Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuluko


Patrick Neate - 2000
    President Adini, dictator and eunuch, clings to power whilst his soldiers switch sides so often they don't know which uniform to wear. All in all, Zambawi is not the ideal location for student teacher Jim Tulloh to indulge in a spot of character building. Yet with the help of Musa, the local witchdoctor, some flatulent weed and headmaster, PK, Jim's days look set to be mellow in the extreme; until that is Jim is kidnapped from his bush school by the rebel Black Boot Gang. But it is when the Gangers invoke the spirit of Zambawi's Great Chief Tuloko that Jim's fate takes a really unexpected turn . . .

Super Team: With Audio Recording (PJ Masks)


Maggie Testa - 2016
    Gekko learns that teamwork can make a strong hero even stronger! After the story, kids will love the three punch-out masks of Catboy, Owlette, and Gekko that they can use to have their own heroic adventures! PJ Masks © Frog Box / Entertainment One UK Limited / Walt Disney EMEA Productions Limited 2014

50 Photographers You Should Know


Peter Stepan - 2008
    From Félix Nadar to Nan Goldin, each of the photographers featured here represents an important aspect of photography's evolution. The artists are presented in double-page spreads that include reproductions of their most important works, concise biographies, informative sidebars, and a timeline that extends throughout the volume. The result is a fascinating overview of the way photographers continue to push the limits of their genre, offering their audiences new ways of seeing and understanding our world.

Me and My Dad: A Baseball Memoir


Paul O'Neill - 2003
    O'Neill epitomized the team's motto of hard work and good sportsmanship, traits instilled in him by his friend, confidant, lifelong model, and biggest fan: his dad, Chick O'Neill.In Me and My Dad, O'Neill writes from the heart about the man who inspired in him a love for the game and a determination to always play his best. O'Neill remembers the highlights of his own amazing career: the Cincinnati Reds calling him up to the majors, his first World Series, being traded to the Yankees -- and taking part in their recent championship wins. He also reflects on his father's untimely death during the 1999 World Series and on the farewell tribute his fans gave him during his last game in Yankee Stadium.

Young Man You'll Never Die: A World War II Fighter Pilot In North Africa, Burma & Malaya


Merton Naydler - 2006
    

African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus


Rachel Holmes - 2008
    Within weeks, the striking African beauty was the talk of the social season of 1810–hailed as “the Hottentot Venus” for her exquisite physique and suggestive semi-nude dance. As her fame spread to Paris, Saartjie became a lightning rod for late Georgian and Napoleonic attitudes toward sex and race, exploitation and colonialism, prurience and science. In African Queen, Rachel Holmes recounts the luminous, heartbreaking story of one woman’s journey from slavery to stardom.Born into a herding tribe known as the Eastern Cape Khoisan, Saartjie was barely out of her teens when she was orphaned and widowed by colonial war and forced aboard a ship bound for England. A pair of clever, unscrupulous showmen dressed her up in a body stocking with a suggestive fringe and put her on the London stage as a “specimen” of African beauty and sexuality. The Hottentot Venus was an overnight sensation.But celebrity brought unexpected consequences. Abolitionists initiated a lawsuit to win Saartjie’s freedom, a case that electrified the English public. In Paris, a team of scientists subjected her to a humiliating public inspection as they probed the mystery of her sexual allure. Stared at, stripped, pinched, painted, worshipped, and ridiculed, Saartjie came to symbolize the erotic obsession at the heart of colonialism. But beneath the costumes and the glare of publicity, this young Khoisan woman was a person who had been torn from her own culture and sacrificed to the whims of fashionable Europe.Nearly two centuries after her death, Saartjie made headlines once again when Nelson Mandela launched a campaign to have her remains returned to the land of her birth. In this brilliant, vividly written book, Rachel Holmes traces the full arc of Saartjie’s extraordinary story–a story of race, eros, oppression, and fame that resonates powerfully today.From the Hardcover edition.

Ancestor Stones


Aminatta Forna - 2006
    Now she has seamlessly turned her hand to fiction and delivers a novel that is lush and beautiful, a touching and intimate portrait of several generations of African women. In Ancestor Stones, a young woman from West Africa, who has lived in England for many years and is married to a British man, returns to visit her family after years of civil war. Her four aunts have decided to leave her the family coffee plantation, as she is the last person in the family with the means to revive its fortunes. And on this trip home she is given an unprecedented look into the lives of the women in her family as her aunts Mary, Hawa, Asana, and Serah— women who were mysterious and a bit intimidating to her younger self—begin to tell her their stories. They are timeless tales of rivalrous co-wives, patriarchal society, and old religions challenged by Islamic and Christian incursions; they are modern stories of European-owned mining companies, the repressive influence of mission schools, corrupt elections, and the postcolonial African elite. Through their voices a family history interwoven with the history of a country emerges—one of a society both ancient and modern, of a family of strong women refusing to live as second-class citizens. In her debut foray into fiction, Forna has created a powerful, sensuously written novel that, through the lives of women, beautifully captures Africa’s past and present, and the legacy that her daughters take with them wherever they live. It is a wonderful achievement that recalls The God of Small Things and The Joy Luck Club, and establishes Forna as a gifted novelist.

Who Was Blackbeard?


