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Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper
Readers will be transported to the vibrant art scene of late nineteenth-century Paris in this richly textured portrait of the relationship between Mary Cassatt and her sister Lydia. Beginning in the autumn of 1878, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper dreams its way into the intimate world of Cassatt's older sibling. Told in the reflective, lyrical voice of Lydia, who is dying of Bright's disease, the novel opens a window onto the extraordinary age in which these sisters lived, painting its sweeping narrative canvas with fascinating real-life figures that include Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, Cassatt's brilliant, subversive mentor. Featuring five full-color plates of Cassatt's paintings, this is a moving and illuminating exploration of the illusive nature of art and desire, memory and mortality, romantic and familial love..
Price: $1.86
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Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man's Own Story
In June 1948, 27-year-old petty criminal Caryl Chessman was sentenced in California on two counts of sexual assault, receiving two death sentences as punishment in a case that remains one of the most baffling episodes in American legal history. Maintaining his innocence of these crimes, Chessman lived in Cell 2455, a four-by-ten foot space on Death Row in San Quentin for the twelve years between his sentencing and eventual execution. He spent this time, punctuated by eight separate stays of execution, writing this memoir — a moving and pitiless account of his life in crime and the early life that produced it. Chessman's clarity of mind and ability to bring his thoughts directly to the page, even within the stifling walls of San Quentin, help make this work the most literate and authentic expose ever written by a criminal about his crimes. .
Price: $4.95
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Greenlanders, The
"HAUNTING." --The New York Times Book Review Jane Smiley, the Pultizer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres, gives us a magnificent novel of fourteenth-century Greenland Rich with fascinating detail about the day-to-day joys and innumerable hardships of remarkable people, The Greenlanders is also the compelling story of one family--proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling center of this unforgettable book. Echoing the simple power of the old Norse sagas, here is a novel that brings a remote civilization to life and shows how it was very like our own. "TOTALLY COMPELLING . . . FASCINATING . . . In the manner of the big books of the nineteenth century, in which complex family and community matters unravel--Dickens, Dumas, Tolstoy--The Greenlanders sweeps the reader along. . . . Jane Smiley is a true storyteller." --The Washington Post "A POWERFUL, MOVING STUDY OF HUMAN FRAILTY AND THE EPHEMERAL NATURE OF COURAGE AND LOVE." --USA Today "WONDERFUL . . . A HISTORICAL NOVEL WITH THE NEARNESS OF CONTEMPORARY FICTION." --The New Republic "[AN] EPIC MASTERPIECE . . . SPELLBINDING." --Newsday.
Price: $4.00
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When You Read This They Will Have Killed Me: The Life and Redemption of Caryl Chessman, Whose Execution Shook America
When Caryl Chessman appeared on the cover of Time's March 21, 1960 issue, he was the most famous prisoner in America and arguably the best-known in the world. He not only put a face on the issue of capital punishment, he made one of the most remarkable transformations by any American writer. Through access to the papers and letters of his attorneys, George T. Davis and Rosalie Asher, the unpublished manuscripts and papers held by Joseph Longstreth; reminiscences with those who knew him, like Mr. Davis, Mr. Longstreth, his agent and executor; and country music legend Merle Haggard, the first definitive portrait of the enigmatic Caryl Chessman emerges. .
Price: $1.60
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Someone Not Really Her Mother
The captivating story of a contemporary American family, in which three generations of women confront the intricacies of memory, geography, and motherhood, from the lauded author of Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper As Hannah PearlÂ’s memories of her 1940 escape to England from war-torn France come to the foreground of her consciousness, her memory of her more recent American life, including her relationships with her daughter and granddaughters, is almost erased. Her daughter, Miranda, attempts to bring her mother into the present and the daily activities of family life, yet finds herself instead pulled into HannahÂ’s unresolved past. MirandaÂ’s daughters confront the shadows of history in their own ways. Fiona, content with her life as a new mother, tries to ignore the ghostly presence of HannahÂ’s family, who perished in the war, while Ida clings to HannahÂ’s revelations as if they form a lifeline. Facing the mystery of HannahÂ’s unspoken memories of grief, each woman must ask how well anyone can know the inner life of another person, even of someone one cherishes..
Price: $0.01
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Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power
Poised at a strategic point in the emergence of modern America, Theodore Roosevelt entered the White House just as the twentieth century opened. Following a succession of weak presidents who proved themselves incapable of dealing seriously with the novel problems and responsibilities created by industrialization within the country and by imperialism in the world outside its boundaries, Roosevelt was uniquely qualified by training and personality to reverse the trend. His patrician background, his education, and his grasp of the national and international situations set him apart from the men he succeeded in Washington. His vigorous, colorful, forceful personality attracted widespread public attention and deep affection. As a result, he was able to face problems that his predecessors had avoided. In matters like labor and conservation, Roosevelt established fruitful precedents for the country. In others, diplomacy for instance, he made false starts. But in any case, he illuminated the questions with which his successors would have to deal. Legend, or near legend, Roosevelt dominated an era in American life. An examination of his multiple careers throws light on the problems of transition of the U.S. from the nineteenth to the twentieth century..
Price: $7.53
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