The Seamstress of Sardinia

The Seamstress of Sardinia PDF Author: Bianca Pitzorno
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063271702
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
A bestselling Italian writer makes her American debut with this delightful dramedy of manners, family, romance, and fashion that is set on the island of Sardinia at the end of the nineteenth century—a dazzling and original literary blend of Jane Austen and Adriana Trigiani. In 1900 Sardinia, a young woman’s remarkable talent with a needle earns her a position as a seamstress with a wealthy family. Inside this privileged world far different from her own humble beginnings, the skilled sewer quietly takes measurements, sketches designs, mends hems—and in the silence, hears whispered secrets and stories of all those around her. Through the watchful young seamstress’s eyes, this small Italian city and its residents emerge in all their vitality, vanity, and fragility—flawed yet congenial people who are not quite what they pretend to be. There is the Marchesa Esther, who rides horses and studies mechanics and ancient Greek; Miss Lily Rose, a spirited American journalist who commissions a special corset—with pockets to hide more than just her flaws; the Provera sisters with their expensive Parisian fashions that belie their financial hardships; and Assuntina, the wild child. There are men, young, old, and in between; love affairs and broken hearts; and even a murder (or was it suicide?). And at the center, watching and waiting is the seamstress herself, an intelligent, ambitious girl with a tender heart and her own impossible dream. An irresistible literary confection rich in atmosphere and period detail and packed with compelling characters. The Seamstress of Sardinia transports us to a long-ago world not so removed from our own—to a society rigidly divided by wealth and shaped by passion, hope, ambition, and love—the elemental forces that drive human lives.

The Seamstress of Sardinia

The Seamstress of Sardinia PDF Author: Bianca Pitzorno
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063271702
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
A bestselling Italian writer makes her American debut with this delightful dramedy of manners, family, romance, and fashion that is set on the island of Sardinia at the end of the nineteenth century—a dazzling and original literary blend of Jane Austen and Adriana Trigiani. In 1900 Sardinia, a young woman’s remarkable talent with a needle earns her a position as a seamstress with a wealthy family. Inside this privileged world far different from her own humble beginnings, the skilled sewer quietly takes measurements, sketches designs, mends hems—and in the silence, hears whispered secrets and stories of all those around her. Through the watchful young seamstress’s eyes, this small Italian city and its residents emerge in all their vitality, vanity, and fragility—flawed yet congenial people who are not quite what they pretend to be. There is the Marchesa Esther, who rides horses and studies mechanics and ancient Greek; Miss Lily Rose, a spirited American journalist who commissions a special corset—with pockets to hide more than just her flaws; the Provera sisters with their expensive Parisian fashions that belie their financial hardships; and Assuntina, the wild child. There are men, young, old, and in between; love affairs and broken hearts; and even a murder (or was it suicide?). And at the center, watching and waiting is the seamstress herself, an intelligent, ambitious girl with a tender heart and her own impossible dream. An irresistible literary confection rich in atmosphere and period detail and packed with compelling characters. The Seamstress of Sardinia transports us to a long-ago world not so removed from our own—to a society rigidly divided by wealth and shaped by passion, hope, ambition, and love—the elemental forces that drive human lives.

The Seamstress

The Seamstress PDF Author: Frances de Pontes Peebles
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408816954
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 754

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Book Description
Emília and Luzia dos Santos, orphaned when they are children, grow up under the protection of their aunt in the hillside village of Taquaritinga, Brazil. Raised as seamstresses, the sisters learn how to cut, how to mend and how to conceal. Emília treasures pretty, girlish things and longs to escape from the confines of the little town. Captivated by the romances she reads in magazines, she dreams of finding love in the bustle and glamour of the city. Luzia, scarred by a childhood accident that has left her with a deformed arm, knows that for her, real life can not be romantically embroidered, and so she finds solace in her sewing and in the secret prayers to the saints she believes once saved her life. But when Luzia is abducted by a gang of rebel bandits, the sisters' lives diverge in ways they never imagined. Whilst Luzia learns to survive in the unforgiving Brazilian outland, discovering love in the most unexpected of places, Emília meets the son of a wealthy doctor who seems to offer her everything she has always desired. But for the innocent dreamer, the excitement of her escape to the city is soon overshadowed by disillusion and loneliness. As she learns how to navigate the treacherous waters of Brazilian high society, the bandits' campaign against the land-owning 'Colonels' intensifies, and when a price is placed upon Luzia's head Emília realises she must risk everything in order to save her sister.

The Church of Solitude

The Church of Solitude PDF Author: Grazia Deledda
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791488187
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
The Church of Solitude tells the story of Maria Concezione, a young Sardinian seamstress living with breast cancer at the cusp of the twentieth century. Overwhelmed by the shame of her diagnosis, she decides that no one can know what has happened to her, but the heavy burden of this secrecy changes her life in dramatic ways and almost causes the destruction of several people in her life. This surprising novel paints the portrait of a woman facing the unknown with courage, faith, and self-reliance, and is the last and most autobiographical work of Grazia Deledda, who died of breast cancer in 1936, shortly after its publication. An afterword by the translator offers additional information on the author and examines the social and historical environment of that time.

Under a Sardinian Sky

Under a Sardinian Sky PDF Author: Sara Alexander
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0008217270
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Sometimes a family’s deepest silences hide the most important secrets.

Maximilian Kolbe

Maximilian Kolbe PDF Author: Elaine Murray Stone
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 9780809166374
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
A middle-grade biography of Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish priest who, at Auschwitz, offered himself in exchange for the life of a man with two children.

