This Strange Eventful History A Novel

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This Strange Eventful History: A Novel

Author : Claire Messud
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393635058
Total Pages : 459 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis This Strange Eventful History: A Novel by : Claire Messud

Download or read book This Strange Eventful History: A Novel written by Claire Messud and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize • Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize One of Oprah Daily's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of New York magazine's "23 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2024" • One of The Guardian's "Books to Look Out for in 2024" • One of The Globe & Mail's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of BookPage's Most Anticipated fiction of 2024 • One of Literary Hub's “Most Anticipated Books of 2024” • One of Book Riot's "Most Anticipated Books of 2024" An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists. Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace. Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters’ rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is “a tour de force…one of those rare novels that a reader doesn’t merely read but lives through with the characters” (Yiyun Li).

This Strange Eventful History

Author : Paul Bradley
Publisher : Algora Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0875868762
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (758 download)

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Book Synopsis This Strange Eventful History by : Paul Bradley

Download or read book This Strange Eventful History written by Paul Bradley and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All of us must seek at a personal and a general level for a philosophy of meaning in life, "this strange eventful history," to borrow a descriptive phrase for our existence from Shakespeare. A sense of meaning is essential for peace of mind, yet meaning may appear elusive in our present-day divided world. This book sets out to survey our options concisely, drawing on philosophy, religion, science and art, across the gamut from classical philosophers to atheists, mystics, sensualists, agnostics, primatologists, neuroscientists, Unifaith believers, Interfaith, Multifaith and lastly Transfaith, to seek a religious attitude freed from myth and magic. A new concept of intelligent design is examined, linked with Panspermia, independent of the concept of anthropomorphic creation. Each chapter draws on the opinions of two (or more) prominent inter-related thinkers, including Sartre, Foucault, and Frankl, Freud and Richard Dawkins, Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade, the Greeks and the Buddha, Van Gogh and Gauguin, and many others, to help us form an opinion, often provocatively, with no holds barred! The stimulating inter-relationship between these stars steers us on a path towards a viewpoint of Cosmic Compassionate Plurality. The Existentialist philosophers cautioned that life is essentially meaningless - but they allowed that we may choose ourselves. Certainly, our choices are many and various in this current era. Often, however, we bemoan the lack of time to read and research those possibilities. This book sets out to provide the needed background material.

A Strange Eventful History

Author : Michael Holroyd
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 1429939044
Total Pages : 772 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis A Strange Eventful History by : Michael Holroyd

Download or read book A Strange Eventful History written by Michael Holroyd and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PLEASE NOTE: THIS EBOOK DOES NOT CONTAIN PHOTOS INCLUDED IN THE PRINT EDITION. Deemed "a prodigy among biographers" by The New York Times Book Review, Michael Holroyd transformed biography into an art. Now he turns his keen observation, humane insight, and epic scope on an ensemble cast, a remarkable dynasty that presided over the golden age of theater. Ellen Terry was an ethereal beauty, the child bride of a Pre-Raphaelite painter who made her the face of the age. George Bernard Shaw was so besotted by her gifts that he could not bear to meet her, lest the spell she cast from the stage be broken. Henry Irving was an ambitious, harsh-voiced merchant's clerk, but once he painted his face and spoke the lines of Shakespeare, his stammer fell away to reveal a magnetic presence. He would become one of the greatest actor-managers in the history of the theater. Together, Terry and Irving created a powerhouse of the arts in London's Lyceum Theatre, with Bram Stoker—who would go on to write Dracula—as manager. Celebrities whose scandalous private lives commanded global attention, they took America by stormin wildly popular national tours. Their all-consuming professional lives left little room for their brilliant but troubled children. Henry's boys followed their father into the theater but could not escape the shadow of his fame. Ellen's feminist daughter, Edy, founded an avant-garde theater and a largely lesbian community at her mother's country home. But it was Edy's son, the revolutionary theatrical designer Edward Gordon Craig, who possessed the most remarkable gifts and the most perplexing inability to realize them. A now forgotten modernist visionary, he collaborated with the Russian director Stanislavski on a production of Hamlet that forever changed the way theater was staged. Maddeningly self-absorbed, he inherited his mother's potent charm and fathered thirteen children by eight women, including a daughter with the dancer Isadora Duncan. An epic story spanning a century of cultural change, A Strange Eventful History finds space for the intimate moments of daily existence as well as the bewitching fantasies played out by its subjects. Bursting with charismatic life, it is an incisive portrait of two families who defied the strictures of their time. It will be swiftly recognized as a classic. Please note: This ebook edition does not contain photos and illustrations that appeared in the print edition.

