Book picks similar to
From Cork to the New World: A Journey for Survival by Michael E. McCarthy
book-club-book
canada
fiction
historical-fiction
Shadows of the Past
June Francis - 2019
Fifteen-year-old Annie Anderson was adopted by Sylvia and Hugh after the death of their own daughter. Annie is told that her own mother in childbirth and her father died before she was born.A chance encounter introduces Annie to local lad Andrew Fraser. Their friendship blossoms, but once Annie’s adoptive parents learn of it they forbid her from seeing him. When Annie asks why, it sets her on a path to discover more about her origins – but will what she learns bring heartache or joy?
Don’t miss this rich and vivid saga by one of Liverpool’s best-known novelists, perfect for fans of Kitty Neale and Katie Flynn.
House Maid: A story behind the suffering of a Sri Lankan Migrant worker in Saudi Arabia.
Indika Guruge - 2017
She thinks migrating to a foreign land would be the only hope. The only qualification she has to migrate to a foreign country is to be a housemaid. That salary would be way better than in Sri Lanka, flying to Saudi Arabia as a housemaid would be a dream come true.Yet day after day, Kamala comprehends her mistake and regrets her stupid actions of leaving her beloveds. She is trapped by the secured walls of the Arabian house and by the rules, regulations and her negligence on working. She gets punished by horrific physical and mental abuse by the hands of her employer. Finally trapped her in a room as a punishment with nonpayment of her salary.When she tries to escape she is being physically tortured by the employer with nailing her body feet beating her with chains and sticks. Finally, when she escapes and returns to her mother land, everything what she worked have gone on a waste by her husband and leaving it all for nothing.Why I wrote this book.Labor migration to the Middle East has become a main feature of Sri Lankan economy strategies making it the second biggest foreign exchange earnings. Migration is likely to continue in the future. Foreign embassies continued to receive many reports that employers abused foreign women working as domestic servants. Some embassies of countries with large domestic servant populations maintained safe houses to which their citizens may flee to escape work situations that included forced confinement, withholding of food, nonpayment of salaries, beating and other physical abuse, and rape.These are few stories... "One particular day I dropped a saucer which broke into pieces. My employer was angry and he heated up five nails and drove them into my hand. When I shouted out in pain my employer's wife held a knife to my neck," she said.Why you should read this book?When you Google Sri Lanka all you see is a beautiful island with beautiful sceneries and nature surrounded by lovely sandy beaches, diverse landscapes ranging from plains to highlands, rainforests, wildlife and exotic food.But not many know how the Sri Lankan lower middle class suffer. How everyday is a challenge for them to make their ends meet. How much they suffer to keep their families alive, insufficient money to feed their children and to spend for their education.I was inspired by so many stories about how these migrant workers suffer. I have been fortunate enough to help these people and listen to their stories.This shows us how cruel the world is. Another side of life which many has not seen, or even think about, simply a nightmare. Why cannot the governments take any action about this? Non-government organizations? Is there anyone at all? When they send their hard earn money with high hopes, most of the time husbands waste money on alcohol and gambling, children go astray and get abused. These women and families fall of from the frying pan into fire. Time, money, pain all gets wasted. Everything end up in tears.This story will give you the inner aspect in depth about the middle class migrant workers and their lives, how hard they work, how much they sacrifice, how hard they hide their feelings and pain, suffer and struggle to survive every day.This book is a story about a family that went through this horrific abuse and torture. Hope you enjoy this book.Scroll up and grab your copy now.
Owen Oliver
Lena Kennedy - 1991
He only stops travelling when he reaches Kent and there his life is dramatically altered, when he is adopted by a loving old lady and her roguish son Tom.
Leah's Children
Gloria Goldreich - 1985
From the courageous struggle of the Hungarian revolution, to the dramatic strife of the civil rights movement in Mississippi…from Israel’s heroic fight for freedom, to the eve of the Six-Day War…Leah’s children confronted their own convictions and desires in an ever-changing world fraught with danger, idealism, and betrayal. Their uncompromising search for love and fulfillment carried them into dangerous emotional territory—where only the strength, courage, and imagination inherited from their mother could lead them to their own triumphant destinies.
