Author: Nicola Italia
Publisher: Nicola Italia
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
At the end of the Victorian era, Orchid Mania has gripped the wealthy and aristocratic men of England. Collectors are willing to spend a small fortune to obtain the rare flowers from distant lands. Lord Holloway, president of the Royal Horticultural Society in London, has decided to finance an expedition team to Ceylon to capture one of the rarest orchids on earth. Frances Wakefield is an educated woman and a gifted illustrator and has traveled throughout Europe documenting various plants and flowers for the Society. When she is handpicked by Lord Holloway to travel to Ceylon as a member of the expedition team, she is thrilled. When she arrives in Egypt to meet the other members of the team, she comes face-to-face with Miles St. Clair, Lord Holloway’s son and heir. He is the arrogant, handsome, insufferable man she encountered at several soirees in London and also the team's leader. As the team scours Ceylon in search of the orchid, someone has been watching Lord Holloway’s team intent on securing the orchid for themselves at any cost. As the team gets closer to finding the orchid, a growing attraction intensifies between Miles and Frances. As the danger increases, the couple must work together to evade the threat and escape Ceylon alive.
Author: Anchee Min
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0618562036
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
From a master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young concubine who becomes China's last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of a country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together. In this "absorbing companion piece to her novel Becoming Madame Mao" (New York Times), readers and reading groups will once again be transported by Min's lavish evocation of the Forbidden City in its last days of imperial glory and by her brilliant portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived, and ultimately dominated, a male world.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Orchids
Languages : en
Pages : 784
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Book Description
Author: Jim Endersby
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022642703X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
The prize-winning history of the orchid: “an engaging and enlightening account of one of the Earth's most mythologized botanical wonders” (Richard Conniff, author of House of Lost Worlds). At once delicate, exotic, and elegant, orchids are beloved for their singular, instantly recognizable beauty. Found in nearly every climate, the many species of orchid have had varying forms of significance in countless cultures over time. Following the orchid’s journey from Ancient Greek medicine to twentieth century detective novels, science historian Jim Endersby explores the flower’s four recurring themes: science, empire, sex, and death. Orchids were a symbol of the exotic riches sought by 19th century Europeans in their plans for colonization. They became subjects of scientific scrutiny for Charles Darwin, who investigated their methods of cross-pollination. As Endersby shows, orchids—perhaps because of their extraordinarily diverse colors, shapes, and sizes—have also bloomed repeatedly in films, novels, plays, and poems, from Shakespeare to science fiction. Featuring many gorgeous illustrations from the collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Orchid: A Cultural History was awarded the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize by the History of Science Society. It is an enchanting tale not only for gardeners and plant collectors, but anyone curious about the flower’s obsessive hold on the imagination in history, cinema, literature, and more.
Author: Yoshiko Yamaguchi
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824854047
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418
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Book Description
The acclaimed actress and legendary singer, Yamaguchi Yoshiko (aka Li Xianglan, 1920-2014), emerged from Japan-occupied Manchuria to become a transnational star during the Second Sino-Japanese war. Born to Japanese parents, raised in Manchuria, and educated in Beijing, the young Yamaguchi learned to speak impeccable Mandarin Chinese and received professional training in operatic singing. When recruited by the Manchurian Film Association in 1939 to act in "national policy" films in the service of Japanese imperialism in China, she allowed herself to be presented as a Chinese, effectively masking her Japanese identity in both her professional and private lives. Yamaguchi soon became an unprecedented transnational phenomenon in Manchuria, Shanghai, and Japan itself as the glamorous female lead in such well-known films as Song of the White Orchid (1939), China Nights (1940), Pledge in the Desert (1940), and Glory to Eternity (1943). Her signature songs, including "When Will You Return?" and "The Evening Primrose," swept East Asia in the waning years of the war and remained popular well into the postwar decades. Ironically, although her celebrated international stardom was without parallel in wartime East Asia, she remained a puppet within a puppet state, choreographed at every turn by Japanese film studios in accordance with the expediencies of Japan's continental policy. In a dramatic turn of events after Japan's defeat, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Chinese Nationalist forces and barely escaped execution as a traitor to China. Her complex and intriguing life story as a convenient pawn, willing instrument, and tormented victim of Japan's imperialist ideology is told in her bestselling autobiography, translated here in full for the first time in English. An addendum reveals her postwar career in Hollywood and Broadway in the 1950s, her friendship with Charlie Chaplin, her first marriage to Isamu Noguchi, and her postwar life as singer, actress, political figure, television celebrity, and private citizen. A substantial introduction by Chia-ning Chang contextualizes Yamaguchi's life and career within the historical and cultural zeitgeist of wartime Manchuria, Japan, and China and the postwar controversies surrounding her life in East Asia.
