Author: Gaynor Arnold
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307462277
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
This dazzling debut novel brings the spirit of Catherine Dickens--the cast-off wife of Charles Dickens--to life in the form of Dorothea “Dodo” Gibson, a woman who is doomed to live in the shadow of her husband, Alfred, the most celebrated author in the Victorian world. Girl in a Blue Dress opens on the day of Alfred’s funeral. Dorothea is not among the throngs in attendance when The One and Only is laid to rest. Her mourning must take place within the walls of her modest apartment, a parting gift from Alfred as he ushered her out of their shared home and his life more than a decade earlier. Even her own children, save her outspoken daughter Kitty, are not there to offer her comfort--they were poisoned against her when Alfred publicly declared her an unfit wife and mother. Though she refuses to don the proper mourning attire, Dodo cannot bring herself to demonize her late husband, something that comes all too easily to Kitty. Instead, she reflects on their time together: their clandestine and passionate courtship, when he was a force of nature and she a willing follower; and the salad days of their marriage, before too many children sapped her vitality and his interest. She uncovers the frighteningly hypnotic power of the celebrity author she married. Now liberated from his hold on her, Dodo finds the courage to face her adult children, the sister who betrayed her, and the charming actress who claimed her husband’s love and left her heart aching. A sweeping tale of love and loss that was long-listed for both the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, Girl in a Blue Dress is both an intimate peek at the woman who was behind one of literature’s most esteemed men and a fascinating rumination on marriage that will resonate across centuries.
Girl in a Blue Dress
Author: Gaynor Arnold
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307462277
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
This dazzling debut novel brings the spirit of Catherine Dickens--the cast-off wife of Charles Dickens--to life in the form of Dorothea “Dodo” Gibson, a woman who is doomed to live in the shadow of her husband, Alfred, the most celebrated author in the Victorian world. Girl in a Blue Dress opens on the day of Alfred’s funeral. Dorothea is not among the throngs in attendance when The One and Only is laid to rest. Her mourning must take place within the walls of her modest apartment, a parting gift from Alfred as he ushered her out of their shared home and his life more than a decade earlier. Even her own children, save her outspoken daughter Kitty, are not there to offer her comfort--they were poisoned against her when Alfred publicly declared her an unfit wife and mother. Though she refuses to don the proper mourning attire, Dodo cannot bring herself to demonize her late husband, something that comes all too easily to Kitty. Instead, she reflects on their time together: their clandestine and passionate courtship, when he was a force of nature and she a willing follower; and the salad days of their marriage, before too many children sapped her vitality and his interest. She uncovers the frighteningly hypnotic power of the celebrity author she married. Now liberated from his hold on her, Dodo finds the courage to face her adult children, the sister who betrayed her, and the charming actress who claimed her husband’s love and left her heart aching. A sweeping tale of love and loss that was long-listed for both the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, Girl in a Blue Dress is both an intimate peek at the woman who was behind one of literature’s most esteemed men and a fascinating rumination on marriage that will resonate across centuries.
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307462277
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
This dazzling debut novel brings the spirit of Catherine Dickens--the cast-off wife of Charles Dickens--to life in the form of Dorothea “Dodo” Gibson, a woman who is doomed to live in the shadow of her husband, Alfred, the most celebrated author in the Victorian world. Girl in a Blue Dress opens on the day of Alfred’s funeral. Dorothea is not among the throngs in attendance when The One and Only is laid to rest. Her mourning must take place within the walls of her modest apartment, a parting gift from Alfred as he ushered her out of their shared home and his life more than a decade earlier. Even her own children, save her outspoken daughter Kitty, are not there to offer her comfort--they were poisoned against her when Alfred publicly declared her an unfit wife and mother. Though she refuses to don the proper mourning attire, Dodo cannot bring herself to demonize her late husband, something that comes all too easily to Kitty. Instead, she reflects on their time together: their clandestine and passionate courtship, when he was a force of nature and she a willing follower; and the salad days of their marriage, before too many children sapped her vitality and his interest. She uncovers the frighteningly hypnotic power of the celebrity author she married. Now liberated from his hold on her, Dodo finds the courage to face her adult children, the sister who betrayed her, and the charming actress who claimed her husband’s love and left her heart aching. A sweeping tale of love and loss that was long-listed for both the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, Girl in a Blue Dress is both an intimate peek at the woman who was behind one of literature’s most esteemed men and a fascinating rumination on marriage that will resonate across centuries.
