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Bird summons / by Aboulela, Leila,1964-author.;
"When Salma, Moni, and Iman-- friends and active members of their local Muslim Women's group-- decide to take a road trip together to the Scottish Highlands, they leave behind lives often dominated by obligation, frustrated desire, and dull predictability. Each wants something more out of life, but fears the cost of taking it. Salma is successful and happily married, but tempted to risk it all when she's contacted by her first love back in Egypt; Moni gave up a career in banking to care for her disabled son without the help of her indifferent husband; and Iman, in her twenties and already on her third marriage, longs for the freedom and autonomy she's never known. When the women are visited by the Hoopoe, a sacred bird from Muslim and Celtic literature, they are compelled to question their relationships to faith and femininity, love, loyalty, and sacrifice"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Magic realist fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Automobile travel; Friendship; Muslim women; Muslims; Self-realization;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Luckenbooth / by Fagan, Jenni,author.;
"There are stories tucked away on every floor of 10 Luckenbooth Close. 1910, Edinburgh. Jessie MacRae has been sent to a tenement building by her recently deceased father to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancée. The harrowing events that follow lead to a curse on the building and its residents--a curse that will last for the rest of the century. Over nine decades, 10 Luckenbooth Close bears witness to emblems of a changing world outside its walls. An infamous madam, a spy, a famous Beat poet, a coal miner who fears daylight, a psychic: these are some of the residents whose lives are plagued by the building's troubled history in disparate, sometimes chilling ways. The curse creeps up the nine floors as an enraged spirit world swells to the surface, desperate for the true horror of the building's longest kept secret to be heard. Luckenbooth is a bold, haunting, and dazzlingly unique novel about the stories and secrets we leave behind--and the places that hold them long after we are gone."--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Historical fiction.; Paranormal fiction.; Blessing and cursing; Secrecy; Tenement houses;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The liar's dictionary : a novel / by Williams, Eley,author.;
Peter Winceworth, a disaffected Victorian lexicographer, inserts false entries into a dictionary - violating and subverting the dictionary's authority - in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory, a young overworked and underpaid intern employed by the dictionary's publishing house, is tasked with uncovering these entries before the work is digitised. As the novel progresses and their narratives combine, as Winceworth imagines who will find his fictional words in an unknown future and Mallory discovers more about the anonymous lexicographer's life through the clues left in his fictitious entries, both discover how they might negotiate the complexities of an absurd, relentless, untrustworthy, hoax-strewn, undefinable life. Braiding together contemporary and historical narratives, the novel explores themes of trust, agency and creativity, celebrating the rigidity, fragility and absurdity of language.
Subjects: Lexicographers; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Truthfulness and falsehood; English language; Unrequited love; Coming out (Sexual orientation); Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.); Threats of violence;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sense and sensibility / by Austen, Jane,1775-1817.; Ballaster, Rosalind.;
Includes bibliographical references (p. xxx-xxxv).LSC
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Love stories.; Classics; Literary; Inheritance and succession; Social classes; Young women; Sisters; Classics;
© 2008., Penguin,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The silence : a novel / by Allott, Susan,author.;
It is 1997, and in a basement flat in Hackney, Isla Green is awakened by a call in the middle of the night: her father, Joe, phoning from Sydney. It seems that thirty years ago, the Greens' next-door neighbour Mandy disappeared. Joe claims he thought Mandy had moved away with her husband, but now Mandy's family is trying to reconnect, and there is no trace of her. Joe was allegedly the last person to see her alive, and now he's under suspicion of murder. So Isla returns to Australia for the first time in a decade to support her father and search for the truth. Her arrival in Sydney brings up echoes from the past, taking us back to the heat of summer 1967, when two young couples lived side by side on a quiet street by the sea. The more questions Isla asks, the more she learns about the secrets each marriage bore. Could her father have done something terrible? How much does her mother know? At the center of it all lies a shameful practice rooted in Australia's colonial past: the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families, children known as the Stolen Generation.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); English; Neighbors; Families; Secrecy; Interpersonal relations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The last hours / by Walters, Minette,author.;
When the Black Death enters England through the port of Melcombe in Dorseteshire in June 1348, no one knows what manner of sickness it is or how it spreads and kills so quickly. The Church cites God as the cause, and religious fear grips the people as they come to believe that the plague is a punishment for wickedness. But Lady Anne of Develish has her own ideas. Educated by nuns, Anne is a rarity among women, being both literate and knowledgeable. With her brutal husband absent from Develish when news of this pestilence reaches her, she takes the decision to look for more sensible ways to protect her people than daily confessions of sin. Well-versed in the importance of isolating the sick from the well, she withdraws her people inside the moat that surrounds her manor house and refuses entry even to her husband. She makes an enemy of her daughter and her husband's steward by doing so, but her resolve is strengthened by the support of her leading serfs ... until food stocks run low and the nerves of all are tested by continued confinement and ignorance of what is happening in the world outside. The people of Develish are alive. But for how long? And what will they discover when the time comes for them to cross the moat?
