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The Patron Saint of Second Chances A Novel [electronic resource] : by Simon, Christine.aut; Frances, Tim.nrt; cloudLibrary;
SELECTED FOR THE RUSA 2023 LISTEN LIST FOR OUTSTANDING AUDIOBOOK NARRATION! The self-appointed mayor of a tiny Italian village is determined to save his hometown no matter the cost in this “charming farce that highlights the triumph of hope and community” (People). Vacuum repairman and self-appointed mayor of Prometto, Italy (population 212) Signor Speranza has a problem: unless he can come up with 70,000 euros to fix the town’s pipes, the water commission will shut off the water to the village and all the residents will be forced to disperse. In a desperate bid to boost tourism—and revenue—he spreads a harmless rumor that movie star Dante Rinaldi will be filming his next project nearby. Unfortunately, the plan works a little too well, and soon everyone wants to be a part of the fictional film—the village butcher will throw in some money if Speranza can find roles for his fifteen enormous sons, Speranza’s wistfully adrift daughter reveals an unexpected interest in stage makeup, and his hapless assistant Smilzo volunteers a screenplay that’s not so secretly based on his undying love for the film’s leading lady. To his surprise—and considerable consternation, Speranza realizes that the only way to keep up the ruse is to make the movie for real. As the entire town becomes involved (even the village priest invests!), Signor Speranza starts to think he might be able to pull this off. But what happens when Dante Rinaldi doesn’t show up? Or worse, what if he does? A “warmhearted, original gem of a novel” (Amy Poeppel, author of Musical Chairs), The Patron Saint of Second Chances is perfect for fans of Fredrik Backman and Maria Semple.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Literary; Humorous;
© 2022., Simon & Schuster,
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For Richer For Poorer A Novel [electronic resource] : by Steel, Danielle.aut; CloudLibrary;
A loving mother and successful fashion designer struggles to keep her family together and her business afloat in this gripping novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel. After working as head designer for Oscar de la Renta, Eugenia Ward started her own company when she turned forty, fourteen years ago. She is now a major name in evening gowns and wedding gowns, ready-to-wear and haute couture. But with the fashion business in major downturn, she has recently suffered heavy losses, and Eugenia desperately needs new investors—and new ideas.  At the same time, she is the matriarch and guiding light for her five adult children, a single mother for more than a decade, since her divorce from the spendthrift Italian prince she’d married young. As the family gathers for a summer vacation at a beach house, wedding plans for her daughter Gloria are ballooning in expense even as the loutish behavior of Gloria’s fiancé causes Eugenia to question her daughter’s judgment. Meanwhile, Gloria’s sister Daphne is due to deliver twins right around the wedding date . . . which is also very close make or break New York Fashion Week. The silver lining in it all may be meeting Patrick Hughes, a successful real estate developer who’s also going through a rough patch. A brilliant and creative businessman, Patrick gives her valuable advice about her business challenges. Eugenia finds friendship with Patrick sailing on his yacht and starts to imagine a new beginning, independent of her roles as mother and entrepreneur. But as the family gathers for the big wedding, tensions are running high, money may be running out, and a hurricane is looming on the horizon. Danielle Steel’s glamorous and gripping novel offers an inspiring portrait of a strong and determined woman who rises to meet life’s challenges with fortitude, creativity, and love.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Contemporary; Family Life; Contemporary Women;
© 2025., Random House Publishing Group,
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Doom : the politics of catastrophe / by Ferguson, Niall,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Setting the great crisis of 2020 in broad historical perspective, Niall Ferguson challenges the conventional wisdom that our failure to cope better with disaster was solely a crisis of political leadership, as opposed to a more profound systemic problem. Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of a number of developed countries, including the United States, to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why? The facile answer is to blame poor leadership. While populist leaders have certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, more profound problems have been exposed by COVID-19. Only when we understand the central challenge posed by disaster in history can we see that this was also a failure of an administrative state and economic elites that had grown myopic over much longer than just a few years. Why were so many Cassandras for so long ignored? Why did only some countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? Why do appeals to "the science" often turn out to be magical thinking? Drawing from multiple disciplines, including history, economics, public health, and network science, Doom is a global postmortem for a plague year. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson has studied the pathologies that afflict modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online schism. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn--if we want to avoid the doom of irreversible decline"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 (Disease); Epidemics; Political leadership.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The wife's tale : a personal history / by Aida Edemariam,author.;