This Strange Eventful History

Author : Paul Bradley
Publisher : Algora Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0875868789
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (758 download)

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Book Synopsis This Strange Eventful History by : Paul Bradley

Download or read book This Strange Eventful History written by Paul Bradley and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meaning may appear elusive in our present divided world but a sense of meaning is essential for peace of mind. This book sets out to survey our options concisely, in the realms of philosophy, religion, science and art. Each chapter draws on the words of two (or more) prominent inter-related thinkers to help us form an opinion, often provocatively, with no holds barred! It steers a path towards an attitude of Cosmic Compassionate Plurality. All of us must seek at a personal and a general level for a philosophy of meaning in life, this strange eventful history, to borrow a descriptive phrase for our existence from Shakespeare. Otherwise how can we logically plan and direct our personal philosophy if we do not know to what end, particularly in a world seemingly hell bent on destruction?. The Existentialist philosophers cautioned that life is essentially meaningless but allowed that we may choose ourselves! Certainly our choices are many and various in this current era. Often however we bemoan the lack of time to read and research those possibilities. This book sets out concisely to survey our options drawing on philosophy, religion, science and art. Each chapter takes two (or more) prominent inter-related thinkers to help us form an opinion, often provocatively. Philosophers who experienced the Holocaust comment that those best adapted to survive life in concentration camps found their impetus in a purpose or a person to give them a meaning to hold onto. We must keep this carefully in mind. The person may be a loved one or a religious archetypal figure.

Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

Author : TIME SUMMARY
Publisher : XinXii
ISBN 13 : 3989119427
Total Pages : 93 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (891 download)

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Book Synopsis Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud by : TIME SUMMARY

Download or read book Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud written by TIME SUMMARY and published by XinXii. This book was released on 2024-05-31 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DISCLAIMER This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book. Summary of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET: Chapter provides an astute outline of the main contents. Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis. Exceptionally summarized content that you may skip in the original book This Strange Eventful History is a masterful story by Claire Messud, set in an itinerant state from 1940 to 2010. The family, including patriarch Gaston and wife Lucienne, is amidst the chaos of World War II, colonial homeland, and Algerian independence. The story revolves around their devoted siblings, François and Denise, and their union with Barbara. Inspired by long-ago stories from their family's history, Messud animates the characters' rich interior lives amid social and political upheaval. The novel is both intimate and expansive, making it a tour de force.

The Burning Girl: A Novel

Author : Claire Messud
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393635031
Total Pages : 143 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis The Burning Girl: A Novel by : Claire Messud

Download or read book The Burning Girl: A Novel written by Claire Messud and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist "[A] masterwork of psychological fiction.… Messud teases readers with a psychological mystery, withholding information and then cannily parceling it out." —Chicago Tribune Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. The Burning Girl is a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about youth and friendship, and straddles, expertly, childhood’s imaginary worlds and painful adult reality—crafting a true, immediate portrait of female adolescence. Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way. The Burning Girl was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, NPR, Financial Times, Town & Country, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Refinery29, and Literary Hub.

The Cold Millions

Author : Jess Walter
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062868101
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (628 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cold Millions by : Jess Walter

Download or read book The Cold Millions written by Jess Walter and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most captivating novels of the year.” – Washington Post NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Best Book of the Year: Bloomberg | Boston Globe | Chicago Public Library | Chicago Tribune | Esquire | Kirkus | New York Public Library | New York Times Book Review (Historical Fiction) | NPR's Fresh Air | O Magazine | Washington Post | Publishers Weekly | Seattle Times | USA Today A Library Reads Pick | An Indie Next Pick From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins comes another “literary miracle” (NPR)—a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century. An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula. Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war? Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe).

I Killed Zoe Spanos

Author : Kit Frick
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 153444971X
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (344 download)

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Book Synopsis I Killed Zoe Spanos by : Kit Frick

Download or read book I Killed Zoe Spanos written by Kit Frick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working as a nanny in the Hamptons before starting college, Anna learns of her weird connection to a missing girl, but after she confesses to manslaughter a podcast producer helps reveal life-changing truths.

