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Keep smiling through : my wartime story / by Lynn, Vera,author.; Lewis-Jones, Virginia,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In the year of her 100th birthday, Dame Vera Lynn's fascinating and life-affirming wartime memoir from the forces' sweetheart of her adventures entertaining the troops in far-flung Burma. 'I was just twenty-seven years old when I went to Burma. It was an experience that changed my life for ever. Up until that time I had not really travelled anywhere at all, apart from one touring visit to Holland with a band I was singing with before the war, and I had certainly never been in an aeroplane. But I wanted to make a difference, to do my bit.' And she did. Written with her daughter, Virginia Lewis-Jones this is a powerful and life-affirming account of the time she spent with troops in wartime Burma. Based, in part on a diary she kept, alongside unpublished personal letters and photographs from surviving veterans and their families, it explores why it was such a life-defining event for her and shows how her presence helped the soldiers, airmen and others who heard her sing."--Publisher's description.
Subjects: Biographies.; Lynn, Vera.; World War, 1939-1945; Women singers; Singers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Uncommon type : some stories / by Hanks, Tom,author.; Twomey, Kevin,photographer.;
"Uncommon Type contains seventeen stories, each in some way involving a different typewriter (Hanks is an avid collector of vintage typewriters and owns over one hundred of them). The stories feature an immigrant arriving in New York City after his family and life have been torn apart by his country's civil war; a man who bowls a perfect game (and then another, and another), becoming ESPN's newest celebrity; an eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant on the hunt for something larger in America; and the junket life of an actor."--
Subjects: Short stories.;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Into Iraq / by Palin, Michael,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.In March 2022, Michael Palin travelled the length of the River Tigris through Iraq to get a sense of what life is like in a region of the world that once formed the cradle of civilisation, but that in recent times has witnessed turmoil and appalling bloodshed. It was a journey of sharp, often brutal contrasts. At one moment he would be exploring the old streets of Baghdad or the ancient ruins of Babylon. At the next he would be visiting the war-torn city of Mosul, or learning about the horrific Speicher massacre in Tikrit. Now he shares the journal he meticulously kept during his trip, in which he describes the very varied places he visited, the people he met and the impressions he formed of a country that few outsiders now venture to see. Illustrated throughout with colour photographs taken on the trip, and permeated with his warmth and humour, this is a vivid and varied portrait of a complex country.
Subjects: Biographies.; Travel writing.; Personal narratives.; Palin, Michael;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Held / by Michaels, Anne,1958-author.;
"A breathtaking and ineffable new novel from the author of the international best sellers Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault-a novel of love and loyalty across generations, at once sweeping and intimate. 1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls-a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts with messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations of connections and consequences that ignite and re-ignite as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. Held is affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom, and compassion, a novel by a writer at the height of her powers"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Families; Man-woman relationships; Photographers; Veterans;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 2
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The lost carousel of Provence / by Blackwell, Juliet,author.;
"An artist lost to history, a family abandoned to its secrets, and the woman whose search for meaning unearths it all. American photographer Cady Drake shoots local merry-go-rounds, a hobby inspired by a carved wooden rabbit gifted to her following her troubled years in foster care. Now at a crisis point in her life, Cady can't refuse a freelance assignment documenting the antique carousels of Paris. While there, she hopes to track down the true origins of her rabbit, which she has always believed to be carved by French carousel maker Gustave Bayol. Cady's research leads her to Provence, where she discovers a dilapidated carousel carved by Bayol for the grand Château Clement in the early 1900s. After commissioning the carousel, the Clement family struggled to maintain their ancestral home through the two World Wars, buffeted by jealousies passed down through the generations. Despite the carousel's derelict state, Cady longs to restore it -- if she can secure the permission of the run-down château's gruff, elderly owner, a man with secrets of his own. As Cady digs deeper into the past, unearthing century-old photographs of the Clement carousel and its creators, she might be the one person who can bring the past to light and reunite a family torn apart"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Women photographers; Family secrets; Merry-go-round art; Americans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The matchmaker : a spy in Berlin / by Vidich, Paul,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.In a Cold War spy story set in 1989 Berlin, an American woman married to an East German must confront the truth behind his mysterious disappearance when she discovers he was a spy reporting back to an East German counterintelligence officer known as the Matchmaker. Berlin, 1989. Protests across East Germany threaten the Iron Curtain and Communism is the ill man of Europe. Anne Simpson, an American who works as a translator at the Joint Operations Refugee Committee, thinks she is in a normal marriage with a charming East German. But then her husband disappears and the CIA and Western German intelligence arrive at her door. Nothing about her marriage is as it seems. She had been targeted by the Matchmaker--a high level East German counterintelligence officer--who runs a network of Stasi agents. These agents are his "Romeos" who marry vulnerable women in West Berlin to provide them with cover as they report back to the Matchmaker. Anne has been married to a spy, and now he has disappeared, and is presumably dead. The CIA are desperate to find the Matchmaker because of his close ties to the KGB. They believe he can establish the truth about a high-ranking Soviet defector. They need Anne because she's the only person who has seen his face - from a photograph that her husband mistakenly left out in his office - and she is the CIA's best chance to identify him before the Matchmaker escapes to Moscow. Time is running out as the Berlin Wall falls and chaos engulfs East Germany. But what if Anne's husband is not dead? And what if Anne has her own motives for finding the Matchmaker to deliver a different type of justice?
