City of Girls

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698408322
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! From the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and The Signature of All Things, a delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don't have to be a good girl to be a good person. "A spellbinding novel about love, freedom, and finding your own happiness." - PopSugar "Intimate and richly sensual, razzle-dazzle with a hint of danger." -USA Today "Pairs well with a cocktail...or two." -TheSkimm "Life is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or being anything other than what you are." Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and no-nonsense stage manager. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves - and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it. It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest. Now eighty-nine years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. "At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time," she muses. "After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is." Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other.

The Girls of Atomic City

Author: Denise Kiernan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451617534
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
This is the story of the young women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who unwittingly played a crucial role in one of the most significant moments in U.S. history. The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942. One of the Manhattan Project's secret cities. All knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The reverberations from their work there, work they did not fully understand at the time, are still being felt today.

The City Girls

Author: Aki
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company (BYR)
ISBN: 1250780535
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 19

Book Description
Bustling sidewalks, busy streets, museums, parks, and tasty treats—the City Girls are ready to explore in this adorable picture book! From Aki, the author-illustrator of The Weather Girls and The Nature Girls, comes a new picture book starring an adorable troupe of girls exploring the city and taking in all the diversity of life it has to offer! It’s morning time in the city./ We watch the sun rise, slow and pretty. Follow these busy girls as they wander through the city, taking in the sights. Charming rhyming verse and adorable art make this picture book irresistible—and perfect for sharing!

The Atomic City Girls

Author: Janet Beard
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006266672X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Book Description
"The Atomic City Girls is a fascinating and compelling novel about a little-known piece of WWII history."—Maggie Leffler, international bestselling author of The Secrets of Flight In the bestselling tradition of Hidden Figures and The Wives of Los Alamos, comes this riveting novel of the everyday people who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. In November 1944, eighteen-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for a city that doesn’t officially exist. Oak Ridge, Tennessee has sprung up in a matter of months—a town of trailers and segregated houses, 24-hour cafeterias, and constant security checks. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the war, but must ask no questions and reveal nothing to outsiders. The girls spend their evenings socializing and flirting with soldiers, scientists, and workmen at dances and movies, bowling alleys and canteens. June longs to know more about their top-secret assignment and begins an affair with Sam Cantor, the young Jewish physicist from New York who oversees the lab where she works and understands the end goal only too well, while her beautiful roommate Cici is on her own mission: to find a wealthy husband and escape her sharecropper roots. Across town, African-American construction worker Joe Brewer knows nothing of the government’s plans, only that his new job pays enough to make it worth leaving his family behind, at least for now. But a breach in security will intertwine his fate with June’s search for answers. When the bombing of Hiroshima brings the truth about Oak Ridge into devastating focus, June must confront her ideals about loyalty, patriotism, and war itself.

Pilgrims

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408808773
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 171

Book Description
_______________ 'Gilbert takes us on a grit-strewn ride into the heart of Country and Western territory: good old boys, cowgirls, dingy bars, the backwaters and empty plains of America' - Sunday Times 'The heroes of Pilgrims, Elizabeth Gilbert's gimmickless story collection, are everyday seekers...This first-time writer has all the hallmarks of a great writer: sympathy, wit, and an amazing ear for dialogue' - Harper's Bazaar _______________ The very first book by the multimillion-copy bestselling author of Eat Pray Love: A memorable collection of short stories of individuals pursuing their own American pilgrimage The cowboys, strippers, labourers and magicians of Pilgrims are all on their way to being somewhere, or someone, else. Some are browbeaten and world-weary, others are deluded and naïve, yet all seek companionship as fiercely as they can. A tough East Coast girl dares a western cowboy to run off with her; a matronly bar owner falls in love with her nephew; an innocent teenager falls hopelessly for the local bully's sister. These are tough heroes and heroines, hardened by their experiences, who struggle for their epiphanies. Yet hope is never far away and though they may act blindly, they always act bravely. Sharply drawn and tenderly observed, Pilgrims is filled with Gilbert's inimitable humour and warmth.

City of Lost Girls

Author: Declan Hughes
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061985325
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
“Ed Loy is…more than worthy of a place among the great creations of Chandler and Hammett. Hughes is simply the best Irish crime novelist of his generation.” —John Connolly Shamus Award winner and Edgar® Award nominee Declan Hughes does for Dublin what Dennis Lehane does for his native Boston. In City of Lost Girls, “Ireland’s Ross MacDonald” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) transports his private investigator, Ed Loy, from the Emerald Isle to the mean streets of Los Angeles and into the sordid heart of Hollywood in search of three young missing woman. City of Lost Girls is unrelentingly exciting and refreshingly intelligent—another shining example of how Hughes “demonstrates that the private detective novel can be vital, modern, and relevant in the right hands” (Laura Lippman).

