I Am Venus

I Am Venus PDF Author: Bárbara Mujica
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1468307649
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
This fictional account of the seventeenth-century Spanish painter’s life is “a very enjoyable read . . . A portrait of Velázquez and a meditation on love” (Washington Independent Review of Books). Narrated by the mysterious model who posed for Rokeby Venus, Diego Velázquez’s only surviving female nude, I Am Venus is the riveting account of a great artist’s rise to prominence, set against the backdrop of political turmoil and romantic scandal. A sweeping story of scandal and passion, and a vivid recreation of a corrupt kingdom on the brink of collapse, I Am Venus is a thrilling novel that brings to life the public and private worlds of Spain’s greatest painter. “A well-plotted read with engaging characters and rich detail. Fans of Tracy Chevalier and Elizabeth Kostova as well as art history buffs will enjoy Mujica’s interpretation.” —Library Journal “A worthwhile read . . . Mujica continues her realistic representation by loading the text with rich historical detail [that] instantly creates a sensory world for her readers to inhabit.” —Booklist “Mujica’s prose is vigorous and intense, and the story is paradoxically both dark and illuminating.” —Kirkus Reviews

I Am Venus

I Am Venus PDF Author: Bárbara Mujica
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1468307649
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book Here

Book Description
This fictional account of the seventeenth-century Spanish painter’s life is “a very enjoyable read . . . A portrait of Velázquez and a meditation on love” (Washington Independent Review of Books). Narrated by the mysterious model who posed for Rokeby Venus, Diego Velázquez’s only surviving female nude, I Am Venus is the riveting account of a great artist’s rise to prominence, set against the backdrop of political turmoil and romantic scandal. A sweeping story of scandal and passion, and a vivid recreation of a corrupt kingdom on the brink of collapse, I Am Venus is a thrilling novel that brings to life the public and private worlds of Spain’s greatest painter. “A well-plotted read with engaging characters and rich detail. Fans of Tracy Chevalier and Elizabeth Kostova as well as art history buffs will enjoy Mujica’s interpretation.” —Library Journal “A worthwhile read . . . Mujica continues her realistic representation by loading the text with rich historical detail [that] instantly creates a sensory world for her readers to inhabit.” —Booklist “Mujica’s prose is vigorous and intense, and the story is paradoxically both dark and illuminating.” —Kirkus Reviews

Vénus Noire

Vénus Noire PDF Author: Robin Mitchell
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820354333
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Even though there were relatively few people of color in postrevolutionary France, images of and discussions about black women in particular appeared repeatedly in a variety of French cultural sectors and social milieus. In Vénus Noire, Robin Mitchell shows how these literary and visual depictions of black women helped to shape the country’s postrevolutionary national identity, particularly in response to the trauma of the French defeat in the Haitian Revolution. Vénus Noire explores the ramifications of this defeat in examining visual and literary representations of three black women who achieved fame in the years that followed. Sarah Baartmann, popularly known as the Hottentot Venus, represented distorted memories of Haiti in the French imagination, and Mitchell shows how her display, treatment, and representation embodied residual anger harbored by the French. Ourika, a young Senegalese girl brought to live in France by the Maréchal Prince de Beauvau, inspired plays, poems, and clothing and jewelry fads, and Mitchell examines how the French appropriated black female identity through these representations while at the same time perpetuating stereotypes of the hypersexual black woman. Finally, Mitchell shows how demonization of Jeanne Duval, longtime lover of the poet Charles Baudelaire, expressed France’s need to rid itself of black bodies even as images and discourses about these bodies proliferated. The stories of these women, carefully contextualized by Mitchell and put into dialogue with one another, reveal a blind spot about race in French national identity that persists in the postcolonial present.

Venus and Aphrodite

Venus and Aphrodite PDF Author: Bettany Hughes
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541674243
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
A cultural history of the goddess of love, from a New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian. Aphrodite was said to have been born from the sea, rising out of a froth of white foam. But long before the Ancient Greeks conceived of this voluptuous blonde, she existed as an early spirit of fertility on the shores of Cyprus -- and thousands of years before that, as a ferocious warrior-goddess in the Middle East. Proving that this fabled figure is so much more than an avatar of commercialized romance, historian Bettany Hughes reveals the remarkable lifestory of one of antiquity's most potent myths. Venus and Aphrodite brings together ancient art, mythology, and archaeological revelations to tell the story of human desire. From Mesopotamia to modern-day London, from Botticelli to Beyoncé, Hughes explains why this immortal goddess continues to entrance us today -- and how we trivialize her power at our peril.

