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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
Crooked Creek
By Maximilian Werner. 2011
2012 Eric Hoffer Book Awards for General Fiction Honorable Mention2011 Utah Book Award FinalistCrooked Creek takes place during the latter…
part of westward expansion and chronicles the lives (and deaths) of the Wood family. The Woods-Preston and Sara-must flee Arizona when they, along with Sara's parents and little brother Jasper, unwittingly get caught up in the plunder and sale of American Indian corpses and funerary objects. Preston, Sara, and Jasper end up in the Heber Valley of Utah, where they seek the support of Sara's Uncle Neff until they can be reunited with Sara's mother and father. But from the moment they ride into Heber, Preston and Sara learn that life in the valley is not as it appears, and that no matter how far we run, we cannot escape the past. Maximilian Werner is the author of Black River Dreams, a collection of literary fly fishing essays that won the 2008 Utah Arts Council's Original Writing Competition for Nonfiction: Book. Mr. Werner's poems, fiction, creative nonfiction, and essays have appeared in several journals and magazines, including Matter Journal: Edward Abbey Edition, Bright Lights Film Journal, The North American Review, ISLE, Weber Studies, Fly Rod and Reel, and Columbia. He lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and two children and teaches writing at the University of Utah."Maximilian Werner is a fresh and grounded writer, a welcome and original new voice." -Thomas McGuane, author of Driving on the Rim"Here in the deep measured prose of Max Werner is a western story, harsh and lush as the old world it depicts. Crooked Creek shows again that one of the natural laws of the wilderness--along with wind and stone and animals and family--is violence. Just as wind and water shaped the stone, trouble shaped these men. With its compelling, layered story, this rich book is a reader's pleasure." -Ron Carlson, author of The Signal"Max Werner's Crooked Creek offers a haunting voyage into the past and into living landscapes sharpened by western light, resonating with the work of such authors as Cormac McCarthy and Wallace Stegner. A narrative of the vitality of family bonds, it is also a tale of the heroic struggle to carry the burden of memory and to transform history's nightmares into visions of possibility, as Octavio Paz once argued was the high calling of literature. Crooked Creek reminds us of the tough aesthetic that is required to sustain hope in family, in community, and in the staggering and heartbreaking beauty of nature that Werner's prose powerfully illuminates, while also reckoning with the dark sins of betrayal and violence that are the legacies of the American West. Werner convinces us that no meaningful sense of place is possible otherwise."-George Handley, author of Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo RiverThe Ordinary Truth
By Jana Richman. 2012
When Nell Jorgensen buried her husband, she buried a piece of herself-and more than one secret. Now, thirty-six years later,…
the rift between Nell and her daughter Kate threatens to implode as Kate, a water manager for the Nevada Water Authority, plans to pipe water from a huge aquifer that lies beneath the family ranch to thirsty Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Nell's granddaughter Cassie intends to unearth those old secrets and repair the resentments that grew in their place. Throughout the novel, sparse and beautiful landscapes surround an emotional wilderness of love, loss, and family.Jana Richman is the award-winning author of The Last Cowgirl (HarperCollins, 2009), a novel which won the 2009 Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction. A sixth-generation Utahn, Jana was born and raised in Utah's west desert, the daughter of a small-time rancher and a hand-wringing Mormon mother. With the exception of a few misguided years spent in New York City trying to make a fortune on Wall Street, she has lived her entire life west of the hundredth meridian. She writes about issues that threaten to destroy the essence of the west-and about passion, beauty, and love. Jana lives in Escalante, Utah.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.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 BushPrivilege
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.