Historical Fiction public shelf from Merle4books, browse by interest area

Kate Atkinson

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York

A Novel

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning author of Life after Life transports us to a restless London in the wake of the Great War—a city bursting with money, glamour, and corruption—in this spellbinding tale of seduction and betrayal. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE GUARDIAN, BOOKLIST "Set during Jazz Age London, in all its fizzy madness and desperation.... As dark as [Atkinson's] stories can get, within them always shines a beacon of humanity.” —Gillian Flynn, bestselling author of Dark Places 1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. The notorious queen of this glittering world is Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven, whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie’s empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho’s gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost. With her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson gives us a window in a vanished world. Slyly funny, brilliantly observant, and ingeniously plotted, Shrines of Gaiety showcases the myriad talents that have made Atkinson one of the most lauded writers of our time.

Shrines of Gaiety

4c6927a9-e67c-40ba-b65b-0ff37c0d06a2-1

Natasha Lester

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Orphan comes an unforgettable historical novel about a secret collection of Dior gowns that ties back to the first female pilots of WWII and a heartbreaking story of love and sacrifice. England, 1939: The Penrose sisters couldn't be more different. Skye is a daring and brash pilot, and Liberty the one to defy her at every turn. Even if women aren't allowed in the Royal Air Force, Skye is determined to help the war effort. She's thrilled when it reunites her with her childhood soulmate, Nicholas. She's less thrilled to learn Nicholas is now engaged to an enigmatic Frenchwoman named Margaux Jourdan. Paris, 1947: Designer Christian Dior unveils his glamorous first collection to a world weary of war and grief. He names his debut fragrance Miss Dior in tribute to his beloved sister Catherine, who forged a friendship with Skye and Margaux through her work with the French Resistance. Present Day: Fashion conservator Kat Jourdan discovers a priceless collection of Dior gowns in her grandmother's vacant cottage. As she delves into the mystery of their origin, Kat begins to doubt everything she thought she knew about her beloved grandmother.

The Paris Secret

6435f3d1-4e5d-4ba0-9e0e-db9986d1782a-1

Juliet Blackwell

In Nazi-occupied Paris, a talented artisan must fight for her life by designing for her enemies. From New York Times bestselling author Juliet Blackwell comes an extraordinary story about holding on to hope when all seems lost.

Capucine Benoit works alongside her father to produce fans of rare feathers, beads, and intricate pleating for the haute couture fashion houses. But after the Germans invade Paris in June 1940, Capucine and her father must focus on mere survival-until they are betrayed to the secret police and arrested for his political beliefs. When Capucine saves herself from deportation to Auschwitz by highlighting her connections to Parisian design houses, she is sent to a little-known prison camp located in the heart of Paris, within the Levitan department store.

There, hundreds of prisoners work to sort through, repair, and put on display the massive quantities of art, furniture, and household goods looted from Jewish homes and businesses.Forced to wait on German officials and their wives and mistresses, Capucine struggles to hold her tongue in order to survive, remembering happier days spent in the art salons, ateliers, and jazz clubs of Montmartre in the 1920s.

Capucine's estranged daughter, Mathilde, remains in the care of her conservative paternal grandparents, whoareprosperingunder the Nazi occupation. But after her mother is arrested and then a childhood friend goes missing, the usually obedient Mathilde finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of Paris's Resistance fighters. As her mind opens to new ways of looking at the world, Mathilde also begins to see her unconventional mother in a different light.

When an old acquaintance arrives to go "shopping" at the Levitan department store on the arm of a Nazi officer and secretly offers to help Capucine get in touch with Mathilde, this seeming act of kindness could have dangerousconsequences.

The Paris Showroom

d201ce8d-639a-4025-8b1b-1a20adc03572-1

HistoricalFiction_Merle4books

Photography public shelf from Merle4books, browse by interest area

Michael A. Freeman

a few pencil annotations, otherwise excellent condition 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos

Presents instructions on traditional photographic composition and addresses the new techniques of digital photography that allow the image to be edited, manipulated, or montaged to produce a radically different final result.

