From the author of The Future Homemakers of America comes the hilarious and moving story of one unstoppable woman's unforgettable ride through an ever-changing century.... What hope is there for Poppy Minkel? She has kinky hair, big ears, skin that's too sallow, and an appetite for fun. Poppy's mother, Dora, despairs of ever finding her a husband, despite the lure of the family fortune offered by Minkel's Mighty Fine Mustard. Correctness, duty, and Dora Minkel Ear Correcting Bandages are the weapons in this husband hunt-and they serve as torture to a girl who has her own hazy ideas about beauty, love, and marriage. After the sudden death of her father, Poppy's rebelliousness bursts into full bloom. From one World War to the next, from New York to Paris, she'll invent her own extraordinary life with never a moment of self-doubt...as acclaimed author Laurie Graham treats us to a rollicking, exhilarating celebration of passion over prudence.
Pastor Greg Laurie sheds light on Graham's lesser-known struggles--such as a broken heart before he met the love of his life and a crisis of faith from which he emerged stronger than ever. Explore the evangelist's private challenges and public successes to his disappointments and joys in this portrait of one of history's most well-known Christian lives.
Entirely original, this makes us laugh a lot and take a long look at our lives. I absolutely adored it!' KATIE FFORDE 'A treat of the highest order ... Graham's merciless eye for the absurd misses nothing' WENDY HOLDEN, Daily Mail The laugh-out-loud sequel to Perfect Meringues - can former queen of the TV cooks Lizzie Partridge claw her way back into the nation's hearts? Life has been going downhill for ex-TV chef Lizzie Partridge ever since she spectacularly ended her television career by throwing a chocolate mousse at the host of Midlands This Morning. Her partner Tom has left her, Nigella and Jamie have got the cookery world sewn up, and now her cookery column - her last bit of work - has been axed. Surely the only way is up from here? In a desperate bid for sympathy and attention she runs away, from the gas bill and the mouse under the sink, and in wet and wintry Aberystwyth she experiences a brush with her past and a glimmer of new prospects. And when her nephew's girlfriend - a TV producer - has the bright idea to reunite her with her former nemesis and target of the mousse attack in a new show, it seems like things could be going Lizzie's way again after all!
“[A] witty and un-catty insight into British pre-war high society, as Wally and Maybell rise and shine while the storm clouds gather over Europe.” —Independent A wicked comedy about the romance of the century—how Wallis Simpson caused the first, and greatest, royal scandal—from the best-selling author of The Future Homemakers of America When Maybell Brumby, frisky, wealthy, and recently widowed, quits Baltimore and arrives in London, she finds that her old school chum, Bessie Wallis Warfield, is there ahead of her. Impoverished and ambitious as ever, Wallis is on the make. Hampered by plodding husband number two, but armed with terrific bone structure and a few erotic tricks picked up in China, Wallis sets her sights on the most eligible bachelor in the world: the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne. Maybell, with her deep pockets, makes the perfect ally, and her disarming dimness makes her the most delicious chronicler of the scandal that rocked a monarchy and changed the course of history. As fizzy as a freshly-popped bottle of champagne, Gone with the Windsors is a supremely clever entertainment: bedtime reading for lovers of Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward.