Author: Jim Endersby
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022637632X
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
Introduction: imagining orchids -- Censored origins -- The lesbian boy -- The uses of orchids -- Red book, black flower -- Utopian botany -- The signature of all things -- The name of the orchid -- Making a family -- A second Adam -- Artificial to natural -- Myths of orchids -- Orchidmania -- The blooming aristocracy -- Orchis bank -- Every trifling detail -- Beautiful contrivances -- The scramble for orchids -- Lost orchids -- Cannibal tales -- Savage orchids -- Long purples and a forked radish -- Queer flowers -- Creation and consolation -- Sexy orchids -- Boy's own orchids -- Manly orchids -- Frail orchids -- Deceptive orchids -- Orchids in orbit -- Endangered orchids -- Fragile specialists -- The spider orchids of Sussex -- Conclusion: an orchid's-eye view?
Author: Gurney Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Orchids
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
Author: Retha Edens-Meier
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226044912
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
A quorum of scientists offer reviews and results to celebrate the 150th anniversary of 'On The Various Contrivances By Which British And Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised By Insects, And On The Good Effects Of Intercrossing' (1862). Authors of the first ten chapters follow research on the pollination and breeding systems of the same orchid lineages that interested Darwin, including temperate and tropical species. Authors on the last two chapters provide information on the floral attractants and flowering systems of orchids using protocols and technologies unavailable during Darwin's lifetime.
Author: Nicola Italia
Publisher: Nicola Italia
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
🌿 When Emily Clairmont's husband is tragically struck down by typhoid fever after only a few months of blissful domesticity, Emily finds herself heartbroken and completely alone in the world. Having lost her mother in childbirth and her father right before her marriage, she has no choice but to seek a position as a governess. She reaches out to her husband’s family solicitor, Quinn Westbourne, hoping that he may be able to help her. 🌿 Quinn takes one look at the young and beautiful Emily and decides that a job as a governess will not do. He writes instead to the father-in-law she's never met, and when Leopold Clairmont offers her a place in his home, Quinn agrees to escort Emily to his isolated refuge in St. Kilda. But he did not anticipate how challenging it would be to keep his distance from the grieving widow when all he wants to do is take her in his arms and console her. The two forge a friendship on their journey, and Emily begins to wonder if she could find solace and a live a comfortable life as a widow in her new home. 🌿 The tiny island of Hirta in the remote cluster of islands known as St. Kilda off the Scottish coast is wild and beautiful, her father-in-law is warm and welcoming, and her sister-in-law offers her much-needed female companionship, but the island is also full of secrets. When Emily learns things about her husband that he never revealed, she wonders if she ever really knew him at all. Torn between her devotion to her departed husband and her growing feelings for Quinn, Emily must decide whether her heart belongs to the living or the dead and find the courage to act before it's too late.
Author: Nicola Italia
Publisher: Nicola Italia
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1199
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Book Description
** A Sexy, Romantic love story ** In the Arabian desert, powerful Sheik Mohammed is master of all. He is a man whose word is supreme and his people look to him for guidance and support. Yet when a young blonde Englishwoman is brought before him as a slave to be sold, he is captivated. He pays an outrageous sum and forces her to join his harem though Katharine refused to bend to his will. Katharine Fairfax is the youngest daughter of English landed gentry. An educated beauty, she lives a privileged life until she rebuffs an older Baron’s proposition that she become his mistress. She refuses and to seek revenge he has her kidnapped and taken far away to the Arab world. As a young woman used to the safety of her family in England, Katharine must now navigate inside an Arab palace filled with intrigue and sexual tension. Though she longs to return home, she soon finds herself falling under the Sheik’s spell. But though Mohammed is intrigued and drawn to the foreign beauty, forces inside the palace work to tear the two lovers apart.