The Photographer's Eye

10acff77-dcce-42c2-8d55-04b89fcb70ad-1

Roger Hicks

Frances Schultz

Moving Beyond 35mm for Better Pictures

Most experienced photographers who work with 35mm ask the same nagging question: If they changed to a larger format, would they get better pictures? In Medium and Large Format Photography, renowned professional photographers Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz provide all the practical and artistic guidance every aspiring photographer needs to master the world beyond 35mm. In clear, no-nonsense language, this valuable guide details all the possibilities and limitations of various film formats, as well as the best cameras and equipment to use with each. Indispensable, easy-to-read tables make it simple to compare film sizes, lens lengths, and other information at a glance. Plus, the guide is packed with over 200 stunning photos showing the merits of medium and large format photography in action. - A comprehensive introduction to the many cameras and film formats available beyond 35mm - Includes expert tips on buying equipment, darkroom supplies, and processing film

Medium and Large Format Photography

3b5932ab-4ca7-4c8b-afc2-42a5fcebc70b-0

Lou Jones

Off the Charts

'On assignment in Havana, Cuba, I heard music. It was across the street and far away. I couldn't track down the source. As I got closer, the echo was bouncing off the tall buildings. It was amazing. Running back and forth I eventually got someone's attention. He led me on a dead run into one of Old Havana's famous condemned historical landmarks. I thought it was abandoned. Upon entering the lobby, I found it totally dark in the middle of the day. No light at all. My "guide" ran up the stairs with me in close pursuit. The circular staircase wound round and round. But soon I hit something. Hard. Since it was so black I had no idea the staircase was full of people. I couldn't see a thing. I panicked. But I always carry a small flashlight on my key chain. I was able to stumble safely the several flights up to the band rehearsing on the top floor. Great photographs.' travel + PHOTOGRAPHY is loaded with beautiful photographs showing you the "how-to's" of travel photography. Herein you will find examples that will reveal the secrets, debunk the myths, and explore the romance of traveling with a camera. Combined with anecdotes that demonstrate how to solve both typical and unique problems of camera equipment, lighting, and language barriers, this ambitious book showcases the imagination, personal vision, and the technology needed to take creative pictures around the world. Money, health, and cultural and language barriers lead to the biggest mistakes and problems for photographers while on the road, and in this book, Lou Jones offers up his years of on-the-road experience for you. Whether you are a professional photographer, or a serious amateur, this book is a must have if you travel with a camera.vel photography. Herein you will find examples that will reveal the secrets, debunk the myths, and explore the romance of traveling with a camera. Combined with anecdotes that demonstrate how to solve both typical and unique problems of camera equipment, lighting, and language barriers, this ambitious book showcases the imagination, personal vision, and the technology needed to take creative pictures around the world. Money, health, and cultural and language barriers lead to the biggest mistakes and problems for photographers while on the road, and in this book, Lou Jones offers up his years of on-the-road experience for you. Whether you are a professional photographer, or a serious amateur, this book is a must have if you travel with a camera.

Travel and Photography

5035d09d-348b-4924-bbbc-11dbb1b37ce7-0

Photography_Merle4books

Short stories and collections, public shelf from Merle4books, browse by interest area

A. M. Homes

a few pencil marks; otherwise excellent condition 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Stories

"With dark humor and sharp dialogue, Homes plumbs the depths of everyday American anxieties." --Time

A razor-sharp story collection from a writer who is always "furiously good" (Zadie Smith, bestselling author of Swing Time).

With her signature humor and compassion, A.M. Homes exposes the heart of an uneasy America in her new collection - exploring our attachments to each other through characters who aren't quite who they hoped to become, though there is no one else they can be.

In "A Prize for Every Player," a man is nominated to run for president by the customers of a big box store, while he and his family do their weekly shopping. At a conference on genocide(s) in the title story, old friends rediscover themselves and one another - finding spiritual and physical comfort in ancient traditions. And in "Hello Everybody" and "She Got Away," Homes revisits a Los Angeles family obsessed with the surfaces and frightened of what lives below.

In the nearly three decades since her seminal debut collection The Safety of Objects, Homes has been celebrated by readers and critics alike as one of our boldest and most original writers, acclaimed for her psychological accuracy and "satire so close to the truth it's terrifying" (Ali Smith). Her first book since the Women's Prize-winning May We Be Forgiven, Days of Awe is a major new addition to her body of visionary, fearless, outrageously funny work.