From the “delightfully smart” bestselling author, childhood friends find different fates in nineteenth-century London—one a life on the stage, the other poverty and danger (The Sunday Times). What Dot Allbones lacks in beauty, she makes up for with the riches of her large Midland family and her comedic talent. The queen of London’s music hall stage, Dot’s life is filled with friendship, pleasurable male company, and enough money to maintain her independence. Dot’s childhood friend, Kate Eddowes, did not fare as well. Orphaned and beautiful, Kate gambled on a better future by taking a well-heeled husband, only to find herself alone and impoverished in London. A chance meeting with her friend Dot will change things for her—or at least she hopes it will. Only Kate is a little too drawn to the drink, a dangerous habit on the streets of Whitechapel in 1888, where a mysterious killer called Jack the Ripper is destroying the most downtrodden of women, one brutalized body at a time. With her inimitable sharpness and wry wit, Laurie Graham brings to life the bustling pleasures and not-so-hidden dangers of urban life in a city where the extremes of poverty and wealth can truly determine a woman’s fortune. Praise for Laurie Graham “Laurie Graham has a wonderfully light, deft touch.” —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls “Why is Laurie Graham not carried on people’s shoulders through cheering crowds? Her books are brilliant!” —Marian Keyes, international bestselling author of Again, Rachel and Grown Ups
Singing the City is an eloquent tribute to a way of life largely disappearing in America, using Pittsburgh as a lens. Graham is not blind to the damage industry has done—both to people and to the environment, but she shows us that there is also a rich human story that has gone largely untold, one that reveals, in all its ambiguities, the place of the industrial landscape in the heart. Singing the City is a celebration of a landscape that through most of its history has been unabashedly industrial. Convinced that industrial landscapes are too little understood and appreciated, Graham set out to investigate the city's landscape, past and present, and to learn the lessons she sensed were there about living a good life. The result, told in both her voice and the distinctive voices of the people she meets, is a powerful contribution to the literature of place. Graham begins by showing the city as an outgrowth of its geography and its geology—the factors that led to its becoming an industrial place. She describes the human investment in the area: the floods of immigrants who came to work in the mills in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their struggles within the domains of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. She evokes the superhuman aura of making steel by taking the reader to still functioning mills and uncovers for us a richness of tradition in ethnic neighborhoods that survives to this day.
Inspired by the biography of a British royal, a historical novel about a princess who defied her family by marrying a Romanov. As a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Princess Victoria Melita—known affectionately as Ducky—must abide by the rules of the royal family and make a suitable match. But Ducky is young and infatuated with a Romanov, a member of the doomed Russian imperial family. Risking everything to be with the man she loves, she forges her own path. From her exile to Paris to her glamourous life in St. Petersburg, Ducky narrates the story of her extraordinary journey—at the center of the chaos of the Russian revolution and the demise of the Romanov dynasty. Praise for Laurie Graham “Graham’s style is riveting.” —The Times (London) “Laurie Graham has a wonderfully light, deft touch.” —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls “Why is Laurie Graham not carried on people’s shoulders through cheering crowds? Her books are brilliant!” —Marian Keyes, international bestselling author of Again, Rachel and Grown Ups
It shouldn't have been like this. Being on television was meant to lead to fame and a glamorous social life. But for Lizzie Partridge, forty-something, divorced and TV cook on Midlands This Morning, it meant dinners for one, coping alone with an air-head adolescent daughter and following middle-aged men into corner shops pretending she needed a bottle of Lea & Perrins. Her good friend Louie - if only he wasn't gay - thought he knew what the trouble was: Lizzie was always on the wrong side of the glass, looking in at other people's lives. Whatever the truth of that, things for Lizzie were going to get a lot worse before they got better . . .
Pittsburgh was too small for Beryl Wexler. Barely out of high school, she changed her name to Buzz and set off for the bright lights of London. She never looked back. Now she's at the top of her game in the music PR business, looking after the coolest groups on the planet. And for a woman who was forty-two last birthday she certainly keeps up the pace. But her life is about to change. Some twenty-year-old has been given the new Japanese girl band predicted to go stellar, and Buzz is being sidelined. Instead, Buzz gets to tour with the Gorni Grannies, Bulgarian singers of a certain age. These ladies may not be the tantrum-throwing celebs Buzz is used to, but they present other challenges. How to stop Lubka straining yogurt through her knee highs? How to dissuade Kichka from stealing everything not nailed to the floor? Fuelled by copious shots of home-brewed plum rakia, Buzz and Lubka address life's ups and down, until the world tilts and a different future beckons.