Accabadora

Accabadora PDF Author: Michela Murgia
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619021331
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
One of Elena Ferrante’s “Best 40 books by Female Writers” This Italian bestseller is a “timeless portrait of village life in Sardinia circa 1950s” as it “tells the story of a young girl adopted by a remarkable woman who stands at the threshold of life and death” (Susan Sherman, author of The Little Russian). Sardinia, 1950s: Formerly beautiful and at one time betrothed to a fallen soldier, Bonaria Urrai has a long-held covenant with the dead. She is revered and feared in equal measure as the village’s Accabadora, midwife to the dying, easing their suffering—and sometimes ending it. When Bonaria adopts Maria, the unloved fourth child of a widow, she tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as an angel of mercy. Moved by the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, she breaks her golden rule of familial consent, and in the recriminations that follow, Maria rejects her and flees Sardinia for Turin. Adrift in the big city, Maria strives as ever to find love and acceptance, but her efforts are overshadowed by the creeping knowledge of a debt unpaid, of a duty and destiny that must one day be hers. Written with intriguing subtlety, this Italian best-seller has been awarded 7 major literary prizes, including Italy’s prestigious Premio Campiello.

The House in the Tree

The House in the Tree PDF Author: Bianca Pitzorno
Publisher: Alma Books
ISBN: 9781846884108
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
All children dream of having a secret house where they can live on their own, far from any rules and regulations. But not all of them are as lucky as Aglaia, who lives at the top of a magical tree together with her friend Bianca and an incredible host of flying dogs, talking cats, carnivorous flowers and children who speak in verse. Inventively illustrated by Quentin Blake, Aglaia's adventures – and her battles with the gruff Signor Brullo and the woodmen who want to cut down the tree – are sure to enchant and inspire the imagination of every child.

The Embroiderer

The Embroiderer PDF Author: Kathryn Gauci
Publisher: Ebony Publishing
ISBN: 9780648123569
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From USA Today Bestselling author Kathryn Gauci-A richly woven saga set against the mosques and minarets of Asia Minor and the ruins of ancient Athens, 1822: As The Greek War of Independence rages, a child is born to a woman of legendary beauty on the Greek island of Chios. The subsequent decades of bitter struggle between Greeks and Turks simmer to a head when the Greek army invades Turkey in 1919. During this time, Dimitra Lamartine arrives in Smyrna and gains fame and fortune as an embroiderer to the elite of Ottoman society. However, it is her granddaughter, Sophia, who takes the business to great heights as a couturier in Constantinople only to see their world come crashing down with the outbreak of war.1922: Sophia begins a new life in Athens, but the memory of a dire prophecy once told to her grandmother about a girl with flaming red hair begins to haunt her with devastating consequences with the occupation of Greece by the Axis Powers in 19411972: Eleni Stephenson is called to the bedside of her dying aunt in Athens. In a story that rips her world apart, Eleni discovers the chilling truth behind her family's dark past plunging her into the shadowy world of political intrigue, secret societies and espionage where families and friends are torn apart and where a belief in superstition simmers just below the surface.Extravagant, inventive, emotionally sweeping, The Embroiderer is a tale that travellers and those who seek culture and oriental history will love

The Dressmaker

The Dressmaker PDF Author: Rosalie Ham
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698194802
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A darkly satirical novel of love, revenge, and 1950s haute couture—now a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, and Hugo Weaving After twenty years spent mastering the art of dressmaking at couture houses in Paris, Tilly Dunnage returns to the small Australian town she was banished from as a child. She plans only to check on her ailing mother and leave. But Tilly decides to stay, and though she is still an outcast, her lush, exquisite dresses prove irresistible to the prim women of Dungatar. Through her fashion business, her friendship with Sergeant Farrat—the town’s only policeman, who harbors an unusual passion for fabrics—and a budding romance with Teddy, the local football star whose family is almost as reviled as hers, she finds a measure of grudging acceptance. But as her dresses begin to arouse competition and envy in town, causing old resentments to surface, it becomes clear that Tilly’s mind is set on a darker design: exacting revenge on those who wronged her, in the most spectacular fashion.

Leviathan

Leviathan PDF Author: Robert McCammon
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504098358
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
The thrilling conclusion to the Matthew Corbett colonial-era mystery series by the New York Times–bestselling author of The King of Shadows. Matthew Corbett barely escaped from the beguiling and sinister island of Golgotha, where he and his companions, Hudson Greathouse and Professor Fell, had searched in vain for a fabled sorcerer’s mirror said to possess demon-summoning powers. The island instead pulled them ever deeper into its influence—with the goal of erasing their very minds. But now, in the waning summer of 1704, still reeling from their harrowing journey, they must pay a price for their rescue from Golgotha by the Spanish. The trio are to resume their abandoned quest for Ciro’s mirror while under the watchful eyes of soldiers and a witch-hunter. And they must do it before the Family of the Scorpion finds the mirror and uses it for their own nefarious purposes. . . . Praise for the Matthew Corbett Novels “Rich, atmospheric stories.” —Booklist on The King of Shadows “Excellent . . . full of tension and suspense.” —Stephen King on Speaks the Nightbird “Compulsively readable.” —Publishers Weekly on Speaks the Nightbird “This popular series takes us to a long-forgotten time with characters who never fail to entertain.” —The Florida Times-Union on The King of Shadows