Showing results by narrator "Nadia May" in All Categories

For years, it was called a "deteriorating situation." Now it is war. All over South Africa, mobs of fugitive white people scramble to board departing flights. But Bam and Maureen Smales have no such option. They take up their servant July's suggestion and seek refuge in his remote home village, forever altering the relationship of servant and master. Now it is the Smales who are dependent on their host, their savior - their keeper. Nadine Gordimer is the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Rumor has linked Queen Elizabeth I to her master of the horse, Robin Dudley. As gossip would have it, only his ailing wife, Amy, prevents marriage between Dudley and the Queen. To quell the idle tongues at court, the Queen dispatches Ursula Blanchard to tend to the sick woman's needs. But not even Ursula can prevent the "accident" that takes Amy's life. Did she fall or was she pushed? Was Ursula a pawn of Dudley and the Queen?

The Rich Are Different is the story of Dinah Slade, a young Englishwoman of immense vitality and great sensual power, whose life, loves, and fierce ambition become entangled with the fate of an American banking family. When Paul Van Zale, a handsome patrician and powerful American banker, meets Dinah in London, he commits the imprudence of falling in love with her. When Dinah follows him to his world, she is caught up in the currents of Paul's life. And among her new acquaintances is Paul's wife.

At the center of Middlemarch is Dorothea Brooke, a thoughtful and idealistic young woman determined to make a difference with her life. Enamored of a man who she believes is setting this example, she traps herself into a loveless marriage. Her parallel is Tertius Lydgate, a young doctor from the city whose passionate ambition to spread the new science of medicine is complicated by his love for the wrong woman.

Parnassus on Wheels is the story of a marvelous man, small in stature, wiry as a cat, yet Olympic in personality. Roger Mifflin is part pixie, part sage, part noble savage, and all God's creature. With his traveling book wagon, named Parnassus, he moves through the New England countryside of 1915 on an itinerant mission of enlightenment. Mifflin's delight in books and authors is infectious. With his singular philosophy and bright eyes, he comes to represent the heart and soul of the book world.

Hiding Jewish refugees during WWII landed Corrie ten Boom in a German concentration camp. Released after 10 months, she tramped the world with a burning desire to tell others that Jesus is a reality, that He lives, that He is victor. Join Corrie on a world-wide trip that could only have been planned by God.

Beginning with the story of Stephen from the book of Acts, considered the first Christian martyr, the drama builds to the passion of the early Church's persecution under the Roman Empire. The hardy and radical faith of those first believers spawned medieval missionary movements that spread the gospel across Europe and into England, Scotland, and Ireland. As the story continues, it places a significant emphasis on the sufferings of the early Protestants during the Reformation.

Magdalene la Batarde is the madam of the Old Priory Guesthouse in Southwark. She and her women are expected to engage in a number of sinful activities, but bloody murder isn't one of them until Baldassare, the messenger, dies. Though Baldassare isn't a regular client of the Old Priory Guesthouse, Magdalene and her women refuse to allow his death to go unavenged. Of course, their efforts aren't completely altruistic.

Silas Marner is a gentle linen weaver who is framed for a heinous theft by his best friend. Exiled from the sphere of human trust and love, he becomes a recluse, caring only for the gold he receives for his work. But when an abandoned child mysteriously appears at his cottage one New Year's Eve, Silas discovers an unselfish love that will ultimately lead to his redemption.

A vibrant portrait of Edwardian England, Howards End examines personal relationships and conflicting values. The Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and their brother, Tibby, place their values in civilized living, music, literature, and conversation with their friends. The Wilcoxes, Henry and his children Charles, Paul, and Evie, are concerned with the business side of life and distrust emotions and imagination.

The girl in the photograph has been missing for five years. Neither her body nor the secret documents she was carrying have ever been found. Now, post-war England's economic recovery depends on finding her and getting the papers back. But the two young Brits working undercover for the ministry know only that her name was Jane Finn, and the only photo of her is in the hands of her rich American cousin.

This historical magnum opus covers 4,000 years of the extraordinary history of the Jews as a people, a culture, and a nation. It shows the impact of Jewish character on the world: their genius, imagination, and, most of all, their ability to persevere despite severe persecutions. Compelling insights into events and individuals are chronologically detailed, from Moses and Jesus to Spinoza, Marx, Freud, the Rothschilds, and Golda Meir.

Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.

Muriel Spark's blackly comic masterwork begins with a voice on the telephone warning, "Remember, you must die." The recipient of the grim message is elderly Dame Lettie Colston, but soon 10 of Lettie's oldest friends also become targets of Death's anonymous herald. A bizarre investigation lays bare an intricate network of deception and disloyalty that binds together the vulnerable group of aging eccentrics.

This is a journey of both escape and discovery for four exquisitely different women, a month of bliss and privacy for four weary souls. Their refuge on the Italian Riviera provides the perfect backdrop for a story about the search for spiritual harmony within and without.

In this accessible and engaging book, Ralph Wood shows us that J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece is a deeply Christian work because it does not blink back the horrors of our terrible times but confronts them with startling honesty.

Set in Florence in 1492, a time of great political and religious turmoil, Eliot's novel blends vivid fictional characters with historical figures such as Savonarola, Machiavelli, and the Medicis. When Romola, the virtuous daughter of a blind scholar, marries Tito Melema, a charismatic young Greek, she is bound to a man whose escalating betrayals threaten to destroy all that she holds dear.

Beginning with May 29, 1919, when photographs of the solar eclipse confirmed the truth of Einstein's theory of relativity, Johnson goes on to describe Freudianism, the establishment of the first Marxist state, the chaos of "Old Europe", the Arcadian 20s, and the new forces in China and Japan. Also discussed are Karl Marx, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Castro, Kennedy, Nixon, the '29 crash, the Great Depression, Roosevelt's New Deal, and the massive conflict of World War II.

Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.

Relinquishing thoughts of a materially rewarding life, the respectably educated Felix Holt returns to his native village in North Loamshire and becomes an artisan. He is a forceful young man of honor, integrity, and idealism, burning to participate in political life so that he may improve the lot of his fellow artisans.