![]() ![]() ![]() As Sally gets farther and farther from home, she experiences freedoms she has never known-forgoing corsets and wearing native dress, learning Arabic, and having her first taste of romance.īut freedom is a luxury that a lady’s maid can ill afford, and when Sally’s newfound passion for life causes her to forget what she is entitled to, she is brutally reminded she is mistress of nothing. When Lady Duff Gordon, paragon of London society, departs for the hot, dry climate of Egypt to seek relief from her debilitating tuberculosis, her lady’s maid, Sally, doesn’t hesitate to leave the only world she has known in order to remain at her mistress’s side. ![]() The American debut of an award-winning novel about a lady’s maid’s awakening as she journeys from the confines of Victorian England to the uncharted far reaches of Egypt’s Nile Valley. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ReviewĪmazon Best Books of the Month, August 2012: Oh my, these beautiful, terrible girls, with their "Aruba-tanned" legs and their ferocity and fears, for whom the smallest slights become life-and-death matters. Award-winning novelist Megan Abbott, writing with what Tom Perrotta has hailed as "total authority and an almost desperate intensity," provides a harrowing glimpse into the dark heart of the all-American girl. The raw passions of girlhood are brought to life in this taut, unflinching exploration of friendship, ambition, and power. ![]() After the first wave of shock and grief, Addy tries to uncover the truth behind the death - and learns that the boundary between loyalty and love can be dangerous terrain. Then a suicide focuses a police investigation on Coach and her squad. Only Beth, unsettled by the new regime, remains outside Coach's golden circle, waging a subtle but vicious campaign to regain her position as "top girl" - both with the team and with Addy herself. Now they're seniors who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by the other girls - until the young new coach arrives.Ĭool and commanding, an emissary from the adult world just beyond their reach, Coach Colette French draws Addy and the other cheerleaders into her life. Beth calls the shots and Addy carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy's best friend and trusted lieutenant. ![]() ![]() ![]() Though in a way you could say Le Guin was always with me. Even as I traced the same route through my neighborhood each day, I was sailing through an enchanted archipelago-and in a time when travel had become impossible, I voyaged among the stars. Le Guin, and during this time, as my external world grew smaller, my internal world expanded. I spent the better part of 20 immersed in the work of the great speculative writer Ursula K. ![]() If this time period happens to fall during a global pandemic, so much the better. If you are luckier still, this author will be at least as old as your mother, astoundingly prolific, and will have published so many novels that reading them back to back will take you well over a year. If you’re lucky in this life, you may discover an author whose work moves you so deeply that reading it is like going to church-like listening to your own soul speaking quietly as you turn the pages. ![]() |