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Blue bloods novel series5/24/2023 ![]() Career ĭe La Cruz wrote her first full-length novel at 22 while living in New York City and working at Bankers Trust. They and their daughter live in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, California. Personal life ĭe la Cruz is married to Michael Johnston, another writer, with whom she co-wrote the Heart of Dread series. After graduation she worked as a computer consultant. She went on to study art history and English at Columbia University in New York City. She immigrated to the United States with her family when she was 13, in 1985, and they settled in San Francisco, where she graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School. Melissa de la Cruz was born in Manila, Philippines and says that she has wanted to be an author since she was eleven years old. Her young-adult series include Au Pairs, the Blue Bloods, and The Beauchamp Family. Melissa de la Cruz (born 1971) is a Filipina-American writer known for young adult fiction. ![]()
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Putin's no 1 enemy5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ‘The reality is that the entire Russian government is the mafia.’ Putin’s Number One Enemy ![]() What the show fails to capture, Browder says, is how officially entrenched Russian corruption is. How realistic was the BBC drama, which saw a chiselled James Norton play the scion of a rich Russian family, quietly funnelling dirty money through a building that looks like it could be in the backdrop of Browder’s picture? Not very, apparently. Photoshoot over, we start with the serious stuff: McMafia. When I arrive to meet Bill Browder, ex-banker turned enemy of Vladimir Putin, he’s being photographed on the balcony of his office, framed by the glass-fronted vista of the surrounding square. Bill Browder’s story leads from the Kremlin to the heart of the White House itself. If you thought BBC One’s McMafia was a dramatic work of fiction, read how one man is trying to combat Russian corruption and avenge the death of his friend. ![]()
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The witches salem 1692 review5/24/2023 ![]() What else, shrugged one husband, could have caused the black and blue marks on his wife’s arms? It made sense of the unfortunate and the eerie, the sick child and the rancid butter along with the killer cat. ![]() The aggravating, the confounding, the humiliating all dissolved in its cauldron. If you point the finger elsewhere, it is unlikely to be pointed at you.įaith aside, witchcraft served an eminently useful purpose. As with all witch-hunts, the most obvious cause is the fear of being accused. The mistrust of women, jealousies, grievances and power struggles would also have played a part, with people seeing an opportunity to take revenge on past slights, or get their hands on much needed land. ![]() ![]() ![]() The strict puritanical lifestyle is one reason for the initial claims, with the original girls who started the rumours suffering from a kind of mass hysteria which resulted in shaking, fits and violent outbursts. It’s not hard to understand why a disgruntled servant might accuse their mistress of being a witch out of anger and jealousy, but Schiff recounts stories of children as young as six implicating themselves as witches, or worse, accusing their own mothers and then having to watch them put to death.Īs with all types of witch-hunts, Schiff is careful to explain where motivations may have come from that led to a town turning on itself. Some of these accusations make for difficult reading. ![]()
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Tara june winch the yield review5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() Ferdinand Greenleaf, who founded the mission that eventually became Prosperous House to “build a home of safety for the poor waifs and strays,” and sections from a dictionary Poppy Albert was compiling of their family’s native language before his death, which includes words from the author’s ancestral Wiradjuri language. ![]() ![]() Interwoven with August’s story are two other narrative strands: a lengthy letter from the Rev. She also discovers that this may be the last time she sees her childhood home-her grandmother will soon be forced out of Prosperous House because a company plans to open a large tin mine on the land. An Aboriginal woman uncovers her heritage, and her painful past, to save her family’s home.Īugust Gondiwindi, a dishwasher in London, receives word that her grandfather Poppy Albert has died and knows she must return to Massacre Plains, the small Australian town her family has lived in for generations-a place she hasn’t visited in years: “Go back full with shame for having left, catch the disappointment in their turned mouths, go back and try to find all the things that she couldn’t find so many thousands of kilometres away.” She arrives at the family farm, Prosperous House, and as she helps her grandmother Elsie prepare food and clean for the large collection of aunts and uncles gathering for the funeral, she runs into former classmates and old flames and wrestles with her long-dormant grief at the disappearance of her sister, Jedda, who vanished when August was 9 and Jedda, 10. ![]()
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The sense of an ending book5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() You may go further and consider your own approaching death, which, despite what company you may muster, can only be faced alone. You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire – and desirability. You imagine yourself being lonely, divorced, widowed children growing away from you, friends dying. “Also, when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. Time.give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.” What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. We imagined we were being responsible but we were only being cowardly. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. Instead, I mowed my lawn, I took holidays, I had my life.