1725. Nancy è la bella e giovane figlia di un ricco mercante inglese. L'improvvisa morte del padre la mette di fronte a quello che il genitore aveva pianificato per lei: sposare un ricco proprietario terriero in Jamaica. Nancy raggiunge la splendida isola caraibica e se ne innamora, ma non può fare a meno di soffrire per la povertà che vi regna e di provare ribrezzo per il futuro sposo. Per salvare la sua schiava personale da una violenza uccide un bianco e si vede costretta a fuggire: unica possibilità di salvezza, una nave di corsari... Ambientata agli inizi del Settecento, una storia tutta colpi di scena, un romanzo d'avventura e d'evasione che ha per protagoniste due ragazze 'corsare per caso'.

Bach's St. Matthew Passion is universally acknowledged to be one of the world's supreme musical masterpieces, yet in the years after Bach's death it was forgotten by all but a small number of his pupils and admirers. The public rediscovered it in 1829, when Felix Mendelssohn conducted the work before a glittering audience of Berlin artists and intellectuals, Prussian royals, and civic notables. The concert soon became the stuff of legend, sparking a revival of interest in and performance of Bach that has continued to this day. Mendelssohn's performance gave rise to the notion that recovering and performing Bach's music was somehow 'national work.' In 1865 Wagner would claim that Bach embodied 'the history of the German spirit's inmost life.' That the man most responsible for the revival of a masterwork of German Protestant culture was himself a converted Jew struck contemporaries as less remarkable than it does us today—a statement that embraces both the great achievements and the disasters of 150 years of German history. In this book, Celia Applegate asks why this particular performance crystallized the hitherto inchoate notion that music was central to Germans' collective identity. She begins with a wonderfully readable reconstruction of the performance itself and then moves back in time to pull apart the various cultural strands that would come together that afternoon in the Singakademie. The author investigates the role played by intellectuals, journalists, and amateur musicians (she is one herself) in developing the notion that Germans were 'the people of music.' Applegate assesses the impact on music's cultural place of the renewal of German Protestantism, historicism, the mania for collecting and restoring, and romanticism. In her conclusion, she looks at the subsequent careers of her protagonists and the lasting reverberations of the 1829 performance itself.

Devoted to her husband, Gerry, Holly has always depended on his practical advice and lists to keep her going and is lost when she loses him to brain cancer, until a package arrives containing ten envelopes filled with practical and impractical advice for carrying on her life without her beloved husband at her side. Reissue. (An Alcon Entertainment film, directed by Richard LaGravenese, releasing Summer 2007, starring Hilary Swank, Kathy Bates, Lisa Kudrow, & Harry Connick, Jr.) (General Fiction)

Two young women meet under extraordinary circumstances in 18th century West Indies and they resolve to escape their oppressive lives. Readership level: 12+.

An ideal book for anyone who loves the shore. The first complete guide to collecting, identifying, and understanding the history behind smooth glass shards found at the water's edge. More than 250 color photos pay tribute to both sea glass and the historical glassware that is frequently its source. Beachcombers can now use subtle clues regarding color and shape to determine age, rarity, and even origin.

Winston Churchill has long been one of the world?s preeminent leadership role models, his voice still reverberating more than forty years after his death. This was illustrated when New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, described after 9/11 as ?Winston Churchill in a Yankees cap,? wrote to Celia Sandys: ?Your grandfather was a great source of inspiration and strength to me following the tragic events.?

In We Shall Not Fail, Sandys (with coauthor Jonathan Littman) distills the traits that made Churchill so effective throughout his career, including his use of language, his courage under fire, and his willingness to defy convention and stand up to bullies.

Drawing on vivid personal stories, as well as her grandfather?s letters and speeches, Sandys reveals the lessons we must all learn if we are to lead in today?s tough times.

The latest title from Celia Haddon - }Daily Telegraph{ pet agony aunt and author of many }100 Ways...{ titles. Line drawings.

In this collection of acerbic essays, Ugresic dissects the nature of the contemporary book industry, which she argues is so infected with the need to create and promote literature that will appeal to the masses-literally to everyone-that if Thomas Mann were writing nowadays, his books wouldn't even be published in the U.S. because they're not sexy enough.