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Upper class; Plague; Black Death; Quarantine; Families;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The high house : a novel / by Greengrass, Jessie,1982-author.;
"Caro and Pauly, Sally and Grandy live together in the High House. Set away from a small town by the sea, on a sloping hill, they have a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden and, mostly importantly, a barn packed full of supplies. They are safe, so far, from the rising water that threatens to destroy the town and that has, perhaps, already destroyed everything else. But for how long? Caro is Pauly's sister, and she takes care of him while his parents, her father and his mother, are away, agitating for a more pronounced response to the incipient climate disaster. When disaster really does strike, she does as she's told and takes Pauly to the High House, far away from London, a converted summer home cared for by Grandy and his granddaughter, Sally. They learn to live together, or at least they try. Yet there are limits to their safety, limits to the supplies, limits to what Grandy--the former village caretaker, a man who knows how to do everything--can teach them as his health fails. A searing novel that takes on parenthood, sacrifice, love, and living, as we all must, under the threat of extinction, The High House is a devastating, emotionally precise novel about what can be salvaged at the end of the world"--
Subjects: Children's stories.; Apocalyptic fiction.; Dystopian fiction.; Climatic changes; Families; Life change events; Preparedness; Self-actualization (Psychology); Survivalism; Climatic changes; Family life; Families; Life change events; Preparedness; Self-actualization (Psychology); Survivalism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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What I know for sure / by Winfrey, Oprah,author.; Winfrey, Oprah.Essays.Selections.;
"In this updated edition of the bestseller that launched Flatiron's list ten years ago, Oprah shares what she has come to know for sure in the last decade. After film critic Gene Siskel asked her, "What do you know for sure?" Oprah Winfrey began writing the "What I Know For Sure" column in O, The Oprah Magazine. Saying that the question offered her a way to take "stock of her life," Oprah has penned one column a month over the last fourteen years, years in which she retired The Oprah Winfrey Show (the highest-rated program of its kind in history), launched her own television network, became America's only black billionaire, was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard University and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, watched friends and colleagues come and go, and celebrated milestone birthdays. Throughout it all, she's continued to offer her profound and inspiring words of wisdom in her "What I Know For Sure" column in O, The Oprah Magazine. Now, for the first time, these thoughtful gems have been revised, updated, and collected in What I Know For Sure, a beautiful book packed with insight and revelation from Oprah Winfrey. Organized by theme-joy, resilience, connection, gratitude, possibility, awe, clarity, and power-these essays offer a rare and powerful glimpse into the mind of one of the world's most extraordinary women. Candid, moving, exhilarating, uplifting, and dynamic, the words Oprah shares in What I Know For Sure shimmer with the sort of wisdom and truth that readers will turn to again and again"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Essays.; Personal narratives.; Winfrey, Oprah; Actors; Television personalities;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Whatever next? : lessons from an unexpected life / by Glenconner, Anne,1932-author.;
"Lady in Waiting brought us royal magic, beguiling insight, and jaw-dropping stories from life inside Anne Glenconner's privileged circle, which though golden didn't always glitter. As she revealed in her memoir, it has been one of stark contrasts--from growing up in the splendor of Holkham Hall to living in a tent in the jungle of Mustique, from traveling the world with Princess Margaret to coping with her wildly unpredictable husband Lord Glenconner. She has also survived the tragic loss of two of her sons and nursed a third son back from a coma. Now in her ninth decade and at her happiest, she's keen to share everything her unexpected life has taught her--the wise, the hilarious, the poignant, and the illuminating. As a wife, she became a master in the art of keeping the peace, knowing when to pick her battles, when she needed help--and when to take a lover. As a hostess, she acquired great practical skills in throwing marvelous parties and looking after magnificent homes, and, as a lady in waiting, became well versed in diplomacy and etiquette. It was as a mother she learnt the toughest lessons of all, and through them the value of friendship, family, and laughter to get her through the worst moments in life, as well as celebrate the best of them. Whatever Next? is a treasury of hard-won wisdom, and richly entertaining proof that staying open to every new adventure sets an inspiring example for us all"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Glenconner, Anne, 1932-;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Hope is a woman's name : my journey as a Bedouin Palestinian activist in Israel / by El'Sana-Alh'jooj, Amal,author.;
"At birth it was only Amal's father who looked at her and said "I see hope in her face. I want to call her 'Amal' -- meaning 'Hope' -- in the hope that Allah will give us boys after her." The fifth daughter in a patriarchal society and an indigenous Bedouin in a Jewish state, Amal Elsana came into this world fighting for her right to exist. Today she is a key shaper of public opinion on Israel's marginalized minorities. Hope is a Woman's Name tells of Amal's journey navigating interweaving systems of power and oppression -- the patriarchal and the nationalist -- in her fight for justice and equality. As a shepherd at the age of 5, she led her flock across the green mountains of Laqiya, her village in the Negev in southern Israel, and later ran literacy classes for the women in her tribe in her early teens, the beginning of a lifelong career organizing people to promote policy change for Israel's Bedouin, a minority within the Palestinian minority. She later established economic empowerment programs for marginalized women, helping to found an Arab-Jewish school, and creating organizations to promote shared society. Where others come up against obstacles, Amal builds bridges; not by sacrificing her identity, but by embracing it. Each thread of her identity -- Bedouin, Arab, woman, feminist, Palestinian and Israeli -- is woven into the tent of her life, a tent where no one is left out in the sun."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; El'Sana-Alh'jooj, Amal.; Bedouins; Feminists; Minorities; Palestinian Arabs; Political activists; Women, Bedouin; Women, Palestinian Arab; Women's rights;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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