THE EARLY BIRDS is a hymn to lifelong female friendship and the touching and funny follow-up to THE FUTURE HOMEMAKERS OF AMERICA by the celebrated Laurie Graham. 'Why is Laurie Graham not carried on people's shoulders through cheering crowds? Her books are brilliant!' Marian KeyesPicking up ten years after THE FUTURE HOMEMAKERS OF AMERICA left off, THE EARLY BIRDS follows Peggy, Kath, Gayle, Lois and Audrey through the turn of the twenty-first century. The women are now in their seventies and time is rendering its Accounts Payable: arthritis, cataracts, forgetfulness and departures.From the dawn of the new millennium - at which the anti-Christ unaccountably fails to appear, despite evangelist Gayle's predictions - Peggy soldiers on through new upheavals, including her ex-husband Vern's Alzheimer's diagnosis, and the death of one of her live-in friends. Then, on a clear blue day in September 2001, the US Air Force scrambles too late to save America from four hostile attacks, and for the first time Peggy wonders if being a USAF wife - the constant worry about your husband, the faraway postings in Alaska, Norfolk, Siberia, the lack of control over your own life - was worth it. 'You're getting very negative in your old age, Peggy Dewey,' says Lois. 'Sure it was worthwhile. Leastways we're not speaking Russky. And besides, we had some fun. Didn't we have some fun?
From a “delightfully smart” historical novelist, a woman raised to believe she is the daughter of a British war hero searches for her true parentage (The Sunday Times). Nan Prunty’s mother is the rare woman to have served aboard navy vessels, an eyewitness to British sea battles aboard the HMS Victory. Now a notorious drunk, Nan’s mother shares outlandish anecdotes of bygone adventures, most of which Nan believes to be tall tales. The only story her mother tells the same way twice is that of Nan’s father, with whom she had an affair just before his tragic death during the Battle of Trafalgar. Is it possible the story is actually true—and that Nan is the daughter of naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson? The search for answers is a mystery that will carry Nan through her life, her marriage, and the birth of her own daughter, Pru. Growing up, Pru listens with skepticism to her mother’s narrative of her legendary genealogy. But when Pru marches off to her own intrepid life as a nurse during the Crimean War, she wonders how much of her mother’s legacy lives within her. With her characteristic warmth and wit, author Laurie Graham explores what our families stories truly tell us about ourselves. Praise for Laurie Graham “Laurie Graham has a wonderfully light, deft touch.” —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls “Why is Laurie Graham not carried on people’s shoulders through cheering crowds? Her books are brilliant!” —Marian Keyes, international bestselling author of Again, Rachel and Grown Ups
First Published in 2017. In this book Dr. Laurie Graham Dodge shares some important fundamnetals of introductory statistics. At its core, statistics is a branch of mathematics. It's a collection of tools that help us organize and make sense of information. Unfortunately, most tools are interesting only if we have an interesting use for them. One of the authors’ major goals in writing this book is to provide you with interesting examples that illustrate many of the important uses of statistics.
In the tradition of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, this moving novel, filled with warmth, wit, and wisdom, is about a group of women who discover—over the course of 40 turbulent years—the nature of true friendship. Stationed at a U.S. Air Force base in Norfolk, England in 1952, a group of “Yankee wives” are thrown together by nothing more than husbands who patrol the skies keeping the Soviets at bay. They seem to have little in common; some, like Pie Crust Queen Betty Gillis, are content to clip coupons and bake chocolate brownies, while others, like good-time girl Lois Moon, look for a little excitement beyond the perimeter fence. But the women soon discover similarities, from a common fear for their husbands to a desire to help out the war-ravaged British natives. Through marriage and divorce, separations and reunions, the gang will try to hold fast to each other in a story that takes us to the heart of female friendship— and reveals the secret of the perfect Three Color Refrigerator Cake.
From the fictitious diary of the equally fictitious Kennedy nanny comes an inside look into the early years of the dynasty—with all the juicy bits intact. Newly arrived from Ireland, Nora Brennan finds a position as nursery maid to the Kennedys of Brookline, Massachusetts—and lands at the heart of American history. In charge of nine children practically from the minute they're born—including Joe Jr., Jack, Bobby, Teddy, vivacious "Kick," and tragic Rosemary—she sees the boys coached at their father's knee to believe everything they'll ever want in life can be bought. She sees the girls trained by mother Rose to be good Catholic wives. With her sharp eye and her quiet common sense, Nora is the perfect candidate to report on an empire in the making. Then World War II changes everything.