A playful and biting critique, Ugresic's essays hit on all of the major aspects of publishing: agents, subagents, and scouts, supermarket-like bookstores, Joan Collins, book fairs that have little to do with books, authors promoted because of sex appeal instead of merit, and editors trying to look like writers by having their photograph taken against a background of bookshelves.

Thanks to cultural influences such as Oprah, The Today Show, and Kelly Ripa, best-seller lists have become just a modern form of socialist realism, a manifestation of a society that generally ignores literature in favor of the next big thing.

Il volume offre al lettore una rassegna ampia e dettagliata delle più significative teorie dell'Intelligenza, così come si sono sviluppate dalla metà dell'Ottocento fino a oggi, dai contributi teorici dei positivisti inglesi alle teorie più recenti, legate allo sviluppo dei modelli computazionali e simulativi dell'Intelligenza. La parte conclusiva del testo è dedicata all'Intelligenza Artificiale e al connessionismo con lo scopo di offrire un quadro del percorso che hanno seguito insieme biologi, cibernetici, informatici, ingegneri, matematici, psicolinguisti e psicologi per comprendere come i processi intellettivi si generino e funzionino all'interno di un essere vivente.

For the legions of readers spellbound by WITCH CHILD, here's the fascinating next chapter - thanks to a Native American descendant with an uncanny link to the past.


Agnes closed her eyes in the heat and steam of the sweat lodge. She woke to air that was dry and cold around her. She was no longer Agnes, or even Karonhisake, Searching Sky. She was no longer American or Haudenosaunee. She was English, and her name was Mary, and she woke to find that she was dying, freezing to death.

It came to Agnes unbidden - a vision of Mary Newbury, alone in the snow, dying of the cold. A vision of a young woman who had lived in the 1600s, who had been driven from her Puritan settlement, accused of being a witch. It was an image of a woman whose life was about to change radically as she embarked on an existence that defied all accepted norms - embracing passionate independence, love, and loyalty to a proud, endangered community that accepted her as one of their own. Mary's and Agnes's lives have been separated by almost 400 years, but they are inextricably linked by more than blood. For, like Mary, Agnes has special powers - and Mary now seeks these powers to ensure that the rest of her story is told.

Celia Correas de Zapata, an internationally recognized expert in the field of Latin American fiction written by women, has collected stories by thirty-one authors from fourteen countries, translated into English by such renowned scholars and writers as Gregory Rabassa and Margaret Sayers Peden. Contributors include Dora Alonso, Rosario Ferré, Elena Poniatowska, Ana Lydia Vega, and Luisa Valenzuela. The resulting book is a literary tour de force, stories written by women in this hemisphere that speak to cultures throughout the world. In her Foreword, Isabel Allende states, “This anthology is so valuable; it lays open the emotions of writers who, in turn, speak for others still shrouded in silence.”

In this study Britton looks at the different ways in which Freudian psychoanalysis has been incorporated into arguments about racial identity and difference in the French Caribbean. Freud is often accused of Eurocentrism and in particular of making unjustifiable generalizations on the basis of European family structures. Although French Caribbean intellectuals such an Fanon, Cesaire and Glissant have joined in these criticisms, they have also made strikingly positive use of psychoanalysis. Much intellectual energy has been invested in notions of repression, the Oedipus complex and the psychoanalytic cure, while at the same time Freudianism has been no less vigorously criticized for its political quietism and its potential as a means of social control. Thus Freudian theory, and the controversies it arouses, remains a surprisingly persistent element in Caribbean culture. The crucial issue is the link between the unconscious and race.

The subtitle likely refers to Allende's bestselling first novel, The House of the Spirits . Correas (Latin American literature, San Jose State U.) presents a brief Allende biography and interview material covering her career and feminist views. Includes an Allende chronology (1942-the present) and photos. Lacks an index and references. Peden (emeritus, U. of Missouri) is a noted translator of Latin American literature to English. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The ghosts of the underground city in Davey Williams's hometown are causing strange things to happen throughout the city as his friends and his enemies prepare for Midsummer, when a final battle will determine whether he will be free from the vengeful spirit called the Lady.The ghosts of the underground city are causing strange things to happen as Davey Williams's friends and his enemies prepare for Midsummer, when a final battle will determine whether he will be free from a vengeful spirit, the Lady.