Author: Beryl MarkhamPublisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780865471184
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
Autobiography detailing the author's life in Africa and career as a pilot.
Straight on Till Morning: The Life of Beryl Markham
Author: Mary S. LovellPublisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393342085
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 620
Book Description
The New York Times bestseller: “Every page is filled with revelations, gossip and fascinating details about Markham.”—Diane Ackerman, The New York Times Book Review Born in England and raised in Kenya, Beryl Markham was a notorious beauty. She trained race horses and had scandalous affairs, but she is most remembered for being a pioneering aviatrix. She became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the first person to make it from London to New York nonstop. In Mary S. Lovell’s definitive biography, Beryl takes on new life—vividly portrayed by a master biographer whose knowledge of her subject is unparalleled.
Too Close to the Sun
Author: Sara WheelerPublisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588365999
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Denys Finch Hatton was adored by women and idolized by men. A champion of Africa, legendary for his good looks, his charm, and his prowess as a soldier, lover, and hunter, Finch Hatton inspired Karen Blixen to write the unforgettable stories in Out of Africa. Now esteemed British biographer Sara Wheeler tells the truth about this extraordinarily charismatic adventurer. Born to an old aristocratic family that had gambled away most of its fortune, Finch Hatton grew up in a world of effortless elegance and boundless power. Tall and graceful, with the soul of a poet and an athlete’s relaxed masculinity, he became a hero without trying at Eton and Oxford. In 1910, searching for novelty and danger, Finch Hatton arrived in British East Africa and fell in love–with a continent, with a landscape, with a way of life that was about to change forever. Wheeler brilliantly conjures the mystical beauty of Kenya at a time when teeming herds of wild animals roamed unmolested across pristine savannah. No one was more deeply attuned to this beauty than Finch Hatton–and no one more bitterly mourned its passing when the outbreak of World War I engulfed the region in a protracted, bloody guerrilla conflict. Finch Hatton was serving as a captain in the Allied forces when he met Karen Blixen in Nairobi and embarked on one of the great love affairs of the twentieth century. With delicacy and grace, Wheeler teases out truth from fiction in the liaison that Blixen herself immortalized in Out of Africa. Intellectual equals, bound by their love for the continent and their inimitable sense of style, Finch Hatton and Blixen were genuine pioneers in a land that was quickly being transformed by violence, greed, and bigotry. Ever restless, Finch Hatton wandered into a career as a big-game hunter and became an expert bush pilot; his passion that led to his affair with the notoriously unconventional aviatrix Beryl Markham. But Markham was no more able to hold him than Blixen had been. Mesmerized all his life by the allure of freedom and danger, Finch Hatton was, writes Wheeler, “the open road made flesh.” In painting a portrait of an irresistible man, Sara Wheeler has beautifully captured the heady glamour of the vanished paradise of colonial East Africa. In Too Close to the Sun she has crafted a book that is as ravishing as its subject.
Circling the Sun
Author: Paula McLainPublisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345534190
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, BOOKPAGE, AND SHELF AWARENESS • “Paula McLain is considered the new star of historical fiction, and for good reason. Fans of The Paris Wife will be captivated by Circling the Sun, which . . . is both beautifully written and utterly engrossing.”—Ann Patchett, Country Living This powerful novel transports readers to the breathtaking world of Out of Africa—1920s Kenya—and reveals the extraordinary adventures of Beryl Markham, a woman before her time. Brought to Kenya from England by pioneering parents dreaming of a new life on an African farm, Beryl is raised unconventionally, developing a fierce will and a love of all things wild. But after everything she knows and trusts dissolves, headstrong young Beryl is flung into a string of disastrous relationships, then becomes caught up in a passionate love triangle with the irresistible safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and the writer Baroness Karen Blixen. Brave and audacious and contradictory, Beryl will risk everything to have Denys’s love, but it’s ultimately her own heart she must conquer to embrace her true calling and her destiny: to fly. Praise for Circling the Sun “In McLain’s confident hands, Beryl Markham crackles to life, and we readers truly understand what made a woman so far ahead of her time believe she had the power to soar.”—Jodi Picoult, author of Leaving Time “Enchanting . . . a worthy heir to [Isak] Dinesen . . . Like Africa as it’s so gorgeously depicted here, this novel will never let you go.”—The Boston Globe “Famed aviator Beryl Markham is a novelist’s dream. . . . [A] wonderful portrait of a complex woman who lived—defiantly—on her own terms.”—People (Book of the Week) “Circling the Sun soars.”—Newsday “Captivating . . . [an] irresistible novel.”—The Seattle Times “Like its high-flying subject, Circling the Sun is audacious and glamorous and hard not to be drawn in by. Beryl Markham may have married more than once, but she was nobody’s wife.”—Entertainment Weekly “[An] eloquent evocation of Beryl’s daring life.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
Author: Isak DinesenSophie's World
Author: Jostein GaarderPublisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466804270
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 599
Book Description
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.