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Historical fiction.; Spy fiction.; Novels.; United States. Central Intelligence Agency; Cold War; Intelligence officers; Intelligence service;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Priscilla : the hidden life of an Englishwoman in wartime France / by Shakespeare, Nicholas,1957-;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 413-423).When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a box of documents belonging to his late aunt, Priscilla, he was completely unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, photographs, and journals, surrounded by suitors and living the dangerous existence of a British woman in a country controlled by the enemy. He had heard rumors that Priscilla had fought in the Resistance, but the truth turned out to be far more complicated. As he investigated his aunt's life, dark secrets emerged, and Nicholas discovered the answers to the questions over which he'd been puzzling: What caused the breakdown of Priscilla's marriage to a French aristocrat? Why had she been interned in a prisoner-of-war camp, and how had she escaped? And who was the "Otto" with whom she was having a relationship as Paris was liberated? Piecing together fragments of one woman's remarkable and tragic life, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.
Subjects: Mais, Priscilla, 1916-1982; Shakespeare, Nicholas, 1957-; Women; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Vimy : the battle and the legend / by Cook, Tim,1971-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Why does Vimy matter? Tim Cook, Canada's foremost military historian and a Charles Taylor Prize winner, examines the battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917 and the way the memory of it has evolved over 100 years. Vimy is unlike any other battle in Canadian history: it has been described as the "birth of the nation." But the meaning of that phrase has never been explored, nor has any writer explained why the battle continues to resonate with Canadians. The Vimy battle that began April 9, 1917, was the first time the four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force fought together. 10,600 men were killed or injured over four days--twice the casualty rate of the Dieppe Raid in August 1942. Cook has uncovered new material and photographs from official archives and private collections across Canada and from around the world. Many of these resources have never been used before by other historians, writers, or film-makers. On the 100th anniversary of Vimy, and as Canada celebrates 150 years as a country, this new book is about more than a defining battle: it is a story of Canadian identity and memory, by a writer who brings history alive."--
Subjects: Vimy Ridge, Battle of, France, 1917.; World War, 1914-1918;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Oligarch's Daughter : A Novel. by Finder, Joseph.;
"This is Finder at his finesta perfect everyman-in-peril story, first building an ominous drumbeat of menace, then exploding in action and intrigue and triumph. As good as it gets."Lee Child"Joseph Finder has written some of the finest spy novels of our time, and he just keeps getting better. . . . I highly, highly recommend this unrelenting thriller!"Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor, with Lincoln Child, of the Pendergast novelsFrom the New York Times bestselling author of House on Fire, a breakneck thriller that marries the dynastic opulence of Succession with the tense and disorienting spycraft of The Americans.Paul Brightman is a man on the run, living under an assumed name in a small New England town with a million-dollar bounty on his head. When his security is breached, Paul is forced to flee into the New Hampshire wilderness to evade Russian operatives who can seemingly predict his every move.Six years ago, Paul was a rising star on Wall Street who fell in love with a beautiful photographer named Tatyanaunaware that her father was a Russian oligarch and the object of considerable interest from several U.S. intelligence agencies. Now, to save his own life, Paul must unravel a decades-old conspiracy that extends to the highest reaches of the government.Rivaling the classic spy novels of the Cold War, The Oligarchs Daughter is built for the frightening world we live in now.Library Bound Incorporated
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); FICTION / Action & Adventure; FICTION / Mystery & Detective / International Crime & Mystery; FICTION / Thrillers / Espionage;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The Bettencourt affair : the world's richest woman and the scandal that rocked Paris / by Sancton, Thomas(Thomas Alexander),1949-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Was the world's wealthiest woman--Liliane Bettencourt--heir to an estimated thirty-six-billion-dollar L'Oreal fortune, the victim of a con man? Or were her own family the real villains? This riveting narrative tells the real-life, shocking story behind the cause celebre that has captivated both France and the world. Liliane Bettencourt is the world's richest woman and the eleventh wealthiest person on the planet, as of 2016. But at ninety-four, she's embroiled in an incredible controversy that has dominated the headlines and ensnared a former president of France in the controversy. Why? [It is] thanks to an artist and photographer named Francois-Marie Banier, who was given hundreds of millions of dollars by Liliane. Liliane's daughter, Francoise, considers Banier a con man and filed a lawsuit against him, but Banier has a far different story to tell. It's all become Europe's biggest scandal in years, uncovering a shadowy corporate history, buried World War II secrets, illicit political payoffs, and much more. Written by Tom Sancton, a Vanity Fair contributor and former Time correspondent currently living in France, The Bettencourt Affair is part courtroom drama; part upstairs-downstairs tale; part business narrative of a glamorous global company with past Nazi connections; and part character-driven story of a complex, fascinating family and the intruder who nearly tore it apart"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Biographies.; Bettencourt, Liliane.; Bettencourt, Liliane; Banier, François-Marie.; Sarkozy, Nicolas, 1955-; L'Oréal (Firm); Scandals; Swindlers and swindling; Businesswomen; Billionaires; Older women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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