Blue Dress Girl
Author: E. V. Thompson
Publisher: Robert Hale
ISBN: 9780709098461
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
When a Chinese peasant girl is chosen as a concubine to Li Hung, she quickly learns the reality is far from honourable. She is sent away, but rescued from her Junk by a Royal Marine Second Lieutenant. When the young officer becomes involved in the Taiping Rebellion, their blossoming relationship looks doomed.
Publisher: Robert Hale
ISBN: 9780709098461
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
When a Chinese peasant girl is chosen as a concubine to Li Hung, she quickly learns the reality is far from honourable. She is sent away, but rescued from her Junk by a Royal Marine Second Lieutenant. When the young officer becomes involved in the Taiping Rebellion, their blossoming relationship looks doomed.
The Girl in the Blue Dress
Devil in a Blue Dress
Author: Walter Mosley
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393028546
Category : African American men
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Private detective Easy Rawlins looks for a gangster's girlfriend in 1940s L.A.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393028546
Category : African American men
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Private detective Easy Rawlins looks for a gangster's girlfriend in 1940s L.A.
My Little Blue Dress
Author: Bruno Maddox
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101191058
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
“Very funny . . . A pitch-perfect account of how it feels to be part of as culture that’s better at showing you what to wear than what to believe in . . . a real original.”—New York Magazine A gorgeous girl recalls her coming of age in her tiny, picturesque English village at the turn of the last century. After she opts out of a rural beauty pageant, her life—and its telling—begins to unravel. And it unravels into a multitude of extremely amusing, searingly beautiful strands that eventually lead her, and a troubled young man who befriends her, through the wall upholstered hellholes of modern Manhattan toward a heartrending and hugely satisfying climax that will almost literally blow your socks off. “Fun, full-throttle stuff, which rather miraculously dresses down the pernicious personal-history trend while remaining both giggly and moving in its own terms.”—Entertainment Weekly
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101191058
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
“Very funny . . . A pitch-perfect account of how it feels to be part of as culture that’s better at showing you what to wear than what to believe in . . . a real original.”—New York Magazine A gorgeous girl recalls her coming of age in her tiny, picturesque English village at the turn of the last century. After she opts out of a rural beauty pageant, her life—and its telling—begins to unravel. And it unravels into a multitude of extremely amusing, searingly beautiful strands that eventually lead her, and a troubled young man who befriends her, through the wall upholstered hellholes of modern Manhattan toward a heartrending and hugely satisfying climax that will almost literally blow your socks off. “Fun, full-throttle stuff, which rather miraculously dresses down the pernicious personal-history trend while remaining both giggly and moving in its own terms.”—Entertainment Weekly
Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress
Author: Thylias Moss
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780380793624
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Within my life's present unified theory of being, splendor divests itself of its own integrity, splitting to belong to everything that notices it, each part as effective as the whole splendid thing. It belongs to whatever wants it and is inexhaustible even as someone lays dying, even as someone else cries thinking there is none, their tears becoming prisms. . . With these words, the acclaimed poet Thylias Moss proclaims a hymn to the power of light over darkness, both in her own life, and in the wider world. In this, her first prose work, the author of six books of poetry and winner of the most distinguished honors--including a MacArthur Fellowship Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship and a Writing Award--delivers a brilliant, passionate, and utterly moving memoir. It is the story of the only child of a maid and factory worker who moved to Ohio from the segregated South of the fifties. Raised with much love, she flourished until the age of five, when disaster struck, in the form of a girl in sky-blue dress. Her childhood was shattered by this girl, her babysitter, who took pleasure from infliction pain, and whose reign of terror, even after its abrupt end, would send poisonous tendril further into her life. Yet ultimately, Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress is about how a young woman retrieved her life from the grasp of darkness. It is about refusing to accept tyranny. It is about feasting on splendor. How can there not be pain in a world spinning madly, in the lovely calculable chaos. . .? asks Thylias. But, she says, I am saying that joy is too necessary to abandon.
