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Christina, The Girl King
by Linda Gaboriau Michel Marc BouchardMichel Marc Bouchard's latest play tells the story of Queen Christina of Sweden, who wreaked havoc throughout northern Europe in the middle of the seventeenth century. An enigmatic monarch, a flamboyant and unpredictable intellectual, a woman eager for knowledge, and a feminist before her time, Christina reigned over an empire she hoped to make the most sophisticated in all of Europe.In 1649, Christina summoned René Descartes to her court in Uppsala to share with her the radical new ideas emerging from science and philosophy at the time - ideas that contradicted long-held, faith-based views about the world. Astronomer Johannes Kepler had recently proposed the elliptical trajectory of planets - including Earth - around the sun, and Descartes himself contended, despite condemnation from the Church, that individuals, not God, determined their own destiny.Descartes's ideas about free will and reason appealed to Christina, who was struggling to reconcile tensions between her rational, thinking self and emotions she dared not name - including her love for a woman. Rather than bow to pressure to conform to the expectations of a nation that demanded she give it an heir, the twenty-six-year-old queen abdicate her throne to convert to Catholicism - rendering her ineligible to rule, according to Swedish law. Was this an act of madness? Or a bold gesture of autonomy by a modern woman born out of her time - one whom the seventeenth century simply could not contain?Christina, the Girl King premieres at the 2014 Stratford Festival.Cast of 4 women and 6 men.
Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-century Holy Woman
by Samuel Fanous Henrietta LeyserSamuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser present a vivid interdisciplinary study devoted to the life, work and extant vita of Christina of Markyate, which draws on research from a wide range of disciplines. This fascinating and comprehensive collection surveys the life of an extraordinary medieval woman. Christina of Markyate made a vow of chastity at an early age, against the wishes of her parents who intended her to marry. When forced into wedlock, she fled in disguise and went into hiding, receiving refuge in a network of hermitages. Christina became a religious recluse and eventually founded a priory of nuns attached to St. Albans. Beautifully illustrated, this book provides students who regularly encounter Christina with a research compendium from which to begin their studies, and introduces Christina to a wider audience.
Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric
by Veronica BuckleyShe was born on a bitterly cold December night in 1626 and, in the candlelight, mistakenly declared a boy. On her father's death six years later, she inherited the Swedish throne. She was tutored by Descartes, yet could swear like the roughest soldier. She was painted a lesbian, a prostitute, a hermaphrodite, and an atheist; in that tumultuous age, it is hard to determine which was the most damning label. She was learned but restless, progressive yet self-indulgent; her leadership was erratic, her character unpredictable. Sweden was too narrow for her ambition. No sooner had she enjoyed the lavish celebrations of her official coronation at twenty-three than she abdicated, converting to Catholicism (an act of almost foolhardy independence and political challenge) and leaving her cold homeland behind for an extravagant new life in Rome. Christina, Queen of Sweden, longed fatally for adventure. Freed from her crown, Christina cut a breath-taking path across Europe: spending madly, searching for a more prestigious throne to scale, stirring trouble wherever she went. Supported and encouraged in turn by the pope, the king of Spain, and France's powerful Cardinal Mazarin, Christina settled at the luxurious Palazzo Farnese, where she established a lavish salon for Rome's artists and intellectuals. More than once the cross-dressing queen was forced to leave town until a scandal died down. She loved to buckle on a sword and swagger like the men whose company she adored, but the greatest mystery in her life was the true nature of her elusive sexuality, which biographer Veronica Buckley explores with sensitivity and rigor. For a time it seemed there was nothing this extraordinary woman might fear attempting, until a bloody tragedy of her own making foreshadowed her downfall. Pairing painstaking research with a sparkling narrative voice and unerring sense of the age, Veronica Buckley reclaims a protean life that had been preserved mostly as myth. Christina was a child of her time, and her time was one of great change: Europe stood at a crossroads where religion and science, antiquity and modernity, peace and war all met. Christina took what she wanted from each to create the life she most desired, and she dazzled all who met her.
Christina Rossetti: A Biography
by Frances ThomasWhy is Christina Rossetti, probably the major woman poet of Victorian Britain, so invisible today? This is the central question addressed in this biography. Rossetti, author of Goblin Market , My Heart Is Like a Singing Bird and In the Deep Midwinter has often been overshadowed by her brother Dante Gabriel. Drawing on many sources, this study enables the reader to piece together a more complete picture of this woman whose nature was passionate and contradictory.
