New and Recently Released!
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| Off the radar: a father's secret, a mother's heroism, and a son's quest by Cyrus CopelandAuthor Cyrus Copeland, son of an Iranian mother and an American father, lived in Tehran when he was young, never imagining that his family could be turned inside-out by Iranian politics. In 1979, Revolutionary agents arrested his father, a Westinghouse employee, and charged him with spying for the CIA. In this thoughtful memoir, Copeland relates his multicultural childhood, explores what happened to his father, and portrays his mother's heroic efforts to extricate her husband from the hands of the Revolutionary Court. This insightful account highlights intercultural relationships as it traces the author's discoveries about his family and heritage. |
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A fine romance
by Candice Bergen
In a follow-up to Knock Wood by the Emmy Award-winning actress traces the milestone events of her life - including her first marriage, the birth of her daughter, her work on Murphy Brown and her struggles with widowhood.
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Mrs Guinness: the rise and fall of Diana Mitford, the thirties socialite
by Lyndsy Spence
Before Diana Mitford's disgrace as a social pariah, she was a celebrated member of the Bright Young Things, moving at the centre of 1920s and '30s London high society. As the young wife of Bryan Guinness, heir to the Guinness brewing empire, she lived a gilded life until fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley turned her head. Unpublished letters, diaries and archives bring an unknown Diana to life, creating a portrait of a beautiful woman whose charm and personality enthralled all who met her, but the discourse of her life would ultimately act as a cautionary tale. This groundbreaking biography reveals the woman behind the myth.
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Waugh stories: growing up in Hokitika during the 1960s
by Alec Waugh
Brothers Alec and Richard Waugh reminisce in Waugh Stories about 1960s Hokitika - the time of the town's centennial and the Haast highway opening... In their later careers Alec and Richard became nationally prominent in deverse spheres of police, church, aviation and community service. For Hokitika's 150th anniversary they combine their memories, research and insights.
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Prussian princesses: the sisters of Kaiser Wilhelm II
by John van der Kiste
Kaiser Friedrich III and his consort Victoria, Princess Royal of Great Britain, had six children who lived to maturity, the eldest being Kaiser Wilhelm II. The three younger sisters, Victoria, Sophie and Margaret, were particularly supportive of their mother during her widowhood and remained close throughout their lives. Like their parents, they would know much sorrow as adults. Victoria's romance with Alexander of Battenberg, Prince of Bulgaria, was thwarted by Bismarck for political reasons and she married twice, firstly to a minor German prince and secondly to a young Russian adventurer who left her to die in poverty. Sophie married the future King Constantine of Greece, whose ill-starred reign saw them forced to leave their throne not once but twice, both dying in exile. Margaret married a prince of Hesse-Cassel, both became members of the Nazi party, and she lived to see her family and house become victims of theft on a major scale at the hands of occupying forces at the end of the Second World War.
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You're telling me!: a memoir of Peg Fleming
by Robin Fleming
Lady Peg Fleming, née Chambers, wife of scientist Sir Charles Fleming, and mother of Robin, Mary, and Jean, was a science graduate from the University of New Zealand and an amateur historian in later life. Peg had a lifelong interest in travel, research, and learning, and filled her spare moments with voluntary work. Her greatest commitment was to the Federation of University Women, in which she was active until her death in 2000. Robin Fleming's memoir of her mother describes the tensions that existed for Peg between supporting her husband's career, raising her daughters, and pursuing these varied interests and activities. It is a portrayal of a richly-lived life within the conventions and expectations of the then middle-class society.
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| Words without music: a memoir by Philip GlassWhile striving to achieve recognition for his musical works, award-winning composer Philip Glass installed drywall, moved furniture, drove a New York City cab, and even taught himself plumbing. Glass eventually became known for his innovative approach to composition, which incorporates multicultural musical, literary, and philosophical influences. He reveals himself in Words Without Music as an engaging storyteller, creating a colloquial, vivid, and unpretentious self-portrait that will appeal to any reader - not just classical music fans. |
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Young Winstone
by Ray Winstone
Revisiting the bomb-sites and boozers of author's childhood and adolescence, this book takes the reader on an unforgettable tour of a cockney heartland which is at once irresistibly mythic and undeniably real.