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780380793624
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Within my life's present unified theory of being, splendor divests itself of its own integrity, splitting to belong to everything that notices it, each part as effective as the whole splendid thing. It belongs to whatever wants it and is inexhaustible even as someone lays dying, even as someone else cries thinking there is none, their tears becoming prisms. . . With these words, the acclaimed poet Thylias Moss proclaims a hymn to the power of light over darkness, both in her own life, and in the wider world. In this, her first prose work, the author of six books of poetry and winner of the most distinguished honors--including a MacArthur Fellowship Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship and a Writing Award--delivers a brilliant, passionate, and utterly moving memoir. It is the story of the only child of a maid and factory worker who moved to Ohio from the segregated South of the fifties. Raised with much love, she flourished until the age of five, when disaster struck, in the form of a girl in sky-blue dress. Her childhood was shattered by this girl, her babysitter, who took pleasure from infliction pain, and whose reign of terror, even after its abrupt end, would send poisonous tendril further into her life. Yet ultimately, Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress is about how a young woman retrieved her life from the grasp of darkness. It is about refusing to accept tyranny. It is about feasting on splendor. How can there not be pain in a world spinning madly, in the lovely calculable chaos. . .? asks Thylias. But, she says, I am saying that joy is too necessary to abandon.
The Girl in the Blue Beret
Author: Bobbie Ann Mason
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
ISBN: 1400067189
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Inspired by the wartime experiences of her late father-in-law, award-winning author Bobbie Ann Mason has written an unforgettable novel about an American World War II pilot shot down in Occupied Europe. When Marshall Stone returns to his crash site decades later, he finds himself drawn back in time to the brave people who helped him escape from the Nazis. He especially recalls one intrepid girl guide who risked her life to help him--the girl in the blue beret. At twenty-three, Marshall Stone was a U.S. flyboy stationed in England. Headstrong and cocksure, he had nine exhilarating bombing raids under his belt when enemy fighters forced his B-17 to crash-land in a Belgian field near the border of France. The memories of what happened next--the frantic moments right after the fiery crash, the guilt of leaving his wounded crewmates and fleeing into the woods to escape German troops, the terror of being alone in a foreign country--all come rushing back when Marshall sets foot on that Belgian field again. Marshall was saved only by the kindness of ordinary citizens who, as part of the Resistance, moved downed Allied airmen through clandestine, often outrageous routes (over the Pyrenees to Spain) to get them back to their bases in England. Even though Marshall shared a close bond with several of the Resistance members who risked their lives for him, after the war he did not look back. But now he wants to find them again--to thank them and renew their ties. Most of all, Marshall wants to find the courageous woman who guided him through Paris. She was a mere teenager at the time, one link in the underground line to freedom. Marshall's search becomes a wrenching odyssey of discovery that threatens to break his heart--and also sets him on a new course for the rest of his life. In his journey, he finds astonishing revelations about the people he knew during the war--none more electrifying and inspiring than the story of the girl in the blue beret. Intimate and haunting, The Girl in the Blue Beret is a beautiful and affecting story of love and courage, war and redemption, and the startling promise of second chances.