Christina Rossetti: A Biography
by Frances ThomasWhy is Christina Rossetti, probably the major woman poet of Victorian Britain, so invisible today? This is the central question addressed in this biography. Rossetti, author of Goblin Market , My Heart Is Like a Singing Bird and In the Deep Midwinter has often been overshadowed by her brother Dante Gabriel. Drawing on many sources, this study enables the reader to piece together a more complete picture of this woman whose nature was passionate and contradictory.
Christina Stead
by Hazel RowleyThis new edition of Hazel Rowley's highly acclaimed biography of Christina Stead brings to life one of the most important literary figures of her age. Christina Stead left Australia in 1928, aged twenty-six, for Europe, not to return to Australia until she was seventy-two. An intensely private person, Stead lived a life that was stormy, eccentric and brave. Stead's fiction was large and passionate, original and challenging, as was her life. Hazel Rowley's compelling biography is a vigorous, penetrating and sympathetic chronicle of Stead's life and times.
Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist
by James F. McGrathMeet the real John the Baptist. For many, John the Baptist is a footnote in the gospels—Jesus&’s unkempt forerunner. But if we look closer, John emerges as a fascinating and influential religious leader in his own right. Esteemed New Testament scholar James F. McGrath turns his critical eye to overlooked details in Scripture and long-neglected sources to discover who John the Baptist really was. McGrath covers the well-known events of John&’s life, from his miraculous conception to his execution at the hands of Herod Antipas. Along the way, he introduces key context about John&’s social and religious world that fleshes out John&’s character. John becomes a rebel son of a priest. An innovator of ritual. A mentor of Jesus. McGrath also explores John&’s far-reaching impact on the history of religion. Aside from his influence on Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, John is also revered by the Mandaeans, the last extant gnostic sect, who consider themselves John&’s faithful disciples. This fresh look at the life of John the Baptist will fascinate any reader interested in John, Jesus, and their dynamic world.
A Christmas Angel at the Ragdoll Orphanage
by Suzanne LambertAn unforgettable true story . . . A heartwarming tale about the true meaning of Christmas, set in a remarkable orphanage in the middle of the last century. When Suzanne was left, two weeks old, at the door of an orphanage, it was Nancy the nanny who fought for the right to adopt Suzanne. Now, 60 years later, Suzanne is sharing the untold story of all the many orphans that her mother Nancy saved throughout the 1940s and 50s. As a teenager, Nancy accompanied the orphans to the other side of the country when they were evacuated during the war years. When they finally returned, 6 long years later, she vowed to dedicate her life to the children. A Christmas Angel at the Ragdoll Orphanage tells the story of a remarkable woman, who worked tirelessly to give society's most vulnerable children a chance of home and happiness. Full of touching, tear-jerking and unforgettable stories, this is a wondrously festive book all about the real meaning of motherhood.
Christmas Around the Village Green: In a WWII 1940s rural village, family means the world at Christmastime
by Dot May DunnDot May Dunn grew up in Derbyshire, the daughter of a miner, during the wartime years. In 1951 she joined the NHS as an early recruit and went on to train as a nurse. Dot's books are full of wonderful anecdotal insight into the life that she has experienced, written with warmth, humour and vivid accounts of her surroundings - from deprivation, health problems and poverty, to personal determination, the surprises faced by midwives and the social history of the pre- and post-war years. Dot draws upon her wealth of experience and shares her life with her readers, provoking both laughter and tears along the way.Centred on Christmas during war-time, this book will focus on community spirit and the sense of coming together and suporting each other, which Dunn captures so well.
Christmas Around the Village Green: In a WWII 1940s rural village, family means the world at Christmastime
by Dot May DunnDot May Dunn grew up in Derbyshire, the daughter of a miner, during the wartime years. In 1951 she joined the NHS as an early recruit and went on to train as a nurse. Dot's books are full of wonderful anecdotal insight into the life that she has experienced, written with warmth, humour and vivid accounts of her surroundings - from deprivation, health problems and poverty, to personal determination, the surprises faced by midwives and the social history of the pre- and post-war years. Dot draws upon her wealth of experience and shares her life with her readers, provoking both laughter and tears along the way.Centred on Christmas during war-time, this book will focus on community spirit and the sense of coming together and suporting each other, which Dunn captures so well.
Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art
by The New YorkerFrom the pages of America's most influential magazine come eight decades of holiday cheer-plus the occasional comical coal in the stocking-in one incomparable collection. Sublime and ridiculous, sentimental and searing, Christmas at The New Yorker is a gift of great writing and drawing by literary legends and laugh-out-loud cartoonists. Here are seasonal stories, poems, memoirs. and more, from a stellar roster of writers, including John Cheever, James Dickey, Richard Ford, Ken Kesey, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, S. J. Perelman, Adrienne Rich, and James Thurber. And it wouldn't be Christmas-or The New Yorker-without dozens of covers and cartoons by Addams, Arno, Chast, and others, or the mischievous verse of Roger Angell, Calvin Trillin, and Ogden Nash ("Do you know Mrs. Millard Fillmore Revere? / On her calendar, Christmas comes three hundred and sixty-five times a year.") From Jazz Age to New Age, E. B. White to Garrison Keillor, these works represent eighty years of wonderful keepsakes for Christmas, from The New Yorker to you.
Christmas at Silver Dale: the perfect Christmas romance for 2019 - featuring the original characters in the Animal Ark series! (Animal Ark Revisited #6)
by Lucy DanielsThe perfect Christmas romance for 2019 - featuring the original characters in the much loved Animal Ark series!**Summer Days at Sunrise Farm, the new book in the Animal Ark revisited series, is currently available!**Although Christmas should be the most wonderful time of year, Mandy Hope is struggling. Her relationship with Jimmy Marsh is on the rocks, while her best friend James has a gorgeous new son which only confirms how much Mandy wants children of her own. Desperately in need of a friend, Mandy strikes up a close relationship with new Welford resident Geraldine Craven, who is only too happy to offer a shoulder to cry on. Geraldine looks to be a lifeline in these troubled times, until she reveals a devastating secret about Mandy's past.With so much uncertainty, is there still hope for a happy Christmas?******Read what everyone's saying about Animal Ark Revisited!'An adorable read [with] a real sense of village community' Bookworms and Shutterbugs'Just the right amount of nostalgia... wonderful and very poignant' - The World is a Book Blog'Heartwarming and endearing... a gorgeous story filled with hope, joy, sweetness and light combined with the honesty of real life' - Amazon'An incredibly lovely story' - Rachel's Random Reads'Will leave you feeling cosy and uplifted' Goodreads'I loved every minute' Amazon'I had tears in my eyes at the first chapter' - Goodreads'One of the best books I've read!' Amazon(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Christmas at the Ragdoll Orphanage
by Suzanne LambertDiscover a magical true story of the power of love and motherhood . . . 'Filled with warmth and love, and is so life-affirming' 5***** reader reviewTwo-week-old Suzanne was left at the door of Nazareth House orphanage - abandoned by the very people who should have given her the love, protection and care she desperately needed. But when Nancy - the orphanage nanny - held Suzanne in her arms and looked into her eyes, she felt a magical bond. It seemed that a guardian angel had brought them both together. Yet their future looked uncertain. Would Nancy ever be allowed to adopt tiny Suzanne? And could their love endure all that the years ahead were to send them? A tear-jerking and unforgettable story about the struggles and joys of parenthood and childhood, and how, for an orphan, having somewhere to call home makes every day feel like Christmas. ____________'A fantastic read' 5***** reader review 'Lovingly portrayed' 5***** reader review'Well written, funny and very moving' 5***** reader review
The Christmas Box Miracle
by Richard Paul EvansSince it was first published, more than seven million people have been touched by the magic of The Christmas Box, a holiday classic that is as beloved in our time as A Christmas Carol was in Dickens's.When New York Times bestselling author Richard Paul Evans wrote The Christmas Box, he intended it as a private expression of love for his two young daughters, Jenna and Allyson. Though he often told them that he loved them, he didn't feel that they could ever really understand the depth of his feelings until they had experienced the joy of rearing their own children, and by that time their relationship would have changed forever. In writing The Christmas Box, he hoped that at some time in the future they would read the book and know of their father's love. As Evans began to write, he was amazed at the inspiration that flowed into his mind and heart. He completed the moving story of a widow and the young family who comes to live with her in less than six weeks, and bound twenty copies to give as Christmas presents to family and friends. In the following weeks, those twenty copies were shared and passed along from family to family, from friend to friend, and what began as a tale for two little girls became a message of miracles, hope, and healing for people throughout the world.
