Promenade of Desire
Promenade of Desire

Author: Isidra Mencos

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-10-11

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1647422523

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“A brave and unblinkingly honest portrait of a young woman’s sensual and sexual awakening in the face of censure and repression, and her refusal to be held back by the constraints of her family, culture, and religion. The same joyful spirit that expresses itself in Mencos’ love of dancing shines through in her story of her own personal dance into a brave new world beyond the one her mother prescribed for her. Her story is shameless, in the very best sense of the word.” —Joyce Maynard, New York Times best-selling author of Labor Day, To Die For, and Count The Ways María Isidra is a proper Catholic girl raised in 1960s Spain by a strong matriarch during a repressive dictatorship. Early sexual trauma and a hefty dose of fear keep her in line for much of her childhood, but also lead her to live a double life. In her home, there is no discussing the needs of her growing body. In the street, kissing in public is forbidden. Upon the dictator’s death in 1975, Spain bursts wide open, giving way to democracy and a cultural revolution. Barcelona’s vibrant downtown and its new freedoms seduce María Isidra. She dives into a world of activism, communal living, literature, counterculture, open sexuality, and alcohol. And yet she knows something is missing. Longing to reconnect with her body—from which she has felt estranged since childhood—she finds a surprising home in a rundown salsa club, where the lush rhythm sparks a deep wave of healing. Transformed, she sets off on a series of sexual and romantic misadventures, in search for what she has always found painfully elusive: true intimacy. Promenade of Desire is a rich journey into the life of a woman once contained, who finds a way to set herself free.

In The Shadow Of The Banyan
In The Shadow Of The Banyan

Author: Vaddey Ratner

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-09-13

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 1849837619

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A stunning, powerful debut novel set against the backdrop of the Cambodian War, perfect for fans of Chris Cleave and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labour, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyanis testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience. 'In the Shadow of the Banyanis one of the most extraordinary and beautiful acts of storytelling I have ever encountered' Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand 'Ratner is a fearless writer, and the novel explores important themes such as power, the relationship between love and guilt, and class. Most remarkably, it depicts the lives of characters forced to live in extreme circumstances, and investigates how that changes them. To read In the Shadow of the Banyan is to be left with a profound sense of being witness to a tragedy of history' Guardian 'This is an extraordinary debut … as beautiful as it is heartbreaking' Mail on Sunday

The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs
The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs

Author: Leslie Kirk Campbell

Publisher: Sarabande Books

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 1946448893

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In these brilliant, thematically linked stories, men and women from the Midwest to the West Coast, from Germany to Japan—engineers, opera singers, waitresses, teenagers, and monks—reckon with their body’s relationship to grief, illness, violation, technology, and genocide. They escape their fate in unusual ways—by befriending the squatting heroin addict next door, using a child’s flute as a gun in the dark, or ordering a new pair of legs, all in a variety of rich settings. The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs is about the ways our bodies are marked by memory, often literally (burns, bruises, tracks, tattoos), and the risky decisions we make when pushed to the extreme. There’s a little O’Connor, a dash of DeLillo, and a cup of Alice Munro mixed together with a great deal of compassion. Leslie Campbell’s fiction debut is a must-read and sure winner.

A Wrinkle in Time
A Wrinkle in Time

Author: Madeleine L'Engle

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1429915641

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NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER • TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM DISNEY Read the ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy classic that has delighted children for over 60 years! "A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so often, I know it by heart." —Meg Cabot Late one night, three otherworldly creatures appear and sweep Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe away on a mission to save Mr. Murray, who has gone missing while doing top-secret work for the government. They travel via tesseract--a wrinkle that transports one across space and time--to the planet Camazotz, where Mr. Murray is being held captive. There they discover a dark force that threatens not only Mr. Murray but the safety of the whole universe. A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet.

