Once again, #1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn transports her readers to historical romance heaven! Quinn’s Just Like Heaven is the dazzling first installment of a delightful quartet of Regency Era-set tales featuring the romantic exploits of the well-meaning but less-than-accomplished Smythe-Smith musicians—in this case, a beautiful violinist in the pitiful group who has her sights set on marrying the last unwed Bridgerton…unless her handsome, love-struck guardian has anything to say about it. Bridgerton fans will cry, “Encore!”—as will every reader who adores England’s Regency period and great love stories that are smart, witty, and lighthearted.
Timeless, beautiful, and haunting, spirals connect the four episodes of The Ghosts of Heaven, the mesmerizing new novel from Printz Award winner Marcus Sedgwick. They are there in prehistory, when a girl picks up a charred stick and makes the first written signs; there tens of centuries later, hiding in the treacherous waters of Golden Beck that take Anna, who people call a witch; there in the halls of a Long Island hospital at the beginning of the 20th century, where a mad poet watches the oceans and knows the horrors it hides; and there in the far future, as an astronaut faces his destiny on the first spaceship sent from earth to colonize another world. Each of the characters in these mysterious linked stories embarks on a journey of discovery and survival; carried forward through the spiral of time, none will return to the same place. This title has Common Core connections.
Description A magnificent stone frieze-built up into curves and flourishes, peacocks and curving vines and trailing leaves-runs like a thread through this gripping, sweeping saga that spans a period of two hundred years between two invasions of Dilli-that of Muhammed of Ghur in 1192 CE, and Taimur in the winter of 1398. For whom was it carved, and what happened to it as family fortunes and dynasties rose and fell? Ten-year-old Madhav comes to Dilli after his world is torn apart by the battle in which Prithviraj Chauhan loses his throne and his life, paving the way for the Delhi Sultanate. In the teeming city, Madhav starts a career as a stone carver, and the craft becomes a manifestation of his very being. It eventually inspires him to create his masterpiece, a stone frieze that he calls the Garden of Heaven. Running parallel to Madhav's story is that of another family of stone carvers- Nandu, his arrogant daughter Gayatri, and Gayatri's daughter, Jayshree, who befriends an unusual, headstrong young woman who wears the clothes of a man and one day leads her army into battle as Razia Sultan. A gentle courtier named Amir Khusro also plays a part in this grand drama, as does Ibrahim, whose forbidden love for Chhoti brings two families together. And then there is poor and lonely Shagufta, who rescues Nasiruddin, a wounded Timurid soldier, and to distract him from his agony, tells the story of her city and herself.... A richly human, layered and dramatic narrative about Delhi on the threshold of a new phase in its long and eventful history, The Garden of Heaven holds the reader in thrall till the end.
DIVDIVIn the second book of Kate Elliott’s Novels of the Jaran, Tess Soerensen is pulled between two powerful men—her brother and her husband—and their competing revolutions/divDIV/divDIV On the planet Rhui, the nomadic tribes of the jaran are uniting the settled cities of their homeland one by one. Their charismatic leader, Ilya Bakhtiian, has his loyal wife by his side, but there is something about her he doesn’t know: Tess Soerensen is a human. And not just any human—back home, her brother, Charles, led an unsuccessful revolt against the all-powerful Chapalii empire. Even though Charles was later made a duke in the Chapalii system, his revolutionary bent has not faded, and he is traveling to Rhui to locate Tess and uncover precious information about a past insurgency. Charles’s insistence that Tess join him is as strong as Ilya’s reluctance to part with his beloved wife—and neither considers that Tess may have her own plans for the future. As three fiercely independent spirits struggle for a solution, the fates of both the human race and the jaran hang in the balance./divDIV /divAn Earthly Crown is the second volume of the Novels of the Jaran, which also include Jaran, His Conquering Sword, and The Law of Becoming. /div
In A City Called Heaven, Robert M. Marovich follows gospel music from early hymns and camp meetings through its growth into the sanctified soundtrack of the city's mainline black Protestant churches. Marovich mines print media, ephemera, and hours of interviews with artists, ministers, and historians--as well as relatives and friends of gospel pioneers--to recover forgotten singers, musicians, songwriters, and industry leaders. He also examines the entrepreneurial spirit that fueled gospel music's rise to popularity and granted social mobility to a number of its practitioners. As Marovich shows, the music expressed a yearning for freedom from earthly pains, racial prejudice, and life's hardships. Yet it also helped give voice to a people--and lift a nation. A City Called Heaven celebrates a sound too mighty and too joyous for even church walls to hold.
