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The mermaid's scream / by Ellis, Kate,1953-author.;
Why did Wynn Staniland, a legend in the literary world, suddenly become a recluse in the 1980s? Most assumed he stopped writing because of his wife's bizarre suicide; a death that mirrored a murder case from the nineteenth century. And now a promising young author called Zac Wilkinson is working on Staniland's biography and hopes to reveal the true story to a waiting world - while at the same time keeping his own troubled past hidden from public view. When Wilkinson is found brutally murdered, DI Wesley Peterson finds links to the unexplained poisoning of a middle-aged couple at a local caravan park - and Wynn Staniland appears to be the connection. As Wesley delves further into the case he suspects a sinister puppet show might provide the solution: a grim re-enactment of the murder of Mary Field, a cause celebre from the reign of Queen Victoria that inspired Staniland's best-known novel. The case becomes personal for Wesley when he discovers his son is involved, and as he begins to unravel decades of secrets and deception, the shocking truth proves almost too much to bear ...
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Peterson, Wesley (Fictitious character); Biographers; Murder; Fathers and sons; Recluses;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Funny farm : my unexpected life with 600 rescue animals / by Zaleski, Laurie,author.;
"Funny Farm is an inspiring and moving memoir of the author's turbulent life with 600 rescue animals Laurie Zaleski never aspired to run an animal rescue; that was her mother Annie's dream. But from girlhood, Laurie was determined to make the dream come true. Thirty years later as a successful businesswoman, she did it, buying a 15-acre farm deep in the Pinelands of South Jersey. She was planning to relocate Annie and her caravan of ragtag rescues-horses and goats, dogs and cats, chickens and pigs-when Annie died, just two weeks before moving day. In her heartbreak, Laurie resolved to make her mother's dream her own. In 2001, she established the Funny Farm Animal Rescue outside Mays Landing, New Jersey. Today, she carries on Annie's mission to save abused and neglected animals. Funny Farm is Laurie's story: of promises kept, dreams fulfilled, and animals lost and found. It's the story of Annie McNulty, who fled a nightmarish marriage with few skills, no money and no resources, dragging three kids behind her, and accumulating hundreds of cast-off animals on the way. And lastly, it's the story of the brave, incredible, and adorable animals that were rescued"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Zaleski, Laurie.; Animal rescue; Animal rights activists; Animal shelters; Animal welfare; Businesswomen;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Snowflake : a novel / by Nealon, Louise,author.;
Eighteen-year-old Debbie was raised on her family's rural dairy farm, forty minutes and a world away from Dublin. She lives with her mother, Maeve, a skittish woman who takes to her bed for days on end, claims not to know who Debbie's father is, and believes her dreams are prophecies. Rounding out their small family is Maeve's brother Billy, who lives in a caravan behind their house, drinks too much, and likes to impersonate famous dead writers online. Though they may have their quirks, the Whites' fierce love for one another is never in doubt. But Debbie's life is changing. Earning a place at Trinity College Dublin, she commutes to her classes a few days a week. Outside the sheltered bubble of her childhood for the first time, Debbie finds herself both overwhelmed and disappointed by her fellow students and the pace and anonymity of city life. While the familiarity of the farm offers comfort, Debbie still finds herself pulling away from it. Yet just as she begins to ponder the possibilities the future holds, a resurgence of strange dreams raises her fears that she may share Maeve's fate. Then a tragic accident upends the family's equilibrium, and Debbie discovers her next steps may no longer be hers to choose.
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Domestic fiction.; Teenage girls; College students; Dysfunctional families; Life change events; Depression, Mental; Self-realization in women; Dairy farms;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare : the mavericks who plotted Hitler's defeat / by Milton, Giles,author.; Milton, Giles.Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Six gentlemen, one goal: the destruction of Hitler's war machine. In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now, his talents were put to more devious use: he built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich. Another, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world's leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men--along with three others--formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, single-handedly changed the course Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a gripping and vivid narrative of adventure and derring-do that is also, perhaps, the last great untold story of the Second World War"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Gubbins, Colin, Sir, 1896-1976.; Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945; Intelligence officers; Espionage, British; Sabotage; Guerrilla warfare;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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When the world didn't end : a memoir / by Turner, Guinevere,author.;
"In this immersive, spell-binding memoir, an acclaimed screenwriter tells the story of her childhood growing up with the infamous Lyman Family cult--and the complicated and unexpected pain of leaving the only home she'd ever known. On January 5, 1975, the world was supposed to end. Under strict instructions from the Family leader, seven-year-old Guinevere Turner put on her best dress, grabbed her favorite toy, and waited with the rest of her community for salvation--a spaceship that would take them to live on Venus. But the spaceship never came. Guinevere did not understand her family was a cult. She spent most of her days on a compound in Kansas, living with dozens of other children who worked in the sorghum fields and roved freely through the surrounding pastures, eating mulberries and tending to farm animals. But there was a dark side to this bucolic existence: When selected girls in her community turned twelve or thirteen, they were "given" to older men on the compound as wives in training. Turner was part of the Lyman Family, a cult spearheaded by Mel Lyman, a self-proclaimed world savior, committed to isolation from a world he declared had lost its way. When Guinevere caught the attention of Jessie, the woman everyone in the Family called the queen, her status was elevated and suddenly she was traveling in the inner-circle caravan between communities in Los Angeles, Boston, and Martha's Vineyard. Before long, Guinevere's world as she had known it ended. Her mother, from whom she had been separated since age three, left the Family with a disgraced member, and Guinevere and her four-year-old sister were forced to go with her. Traveling outside the bounds of her cloistered existence, Guinevere was thrust into public school for the first time, a stranger in a strange world with homemade clothes, clueless about social codes. Now, in the World she'd been raised to believe was evil, she faced challenges and horrors she couldn't have imagined. Drawing from the diaries that she kept throughout her youth, Guinevere Turner's memoir is an intimate and heart-wrenching chronicle of a childhood touched with extraordinary beauty and unfathomable ugliness, the ache of yearning to return to a lost home--and the slow realization of how harmful that place really was"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Turner, Guinevere.; Fort Hill Community (Organization); Ex-cultists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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