"Beatrix Potter was a late bloomer, gardening-wise."
~ from Marta McDowell's
Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life
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WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival 2016
Picks for Biography Fans
Taku Kupu ki te ao: My word to the world workshop A three-hour workshop hosted by Ngai Tahu writer Hana O’Regan, with special guests Elissa Washuta, Ali Cobby Eckermann and Ivan E. Coyote. This interactive workshop will look at writing and performing our own personal stories as indigenous writers.
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Double Cup Love: On the Trail of Family, Food, and Broken Hearts in China
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Eddie Huang
Chef Eddie Huang follows his memoir Fresh Off the Boat, which inspired the television show of the same name, with this account of cooking in China itself. After he began to wonder if his New York restaurant's food was really authentic, Huang enlisted his two brothers in a research adventure in Chengdu. In addition to providing a travelogue that vividly describes contemporary China, Double Cup Love is a personal memoir of Huang's family and his romance with fiancée Dena.
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High Street to homestead
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Angela Williams
From her Grey Lynn apartment to one of New Zealand's most historic homesteads and horse studs, this is an inspirational journey from a corporate life working with Louis Vuitton back to the golden hills of rural Wairarapa.
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High endeavours : the life and legend of Robin Smith
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Jimmy Cruickshank
Robin Smith was one of the most legendary climbers ever to have tackled a mountain. This book draws on contributions from people who knew this charismatic and complex young man, as well as diary extracts from Smith himself.
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Two decades naked
by Leigh Hopkinson
When Leigh Hopkinson was a university student in Christchurch she worked at a succession of low-paying jobs that paid the rent and fit in around her degree. None of them fit so well, however, as stripping. She figured it couldn't be that difficult she was just going to dance on stage in front of a bunch of strangers. She'd show them a bit of skin, but the gig wasn't going to last that long. Or so she imagined.
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A life in secrets: the story of Vera Atkins and the lost agents of SOE
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Sarah Helm
During World War Two the Special Operation Executive's French Section sent more than 400 agents into Occupied France at least 100 never returned and were reported 'Missing Believed Dead' after the war. Vera Atkins had helped prepare these women for their missions, and when the war was over she went out to Germany to find out what happened to them and the other agents lost behind enemy lines.
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Snatched: From Drug Queen to Informer to Hostage -- A Harrowing True Story
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Bruce Porter
In the late 1980s, "Pilar," a Colombian aristocrat and former drug trafficker living in Florida, has settled into a quiet life with her children -- until her second ex-husband gives her name to a new DEA task force looking for a contact to help them with a major sting on the Cali drug cartel. In 1991, she begins collaborating with the DEA, but her unexpected success at working with high-level dealers leads to complications that culminate in her kidnapping by Colombian revolutionaries.
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Mary McGrory : the first queen of journalism
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John Norris
In a fascinating biography of the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, the author, combining juicy gossip with her acerbic wit, takes readers back to a time when the newsrooms were dominated by men, showing how different the media was then from today's punditry.
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Alligator candy : a memoir
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David Kushner
An NPR culture commentator and Rolling Stone contributing editor documents the story of his brother's murder at the hands of two drifters and his family's efforts to survive and seek justice against a backdrop of 1970s parenting dynamics and media hype.
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Almost interesting : the memoir
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David Spade
The actor and comedian examines his life and career, including his road-tour to fame when he was regularly mistaken for a ten year-old and his years on SNL during the Rock/Sandler/Farley era of the 1990s.
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Once a cop : the street, the law, two worlds, one man
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Corey Pegues
A provocative memoir of a crack dealer-turned-decorated NYPD officer illuminates the complex relationship between the police and the communities they are meant to protect, describing the author's membership in a 1980s gang, service in the military and perspectives on the realities of daily life for today's urban youth.
