Results 131 to 139 of 139 | « previous
- A death in Cornwall [text (large print)] : a novel / by Silva, Daniel,1960-author.;
"Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into London to attend a reception at the Courtauld Gallery celebrating the return of a stolen self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But when an old friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police seeks his help with a baffling murder investigation, he finds himself pursuing a powerful and dangerous new adversary. The victim is Charlotte Blake, a celebrated professor of art history from Oxford who spends her weekends in the same seaside village where Gabriel once lived under an assumed identity. Her murder appears to be the work of a diabolical serial killer who has been terrorizing the Cornish countryside. But there are a number of telltale inconsistencies, including a missing mobile phone. And then there is the mysterious three-letter cypher she left behind on a notepad in her study. Gabriel soon discovers that Professor Blake was searching for a looted Picasso worth more than a $100 million, and he takes up the chase for the painting as only he can -- with six Impressionist canvases forged by his own hand and an unlikely team of operatives that includes a world-famous violinist, a beautiful master thief, and a lethal contract killer turned British spy. The result is a stylish and wildly entertaining mystery that moves at lightning speed from the cliffs of Cornwall to the enchanted island of Corsica and, finally, to a breathtaking climax on the very doorstep of 10 Downing Street."--
- Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Large print books.; Spy fiction.; Novels.; Allon, Gabriel (Fictitious character); Art thefts; Intelligence officers; Murder;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Only time will tell / by Archer, Jeffrey,1940-author.;
"From the popular author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph. The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1920, with the words, "I was told that my father was killed in the war." A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he's left school. But then his unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys' school, and his life will never be the same again. As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question who was his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole life on the docks, or the first-born son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line? This introductory novel in The Clifton Chronicles includes a cast of colorful characters and takes us from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford or join the navy and go to war with Hitler's Germany. From the docks of working-class England to the bustling streets of 1940 New York City, Only Time Will Tell takes readers on a journey through to future volumes, which will bring to life one hundred years of recent history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined.".
- Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Historical fiction.; Sagas.; Families; Families; Fathers and sons; Social classes;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- The four workarounds : strategies from the world's scrappiest organizations for tackling complex problems / by Savaget, Paulo,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Oxford University professor and award-winning researcher Paulo Savaget reveals the ways that the scrappiest organizations problem solve and how everyone can use the same tools at work and in life. We constantly encounter complex problems at home, in our places of work, and in society at large. Even if we had all the time and money in the world, sometimes no good solution can be found. So, what should we do, especially when we can't wait? The answer: A Workaround. When Paulo Savaget was ten months old growing up in Brazil, he became deathly ill. His parents had no access to baby formula he needed-but managed to save his life using a simple workaround. Decades later, Savaget began to study workarounds to find different ways they can address our most urgent problems. For ages, corporations have been lecturing the world on how to get things done-but Savaget soon discovered that much about problem-solving can be learned from the scrappiest groups. He focused his research on groups that have made an artform out of subverting the status quo. He identified four workarounds: the piggyback, the loophole, the roundabout, and the next-best. This book explains how each one works and how to know which one to use when. The Four Workarounds covers stories of how seemingly intractable problems-from public urination to the challenges of delivering life-saving medicine to remote communities- were unconventionally addressed. Savaget shows how some of the world's most influential and admired organizations have used and benefited from these scrappy tactics. And he demonstrates how we can, too"--
- Subjects: Decision making.; Positive psychology.; Problem solving.;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- The confidence men : how two prisoners of war engineered the most remarkable escape in history / by Fox, Margalit,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Imprisoned in a remote Turkish prison camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around camp, and one day, a Turkish officer approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby? Jones, a trained lawyer, and Hill, a brilliant magician, use the Ouija board--and their keen understanding of the psychology of deception--to build a trap for the Turkish officers that will ultimately lead them to freedom. The Confidence Men is the story of the only known con game played for a good cause--and of a profound but unlikely friendship. Had it not been for "the Great War," Jones, the Oxford-educated son of a British lord, and Hill, a mechanic from an Australian sheep farm, would never have met. But in pain, loneliness, hunger, and isolation, they formed a powerful emotional and intellectual alliance that saved both of their lives. Margalit Fox brings her "nose for interesting facts, the ability to construct a taut narrative arc, and a Dickens-level gift for concisely conveying personality" (Kathryn Schulz, New York) to this gripping tale of psychological strategy that is rife with cunning, danger, and moments of high farce that rival anything in Catch-22"--