Monkey With a Gun
Author: Andre Duane GidenPublisher:
ISBN: 9781535444187
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 130
Book Description
Some stories are based on truth; this is a true story. I have changed the names of some of the people because I don't want to pay anybody, but if there is a mistake in here, blame it on my head not my heart. This is the way I remembered it.
Illusionarium
Author: Heather DixonPublisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062311875
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
What if the world holds more dangers—and more wonders—than we have ever known? And what if there is more than one world? From Heather Dixon, author of the acclaimed Entwined, comes a brilliantly conceived adventure that sweeps us from the inner workings of our souls to the far reaches of our imaginations. Jonathan is perfectly ordinary. But then—as every good adventure begins—the king swoops into port, and Jonathan and his father are enlisted to find the cure to a deadly plague. Jonathan discovers that he's a prodigy at working with a new chemical called fantillium, which creates shared hallucinations—or illusions. And just like that, Jonathan is knocked off his path. Through richly developed parallel worlds, vivid action, a healthy dose of humor, and gorgeous writing, Heather Dixon spins a story that calls to mind The Night Circus and Pixar movies, but is wholly its own.
Nature at Night
Author: Lisa ReganPublisher: Firefly Books
ISBN: 9780228102540
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 48
Book Description
Like Glow Down Deep, about luminescence in the ocean, this book also has a lenticular jacket and glow-in-the-dark illustrations. Nature at Night takes readers into the lives of some amazing glowing animal and plant organisms that use the phenomena of bioluminescence, biofluorescence or ultraviolet light as part of their survival arsenal. Nature at Night goes into the dark corners of forest, jungle and ocean to find organisms that use luminescence for camouflage, mating, warding off predators or attracting prey. One of the organisms is not an animal but is vegetation: Foxfire Fungi glow to attract animals that will eat them and spread their pores through their scat and so help the plant to reproduce. The book includes well-known creatures like Fireflies, Eels and Lanternfish, but also three animals which, it has been recently discovered, use luminescence: Polka-Dot Tree Frogs, the only known amphibian to use biofluorescence; Puffins, which use ultraviolet light to make their beaks glow during courtship; and Hawksbill Turtles, one of the rarest species on our planet and the first reptile seen exhibiting biofluorescence. In all, Nature at Night features Foxfire Fungi and Aurora, as well as these 21 glowing creatures: Dinoflagellate Glowworms Firefly Crocodile Hawksbill Turtle Scorpion Fimbriated Moray Eel Jellyfish Swallowtail Butterfly Yellow Stingray Lizardfish Click Beetle Eye-Flash Squid Lanternfish Atolla Jellyfish Polka Dot Tree Frog Flashlight Fish Octopus Chameleon Decapod Shrimp Puffin. Readers will learn about each organism, its biology, what type of luminescence it uses and how, where it lives and how it survives. "Did You Know?" insets share unusual facts, focus on a topic, or display incredible photographs, like curtains of shining Glowworms hanging from the ceiling of Waipu Cave in New Zealand. Like its companion title, Glow Down Deep (9780228102526), Nature at Night takes a new look at how nature magically lights up the dark. Young readers will thrill at the striking cover and spend many an hour under the bedsheets marvelling at the glowing illustrations.
Waiting for a Warbler
Author: Sneed B. Collard IIIPublisher: Tilbury House Publishers and Cadent Publishing
ISBN: 0884488543
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 42
Book Description
Short listed for the Green Earth book award In early April, as Owen and his sister search the hickories, oaks, and dogwoods for returning birds, a huge group of birds leaves the misty mountain slopes of the Yucatan peninsula for the 600-mile flight across the Gulf of Mexico to their summer nesting grounds. One of them is a Cerulean warbler. He will lose more than half his body weight even if the journey goes well. Aloft over the vast ocean, the birds encourage each other with squeaky chirps that say, “We are still alive. We can do this.” Owen’s family watches televised reports of a great storm over the Gulf of Mexico, fearing what it may mean for migrating songbirds. In alternating spreads, we wait and hope with Owen, then struggle through the storm with the warbler. This moving story with its hopeful ending appeals to us to preserve the things we love. The backmatter includes a North American bird migration map, birding information for kids, and guidance for how native plantings can transform yards into bird and wildlife habitat.