“A portrait of the riotous, tragicomic, dysfunctional, bonkers Royal family of poor George III. . . . Fascinating, very, very funny, ultimately humane.” —Marian Keyes, international bestselling author When Nellie Welche is appointed companion to Princess Sophia, her family is delighted. It’s more than her father, steward to the Prince of Wales, ever imagined for his daughter. But once Nellie begins spending her days in close quarters with the royal family, she discovers the world within the palace is not at all what she expected. Rather than attending royal balls and society events, Princess Sofy and her sisters live in isolation. There’s also affable King George III, whose struggles with madness only deepen the privacy in which the royals must live. Over the course of a lifetime, Sofy and Nellie become inseparable. But as Sofy’s dearest friend, Nellie is also the keeper of her secrets—until the scandal that threatens their relationship . . . and the reputation of the House of Hanover. “Funny, fascinating and profoundly moving.” —Freya North, international bestselling author of The Turning Point “A delightfully smart and sophisticated historical novelist.” —The Sunday Times “Every page is a joy to read.” —Daily Mail
Birdie Gibbs lives on the seventh floor of an East End high-rise. She hates it, and she hates the hooligans. And she gets pretty bored. Ok, she's old, but that doesn't mean she's satisfied with a pair of slippers and a good book. Her best friend constantly taunts her with threats of an old people's home. But Birdie's resolute - she's not going anywhere near one of those places. She keeps herself busy, it's better to wear out than rust out. And when ex-husband Jimmy Dwyer turns up out of the blue with a greyhound that needs a home, Birdie thinks things might be on the up. But he vanishes just as quickly, leaving behind him some memories of the past that Birdie would rather forget. Laugh-out-loud funny - this is classic Laurie Graham.
It shouldn't have been like this. Being on television was meant to lead to fame and a glamorous social life. But for Lizzie Partridge, forty-something, divorced and TV cook on Midlands This Morning, it meant dinners for one, coping alone with an air-head adolescent daughter and following middle-aged men into corner shops pretending she needed a bottle of Lea & Perrins. Her good friend Louie - if only he wasn't gay - thought he knew what the trouble was: Lizzie was always on the wrong side of the glass, looking in at other people's lives. True or not, things for Lizzie were going to get a lot worse before they got better...
Did he cheat on you? It doesn't matter, sometimes the doubt is enough. Bobs and Ba had nothing when they met. But they've worked hard to get where they are. And now that Bobs is approaching fifty, it's time to celebrate. The couple go to the Caribbean. But what was meant to be a celebration turns into a disaster. Bobs is clearly hiding something and Ba fears the worst. Has Bobs found a younger woman? As the gossip starts at the golf club and their children stop calling, Ba's life is turned upside down. Will their marriage survive?
Comedy that sparkles like sunlight on water: a man re-invents himself, then comes face to face with his past on a cruise ship where the only escape is overboard.
It is 1962. The first avocado pears are appearing at the greengrocers, people are thinking about carpeting their lavatories and boxing in their banisters, and Ronnie Glover, housepainter, husband and father, is feeling the first vague stirrings of discontent with his life. Then, out of the blue, the fabulous, sophisticated (and married) Jacqueline bursts into this life and teaches him to tango. She seems to offer everything he ever dreamt of. But is it all too good to be true? What can a woman who has traveled the world want with a man who carries a stub of pencil behind his ear? And are the Ten O'Clock horses of Ronnie's painful childhood awake and sniffing the wind?
