The Salt Madonna
The Salt Madonna

Author: Catherine Noske

Publisher: Picador Australia

Published: 2020-02-25

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1760980196

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'Tense, original and lyrically told; this is a gripping story of a community spellbound by collective mania and the search for what cannot be found...' Gail Jones This is the story of a crime. This is the story of a miracle. There are two stories here. Hannah Mulvey left her island home as a teenager. But her stubborn, defiant mother is dying, and now Hannah has returned to Chesil, taking up a teaching post at the tiny schoolhouse, doing what she can in the long days of this final year. But though Hannah cannot pinpoint exactly when it begins, something threatens her small community. A girl disappears entirely from class. Odd reports and rumours reach her through her young charges. People mutter on street corners, the church bell tolls through the night and the island's women gather at strange hours...And then the miracles begin. A page-turning, thought-provoking portrayal of a remote community caught up in a collective moment of madness, of good intentions turned terribly awry. A blistering examination of truth and power, and how we might tell one from the other. SHORTLISTED FOR THE WEST AUSTRALIAN PREMIER'S BOOK AWARDS PREMIER'S PRIZE FOR AN EMERGING WRITER 2020 Praise for The Salt Madonna 'Catherine Noske's debut novel grapples with questions of familial obligation, complicity, remorse and the fallibility of memory ... The Salt Madonna will appeal to readers who enjoyed Laura Elizabeth Woollett's Beautiful Revolutionary.' - Books+Publishing 'Catherine Noske's The Salt Madonna is Australian Gothic at its most sublime and uncanny. Superbly atmospheric and darkly unsettling, the characters are haunted by their colonial pasts, manifested in guilty silence...Noske's taut, subversive writing exposes unspeakable truths buried in dazzling stories, miracles and epiphanies.' - Cassandra Atherton

Mr Peabodys Apples
Mr Peabodys Apples

Author: Madonna

Publisher: Puffin Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780140569674

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A boy learns a lesson about the destructive power of gossip.

Madonna
Madonna

Author: J. Randy Taraborrelli

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2001-09-27

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0743228804

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Madonna! Megastar. Lover. Mother. Opportunist. Chameleon. Role model. She's all of these things...and more. Yet, who is she, really? In Madonna: An Intimate Biography, author J. Randy Taraborrelli's scrupulously researched and completely balanced unauthorized biography of one of the world's most celebrated entertainers, the reader is allowed to draw his or her own conclusions. Indeed, the portrait bestselling author Taraborrelli paints here is of a truly complex woman, one who is driven and determined to succeed at any cost, yet who displays remarkable vulnerability when it comes to matters of the heart. It is significant that Madonna: An Intimate Biography is the first such book written about the star in over a decade, because in the past ten years the ever-changing Madonna has gone through her biggest transformation yet -- from tempestuous sex goddess to happily married mother. Amazingly, as she launches her first worldwide tour in eight years, she is now -- at forty-something -- enjoying one of the most successful periods of her groundbreaking career. Whereas other books about Madonna have been based on previously published material, Madonna: An Intimate Biography is the result of ten years of exclusive interviews with people who are speaking publicly about her for the first time, including close friends, business associates and even family members. Since Taraborrelli interviewed the star herself early in her career, he is now able to draw from such firsthand experiences to place her success story in perspective and provide new, stunning insights. The true Madonna, as presented here, is not merely a sensation-seeking tabloid vixen, but a flesh-and-blood woman with human foibles and weaknesses -- as well as great strengths and ambitions. For the first time, the reader learns about the complex nature of her difficult relationship with her father, and how the two finally found one another after years of estrangement; how Warren Beatty broke her heart, and why the two never wed; how she and John Kennedy, Jr., became romantically involved, his mother's reaction to the prospect of Madonna as a daughter-in-law and why it could never have worked out; the truth of her relationships with the fathers of her two children and how, as a loving and attentive mother, she has evolved into a surprisingly different woman...and what the future holds for her. Madonna: An Intimate Biography is a truly explosive and definitive account of the life of an entertainer who is undoubtedly one of the most popular, trendsetting figures of our time. Full of amazing disclosures about her private life and public career, New York Times bestselling author J. Randy Taraborrelli's latest work reveals Madonna in a new -- and surprisingly inspiring -- way. Not only a feast for fans, this book is great entertainment for anyone who enjoys a remarkable story, stirringly told.

The Madonna of the Mountains
The Madonna of the Mountains

Author: Elise Valmorbida

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2018-06-12

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0399592431

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“A riveting adventure for the soul . . . just the kind of evocative historical fiction I love.”—Sara Gruen, author of At the Water’s Edge and Water for Elephants An epic, inspiring novel about one woman’s survival in the hardscrabble Italian countryside and her determination to protect her family throughout the Second World War—by any means possible Maria Vittoria is twenty-five when her father brings home the man who will become her husband. It is 1923 in the austere Italian mountain village where her family has lived for generations, and the man she sees is tall and handsome and has survived the First World War without any noticeable scars. Taking just the linens she has sewn that make up her dowry and a statue of the Madonna that sits by her bedside, Maria leaves the only life she has ever known to begin a family. But her future will not be what she imagines. The Madonna of the Mountains follows Maria over the next three decades, as she moves to the town where she and her husband become shopkeepers, through the birth of their five children, through the hardships and cruelties of the National Fascist Party Rule and the Second World War. Struggling with the cost of survival at a time when food is scarce and allegiances are questioned, Maria trusts no one and fears everyone—her Fascist cousin, the madwoman from her childhood, her watchful neighbors, the Nazis and the Partisans who show up hungry at her door. As Maria’s children grow up and her marriage endures its own hardships, she must hold her family together with resilience, love, and faith, until she makes a fateful decision that will change the course of all their lives. A sweeping saga about womanhood, loyalty, war, religion, family, food, motherhood, and marriage, The Madonna of the Mountains is a poignant look at the span of one woman’s life as the rules change and her world becomes unrecognizable. In depicting the great cost of war and the ineluctable power of time on a life, Elise Valmorbida has created an unforgettable portrait of a woman navigating both the unforeseen and the inevitable. Advance praise for Madonna of the Mountains “The moral and ethical questions raised propel the story beyond the particulars into the universal.”—Kirkus Reviews “It is a bewitching but entirely unsentimental portrait of one woman’s attempt to keep her family safe in turbulent times.”—The Times (UK), Book of the Month “A solid choice for readers who appreciate layered family sagas.”—Library Journal