The Last American Man

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408806878
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
_____________ 'It is almost impossible not to fall under the spell of Eustace Conway ... his accomplishments, his joy and vigor, seem almost miraculous' - New York Times Review of Books 'Gilbert takes a bright-eyed bead on Eustace, hitting him square with a witty modernist appraisal of folkloric American masculinity' - The Times 'Conversational, enthusiastic, funny and sharp, the energy of The Last American Man never ebbs' - New Statesman _____________ A fascinating, intimate portrait of an endlessly complicated man: a visionary, a narcissist, a brilliant but flawed modern hero At the age of seventeen, Eustace Conway ditched the comforts of his suburban existence to escape to the wild. Away from the crushing disapproval of his father, he lived alone in a teepee in the mountains. Everything he needed he built, grew or killed. He made his clothes from deer he killed and skinned before using their sinew as sewing thread. But he didn't stop there. In the years that followed, he stopped at nothing in pursuit of bigger, bolder challenges. He travelled the Mississippi in a handmade wooden canoe; he walked the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail; he hiked across the German Alps in trainers; he scaled cliffs in New Zealand. One Christmas, he finished dinner with his family and promptly upped and left - to ride his horse across America. From South Carolina to the Pacific, with his little brother in tow, they dodged cars on the highways, ate road kill and slept on the hard ground. Now, more than twenty years on, Eustace is still in the mountains, residing in a thousand-acre forest where he teaches survival skills and attempts to instil in people a deeper appreciation of nature. But over time he has had to reconcile his ambitious dreams with the sobering realities of modernity. Told with Elizabeth Gilbert's trademark wit and spirit, The Last American Man is an unforgettable adventure story of an irrepressible life lived to the extreme. The Last American Man is a New York Times Notable Book and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist.

Stern Men

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101014873
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
The "wonderful first novel about life, love, and lobster fishing" (USA Today) from the #1 bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic and City of Girls Off the coast of Maine, Ruth Thomas is born into a feud fought for generations by two groups of local lobstermen over fishing rights for the waters that lie between their respective islands. At eighteen, she has returned from boarding school-smart as a whip, feisty, and irredeemably unromantic-determined to throw over her education and join the "stern men"working the lobster boats. Gilbert utterly captures the American spirit through an unforgettable heroine who is destined for greatness-and love-despite herself in this the critically acclaimed debut.

Feminist City

Author: Leslie Kern
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788739841
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Feminist City is an ongoing experiment in living differently, living better, and living more justly in an urban world. We live in the city of men. Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. There is little consideration for women as mothers, workers or carers. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. What would a metropolis for working women look like? A city of friendships beyond Sex and the City. A transit system that accommodates mothers with strollers on the school run. A public space with enough toilets. A place where women can walk without harassment. In Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern offers an alternative vision of the feminist city. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out an intersectional feminist approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. It is time to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and women-friendly cities together.

Bee and the Orange Tree

Author: Melissa Ashley
Publisher: Affirm Press
ISBN: 192597250X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
It's 1699, and the salons of Paris are bursting with the creative energy of fierce, independent-minded women. But outside those doors, the patriarchal forces of Louis XIV and the Catholic Church are moving to curb their freedoms. In this battle for equality, Baroness Marie Catherine D'Aulnoy invents a powerful weapon: 'fairy tales'. When Marie Catherine's daughter, Angelina, arrives in Paris for the first time, she is swept up in the glamour and sensuality of the city, where a woman may live outside the confines of the church or marriage. But this is a fragile freedom, as she discovers when Marie Catherine's close friend Nicola Tiquet is arrested, accused of conspiring to murder her abusive husband. In the race to rescue Nicola, illusions will be shattered and dark secrets revealed as all three women learn how far they will go to preserve their liberty in a society determined to control them. This keenly-awaited second book from Melissa Ashley, author of The Birdman's Wife, restores another remarkable, little-known woman to her rightful place in history, revealing the dissent hidden beneath the whimsical surfaces of Marie Catherine's fairy tales. The Bee and the Orange Tree is a beautifully lyrical and deeply absorbing portrait of a time, a place, and the subversive power of the imagination.