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Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder
by Jerry BledsoeThe “riveting” #1 New York Times bestseller: A true story of three wealthy families and the unbreakable ties of blood (Kirkus Reviews). The first bodies found were those of a feisty millionaire widow and her daughter in their posh Louisville, Kentucky, home. Months later, another wealthy widow and her prominent son and daughter-in-law were found savagely slain in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Mystified police first suspected a professional in the bizarre gangland-style killings that shattered the quiet tranquility of two well-to-do southern communities. But soon a suspicion grew that turned their focus to family. The Sharps. The Newsoms. The Lynches. The only link between the three families was a beautiful, aristocratic young mother named Susie Sharp Newsom Lynch. Could this former child “princess” and fraternity sweetheart have committed such barbarous crimes? And what about her gun-loving first cousin and lover, Fritz Klenner, son of a nationally renowned doctor? In this tale of three families connected by marriage and murder, of obsessive love and bitter custody battles, Jerry Bledsoe recounts the shocking events that ultimately took nine lives, building to a truly horrifying climax that will leave you stunned. “Recreates . . . one of the most shocking crimes of recent years.” —Publishers Weekly “Absorbing suspense.” —Chicago Tribune “Astonishing . . . Brilliantly chronicled.” —Detroit Free Press “An engrossing southern gothic sure to delight fans of the true-crime genre. Bledsoe maintains the suspense with a sure hand.” —The Charlotte Observer
A Bitter Chill: An Aurelia Marcella Roman Mystery (Aurelia Marcella Roman Series #2)
by Jane FinnisIn late December 95 AD, Roman settlers in Britannia are preparing to celebrate Saturnalia. Innkeeper Aurelia Marcella's plans for a peaceful holiday are shattered when her brother brings bad news. An enemy in Rome is trying to destroy her family by spreading rumors that they are plotting against Caesar. Her brother has lost his job as a government investigator, the mansio is menaced by a gang of native criminals, and when a party of rich, demanding travelers arrive to stay, their quarrels and violence spill over into Aurelia's household. Then the Saturnalia banquet, highlight of the festival, culminates in tragic death. The second installment in the Aurelia Marcella series.
Bitter Choices: Loyalty And Betrayal In The Russian Conquest Of The North Caucasus
by Michael KhodarkovskyRussia's attempt to consolidate its authority in the North Caucasus has exerted a terrible price on both sides since the mid-nineteenth century. Michael Khodarkovsky's book tells the story of a single man with multiple allegiances and provides a concise and compelling history of the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian seas. After forays beginning in the late 1500s, Russia tenuously conquered the peoples of the region in the 1850s; the campaign was defined by a cruelty on both sides that established a pattern repeated in our own time, particularly in Chechnya. At the center of Khodarkovsky's sweeping account is Semen Atarshchikov (1807-1845). His father was a Chechen translator in the Russian army, and Atarshchikov grew up with roots in both Russian and Chechen cultures. His facility with local languages earned him quick promotion in the Russian army. Atarshchikov enjoyed the confidence of his superiors, yet he saw the violence that the Russians inflicted on the native population and was torn between his duties as a Russian officer and his affinity with the highlanders. Twice he deserted the army to join the highlanders in raids against his former colleagues. In the end he was betrayed by a compatriot who sought to gain favor with the Russians by killing the infamous Atarshchikov. Khodarkovsky places Atarshchikov's life in a rich context: we learn a great deal about the region's geography, its peoples, their history, and their conflicts with both the Russians and one another. Khodarkovsky reveals disputes among the Russian commanders and the policies they advocated; some argued for humane approaches but always lost out to those who preferred more violent means. Like Hadji Murat--the hero of Tolstoy's last great work--Atarshchikov moved back and forth between Russian and local allegiances; his biography is the story of the North Caucasus, one as relevant today as in the nineteenth century.
Bitter Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus
by Michael KhodarkovskyRussia’s attempt to consolidate its authority in the North Caucasus has exerted a terrible price on both sides since the mid-nineteenth century. Michael Khodarkovsky tells a concise and compelling history of the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian seas during the centuries of Russia’s long conquest (1500–1850s). The history of the region unfolds against the background of one man’s life story, Semën Atarshchikov (1807–1845). Torn between his Chechen identity and his duties as a lieutenant and translator in the Russian army, Atarshchikov defected, not once but twice, to join the mountaineers against the invading Russian troops. His was the experience more typical of Russia’s empire-building in the borderlands than the better known stories of the audacious kidnappers and valiant battles. It is a history of the North Caucasus as seen from both sides of the conflict, which continues to make this region Russia’s most violent and vulnerable frontier.
Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor
by Jafa WallachA riveting account of a unique survival in an earthen hole dug under a cellar floor next to the Gestapo Headquarters of a small Polish town. And the story of a heroic Pole who risked his life and the lives of his family to save the hunted ones.
Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World
by Maurice Walsh"Sets Ireland's post-1916 history in its global and human context, to brilliant effect." --Neil Hegarty, Irish Times Books of the Year 2015 The Irish Revolution has long been mythologized in American culture but seldom understood. Too often, the story of Irish independence and its grinding aftermath in the early part of the twentieth century has been told only within a parochial Anglo-Irish context. Now, in the critically acclaimed Bitter Freedom, Maurice Walsh, with "a novelist's eye for detailing lives in extremis" (Feargal Keane, Prospect), places revolutionary Ireland within the panorama of nationalist movements born out of World War I. Beginning with the Easter Rising of 1916, Bitter Freedom follows through from the War of Independence to the end of the post-partition civil war in 1924. Walsh renders a history of insurrection, treaty, partition, and civil war in a way that is both compelling and original. Breaking out this history from reductionist, uplifting narratives shrouded in misguided sentiment and romantic falsification, the author provides a gritty, blow-by-blow account of the conflict, from ambushes of soldiers and the swaggering brutality of the Black and Tan militias to city streets raked by sniper fire, police assassinations, and their terrible reprisals; Bitter Freedom provides a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human face of the conflict. Walsh also weaves surprising threads into the story of Irish independence such as jazz, American movies, and psychoanalysis, examining the broader cultural environment of emerging modernity in the early twentieth century, and he shows how Irish nationalism was shaped by a world brimming with revolutionary potential defined by the twin poles of Woodrow Wilson in America and Vladimir Lenin in Russia. In this "invigorating account" (Spectator), Walsh demonstrates how this national revolution, which captured worldwide attention from India to Argentina, was itself profoundly shaped by international events. Bitter Freedom is "the most vivid and dramatic account of this epoch to date" (Literary Review).
Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
by Stephen Schlesinger Stephen KinzerBitter Fruit recounts in telling detail the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954.
Bitter Fruit: The Story Of The American Coup In Guatemala (Series On Latin American Studies #4)
by Stephen Schlesinger & Stephen KinzerBitter Fruit is a comprehensive and insightful account of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews with former CIA and other officials. It is a warning of what happens when the United States abuses its power.
Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series)
by Armstead L. RobinsonBitter Fruits of Bondage is the late Armstead L. Robinson&’s magnum opus, a controversial history that explodes orthodoxies on both sides of the historical debate over why the South lost the Civil War. Recent studies, while conceding the importance of social factors in the unraveling of the Confederacy, still conclude that the South was defeated as a result of its losses on the battlefield, which in turn resulted largely from the superiority of Northern military manpower and industrial resources. Robinson contends that these factors were not decisive, that the process of social change initiated during the birth of Confederate nationalism undermined the social and cultural foundations of the southern way of life built on slavery, igniting class conflict that ultimately sapped white southerners of the will to go on. In particular, simmering tensions between nonslaveholders and smallholding yeoman farmers on the one hand and wealthy slaveholding planters on the other undermined Confederate solidarity on both the home front and the battlefield. Through their desire to be free, slaves fanned the flames of discord. Confederate leaders were unable to reconcile political ideology with military realities, and, as a result, they lost control over the important Mississippi River Valley during the first two years of the war. The major Confederate defeats in 1863 at Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge were directly attributable to growing disenchantment based on class conflict over slavery. Because the antebellum way of life proved unable to adapt successfully to the rigors of war, the South had to fight its struggle for nationhood against mounting odds. By synthesizing the results of unparalleled archival research, Robinson tells the story of how the war and slavery were intertwined, and how internal social conflict undermined the Confederacy in the end.
