Mrs. Osmond

Mrs. Osmond PDF

Author: John Banville

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2018-10-09

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1101972890

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The Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea continues the story of Isabel Archer, the young protagonist of Henry James’s beloved The Portrait of a Lady—in this masterful novel of betrayal, corruption, and moral ambiguity. Eager but naïve, in James’s novel Isabel comes into a large, unforeseen inheritance and marries the charming, penniless, and—as Isabel finds out too late—cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond. Here Banville imagines Isabel’s second chapter telling the story of a woman reawakened by grief and the knowledge that she has been grievously wronged, and determined to resume her quest for freedom and independence.

The Untold Story of Olive Osmond

The Untold Story of Olive Osmond PDF

Author: Virl Osmond

Publisher: Knowledge Unlimited Publishing

Published: 2009-12-23

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781576361894

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Taken from Olive's personal journals, this biography is penned by her oldest son and confidante, Virl, who was born hearing impaired. Although she was know to fans world-wide as "Mother Osmond" and mother to the Osmond Brothers and Donny and Marie Osmond, what is not known is the depth and breadth of her mind and soul, which the journal entries and Virl's memories reveal.

Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece

Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece PDF

Author: Michael Gorra

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2012-08-27

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 0871403285

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Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography) One of the Best Books of 2012: The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, Boston Phoenix A revelatory biography of the American master as told through the lens of his greatest novel. Henry James (1843–1916) has had many biographers, but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the modern novel, combining elements of biography, criticism, and travelogue in re-creating the dramatic backstory of James’s masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady (1881). Gorra, an eminent literary critic, shows how this novel—the scandalous story of the expatriate American heiress Isabel Archer—came to be written in the first place. Traveling to Florence, Rome, Paris, and England, Gorra sheds new light on James’s family, the European literary circles—George Eliot, Flaubert, Turgenev—in which James made his name, and the psychological forces that enabled him to create this most memorable of female protagonists. Appealing to readers of Menand’s The Metaphysical Club and McCullough’s The Greater Journey, Portrait of a Novel provides a brilliant account of the greatest American novel of expatriate life ever written. It becomes a piercing detective story on its own.

The Key Is Love

The Key Is Love PDF

Author: Marie Osmond

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1101627875

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For beloved superstar Marie Osmond, one gift that her mother gave her stands above the rest: the gift to trust and follow her heart. Even when her path seemed bleak, it was this unwavering faith that allowed her to follow her dreams, both professional and personal, and survive the hardest times in her life. Like so many women out there, Marie has struggled through years of being a single parent and a working parent, while juggling the need to be there for her children and still be there for her other “family,” the multitude of fans and followers who look up to her. Through it all, Marie has turned to the person who helped her through every stage of her life and her career: her mother. Drawing on the wisdom that Olive Osmond imparted over the years, Marie weaves a rich, touching, and honest memoir about her life offstage and off-camera, where she took on her most important role: motherhood. Through her personal delights, dreams, downturns, and devastating tragedy, Marie offers insights on creating a strong family, raising happy and independent children and, especially, moving forward when it seems impossible to do so.

Ancient Light

Ancient Light PDF

Author: John Banville

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-10-02

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0307960838

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The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea gives us a brilliant novel about an actor in the twilight of his life and his career: “a devastating account of a boy’s sexual awakening and the loss of his childhood…. Seamless [and] profound ... An unsettling and beautiful work.” —Wall Street Journal Is there a difference between memory and invention? That is the question that haunts Alexander Cleave as he reflects on his first, and perhaps only, love—an underage affair with his best friend’s mother. When his stunted acting career is suddenly, inexplicably revived with a movie role playing a man who may not be who he claims, his young leading lady—famous and fragile—unwittingly gives him the opportunity to see, with startling clarity, the gap between the things he has done and the way he recalls them. Profoundly moving, Ancient Light is written with the depth of character, clarifying lyricism, and heart-wrenching humor that mark all of Man Booker Prize-winning author John Banville’s extraordinary works.

