Queen Bee Of Tuscany

Author : Ben Downing
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2013-06-18
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781429942959

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Queen Bee of Tuscany by Ben Downing Pdf

"Quite simply one of the best books of the year." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Ben Downing's Queen Bee of Tuscany brings an extraordinary Victorian back to life. Born into a distinguished intellectual family and raised among luminaries such as Dickens and Thackeray, Janet Ross married at eighteen and went to live in Egypt. There, for the next six years, she wrote for the London Times, hobnobbed with the developer of the Suez Canal, and humiliated pashas in horse races. In 1867 she moved to Florence, Italy where she spent the remaining sixty years of her life writing a series of books and hosting a colorful miscellany of friends and neighbors, from Mark Twain to Bernard Berenson, at Poggio Gherardo, her house in the hills above the city. Eventually she became the acknowledged doyenne of the Anglo-Florentine colony, as it was known. Yet she was also immersed in the rural life of Tuscany: An avid agriculturalist, she closely supervised the farms on her estate and the sharecroppers who worked them, often pitching in on grape and olive harvests. Spirited, erudite, and supremely well-connected, Ross was one of the most dynamic women of her day. Her life offers a fascinating window on fascinating times, from the Risorgimento to the rise of fascism. Encompassing all this rich history, Queen Bee of Tuscany is a panoramic portrait of an age, a family, and our evolving love affair with Tuscany. A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2013

Author : Lisa Rochon
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 371 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2021-07-13
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781443463522

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Tuscan Daughter by Lisa Rochon Pdf

NATIONAL BESTSELLER In Renaissance Florence, a young artist searching for her missing mother is discovered by arch-rivals Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci In Tuscany during the early 1500s, Beatrice, a peasant girl, finds herself alone in the countryside after her father is killed and her mother disappears into the walled city of Florence. Barefoot and defiant, Beatrice enters the city to sell her family’s olive oil to the artists who toil to create masterworks that will elevate the status of the republic. While selling her wares, Beatrice befriends Michelangelo as he struggles to sculpt David and helps heal a melancholic woman who is having her portrait painted by the brilliant but aging Leonardo. Bonds deepen even while Michelangelo and Leonardo are pitted against each other in a competition organized by Machiavelli. Set during five epic years, Tuscan Daughter reveals the humanity and struggles of a young woman who longs to find the only family she has left while seeking to be an artist in her own right. In her own way, Beatrice influences the artistic masters of the time to find peace with their inner demons as they stake everything on the power of beauty to transform and inspire.

Author : Pamela Binnings Ewen
Publisher : Blackstone Publishing
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2020-04-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781982546946

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The Queen of Paris by Pamela Binnings Ewen Pdf

Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is revered for her sophisticated style—the iconic little black dress—and famed for her intoxicating perfume Chanel No. 5. Yet behind the public persona is a complicated woman of intrigue, shadowed by mysterious rumors. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, is fiction based on facts, some uncovered only within the past few years, and vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII. Coco Chanel could be cheerful, lighthearted, and generous; she also could be ruthless, manipulative, even cruel. Against the winds of war, with the Wehrmacht marching down the Champs-Élysées, Chanel finds herself residing alongside the Reich’s High Command in the Hotel Ritz. Surrounded by the enemy, Chanel wages a private war of her own to wrestle full control of her perfume company from the hands of her Jewish business partner, Pierre Wertheimer. With anti-Semitism on the rise, he has escaped to the United States with the confidential formula for Chanel No. 5. Distrustful of his intentions to set up production on the outskirts of New York City, Chanel fights to seize ownership. The House of Chanel shall not fall. While Chanel struggles to keep her livelihood intact, Paris sinks under the iron fist of German rule. Chanel—a woman made of sparkling granite—will do anything to survive. She will even agree to collaborate with the Nazis in order to protect her darkest secrets. When she is covertly recruited by Germany to spy for the Reich, she becomes Agent F-7124, code name: Westminster. But why? And to what lengths will she go to keep her stormy past from haunting her future?

Author : Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 472 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2011-10-13
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781444731002

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The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan Pdf

Consuelo Vanderbilt was young, beautiful and the heir to a vast family fortune. She was also deeply in love with an American suitor when her mother chose instead for her to fulfil her social ambitions and marry an English Duke. Leaving her life in America, she came to England as the Duchess of Marlborough in 1895 and took up residence in her new home - Blenheim Palace. The 9th Duchess gives unique first-hand insight into life at the very pinnacle of English society in the Edwardian era. An unsnobbish, but often amused observer of the intricate hierarchy both upstairs and downstairs at Blenheim Palace, she is also a revealing witness to the glittering balls, huge weekend parties and major state occasions she attended or hosted. Here are her encounters with every important figure of the day - from Queen Victoria, Edward V11 and Queen Alexandra to Tsar Nicholas, Prince Metternich and the young Winston Churchill. Causing a scandal by separating from the Duke after 11 years, Consuelo began her new life as philanthropist, public speaker and campaigner for women's suffrage. Her literary soirees would include H G Wells, JM Barrie and George Bernard Shaw. In 1921 she remarried aviator Jacques Balsan moving with him to a chateau in the South of France. This intimate, richly enjoyable memoir is a wonderfully revealing portrait of a golden age.