A Christmas Far from Home: An Epic Tale of Courage and Survival during the Korean War
by Stanley WeintraubAn anecdote-rich narrative of the 1950 holiday season during the Korean War, when, just after Thanksgiving, tens of thousands of US troops were surrounded in the Chosin reservoir area by hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops and began a terrible and difficult retreat, which finally ended on Christmas Day.
Christmas Gift!
by Ferrol SamsIn this timeless, touching holiday memoir drawing on his own experiences as a child of the Depression, master storyteller Ferrol Sams rekindles the sentiment and spirit of the Christmas season in a book that will capture the hearts of generations to come. Image descriptions present.
A Christmas Gift from Bob: NOW A MAJOR FILM
by James BowenThe festive standalone from James and Bob, the stars of the bestselling A Street Cat Named Bob. Now a major motion picture starring Luke Treadaway as James and Bob himself.STREET CAT BOB and James, stars of the bestselling A Street Cat Named Bob and The World According to Bob that touched millions of hearts around the world, return in a festive standalone special as they spend a cold and challenging December on the streets of London together in a new adventure.From the day James rescued a street cat abandoned in the hallway of his sheltered accommodation, they began a friendship which has transformed both their lives and, through the bestselling books A Street Cat Named Bob and The World According to Bob, touched millions around the world. In this new story of their journey together, James looks back at the last Christmas they spent scraping a living on the streets and how Bob helped him through one of his toughest times - providing strength, friendship and inspiration but also teaching him important lessons about the true meaning of Christmas along the way.Now a major motion picture starring Luke Treadaway as James and Bob himself, coming November 6.
A Christmas Gift from Bob: NOW A MAJOR FILM
by James BowenThe festive standalone from James and Bob, the stars of the bestselling A Street Cat Named Bob. Now a major motion picture starring Luke Treadaway as James and Bob himself.STREET CAT BOB and James, stars of the bestselling A Street Cat Named Bob and The World According to Bob that touched millions of hearts around the world, return in a festive standalone special as they spend a cold and challenging December on the streets of London together in a new adventure.From the day James rescued a street cat abandoned in the hallway of his sheltered accommodation, they began a friendship which has transformed both their lives and, through the bestselling books A Street Cat Named Bob and The World According to Bob, touched millions around the world. In this new story of their journey together, James looks back at the last Christmas they spent scraping a living on the streets and how Bob helped him through one of his toughest times - providing strength, friendship and inspiration but also teaching him important lessons about the true meaning of Christmas along the way.Now a major motion picture starring Luke Treadaway as James and Bob himself, coming November 6.
A Christmas Gift from Bob: NOW A MAJOR FILM
by James BowenFrom the day James rescued a street cat abandoned in the hallway of his sheltered accommodation, they began a friendship which has transformed both their lives and, through the bestselling books A STREET CAT NAMED BOB and THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BOB, touched millions around the world. In this new story from their journey together, James looks back at an early Christmas they spent on the streets and how Bob helped him through one of his toughest times - teaching him the true meaning of Christmas and bringing home him to in how many ways Bob has saved his life.(P)2014 Hodder & Stoughton
Christmas in Plains: Memories
by Jimmy Carter Amy CarterJimmy Carter remembers Christmas in Plains, Georgia, the source of spiritual strength, respite, friendship, and vacation fun in this charming portrait.In a beautifully rendered portrait, Jimmy Carter remembers the Christmas days of his Plains boyhood--the simplicity of family and community gift-giving, his father's eggnog, the children's house decorations, the school Nativity pageant, the fireworks, Luke's story of the birth of Christ, and the poignancy of his black neighbors' poverty. Later, away at Annapolis, he always went home to Plains, and during his Navy years, when he and Rosalynn were raising their young family, they spent their Christmases together recreating for their children the holiday festivities of their youth. Since the Carters returned home to Plains for good, they have always been there on Christmas Day, with only one exception in forty-eight years: In 1980, with Americans held hostage in Iran, Jimmy, Rosalynn, and Amy went by themselves to Camp David, where they felt lonely. Amy suggested that they invite the White House staff and their families to join them and to celebrate. Nowadays the Carters' large family is still together at Christmastime, offering each other the gifts and the lifelong rituals that mark this day for them. With the novelist's eye that enchanted readers of his memoir An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter has written another American classic, in the tradition of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory and Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales.