James Buckley Jr. - 2015
    He began his career as a hired British sailor during Queen Anne’s War. He eventually settled in the Bahamas under Captain Benjamin Hornigold who taught the young sailor to go "a-pirating." Soon enough, Blackbeard was commanding his own fleet and stealing ships around the Caribbean and up and down the Eastern seaboard. Known for his thick, black beard and fearsome reputation, the legend of Blackbeard has influenced pirate legend and lore for over 300 years.

FIRSTS: Women Who Are Changing the World


TIME Magazine - 2017
    A companion to TIME's multi-platform documentary, the book includes 15 first person deep-dives into the lives of influential women such as General Lori Robinson, the first woman to lead troops into combat, Kathryn Sullivan, the first woman to walk in space, and Aretha Franklin, the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Many others, including Oprah Winfrey, Madeline Albright, and Sheryl Sandburg offer their own personal reflections, thematic quotes and perspectives on balance, perseverance and strength.Each first-person piece or quote is accompanied by a distinctive portrait by photographer Luisa Dorr ― set up and taken on her iPhone. Others included in this unforgettable volume: Serena Williams, Ellen Degeneres, Loretta Lynch, Shonda Rimes, Nancy Pelosi, Rita Moreno, Cindy Sherman and Mo’Ne Davis.With a stirring introduction by Nancy Gibbs, herself a pioneer as the first female editor of TIME magazine, this is an inspirational book for all women and men.

The Lacemaker and the Princess


Kimberly Brubaker Bradley - 2007
    One day as she delivers lace to the palace, she is almost trampled by a crowd of courtiers -- only to be rescued by Marie Antoinette. Before Isabelle can believe it, she has a new job -- companion to the queen's daughter. Isabelle is given a fashionable name, fashionable dresses -- a new identity. At home she plies her needle under her grandmother's disapproving eye. At the palace she is playmate to a princess.Thrown into a world of luxury, Isabelle is living a fairy-tale life. But this facade begins to crumble when rumors of starvation in the countryside lead to whispers of revolution. How can Isabelle reconcile the ugly things she hears in the town with the kind family she knows in the palace? And which side is she truly on? Inspired by an actual friendship between the French princess and a commoner who became her companion, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley offers a vivid portrait of life inside the palace of Versailles -- and a touching tale of two friends divided by class and the hunger for equality and freedom that fueled the French Revolution.

Stories of the Pilgrims


Margaret B. Pumphrey - 1910
    The Brewster children and other Pilgrim boys and girls are the center of interest. A wonderful book to read aloud in the weeks before Thanksgiving. Suitable for ages 6 and up.

I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912


Lauren Tarshis - 2010
    The ship is full of exciting places to explore, but when George ventures into the first class storage cabin, a terrible boom shakes the entire boat. Suddenly, water is everywhere, and George's life changes forever.Lauren Tarshis brings history's most exciting and terrifying events to life in this new fictional series. Readers will be transported by stories of amazing kids and how they survived!

Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora


Michael A. Gomez - 2004
    Particular attention is paid to the everyday lives of the working classes and their cultural development. Their exploits, challenges, and struggles are covered over a broad time frame that links as well as differentiates past and present circumstances.

T.H. White's the Once and Future King


Elisabeth Brewer - 1993
    Is it for children, or for adults? Is it fantasy or a psychological novel? In its great range, it encompasses poetry and farce, comedy and tragedy -and sudden flights of schoolboy humour. White's `footnote to Malory' (his own phrase) resulted in the last major retelling of the story based on Malory's Morte Darthur, and Elisabeth Brewer explores the literary context of White's finest work as wellas considering his aims and achievement in writing it.White's story of Arthur begins with his `enfances', set in an imaginary medieval England, but it is far removed from the conventional historical novel. White was writing in wartime England, a country increasingly absorbed by a need to find an antidote to war. Through the medium of the Arthurian story he found his own voice, his unique contribution to keeping alive the flame of civilisation. Malory's chivalric virtues are rejected in favour of White's own twentieth-century values; the love affair of Lancelot and Guenever is interpreted in terms of modern psychology.The books which eventually made up The Once and Future Kingof 1958 appeared in distinctly different editions. In discussing these, Elisabeth Brewer looks at some of the ways in which White drew on his own personal experience at a deep psychological level, while also incorporating into his story material inspired by his antiquarian pursuits and by his years as a schoolmaster. She completes her study with an account of White's use of historical material, and the relationship of The Once and Future King to the Morte Darthur.ELISABETH BREWER lectured in English at Homerton College, Cambridge. She is the author of books and articles on Chaucer and the Arthurian legends

With This Ring


Allison Hobbs - 2013
    But now, they are coming the realization that happily ever after might not be attainable, or even a reality. Harlow’s dreams of walking down the aisle are shattered when a muffled gunshot forces her to question her new husband’s character. Is Drake Morgan the determined entrepreneur she thought he was or a gangster and ruthless killer? After a bout with alcoholism and an emotional breakdown, Nivea is trying to rebuild her life, but the explosive result of her child’s paternity test threatens to destroy her fragile family ties. Desperate for her new man to put a ring on it, Vangie sacrifices her morals and puts a lifelong friendship to the test. From the bestselling author of Big Juicy Lips and Double Dippin’, this edgy new novel is sure to please both Allison Hobbs fans and newcomers looking for a spicy read.