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Party animals: my family and other communists
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David Aaronovitch
In July 1961, just before David Aaronovitch's seventh birthday, Yuri Gagarin came to London. The Russian spaceman was everything the Aaronovitch family wished for a popular and handsome embodiment of modern communism, of the forward march of history. When Gagarin went to Highgate to visit the tomb of Karl Marx, the local communists came out to cheer, David's father, a full-time worker for the Communist Party, and his mother among them.
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Finding Fontainebleau : an American boy in France
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Thaddeus Carhart
The New York Times best-selling author of The Piano Shop on the Left Bank chronicles the wonders of his childhood as an American in post-war France, bringing to life France in the 50s, from the parks and museums of Paris to the rigors of French schooling to the vast Chateau of Fontainebleau and its village, built, piece by piece, over many centuries.
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A Series of Catastrophes & Miracles: A True Story of Love, Science, and Cancer
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Mary Elizabeth Williams
In 2010, after journalist Mary Elizabeth Williams received a diagnosis of malignant melanoma and was given six months to live, she enrolled in a clinical trial that offered cutting-edge immunotherapy. Surprisingly, she appeared cancer free after 12 weeks, and remains healthy in 2016. In her candid and detailed memoir, Williams relates the physical and emotional trauma of her disease and treatment, employing an amusing, anecdotal style that reads almost like a novel.
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All at sea
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Decca Aitkenhead
All at sea is a remarkable story of love and loss, of how one couple changed each other's lives, and what a sudden death can do to the people who survive.
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A different kind of daughter : the girl who hid from the Taliban in plain sight
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Maria Toorpakai
A woman from an oppressive Pakistani tribal region, where women playing sports is forbidden, discusses how she passed as a boy in order to play the sports she loved, thus becoming a lightning rod of freedom in her country's fierce battle over women's rights, as well as the subject of a forthcoming 2016 documentary.
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Ruthless : scientology, my son David Miscavige, and me
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Ron Miscavige
The father of Scientology's current leader describes how he first introduced his family to the church and looks at how his son's actions have transformed the organization into one that wields toxic power over its members
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Journey of a thousand storms
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Kooshyar Karimi
Dr Kooshyar Karimi, author of Leila's Secret, tells his gripping personal story of surviving prison in Iran and life as a refugee before finding success in Australia.
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July and August Birthdays
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Julius Caesar
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Philip Freeman
July 12, 101 BCE. Roman leader Julius Caesar was not only a brilliant military leader: he was a writer, orator, and masterful politician. In this absorbing biography, Classics scholar Philip Freeman offers a lively, comprehensive portrait of the man whose name came to mean "emperor" in several languages. While Julius Caesar's willingness to risk the disapproval of the Roman ruling class led ultimately to his death, his innovative political tactics left an indelible mark on Roman history and the history of the Western world.
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Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic...
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Marta McDowell
July 28, 1866. Author and illustrator Beatrix Potter's 150th birth anniversary is this month. Her charming tales of mischievous rabbits, thieving mice, and quizzical squirrels continue to beguile readers today, but many fans of her picture books know little about her life. In gardening historian Marta McDowell's biography, you can learn about Potter's botanical expertise, farming know-how, and interest in conservation.
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Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
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Bob Spitz
August 15, 1912. Julia Child, cookbook author and television star, lived a rich and complex life even before she discovered French cuisine in 1948. In Dearie, biographer Bob Spitz recounts details of Child's California upbringing, her wartime service with the OSS, her loving relationship with her husband, and her friendships and professional ties. Her apparently inexhaustible energy and joie de vivre come to life on the pages of this biography.
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Tolstoy: A Russian Life
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Rosamund Bartlett
August 28, 1828. While Russian author Leo Tolstoy is perhaps best known in the West for his towering literary achievements, especially the novels Anna Karenina and War and Peace, he devoted his life as much to campaigning for political and religious reform as to his writing. In this thoroughly researched biography, which draws on newly available historical records as well as earlier biographical resources, author Rosamund Bartlett illuminates his difficult personality, his military career, his philosophy, and his religious practices.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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