Required to have a college education, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 19 also had to be between 5′3" and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under 26 years of age at the time of hire.Cooke’s intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from small-town girl Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few Black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life. Glamour, danger, liberation: in a Mad Men–era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up
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Livingston firmly eschews sentimentality, offering instead a meditation on what it means to hunger and showing that poverty can strengthen the spirit just as surely as it can grind it down."-Jacket "Larger cultural experiences such as her love for Wonder Woman and Nancy Drew and her experiences with the Girl Scouts and Roman Catholicism inform this lyrical memoir. While struggling to make sense of her world, Livingston perceives the stresses and patterns that keep children - girls in particular - trapped in the cycle of poverty." From an old farming town to an Indian reservation to a dead-end urban neighborhood, Livingston and her siblings follow their nonconformist mother from one ramshackle house to another on the perpetual search for something better." "Along the way, the young Sonja observes the harsh realities her family encounters, as well as small moments of transcendent beauty that somehow keep them going. One of seven children brought up by a single mother, Sonja Livingston was raised in areas of western New York that remain relatively hidden from the rest of America. "Ghostbread makes real for us the shifting homes and unending hunger that shape the life of a girl growing up in poverty during the 1970s. When a local artist is found dead on a deer trail, pierced through the chest by a hunting arrow, Gamache and his homicide team are dispatched from Montreal to solve the case. The setting is Three Pines, a small Quebecois village near the U.S. As Chief Inspector Gamache puts it at one point in the book (paraphrasing): "It was a town full of lovely people. Still Life certainty falls within that framework, but what makes it stand out is its strong sense of place (Quebec), third person omniscient narration (we know what most of the characters are thinking most of the time) and its lovingly crafted portraits of life in a small town.Īll of Penny's characters are sympathetic, or at least understandable, even the most unlikable. It's been so long since I've read a mystery of the "cozy" variety I'm not sure the sub-genre is even called that anymore? At any rate, I usually think of cozies as gentler in spirit than the rock 'em, sock 'em hardboiled noir mysteries, often set a small town or rural setting, with little to no violence on stage, and most of the plot centering on the puzzle of whodunnit. "A Darker Shade of Magic has all the hallmarks of a classic work of fantasy. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive. Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure. After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand. Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. Kell was raised in Arnes -Red London -and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see. Schwab Kell is one of the last Antari -magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black. A Darker Shade of Magic, from #1 New York Times bestselling author V.E. Kate Larson reveals both the sensitive care Rose and Joe gave to Rosemary and then - as the family’s standing reached an apex - the often desperate and duplicitous arrangements the Kennedys made to keep her away from home as she became increasingly intractable in her early twenties. Major new sources - Rose Kennedy’s diaries and correspondence, school and doctors' letters, and exclusive family interviews - bring Rosemary alive as a girl adored but left far behind by her competitive siblings. And yet, Rosemary was intellectually disabled - a secret fiercely guarded by her powerful and glamorous family. The daughter they secreted away made all the difference.Joe and Rose Kennedy’s strikingly beautiful daughter Rosemary attended exclusive schools, was presented as a debutante to the Queen of England, and traveled the world with her high-spirited sisters. They were the most prominent American family of the twentieth century. Right now, this is where my reference points lie. BUT, hey!