īut time.how time first grounds us and then confounds us. I would never do those things adolescence had dreamt about. However.who said that thing about "the littleness of life that art exaggerates"? There was a moment in my late twenties when I admitted that my adventurousness had long since petered out. ![]() Which ones I was not sure, only that passion and danger, ecstasy and despair (but then more ecstasy) would be in attendance. ![]() I shall live as people in novels live and have lived. I shall go there, do this, discover that, love her, and then her and her and her. “I remember a period in late adolescence when my mind would make itself drunk with images of adventurousness. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Picture Princess Diaries meets YA contemporary goodness in this series following the Washington family, aka the monarchs of America. ![]() I don’t’ read too many series nowadays, but if there’s one YA series that I MUST pick up as soon as the next book comes out, it’s Katharine McGee’s American Royals series. Can these enemies join forces, or will old rivalries stand in the way? Now they have something in common: they both want to take down manipulative Lady Gabriella Madison. Nina and Daphne have spent years competing for Prince Jefferson. ![]() ![]() When she meets a glamorous foreign princess, she gets drawn into the inner circle…but at what cost? Is Sam destined to repeat her string of broken relationships…and this time will the broken heart be her own?īeatrice is representing America at the greatest convocation of kings and queens in the world. Princess Samantha is in love with Lord Marshall Davis-but the more serious they get, the more complicated things become. Summary (from the publisher): The third book in the New York Times bestselling American Royals series is here, and a meeting of monarchs will test everyone’s loyalty to the crown…and their own hearts.īeatrice is queen, and for the American royal family, everything is about to change. ![]()
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Nick pileggi books5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() There is so much to love about Peperomias! ![]() They are considered "tropical succulents", meaning they require small amounts of water, so I find them to be very low maintenance as I don't have to watch over them as often as some of my others. My favorite thing about Peperomias as I collect them is the many differences and similarities I notice between the species, each with their own characteristics that may mimic the traits of another. ![]() It’s a genus that is very rich in diversity, currently with over 1500 species. Basically, my job is all about plants, plants, and more plants!Īmong a few other groups of plants, I tend to gravitate toward the genus Peperomia. On top of that, I am the "Houseplant Expert,” which of course coincides with the curating aspect, so I help clients and customers select their plants for their space - whether it is just a small plant for a bedroom, or a large array of plants for an office building or lobby. My main purpose is to curate the selection of indoor plants at the store, which is a balance of carrying timeless plants such as Pothos and Spider Plants as well as stocking new, popular plants such as Philodendrons and Peperomias. I am the head buyer at Urban Jungle, a plant shop located in South Philadelphia. ![]()
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Bring Back the King by Helen Pilcher5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() But de-extinction is more than just bringing back the dead. Around the globe, scientists are trying to de-extinct all manner of animals, including the woolly mammoth, the passenger pigeon and a bizarre species of flatulent frog. ![]() De-extinction - the ability to bring extinct species back to life - is fast becoming reality. rex, to the King of Rock `n' Roll, Elvis Presley, and beyond. If you could bring back just one animal from the past, what would you choose? It can be anyone or anything from history, from the King of the Dinosaurs, T.
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Christmas letters tolkien5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Letters From Father Christmas is the collection of letters Tolkien wrote for his own children from none other than Father Christmas himself, detailing his life in the North Pole with his elves, his friend North Polar Bear and their adventures. In honor of the festivities, the tradition, the anticipation millions of children will be feeling today, I thought we’d celebrate with letters from Santa-or as close as we can get, which happens to be the workings of J.R.R. Letters to Santa were sent out weeks ago to ensure they’d make it to the North Pole in time for the big man’s big night- tonight. Stockings have been hung and the halls decked for some time now. On this, the 24th of December, Christmas is so very nearly here. Published on the 100th anniversary of the first letter Tolkien sent to his firstborn, John, in 1920, this handsome hardcover will also include an introduction from granddaughter Baillie Tolkien, who reflects on the centenary anniversary of the letters, as well as a personal note by J.R.R. created for his children for the first time in one book along with other archival elements. For fans of Tolkien and lovers of Christmas holidays, Letters from Father Christmas is a gorgeous, festive gift featuring all of the letters that J.R.R. ![]()
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Heartless marissa meyer hardcover5/23/2023 ![]() Hornbook Guide to Children - Below Average, With Minor Flaw ![]() In Heartless, her first stand-alone teen novel, the New York Times-bestselling author dazzles us with a prequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But in a land thriving with magic, madness, and monsters, fate has other plans. Cath is determined to define her own destiny and fall in love on her terms. At the risk of offending the king and infuriating her parents, she and Jest enter into an intense, secret courtship. For the first time, she feels the pull of true attraction. Then Cath meets Jest, the handsome and mysterious court joker. But according to her mother, such a goal is unthinkable for the young woman who could be the next queen. ![]() ![]() ![]() A talented baker, all she wants is to open a shop with her best friend. Long before she was the terror of Wonderland, she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love.Ĭatherine may be one of the most desired girls in Wonderland, and a favorite of the unmarried King of Hearts, but her interests lie elsewhere. From Marissa Meyer, the #1 New York Times-bestselling story of Wonderland's most notorious villain: the Queen of Hearts. ![]() |