- Subjects: Biographies.; Hill, C. W. (Cedric Waters), 1891-1975.; Jones, E. H. (Elias Henry), 1883-1942.; Escaped prisoners of war; Escaped prisoners of war; Male friendship.; Prisoner-of-war camps; Prisoner-of-war escapes; Swindlers and swindling.; World War, 1914-1918;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Sipping Dom Pérignon through a straw : reimagining success as a disabled achiever / by Ndopu, Eddie,author.;
"Global humanitarian Eddie Ndopu's rousing memoir about being both profoundly disabled and profoundly successful without trading one for the other. Eddie Ndopu grew up loving pop music and reruns of The Bold and the Beautiful, and as an adult he would become a globe-trotting disability activist. By his early twenties, he had rocketed through every boundary put in front of him-a queer, Black wheelchair user-challenging bias at the highest echelons of power and prestige. Born with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare degenerative motor neuron disease affecting his physical mobility, Eddie was told that he wouldn't live beyond age five. But using his razor-sharp mind and grit, Eddie became the first-ever disabled African awarded a full scholarship to the prestigious Oxford University for a master's degree in public policy, a remarkable feat worthy of a toast. But beyond the challenges that students face-making it to class on time, managing steamy crushes, and being student body president-Eddie faced obstacles as a disabled individual that often go unnoticed and unaddressed, namely a revolving door of care aides. Saddled with the burden of raising money to cover his most basic needs: a care aide, financial aid, and disability accommodations, Eddie writes about his fight for financial aid and his continued advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities. Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw follows Eddie as he scales the mountain of success only to find exclusion, discrimination, and neglect still lying in wait on the other side. Written with his one good finger, Eddie's vibrant prose delivers a clarion call to underdogs everywhere to stop climbing mountains and start moving them instead"--
- Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Ndopu, Eddie.; Human rights.; People with disabilities; People with disabilities; Success.;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- How big things get done : the surprising factors that determine the fate of every project, from home renovations to space exploration and everything in between / by Flyvbjerg, Bent,author.; Gardner, Dan,1968-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from sketch to the jewel of the New York skyline in twenty-one months; how Amazon started in a garage and became a global retail giant in five years; how, when coronavirus broke out in the city of Wuhan, the Chinese goverment built a 1,500-room hospital in under a week. These grand visions make for inspiring stories. But even for endeavors of far smaller and more modest scales, turning a vision into a plan and a plan into reality isn't easy. Whether it's delivering a key report to a client, organizing a big event, implementing a department-wide process, launching a small business, inventing a product, or renovating a home, many of our everyday projects are in fact complex feats of planning and coordination. Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life's work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed "the world's leading megaproject expert" by KPMG. In Big Plans, he identifies the errors in judgement and decision-making that lead projects to fail, and offers research-based strategies for avoiding common pitfalls. For example: Think slow, act fast: It may seem obvious that we should spend less time planning and more time executing, but in practice this is exceedingly difficult. Plan backwards: Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there. Eliminate the unpredictable: when a project gets derailed, we often cite "unforeseen problems." However, most problems can be foreseen, through a method called reference-class forecasting. Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House to the making of Pixar's first film, Big Plans reveals how to get any ambitious project done: on time and on budget"--
- Subjects: Project management; Project management;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- The Black Bird Oracle A Novel [electronic resource] : by Harkness, Deborah.aut; cloudLibrary;
Diana Bishop journeys to the darkest places within herself—and her family history—in the highly anticipated fifth novel of the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling All Souls series. “The Black Bird Oracle deftly explores the nexus of memory, history, and parenthood—the magic, pain, and promises mothers pass onto their children.”—Jodi Picoult Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, an Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana’s family line. Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family’s future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It’s time you came home, Diana. On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family’s dark past and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power—if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it. In this stunning new novel, grand in scope, Deborah Harkness deepens the beloved world of All Souls with powerful new magic and long-hidden secrets, and the path Diana finds at Ravenswood leads to the most consequential moments yet in this cherished series.