My Name Is Venus Black

My Name Is Venus Black PDF Author: Heather Lloyd
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0399592199
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
In this riveting, heartfelt debut, a young woman assumes a new name to escape her dark past and find the redemption she desperately seeks. “It’s impossible not to root for this strong, willful girl as she finds her place in the world and for her brother as he tries to make sense of it.”—Kirkus Reviews “Charming, touching, and a host of other adjectives not often associated with a murderous thirteen-year-old.”—Booklist Venus Black is a straitlaced A student fascinated by the study of astronomy—until the night she commits a shocking crime that tears her family apart and ignites a media firestorm. Venus refuses to talk about what happened or why, except to blame her mother. Adding to the mystery, Venus’s developmentally challenged younger brother, Leo, goes missing. More than five years later, Venus is released from prison with a suitcase of used clothes, a fake identity, and a determination to escape her painful past. Estranged from her mother, and with her beloved brother still missing, she sets out to make a fresh start in Seattle, skittish and alone. But as new people enter her orbit—including a romantic interest and a young girl who seems like a mirror image of her former lost self—old wounds resurface, and Venus realizes that she can’t find a future while she’s running from her past. In this gripping story, debut novelist Heather Lloyd brilliantly captures ordinary lives thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Told through a constellation of captivating voices, My Name Is Venus Black explores the fluidity of right and wrong, the pain of betrayal, and the meaning of love and family. Praise for My Name Is Venus Black “Fans of realistic coming-of-age fiction will enjoy Lloyd’s fast-paced first novel for the freshly drawn original characters, compelling story line, and beautiful tribute to the healing power of love. It’s bound to have crossover appeal to older YA readers.”—Library Journal “A dark but ultimately uplifting story about family, love, and forgiveness, and how to find your place in the world, My Name Is Venus Black is a powerful debut novel from a fresh voice in fiction.”—New York Times bestselling author Sarah Jio

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus PDF Author: John Gray
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006016848X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Popular marriage counselor and seminar leader John Gray provides a unique, practical and proven way for men and women to communicate and relate better by acknowledging the differences between them. Once upon a time Martians and Venusians met, fell in love, and had happy relationships together because they respected and accepted their differences. Then they came to earth and amnesia set in: they forgot they were from different planets. Using this metaphor to illustrate the commonly occurring conflicts between men and women, Gray explains how these differences can come between the sexes and prohibit mutually fulfilling loving relationships. Based on years of successful counseling of couples, he gives advice on how to counteract these differences in communication styles, emotional needs and modes of behavior to promote a greater understanding between individual partners. Gray shows how men and women react differently in conversation and how their relationships are affected by male intimacy cycles ("get close", "back off"), and female self-esteem fluctuations ("I'm okay", "I'm not okay"). He encourages readers to accept the other gender's particular way of expressing love, and helps men and women learn how to fulfill each other's emotional needs. With practical suggestions on how to reduce conflict, crucial information on how to interpret a partner's behavior and methods for preventing emotional "trash from the past" from invading new relationships, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is a valuable tool for couples who want to develop deeper and more satisfying relationships with their partners.

Magic Shop

Magic Shop PDF Author: Muhsina Kealamthodi
Publisher: CONSCIENCE WORKS PUBLICATION
ISBN: 9393269467
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
WELCOME READERS ALORA WORLD "MAGIC SHOP" ALL' THE STORIES CONNECT WITH CODE OPEN LEARN AND GROW AND UNDERSTAND DANGER KNOW HOW TO STORY CONNECT WITH CODE JUST FOUND

The Transit of Venus

The Transit of Venus PDF Author: Shirley Hazzard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143135651
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The award-winning, New York Times bestselling literary masterpiece of Shirley Hazzard—the story of two beautiful orphan sisters whose fates are as moving and wonderful, and yet as predestined, as the transits of the planets themselves A Penguin Classic Considered "one of the great English-language novels of the twentieth century" (The Paris Review), The Transit of Venus follows Caroline and Grace Bell as they leave Australia to begin a new life in post-war England. From Sydney to London, New York, and Stockholm, and from the 1950s to the 1980s, the two sisters experience seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal. With exquisite, breathtaking prose, Australian novelist Shirley Hazzard tells the story of the displacements and absurdities of modern life. The result is at once an intricately plotted Greek tragedy, a sweeping family saga, and a desperate love story.

Venus Envy

Venus Envy PDF Author: Shannon McKelden
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780765354976
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Venus: “After a few centuries of turning pumpkins into coaches and frogs into princes, I thought I was getting the hang of being a fairy godmother. Maybe soon Zeus would let me back onto Mount Olympus . . . then I met Rachel Greer. A goody-two-shoes do-gooder who ignored my advice—terrific advice, if I do say so myself—about men. And kept nagging me for spending too much time in the bathroom when everyone knows a goddess always needs to look her best. Rachel: “I had a decent job, friends, a loving family. My volunteer work, as a mentor for young women and a dog-walker at the local shelter, kept me hopping. Then this amazingly beautiful woman, who literally turns heads—men walk into walls when she passes by—announces she’s my fairy godmother, here to help me fall in love! Next thing I know, she’s moved into my apartment and kicked me out of my own bedroom. Of course I thought she was nuts . . . until the magic started to happen.”

The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus PDF Author: Sarah Dunant
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588364429
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities. But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.

Sisters

Sisters PDF Author: Jeanette Winter
Publisher: Beach Lane Books
ISBN: 1534431217
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
Celebrated picture book biographer Jeanette Winter shares the story of champion tennis players—and sisters—Venus and Serena Williams. Before they were famous tennis stars, Venus and Serena Williams were sisters with big dreams growing up in Compton, California. In the early mornings, they head to the tennis courts, clean up debris, and practice. They compete in their first tournament and they both win. From there, the girls’ trophy collection grows and grows. Despite adversity and health challenges, the sisters become two of the greatest tennis players of all time. This inspiring story of sisterhood, hard work, and determination is perfect for budding athletes or any young reader with a big dream.