įunny thing about Court of Miracles though- it might be the first to actually have that comparison make sense, but I’m going to get to that later. So…Īnd then of course, let’s just go ahead and trot out the Six of Crows reference because every book from There Will Come a Darkness (WHICH I LOVE) to Ink in the Blood (which left me afflicted in the best of ways) has been, so why not? Because NONE of them are ANYTHING like it. Les Misérables ? I know it has something to do about poor (Edited because that said POO people) people during the French Revolution and was a popular Broadway play. In fact, I was worse off than Captain America, so I won’t insult his meme. Until Becky mentioned the Disney Movie? That didn’t even ring a bell with me. We have the Jungle Book, Les Misérables and Six of Crows. Kester Grant’s Court of Miracles actually has 3 comp titles to live up to- one of which Becky has to completely explain to me because I didn’t even think I had heard of it. He has to get tired of this but as long as it keeps coming up, I’m going with it. Here is her dead body.” The notepaper is suspiciously pristine, the penmanship impersonal-the kind “you’d use when making a sign for a yard sale,” Vesta observes. Vesta Gul is a 72-year-old widow who lives in a secluded former Girl Scout cabin in the woods with a muscular dog, her “alarm and bodyguard.” One day, while on a dawn walk, she stumbles upon a note that reads: “Her name was Magda. The opening of Death in Her Hands gestures as much toward fable as to mystery. This time, she uses a meta-mystery-gone-mad to explore a question that applies to her own oeuvre: How much control can women have over their narratives? (“Try to tell me she’s disgusting!” she told one interviewer.) In her latest novel, Death in Her Hands, Moshfegh is back to her old formal tricks. To Moshfegh’s frustration, readers still fixated on the grossness of Eileen-a laxative-addicted clerk at a juvenile prison who has vivid, violent thoughts-so she funneled similarly off-putting traits into the narrator of her second novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, but gave her the looks of an off-duty model. Convinced that readers wouldn’t pick up a novel about a self-loathing woman with little desire to please others, she masked her “ freak book” as a mystery. “I’ve disguised the ugly truth in a kind of spiffy noir package,” Ottessa Moshfegh said about her debut novel, Eileen, published in 2015. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Written with grace, sensitivity, and passion, Careless Love is a unique contribution to our understanding of American popular culture and the nature of success, giving us true insight at last into one of the most misunderstood public figures of our times. This is the quintessential American story, encompassing race, class, wealth, sex, music, religion, and personal transformation. It's a breathtaking drama that places the events of a too often mistold tale in a fresh, believable, and understandable context. Beginning with Presley's army service in Germany in 1958 and ending with his death in Memphis in 1977, Careless Love chronicles the unraveling of the dream that once shone so brightly, homing in on the complex playing-out of Elvis's relationship with his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker. This concluding volume recounts the second half of Elvis's life in rich and previously unimagined detail, and confirms Guralnick's status as one of the great biographers of our time. Last Train to Memphis, the first part of Guralnick's two-volume life of Elvis Presley, received unprecedented accolades. I will leave the train here to conclude formalities. The police have accepted my first solution to the crime: the lone assassin who made his escape. There are no killers here, only people who deserve a chance to heal. And I must learn for once, to live with the imbalance. Hercule Poirot: Ladies and gentlemen, I have understood in this case that the scales of justice. My very existence depends upon this hope, upon order and method and the little grey cells. I have always wanted to believe that man is rational and civilized. So many broken lives, so much pain and anger giving way to the poison of deep grief, until one crime became many. I have seen the fracture of the human soul. I have now discovered the truth of the case and it is profoundly disturbing. Hercule Poirot: My Dear Colonel Armstrong, finally, I can answer your letter, at least with the thoughts in my head and the feeling in my heart that somewhere you can hear me. During this time he was the editor of the campus magazine and was also the co-editor of British literary magazine Granta. He received his BA in history in 1959, studying at Clare College, Cambridge. He then spent two years in the British Army and was deployed in Germany during this period. Spence was educated first at Winchester College, graduating in 1954. His mother was a French researcher while his father worked at an art gallery and a publishing house. Spence was born on 11 August 1936 to Muriel ( née Crailsham) and Dermot Spence in Surrey in England. Another common theme is the efforts of both Westerners and Chinese "to change China", and how such efforts were frustrated. Spence frequently used biographies to examine cultural and political history. Spence's major interest was modern China, especially the Qing dynasty, and relations between China and the West. A prolific author, reviewer, and essayist, he published more than a dozen books on China. His most widely read book is The Search for Modern China, a survey of the last several hundred years of Chinese history based on his popular course at Yale. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. Jonathan Dermot Spence CMG (11 August 1936 – 25 December 2021) was an English-born American historian, sinologist, and writer who specialized in Chinese history. Recorded June 2008 from the BBC Radio 4 programme the Reith Lectures |