The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2012-03-20

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1453245030

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“A perfect book”—and basis for the Maggie Smith film—about a teacher who makes a lasting impression on her female students in the years before World War II (Chicago Tribune). “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!” So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie selects six favorite pupils to mold—and she doesn’t stop with just their intellectual lives. She has a plan for them all, including how they will live, whom they will love, and what sacrifices they will make to uphold her ideals. When the girls reach adulthood and begin to find their own destinies, Jean Brodie’s indelible imprint is a gift to some, and a curse to others. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is Spark’s masterpiece, a novel that offers one of twentieth-century English literature’s most iconic and complex characters—a woman at once admirable and sinister, benevolent and conniving. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland.


Spark

Spark

Author: Patricia Leavy

Publisher: Guilford Publications

Published: 2019-03

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1462538150

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Professor Peyton Wilde has an enviable life teaching sociology at an idyllic liberal arts college--yet she is troubled by a sense of fading inspiration. One day an invitation arrives. Peyton has been selected to attend a luxurious all-expense-paid seminar in Iceland, where participants, billed as some of the greatest thinkers in the world, will be charged with answering one perplexing question. Meeting her diverse teammates--two neuroscientists, a philosopher, a dance teacher, a collage artist, and a farmer--Peyton wonders what she could ever have to contribute. The ensuing journey of discovery will transform the characters' work, their biases, and themselves. This suspenseful novel shows that the answers you seek can be found in the most unlikely places. It can be read for pleasure, is a great choice for book clubs, and can be used as unique and inspiring reading in qualitative research and other courses in education, sociology, social work, psychology, and communication.


The Mandelbaum Gate

The Mandelbaum Gate

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2012-03-20

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 1453245057

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DIVDIVFor Barbara Vaughn, a checkpoint between Jordan and the newly formed Israel is the threshold to painful self-discovery/divDIV /divDIV/divDIVBarbara Vaughn is a scholarly woman whose fascination with religion stems partly from a conversion to Catholicism, and partly from her own half-Jewish background. When her boyfriend joins an archaeological excursion to search for additional Dead Sea Scrolls, Vaughn takes the opportunity to explore the Holy Land. But this is 1960, and with the nation of Israel still in its infancy, the British Empire in retreat from the region, and the Eichmann trials in full swing, Vaughn uncovers much deeper mysteries than those found at tourist sites. /divDIV /divDIVBoth an espionage thriller and a journey of faith, The Mandelbaum Gate won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize upon its publication, and is one of Spark’s most compelling novels./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland./divDIV /divDIV/div/div


Seduction and Death in Muriel Spark's Fiction

Seduction and Death in Muriel Spark's Fiction

Author: Phōteinē Apostolou

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2001-07-30

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13:

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Muriel Spark's works often consider the seductive and destructive power of social structures, such as religion and education. These structures lure Spark's characters with their promise of power. But after entering the structure's domain to exploit the mastery it offers, the characters are imprisoned by rules and codes. Through a postmodern reading of Spark's works, such as The Comforters (1957), ^The Public Image (1968), The Driver's Seat (1970), Reality and Dreams (1996), and Aiding and Abetting (2000), this book analyzes the role of certain social structures in her fiction. The volume argues that these attractions and destructions are very much like postmodern critical games with structures that are open to any experimentation, but at the same time seem fixed and unchanging. Within this postmodern context, one is free to play games with signs and systems of rules. Spark's characters enter these games in a playful mood and test their limits. The texts, images, and spectacles haunt their victims, who are unable to escape the process of attraction and destruction. The characters are eventually led to their death-literal or metaphoric-which will inevitably introduce them to a new beginning.


Love, Lucas

Love, Lucas

Author: Chantele Sedgwick

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-05-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1634500032

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A 2015 Whitney Award Nominee! A powerful story of loss, second chances, and first love, reminiscent of Sarah Dessen and John Green. When Oakley Nelson loses her older brother, Lucas, to cancer, she thinks she’ll never recover. Between her parents’ arguing and the battle she’s fighting with depression, she feels nothing inside but a hollow emptiness. When Mom suggests they spend a few months in California with Aunt Jo, Oakley isn’t sure a change of scenery will alter anything, but she’s willing to give it a try. In California, Oakley discovers a sort of safety and freedom in Aunt Jo’s beach house. Once they’re settled, Mom hands her a notebook full of letters addressed to her—from Lucas. As Oakley reads one each day, she realizes how much he loved her, and each letter challenges her to be better and to continue to enjoy her life. He wants her to move on. If only it were that easy. But then a surfer named Carson comes into her life, and Oakley is blindsided. He makes her feel again. As she lets him in, she is surprised by how much she cares for him, and that’s when things get complicated. How can she fall in love and be happy when Lucas never got the chance to do those very same things? With her brother’s dying words as guidance, Oakley knows she must learn to listen and trust again. But will she have to leave the past behind to find happiness in the future? Sky Pony Press, with our Good Books, Racehorse and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of books for young readers—picture books for small children, chapter books, books for middle grade readers, and novels for young adults. Our list includes bestsellers for children who love to play Minecraft; stories told with LEGO bricks; books that teach lessons about tolerance, patience, and the environment, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.


