Other books that might interest you

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  Anatomy of a Whale - Poems

  Matt Barnard

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  Like all the best poets, Matt Barnard knows how to make poems bigger than themselves; short lyrics like ‘Please Follow the Yellow Line,’ ‘The Day Twilight Went on for Days’ and ‘Border Patrol’ manage to fill the page and the time beyond their reading, treading a nice line in Larkinesque terror. Writers like Charles Boyle and Charles Simic also come to mind in the poet’s highly original metaphors, his ability to draw symbol from the everyday. There are lyrics here on everything from cows named after Jane Fonda and Bette Davis to villanelles about intellectual property and the knotty question of dying hair in middle age. This is a poet with the highest regard for the reader, who offers us poems that lay out a welcome mat, before ushering us into the conservatory to look out at that incredible, incredible view.

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  Escape into Danger - The True...

  Sophia Orlosvky Williams

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  This WWII memoir tells the remarkable story of a Ukrainian girl’s perilous adventures and coming of age amid the chaos of war.  Born in Kiev to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, Sophia Williams chose to be identified as Jewish when she became eligible for a Soviet passport at age sixteen. She had no way of realizing the life-changing consequences of her decision. When Germany invaded Russia the following year, Sophia left Kiev and embarked on daring journey into Russia—surviving floods, dodging fires and bombs, and falling in love.   After reaching Stalingrad, Sophia found herself stranded in a Nazi-occupied town. She was safely employed by a sympathetic German officer until a local girl recognized her as a Jew. Within days, Sophia’s boss spirited her to safety with his family in Poland. Soon, though, Sophia was on the run again, this time to Nazi Germany, where she somehow escaped detection through the rest of the war.   Her story of survival continues into the postwar years, through starting a family and business with a German soldier. But when her marriage deteriorated, even divorce was not enough to keep her vindictive and violent husband away. Throughout this difficult life, Sophia maintained the grit, charm, and optimism that saved her time and again as she made her “escape into danger.”

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  A Lesson on a Tortoise - From...

  D H Lawrence

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  David Herbert Lawrence was born on the 11th September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, a coal mining town where the reality of a harsh life was only useful as experiences for future literary works. 
  He was educated at Beauvale Board School and became the first local boy to receive a scholarship to attend Nottingham High School. After 3 years he became a junior clerk in Haywood’s surgical appliances factory. He was also attempting a literary career which, in the short term, led to a teacher training position in Eastwood and later a teaching qualification from University College, Nottingham.  
  Lawrence’s first efforts were poems, short stories and a draft of ‘The White Peacock’. Moving to London and a teaching position in Croydon his writing attracted the attention of Ford Madox Ford, editor of The English Review, and he commissioned him to write ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’.  
  Wanting to write full-time he now began work on what would become ‘Sons and Lovers.   
  In 1912 he met the older and married mother-of-three Frieda Weekley. They eloped to Germany and here Lawrence could see for himself the growing tensions with France.  So keen was his interest that he was arrested and accused of being a British spy.  
  In early 1914 Frieda obtained her divorce and they returned to Britain to be married just days before the outbreak of war. Owing to her German parentage, and his own public dislike of militarism and violence, the couple were treated with contempt and suspicion throughout the war years.  
  Despite this he continued to write but his reputation in England was so tarnished and, mirrored by his own disdain for the country, he and Frieda left England in November 1919, first for Europe and then America via Ceylon and Australia. 
  They bought a ranch in Taos, New Mexico and visited Mexico several times. The third visit in March 1925 caused a near fatal attack of malaria. To convalesce they moved to Florence. Here he continued work on ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ which for many years would cause controversy. A renewed interest in oil painting resulted in an exhibition in 1929 which was raided by the police and several works were confiscated.  
  D H Lawrence died of complications arising from a bout of tuberculosis on the 2nd of March 1930 in Vence, France.  He was 44.

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  The G-man and the Hit Man

  Frederic Dannen

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  Journalist Frederic Dannen reports on the questionable close relationship between a mobster/informant and an F.B.I. agent during a bloody Colombo crime family battle. This selection is part of the full-length audiobook, "Mob: Stories of Death and Betrayal From Organized Crime."

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  Ronaldo

  Luca Caioli

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  Strength, speed and dedication: Cristiano Ronaldo is known throughout the 
  world as a colossus of the modern game. But did you know that he underwent laser heart surgery aged just fifteen to enable him to continue playing the game he loved? Or that Nacional, his first professional club, donated twenty balls and two sets of kits to his youth team in order to sign him? Or how he came to be known as abelhinha -'little bee' - a name he would later pass on to his Yorkshire Terrier? 
   
  Find out all this and more in Luca Caioli's biography of the global superstar, featuring exclusive insights from those who know him best and even the man himself.

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  Sharp - The Women Who Made an...

  Michelle Dean

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  A “deeply researched and uncommonly engrossing” book profiling ten trailblazing literary women, including Dorothy Parker and Joan Didion (Paris Review). 
   
  In Sharp, Michelle Dean explores the lives of ten women of vastly different backgrounds and points of view who all made a significant contribution to the cultural and intellectual history of America. These women—Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, and Janet Malcolm—are united by what Dean calls “sharpness,” the ability to cut to the quick with precision of thought and wit. 
   
  Sharp is a vibrant depiction of the intellectual beau monde of twentieth-century New York, where gossip-filled parties gave out to literary slugging-matches in the pages of the Partisan Review or the New York Review of Books. It is also a passionate portrayal of how these women asserted themselves through their writing despite the extreme condescension of the male-dominated cultural establishment. 
   
  Mixing biography, literary criticism, and cultural history, Sharp is a celebration of this group of extraordinary women, an engaging introduction to their works, and a testament to how anyone who feels powerless can claim the mantle of writer, and, perhaps, change the world.

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