Author : Darin Strauss
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2021-05-25
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780812982572

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The Queen of Tuesday by Darin Strauss Pdf

Lucille Ball, Hollywood’s first true media mogul, stars in this “bold” (The Boston Globe), “boisterous novel” (The New Yorker) with a thrilling love story at its heart—from the award-winning, bestselling author of Chang & Eng and Half a Life A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • “A gorgeous, Technicolor take on America in the middle of the twentieth century.”—Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Nickel Boys This indelible romance begins with a daring conceit—that the author’s grandfather may have had an affair with Lucille Ball. Strauss offers a fresh view of a celebrity America loved more than any other. Lucille Ball—the most powerful woman in the history of Hollywood—was part of America’s first high-profile interracial marriage. She owned more movie sets than did any movie studio. She more or less single-handedly created the modern TV business. And yet Lucille’s off-camera life was in disarray. While acting out a happy marriage for millions, she suffered in private. Her partner couldn’t stay faithful. She struggled to balance her fame with the demands of being a mother, a creative genius, an entrepreneur, and, most of all, a symbol. The Queen of Tuesday—Strauss’s follow-up to Half a Life, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award—mixes fact and fiction, memoir and novel, to imagine the provocative story of a woman we thought we knew.

Author : Baldassarre conte Castiglione
Publisher : Good Press
Page : 391 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2022-08-21
Category : Fiction
ISBN : EAN:4064066426583

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The Book of the Courtier by Baldassarre conte Castiglione Pdf

"The Book of the Courtier" by Baldassarre conte Castiglione is a lengthy philosophical dialogue on the topic of what constitutes an ideal courtier or court lady, worthy to befriend and advise a Prince or political leader. Castiglione set the narrative of the book in his years as a courtier in his native Duchy of Urbino. It offers a poignantly nostalgic evocation with a reverent tribute to the friends of Castiglione's youth.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 28 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 1820
Category : Electronic
ISBN : ICDL:___book_00870181

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The Book of Nature by Anonim Pdf

A father tells his child about the wonder of the natural world from a Christian point of view.

Author : Alphonse James Albert Symons
Publisher : London : Cassell
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 1955
Category : Authors, English
ISBN : STANFORD:36105044997810

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The Quest for Corvo by Alphonse James Albert Symons Pdf

Author : Tim Parks
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2014-05-05
Category : Transportation
ISBN : 9780393348828

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Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo by Tim Parks Pdf

An Italian travelogue describes the trains that traverse the country, from the architecture of old train stations to the new high-speed railways, and portrays the author's memorable encounters along the way.

Author : Douglas Preston
Publisher : Grand Central Publishing
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2008-06-10
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9780446537414

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The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston Pdf

In the nonfiction tradition of John Berendt and Erik Larson, the author of the #1 NYT bestseller The Lost City of the Monkey God presents a gripping account of crime and punishment in the lush hills surrounding Florence as he seeks to uncover one of the most infamous figures in Italian history. In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Italy. Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more. This is the true story of their search for--and identification of--the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers, The Monster of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide-and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta.

Author : D. Medina Lasansky
Publisher : didapress
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2018-01-10
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9788833380117

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Hidden Histories by D. Medina Lasansky Pdf

Tuscany is a landscape whose cultural construction is complicated and multi-layered. It is this very complexity that this book seeks to untangle. By revealing hidden histories, we learn how food, landscape and architecture are intertwined, as well as the extent to which Italian design and contemporary consumption patterns form a legacy that draws upon the Romantic longings of a century before. In the process, this book reveals the extent to which Tuscany has been constructed by Anglos — and what has been distorted, idealized and even overlooked in the process.

