Under a Canvas Sky

Under a Canvas Sky

Author: Clare Peake

Publisher: Constable

Published: 2012-04-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9781780333854

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Clare Peake, daughter of the celebrated writer and artist Mervyn Peake, tells the story of her parents' romance and her own happy and bohemian childhood.Mervyn Peake was born in China, the son of medical missionaries, and the juxtaposition of his exotic surroundings and the very English manners at home had a lasting effect on him. Reading Treasure Island until he could recite it by heart and waiting for comics to arrive from England had him living a childhood bursting with imagery.He returned to England to study at the Royal Academy School and was then offered a teaching post at Westminster School of Art. There his charismatic and un-worldly presence made a huge impact: none more so than on Maeve Gilmore, a seventeen-year-old sculpture student.The couple fell passionately in love but Maeve's parents were determined their daughter would not marry a penniless artist and sent her away to forget him. She didn't and, refusing to be parted ever again, they married when Maeve was nineteen and Mervyn twenty-six.Mervyn Peake developed Parkinson's disease aged forty-five.His decline was rapid and he spent time in and out of mental hospitals until his death at fifty-seven, the diagnosis never fully understood. Clare Peake writes movingly of the impact on the family and her mother's determination to continue giving her children the happiness she felt all children deserved.


Canvas Under the Sky

Canvas Under the Sky

Author: Robin Binckes

Publisher: 30 Degrees South Publishers

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781920143633

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It is 1834. The Eastern Cape frontier is burning. Rauch Beukes, a young Boer of 17, returns to the family homestead to find it razed, the livestock gone and his mother and sisters slaughtered by the marauding Xhosa from across the Great Fish River. So begins a tale of violence and warfare and love and lust across racial divides, painted against the


Under a Yellow Sky

Under a Yellow Sky

Author: Simon J. Hall

Publisher: Whittles

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781849950947

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Simon Hall went to sea in search of a way of life that he believed was glamorous, adventurous and disciplined, a life where smartly-uniformed men ran ships in a tightly organised manner. At this time the British fleet was still one of the largest in the world and the Red Ensign a common sight in most large ports. In over three years as a Deck Cadet he explored this world and although he uncovered much of the magic of the sea, he also encountered brutality, exploitation, dizzying hard work and frightening bouts of violence. From the rigidity of naval college to the heat and sweat of working as a deck-hand in the South China Sea, the book charts Simon's progress from a naïve and callow school-leaver to a strong young man. On that road he encountered a cast of people that were beyond his wildest imagination. He met the bad: sadists, bullies, madmen; and the sad: alcoholics, prostitutes, drug addicts. And sometimes people so good they diminished him. The author tells of nights so cold the water froze on his hands; of days when the sun was so hot he could hear his skin sizzle and of times when the ship steamed through wild seas that rushed over the deck like boiling foam. With a thread of humour running throughout, he writes of the shipboard camaraderie and the wild jaunts ashore in exotic places.


Under a Painted Sky

Under a Painted Sky

Author: Stacey Heather Lee

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0399168036

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"In 1845, Sammy, a Chinese American girl, and Annamae, an African American slave girl, disguise themselves as boys and travel on the Oregon Trail to California from Missouri"--


Under a White Sky

Under a White Sky

Author: Elizabeth Kolbert

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2021-02-09

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0593136292

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? RECOMMENDED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND BILL GATES • SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, Esquire, Smithsonian Magazine, Vulture, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • “Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment.”—Helen Macdonald, The New York Times That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.


Landscape Painting

Landscape Painting

Author: Mitchell Albala

Publisher: Watson-Guptill

Published: 2011-11-15

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0823008347

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Because nature is so expansive and complex, so varied in its range of light, landscape painters often have to look further and more deeply to find form and structure, value patterns, and an organized arrangement of shapes. In Landscape Painting, Mitchell Albala shares his concepts and practices for translating nature's grandeur, complexity, and color dynamics into convincing representations of space and light. Concise, practical, and inspirational, Landscape Painting focuses on the greatest challenges for the landscape artist, such as: • Simplification and Massing: Learn to reduce nature's complexity by looking beneath the surface of a subject to discover the form's basic masses and shapes.• Color and Light: Explore color theory as it specifically applies to the landscape, and learn the various strategies painters use to capture the illusion of natural light.• Selection and Composition: Learn to select wisely from nature's vast panorama. Albala shows you the essential cues to look for and how to find the most promising subject from a world of possibilities. The lessons in Landscape Painting—based on observation rather than imitation and applicable to both plein air and studio practice—are accompanied by painting examples, demonstrations, photographs, and diagrams. Illustrations draw from the work of more than 40 contemporary artists and such masters of landscape painting as John Constable, Sanford Gifford, and Claude Monet. Based on Albala's 25 years of experience and the proven methods taught at his successful plein air workshops, this in-depth guide to all aspects of landscape painting is a must-have for anyone getting started in the genre, as well as more experienced practitioners who want to hone their skills or learn new perspectives.


Under the Broken Sky

Under the Broken Sky

Author: Mariko Nagai

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1250159229

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"Necessary for all of humankind, Under the Broken Sky is a breathtaking work of literature."—Booklist, starred review A beautifully told middle-grade novel-in-verse about a Japanese orphan’s experience in occupied rural Manchuria during World War II. Twelve-year-old Natsu and her family live a quiet farm life in Manchuria, near the border of the Soviet Union. But the life they’ve known begins to unravel when her father is recruited to the Japanese army, and Natsu and her little sister, Cricket, are left orphaned and destitute. In a desperate move to keep her sister alive, Natsu sells Cricket to a Russian family following the 1945 Soviet occupation. The journey to redemption for Natsu's broken family is rife with struggles, but Natsu is tenacious and will stop at nothing to get her little sister back. Literary and historically insightful, this is one of the great untold stories of WWII. Much like the Newbery Honor book Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, Mariko Nagai's Under the Broken Sky is powerful, poignant, and ultimately hopeful. Christy Ottaviano Books


Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Author: Mark Sullivan

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781503902374

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A teenage boy in 1940s Italy becomes part of an underground railroad that helps Jews escape through the Alps, but when he is recruited to be the personal driver for a powerful Third Reich commander, he begins to spy for the Allies.


Inside Team Sky

Inside Team Sky

Author: David Walsh

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-06-19

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1471133338

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The inside story of Team Sky's challenge for the 2013 Tour de France. After the victory of Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky in the 2012 Tour de France, the pressure was on the team to repeat their success in 2013. When Wiggins had to pull out of the defence of his yellow jersey, attention moved to Chris Froome, who had finished as runner-up the year before. Could he bring about back-to-back victories for the UK and for Team Sky? With team principal Sir Dave Brailsford at the helm, the levels of expectation were high. Nothing less than a win would do. Embedded within the team was top sportswriter David Walsh, who had been covering the sport for four decades. The Sunday Times writer had done more than any other journalist to reveal the lies of Lance Armstrong, he has the reputation for exposing the dark secrets that cycling would want to keep hidden. His inside story, from how Team Sky prepared for the Tour de France through to Froome's emphatic victory, is supported by insights from all the key members of the team, and provides a definitive account of a dramatic race that gripped cycling fans around the world.