![]() ![]() ![]() Richard Lancelyn Green points out that Raffles shares his first name with Conan Doyle and with Hornung's son, Arthur Oscar Hornung. It has been suggested that Raffles's name may have been inspired by the title of Doyle's 1891 novel The Doings of Raffles Haw. ![]() Hornung was inspired by the Sherlock Holmes stories of his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle and dedicated The Amateur Cracksman to Doyle: "To A. Raffles's adventures have been adapted across various media, the character played by a number of popular actors including John Barrymore and David Niven. Raffles is an expert thief and like Holmes, he is a master of disguise. Watson to chronicle his adventures, Raffles has Harry "Bunny" Manders – a former schoolmate saved from disgrace by Raffles, whom Raffles persuaded to accompany him on a burglary. He is called the "Amateur Cracksman" and often, at first, differentiates between him and the "professors" – professional criminals from the lower classes.Īs Holmes has Dr. Raffles is, in many ways, an inversion of Holmes – he is a " gentleman thief", living at the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing cricket as a gentleman (or " amateur") for the Gentlemen of England and supporting himself by carrying out ingenious burglaries. Hornung, brother-in-law of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Raffles) is a fictional character created in 1898 by E. Raffles (right) lock-picking with Bunny's assistance, by John H. ![]()
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![]() ![]() By his death he was effectively emperor of most of the known world. In just thirty years he had risen from a position of virtual obscurity to become one of the richest men in the world, with the power single-handedly to overthrow the Republic. In a string of spectacular victories he conquered all of Gaul, invaded Germany, and twice landed in Britain - an achievement which in 55BC was greeted with a public euphoria comparable to that generated by the moon landing in 1969. His greatest skill, outside the bedroom, was as a military commander. His affairs with noblewomen were both frequent and scandalous. ![]() His many acclaimed works include Caesar, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Society of Military History’s Distinguished Book Award for Biography. By his early 30s he had risen to the position of Consul, and was already beginning to dominate the Senate. Adrian Goldsworthy is a preeminent historian of the ancient world. He was decorated for valour in battle, captured and held to ransom by pirates, and almost bankrupted himself by staging games for the masses.Īs a politician, he quickly gained a reputation as a dangerously ambitious maverick. In his late teens he narrowly avoided execution for opposing the military dictator Sulla. ![]() 'Combines scholarship with storytelling to bring the ancient world to life: in his masterly new CAESAR he shows us the greatest Roman as man, statesman, soldier and lover' Simon Sebag Montefioreįrom the very beginning, Caesar's story makes dazzling reading. The story of one of the most brilliant, flamboyant and historically important men who ever lived. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Paragraphing is managed instead by the full stops between extended sentences-breathless, bad-mouthed, resentful sentences, sentences that are fetid, rhythmic and readable, full of insult and gossip, anecdotes and digressions. There are no paragraphs, only chapter breaks. Offering such glints of transcendence at the edge of an ugly killing, Melchor creates a narrative that not only decries an atrocity but embodies the beauty and vitality it perverts. Sometimes, though, this claustrophobic style breaks like a fever, yielding to flights of mesmerically expansive prose. The crime is not an act but an entire atmosphere, which Melchor captures in language as though distilling venom. At times, she enters so deeply into the psyche of sexual violence that she skirts the voyeurism risked by any representation of cruelty. The novel’s tortured self-deceptions and sprung-trap revelations evoke the stories of Flannery O’Connor, or, more recently, the neuroses of Marlon James’s Kingston gunmen in A Brief History of Seven Killings In an interview about that novel, James spoke about the need to 'risk pornography' in the portrayal of violence-and Melchor certainly does. Hurricane Season belongs to the Gothic-grotesque tradition of the transnational American South. ![]() ![]() ![]() In his last book, he turned his attention to science. Other travel books include the massive bestseller Notes From a Small Island, which won the 2003 World Book Day National Poll to find the book which best represented modern England, followed by A Walk in the Woods (in which Stephen Katz, his travel companion from Neither Here Nor There, made a welcome reappearance), Notes From a Big Country and Down Under.īill Bryson has also written several highly praised books on the English language, including Mother Tongue and Made in America. It was followed by Neither Here Nor There, an account of his first trip around Europe. In The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson's hilarious first travel book, he chronicled a trip in his mother's Chevy around small town America. ![]() He and his family then moved to New Hampshire in America for a few years, but they have now returned to live in the UK. He lived for many years with his English wife and four children in North Yorkshire. He settled in England in 1977, and worked in journalism until he became a full time writer. William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, FRS was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Joe's parents, owners of a local pub, ask Maisie to investigate what happened to their son, and Maisie readily accepts, having watched all the Coombes children, Joe, Archie, and Vivian, grow up in their close-knit family. But the vapors from the paint give Joe headaches, and when he is found dead from an apparent fall, it's all chalked up to being a suicide rather than the fatal blow on the head he received from the two men following him as Joe was out walking one night (NOT a spoiler - it happens in the Prologue). But now that the so-called phony war has ended, things are heating up.