Mrs. Caliban

Mrs. Caliban PDF

Author: Rachel Ingalls

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2017-11-15

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 081122709X

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Now back in print, Mrs. Caliban is “totally unforgettable” (The New York Times Book Review) and “something of a miracle” (The New Yorker) In the quiet suburbs, while Dorothy is doing chores and waiting for her husband to come home from work, not in the least anticipating romance, she hears a strange radio announcement about a monster who has just escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research… Reviewers have compared Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. Caliban to King Kong, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates’s domestic realism, B-horror movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter—how such a short novel could contain all of these disparate elements is a testament to its startling and singular charm.

The Which Way Tree

The Which Way Tree PDF

Author: Elizabeth Crook

Publisher: Bedford Square Publishers

Published: 2024-02-15

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1835011004

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When a panther attacks a family of homesteaders in the remote hill country of Texas, it leaves a young girl traumatised and scarred, and her mother dead. Samantha is determined to find and kill the animal and avenge her mother, and her half-brother Benjamin, helpless to make her see sense, joins her quest. Dragged into the panther hunters' crusade by the force and purity of Samantha's desire for revenge are a charismatic outlaw, a haunted, compassionate preacher, and an aged but relentless tracker dog. As the members of this unlikely posse hunt the giant panther, they in turn are pursued by a hapless, sadistic soldier with a score to settle. And Benjamin can only try to protect his sister from her own obsession, and tell her story in his uniquely vivid voice. The breathtaking saga of a steadfast girl's revenge against an implacable and unknowable beast, The Which Way Tree is a timeless tale full of warmth and humour, testament to the power of adventure and enduring love.

Crusoe's Daughter

Crusoe's Daughter PDF

Author: Jane Gardam

Publisher: Europa Editions

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1609458826

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From the award-winning author of Old Filth. “[A] wonderfully old-fashioned novel . . . This post-Victorian charmer is an engrossing delight” (People). In 1904, six-year-old Polly Flint is sent by her sea captain father to live with her aunts in a house by the sea on England’s northeast coast. Orphaned shortly thereafter, Polly will spend the next eighty years stranded in this quiet corner of the world as the twentieth century rages in the background. Through it all, Polly returns again and again to the story of Robinson Crusoe, who, marooned like her, fends off the madness of isolation with imagination. In the Guardian’s series on writers and readers’ favorite comfort books, associate editor Claire Armitstead said of Crusoe’s Daughter, “This is the most bookish of books . . . Every time I return to it, I am comforted by its refusal to conform, its wonderful, boisterous bolshiness, and the intelligence with which it demonstrates that we are what we read.” “Witty, subversive, moving.” —The Times (London) “[A] richly textured novel . . . much occurs on the emotional landscape. We know Polly intimately, and she haunts our imaginations as surely as Crusoe haunts hers . . . a thought-provoking book.” —Library Journal “[The] most seductively entertaining of British novelists.” —Kirkus Reviews

The Sea

The Sea PDF

Author: John Banville

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 030742930X

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BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory" (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife. In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

The Infinities

The Infinities PDF

Author: John Banville

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-02-23

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0307592871

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On a languid midsummer’s day in the countryside, old Adam Godley, a renowned theoretical mathematician, is dying. His family gathers at his bedside: his son, young Adam, struggling to maintain his marriage to a radiantly beautiful actress; his nineteen-year-old daughter, Petra, filled with voices and visions as she waits for the inevitable; their mother, Ursula, whose relations with the Godley children are strained at best; and Petra’s “young man”—very likely more interested in the father than the daughter—who has arrived for a superbly ill-timed visit. But the Godley family is not alone in their vigil. Around them hovers a family of mischievous immortals—among them, Zeus, who has his eye on young Adam’s wife; Pan, who has taken the doughy, perspiring form of an old unwelcome acquaintance; and Hermes, who is the genial and omniscient narrator: “We too are petty and vindictive,” he tells us, “just like you, when we are put to it.” As old Adam’s days on earth run down, these unearthly beings start to stir up trouble, to sometimes wildly unintended effect. . . . Blissfully inventive and playful, rich in psychological insight and sensual detail, The Infinities is at once a gloriously earthy romp and a wise look at the terrible, wonderful plight of being human—a dazzling novel from one of the most widely admired and acclaimed writers at work today.