| Cindy
Vallar
Author,
Editor, & Pirate Chronicler |
 |
| Cindy
Vallar
Author,
Editor, & Pirate Chronicler |
|
Devastated at the
senseless death of her lover, South African
paleontologist Zoe Du Plessis flees
Johannesburg for her childhood home on the
Cape. She had risked her heart only to
discover that the warnings of her female
ancestors weren't absurd chimeras of previous
firstborn daughters. To come to terms with
both reality and her grief, she embarks on a
journey of inner reflection that is
intertwined with acceptance of the past,
standing up for what she believes, and taking
chances in spite of her own biasness in an
ever-changing world in the aftermath of racial
segregation.
In
September 2010, a freelance journalist
accompanies soldiers on patrol in eastern
Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. He’s scared –
after all, this is Taliban territory – but
showing that fear will just aggravate the
tense situation. He’s well aware of the
dangers, since he’s been embedded before,
yet listeners of CBS Radio and readers of USA
Today need to know what’s happening in
a war zone, the dangers soldiers face, and
the conditions they endure. His greatest
fear? Surviving a bomb blast and losing his
legs. On this particular day, however, it’s
not a bomb he faces, but a man holding a
rocket launcher aimed directly at him. The
projectile slams into his face. He should be
dead; instead, he sustains a ruptured
eyeball and a shattered orbital socket.
Stripes
are part of our everyday lives, but
depending on how or where we encounter
them, they evoke certain impressions. This
thought-provoking book examines the
stripe's development in western fashion,
from its scandalous entry during the
Middle Ages to today. Readers are unlikely
to ever again look at any stripe without
interpreting it.
In August
1745, Charles Edward Stuart landed in
the Scottish Highlands, intending to
restore his exiled father, James, to the
British throne. The Hanoverian army,
under Prince William, Duke of
Cumberland, had other plans. Some clan
chiefs had pledged their support if
Charles came with French military and
financial support, but he came with only
seven men. Still they raised the
Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan and, for
the next eight months, fought the last
civil war on British soil. Rather than a
conflict between Highlanders and
Lowlanders, Catholics and Protestants,
or the English and the Scots, both sides
were comprised of all these and more,
and this new chronological history
places the rebellion in international,
national, and local context. The rising
began with unparalleled success, reached
as far south as Derby, and ended with
devastating consequences that are still
remembered today.
On
17 July 1918, in Ekaterinburg, Bolsheviks
brutally murdered Tsar Nicholas II, his wife
Alexandra, and their children: Olga,
Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexey. While
this book focuses primarily on the events
and players during the time the family lived
at the “House of Special Purpose,” Rappoport
explores the responses of various leaders –
Woodrow Wilson, George V, Kaiser Wilhelm,
and Vladimir Lenin. She captures the time,
place, politics, and events through the use
of Russian and English primary sources, many
rarely consulted in previous works. Although
there are no footnotes, this is an absorbing
account from personal perspectives that puts
the reader in the midst of it all, from the
boredom of inactivity to the horror of what
happened in the cellar of the Ipatiev House
that night.
Americans
tend to think of the War for Independence as
a revolution, but in reality it was a civil
war. Many men participants are well known,
but not so the women. Berkin rectifies this
oversight by examining first the role women
played in that period’s society, then
showing how they protested English policies,
what challenges they faced, why some became
camp followers, what effect the generals’
wives had on the soldiers, what loyalist
women endured, how the war impacted Indian
and African-American women, and who fought
for and against independence. This
well-paced, even, and insightful examination
of eighteenth-century women is a worthy
resource for learning about ordinary women
of the past in their own time period rather
than today’s.
In 1910,
the Great Northern Railway crossed
the Cascade Mountains in Washington
State. Two trains loaded with
passengers and mail headed west
toward Seattle. A late winter storm
began soon after, and no matter what
James H. O’Neill and his men did to
keep the tracks clear, the snow kept
falling. Temperatures warmed then
dropped repeatedly, creating
dangerous conditions on the mountain
above. Halted by snow drifts and
slides, the trains halted at
Wellington and sat on tracks above a
precipice for almost a week. Some
passengers, tired with waiting,
trekked back to the previous town,
but women and children, as well as
invalid passengers and railroad
workers, remained. Early on the
morning of March 1st, an avalanche
toppled both trains into a ravine.
At thirteen, Thomas
Savage becomes a translator between
the Jamestown colonists and the
Indians. He lives with Powhatan, the
chief, and Pocahontas teaches him her
language and her people’s ways. Each
presents challenges, but the hardest
of Thomas’s job is remaining neutral.
When 300 new colonists arrive, there
isn’t enough room or food for them. A
fire injures Captain John Smith, and
false accusations force the Indians to
break the peace. How will the English
survive the Starving Time? Will there
be war or a new truce? Can Thomas stay
neutral amidst the hostilities of the
settlers and the Indians? Will he
achieve his dream of being a gentleman
landowner with a family of his own?