Eye of a Rook
Eye of a Rook

Author: Josephine Taylor

Publisher: Fremantle Press

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1925816729

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In 1860s London, Arthur sees his wife, Emily, suddenly struck down by a pain for which she can find no words, forced to endure harmful treatments, and reliant on him for guidance. Meanwhile, in contemporary Perth, Alice, a writer, and her older husband, Duncan, find their marriage threatened as Alice investigates the history of hysteria, female sexuality, and the treatment of the female body—her own and the bodies of those who came before.

The Madonna of 115th Street
The Madonna of 115th Street

Author: Robert A. Orsi

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0300157525

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A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Robert A. Orsi's classic study of popular religion in Italian Harlem. In a new preface, Orsi discusses significant shifts in the field of religious history and calls for new ways of empirically studying divine presences in human life. "The Madonna of 115th Street has over the last quarter century become a classic of American religious history. There are few books that I have enjoyed teaching more over the years and even fewer that have taught me as much about American Catholic history."—Leigh E. Schmidt, author of Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

Auntie Poldi and the Lost Madonna
Auntie Poldi and the Lost Madonna

Author: Mario Giordano

Publisher: Auntie Poldi Adventure

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 0358446279

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There's only one Auntie Poldi: bewigged, cursing in Bavarian, and knocking back a wee shot of grappa as a pre-breakfast aperitif . . . or is there? No one is as they seem (and sound) in this hilarious new mystery featuring Sicily's sultriest sleuth. Strange dealings are afoot in the Apostolic Palace--a nun leapt to her death shortly after participating in a seemingly routine exorcism. But when a priest clad in Gammarelli and a Vatican commissario with an almost unholy level of sex appeal turn up at her door, Poldi is shocked to hear that she's a suspect in their case. Who is the woman being exorcised, and where has she disappeared to? And why in the world does she claim, in perfect Bavarian, to be Poldi, Isolde Oberreiter, of Torre Archirafi? Poldi will need all the help she can get to clear her name, but her nephew has been distracted by a love affair gone sour, someone in the town has been spraying graffiti death threats on her front door, and her local friends seem to be avoiding her. And even Vito Montana balks when Poldi discovers that the case hinges on a lost Madonna statue, stolen years ago from the pope himself. Forza, Poldi! With a pair of mysterious twins dogging her every move and a mandate to maintain sobriety, will Poldi be able to unmask her mysterious doppelgänger, find the lost statue in time, and survive her sixty-first birthday?

Spirits of San Francisco
Spirits of San Francisco

Author: Gary Kamiya

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1635575893

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The bestselling book from two prizewinning, critically acclaimed contemporary chroniclers of San Francisco-a rich, illustrated, idiosyncratic portrait of this great city. In Spirits of San Francisco, #1 bestselling Cool Gray City of Love author Gary Kamiya joins forces with celebrated, bestselling artist Paul Madonna to take a fresh look at this one-of-a-kind city. Marrying image and text in a way no book about this city has done before, Kamiya's illuminating narratives accompany Madonna's masterful pen-and-ink drawings, breathing life into San Francisco sites both iconic and obscure. Paul Madonna's atmospheric images will awe: his wide-angle drawings offer a new perspective on the “crookedest street in the world” and vistas across the city. And Kamiya's engaging prose, accompanying each image, offers striking vignettes of this incredible city: witness his story of “Dumpville,” the bizarre community that sprang up in the 19th century on top of a massive garbage dump. Handsome and irresistible-much like the city it chronicles-Spirits of San Francisco is both a visual feast and a detailed, personal, loving, informed portrait of a beloved city.

The Madonna Ghost
The Madonna Ghost

Author: Linda Maria Frank

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2013-11-05

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1491710632

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Seventeen-year-old Annie Tillery and her Aunt Jill set off for Long Islands Fire Island for a vacation of surf, sun, and sailing. Annie is happy to leave behind the stress of her relationship with her parents. Aunt Jill, who is an NYPD detective, is mixing her vacation with a case she must keep secret from Annie, who is suspicious nevertheless. Annie finds romance and intrigue when she meets Ty Egan, the nephew of their host on the island. They find themselves in the middle of an eerie adventure when she and Ty investigate the tragic and perplexing story of a local ghost. Annie becomes increasingly uneasy and the investigation turns sinister when Aunt Jill goes missing, the ghost appears, and the troublesome neighbors in the cottage next door become hostile. When they find one of Aunt Jills special earrings on the neighbors porch, they begin to wonder what she was doing there. Will they find Aunt Jill before its too late? In the breathless conclusion to their investigation, Annie and Ty narrowly escape death solving the mystery of The Madonna Ghost.