Bitter Greens: A Novel
by Kate ForsythA Library Journal Best Book of 2014: Historical FictionThe amazing power and truth of the Rapunzel fairy tale comes alive for the first time in this breathtaking tale of desire, black magic and the redemptive power of loveFrench novelist Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. At the convent, she is comforted by an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens...After Margherita's father steals parsley from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off, unless he and his wife relinquish their precious little girl. Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1512 and still inspiring him at the time of his death. She is at the center of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.Locked away in a tower, Margherita sings in the hope that someone will hear her. One day, a young man does.Award-winning author Kate Forsyth braids together the stories of Margherita, Selena, and Charlotte-Rose, the woman who penned Rapunzel as we now know it, to create what is a sumptuous historical novel, an enchanting fairy tale retelling, and a loving tribute to the imagination of one remarkable woman.
Bitter Grounds
by Sandra BenitezIn 1932 El Salvador, Elena de Contreras and her husband Ernesto live the luxurious life of the very wealthy: regular trips to Europe and the United States, vast amounts of property, several gorgeous homes. In sharp contrast to their privileged existence, however, are the lives of the coffee workers they employ, who know only the hardships of back-breaking labor and low wages. Mercedes Prieto, a Pipil Indian, comes from such a background. After losing her son and husband in the aftermath of a violent uprising against rich plantation owners, she flees with her daughter Jacinta to work in the household of Elena de Contreras. Their arrival sets in motion a spellbinding story that takes three generations to unfold, as the two families become inexorably intertwined and their private turmoil mirrors the upheaval of the world around them.
Bitter Harvest: A Chef's Perspective on the Hidden Danger in the Foods We Eat and What You Can Do About It
by Ann Cooper Lisa M. HolmesFirst Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Bitter Harvest: An Inquiry into the War between Economy and Earth
by Lisi KrallHumans are in danger of crossing a divide where their foothold on an earth once abundant in self-willed otherness is slipping away. This is apparent with the sixth mass extinction, climate change, and the many breaches of planetary boundaries. Bitter Harvest brings clarity to this moment in history through a focus on economic order, how it comes to be what it is, and the way it structures the relationship between humans and Earth. An unusual synergy of disciplines (evolutionary biology, history, economic systems analysis, anthropology, and deep ecology) are tapped to fully explore the emergence of an economic system that contextualized a duality between humans and Earth. Conversations that focus on capitalism and the industrial revolution are subsumed under the longer arc of history and the system change that began with the cultivation of annual grains. Bitter Harvest engenders a more critical conversation about the complexity of the human relationship to Earth and the challenge of altering the economic trajectory that began with agriculture and has now reached its apogee in global capitalism.
Bitter Herbs: Based on a true story of a Jewish girl in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands
by Marga Minco‘The evening the men came I fled through the garden gate…’The Netherlands, World War IIWhen the Nazis invade the Netherlands in May 1940 it's clear that life is changing for the girl and her family. Step by step, the Nazis close in on the Dutch Jews. But when the authorities finally come to the family home a split decision will have devastating consequences.Marga Minco’s autobiographical novel Bitter Herbs is a Dutch classic that has been translated into more than fifteen languages. This deceptively simple and profoundly moving tale is now reissued with a new translation by Jeannette K Ringold.
Bitter Melon: Inside America's Last Rural Chinese Town
by Jeff Gillenkirk James MotlowDuring the mid 1970s, James Motlow lived in the Sacramento Delta village of Locke, where he found himself one of the only Caucasians in the community. The village had been founded in 1915 by Chinese Americans who sought a haven from discrimination and harassment in nearby communities. By the 1970s only the older generation remained to tell the story of Locke's founding and boom years. This book is based on oral histories of men and women who lived in Locke and recall the days of gambling, prostitution, missionaries, and Chinese festivals.