Days of Awe

0d19574a-cf10-411e-91ac-e606f6250241-1

Helen Oyeyemi

From the award-winning author of Boy, Snow, Bird and Mr. Fox comes an enchanting collection of intertwined stories. Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret--Oyeyemi's keys not only unlock elements of her characters' lives, they promise further labyrinths on the other side. In "Books and Roses" one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers' fates. In "Is Your Blood as Red as This?" an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. "'Sorry' Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea" involves a "house of locks," where doors can be closed only with a key--with surprising, unobservable developments. And in "If a Book Is Locked There's Probably a Good Reason for That Don't You Think," a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason). Oyeyemi's creative vision and storytelling are effervescent, wise, and insightful, and her tales span multiple times and landscapes as they tease boundaries between coexisting realities. Is a key a gate, a gift, or an invitation? What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours captivates as it explores the many possible answers.

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

2418789a-1f4b-4784-80b7-5d12262f667b-1

Frederick Barthelme

New and Selected Stories

Twenty years ago Frederick Barthelme began publishing stories that turned readers' expectations on their heads. In The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, and elsewhere he published story after story that confounded the prevailing literary assumptions, treating our very ordinary lives with a new kind of careful and loving attention and imagination. He wrote intimate, funny, odd, detailed, laugh-out-loud stories about relationships that almost happen and ones that almost don't, about the ways we look at each other when we mean things we cannot bring ourselves to say. Before there were slackers, or kids in parking lots, or stories that took the mundane seriously, there were these prescient stories by Frederick Barthelme. He took a post-ironic stance before the post-ironic had a name. He took fiction where few were then willing to go, took as his subject small romances, private fears, suburban estrangement, office angst, cultural isolation, apparently insignificant humiliations, and the growing information surplus (CNN is a sociological novel, he once remarked). He wrote--and continues to write--with a laser-surgery precision that stuns and delights both readers and critics. If he arrived at the new-literature party a little earlier than the other guests, he has not left early, and is thus well represented in The Law of Averages, with old and new stories side by side, ready to give up their abundant pleasures.

The Law of Averages

37ee0219-218e-4730-a54d-28ab1efcf9e7-0

ShortStories_Merle4books

Travel writing, Sense of Place, Historical -  public shelf from Merle4books, browse by interest area

Lesley Hazleton

Some pencil underlining, otherwise like new. 

The Story of Muhammad

Muhammad's was a life of almost unparalleled historical importance; yet for all the iconic power of his name, the intensely dramatic story of the prophet of Islam is not well known. In The First Muslim, Lesley Hazleton brings him vibrantly to life. Drawing on early eyewitness sources and on history, politics, religion, and psychology, she renders him as a man in full, in all his complexity and vitality. Hazleton's account follows the arc of Muhammad's rise from powerlessness to power, from anonymity to renown, from insignificance to lasting significance. How did a child shunted to the margins end up revolutionizing his world? How did a merchant come to challenge the established order with a new vision of social justice? How did the pariah hounded out of Mecca turn exile into a new and victorious beginning? How did the outsider become the ultimate insider?

The First Muslim

32df325a-e740-4772-aa01-9e0787e9aa35-1

Heinrich Harrer

Dalai Lama

Translated from the German by Richard Graves; with an introduction by Peter Fleming 

Translated from the German by Richard Graves

Recounts how the author, an Austrian, escaped from an English internment camp in India in 1943 and spent the next seven years in Tibet, observing its social practices, religion, politics, and people.

Seven Years in Tibet

662b5cce-8f98-4a7a-93fb-22892ef525c5-1

David Lamb

Journeys Beyond the Mirage

The Arabs is widely considered one of the essential books for understanding the Middle East and the peoples who live there. David Lamb, who spent years as a correspondent in Cairo, explores the Arabs’ religious, political, and cultural views, noting the differences and key similarities between the many segments of the Arab world. He explains Arab attitudes and actions toward the West, including the growth of terrorism, and situates current events in a larger historical backdrop that goes back more than a thousand years.

Now thoroughly revised and updated, The Arabs takes the story up to 2001. Lamb analyzes the developments that led to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and helps the reader to understand how things got to that point. A veteran journalist, Lamb combines his extensive experience in covering international politics with his deeply informed insider’s knowledge to provide an intimate portrait of the Arab world today.

Shelves by Merle4Books

Merle4Books

HistoricalFiction_Merle4books

Photography_Merle4books

ShortStories_Merle4books

Travel-Place-History_Merle4books

Browse by categories

Shelves by Merle4Books

Merle4Books

HistoricalFiction_Merle4books

Photography_Merle4books

ShortStories_Merle4books

Travel-Place-History_Merle4books