Author: Bill Dedman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345534522
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 498
Get Book Here
Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic. Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms. Praise for Empty Mansions “An amazing story of profligate wealth . . . an outsized tale of rags-to-riches prosperity.”—The New York Times “An evocative and rollicking read, part social history, part hothouse mystery, part grand guignol.”—The Daily Beast “Fascinating . . . [a] haunting true-life tale.”—People “One of those incredible stories that you didn’t even know existed. It filled a void.”—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show “Thrilling . . . deliciously scandalous.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Author: Anna Sargent
Publisher: Archway Publishing
ISBN: 1665762993
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Get Book Here
Book Description
In early Victorian-era England, Constance Clark finds herself faced with the opportunity to leave home for the first time to explore France. She must leave behind her family and her beloved Jackson to see if the dresses she has been designing since she was little are worth anything. The life of a seamstress in the bustling city of Paris is nothing like the simplicity of the English countryside and Constance is forced to grow up when confronted by dangerous and vindictive characters. With an ocean separating them will Jackson wait for Constance? When her letters go unanswered Constance is faced with the reality that she may never be able to tell Jackson she loves him or that he may never listen.
Author: Gordon Matta-Clark
Publisher: Cabinet
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 100
Get Book Here
Book Description
Edited by Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi and Frances Richard. Essay by Jeffrey Kroessler.
Author: Robert Herrick
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3752322594
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Get Book Here
Book Description
Reproduction of the original: Clark's Field by Robert Herrick
Author: Florence Theriault
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781944881177
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
The collection comprises extraordinary dolls and automata from the French golden age of 1860-1890, as well as selections of sought-after early Japanese cultural dolls and architectural miniatures. The Huguette Clark auction appropriately centers the inauguration of Theriault's 50th anniversary year. An early and continuing client of Theriault's for decades, her dolls include many fine antique examples from that 50 year span, as well as privately commissioned Japanese art dolls.
Author: Mary Jane Clark
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312381182
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Get Book Here
Book Description
Nobody in this perfect seaside resort town ever imagined that the body of a missing heiress might be found deep in a tunnel beneath her family's crumbling Newport estate. Nobody, that is, but the last person to see her alive. Now, as a KEY News crew investigates the murder, a cold-blooded killer lives in fear of discovery. Too many reporters are closer than they realize to the truth behind a chilling secret... For thirty-two-year-old KEY News intern Grace Callahan, the Newport assignment is the chance of a lifetime. The single mom is determined to win a coveted staff position, but that means outshining equally ambitious-and far younger-rivals. When the killer begins to target those closest to Grace, she must face the real danger that lurks in an otherwise idyllic town. In a race against time, Grace must find the courage to delve into Newport's secrets, protect her daughter, and stop a ruthless killer who's determined to win this deadly game of hide and seek...
Author: Elizabeth Urban Alexander
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807130249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Get Book Here
Book Description
The legal crusade of Myra Clark Gaines (1804?--1885) has all the trappings of classic melodrama -- a lost heir, a missing will, an illicit relationship, a questionable marriage, a bigamous husband, and a murder. For a half century the daughter of New Orleans millionaire Daniel Clark struggled to justify her claim to his enormous fortune in a case that captivated the nineteenth-century public. Elizabeth Urban Alexander taps voluminous court records and letters to unravel the twists and turns of Gaines's litigation and reveal the truth behind the mysterious saga of this notorious woman. Myra, the daughter of real estate heir Clark and Zulime Carrière, a beautiful young Frenchwoman, was raised by friends of Clark and kept ignorant of her real parentage until 1832, when she discovered her true lineage in letters among her foster father's papers. She thereupon returned to Louisiana with tales of a lost will and a secret marriage between Clark and Carrière and claimed to be Clark's missing heir. Was Myra the legitimate daughter of the prominent merchant or the "fruit of an adulterous union?" The courts would decide. The Great Gaines Case wound its tortuous path through the United States legal system from 1834 until 1891. It was considered by the U.S. Supreme Court seventeen times and pursued even after Gaines's death by lawyers trying to recoup fees. By courageously bringing her case to the courtroom and doggedly keeping it there, Alexander asserts, Gaines helped instigate a new type of family law that provided special protection of women, children, and marriages. Though Gaines never recovered more than a tiny fraction of the rumored millions, this riveting chronicle of her struggle for legitimacy and legacy as told by Elizabeth Urban Alexander is a gold mine for anyone interested in legal history, women's studies, or a good yarn superbly spun.
Author: Liz Brown
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0143132903
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
"Twilight Man is biography, romance, and nonfiction mystery, carrying with it the bite of fiction." -- Los Angeles Review of Books “In Twilight Man, Liz Brown uncovers a noir fairytale, a new glimpse into the opulent Gilded Age empire of the Clark family.” —Bill Dedman, co-author of The New York Times bestseller Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune The unbelievable true story of Harrison Post--the enigmatic lover of one of the richest men in 1920s Hollywood--and the battle for a family fortune. In the booming 1920s, William Andrews Clark Jr. was one of the richest, most respected men in Los Angeles. The son of the mining tycoon known as "The Copper King of Montana," Clark launched the Los Angeles Philharmonic and helped create the Hollywood Bowl. He was also a man with secrets, including a lover named Harrison Post. A former salesclerk, Post enjoyed a lavish existence among Hollywood elites, but the men's money--and their homosexuality--made them targets, for the district attorney, their employees and, in Post's case, his own family. When Clark died suddenly, Harrison Post inherited a substantial fortune--and a wealth of trouble. From Prohibition-era Hollywood to Nazi prison camps to Mexico City nightclubs, Twilight Man tells the story of an illicit love and the battle over a family estate that would destroy one man's life. Harrison Post was forgotten for decades, but after a chance encounter with his portrait, Liz Brown, Clark's great-grandniece, set out to learn his story. Twilight Man is more than just a biography. It is an exploration of how families shape their own legacies, and the lengths they will go in order to do so.
Author: Stuart M. Saft
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1194
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0345504488
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Firstborn–the mysterious race of aliens who first became known to science fiction fans as the builders of the iconic black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey–have inhabited legendary master of science fiction Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s writing for decades. With Time’s Eye and Sunstorm, the first two books in their acclaimed Time Odyssey series, Clarke and his brilliant co-author Stephen Baxter imagined a near-future in which the Firstborn seek to stop the advance of human civilization by employing a technology indistinguishable from magic. Their first act was the Discontinuity, in which Earth was carved into sections from different eras of history, restitched into a patchwork world, and renamed Mir. Mir’s inhabitants included such notables as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and United Nations peacekeeper Bisesa Dutt. For reasons unknown to her, Bisesa entered into communication with an alien artifact of inscrutable purpose and godlike power–a power that eventually returned her to Earth. There, she played an instrumental role in humanity’s race against time to stop a doomsday event: a massive solar storm triggered by the alien Firstborn designed to eradicate all life from the planet. That fate was averted at an inconceivable price. Now, twenty-seven years later, the Firstborn are back. This time, they are pulling no punches: They have sent a “quantum bomb.” Speeding toward Earth, it is a device that human scientists can barely comprehend, that cannot be stopped or destroyed–and one that will obliterate Earth. Bisesa’s desperate quest for answers sends her first to Mars and then to Mir, which is itself threatened with extinction. The end seems inevitable. But as shocking new insights emerge into the nature of the Firstborn and their chilling plans for mankind, an unexpected ally appears from light-years away.