Bitter Ocean
by David Fairbank WhiteBitter Oceanis a masterful, authoritative account of perhaps the least-known major battle of World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic. British, Canadian, and American air and sea forces fought the German U-boats in this desperate battle, and prevailed -- at a terrible cost. Between 1939 and 1945, over 36,000 Allied sailors and navy airmen and 36,000 merchant seamen lost their lives in the Atlantic Ocean. They were attempting to deliver the weapons, food, and supplies essential to keeping Britain alive, as well as the supplies vital to the armies fighting in Europe. In addition to the troops themselves, every tank, plane, and bomb crossed the Atlantic aboard ship. As dreadful as the loss of life was for the Allies, the Germans fared even worse. More than 80 percent of German U-boat crewmen never made it home, the highest casualty rate of any branch of the military on either side. Bitterly contested and nearly lost, the Allies' battle for control of the Atlantic shipping lanes remains perhaps the least understood chapter of World War II -- until now. Drawing on a wealth of archival research as well as interviews with veterans on both sides of the ocean campaign, author and maritime journalist David Fairbank White takes us aboard ship and beneath the waves as he reconstructs this epic clash from both sides. With captivating immediacy,Bitter Oceanevokes the grim years 1940-42 when Admiral Karl Donitz's U-boats -- "tough wolves, stubby, 761 tons of driven, overcharged Nazi attack power" -- succeeded in sinking more tonnage than Allied shipyards could replace. He shows us the technological breakthroughs that reversed the course of the battle in 1943, including improved radar, machines that cracked the German naval code, and very long-range bombers. As the hunters became the hunted, the tide turned, but the German fleet continued to fight despite the increasingly terrible odds. As he tells the powerful, wrenching stories of individual convoys that suffered from the German submarine attacks, White displays a novelist's flair. Vividly written,Bitter Oceanis scrupulously factual, a triumph of scholarship that will enthrall every student of history.
Bitter Orange Tree
by Jokha AlharthiZuhur, an Omani student at a British university, is caught between the past and the present. As she attempts to form friendships and assimilate in Britain, she can&’t help but ruminate on the relationships that have been central to her life. Most prominent is her strong emotional bond with Bint Amir, a woman she always thought of as her grandmother, who passed away just after Zuhur left the Arabian Peninsula. As the historical narrative of Bint Amir&’s challenged circumstances unfurls in captivating fragments, so too does Zuhur&’s isolated and unfulfilled present, one narrative segueing into another as time slips, and dreams mingle with memories.The eagerly awaited new novel by the winner of the Man Booker International Prize, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman&’s attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in which her own power and happiness might find the freedom necessary to bear fruit and flourish.
Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors as Nazi Collaborators
by Dan PoratDigging into newly declassified archives, Dan Porat unearths the story of Jews prosecuted by the State of Israel for Nazi collaboration. Over time courts and the public came to see Jewish ghetto administrators or kapos as tragic figures. Rigorous yet humane, Porat invites us to rethink ideas about victimhood, justice, and collective memory.
The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe
by William I. HitchcockThe Bitter Road to Freedom is a powerful, deeply moving account of an earth-shattering year in the history of the U.S. and Europe.Americans are justly proud of the role their country played in liberating Europe from Nazi tyranny. For many years, we have celebrated the courage of Allied soldiers, sailors, and aircrews who defeated Hitler's regime and restored freedom to the continent. But in recounting the heroism of the "greatest generation," Americans often overlook the wartime experiences of European people themselves—the very people for whom the war was fought. In this brilliant new book, historian William I. Hitchcock surveys the European continent from D-Day to the final battles of the war and the first few months of peace. Based on exhaustive research in five nations and dozens of archives, Hitchcock's groundbreaking account shows that the liberation of Europe was both a military triumph and a human tragedy of epic proportions.This strikingly original, multinational history of liberation brings to light the interactions of soldiers and civilians, the experiences of noncombatants, and the trauma of displacement and loss amid unprecedented destruction. This book recounts a surprising story, often jarring and uncomfortable, and one that has never been told with such richness and depth. Ranging from the ferocious battle for Normandy (where as many French civilians died on D-Day as U.S. servicemen) to the plains of Poland, from the icy ravines of the Ardennes to the shattered cities and refugee camps of occupied Germany, The Bitter Road to Freedom depicts in searing detail the shocking price that Europeans paid for their freedom.
Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa
by Abena Dove Osseo-AsareFor over a century, plant specialists worldwide have sought to transform healing plants in African countries into pharmaceuticals. And for equally as long, conflicts over these medicinal plants have endured, from stolen recipes and toxic tonics to unfulfilled promises of laboratory equipment and usurped personal patents. In Bitter Roots, Abena Dove Osseo-Asare draws on publicly available records and extensive interviews with scientists and healers in Ghana, Madagascar, and South Africa to interpret how African scientists and healers, rural communities, and drug companies—including Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Unilever—have sought since the 1880s to develop drugs from Africa’s medicinal plants. Osseo-Asare recalls the efforts to transform six plants into pharmaceuticals: rosy periwinkle, Asiatic pennywort, grains of paradise, Strophanthus, Cryptolepis, and Hoodia. Through the stories of each plant, she shows that herbal medicine and pharmaceutical chemistry have simultaneous and overlapping histories that cross geographic boundaries. At the same time, Osseo-Asare sheds new light on how various interests have tried to manage the rights to these healing plants and probes the challenges associated with assigning ownership to plants and their biochemical components. A fascinating examination of the history of medicine in colonial and postcolonial Africa, Bitter Roots will be indispensable for scholars of Africa; historians interested in medicine, biochemistry, and society; and policy makers concerned with drug access and patent rights.