The Impossible Fortress

Author : Jason Rekulak
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501144413
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Impossible Fortress by : Jason Rekulak

Download or read book The Impossible Fortress written by Jason Rekulak and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year is 1987 and Playboy has just published scandalous photographs of Vanna White, from the popular TV game show Wheel of Fortune. For three teenage boys, Billy, Alf, and Clark, who are desperately uneducated in the ways of women, the magazine is somewhat of a Holy Grail: priceless beyond measure and impossible to attain. So, they hatch a plan to steal it.

A Strange Eventful History

Author : Michael Holroyd
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0374270805
Total Pages : 770 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis A Strange Eventful History by : Michael Holroyd

Download or read book A Strange Eventful History written by Michael Holroyd and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-03-03 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the greatest literary biographers turns his keen observation and humane insight on an ensemble cast, a remarkable dynasty that presided over the golden age of theater: Ellen Terry, George Bernard Shaw, and Henry Irving.

In Search of The Color Purple

Author : Salamishah Tillet
Publisher : Abrams
ISBN 13 : 1683356853
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (833 download)

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Book Synopsis In Search of The Color Purple by : Salamishah Tillet

Download or read book In Search of The Color Purple written by Salamishah Tillet and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mixing cultural criticism, literary history, biography, and memoir, an exploration of Alice Walker’s critically acclaimed and controversial novel, The Color Purple Alice Walker made history in 1983 when she became the ï¬?rst black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Color Purple. Published in the Reagan era amid a severe backlash to civil rights, the Jazz Age novel tells the story of racial and gender inequality through the life of a 14-year-old girl from Georgia who is haunted by domestic and sexual violence. Prominent academic and activist Salamishah Tillet combines cultural criticism, history, and memoir to explore Walker’s epistolary novel and shows how it has inï¬‚uenced and been informed by the zeitgeist. The Color Purple received both praise and criticism upon publication, and the conversation it sparked around race and gender still continues today. It has been adapted for an Oscar-nominated ï¬?lm and a hit Broadway musical. Through archival research and interviews with Walker, Oprah Winfrey, and Quincy Jones (among others), Tillet studies Walker’s life and how themes of violence emerged in her earlier work. Reading The Color Purple at age 15 was a groundbreaking experience for Tillet. It continues to resonate with her—as a sexual violence survivor, as a teacher of the novel, and as an accomplished academic. Provocative and personal, In Search of The Color Purple is a bold work from an important public intellectual, and captures Alice Walker’s seminal role in rethinking sexuality, intersectional feminism, and racial and gender politics.

A Literary Tour de France

Author : Robert Darnton
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195144511
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (951 download)

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Book Synopsis A Literary Tour de France by : Robert Darnton

Download or read book A Literary Tour de France written by Robert Darnton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The publishing industry in France in the years before the Revolution was a lively and sometimes rough-and-tumble affair, as publishers and printers scrambled to deal with (and if possible evade) shifting censorship laws and tax regulations, in order to cater to a reading public's appetite for books of all kinds, from the famous Encyclop die, repository of reason and knowledge, to scandal-mongering libel and pornography. Historian and librarian Robert Darnton uses his exclusive access to a trove of documents-letters and documents from authors, publishers, printers, paper millers, type founders, ink manufacturers, smugglers, wagon drivers, warehousemen, and accountants-involving a publishing house in the Swiss town of Neuchatel to bring this world to life. Like other places on the periphery of France, Switzerland was a hotbed of piracy, carefully monitoring the demand for certain kinds of books and finding ways of fulfilling it. Focusing in particular on the diary of Jean-Fran ois Favarger, a traveling sales rep for a Swiss firm whose 1778 voyage, on horseback and on foot, around France to visit bookstores and renew accounts forms the spine of this story, Darnton reveals not only how the industry worked and which titles were in greatest demand, but the human scale of its operations. A Literary Tour de France is literally that. Darnton captures the hustle, picaresque comedy, and occasional risk of Favarger's travels in the service of books, and in the process offers an engaging, immersive, and unforgettable narrative of book culture at a critical moment in France's history.

