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  Crusoe Castaways and Shipwrecks...

  Mike Rendell

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  “Fascinating” stories of real-life people and events that inspired the author of the classic adventure novel Robinson Crusoe (Historical Novel Society).   This book looks at some of the stories that inspired Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe—stories of bravery, determination, and good fortune, as well as human negligence, sheer stupidity, and bad luck. In addition to an overview of Defoe’s life and his monumentally successful novel, it also considers some of the reasons why people found themselves cast away—as a result of being wrecked, abandoned as a punishment, or marooned by pirates, or even out of deliberate choice.   Major hurricanes in the eighteenth century causing huge damage to shipping and loss of life are also covered, along with catastrophes when ships were lost, and astonishing tales of survival in the face of adversity—down in the Falklands, in the Caribbean, and off the coast of Australia. It looks at how being cast away brings out the best in some—and in others the very worst. And it examines perhaps the most astonishing story of them all—sixty slaves abandoned on a desolate treeless island in the Indian Ocean and left there for fifteen years, some of whom survived against all odds.

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  To the River - A Journey Beneath...

  Olivia Laing

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  An author’s walk “from source to sea along the Ouse in Sussex is a meandering, meditative delight” drawing on history, literature, and the river itself (The Guardian, UK). In To The River, author Olivia Laing embarks on a weeklong, midsummer odyssey along the banks of the River Ouse in Sussex, England, from its source near Haywards Heath to the sea, where it empties into the Channel at Newhaven. More than sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse, Laing still finds inspiration and guidance in the author’s abiding presence. Through cow pastures, woods, and neighborhood streets, Laing’s meandering walk occasions a profound and haunting reflection on histories both personal and cultural, and on landscapes both physical and emotional. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology and folklore. Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.“Magical…By turns lyrical, melancholic and exultant, To the River just makes you want to follow Olivia Laing all the way to the sea.”—Daily Telegraph, UK

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  God's Bestseller - William...

  Brian Moynahan

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  The English Bible--the most familiar book in our language--is the product of a man who was exiled, vilified, betrayed, then strangled, then burnt.William Tyndale left England in 1524 to translate the word of God into English. This was heresy, punishable by death. Sir Thomas More, hailed as a saint and a man for all seasons, considered it his divine duty to pursue Tyndale. He did so with an obsessive ferocity that, in all probability, led to Tyndale's capture and death.The words that Tyndale wrote during his desperate exile have a beauty and familiarity that still resonate across the English-speaking world: "Death, where is thy sting?...eat, drink, and be merry...our Father which art in heaven."His New Testament, which he translated, edited, financed, printed, and smuggled into England in 1526, passed with few changes into subsequent versions of the Bible. So did those books of the Old Testament that he lived to finish.Brian Moynahan's lucid and meticulously researched biography illuminates Tyndale's life, from his childhood in England, to his death outside Brussels. It chronicles the birth pangs of the Reformation, the wrath of Henry VIII, the sympathy of Anne Boleyn, and the consuming malice of Thomas More. Above all, it reveals the English Bible as a labor of love, for which a man in an age more spiritual than our own willingly gave his life.

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  Love in the Moon

  Barbara Cartland

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  Times have been tough for young Lady Canèda Lang and her brother Harry and they neither seek not expect help from the aristocratic French family that ostracised their mother Clémentine de Bantôme in their outrage at her running away to marry their father, Gerald Lang, whom they considered beneath her.
   
  Worse still, the couple incurred the wrath of the much older and powerful Duc de Saumac, to whom Clémentine was betrothed and so a bitter vendetta began.
   
  Then, overnight, Harry discovers that he is now an Earl! He has unexpectedly inherited the Earldom of Langstone with an ancestral Castle and a large and prosperous estate.
   
  Hearing the news, their French grandmother invites them to stay – evidently the de Bantômes have fallen on hard times themselves and now have the nerve to ask for help.
   
  Apparently their vines have contracted the deadly phylloxera disease that is ravaging vineyards all over Europe and has badly damaged the family’s finances.
   
  Harry is determined to refuse the invitation, but Canèda is set on journeying to the Dordogne to meet the family and the Duc de Saumac – and to wreak her revenge on them for all the years of misery they have caused..
   
  But on arrival it is not hatred but love that she finds in beautiful Périgord!

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  The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth...

  Frances Wilson

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  Described by the writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey as "the very wildest . . . person I have ever known," DorothyWordsworth was neither the self-effacing spinster nor the sacrificial saint of common telling. A brilliant stylist in her own right, Dorothy was at the center of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. She was her brother William Wordsworth's inspiration, aide, and most valued reader, and a friend to Coleridge; both borrowed from her observations of the world for their own poems.William wrote of her, "She gave me eyes, she gave me ears."In order to remain at her brother's side, Dorothy sacrificed both marriage and comfort, jealously guarding their close-knit domesticity—one marked by a startling freedom from social convention. In the famed Grasmere Journals, Dorothy kept a record of this idyllic life together. The tale that unfolds through her brief, electric entries reveals an intense bond between brother and sister, culminating in Dorothy's dramatic collapse on the day of William's wedding to their childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy lived out the rest of her years with her brother and Mary. The woman who strode the hills in all hours and all weathers would eventually retreat into the house for the last three decades of her life.In this succinct, arresting biography, Frances Wilson reveals Dorothy in all her complexity. From the coiled tension of Dorothy's journals, she unleashes the rich emotional life of a woman determined to live on her own terms, and honors her impact on the key figures of Romanticism.

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  Frida Kahlo - An Illustrated Life

  María Hesse

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  “A vibrantly illustrated biography of Kahlo . . . [Hesse’s] drawings and graphics [flow] seamlessly with the narration.” —Houston Chronicle 
   
  One of the most important artists of the twentieth century and an icon of courageous womanhood, Frida Kahlo lives on in the public imagination, where her popularity shows no signs of waning. She is renowned for both her paintings and her personal story, which were equally filled with pain and anguish, celebration and life. Thousands of words, including her own, have been written about Kahlo, but only one previous biography has recorded her fascinating, difficult life. Frida Kahlo by María Hesse offers a highly unique way of getting to know the artist by presenting her life in graphic novel form, with striking illustrations that reimagine many of Kahlo’s famous paintings. 
   
  Originally published in Spanish in 2016, Frida Kahlo has already found an enthusiastic audience in the Spanish-speaking world, with some 20,000 copies sold in just a few months. This translation introduces English-language readers to Kahlo’s life, from her childhood and the traumatic accident that would change her life and her artwork, to her complicated love for Diego Rivera and the fierce determination that drove her to become a major artist in her own right. María Hesse tells the story in a first-person narrative, which captures both the depths of Frida’s suffering and her passion for art and life. 
   
  “Despite the often light mood of the artwork, the book never shies from weighty consideration of the physical pain and personal loss that gave way—in fleeting but significant moments—to Kahlo’s artistic triumph.” —Publishers Weekly

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