The Early Birds is the touching and funny follow-up to The Future Homemakers of America. 'Funny, heartwarming and a real treat. I would recommend it to anyone!' Katie Fforde 'Wit and insight to match Nick Hornby, and the entertainment value of Helen Fielding' Independent on The Future Homemakers of America 'Why is Laurie Graham not carried on people's shoulders through cheering crowds? Her books are brilliant!' Marian Keyes Peggy, the southern belle. Kath, the pragmatist with the only Norfolk accent in New York state. Gayle, the preacher with healing hands. Mrs Colonel Audrey Rudman, forever keeping up the standards of the Officers' Wives Club. Lois, who's never had a thought she didn't voice. Loudly. Their menfolk may be long retired, but once a US Air Force wife, always an Air Force wife, and the bonds of friendship forged in base after military base are still going strong fifty years later. Time is rendering its Accounts Payable for all of them now: hip replacements, eye problems, forgetfulness and departures. In this hymn to lifelong female friendship, Peggy soldiers on through new upheavals, including her ex-husband Vern's Alzheimer's diagnosis, the death of one of her nearest and dearest, a life-changing house move and the world-shattering events of 9/11 with the help of her sharp-tongued, often eccentric, but always loyal group of friends.
As a participant observer at Subaru-Isuzu Automotive, Laurie Graham conducted extensive covert research. Her findings will interest all those concerned about Japanese management strategies, the auto industry, and the American worker's experience of lean production.
Look Forward to Looking Forward! Do you dread the days ahead? Then it’s time for a perspective check! It’s not that footloose and fancy-free days await you, because the reality of life is that you will indeed face trials, sorrow, and grief. But you can boldly move forward to embrace this future—because the best is yet to come! Greg Laurie observes Jesus’ first two miracles to reveal how and why you can approach the future with confidence, no matter what your present circumstance. Life will never stop throwing challenges your way, but God will never stop escalating your faith. That’s guaranteed. And with this increased faith, you can more fully embrace Him and the beauty of life as He intends it for you! Is Your Life Dread-Locked? If you feel stuck, hard-pressed on every side by bleak circumstances and an ominous future looming ahead, you know there’s got to be a better way to live. But worry and anxiety have become familiar companions. And you need out. Thank God, because He’s saving the best for last. Join Greg Laurie in this insightful study of the first two miracles Jesus ever performed. Here you’ll discover the secret to thriving in any situation. Your circumstances could miraculously change, but more likely, you will change. Your faith will escalate, and anxieties will melt away. Embrace now the truth that the best is indeed yet to come! “I know of no greater preacher in America today than Greg Laurie.” Reverend Billy Graham Story Behind the Book “The Best Is Yet to Come is a message that came out of a time of personal reflection on the rapid passing of time in my life. It is a look at the importance of focusing on what really matters in life and holding the course of following Jesus Christ in the confidence that the best really is yet to come!” —Greg Laurie
After leaving her Manhattan publishing job, Laurie Graham occupies and renovates the rural New Jersey home she once shared with her late husband, affirming as she works that she can manage on her own.
Meet Dr Dan. He's young, he's eager and he's been offered a ritzy job in Harley Street. So why is he joining a GP practice in a gritty Black Country community? A gentle comedy from best-selling author Laurie Graham.
Pastor Greg Laurie sheds light on Graham's lesser-known struggles--such as a broken heart before he met the love of his life and a crisis of faith from which he emerged stronger than ever. Explore the evangelist's private challenges and public successes to his disappointments and joys in this portrait of one of history's most well-known Christian lives.
Trillium Book Award for Poetry, Finalist A powerful book-length poem on environmental destruction and the violences of colonial nation-states from the acclaimed author of Settler Education. Here is a lament for places in flux, where industrial, commercial, or suburban development encroaches or invades. From Highway 401 to Refinery Row east of Edmonton, from Lake Ontario to the Fraser River, this long poem takes aim at the structures that support ecological injustice and attempts new forms of expression grounded in respect for flora, fauna, water, land, and air. It also wrestles with the impossibility of speaking ethically about “the environment” as a settler living within and benefiting from the will to destroy that so often doubles as nationalism. Following physical routes and terrains, Fast Commute exists both within and outside the dissociative registers of colonialism and capitalism. This deeply engaging book offers a way to see, learn about, and live in relationship with other-than-human life, and to begin dealing with loss on a grand scale.
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