The Gardens of Consolation

2016-12-06
The Gardens of Consolation

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  • Author: Parisa Reza
  • Publisher: Europa Editions
  • ISBN: 1609453581
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 211

A novel of love, family, and a fight for freedom in Iran featuring a “formidable and hard-to-forget heroine” (Publishers Weekly). In the early 1920s, in the remote Persian village of Ghamsar, two young people dreaming of a better life fall in love and marry. Sardar brings his bride, Talla, with him across the mountains to the suburbs of Tehran, where the couple settles down and builds a home. From the outskirts of the capital city, they will watch as the Qajar dynasty falls and Reza Khan rises to power as Reza Shah Pahlavi. Into this family of illiterate shepherds is born Bahram, a boy whose brilliance and intellectual promise are apparent from a very young age. As he grows older, Bahram will become a fervent follower of reformer Mohammad Mosaddegh and will participate firsthand in his country’s political and social upheavals, putting himself in mortal danger, in this prize-winning, “compelling book [that] raises important questions about indulgence, gender, community, and the impact of politics on everyday life” (Kirkus Reviews). “Exquisite . . . the narrative evolves from an intimate chronicle of Talla and Sardar’s provincial lives into a sweeping tour through early-20th-century Iran.” —The New York Times

Small Admissions

2016-12-27
Small Admissions

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  • Author: Amy Poeppel
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster
  • ISBN: 1501122541
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 368

People’s Book of the Week “Perfect for fans of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep.” —Booklist ​Top 6 Books You Need to Read —BuzzFeed ​Best Books to Give Every Book Lover on Your List —Town & Country In this witty, hilarious, and entertaining novel that’s “The Devil Wears Prada meets Primates of Park Avenue” (The New York Times), a young woman is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat world of New York City private school admissions, from award-winning author Amy Poeppel. Despite her innate ambition and summa cum laude smarts, Kate Pearson has turned into a major slacker. After being unceremoniously dumped by her handsome “almost fiancé,” she abandons her plans and instead spends her days lolling on the couch, watching reruns of Sex and the City. Her friends don’t know what to do other than pass tissues and hope for a comeback, while her practical sister, Angela, pushes every remedy she can think of, from trapeze class to therapy to job interviews. Miraculously, Kate manages to land a job in the admissions department at the revered Hudson Day School. In her new position Kate learns there’s no time for self-pity or nonsense during the thick of the admissions season, or what her colleagues refer to as “the dark time.” As the process revs up, Kate meets smart kids who are unlikable, likeable kids who aren’t very smart, and Park Avenue parents who refuse to take no for an answer. Through a comical and crazy run of wildly unpredictable interviews, subtle bribes, outright threats, final judgments, and page-turning twists, the highly competitive and occasionally absurd world of private school admissions is brought to light in all of its outrageous glory that is reminiscent of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep.

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

2020-01-07
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

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  • Author: Shokoofeh Azar
  • Publisher: Europa Editions
  • ISBN: 1609455665
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 202

A grieving family flees Tehran after the Islamic Revolution in this novel of “magical realism with a Persian twist” translated from Farsi (The Guardian, UK). When their home in Tehran is burned to the ground by zealots, killing their thirteen-year-old daughter Bahar, a once-prominent family flees to a small village. There, they hope to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land and its people. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning in a world swept up in the post-revolutionary madness. The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself. Through her unforgettable characters, Iranian novelist Shokoofeh Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive political regime. “[Azar’s] book is a great journey. It moves places and it moves us as readers, in an emotional and intellectual sense.” —Robert Wood, The Los Angeles Review of Books

The Gardener of Versailles

2014-02-11
The Gardener of Versailles

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  • Author: Alain Baraton
  • Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
  • ISBN: 0847842703
  • Category : Gardening
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 296

INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards -- 2014 Finalist For gardening aficionados and Francophiles, a love letter to the Versailles Palace and grounds, from the man who knows them best. In Alain Baraton's Versailles, every grove tells a story. As the gardener-in-chief, Baraton lives on its grounds, and since 1982 he has devoted his life to the gardens, orchards, and fields that were loved by France's kings and queens as much as the palace itself. His memoir captures the essence of the connection between gardeners and the earth they tend, no matter how humble or grand. With the charm of a natural storyteller, Baraton weaves his own path as a gardener with the life of the Versailles grounds, and his role overseeing its team of eighty gardeners tending to 350,000 trees and thirty miles of walkways on 2,100 acres. He richly evokes this legendary place and the history it has witnessed but also its quieter side that he feels privileged to know. The same gardens that hosted the lavish lawn parties of Louis XIV and the momentous meeting between Marie Antoinette and the Cardinal de Rohan remain enchanted, private places where visitors try to get themselves locked in at night, lovers go looking for secluded hideaways, and elegant grandmothers secretly make cuttings to take back to their own gardens. A tremendous best seller in France, The Gardener of Versailles gives an unprecedentedly intimate view of one of the grandest places on earth. From the Hardcover edition.