Memento Mori

Memento Mori

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2014-05-27

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 0811219372

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Poignant, hilarious, and spooky, Memento Mori addresses old age In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone reminds each: Remember you must die. Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled, and many an old unsavory secret is dusted off.


Sunset Song

Sunset Song

Author: Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-11-13

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13:

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Sunset Song is widely regarded as one of the most important Scottish novels of the 20th century. Chris Guthrie, the female protagonist, is a strong character who grows up in a dysfunctional farming family. Life is hard after her dad's death and she must take some tough decisions to save her farms under the inevitable threat of World War I . . . Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell (1901-1935), a Scottish writer famous for his contribution to the Scottish Renaissance and portrayal of strong female characters.


The Girl Who Wrote in Silk

The Girl Who Wrote in Silk

Author: Kelli Estes

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.

Published: 2015-07-07

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1492608343

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A USA TODAY BESTSELLER! "A powerful debut that proves the threads that interweave our lives can withstand time and any tide, and bind our hearts forever."—Susanna Kearsley, New York Times bestselling author of Belleweather and The Vanished Days A historical novel inspired by true events, Kelli Estes's brilliant and atmospheric debut is a poignant tale of two women determined to do the right thing, highlighting the power of our own stories. The smallest items can hold centuries of secrets... While exploring her aunt's island estate, Inara Erickson is captivated by an elaborately stitched piece of fabric hidden in the house. The truth behind the silk sleeve dated back to 1886, when Mei Lien, the lone survivor of a cruel purge of the Chinese in Seattle found refuge on Orcas Island and shared her tragic experience by embroidering it. As Inara peels back layer upon layer of the centuries of secrets the sleeve holds, her life becomes interwoven with that of Mei Lein. Through the stories Mei Lein tells in silk, Inara uncovers a tragic truth that will shake her family to its core—and force her to make an impossible choice. Should she bring shame to her family and risk everything by telling the truth, or tell no one and dishonor Mei Lien's memory? A touching and tender book for fans of Marie Benedict, Susanna Kearsley, and Duncan Jepson, The Girl Who Wrote in Silk is a dual-time period novel that explores how a delicate piece of silk interweaves the past and the present, reminding us that today's actions have far reaching implications. Praise for The Girl Who Wrote in Silk: "A beautiful, elegiac novel, as finely and delicately woven as the title suggests. Kelli Estes spins a spellbinding tale that illuminates the past in all its brutality and beauty, and the humanity that binds us all together." —Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author of The Beekeeper's Ball "A touching and tender story about discovering the past to bring peace to the present." —Duncan Jepson, author of All the Flowers in Shanghai "Vibrant and tragic, The Girl Who Wrote in Silk explores a horrific, little-known era in our nation's history. Estes sensitively alternates between Mei Lien, a young Chinese-American girl who lived in the late 1800s, and Inara, a modern recent college grad who sets Mei Lien's story free." —Margaret Dilloway, author of How to Be an American Housewife and Sisters of Heart and Snow


Glover's Mistake

Glover's Mistake

Author: Nick Laird

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2009-07-09

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1101108576

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An insightful and drolly satirical novel about contemporary romance--"the kind of book Jane Austen would've written had she been male and hipper." -Chicago Tribune Look out for Nick Laird's new novel, Modern Gods, coming in June 2017 With his debut novel, Utterly Monkey, Nick Laird won acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic for his deft humor and sharp-eyed powers of observation. In this new novel, disaffected thirty-something college teacher David introduces his former teacher, American artist Ruth Marks, to his friend and flatmate James Glover, unwittingly setting in place a love triangle loaded with tension, guilt, and heartbreak. Set in the London art scene awash with new money and intellectual pretension, Nick Laird's insightful and drolly satirical novel explores the nature of contemporary romance among damaged souls whose hearts and heads never quite line up long enough for them to achieve true happiness.