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Minutes of glory: and other stories
By Ngũgĩ Wa Thiongʼo. 2019
Collection of short stories from across the author's career that cover the period of British colonial rule and resistance in…
Kenya to eventual independence. Women fight for their space, men inherit power, and rebels embody the fighting spirit of the downtrodden. Includes two new stories. 2018My name is Truth: the life of Sojourner Truth
By Ann Turner, Ann Warren Turner, James Ransome. 2015
The Silent Brigade: the true story of how one woman outwitted the night riders
By Ron Elliott. 1995
Author of The Kennedy Curse (DB 56880) assesses the New York senator and her aspirations for the presidency. Comments on…
Mrs. Clinton's successes and failures as First Lady and her ambitions for the 2008 Democratic nomination. Covers the Lewinsky scandal. Some strong language. Bestseller. 2005Woman Chief: The Federalist
By Garry Wills, Benjamin Capps. 1979
A ten-year-old Atsina Indian girl is mistakenly captured by Antelope Man, a Crow horse raider who wanted a son. Refusing…
to be a typical slave, she learns a man's skills. After killing three Blackfeet warriors, she steadily gains respect from her adopted people. Based on a true story. 1979Tinker vs. Des Moines: student rights on trial (Be the judge/be the jury)
By Doreen Rappaport, John J. Palencar. 1993
By 1965, 200,000 Americans were fighting in a war in Vietnam. Many Americans did not support the war. In Des…
Moines, Iowa, a dozen high school students were suspended for protesting the war, and three sued school officials for violating their right to free speech. Briefs and testimonies from the case, which reached the Supreme Court, are provided to challenge critical thinking. For grades 5-8 and older readersShh! we're writing the Constitution
By Jean Fritz, Tomie DePaola. 1987
Lively, anecdotal history of the writing and ratification of the Constitution. Includes the text of the Constitution as signed by…
the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. For grades 3-6 and older readers. 1987In the Midst of Alarms
By Robert Barr, Douglas Lochhead. 1973
The Prince
By Niccolò Machiavelli, Christopher Celenza. 2018
Packaged in handsome, affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential works. From the musings of intellectuals…
such as Thomas Paine in Common Sense to the striking personal narrative of Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our intellectual history through the words of the exceptional few.Widely acknowledged as Machiavelli’s defining work, The Prince is an innovative and rich treatise marked by his political theories and the principles of leadership. Based upon his own experiences witnessing “the actions of great men” and the often immoral aspects that come with power, Machiavelli encouraged ambition amongst leaders—which was a break from the philosophy of other contemporary thinkers. The Prince identifies the aims of powerful leaders, which can help to justify the use of largely immoral means in their methods.With a new foreword by scholar Christopher Celenza, this essential work on politics contemplates leadership in a manner still relevant today. This lesson in autocratic rule will provide the reader with the author’s rational approach to control and the contextualization for the term “Machiavellian.”The King's Fool
By Mahi Binebine. 2017
Sidi is dying.In the last days of this all-powerful tyrant, his faithful court fool takes stock of the decades he…
has spent in the king's service. For the many years have left certain indelible wounds.During his service, the fool has been the king's closest counsel, his most trusted companion and adviser, privy to the king's deepest secrets and most intimate thoughts. It is an honoured position for which many other courtiers would pay a hefty price. Something the fool understands only too well, for this closeness has indeed come at a terrible cost.What price the confidence of a great king? Is it stories, jokes, witty repartee? Or does the debt fall closer to home? Perhaps it must be paid far from the magnificent palaces, feasting and festivities of the royal court. Perhaps it must be paid in the death jails of a formidable prison fortress far out in the desert; a place so feared that few dare to speak its name . . .The King's Fool
By Mahi Binebine. 2017
Sidi is dying.In the last days of this all-powerful tyrant, his faithful court fool takes stock of the decades he…
has spent in the king's service. For the many years have left certain indelible wounds.During his service, the fool has been the king's closest counsel, his most trusted companion and adviser, privy to the king's deepest secrets and most intimate thoughts. It is an honoured position for which many other courtiers would pay a hefty price. Something the fool understands only too well, for this closeness has indeed come at a terrible cost.What price the confidence of a great king? Is it stories, jokes, witty repartee? Or does the debt fall closer to home? Perhaps it must be paid far from the magnificent palaces, feasting and festivities of the royal court. Perhaps it must be paid in the death jails of a formidable prison fortress far out in the desert; a place so feared that few dare to speak its name . . .Widows: A Novel
By Ariel Dorfman, Stephen Kessler. 1983
Set in a Greek village in 1942, and purportedly written from his imagination by a Danish man before he was…