The Shadow of Celene
Carol Sanders - 2018
Livy Prescott is a young wife dependent upon,beholden to, and manipulated by Celene, a slave. In 1860, Edward Prescott gallops into Livy Taylor’s life racing his carriage down the main street of her tiny Pennsylvania town, winning a bet and her heart. After they wed, Livy is swept away to Merrywood, Edward’s home in the hills of North Carolina. There Livy faces the daunting task of adjusting to her new life as Mistress of Merrywood and slave-owner. And there Livy encounters Celene, the beautiful slave cook of Merrywood, skilled in the healing arts and privy to the deepest secrets of the Prescotts. Gradually Livy learns the extent of Celene’s influence and the hold she maintains over her master, causing Livy to question who is the real mistress of Merrywood.
The Haunted Mine
Carrie Bates - 2019
The pay is great, his men are welcoming, but who is that man he keeps seeing in the mines? As time goes on, the man's presence sparks chilling scenes. Lights go off in the mine, terrifying noises are heard, and money and tools go missing. When Adam is attacked, he thinks he's losing his mind as none of his men nearby see anything. Adam has only one choice - leave - before he meets the same fate as the mystery miner. But when the miner asks for help, Adam changes his mind, which may be the biggest mistake of his life.
Outremer
Richard Allibone - 2012
In this five year period, the Muslim world inflicted a major defeat on the Christian army of Jerusalem that resonated around the known world, and which directly resulted in the confrontation between two of the most celebrated figures in medieval history – Richard the Lionheart, renowned as the great warrior king and personification of the knightly chivalry, and Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia and consummate diplomat and strategist.The story unfolds through the reminiscences of Geoffrey de Moissac, who relates his incredible first-hand experiences fifty years after the main protagonists have perished. Geoffrey has been witness to all the dramatic events of that time, from the Christian disaster at Hattin, through a perilous journey to the west to solicit aid, and finally as part of the mighty Crusader army intent on the re-conquest of the Holy Land.
No Peace (Steve Dancy Tales Book 7)
James D. Best - 2019
He can hardly remember his days of wanderlust, and he’s grateful to have left behind the violence of a raw frontier. In a celebratory mood, Steve invites his mother to a meet her new grandchild in a chic resort in Monterey, California. With the delivery of a handwritten note, his world suddenly reverts to the savagery of his bygone days. There will be no peace.
Fortune's Daughter
Benita Brown - 2006
Little does she know Rose has been stolen and given to a wealthy woman who, tricked into believing she's an orphan, adopts her and renames her Rosina. Worse still, it was all arranged by Daisy’s ruthlessly ambitious agent, Jack Fidler. Years later, when tragedy strikes, Rosina runs away to join a theatrical troupe and her natural talent for singing wins the hearts of the crowds. But this brings her into direct competition with one of the northern music halls’ established stars, Daisy Belle – and back into the path of Jack, who is determined to destroy her...
Paperback Dreams
Rahul Saini - 2013
All he wants is to earn loads of money and have hot girls chase after him wherever he goes. Rohit Sehdev, a one book old popular fiction writer is furious when he finds out that his publisher has cheated him out of his royalties. Karun Ahuja is a highly ambitious schoolboy who wants to win the heart his lady love by writing a novel about it and he doesnt mind playing dirty to get to the top. Ruthlessly exploiting these ambitious young men is their unscrupulous publisher. Sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, Paperback Dreams is the story of a new breed of young writers who will do anything to get famous, fast.
Secrets of the Heart
Gilda O'Neill - 2008
They hoped it would be over by Christmas...
Britain is at war and the proximity of the docks means that life in and around London's Turnbury Buildings is hard and dangerous. Chances are taken, people have secrets, hearts are broken. And feelings about foreigners are running high.
Sixteen-year-old Freddie Jarrett is secretly seeing a girl from the local Chinese community - a relationship that would be frowned on by both families, despite the fact that they all support the fight for freedom from oppression. And his sister Grace has her own secret to hide. A secret that no one outside the immediate family must ever know.
As the threat of the Luftwaffe looms over the docks, the community is threatened with being torn apart by prejudice, fear and separation, and the disturbing loss of stability that brings with it the feeling that it is only what happens today that counts for anything...
