Suzanne's Children

Suzanne's Children

Anne Nelson

History / Biography

A story of courage in the face of evil. The tense drama of Suzanne Spaak who risked and gave her life to save hundreds of Jewish children from deportation from Nazi Paris to Auschwitz. This is one of the untold stories of the Holocaust.Suzanne Spaak was born into the Belgian Catholic elite and married into the country's leading political family. Her brother-in-law was the Foreign Minister and her husband Claude was a playwright and patron of the painter Renée Magritte. In Paris in the late 1930s her friendship with a Polish Jewish refugee led her to her life's purpose. When France fell and the Nazis occupied Paris, she joined the Resistance. She used her fortune and social status to enlist allies among wealthy Parisians and church groups. Under the eyes of the Gestapo, Suzanne and women from the Jewish and Christian resistance groups "kidnapped" hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers. In the final year of the Occupation Suzanne was...
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Hemingway in Love

Hemingway in Love

A. E. Hotchner

Nonfiction / Biography / Autobiography

In June of 1961, A.E. Hotchner visited an old friend in the psychiatric ward of St. Mary's Hospital. It would be the last time they spoke-a few weeks later, Ernest Hemingway was released home, where he took his own life. Their final conversation was also the final installment in a story whose telling Hemingway had spread over more than a decade. In characteristically pragmatic terms, Hemingway revealed to Hotchner the details of the affair that destroyed his first marriage: the truth of his romantic life in Paris and how he lost Hadley, the true part of each literary woman he'd later create and the great love he spent the rest of his life seeking. And he told of the mischief that made him a legend: of impotence cured in a house of God; of a plane crash in the African bush, from which Hemingway stumbled with a bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin in hand; of F. Scott Fitzgerald dispensing romantic advice and champagne in the buff with Josephine Baker; of adventure,...
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Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories: A Hercule Poirot Collection With Foreword by Charles Todd

Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories: A Hercule Poirot Collection With Foreword by Charles Todd

Agatha Christie

Nonfiction / History / Biography

At last, a single volume that gathers together all of the short stories featuring Agatha Christie's most famous creation: Hercule Poirot. The dapper, mustache-twirling little Belgian with the egg-shaped head and curious mannerisms has solved some of the most puzzling crimes of the century—and, in his own humble opinion, is "probably the greatest detective in the world."In this complete collection of stories, ranging from short tales to novellas, Poirot faces violent murders, poisonings, kidnappings, and thefts—all solved with his characteristic panache. Only Agatha Christie could have devised cases worthy of Hercule Poirot's skill and "little gray cells." About the AuthorAgatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976.
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Can You Hear the Sea?

Can You Hear the Sea?

Brenda Niall

Biography / Cultural / Australia

'An affectionate tribute to someone who quietly but firmly shaped her own place in the world.' Books+Publishing Brenda Niall has turned her biographer's eye to a personal subject—her grandmother, Aggie. She tells the story of a fiercely independent and intelligent woman who braved a new country as a single woman, teaching in a country school, before marrying a Riverina grazier, whose large powerful family was wary of the newcomer with ideas of her own. Aggie dealt with hardships and loneliness after the early and drawn-out death of her husband, and brought up her seven children to be happy—all with a calm determination. But it was the memory box and her longing for the sea that captured the imagination of her granddaughter.Brenda Niall is one of Australia's foremost biographers. She is the author of five award-winning biographies, including her acclaimed accounts of the Boyd family. In 2016 she won the Australian Literature...
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Shakespeare

Shakespeare

Peter Ackroyd

Biography / Fiction / Poetry

Drawing on an exceptional combination of skills as literary biographer, novelist, and chronicler of London history, Peter Ackroyd surely re-creates the world that shaped Shakespeare--and brings the playwright himself into unusually vivid focus. With characteristic narrative panache, Ackroyd immerses us in sixteenth-century Stratford and the rural landscape--the industry, the animals, even the flowers--that would appear in Shakespeare's plays. He takes us through Shakespeare's London neighborhood and the fertile, competitive theater world where he worked as actor and writer. He shows us Shakespeare as a businessman, and as a constant reviser of his writing. In joining these intimate details with profound intuitions about the playwright and his work, Ackroyd has produced an altogether engaging masterpiece.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Thunderstrike in Syria

Thunderstrike in Syria

Nick Carter

Nonfiction / Biography / Music

DEATH IN THE DESERT! The Syrian Liberation Army, a fanatical group driven by "The Hawk," are expanding their activities — if they succeed a tanker will explode in New York Harbor wasting a million lives! And that'll be just the beginning! Nick Carter enlists double agent Miriam Kamel to lead him to the terrorists' desert camp under the spectacular ruins of The Tower of Lions. Miriam's an expert in the arts of love and war — but Nick wonders if she's as clever at deceit… Under the chilling desert moon, amid the dying cries of "The Hawk's" torture victims, Nick is trapped in a nerve shattering battle. His Israeli friends call him Lamedvovnik — the secret saint. But as time runs short N-3 could quickly become another kind of «saint» — a very dead martyr!
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The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo

The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo

Amy Schumer

Humor and Comedy / Biography

"Amy's got your back. She's in your corner. She's an honesty bomb. And she's coming for you." —Actress Tilda Swinton and Trainwreck co-star The Emmy Award-winning comedian, actress, writer, and star of Inside Amy Schumer and the acclaimed film Trainwreck has taken the entertainment world by storm with her winning blend of smart, satirical humor. Now, Amy Schumer has written a refreshingly candid and uproariously funny collection of (extremely) personal and observational essays.In The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy mines her past for stories about her teenage years, her family, relationships, and sex and shares the experiences that have shaped who she is—a woman with the courage to bare her soul to stand up for what she believes in, all while making us laugh. Down to earth and relatable, frank and unapologetic, Amy Schumer is one of us: she relies on her sister for advice, still hangs out with her...
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Fatal North

Fatal North

Bruce Henderson

Nonfiction / History / Biography

"Compulsively readable" -San Francisco ExaminerIt began as President Ulysses S. Grant's bid for international glory after the Civil War—America's first attempt to reach the North Pole. It ended with Captain Charles Hall's death under suspicious circumstances, dissension among sailors, scientists, and explorers, the ship's evacuation and eventual sinking. Then came a brutal struggle for survival by thirty-three men, women and children, stranded on the polar ice—and two dramatic rescues by whaling ships. When news of the disastrous expedition and accusations of murder reached Washington D.C., it led to a nationwide scandal, an official investigation, and a government cover-up.The mystery of the captain's death remained unsolved for nearly 100 years. But when Charles Hall's frozen grave in northern Greenland was opened, and hair and fingernail samples were retrieved, forensic scientists were finally able to reach a shocking conclusion.
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Napoleon

Napoleon

Andrew Roberts

History / Biography

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times. Andrew Roberts's Napoleon is the first modern biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth...
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