picked up by the Gestapo and not seen again, here is Ariel Dorfman's haunting and universal parable of individual courage in the face of political oppression. Widows forms a testament to the disappeared--those living under totalitarian regimes the world over, who are taken away for "questioning" and never return.One by one, the bodies of men wash up on the shore of the river, where they are claimed by the women of the local town as husbands and fathers, even though the faces of the dead men are unrecognizable. A tug-of-war ensues between the local police, who insist that the women couldn't possibly recognize their loved ones, and the women demanding the right to bury their beloveds. As it evolves, the stand-off reveals itself to be a power struggle between love, dignity and honor, and the lesser god of brute force. A lesson in how power really works, and how it can be made to work differently.Haymarket: A Novel
By Martin Duberman. 2003
On the night of May 4, 1886, during a peaceful demonstration of labor activists in Haymarket Square in Chicago, a…
dynamite bomb was thrown into the ranks of police trying to disperse the crowd. The officers immediately opened fire, killing a number of protestors and wounding some two hundred others. Albert Parsons was the best-known of those hanged; Haymarket is his story. Parsons, humanist and autodidact, was an ex-Confederate soldier who grew up in Texas in the 1870s, and fell in love with Lucy Gonzalez, a vibrant, outspoken black woman who preferred to describe herself as of Spanish and Creole descent. The novel tells the story of their lives together, of their growing political involvement, of the formation of a colorful circle of "co-conspirators"--immigrants, radical intellectuals, journalists, advocates of the working class-and of the events culminating in bloodshed. More than just a moving story of love and human struggle, more than a faithful account of a watershed event in United States history, Haymarket presents a layered and dynamic revelation of late nineteenth-century Chicago, and of the lives of a handful of remarkable individuals who were willing to risk their lives for the promise of social change.Olga: A Novel
By Prof Bernhard Schlink. 2018
A #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'Bernhard Schlink speaks straight to the heart' New York Times'Brilliant... A tale of love and loss in…
20th century Germany' Evening Standard'A cleverly-constructed tale of cross-class romance' Mail on Sunday'A poignant portrait of a woman out of step with her time' Observer Olga is an orphan raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village around the turn of the 20th century. Smart and precocious, she fights against the prejudices of the time to find her place in a world that sees her as second-best.When she falls in love with Herbert, a local aristocrat obsessed with the era's dreams of power, glory and greatness, her life is irremediably changed.Theirs is a love against all odds, entwined with the twisting paths of German history, leading us from the late 19th to the early 21st century, from Germany to Africa and the Arctic, from the Baltic Sea to the German south-west.This is the story of that love, of Olga's devotion to a restless man - told in thought, letters and in a fateful moment of great rebellion.Out of Touch: The heartbreaking and hopeful must read
By Haleh Agar. 2020
'A must read' Sunday Express'Heartbreaking and hopeful' Woman's Weekly'A riveting and captivating new novel about the complexities of sibling relations'…
Grazia 'Raw and hopeful, this book is about what pulls us apart and what keeps us together' Rowan Hisayo Bucahan'One of those books that had me ignoring my phone, family and sensible bedtimes. Immersive, gorgeously rich and beautifully written. I loved it' Lia LouisA man hit Ava with his car, a few miles from her bungalow. He brings her flowers in hospital, and offers to do her laundry. He also brings her the letter she dropped that night on the road.In New York, Ava's brother Michael receives the same letter. He thinks about it as he steps out of the shower into his curtainless bedroom. A naked woman stares at him from the apartment across. They both laugh and cover up with their arms. Brother and sister cannot avoid the letter: their estranged father is dying and wants to meet. Can they forgive their father, and face each other after all these years apart? Will new unexpected friends offer the advice and comfort they need?With sharp wit and sensitivity, Out of Touch is a deeply absorbing story about love and vulnerability, sex and power, and the unbreakable bonds of family.The King's Fool
By Mahi Binebine. 2017
Sidi is dying.In the last days of this all-powerful tyrant, his faithful court fool takes stock of the decades he…
has spent in the king's service. For the many years have left certain indelible wounds.During his service, the fool has been the king's closest counsel, his most trusted companion and adviser, privy to the king's deepest secrets and most intimate thoughts. It is an honoured position for which many other courtiers would pay a hefty price. Something the fool understands only too well, for this closeness has indeed come at a terrible cost.What price the confidence of a great king? Is it stories, jokes, witty repartee? Or does the debt fall closer to home? Perhaps it must be paid far from the magnificent palaces, feasting and festivities of the royal court. Perhaps it must be paid in the death jails of a formidable prison fortress far out in the desert; a place so feared that few dare to speak its name . . .Winds of the Night (MacLehose Press Editions #8)
By Joan Sales. 2017
"Perhaps the worst thing about war is the peace that follows . . ."Winds of the Night is the follow-up,…