A Loving Tribute To A Unique Upbringing When Stephen Alter Is Asked The Simple Question Where Are You From, Originally? He Hesitates. Although He Is In Almost Every Way An American-Granted With A Trace Of British Accent-He Has An Unexpected Reply: My Real Home Was In India, A Hill Station Called Mussoorie, Seven And A Half Thousand Feet Up The Himalayas. That Was Where I Was Born And Raised, In A Section Known As Landour... It Is A Landscape, And A Time, That Haunts Him Still: I Miss The Place Itself; The Mountains, The View Of The High Himalayas Beyond Mussoorie, Stretching All The Way To Heaven. The Son And Grandson Of Presbytarian Missionaries Living In India For More Than Half A Century, Every Day Alter Straddled The Profound Boundary Between Utterly Different Peoples, Cultures, Languages And Religions. He And His Brothers Spoke A Pidgin Dialect Of Hindustani And English As Young Boys, Fished In The Rivers Song, Ganga And The Jumna, And Later Hunted For Barking Deer And Ghoral In The Steep Foothills Of The Mountains Always Looming Behind Them. They Studied American History But Knew More About India'S Recent Independence From England. In All The Way To Heaven, Alter Writes Affectionately Of His Family, His Indian Friends And His Memories Exotic And Mundane.
Million Dollar Quartet’ is the name given to recordings made on Tuesday December 4, 1956 in the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The recordings were of an impromptu jam session among Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash.The events of the session. Very few participants survive. Includes interviews with the drummer and the sound engineer. A detailed analysis of the music played – and its relevance to subsequent popular music. The early lives and careers of the quartet – where they were in 1956. Relevant social and economic factors which meant that a massive audience of young people were keenly looking for a new kind of music they could call their own. The “reunions” of surviving members of the quartet. The emergence of the tapes, first on bootleg and then on legitimate CDs. The genesis of the stage show and its reception – the enduring appeal of the music.
Sir Richard Kenworthy has less than a month to find a bride. He knows he can't be too picky, but when he sees Iris Smythe-Smith hiding behind her cello at her family's infamous musicale, he thinks he might have struck gold. She's the type of girl you don't notice until the second—or third—look, but there's something about her, something simmering under the surface, and he knows she's the one. Iris Smythe–Smith is used to being underestimated. With her pale hair and quiet, sly wit she tends to blend into the background, and she likes it that way. So when Richard Kenworthy demands an introduction, she is suspicious. He flirts, he charms, he gives every impression of a man falling in love, but she can't quite believe it's all true. When his proposal of marriage turns into a compromising position that forces the issue, she can't help thinking that he's hiding something . . . even as her heart tells her to say yes.
In Canons and Wisdoms, Albert Cook addresses what is arguable the most profound question about poetry and literature: What is its human value? Cook claims that the value lies in the special yield of wisdom rich, full, and not available in other forms of human discourse. This somewhat traditional position is reinforced by the related arguments of such philosophers as Adorno and Heidegger, and by other works in Renaissance poetry and modern poetry and fiction, where the sense of the work becomes clearer when it is seen in the light of such a question. Cook addresses what can be claimed for poetry and literature after all due allowance has been made for the relativity of canons, the subjectivity of the literary experience, and the subtle and comprehensive effects of received expectations. Such questions have dominated recent discussions about the value of literature. The nature of all human utterance argues for its being aimed at social inclusion, formalized as a canon, even though such a notion must remain ideal. Canons and Wisdoms is an eloquent and original contribution to the ongoing debate about the canon. It is the work of an experienced, erudite, and individualistic scholar working at the intersection of philosophy and literary theory and criticism.