- Subjects: Electronic books.; Romantic; Occult & Supernatural;
- © 2024., Random House Publishing Group,
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- Lands of lost borders : out of bounds on the Silk Road / by Harris, Kate,1982-author.;
"In the spirit of The Places in Between and Into the Silence, this is a transcendent memoir about travelling wildly out of bounds on the fabled Silk Road. "Carried me up into a state of excitement I haven't felt for years. It's a modern classic."--Pico Iyer. As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved--that of a generalist explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician, with a flair for basic science and endless slogging--had gone extinct. From what she could tell of the world from small-town Ontario, the likes of Marco Polo and Magellan had mapped the whole earth. So she looked beyond this planet, vowing to become a scientist and go to Mars. Well along this path, Harris set off by bicycle down a short section of the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel Yule. This trip was just a simulacrum of exploration, she thought, not the thing itself--a little adventure to pass the time until she could launch for outer space. But somewhere in between sneaking illegally across Tibet, studying the history of science and exploration at Oxford, and staring down a microscope for a doctorate at MIT, she realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks, leaving footprints on another planet: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. And where she'd felt that most intensely was on a bicycle, on a bygone trading route. So Harris quit the laboratory and hit the Silk Road again with Yule, this time determined to bike it from beginning to end. Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer, Kate Harris offers a travel account at once exuberant and meditative, wry and rapturous, and above all full of hope. Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of the self that, like our planet, can never be fully mapped. Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders celebrates our connection as humans to the natural world, and ultimately to each other--a belonging that transcends any fences or stories that may divide us."--
- Subjects: Harris, Kate, 1982-; Cycling;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Letters / by Sacks, Oliver,1933-2015,author.; Edgar, Kate(Editor),editor.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The letters of one of the greatest observers of the human species, revealing his intimate thoughts on life and work, friendship and art, medicine and society, and the richness of his relationships with friends, family and scientists over the decades. A prolific correspondent, Dr. Oliver Sacks -- who describes himself variously in these pages as "a philosophical physician," "an astronomer of the inward," a "neuropathological Talmudist," and "a consummate observer" with "a pure love for phenomena" -- wrote letters throughout his life to his parents, his beloved Aunt Lennie, to friends and colleagues from London, Oxford, California, and around the world. The pages begin with his arrival in America as a young man, eager to establish himself away from the confines of postwar England, and carry us through his bumpy early career in medicine and the discovery of his writer's voice and métier; his weightlifting, motorcycle-riding years and his explosive seasons of discovery with the patients who populate his book Awakenings; his growing interest in matters of sight and the musical brain; his many friendships and exchanges with fellow writers, artists and scientists (to say nothing of astronauts, botanists, and mathematicians), and his deep gratitude for all these relationships at the end of his life. From Francis Crick and Jane Goodall to W. H. Auden and Susan Sontag, from lovers to patients, and ordinary folk who wrote to him with their odd symptoms and questions, all are treated equally to Sacks's lyrical, ferocious, penetrating and at times hilarious observations. His musings often contain the first detailed sketches of an essay forming in his mind. Sensitively introduced and edited by Kate Edgar, Sacks's longtime assistant (and one of his correspondents), the letters deliver a complete portrait of Sacks as he wrestles with the workings of the brain and mind. We see, through his eyes, the beginnings of modern neuroscience as it unlocks many secrets of how the human brain defines us. We experience the arc of a remarkable personal evolution, closely following the thought processes of one of the twentieth century's great intellectuals, whose life was long and productive and whose words, as evidenced in these pages, were unfailingly shaped with generosity and wonder toward other people"--
- Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal correspondence.; Personal narratives.; Sacks, Oliver, 1933-2015; Sacks, Oliver, 1933-2015; Neurologists;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 131 to 139 of 139 | « previous