Her father was the deluded and cruel leader of a cult based in South London who brainwashed those around him.Her father's paranoia and his need to completely control others led to Katy being imprisoned indoors and denied any kind of love or friendship. From a young age, Katy's father subjected her to violence and mental abuse. She was not permitted contact with anyone outside the house and on the rare occasions she did have to go out, she was always chaperoned. Katy never gave up hope of one day breaking free from her father's cruel clutches and finally found her freedom. This is her true story of endurance and survival.

    No other city in any of his travels was as significant, professionally or emotionally, as was Paris. And it remains there, all of the complexity, beauty, and intrigue that Hemingway described in the pages of so much of his work.It is all still there for the reader and traveler to experience—the history, the streets, and the city. Restaurants, hotels, homes, sites and favorite bars are all detailed here. The ninety-five black and white photographs in Hemingway’s Paris are of the highest caliber. The accompanying text reveals Wheeler’s deep understanding of the man; his torment, talent, obstacles and the places of refuge needed to nurture one of the preeminent writers of the twentieth century. Moved by the humanistic writing of the man—a writer capable of transcending his readers to foreign settings and into the hearts and minds of his protagonists—Wheeler was inspired to travel throughout France, Italy, Spain, Africa, and Cuba, where he has sought to gain insight into the motivation behind Hemingway’s books and short stories. As a teacher, lecturer, and photojournalist, he set out to capture and interpret the Paris that Ernest Hemingway experienced in the first part of the century. Through his journal and photographs, Wheeler portrays the intimate connection Hemingway had with the woman he never stopped loving, Hadley, and with the city he loved most, Paris.

    One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner with an Italian name, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent’s greatest portraits. The commoner was Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, pioneer gynaecologist and free-thinker – a rational and scientific man with a famously complicated private life.Pozzi's life played out against the backdrop of the Parisian Belle Epoque. The beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side: hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and violent, a time of rampant prejudice and blood-and-soil nativism, with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine.The Man in the Red Coat is at once a fresh and original portrait of the Belle Epoque – its heroes and villains, its writers, artists and thinkers – and a life of a man ahead of his time. Witty, surprising and deeply researched, the new book from Julian Barnes illuminates the fruitful and longstanding exchange of ideas between Britain and France, and makes a compelling case for keeping that exchange alive.

    Organized by arrondissement, Paris takes readers through the city's most charming streets, revealing best-kept secrets and little gems at every turn: ateliers overflowing with notions, cafés with their neat rows of macarons, markets abundant with fresh flowers, shaded parks, and creative hotspots. Packed with vibrant color photographs that capture the spirit of Paris and packaged as a hefty flexi-bound paperback with a ribbon page marker, the book is a beautiful object in its own right. The accessible writing invites readers to dip in and out and provides history and context for each spot on the journey. Visually rich and totally inspiring, Paris is a treasure for lovers of art, style, design, food, and, of course, Paris!

    Some of the places have breathtaking views, others are filled with historic and architectural details, from stone archways, garden follies, boxwood mazes, ornamental statuary, stained glass, and Renaissance fountains. Follow a stone path under a trellis of blossoms or wander through a gate to discoverÉ

    It is the most famous story about any artist in history. But what really happened on that dark winter night?In Van Gogh's Ear, Bernadette Murphy reveals the truth. She takes us on an extraordinary journey from major museums to forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing Van Gogh's world. We meet police inspectors and café patrons, prostitutes and madams, his beloved brother Theo and fellow painter Paul Gauguin.Why did Van Gogh commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious 'Rachel' to whom he presented his macabre gift? Did he really remove his entire ear? Murphy answers these important questions with her groundbreaking discoveries, offering a stunning portrait of an artist edging towards madness in his pursuit of excellence.BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEKPRIMETIME BBC2 DOCUMENTARY WITH JEREMY PAXMAN

    In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber shows how Marie Antoinette developed her reputation for fashionable excess, and explains through lively, illuminating new research the political controversies that her clothing provoked. Weber surveys Marie Antoinette's "Revolution in Dress," covering each phase of the queen's tumultuous life, beginning with the young girl, struggling to survive Versailles's rigid traditions of royal glamour (twelve-foot-wide hoopskirts, whalebone corsets that crushed her organs). As queen, Marie Antoinette used stunning, often extreme costumes to project an image of power and wage war against her enemies. Gradually, however, she began to lose her hold on the French when she started to adopt "unqueenly" outfits (the provocative chemise) that, surprisingly, would be adopted by the revolutionaries who executed her. Weber's queen is sublime, human, and surprising: a sometimes courageous monarch unwilling to allow others to determine her destiny. The paradox of her tragic story, according to Weber, is that fashion--the vehicle she used to secure her triumphs--was also the means of her undoing. Weber's book is not only a stylish and original addition to Marie Antoinette scholarship, but also a moving, revelatory reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures.

    It also relates the extraordinary history of the museum's collection, a collection that has enabled the Van Gogh Museum to evolve into a world-renowned centre of knowledge about Van Gogh's work and the art of his time.