The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China Before Mao
by Charles N. LiThis haunting, illuminating memoir tells the remarkable true story of a young Chinese man’s coming-of-age during the tumultuous early years of the People’s Republic of ChinaIn this exceptional personal memoir, Charles N. Li brings into focus the growth pains of a nation undergoing torturous rebirth and offers an intimate understanding of the intricate, subtle, and yet all-powerful traditions that bind the Chinese family.Born near the beginning of World War II, Li Na was the youngest son of a wealthy Chinese government official. He saw his father jailed for treason and his family's fortunes dashed when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists came to power in 1945. He watched from his aunt's Shanghai apartment as the Communist army seized the city in 1948. He experienced the heady materialism of the decadent foreign "white ghosts" in British Hong Kong and starved within the harsh confines of a Communist reform school. Over the course of twenty-one tumultuous years, he went from Li Na, the dutiful Chinese son yearning for a stern, manipulative father's love, to Charles, an independent Chinese American seeking no one's approval but his own.Lyrical and luminous, intense and extraordinary, The Bitter Sea is an unforgettable tale of one young man and his country.
Bitter Seeds: Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, Necessary Evil (The Milkweek Triptych #1)
by Ian TregillisIt's 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in betweenRaybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities—a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present—Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.Alan Furst meets Alan Moore in the opening of an epic of supernatural alternate history, the tale of a twentieth century like ours and also profoundly different.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Bitter Springs
by Laura Stonein 1870s Texas, Renaldo Valle Santos, the youngest son of a large and traditional family, has been sent to train with Henry "Hank" Burnett, a freed slave and talented mestenero--or horse-catcher--so he may continue the family horse trade. Bitter Springs is a sweeping epic that takes themes from traditional Mexican literature and Old Westerns to tell the story of a man coming into his own and realizing his destiny lies in the wild open spaces with the man who loves him, far from expectations of society.
A Bitter Taste: Legend of the Five Rings: A Daidoji Shin Mystery (Legend of the Five Rings)
by Josh ReynoldsGentleman sleuth Daidoji Shin faces his trickiest case yet when he finds himself being framed for murder in this captivating cozy fantasy mystery from Legend of the Five Rings.In the fantasy empire of Rokugan, when a Crane Clan auditor turns up dead in a soy brewery, all eyes turn to nobleman-turned-detective, Daidoji Shin… but not to solve the man&’s murder; rather, Shin is the suspect. Now Shin must attempt to figure out who killed the victim and, more importantly, who framed him, all while outwitting the authorities on his trail – including a dogged Kitsuki investigator with a score to settle. Caught in a spider&’s web of intrigue and with his enemies closing in, time is running out for Dadoiji Shin…
Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily, 1943
by Carlo D'EsteBitter Victory illuminates a chapter of World War II that has lacked a balanced, full-scale treatment until now. In recounting the second-largest amphibious operation in military history, Carlo D'Este for the first time reveals the conflicts in planning and the behind-the-scenes quarrels between top Allied commanders. The book explodes the myth of the Patton-Montgomery rivalry and exposes how Alexander's inept generalship nearly wrecked the campaign. D'Este documents in chilling detail the series of savage battles fought against an overmatched but brilliant foe and how the Germans-against overwhelming odds-carried out one of the greatest strategic withdrawals in history. His controversial narrative depicts for the first time how the Allies bungled their attempt to cut off the Axis retreat from Sicily, turning what ought to have been a great triumph into a bitter victory that later came to haunt the Allies in Italy. Using a wealth of original sources, D'Este paints an unforgettable portrait of men at war. From the front lines to the councils of the Axis and Allied high commands, Bitter Victory offers penetrating reassessments of the men who masterminded the campaign. Thrilling and authoritative, this is military history on an epic scale.