Here I Am

Author : Jonathan Safran Foer
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 024196637X
Total Pages : 639 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis Here I Am by : Jonathan Safran Foer

Download or read book Here I Am written by Jonathan Safran Foer and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the bestselling author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Everything is Illuminated and We are the Weather - a rich and moving novel about modern family lives and the ties that bind 'Towering and glorious: a tale of social, familial and marital breakdown and the End of the World. The funniest literary novel I have ever read' The Times 'A rich, beautifully written, ambitious and grandly moving novel, which looks both at the world at large and at the deepest concerns of individual lives' Evening Standard 'Lays bare the interior of a marriage with such intelligence and deep feeling and pitiless clarity, it's impossible to read it and not re-examine your own family' Time 'Astonishing. So sad and so funny and so wry' Scotland on Sunday Jacob and Julia Bloch are about to be tested . . . By Jacob's grandfather, who won't go quietly into a retirement home. By the family reunion, that everyone is dreading. By their son's heroic attempts to get expelled. And by the sexting affair that will rock their marriage. A typical modern American family, the Blochs cling together even as they are torn apart. Which is when catastrophe decides to strike . . . Confronting the enduring question of what it means to be human with inventiveness, playfulness and compassion, Here I Am is a great American family novel for our times, an unmissable read for fans of Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon, a masterpiece about how we live now.

The Novels and Selected Plays of Thomas Holcroft Vol 2

Author : Wil Verhoeven
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040247180
Total Pages : 498 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis The Novels and Selected Plays of Thomas Holcroft Vol 2 by : Wil Verhoeven

Download or read book The Novels and Selected Plays of Thomas Holcroft Vol 2 written by Wil Verhoeven and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-28 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809) was a key figure in the radical movement of the 1790s. This work is intended for scholars wanting to understand Britain and its literature in the 1790s.

Sing to It

Author : Amy Hempel
Publisher : Scribner
ISBN 13 : 1982109114
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (821 download)

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Book Synopsis Sing to It by : Amy Hempel

Download or read book Sing to It written by Amy Hempel and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKER AWARD ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 “All the tawdry details I’m dying for are in these stories, but they’re given out like old sweaters—without shame, without guile. Amy Hempel is the writer who makes me feel most affiliated with other humans; we are all living this way—hiding, alone, obsessed—and that’s ok.” —Miranda July From legendary writer Amy Hempel, one of the most celebrated and original voices in American short fiction: a ravishing, sometimes heartbreaking new story collection—her first in over a decade. Amy Hempel is a master of the short story. A multiple award winner, Hempel is highly regarded among writers, reviewers, and readers of contemporary fiction. This new collection, her first since her Collected Stories published more than a decade ago, is a literary event. These fifteen exquisitely honed stories reveal Hempel at her most compassionate and spirited, as she introduces characters, lonely and adrift, searching for connection. In “A Full-Service Shelter,” a volunteer at a dog shelter tirelessly, devotedly cares for dogs on a list to be euthanized. In “Greed,” a spurned wife examines her husband’s affair with a glamorous, older married woman. And in “Cloudland,” the longest story in the collection, a woman reckons with the choice she made as a teenager to give up her newborn infant. Quietly dazzling, these stories are replete with moments of revelation and transcendence and with Hempel’s singular, startling, inimitable sentences.

The Crossover Novel

Author : Rachel Falconer
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135865000
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (358 download)

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Book Synopsis The Crossover Novel by : Rachel Falconer

Download or read book The Crossover Novel written by Rachel Falconer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-10-21 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Highly recommended" by Choice While crossover books such as Rowling's Harry Potter series have enjoyed enormous sales and media attention, critical analysis of crossover fiction has not kept pace with the growing popularity of this new category of writing and reading. Falconer remedies this lack with close readings of six major British works of crossover fiction, and a wide-ranging analysis of the social and cultural implications of the global crossover phenomenon. A uniquely in-depth study of the crossover novel, Falconer engages with a ground-breaking range of sources, from primary texts, to child and adult reader responses, to cultural and critical theory.

The All-American

Author : Susie Finkbeiner
Publisher : Baker Books
ISBN 13 : 1493436295
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (934 download)

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Book Synopsis The All-American by : Susie Finkbeiner

Download or read book The All-American written by Susie Finkbeiner and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two sisters discover how much good there is in the world--even in the hardest of circumstances It is 1952, and nearly all the girls 16-year-old Bertha Harding knows dream of getting married, keeping house, and raising children in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. Bertha dreams of baseball. She reads every story in the sports section, she plays ball with the neighborhood boys--she even writes letters to the pitcher for the Workington Sweet Peas, part of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. When Bertha's father is accused of being part of the Communist Party by the House Un-American Activities Committee, life comes crashing down on them. Disgraced and shunned, the Hardings move to a small town to start over where the only one who knows them is shy Uncle Matthew. But dreams are hard to kill, and when Bertha gets a chance to try out for the Workington Sweet Peas, she packs her bags for an adventure she'll never forget. Join award-winning author Susie Finkbeiner for a summer of chasing down your dreams and discovering the place you truly belong.