"One remarkable woman--caught in the tumult of an extraordinary century in Ethiopia's history. Told by her granddaughter, Canadian journalist Aida Edemariam, Yetemegnu's story is of courage, struggle and survival. The wife's tale has the sweep and lyrical power that captivated readers of Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone, and of Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family. Born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar in about 1916, and a child bride at eight years old, Aida Edemariam's grandmother once stood, shaking, as fascists searched her home for guns she knew were there; in the late 1930s and early 1940s she fled both Italian and Allied bombardment. When her husband was imprisoned, in the 1950s, Yetemegnu--a woman who had hardly left her own compound for three decades--managed to gain audiences with Emperor Haile Selassie I in Addis Ababa, to argue for justice, for revenge, and for the futures of her seven children. Widowed, she fought for thirteen years through courts unaccustomed to a woman determined to defend her assets. A feudal landlord herself, she felt the first tremors of the coming revolution, then, in the early 1970s, watched it burst into flower: night after night she listened, praying desperately, to the firing squads of the Red Terror doing their work next door, and endured yet more soldiers tramping through her home. In her sixties she learned to read, and eventually made a longed-for pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Told from Yetemegnu's own point of view, The wife's tale features a rich cast of characters--emperors and empresses, archbishops and slaves, priests and scholars, monks and nuns, Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents. But above all, there is Yetemegnu herself, grand and haughty and sometimes difficult but also vulnerable and incredibly generous and who, despite everything--the toil, the deaths, the cruelties and the many, many tears--retains an infectious sense of mischief and joy."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Yetemegnu Mekonnen.; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Yours cruelly, Elvira : memoirs of the mistress of the dark / by Peterson, Cassandra,1951-author.;
"The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story, filled with intimate bombshells, told by the bombshell herself. On Good Friday in 1953, at only 18 months old, 25 miles from the nearest hospital in Manhattan, Kansas, Cassandra Peterson reached for a pot on the stove and doused herself in boiling water. Third-degree burns covered 35% of her body, and the prognosis wasn't good. But she survived. Burned and scarred, the impact stayed with her and became an obstacle she was determined to overcome. Feeling like a misfit led to her love of horror. Due to a complicated relationship with her mother, Cassandra left home at 14, and by age 17 she was performing at the famed Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas. Run-ins with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tom Jones helped her grow up fast. Then a chance encounter with her idol Elvis Presley, changed the course of her life forever, and led her to Europe where she worked in film and traveled Italy as lead singer of an Italian pop band. She eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she joined the famed comedy improv troupe, The Groundlings, and worked alongside Phil Hartman and Paul "Pee-wee" Reubens, honing her comedic skills. Nearing age 30, a struggling actress considered past her prime, she auditioned at local LA channel KHJ as hostess for the late night vintage horror movies. Cassandra improvised, made the role her own, and got the job on the spot. Yours Cruelly, Elvira is an unforgettably wild memoir. Always original and sometimes outrageous, her story is loaded with twists, travails, revelry, and downright shocking experiences. It is the candid, often funny, and sometimes heart-breaking tale of a Midwest farm girl's long strange trip to become the world's sexiest, sassiest Halloween icon"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Elvira, 1951-; Actors; Television personalities;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Grey Wolf A Novel [electronic resource] : by Penny, Louise.aut; Brassard, Jean.nrt; cloudLibrary;
"Brassard's accents—whether French Canadian, Italian, or continental French—create indelible characters. His performance lets us feel Reine Marie's warmth and Armand's affectionate nature, and he adds an additional layer to surly Ruth and her potty-mouthed duck. Exciting and entertaining." —AudioFile (Earphones Award winner) The 19th mystery in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Armand Gamache series. Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning. That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF, the nineteenth novel in Louise Penny's #1 New York Times-bestselling series. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading "this might interest you", a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list—and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching. Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies appear to be friends. Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Québec and across borders. Their hunt grows increasingly desperate, even frantic, as the enormity of the creature they’re chasing becomes clear. If they fail the devastating consequences would reach into the largest of cities and the smallest of villages. Including Three Pines. A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; International Mystery & Crime; Traditional;
© 2024., Macmillan Audio,
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The Villa A Novel [electronic resource] : by Hawkins, Rachel.aut; CloudLibrary;
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! "Hawkins weaves an engrossing tale about betrayal, sisterhood, and the power of telling your own story. Captivating!" ––People "Hawkins is the reigning queen of suspense." ––Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author The bestselling author of The Wife Upstairs returns with a brilliant new gothic suspense set at an Italian villa with a dark history. As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend. Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album––and ends in Pierce’s brutal murder. As Emily digs into the villa’s complicated history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974. That perhaps Pierce’s murder wasn’t just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but that something more sinister might have occurred––and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari and Lara left behind. Yet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge––and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends. Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the Manson murders, and the infamous summer Percy and Mary Shelley spent with Lord Byron at a Lake Geneva castle––the birthplace of Frankenstein––The Villa welcomes you into its deadly legacy.General adult.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Gothic; Psychological; Suspense;