published almost thirty years later, to Joan Sales' acclaimed masterwork of the Spanish Civil War, Uncertain Glory.It describes the shell-shocked wasteland that was post-war Catalonia through the eyes of Cruells, a Republican chaplain who survives the war, and completes his theological studies only to lose his faith in a world where it seems all hope has been extinguished.As he struggles to function as a rural priest, his steps are dogged by a ghostly figures from his past, such as Lamoneda, a fascist agent provocateur who now hobnobs with Himmler and misses few opportunities to turn the febrile post-war atmosphere to his financial advantage. Against his wishes, Creulls is drawn into obsessive dialogues about the war in which only lunacy prevails, for Lamoneda seems to hold the key to the whereabouts of an old friend - the mercurial Juli Soleràs, whose charisma, for all his betrayals, still holds Cruells in thrall.An essential coda to the modern classic that is Uncertain Glory, Winds of the Night is a Beckettian vision of the traumas of combatants and country hidden beneath the rhetoric of the victors.Translated from the Catalan by Peter BushThe Early Birds
By Laurie Graham. 2017
'Why is Laurie Graham not carried on people's shoulders through cheering crowds? Her books are brilliant!' MARIAN KEYESThe Early Birds…
is the feel-good and funny follow-up to The Future Homemakers of America that proves that no matter what life throws at you, great friends and regular cocktails will always see you through.Peggy, the southern belle. Kath, the pragmatist with the only Norfolk accent in New York state. Gayle, the preacher with healing hands. Mrs Colonel Audrey Rudman, forever keeping up the standards of the Officers' Wives Club. Lois, who's never had a thought she didn't voice. Loudly.Their menfolk may be long retired, but once a US Air Force wife, always an Air Force wife, and the bonds of friendship forged in base after military base are still going strong fifty years later. Time is rendering its Accounts Payable for all of them now: hip replacements, eye problems, forgetfulness and departures. In this hymn to lifelong female friendship, Peggy soldiers on through new upheavals, including her ex-husband Vern's Alzheimer's diagnosis, the death of one of her nearest and dearest, a life-changing house move and the world-shattering events of 9/11 with the help of her sharp-tongued, often eccentric, but always loyal group of friends.Privilege
By Guinevere Glasfurd. 2022
'Tightly plotted and hugely readable' Jane Rogers, author of PROMISED LANDS'Marvellous . . . fans of immersive historical fiction, the…
18th century, all things French and a dash of peril, this one's for you' Emily Brand, author of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BYRON'Glasfurd deftly, elegantly captures this volatile world of impoverished attic rooms and gilded literary salons' DAILY MAIL'I thought of the books we carried and the hands that would one day hold them. The pages read, turned and discussed. And how the book would become thought and the thought then become the person gone out into the world. Let Gilbert try and put a stop to that.'After her father is disgraced, Delphine Vimond is cast out of her home in Rouen and flees to Paris. Into her life tumbles Chancery Smith, apprentice printer sent from London to discover the mysterious author of potentially incendiary papers marked only D. In a battle of wits with the French censor, Henri Gilbert, Delphine and Chancery set off in a frantic search for D's author. But who is D and does D even exist?Privilege is a story of adventure and mishap set against the turmoil of mid-18th century France at odds with the absolute power of the King who is determined to suppress opposition on pain of death. At a time when books required royal privilege before they could be published - a system enforced by the Chief Censor and a network of spies - many were censored or banned, and their authors harshly punished. Books that fell foul of the system were published outside France and smuggled back in at great risk.Costa-shortlisted author Guinevere Glasfurd has conjured a vibrant world of entitlement and danger, where the right to live and think freely could come at the highest cost.No Return: A novel of the Canadian election that vanished in Muskoka's backwoods
By Gordon Aiken. 2010
Canadians took politics seriously in the years following Confederation and Gordon Aiken’s novel about pioneer Muskoka and the fledgling nation’s…
capital shows why. Unique events in the Dominion’s second election, in 1872, inspired Aiken to write about Muskoka’s returning officer, Richard Bell, who refused to declare Liberal candidate A.P. Cockburn elected, even though he got the most votes. Consequent ground-breaking events included Bell’s summons to give an accounting of himself to the House of Commons, the first and only time an MP would be elected to parliament by members of the Commons itself, and reforms in Canadian election law including introduction of the secret ballot. Privately published as Returning Officer in 1982, and long since out of print, this Blue Butterfly edition is re-titled No Return. Completely reset and redesigned, with added maps and period photographs, this new edition also features J. Patrick Boyer’s afterword, "Gordon Aiken’s Quest and the Genesis of No Return." The political intrigues woven into Gordon Aiken’s rich tale of local and national affairs from 140 years ago will resonate with readers today, if its essential plots and human ambitions were simply updated by new technology and a fresh cast of characters to re-enact timeless dramas of mismatched lovers, a local judge fighting the newspaper editor, lumber barons playing both sides to keep their timber licences, and contractors changing political sides to win road jobs (or what today are termed "infrastructure projects"). Aiken, Member of Parliament for the same district a century later, wrote with deep understanding about Muskoka and its people and acute knowledge of parliamentary politics. No Return tells of one man’s struggle to support his chosen party, maintain his independence, confound his enemies, and hold his family together under duress.