Nest and Mina still live at Ottercombe, their beautiful old rambling childhood home in the depths of Devon. They came to the house before the war, when as small children they played with their sisters and brothers in the gardens and the woods and the nearby beach while their mother read them stories and their father visited at weekends. It was, in retrospect, an idyllic time, when tragedy seemed far distant. Now they welcome their children and grandchildren, and especially young Lyddie, their ni...
From time to time a single voice surfaces: "It is all one life and one memory." It sings of Ampofo, human cargo brought across the seas, of Sally, enslaved as a breeder of slaves, of Tomas, the master's banished son, of Antoinette, summoned by angels, of Robert, unseeing tourist in his ancestral land, and of Brenndan, imprisoned and damned by his violence. And all the voices belong to Calvin Baker, whose tautly lyrical Naming the New World brings the horror and healing of a people to our nationa...
The classic tale behind MGM’s blockbuster movie directed by George Sidney, starring Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, and Kathryn Grayson. Bringing to life the adventurous world of Mississippi show boats, the grittiness of turn-of-the-century Chicago, and the majesty of 1920s Broadway, Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber’s Show Boat is a classic. Magnolia Hawks spends her childhood aboard the Cotton Blossom, growing up amid simmering racial tension and struggling to survive life on the Mississippi. When s...
With the Great War raging, can they keep Britain going?1915. On Beth Healey's eighteenth birthday, she hopes that she will be able to forget the ghastly war and celebrate. But that evening, her twin brother Ned announces that he has signed up to fight. No longer able to stand working in her parents' village shop while others are doing their bit, Beth applies to join the Army Post Office's new Home Depot on the Regent's Park, and is astounded to be accepted. She will be responsible for making su...