My Place At The Table
My Place At The Table

Author: Alexander Lobrano

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1328585212

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In this debut memoir, a James Beard Award–winning writer, whose childhood idea of fine dining was Howard Johnson’s, tells how he became one of Paris’s most influential food critics Until Alec Lobrano landed a job in the glamorous Paris office of Women’s Wear Daily, his main experience of French cuisine was the occasional supermarket éclair. An interview with the owner of a renowned cheese shop for his first article nearly proves a disaster because he speaks no French. As he goes on to cover celebrities and couturiers and improves his mastery of the language, he gradually learns what it means to be truly French. He attends a cocktail party with Yves St. Laurent and has dinner with Giorgio Armani. Over a superb lunch, it’s his landlady who ultimately provides him with a lasting touchstone for how to judge food: “you must understand the intentions of the cook.” At the city’s brasseries and bistros, he discovers real French cooking. Through a series of vivid encounters with culinary figures from Paul Bocuse to Julia Child to Ruth Reichl, Lobrano hones his palate and finds his voice. Soon the timid boy from Connecticut is at the epicenter of the Parisian dining revolution and the restaurant critic of one of the largest newspapers in the France. A mouthwatering testament to the healing power of food, My Place at the Table is a moving coming-of-age story of how a gay man emerges from a wounding childhood, discovers himself, and finds love. Published here for the first time is Lobrano’s “little black book,” an insider’s guide to his thirty all-time-favorite Paris restaurants.

The Riviera, Exposed
The Riviera, Exposed

Author: Stephen L. Harp

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2022-05-15

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1501763032

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A sweeping social and environmental history, The Riviera, Exposed illuminates the profound changes to the physical space that we know as the quintessential European tourist destination. Stephen L. Harp uncovers the behind-the-scenes impact of tourism following World War II, both on the environment and on the people living and working on the Riviera, particularly North African laborers, who not only did much of the literal rebuilding of the Riviera but also suffered in that process. Outside of Paris, the Riviera has been the most visited region in France, depending almost exclusively on tourism as its economic lifeline. Until recently, we knew a great deal about the tourists but much less about the social and environmental impacts of their activities or about the life stories of the North African workers upon whom the Riviera's prosperity rests. The technologies embedded in roads, airports, hotels, water lines, sewers, beaches, and marinas all required human intervention—and travelers were encouraged to disregard this intervention. Harp's sharp analysis explores the impacts of massive construction and public works projects, revealing the invisible infrastructure of tourism, its environmental effects, and the immigrants who built the Riviera. The Riviera, Exposed unearths a gritty history, one of human labor and ecological degradation that forms the true foundation of the glamorous Riviera of tourist mythology.

Los Angeles Promenade of Prominence
Los Angeles Promenade of Prominence

Author: Dr. James A. Mays

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2015-01-31

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 1499081324

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James A. Mays, MD, deserves the recognition a CNN Hero, because he is a unique medical doctor and person in providing medical of the body while giving hope as a role and motivator to the citizens of Los Angeles, especially its youth. He is called the Dr. Welby of the ghetto. He has been named the Doctor of the year in Los Angeles and Watts. He is a 1965 graduate of the University of Arkansas and was named Alumnus of the Year, Community Affairs, in 1993. His community education on high blood pressure resulted in an editorial written by him in the Los Angeles Times titled Salt and Soul Food revolutionized thinking on ethnic foods transfer as a etiology for heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity; he awakened the nation during his national medical speaking engagements and appearance in the national media, picture, and print. He traveled the nation, speaking, while serving as the chief of cardiology as a young thirty-one-year-old physician at the new Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles from 19721976. His nocturnal AIDS education walks and education to street corners and motels, educating prostitutes, street people, and youth (1980 to present)are noteworthy. He cofounded the United High Blood Pressure Foundation and presented the first of a series of telethons. He later became chancellor of the Technical Health Career schools (19801985) while in private practice as a primary care physician with three medical offices in South Los Angeles for thirty-five years to the present.