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- The Dickens boy : a novel / by Keneally, Thomas,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."In the late 1800s, rather than run the risk of his under-achieving sons tarnishing his reputation at home, Charles Dickens sent two of them to Australia. The tenth child of Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn, had consistently proved unable 'to apply himself ' to school or life. So aged sixteen, he is sent, as his brother Alfred was before him, to Australia. Plorn arrives in Melbourne in late 1868 carrying a terrible secret. He has never read a word of his father's work. He is sent out to a 2000-square-mile station in remotest New South Wales to learn to become a man, and a gentleman stockman, from the most diverse and toughest of companions. In the outback he becomes enmeshed with Paakantji, colonists, colonial-born, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women. Plorn, unexpectedly, encounters the same veneration of his father and familiarity with Dickens' work in Australia as was rampant in England. Against this backdrop, and featuring cricket tournaments, horse-racing, bushrangers, sheep droving, shifty stock and station agents, frontier wars and first encounters with Australian women, Plorn meets extraordinary people and enjoys wonderful adventures as he works to prove himself. This is Tom Keneally in his most familiar terrain. Taking historical figures and events and reimagining them with verve, compassion and humour. It is a triumph."--Publisher's website.- Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Biographical fiction.; Historical fiction.; Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870; Country life; Families; Immigrants; Secrecy;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- In the country of others / by Slimani, Leïla,1981-author.; Taylor, Sam,1970-translator.; translation of:Slimani, Leïla,1981-Pays des autres.English.;
"In her first new novel since The Perfect Nanny launched her onto the world stage and won her acclaim for her "devastatingly perceptive character studies" (The New York Times Book Review), Leila Slimani draws on her own family's inspiring story for the first volume in a planned trilogy about race, resilience, and women's empowerment. Mathilde, a spirited young Frenchwoman, falls in love with Amine, a handsome Moroccan soldier in the French army during World War II. After the war, the couple settles in Morocco. While Amine tries to cultivate his family farm's rocky terrain, Mathilde feels her vitality sapped by the isolation, the harsh climate, the lack of money, and the mistrust she inspires as a foreigner. Left increasingly alone to raise her two children in a world whose rules she does not understand, and with her daughter taunted at school by rich French girls for her secondhand clothes and unruly hair, Mathilde goes from being reduced to a farmer's wife to defying the country's chauvinism and repressive social codes by offering medical services to the rural population. As tensions mount between the Moroccans and the French colonists, Amine finds himself caught in the crossfire: in solidarity with his Moroccan workers yet also a landowner, despised by the French yet married to a Frenchwoman, and proud of his wife's resolve but ashamed by her refusal to be subjugated. All of them live in the country of others--especially the women, forced to live in the land of men--and with this novel, Leila Slimani issues the first salvo in their emancipation"--- Subjects: Historical fiction.; Domestic fiction.; Slimani, Leïla, 1981-; Women immigrants;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Native nations : a millennium in North America / by DuVal, Kathleen,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In this magisterial history of the continent, Kathleen DuVal traces the power of Native nations from the rise of ancient cities more than 1000 years ago to the present. She reframes North American history, noting significantly that Indigenous civilizations did not come to a halt when a few wandering explorers or hungry settlers arrived, even when the strangers came well-armed. A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size, but following a period of climate change and instability DuVal shows how numerous nations emerged from previously centralized civilizations. From this urban past, patterns of egalitarian government structures, complex economies and trade, and diplomacy spread across North America. And, when Europeans did arrive in the 16th century, they encountered societies they did not understand and whose power they often underestimated. For centuries, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch -- and influenced global trade patterns -- and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. With the American Revolution, power dynamics shifted, but Indigenous people continued to control the majority of the continent. The Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa built alliances across the continent and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created new institutions to assert their sovereignty to the U.S. and on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their preponderance of power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory. The definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Indigenous nations has been a constant"--- Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous peoples;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Blood and treasure : Daniel Boone and the fight for America's first frontier / by Drury, Bob,author.; Clavin, Thomas,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The explosive true saga of the legendary figure, Daniel Boone, and the bloody struggle for America's frontier by two bestselling authors at the height of their writing power--Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. It is the mid-eighteenth century, and in the 13 colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America's "First Frontier" beyond the Appalachian Mountains engage in a never-ending series of bloody battles. These violent conflicts are waged against the Native American tribes whose lands they covet, The French, and finally against the mother country itself in an American Revolution destined to reverberate around the world. This is the setting of Blood and Treasure and the guide to this epic narrative is none other than America's first and arguably greatest pathfinder Daniel Boone-not the coonskin cap-wearing caricature of popular culture but the flesh-and-blood frontiersman and Revolutionary War hero whose explorations into the forested frontier beyond the great mountains would become the stuff of legend. Now, thanks to painstaking research by two award-winning authors, the story of the brutal birth of the United States is told through the eyes of both the ordinary and larger-than-life men and women, white and Native American, who witnessed it. This fast-paced and fiery narrative, fueled by contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts, is a stirring chronicle of the conflict over America's "First Frontier" that places the reader at the center of this remarkable epoch and its gripping tales of courage and sacrifice"--- Subjects: Biographies.; Boone, Daniel, 1734-1820.; Explorers; Frontier and pioneer life; Frontier and pioneer life; Pioneers; Indigenous peoples;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- The mosquito : a human history of our deadliest predator / by Winegard, Timothy C.(Timothy Charles),1977-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity's fate. Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power. The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence.As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village. Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter?Our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable. Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling,The Mosquitois the extraordinary untold story of the mosquito's reign through human history and her indelible impact on our modern world order.- Subjects: Mosquitoes; Human ecology.;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- 1666 : a novel / by Chilton, Lora,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-200)."The survival story of the Patawomeck Tribe of Virginia has been remembered within the tribe for generations, but the massacre of Patawomeck men and the enslavement of women and children by land hungry colonists in 1666 has been mostly unknown outside of the tribe until now. Author Lora Chilton, a member of the tribe through the lineage of her father, has created this powerful fictional retelling of the survival of the tribe through the lives of three women. 1666: After the Massacre is the imagined story of the indigenous Patawomeck women who lived through the decimation of their tribe in the summer of 1666. Told in first person point of view, this historical novel is the harrowing account of the Patawomeck women who were sold and transported to Barbados via slave ship. The women are separated and bought by different sugar plantations, and their experiences as slaves diverge as they encounter the decadence and clashing cultures of the Anglican, Quaker, Jewish and African populations living in sugar rich "Little England" in the 1660's. The book explores the Patawomeck customs around food, family and rites of passage that defined daily life before the tribe was condemned to "utter destruction" by vote of the Virginia General Assembly. The desire to return to the land they call home fuels the women as they bravely plot their escape from Barbados. With determination and guile, Ah'SaWei WaTaPaAnTam (Golden Fawn) and NePa'WeXo (Shining Moon) are able to board separate ships and make their way back to Virginia to be reunited with the remnant of the tribe that remained. It is because of these women that the tribe is in existence to this day. This work of historical fiction is based on oral tradition, written colonial records and extensive research by the author, including study of the language. The book uses indigenous names for the characters and some of the Patawomeck language to honor the culture and heritage that was erased when European colonization of the Americans began in the 16th century. The book includes a glossary for readers unfamiliar with the language and names"--- Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Enslaved persons; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous women; Indigenous women; Massacres; Potomac Indians;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 21 to 26 of 26 | « previous