© 2023., St. Martin's Publishing Group,
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The View From Lake Como A Novel [electronic resource] : by Trigiani, Adriana.aut; CloudLibrary;
PEOPLE: BEST NEW BOOKS An Amazon Best Book of the Month An Elle Best Book of Summer 2025 USA Today Most Anticipated Read of Summer 2025 Publisher's Weekly Most Anticipated Book of Summer 2025 From the beloved New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani, a “dazzling” storyteller (Washington Post), and a “comedy writer with a heart of gold” (NYT), comes a novel about one woman’s quest to build her own life before it’s too late. Jess Capodimonte Baratta is not living the life of her dreams. Not even close. In blue-collar Lake Como, New Jersey, family comes first. Recently divorced from Bobby Bilancia, “the perfect husband," Jess moves into her parents’ basement to hide and heal. Jess is the overlooked daughter, who dutifully takes care of her parents, cooks Sunday dinner, and puts herself last. Despite her role as the family handmaiden, Jess is also a talented draftswoman in the marble business run by her dapper uncle Louie, who believes she can do anything (once she invests in a better wardrobe). When the Capodimonte and Baratta families endure an unexpected loss, the shock unearths long-buried secrets that will force Jess to question her loyalty to those she trusted. Fueled by her lost dreams, Jess takes fate into her own hands and escapes to her ancestral home, Carrara, Italy. From the shadows of the majestic marble-capped mountains of Tuscany, to the glittering streets of Milan, and on the shores of enchanting Lake Como (the other one), Jess begins to carve a place in this new/old world. When she meets Angelo Strazza, a passionate artist who works in gold, she discovers her own skills are priceless. But as Jess uncovers the truth about her family history, it will change the course of her life and those she loves the most forever. In love and work, in art and soul, Jess will need every tool she has mastered to reinvent her life. Fed by the author’s cherished Italian roots comes a bighearted, hilarious novel of the moment: the story of one woman’s determination to live a creative life that matters, with enough room left over for love. With a one-way ticket to Italy, Jess is determined to write a new story on her own terms--this time, in stone.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Contemporary; Family Life; Contemporary Women;
© 2025., Penguin Publishing Group,
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Hemingway's widow : the life and legacy of Mary Welsh Hemingway / by Christian, Timothy J.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A stunning portrait of the complicated woman who was Ernest Hemingway's fourth wife, exploring the tumultuous years of their marriage, and evoking her merry widowhood as she shapes Hemingway's literary legacy. Mary Welsh, a celebrated wartime journalist during the London Blitz and the liberation of Paris, meets Ernest Hemingway in May 1944. He becomes so infatuated with Mary that he asks her to marry him the third time they meet-although they are married to other people. Eventually, she succumbs to Ernest's campaign, and in the last days of the war joined him at his estate in Cuba. Through Mary's eyes, we see Ernest Hemingway in a fresh light. Their turbulent marriage survives his cruelty and abuse, perhaps because of their sexual compatibility and her essential contribution to his writing. She reads and types his work each day-and makes plot suggestions. She becomes crucial to his work and he depends upon her critical reading of his work to know if he has it right. We watch the Hemingways as they travel to the ski country of the Dolomites, commute to Harry's Bar in Venice; attend bullfights in Pamplona and Madrid; go on safari in Kenya in the thick of the Mau Mau Rebellion; and fish the blue waters of the gulf stream off Cuba in Ernest's beloved boat Pilar. We see Ernest fall in love with a teenaged Italian countess and wonder at Mary's tolerance of the affair. We witness Ernest's sad decline and Mary's efforts to avoid the stigma of suicide by claiming his death was an accident. In the years following Ernest's death, Mary devotes herself to his literary legacy, negotiating with Castro to reclaim Ernest's manuscripts from Cuba, publishing one-third of his work posthumously. She supervises Carlos Baker's biography of Ernest, sues A. E. Hotchner to try and prevent him from telling the story of Ernest's mental decline, and spends years writing her memoir in her penthouse overlooking the New York skyline. Her story is one of an opinionated woman who smokes Camels, drinks gin, swears like a man, sings like Edith Piaf, loves passionately, and experiments with gender fluidity in her extraordinary life with Ernest. This true story reads like a novel-and the reader will be hard pressed not to fall for Mary."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Hemingway, Mary Welsh, 1908-1986; Hemingway, Mary Welsh, 1908-1986.; Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961; Authors' spouses; Journalists; Women journalists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The 10th Victim. by Petri, Elio,film director.; Martinelli, Elsa,actor.; Mastroianni, Marcello,actor.; Serato, Massimo,actor.; Randone, Salvo,actor.; Andress, Ursula,actor.; Kino Lorber (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Elsa Martinelli, Marcello Mastroianni, Massimo Serato, Salvo Randone, Ursula AndressOriginally produced by Kino Lorber in 1965.In the civilized world of the 21st century, the concept of war no longer exists - but the human instinct to kill does, so a game is played where a "hunter" and his" victim" are randomly selected by computer. This time Marcello is the unwitting victim: attracted to Caroline, he is lured to the Coliseum in Rome, where they are to confront each other in front of the world's television cameras…Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Feature films.; Foreign films.; Motion pictures.; Science fiction.; Motion Pictures.; Motion pictures, Italian.;
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