The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
A powerful journey brimming with color and drama, The Last
Runaway is New York Times bestselling author Tracy Chevalier’s vivid
exploration of an iconic chapter in American history.
Ohio 1850. For a modest English Quaker stranded far from home,
life is a trial. Untethered from the moment she leaves England, fleeing
personal disappointment, Honor Bright is forced by family tragedy to rely on
strangers in an alien, untamed landscape. Drawn into the clandestine activities
of the Underground Railroad, a network helping runaway slaves escape to
freedom, Honor befriends two exceptional people who embody the startling power
of defiance. Eventually she must decide if she too can act on what she believes
in, whatever the personal cost.
Like Sue Monk Kidd's The Invention of Wings, Chevalier's
novel is a sweeping and important novel about the power of bravery, friendship,
and perseverance. –Amazon Description
The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi
Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi's literary debut novel is a
searing tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one's own fate
that combines the cultural flavor and emotional resonance of the works of
Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lisa See.
In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers,
Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely
leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh,
which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of
marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and
chaperone her older sisters.
But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this
unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, left
orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way.
Crisscrossing in time, The Pearl the Broke Its Shell
interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share
similar destinies. But what will happen once Rahima is of marriageable age?
Will Shekiba always live as a man? And if Rahima cannot adapt to life as a bride,
how will she survive? –Amazon Description
The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant
Based on the true story of Matt Bondurant’s grandfather and
two granduncles, The Wettest County in the World is a gripping tale of
brotherhood, greed, and murder. The Bondurant Boys were a notorious gang of
roughnecks and moonshiners who ran liquor through Franklin County, Virginia,
during Prohibition and in the years after. Howard, the eldest brother, is an ox
of a man besieged by the horrors he witnessed in the Great War; Forrest, the
middle brother, is fierce, mythically indestructible, and the consummate
businessman; and Jack, the youngest, has a taste for luxury and a dream to get
out of Franklin. Driven and haunted, these men forge a business, fall in love,
and struggle to stay afloat as they watch their family die, their father's
business fail, and the world they know crumble beneath the Depression and
drought.
White mule, white
lightning, firewater, popskull, wild cat, stump whiskey, or rotgut—whatever you
called it, Franklin County was awash in moonshine in the 1920s. When Sherwood
Anderson, the journalist and author of Winesburg, Ohio, was covering a story
there, he christened it the “wettest county in the world.” In the twilight of
his career, Anderson finds himself driving along dusty red roads trying to find
the Bondurant brothers, piece together the clues linking them to “The Great
Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy,” and break open the silence that shrouds
Franklin County.
In vivid,
muscular prose, Matt Bondurant brings these men—their dark deeds, their long silences,
their deep desires—to life. His understanding of the passion, violence, and
desperation at the center of this world is both heartbreaking and magnificent. -Amazon Description
Lawless (Movie)
I added this movie to the list because it is based on the book, The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant. I have not read the book but I have seen the movie. I enjoyed it.
Actors include Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce, Jason Clarke,
Jessica Chastain
It was directed by John Hillcoat and written by Matt Bondurant and Nick Cave.
Victorian City Everyday Life of Dickens London by Judith Flanders
From the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed
author of The Invention of Murder, an extraordinary, revelatory portrait of
everyday life on the streets of Dickens' London.
The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented change,
and nowhere was this more apparent than London. In only a few decades, the
capital grew from a compact Regency town into a sprawling metropolis of 6.5
million inhabitants, the largest city the world had ever seen.
Technology--railways, street-lighting, and sewers--transformed both the city
and the experience of city-living, as London expanded in every direction. Now
Judith Flanders, one of Britain's foremost social historians, explores the
world portrayed so vividly in Dickens' novels, showing life on the streets of
London in colorful, fascinating detail.
From the moment Charles Dickens, the century's best-loved
English novelist and London's greatest observer, arrived in the city in 1822,
he obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures, curiosities and
cruelties. Now, with him, Judith Flanders leads us through the markets,
transport systems, sewers, rivers, slums, alleys, cemeteries, gin palaces,
chop-houses and entertainment emporia of Dickens' London, to reveal the
Victorian capital in all its variety, vibrancy, and squalor. From the colorful
cries of street-sellers to the uncomfortable reality of travel by omnibus, to
the many uses for the body parts of dead horses and the unimaginably grueling
working days of hawker children, no detail is too small, or too strange. No one
who reads Judith Flanders's meticulously researched, captivatingly written The
Victorian City will ever view London in the same light again. -Amazon Description
All of these title are available to be place on hold here. I included lage print editions and sound reordings if available. Enjoy
No comments:
Post a Comment