Author : Barbara Hand Clow
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2021-09-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781591434320

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Revelations from the Source by Barbara Hand Clow Pdf

• Offers an in-depth experience of alchemical transmutation to cleanse old parts of the psyche and clear space for the shift to 5D through 9D consciousness • Reveals the astrological factors at play behind the multitude of crises hitting the world stage in 2018, 2019, and 2020, including the Covid-19 pandemic • Continues the story from Revelations of the Ruby Crystal and Revelations of the Aquarian Age With the Age of Aquarius dawning, six friends connected by ancient wisdom, spiritual revelation, past lives, and sexual alchemy discover the connections between seemingly disconnected events--environmental collapse, schisms in the Catholic Church, the refugee crisis, political breakdown in the United States, the shift out of the age of oil to the high-tech economy, and the Covid-19 pandemic. The characters, as well as readers, experience moving out of fear-based consciousness to the higher dimensions. The story begins in Florence, Italy, at an art soirée in honor of Armando Pierleoni’s visionary painting of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In addition to the six friends--Armando, his photographer wife Jennifer, New York Times journalist Simon, his mystical wife Sarah, Jungian analyst Lorenzo, and exotically beautiful and astrologically insightful Claudia--the dinner party also includes Alessandro de Medici, later revealed to be a master alchemist, and the Jesuit priest Father Giorgio Faccini, the Vatican archivist and a covert agent for the Church’s secret agenda. As the Aquarian vibrations intensify, Claudia sees the astrological factors at play behind the multitude of crises hitting the world stage, and then Covid-19 hits Italy. In the rapidly escalating tension, the deepest fears and greatest joys of the characters’ lives are revealed. Armando has a spiritual breakthrough and high initiation with Lorenzo in his tower, and the friends discover alchemical keys and the perennial wisdom--long suppressed by the Church--that will help humanity transcend.

Author : Eleanor Herman
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2018-06-12
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781250140876

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The Royal Art of Poison by Eleanor Herman Pdf

One of Washington Independent Review of Books' 50 Favorite Books of 2018 • A Buzzfeed Best Book of 2018 "Morbidly witty." —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times "You’ll be as appalled at times as you are entertained." —Bustle, one of The 17 Best Nonfiction Books Coming Out In June 2018 "A heady mix of erudite history and delicious gossip." —Aja Raden, author of Stoned In the Washington Post roundup, "What your favorite authors are reading this summer," A.J. Finn says, “I want to read The Royal Art of Poison, Eleanor Herman’s history of poisons." Hugely entertaining, a work of pop history that traces the use of poison as a political—and cosmetic—tool in the royal courts of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Kremlin today The story of poison is the story of power. For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family’s spoons, tried on their underpants and tested their chamber pots. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions. Women wore makeup made with mercury and lead. Men rubbed turds on their bald spots. Physicians prescribed mercury enemas, arsenic skin cream, drinks of lead filings, and potions of human fat and skull, fresh from the executioner. The most gorgeous palaces were little better than filthy latrines. Gazing at gorgeous portraits of centuries past, we don’t see what lies beneath the royal robes and the stench of unwashed bodies; the lice feasting on private parts; and worms nesting in the intestines. In The Royal Art of Poison, Eleanor Herman combines her unique access to royal archives with cutting-edge forensic discoveries to tell the true story of Europe’s glittering palaces: one of medical bafflement, poisonous cosmetics, ever-present excrement, festering natural illness, and, sometimes, murder.

Author : Thomas Chalmers Potter
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 120 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 1911
Category : Bees
ISBN : NYPL:33433008183885

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Queenie by Thomas Chalmers Potter Pdf

Author : Qais Akbar Omar
Publisher : Pan Macmillan
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2013-05-09
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781447221760

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A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar Pdf

'To read this book is to understand Afghanistan as it exists today. This haunting memoir traces the unimaginable odyssey of one family whose world has collapsed . . . Poetic, powerful, and unforgettable.' – Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. A true life account of growing up in Afghanistan, Qais Akbar Omar recounts his happy childhood in Kabul, his journeys with his family across Afghanistan in search of a safe haven, and life under the Taliban rule as a young man. Qais was eleven when a brutal civil war engulfed Kabul. For Qais, it brought an abrupt end to a childhood filled with kites and cousins in his grandfather's garden: one of the most convulsive decades in Afghan history had begun. Ahead lay the rise of the Taliban, and, in 2001, the arrival of international forces. A Fort of Nine Towers is the story of Qais, his family and their determination to survive these upheavals as they were buffeted from one part of Afghanistan to the next. Drawing strength from each other, and their culture and faith, they sought refuge for a time in the Buddha caves of Bamyan, and later with a caravan of Kuchi nomads. When they eventually returned to Kabul, it became clear that their trials were just beginning . . . 'Even more haunting than The Kite Runner, because it's not fiction.' – Philidelphia Inquirer 'Here at last is a powerful memoir that does justice to its tough, tenacious and astonishingly good-humoured people. The best thing about it . . . is that it is a book about Afghanistan written by an Afghan.' – Evening Standard