The Face in the Locket
Alexandra Connor - 2003
The two sisters have their own secrets, hiding difficult childhoods yet still maintaining an air of superiority and righteousness with those around them. Living with them is their brother, Saville, an adult but with the mind of a seven year old. The little girl’s arrival soon turns their world upside down. Great plans are laid for their good-looking, headstrong niece. Harris is going to marry well. Everything changes when World War Two breaks out. Harris falls in love with a man who only has his own interests at heart. She scandalises and disgraces her family with her obsessive behaviour, making herself a laughing stock in the close-knit town. But Harris is not to be put down. She begins to build a successful business with the support of her aunts and her close friend, Bonny. She eventually meets and agrees to marry the respectable local solicitor to the happiness of her aunts, but at the altar, she hears her lost love enter the church…. And once again, she shows her true colours. When tragedy strikes, Harris fights to regain respectability in the eyes of those who care for her but has Harris learned any lessons from her obsessive past…?
Empire Day (New England Book 1)
James Philip - 2018
It is the day before Empire Day – 4th July - the day each year when the British Empire marks the brutal crushing of the rebellion dignified by the treachery of the fifty-six delegates to the Continental Congress who were so foolhardy as to sign the infamous Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on that day of infamy in 1776. It is nearly two hundred years since George Washington was killed and his Continental Army was destroyed in the Battle of Long Island and now New England, that most quintessentially loyal and ‘English’ imperial fiefdom – at least in the original, or ‘First Thirteen’ colonies - is about to celebrate its devotion to the Crown and the Old Country, of which it still views, in the main, as the ‘mother country’. Yet all is not roses. Since 1776 in a world of empires the British Empire has grown and prospered until now, it stands alone as the ultimate arbiter of global war and peace. The Royal Navy has enforced the global Pax Britannia for over a century since the World War of the 1860s established a lasting but increasingly tenuous ‘peace’ between the great powers. Nonetheless, while elsewhere the Empire may be creaking at the seams, struggling to come to terms with a growing desire for self-determination; thus far the Pax Britannica has survived – buttressed by the commercial and industrial powerhouse of New England stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific North West - intact for all that barely a year goes by without the outbreak of another small, colonial war somewhere... This said, the British ‘Imperial System’ remains the envy of its friends and enemies alike and nowhere has it been so successful as in North America, where peace and prosperity has ruled in the vast Canadian dominions and the twenty-nine old and recent colonies of the Commonwealth of New England for the best part of two centuries. In Whitehall every British government in living memory has complacently based its ‘American Policy’ on the one immutable, unchanging fact of New England politics; that the First Thirteen colonies will never agree with each other about anything, let alone that the sixteen ‘Johnny-come-lately’ new (that is, post-1776) colonies, protectorates, territories and possessions which comprise half the population and eight-tenths of the land area of New England, should ever have any say in their affairs! New England is a part of England and always will be because, axiomatically, it will never unite in a continental union. Notwithstanding, in the British body politic the myths and legends of that first late eighteenth-century rebellion in the New World still touches a raw nerve in the old country, much as in former epochs memories of Jacobin revolts, Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War still harry old deep-seated scars in the national psyche. Empire Day might not have originally been conceived as a celebration of the saving of the first British Empire and but as time has gone by it has come to symbolise the one, ineluctable truth about the Empire: that New England is the rock upon which all else stands, an empire within an empire that is greater than the sum of all the other parts of the great imperium ruled from London. In past times a troubling question has been whispered in the corridors of power in London: what would happen to the Empire – and the Pax Britannica – if the British hold on New England was ever to be loosened? Generations of British politicians have always known that if the question was ever to be asked again in earnest it has but one answer.
Fear
Clare Dundas - 2019
It is a dark and cruel place for the workers on this farm. The master, Archie McLachlan, causes fear to run through the hearts of the slaves, except for one woman who speaks up deliberately and without fear whenever she wishes. Her name is Soola, and she fast becomes leader of the slaves and friend to the master's wife Gertrude. The friendship forms a triangle of competition, love, and hatred as "Massa Archie" becomes more and more dangerous, even towards his own son Robert and Soola's son John, even to a point where Soola begins to understand the meaning of fear. But, together, the leaders of the second generation can look for a future where hope might overcome fear.Thus, this story, Part One of a four-part series, not only recounts the family's beginnings at the Inveraray/Dogwood Plantation, but also introduces the second generation, who will appear again in the ensuing volumes. Slavery, the corruption caused by slavery, its close companions, race bigotry and injustice, and the laws and bitter politics that result from them, are featured and discussed throughout. While, in the foreground, the unique relationship between mistress and slave and their respective descendants triggers a wide-sweeping story of love, conflict, heartbreak, and forgiveness.