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Alfred Hitchcock
by Peter Ackroyd
Alfred Hitchcock was a strange child. Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolated one, scented with fish from his father's shop. Afraid to leave his bedroom, he would plan great voyages, using railway timetables to plot an exact imaginary route across Europe. So how did this fearful figure become the one of the most respected film directors of the twentieth century?
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John Aubrey: my own life
by Ruth Scurr
Ruth Scurr's biography is an act of scholarly imagination: a diary drawn from John Aubrey's own words, displaying his unique voice, dry wit, the irreverence and drama of a literary pioneer. Aubrey saw himself modestly as a collector of a vanishing past, a 'scurvy antiquary'. But he was also one of the pioneers of modern writing, a journalist before the age of journalism, who witnessed the Civil War and the Great Fire of London in the company of some of the influential men and women, high and low, whose lives he would make his legacy. John Aubrey's own life was a poignant personal and financial struggle to record the doings of great men and the relics of antiquity, the habits of Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton and Thomas Hobbes, the stones of Stonehenge and the stained glass of forgotten churches. In this genre-defying account, rich with the London taverns and elegiac landscapes of an England he helped to preserve,
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Duke: a great Hawaiian
by Sandra Kimberley Hall
On 24th February 1915, the world-renowned Hawaiian surf rider and Olympic gold medal swimmer, Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, gave his first New Zealand demonstration of surf riding at New Brighton Beach.
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Great Books You Might Have Missed
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| The woman who would be king: Hatshepsut's rise to power in... by Kara CooneyWithin a few years of her death, King Hatshepsut's (there was no word in her language for "queen") successor destroyed many of her monuments and other records of her reign. Though she had been king for 22 prosperous years, few Egyptologists considered her to be significant - until scholar Kara Cooney decided to write The Woman Who Would Be King. Drawing on physical artifacts, historical background about Hatshepsut's era, and well-founded inference, Cooney paints a fascinating portrait of Egypt's first female king. Amateur fans of Egyptology, readers intrigued by feminist history, and scholars of ancient Egypt will want to read this compelling biography. |
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| The phantom of Fifth Avenue: the mysterious life and scandalous death... by Meryl GordonFabulously wealthy Huguette Clark grew up in a New York City mansion, married but soon divorced a childhood friend, and began to withdraw from society after several failed romances. Though she was a well regarded painter, she isolated herself for decades in a huge Fifth Avenue apartment and eventually became fearful that others were after her money. After skin cancer treatment in Doctor's Hospital, she remained in a hospital room for over twenty years, although she was no longer ill. The Phantom of Fifth Avenue employs correspondence and journals, memorabilia, and interviews with over 100 relatives and acquaintances to build a "well-rounded portrait of an eccentric and talented woman" (Booklist). |
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More fool me: a memoir
by Stephen Fry
The writer, comedian and actor discusses his issues with addiction as he catapulted to fame and then came crashing down in the late 1980s through remembrances and excerpts from his diaries. .
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The Putin mystique: inside Russia's power cult
by Anna Arutunyan
The Putin Mystique takes the reader on a journey through the Russia of Vladimir Putin, named by Forbes magazine in 2013 as the most powerful man in the world. It is a neo-feudal world where iPads, WTO membership, and Brioni business suits conceal a power structure straight out of the Middle Ages, where the Sovereign is perceived as both divine and demonic, where a man's riches are determined by his proximity to the Kremlin, and where large swathes of the populace live in precarious complacency interrupted by bouts of revolt. Where does that kind of power come from? The answer lies not in the leader, but in the people: from the impoverished worker who appeals directly to Putin for aid, to the businessmen, security officers and officials in Putin's often dysfunctional government who look to their leader for instruction and protection.
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Mona Lisa: a life discovered
by Dianne R. Hales
Blends biography, history and memoir to compile the story of da Vinci's famous masterpiece subject, detailing the political upheavals, family dramas and public scandals of Renaissance Florence that shaped her life and her relationships with kings and artists.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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