Christmas in Plains
by Jimmy Carter Amy CarterIn a beautifully rendered portrait, Jimmy Carter remembers the Christmas days of his Plains boyhood -- the simplicity of family and community gift-giving, his father's eggnog, the children's house decorations, the school Nativity pageant, the fireworks, Luke's story of the birth of Christ, and the poignancy of his black neighbors' poverty. Later, away at Annapolis, he always went home to Plains, and during his Navy years, when he and Rosalynn were raising their young family, they spent their Christmases together re-creating for their children the holiday festivities of their youth. Since the Carters returned home to Plains for good, they have always been there on Christmas Day, with only one exception in forty-eight years: In 1980, with Americans held hostage in Iran, Jimmy, Rosalynn, and Amy went by themselves to Camp David, where they felt lonely. Amy suggested that they invite the White House staff and their families to join them and to celebrate. Nowadays the Carters' large family is still together at Christmastime, offering each other the gifts and the lifelong rituals that mark this day for them. With the novelist's eye that enchanted readers of his memoir An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter has written another American classic, in the tradition of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory and Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales.
Christmas Memories
by A. C. GreeneOne of Texas's most recognized folk lore writers presents this little book with two of his fondest Christmas reminiscences from a childhood during the Depression. "In the town where I was born and raised, everyone drove a few miles south to cut a tree.... In that dry, windy country few of the cedars grew straight and full, so the major problem was to find the one least lopsided and wind-whipped." Thus A. C. Greene, in "The Too-Big Christmas Tree," tells of a Christmas in the 1920s when his father cut a too-big tree and almost broke up the family. Long out-of-print and a collector's item, this story is now coupled with "Christmas Shopping," in which a small boy sets out with his grandmother on his first shopping trip to buy Christmas presents for the family. "My grandmother and I boarded the little four-wheel trolley on the Fair Park loop--the men who were waiting all tipping their hats and letting the women and children on first. Pretty soon we were bumping and swaying up Sayles Hill on our way to downtown." A.C. Greene, born in Abilene, Texas, wrote a column for the Dallas Morning News and more than twenty books, many on Texas history and lore. He was a memoirist, fiction writer, historian, poet, and book critic.
Christmas Memories from Mississippi
by Wyatt WatersThis beautiful book of thirty-eight essays, illustrated by Mississippi's premier watercolorist Wyatt Waters, will ring true with treasured recollections of Christmases past. Remember the Christmas it snowed on the Mississippi Coast? Glen Allison recalls that miracle. Richard Ford and Waters tell exactly what they felt when they first laid eyes on a bicycle left under the tree by Santa Claus. These Mississippians celebrate Christmas pageants, the decorating, the family dinners—even as they recognize war and loss as part of our lives and sometimes part of our holidays. Christmas Memories from Mississippi looks at the holidays from the early twentieth century through the present and offers the celebrations from various points of view, both religious and secular. This book makes an ideal memento of shared traditions and lovingly extends the spirit of the season across the state's diversity.
Christmas on Jane Street: A True Story
by Billy Romp Wanda UrbanskaThis “sweet tale” of a Vermont family’s annual trek to New York City to sell trees is “a cross between It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol” (USA Today).Every holiday season for nearly twenty years, Billy Romp, his wife, and their three children have spent nearly a month living in a tiny camper and selling Christmas trees on Jane Street in New York City. They arrive from Vermont the day after Thanksgiving and leave just in time to make it home for Christmas morning—and for a few weeks they transform a corner of the Big Apple into a Frank Capra-esque small town alive with heartwarming holiday spirit.A lovely, lovingly illustrated little gem of a book, this delightful tenth anniversary edition of a beloved Christmas classic tells the poignant, inspiring story of an unforgettable family that brings the Christmas spirit to life on a street corner in Manhattan and the warm, wide circle of friends who have welcomed them to the neighborhood.Christmas on Jane Street is about the transformative power of love—love of parent and child, of merchant and customer, of stranger and neighbor. The ideal Christmas story, it is about the lasting and profound difference that one person can make to a family and one family can make to a community.“A heartwarming story”—Newsday“A touching tale fragrant with the season . . . a special treat for those who love Christmas trees.” —Tampa Tribune