    In 1994, the advent of the Internet as a popular medium catalyzed a global art movement that began to explore the cultural, social, and aesthetic possibilities of such new communication technologies as the Web, video surveillance cameras, wireless phones, hand-held computers, and GPS devices. This book addresses New Media art as a specific art historical movement, focusing not only on technologies and forms but also on thematic content and conceptual strategies. New Media art often involves appropriation, collaboration, and the free sharing of ideas and expressions, and frequently addresses the political ramifications of technology around issues of identity, commercialization, privacy, and the public domain. Many New Media artists are profoundly aware of their art historical antecedents, making reference to Dada, Pop Art, Conceptual art, Performance art, and Fluxus. Artists featured: Cory Arcangel, Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Vuk Cosic, Mary Flanagan, Ken Goldberg, Paul Kaiser and Shelly Eshkar, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Mouchette, MTAA, Keith and Mendi Obadike, Radical Software Group, Raqs Media Collective, RTMark, and John F. Simon Jr.

    At the age of 12, Louis Daguerre fell in love with women and light on the same day. Several decades later, the founder of modern photography invented a process that ignited 19th-century Paris and secured his wealth and fame. But the years following find him delusional and ill, racked with terrible fevers. Slowly dying from repeated exposure to mercury, the very means by which he was able to capture image and light, Daguerre is now convinced the world will soon end. Fashioning a "Doomsday List" of ten photographs he must take before "The End," perhaps none is more urgent that that of Isobel Le Fournier, the object of a youthful crush, lost to Daguerre years ago.Navigating the Paris streets with his friend Charles Baudelaire and a mysterious prostitute named Pigeon, Daguerre encounters a city awash in excess, cafes charged with the talk of revolution, and a countryside blanketed by the smell of gunpowder. As the search for his doomsday subjects intensifies and his health grows more precarious, Daguerre learns, quite improbably, that he may actually have one last chance at love.In The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre, Smith has fashioned a novel as beguiling as it is strange; an intoxicating blend of history and imagination. (Summer 2006 Selection)

    Alex Danchev, with brisk intellect, rich documentation, and eighty color illustrations, tells the story of an artist who, during his lifetime, was considered a madman, a barbarian, and a revolutionary. Beginning with the restless teenager from Aix, Danchev carries us through the trials of a painter who believed that art must be an expression of temperament but who was tormented by self-doubt; whose work sold to no one outside his immediate circle until late into his thirties; who fiercely maintained the revolutionary belief that "to paint from nature is not to copy an object; it is to represent its sensations." And Danchev shows us how the implications of this belief became the obsession of many other artists and writers, from Matisse to Samuel Beckett. The book delivers not only the fascinating life of this visionary artist and remarkable man but a complete assessment of his ongoing influence in the artistic imagination of our own time.

    Sartre considers the artist’s “function,” and the relation of art and the artist to the human condition. Sartre integrates his deep concern for the sensibilities of the artist with a fascinating analysis of the techniques of the artist as creator. The result is a vibrant manifesto of existentialist aesthetics. By looking at existentialism through the lens of great art, Essays in Aesthetics is just as valuable a read to the artist as it is to the philosopher.

    It asks what would have happened if Damien Hirst had never arrived? If someone else had become the most notorious and influential young British artist? And what if that someone had been more talented, more provocative, more outrageous? And far, far funnier?Early on in this bravura debut we are informed that Hirst was hit and killed by a train in 1989 (“apparently when drunk”) – and the focus of everyone’s attention falls instead on Randall. Randall – a big, lumbering ape of a man – is a genius of language as much as art, supremely able to baffle, bemuse and amuse the press, public and all around him. He makes a fortune, causes chaos, changes the art world – the whole world – and provides brilliant quips every step of the way: “There’s only two things you can do with art: make it, and buy it. Everything else – talking about it, thinking about it, selling it, looking at it – either comes under one of those two, or doesn’t count.”

    We encounter Françoise, her family and friends close-up, in a post-war world that is changing radically; and Mlle Quoirez, in her new guise of Françoise Sagan, will be at the heart of that social change.Anne Berest was writing her third novel when Sagan's son, Denis Westhoff, asked her to write a book to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Bonjour Tristesse.

    Say you?re already an experienced photographer? The helpful tips and tricks in this friendly book will get you quickly up to speed on the D3100's new 14-megapixel sensor, continous video/live focus, full HD video, expanded autofocus, and more. As a seasoned instructor at the Palm Beach Photographic Center, Julie anticipates all questions, whether you?re a beginner or digital camera pro, and offers pages of easy-to-follow advice.Helps you get every bit of functionality out of the new Nikon D3100 camera Walks you through its exciting new features, including the 14-megapixel sensor, continous video/live focus, full HD video, expanded autofocus, and the updated in-camera menu Explores shooting in Auto mode, managing playback options, and basic troubleshooting Explains how to adjust the camera's manual settings for your own preferred exposure, lighting, focus, and color style Covers digital photo housekeeping tips?how to organize, edit, and share your files Tap all the tools in this hot new DSLR camera and start taking some great pix with Nikon D3100 For Dummies.