Eden Revisited

2019-09-17
Eden Revisited

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  • Author: Umberto Pasti
  • Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
  • ISBN: 0847864804
  • Category : Gardening
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 242

A lovingly photographed tour of internationally renowned writer Umberto Pasti's famous hillside garden in Morocco. Italian writer and horticulturist Umberto Pasti's passion for the wild flora of Tangier and its surrounding region led him to create his world-famous garden, Rohuna, where he has transplanted thousands of plants rescued from construction sites with the aid of men from the village. Planted between two small houses is the Garden of Consolation: a series of rooms and terraces with lush vegetation, some rendering homage to the paintings of Henri Rousseau, others inspired by invented characters. Surrounding the Garden of Consolation are the Wild Garden and a hillside devoted to the wild flowering bulbs of northern Morocco, where indigenous species of narcissus, iris, crocus, scilla, gladiolus, and others bloom. With its stunning vistas and verdant fields, Rohuna is a garden of incomparable beauty with the mission to preserve the botanical richness of the region. Captured here in detail by celebrated photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo, the poetic beauty of this special and unique place is lovingly rendered for all the world to see and share.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden

2022-11-02
Elizabeth and Her German Garden

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  • Author: Elizabeth Von Arnim
  • Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
  • ISBN: 3368400592
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 189

Reproduction of the original.

The Essential Earthman

2003-01-24
The Essential Earthman

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  • Author: Henry Mitchell
  • Publisher: Indiana University Press
  • ISBN: 9780253215857
  • Category : Gardening
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 260

"The most soul-satisfying gardening book in years." --New York Times (March 1982, reviewing the 1981 cloth edition from IU Press). "Genuinely a classic..." --Los Angeles Times (on the occasion of Houghton Mifflin's paperback edition, which came out in 1994). "Is there anyone alive with the slightest interest in gardening who doesn't know that Henry Mitchell is one of the funniest and most truthful garden columnists we've got?" --Allen Lacy "Mitchell is a joy to read. He has tried and failed, persevered and triumphed, and he has many sound recommendations for us fumblers and failures." --Celestine Sibley, in the Atlanta Constitution. "Henry Mitchell is one of America's most entertaining and enlightening garden writers.... 'Garden writer' fails, in truth, to describe this man. He gardens and he writes--the former, if we take him at his word, with lust and loathing, foolhardiness and finesse; the latter with gentle irony and consummate skill." --Pacific Horticulture "Mitchell mixes practical advice, encouragement, philosophic consolation and wit. He is the neighbor you wish you could talk to over the back fence." --House and Garden Henry Mitchell was to gardening what Izaak Walton was to fishing. The Essential Earthman is a collection of the best of his long-running column for the Washington Post. Although he offered invaluable tips for novice as well as seasoned gardeners, at the heart of his essays were piquant observations: on keeping records; the role of trees in gardens (they don't belong there); how a gardener should weather the winter; on shrubs, bulbs, and fragrant flowers--and about observation itself. Here's one example: Marigolds gain enormously in impact when used as sparingly as ultimatums. Henry Mitchell came to his subject with reverence, passion, humor, and a contagious enthusiasm tempered only by his sober knowledge of human frailty. The Essential Earthman is for all who love gardening--even those who only dream of doing it.

The Bone Garden

2003-07-02
The Bone Garden

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  • Author: Kate Ellis
  • Publisher: Macmillan
  • ISBN: 9780312300371
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 248

Detective Wesley Peterson is back in action and digging up trouble in his search to solve a mysterious murder. Peterson has little time to indulge in his hobby of archaeology, for he has a rather more recent murder case to solve: a man found brutally stabbed to death at a popular holiday site.

Disoriental

2018-05-01
Disoriental

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  • Author: Négar Djavadi
  • Publisher: Europa Editions
  • ISBN: 1609454529
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 282

National Book Award Finalist: “A multigenerational epic of the Sadr family’s life in Iran and their eventual exile . . . Full of surprises” (The Globe and Mail). Winner of the 2019 Albertine Prize and Lambda Literary Award Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself, as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them. It is Kimiâ herself—punk-rock aficionado, storyteller extraordinaire, a Scheherazade of our time, and above all a modern woman divided between family traditions and her own “disorientalization”—who forms the heart of this bestselling and beloved novel, recipient of numerous literary honors. “Where initially Disoriental seems focused on Kimiâ’s father and his pro-democracy activism—first against the Shah, then the Ayatollah Khomeini—this is truly Kimiâ’s story of disorientation—national, familial and sexual—and finding herself again.” —The Globe and Mail “A tour de force of storytelling . . . Djavadi deftly weaves together the history of 20th-century Iran [and] the spellbinding chronicle of her own ancestors. . . . Perfectly blends historical fact with contemporary themes.” —Library Journal “Riveting . . . Djavadi is an immensely gifted storyteller, and Kimiâ’s tale is especially compelling.” —Booklist (starred review) “A wonder and a pleasure to read.” —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances WINNER 2019 ALBERTINE PRIZE WINNER 2019 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST 2019 CLMP FIRECRACKER AWARD FINALIST 2019 BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD WINNER LE PRIX DU ROMAN NEWS WINNER STYLE PRIZE WINNER 2016 LIRE BEST DEBUT NOVEL WINNER LA PORTE DORÉE PRIZE ONE OF THE GLOBE & MAIL’S BEST BOOKS OF 2018

The Consolation of Gardens

2019-06-29
The Consolation of Gardens

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  • Author: Diane Marquart Moore
  • Publisher: Border Press Books
  • ISBN: 9780999780466
  • Category :
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 110

The duet of poet and plant photographer, Moore and Sullivan, has produced another book featuring their pursuits of plant life scattered throughout the southeastern United States and as far afield as the Mideast. Poet Diane Marquart Moore observes humanistic elements in the diversity of plant forms from mayapples to the everlasting rose; and Sullivan's trained eye records the color and structure of typical and atypical forms of leaf and flower. A special page derived from drawings delineated by the poet's mother, Dorothy Greenlaw Marquart, in 1926 lends interest to this volume. Poems about those living forms that provide beauty as the principal adornments in garden and field provide botanical bounty for plant collectors, explorers, and lovers of the consolation of gardens.