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
ISBN: 1400067189
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Inspired by the wartime experiences of her late father-in-law, award-winning author Bobbie Ann Mason has written an unforgettable novel about an American World War II pilot shot down in Occupied Europe. When Marshall Stone returns to his crash site decades later, he finds himself drawn back in time to the brave people who helped him escape from the Nazis. He especially recalls one intrepid girl guide who risked her life to help him--the girl in the blue beret. At twenty-three, Marshall Stone was a U.S. flyboy stationed in England. Headstrong and cocksure, he had nine exhilarating bombing raids under his belt when enemy fighters forced his B-17 to crash-land in a Belgian field near the border of France. The memories of what happened next--the frantic moments right after the fiery crash, the guilt of leaving his wounded crewmates and fleeing into the woods to escape German troops, the terror of being alone in a foreign country--all come rushing back when Marshall sets foot on that Belgian field again. Marshall was saved only by the kindness of ordinary citizens who, as part of the Resistance, moved downed Allied airmen through clandestine, often outrageous routes (over the Pyrenees to Spain) to get them back to their bases in England. Even though Marshall shared a close bond with several of the Resistance members who risked their lives for him, after the war he did not look back. But now he wants to find them again--to thank them and renew their ties. Most of all, Marshall wants to find the courageous woman who guided him through Paris. She was a mere teenager at the time, one link in the underground line to freedom. Marshall's search becomes a wrenching odyssey of discovery that threatens to break his heart--and also sets him on a new course for the rest of his life. In his journey, he finds astonishing revelations about the people he knew during the war--none more electrifying and inspiring than the story of the girl in the blue beret. Intimate and haunting, The Girl in the Blue Beret is a beautiful and affecting story of love and courage, war and redemption, and the startling promise of second chances.
In a Blue Velvet Dress
Author: Catherine Sefton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780744520569
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 143
Book Description
When her parents go on vacation in Scotland, bookworm Jane Reid is sent to visit her aunt and uncle Hildreth. But she arrives to find that she and her father have switched suitcases, and she is stranded with no books Her aunt and uncle are nice enough, but the only book in their house is the telephone directory. And their town has no bookstore or library. But on her first night at the Hildreths', Jane discovers a small book with a faded cover on her nightstand. In the morning, it is gone. The next night, another book appears. Jane seems to have a mysterious friend who knows just what she needs. . .
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780744520569
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 143
Book Description
When her parents go on vacation in Scotland, bookworm Jane Reid is sent to visit her aunt and uncle Hildreth. But she arrives to find that she and her father have switched suitcases, and she is stranded with no books Her aunt and uncle are nice enough, but the only book in their house is the telephone directory. And their town has no bookstore or library. But on her first night at the Hildreths', Jane discovers a small book with a faded cover on her nightstand. In the morning, it is gone. The next night, another book appears. Jane seems to have a mysterious friend who knows just what she needs. . .
Ghost in the Blue Dress
Author: R. a. Slone
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781626942974
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
Fifteen-year-old Jenna Moores is struggling with her father's recent death. Not long after his passing, a ghost from her childhood returns. When she was young, Jenna's father convinced her that the ghost was just her imagination and that he would always protect her. But now he's gone, the ghost is back, and Jenna knows she's not imagining it. As the entity grows stronger, its threats move from alienating Jenna from her friends and family to killing her. Alone and afraid, she must find and destroy the link that holds the spirit to this world...before Jenna, too, becomes a ghost.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781626942974
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
Fifteen-year-old Jenna Moores is struggling with her father's recent death. Not long after his passing, a ghost from her childhood returns. When she was young, Jenna's father convinced her that the ghost was just her imagination and that he would always protect her. But now he's gone, the ghost is back, and Jenna knows she's not imagining it. As the entity grows stronger, its threats move from alienating Jenna from her friends and family to killing her. Alone and afraid, she must find and destroy the link that holds the spirit to this world...before Jenna, too, becomes a ghost.
Girl in Hyacinth Blue
Author: Susan Vreeland
Publisher: Perfection Learning
ISBN: 9780756910600
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This luminous story of an alleged 36th Vermeer painting begins in the present day and traces the ownership back to World War II, Amsterdam, and to the work's inspiration.
Publisher: Perfection Learning
ISBN: 9780756910600
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This luminous story of an alleged 36th Vermeer painting begins in the present day and traces the ownership back to World War II, Amsterdam, and to the work's inspiration.