From the author of The Shoe Queen comes a jazz-age tale of love set in the world of London’s high society. London, 1927. Diamond Sharp writes a racy newspaper column, using a fake name to conceal her identity. When she meets two charismatic American men who are bitter enemies, her life is turned upside down. She is drawn to both of them but isn’t sure whom she can trust. As she becomes increasingly involved with both, Diamond begins to uncover a nest of secrets that puts both her heart and her reputation at risk. Blending the rich historical detail of Philippa Gregory’s novels with the sophisticated glamour of Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic books, The Jewel Box is romantic historical fiction at its finest.
A plastic box with a lightbulb attached may seem like an odd birthday present. But for ecologist Tim Blackburn, a moth trap is a captivating window into the world beyond the roof terrace of his London flat. Whether gaudy or drab, rare or common, each moth ensnared by the trap is a treasure with a story to tell. In The Jewel Box, Blackburn introduces these mysterious visitors, revealing how the moths he catches reflect hidden patterns governing the world around us. With names like the Dingy Footman, Jersey Tiger, Pale Mottled Willow, and Uncertain, and at least 140,000 identified species, moths are fascinating in their own right. But no moth is an island—they are vital links in the web of life. Through the lives of these overlooked insects, Blackburn introduces a landscape of unseen ecological connections. The flapping of a moth’s wing may not cause a hurricane, but it is closely tied to the wider world, from the park down the street to climatic shifts across the globe. Through his luminous prose and infectious sense of curiosity, Blackburn teaches us to see—and respect—the intricate web of nature in which we’re all caught. The Jewel Box shows us how the contents of one small box can illuminate the workings of all nature.
Featured on LeVar Burton Reads “Like Oscar Wilde or Ray Bradbury, E. Lily Yu writes the kind of delicious short stories that come with a sting in the tail. Utterly beguiling.” —Kelly Link, bestselling author of Get in Trouble “Each story here is a gem. A trove of fantastical treasures.” —Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW “An astonishing collection of stories…transformative.” —Library Journal STARRED REVIEW The strange, the sublime, and the monstrous confront one another with astonishing consequences in this collection of twenty-two stories from award-winning writer E. Lily Yu. In the village of Yiwei, a fallen wasp nest unfurls into a beautifully accurate map. In a field in Louisiana, birdwatchers forge an indelible connection over a shared glimpse of a Vermilion Flycatcher, and fall. In Nineveh, a judge who prides himself on impartiality finds himself questioned by a mysterious god. On a nameless shore, a small monster searches for refuge and finds unexpected courage. At turns bittersweet and boundary-breaking, poignant and profound, these twenty-two stories sing, as the oldest fables do, of what it means to be alive in this strange, terrible, beautiful world. For readers who loved the intelligence and compassion in Kim Fu's Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century and the dreamlike prose of Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, this collection introduces the short fiction of E. Lily Yu, winner of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer and author of the Washington Book Award–winning novel On Fragile Waves, praised by the New York Times Book Review as "devastating and perfect." "A lovely story." —LeVar Burton, on "The Pilgrim and The Angel" (from Jewel Box: Stories)
An antique dealer’s revelation about a former queen’s priceless heirloom starts Nancy on a trail of exciting adventures. Madame Alexandra, now living incognito in River Heights, asks Nancy to find her missing grandson. With only one clue to go on – a faded photograph of the prince at the age of four – the young detective begins her search. Nancy’s investigation unmasks a slick imposter and reunites the long-separated family in this suspense-filled story.
Crossing the Stage brings together for the first time essays which explore cross-dressing in theatre, cabaret, opera and dance. The volume contains seminal pieces which have become standard texts in the field, as well as new work especially commissioned from leading writers on performance. Crossing the Stage is an indispensable sourcebook on theatrical cross-dressing. It will be essential reading for all those interested in performance and the representation of gender.
LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.
Within the pages of this book lies the story of the community of lesbians and gays that blossomed around America's first gay-owned cabaret, the Garden of Allah, in seedy downtown Seattle.
Poised on the edge of the United States and at the center of a wider Caribbean world, today's Miami is marketed as an international tourist hub that embraces gender and sexual difference. As Julio Capo Jr. shows in this fascinating history, Miami's transnational connections reveal that the city has been a queer borderland for over a century. In chronicling Miami's queer past from its 1896 founding through 1940, Capo shows the multifaceted ways gender and sexual renegades made the city their own. Drawing from a multilingual archive, Capo unearths the forgotten history of "fairyland," a marketing term crafted by boosters that held multiple meanings for different groups of people. In viewing Miami as a contested colonial space, he turns our attention to migrants and immigrants, tourism, and trade to and from the Caribbean--particularly the Bahamas, Cuba, and Haiti--to expand the geographic and methodological parameters of urban and queer history. Recovering the world of Miami's old saloons, brothels, immigration checkpoints, borders, nightclubs, bars, and cruising sites, Capo makes clear how critical gender and sexual transgression is to understanding the city and the broader region in all its fullness.
