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Spalding Linda
Who Named the Knife: A True Story of Murder and Memory
DescriptionWhen a murder occurs in beautiful Hawaii, the suspects are two young mainlanders on their honeymoon. Mayann Acker is eighteen-years-old. Her husband, William, is twenty-eight and just out of prison.Linda Spalding is chosen as a juror for Maryann's trail. Surprisingly, the chief witness against her is William. Spalding has her doubts, but on the last day of the trial she is abruptly dismissed from the jury. Maryann is found guilty. Who Named the Knife is the story of how, eighteen years later, Spalding tracks down Maryann and uncovers much more than the answer to the question of her innocence. A complex journey into the twists of fate that spin two lives down different paths, Who Named the Knife offers profound insight into the human heart.
Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission
DescriptionAn Anchor Books OriginalSeventy-four distinguished writers tell personal tales of books loved and lost–great books overlooked, under-read, out of print, stolen, scorned, extinct, or otherwise out of commission. Compiled by the editors of Brick: A Literary Magazine, Lost Classics is a reader’s delight: an intriguing and entertaining collection of eulogies for lost books. As the editors have written in a joint introduction to the book, “being lovers of books, we’ve pulled a scent of these absences behind us our whole reading lives, telling people about books that exist only on our own shelves, or even just in our own memory.” Anyone who has ever been changed by a book will find kindred spirits in the pages of Lost Classics. Each of the editors has contributed a lost book essay to this collection, including Michael Ondaatje on Sri Lankan filmmaker Tissa Abeysekara’s Bringing Tony Home, a novella about a mutual era of childhood. Also included are Margaret Atwood on sex and death in the scandalous Doctor Glas, first published in Sweden in 1905; Russell Banks on the off-beat travelogue Too Late to Turn Back by Barbara Greene–the “slightly ditzy” cousin of Graham; Bill Richardson on a children’s book for adults by Russell Hoban; Ronald Wright on William Golding’s Pincher Martin; Caryl Phillips on Michael Mac Liammoir’s account of his experiences on the set of Orson Welles’s Othello, and much, much more. Writers, it's often said, are readers first and writers second. Frequently, it is the indelible mark left by some book that inspires a person to commit to the writing life. Mining that vein, the editors of Brick, a Canadian literary journal, asked their contributors "to tell us the story of a book loved and lost." The "Lost Classics" issue has been expanded into a book, in which 73 authors--Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, John Irving, Philip Levine, Anchee Min, and Michael Ondaatje among them--write about the books they've loved and lost. These are books worth stealing, books remembered in the twilight that precedes sleep, books that, for these authors, provided "that moment when a reader seems to have found the perfect mate." Though many of the books extolled here are acknowledged classics, many are not. Helen Garner cherishes a childhood book that "except for members of my immediate family, no Australian I've mentioned the book to ... has had any knowledge of it whatsoever." Sarah Sheard writes lovingly of Down and Out in the Woods: An Airman's Guide to Survival in the Bush, "a manual of food, shelter and first aid [that] was the companion text of my childhood summers." Michael Turner reminisces about a book he never actually read, and Erin Mouré describes a book about the history of fishes that "no one I knew was ever interested in reading." Anne Holzman laments her inability to find a copy of a book for lefty activists called Reweaving the Web of Life (hint to Holzman: check online--used copies are readily available). And Nancy Huston introduces Kressmann Taylor's Address Unknown, "a perfectly astonishing [and prescient] little book." A kind of Rand McNally for the literary explorer, each chapter a hand-forged map leading down bookish roads less traveled. --Jane Steinberg
Riska: Memories of a Dayak Girlhood
DescriptionBooks by Western specialists have compiled many observations and facts about the headhunters of Borneo,” but the culture has never before been described from the inside, by an indigenous person born and reared in the rain forest listening to the stories and legends of her tribe. In this vivid memoir, Riska Orpa Sari tells us about the remote village of her birth, where rice is cultivated by cutting and burning the rain forest, where hunting and gathering take place under its dark canopy. She describes courtship and marriage, funeral rites, the sound headhunters make before they strike, the impact of the logging industry on the Dayak way of life, and the centrality of the river to all aspects of daily living. As Riska’s marvelous story unfolds, a witty, intelligent personality is revealed, endearing, resilient, and dedicated to the preservation of her people.
The Paper Wife
DescriptionAs evocative of an era as it is psychologically penetrating, The Paper Wife is the story of a friendship, a triangle, and a trial by fire as three young friends struggle to find their moral footing during the turbulent years of the Vietnam War.In the midst of the excesses of the 1960s and the horrors of the Vietnam War, Lily Granger betrays her best friend, Kate, by sleeping with Kate's boyfriend, Turner. She becomes pregnant, and to hide from her shame and guilt, she runs away to a home for unwed mothers in a rural Mexican town. Alone and uncertain about her fate, she survives each day by teaching the children of a nearby orphanage--the one her own child will most surely join. When, upon Kate's insistence, Turner shows up in Mexico, Lily becomes even more confused--by his motives, and the glimmer of hope that might lead the both of them to a very different future.
Daughters of Captain Cook
DescriptionKansas-born Jess marries Paul and removes with him to the sultry paradise of Hawaii to challenge Paul's haunting past. All goes well until an act of disloyalty exposes Jess to the mythical beliefs of Hawaii, and she discovers the true weight of her husband's betrayal and heritage. The author weaves a chilling tale of old memories, secrets, and a clash of cultures--with an undercurrent of peril throughout .
The Follow
DescriptionThis work examines the impulse to "save" a species, combining issues of natural history, travel writing and reflections on motherhood, the reforming zeal of the 1960s and ethics of being "Green". Fascinated by the reputation of Birute Galdikas who studied a group of orang-utans in the wild, Linda Spalding took her own journey in order to discover why a woman would commit her life to a malaria-infested swamp and a group of orang-utans.Spalding Linda News![]()
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