself working in the fields and the mill on a sugar estate. She is absorbed into slave society and begins to adapt, learning Portuguese. Years pass. Ama is now totally blind. Clutching the cloth which is her only material link with Africa, she reminisces, dozes, falls asleep. A short epilogue brings the story up to date. The consequences of the slave trade and slavery are still with us. Brazilians of African descent remain entrenched in the lower reaches of society, enmeshed in poverty. “This is story telling on a grand scale,” writes Tony Simões da Silva. “In Ama, Herbstein creates a work of literature that celebrates the resilience of human beings while denouncing the inscrutable nature of their cruelty. By focusing on the brutalization of Ama's body, and on the psychological scars of her experiences, Herbstein dramatizes the collective trauma of slavery through the story of a single African woman. Ama echoes the views of writers, historians and philosophers of the African diaspora who have argued that the phenomenon of slavery is inextricable from the deepest foundations of contemporary western civilization.” Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book.
Publisher: Moritz HERBSTEIN
ISBN: 150804080X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 473
Book Description
"I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, here and here, I am still a free woman." During a period of four hundred years, European slave traders ferried some 12 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. In the Americas, teaching a slave to read and write was a criminal offense. When the last slaves gained their freedom in Brazil, barely a thousand of them were literate. Hardly any stories of the enslaved and transported Africans have survived. This novel is an attempt to recreate just one of those stories, one story of a possible 12 million or more.Lawrence Hill created another in The Book of Negroes (Someone Knows my Name in the U.S.) and, more recently, Yaa Gyasi has done the same in Homegoing. Ama occupies center stage throughout this novel. As the story opens, she is sixteen. Distant drums announce the death of her grandfather. Her family departs to attend the funeral, leaving her alone to tend her ailing baby brother. It is 1775. Asante has conquered its northern neighbor and exacted an annual tribute of 500 slaves. The ruler of Dagbon dispatches a raiding party into the lands of the neighboring Bekpokpam. They capture Ama. That night, her lover, Itsho, leads an attack on the raiders’ camp. The rescue bid fails. Sent to collect water from a stream, Ama comes across Itsho’s mangled corpse. For the rest of her life she will call upon his spirit in time of need. In Kumase, the Asante capital, Ama is given as a gift to the Queen-mother. When the adolescent monarch, Osei Kwame, conceives a passion for her, the regents dispatch her to the coast for sale to the Dutch at Elmina Castle. There the governor, Pieter de Bruyn, selects her as his concubine, dressing her in the elegant clothes of his late Dutch wife and instructing the obese chaplain to teach her to read and write English. De Bruyn plans to marry Ama and take her with him to Europe. He makes a last trip to the Dutch coastal outstations and returns infected with yellow fever. On his death, his successor rapes Ama and sends her back to the female dungeon. Traumatized, her mind goes blank. She comes to her senses in the canoe which takes her and other women out to the slave ship, The Love of Liberty. Before the ship leaves the coast of Africa, Ama instigates a slave rebellion. It fails and a brutal whipping leaves her blind in one eye. The ship is becalmed in mid-Atlantic. Then a fierce storm cripples it and drives it into the port of Salvador, capital of Brazil. Ama finds herself working in the fields and the mill on a sugar estate. She is absorbed into slave society and begins to adapt, learning Portuguese. Years pass. Ama is now totally blind. Clutching the cloth which is her only material link with Africa, she reminisces, dozes, falls asleep. A short epilogue brings the story up to date. The consequences of the slave trade and slavery are still with us. Brazilians of African descent remain entrenched in the lower reaches of society, enmeshed in poverty. “This is story telling on a grand scale,” writes Tony Simões da Silva. “In Ama, Herbstein creates a work of literature that celebrates the resilience of human beings while denouncing the inscrutable nature of their cruelty. By focusing on the brutalization of Ama's body, and on the psychological scars of her experiences, Herbstein dramatizes the collective trauma of slavery through the story of a single African woman. Ama echoes the views of writers, historians and philosophers of the African diaspora who have argued that the phenomenon of slavery is inextricable from the deepest foundations of contemporary western civilization.” Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book.
A Distant Mirror
Author: Barbara W. Tuchman
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0345349571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 738
Book Description
A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.” Praise for A Distant Mirror “Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was. . . . No one has ever done this better.”—The New York Review of Books “A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer.”—The Wall Street Journal “Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition.”—Commentary
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0345349571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 738
Book Description
A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.” Praise for A Distant Mirror “Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was. . . . No one has ever done this better.”—The New York Review of Books “A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer.”—The Wall Street Journal “Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition.”—Commentary