įor 15 year-old Joe Coombes, already an apprentice for Yates and Sons, painters and decorators, it now means a job painting the buildings at every RAF airfield in the country with a special new fire-retardant paint. It's May 1940 and, while Britain is at war with Germany, nothing much has happened so far on the home front, except lots of talk about the possibility of England being invaded, and continued preparations for the war. ![]() ![]() ![]() In 2007, MTV and Tangerine promotions helped finance a line by Ms. ![]() Conrad’s first attempt at designing a clothing line but the low prices are new. “I think that it’s actually great timing.” “Now that the economy’s not doing so well, I think it’s everybody that’s looking for bargains,” Ms. And we feel like these exclusive brands do just that.” “You need to give the customer a reason to come in and shop with you. “To be important to the consumer today, you need to differentiate yourself,” Don Brennan, senior executive vice president of Kohl’s, said Monday in a telephone interview. It is particularly effective in this economy where shopping is no longer a national pastime. The retailer has become a favorite of analysts in part for a strategy of acquiring well-known brands (or brands by well-known people) and selling them at low prices. Later, Kohl’s plans to sell the exclusive brand, LC Lauren Conrad, in all of its more than 1,000 stores. Conrad, 23, will introduce a casual California-inspired clothing line for young women in 300 Kohl’s stores and on. Kohl’s is expected to announce Wednesday that in October, Ms. ![]() ![]() Fashion Week and been on the cover of Rolling Stone.īut she is about to brave a new frontier: Kohl’s, the discount department store chain. Lauren Conrad, the honey-blond star of MTV’s hit reality series “The Hills,” has attended the exclusive Crillon Ball in Paris, walked a runway at L.A. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() However, since he is mostly on this mission throughout the book, his intensity was toned down by several notches. He had to make major adjustments, from his lifestyle to the way he conducts business. It's heart-melting, isn't it, when the heroes go out of their way to prove themselves to the heroine? Especially after a major screw-up? I was truly impressed with the lengths he had taken to make it up to Holly. There is one awesome thing here though: Creighton truly wants to make things work. It's no wonder they are having trouble now. They did things backwards if you recall in book 1: hookup first, a very public proposal driven by lust, and then a wedding very soon after. Hurt and determined to succeed, she takes off on her own.Īs the second book of this series, this was all about the growth of Creighton and Holly's relationship. Unfortunately, he forgot about Holly and that she had to make it to her scheduled tour-or else, her record label will drop her like a hot potato. ![]() Creighton did not promise her love, but he did give his word that he will consider her career top priority, just as he does his own. Normally I'd roll my eyes at dramatics over a single mistake, but in this instance I empathize with her. ![]() Holly has just left her dirty-talking, billionaire husband, Creighton Karas. DIRTY PLEASURES immediately follows the final events of DIRTY BILLIONAIRE (read my review here!). ![]() ![]() ![]() Through this multilayered series of practices and dharma talks, you will investigate the mechanics of your mind, so you can free yourself from clinging to the past or worrying about the future. You’ll let go of “getting somewhere” or “getting something” out of meditation, and instead learn to recognize the profound peace that comes with simply, softly being in the present moment. =[[cta[[ What You'll Experience During the “Pause, Breathe, Be Here Now” Meditation Experience Pause, Breath, Be Here Now is a 10-day meditation series with Ram Dass – alongside other notable meditation teachers such as Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, and Joseph Goldstein – to help you bring mindful awareness into your daily experience. “The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” – Ram Dass Therefore, all links from One Commune events will now redirect to other events that will help serve you during your spiritual growth journey.Įven though we disagree with their decision, we are grateful for your support and recommend you also check out our events calendar for more great events! While we are committed to your spiritual growth, we can no longer recommend their events, nor will we publish new ones from them. We were given zero notification until it happened, and this was after we had been a strong supporter of their work for a couple of years now. ![]() The publisher (One Commune) of this event has made the unexpected business decision to no longer work with smaller websites, such as ours. ![]() ![]() ![]() The town’s closeness and culture absolutely inform the story, and give it a distinct feeling. Even with that in mind, I can see that Sain did a good job with La Cachette. I’m not a visual person and I’ve moved often enough that to me, one place is pretty much like another. ![]() As I said above, I don’t personally care all that much about setting. Grey, spurred on by what are possibly psychic visions of the night Elora disappeared, becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of Elora’s disappearance… and, with it, the drownings of two other children a decade before. This summer is different, however her best friend (and “twin flame”) Elora has disappeared and is presumed dead even though no body has been found. Grey was born in La Cachette, Louisiana, a town full of psychics and secrets, but after her mother’s death she lives with her father and returns to La Cachette only in the summertime. It’s fine, but it’s nothing to write home about. Considering that the last two books I had to read for work were All of Us Villainsby Amanda Foody and Christine Lynn Herman and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Dark and Shallow Lies had a lot to live up to. ![]() Still, I had to read it for work so I did. Setting-heavy fiction isn’t something that particularly appeals to me, and the witchy small-town Louisiana setting is a major selling point of this one. To be totally honest, the premise of Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain didn’t really catch me. ![]() ![]() ![]() In Florida, the majority of banned books touch on race ( How to Be an Antiracist by Ibrahim Kendi, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison), sexuality ( Forever by Judy Blume, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley), and sexual orientation and gender identity ( Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe). ![]() ![]() Of Mice and Men is actually within arm's reach."Īccording to PEN America, which tracks book-banning incidents, Florida tallied the third-highest number of school book banning incidents in the nation, trailing only Texas and Pennsylvania. While books have been banned in America since the days of the Mayflower, there has been a recent surge as an unprecedented number of parents, activists, and elected officials request scores of books to be banned from classrooms and libraries. " Handmaid's Tale - we have a copy of it right now. "Wow, look at this - I can tell you that Sapphire is right here," Sandler tells New Times as he cross-references book titles on his shelves with the banned-book list shared by PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for literary free expression. (The complete list is included at the end of this story.) It's not intentional, but that's what happens when you run a nonprofit mobile library in a state that has so far banned more than 200 books in various school districts since July of 2021. Nathaniel Sandler is surrounded by banned books at the Wynwood headquarters of Bookleggers Library. ![]() |