by Ruth Burrows (1975)
"Before the Living God is Ruth Burrows' autobiography - the account of a life empty of outward incident after her early years, but rich with her own spiritual growth. She writes of the Christian's relationship with others and with God, of prayer, of the life of the Spirit. She presents these ideals in no abstract way, but in the intimately personal terms of one individual's - her own - struggle to live them to the full."--BOOK JACKET.
[by] Beth Pattillo
Denied tenure in the wake of the scandal and left penniless by the ensuing divorce, English professor Emma Grant packs up what few worldly possessions she has left and heads to England on a quest to find the missing letters of Jane Austen. Laced with fictional excerpts from the missing letters, this is the story of a woman betrayed who uncovers the deeper meaning of loyalty.
Robert B. Shoemaker
"By 1700 London was the largest city in the world, with over 500,000 inhabitants. Very weakly policed, its streets saw regular outbreaks of rioting by a mob easily stirred by economic grievances, politics or religion. If the mob vented its anger more often on property than people, eighteenth-century Londoners frequently came to blows over personal disputes. In a society where men and women were quick to defend their honour, slanging matches easily turned to fisticuffs and slights on honour were avenged in duels. In this world, where the detection and prosecution of crime was the part of the business of the citizen, punishment, whether by the pillory, whipping at a cart's tail or hanging at Tyburn, was public and endorsed by crowds. The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England draws a fascinating portrait of the public life of the modern world's first great city."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Anthony Holden
In June 1805, a 56-year-old Italian immigrant disembarked in Philadelphia carrying only a violin. Before dying in New York, in his ninetieth year, he would find New World respectability as a bookseller, then as the first Professor of Italian at Columbia University. For now, he set up shop as a grocer. There was always an air of mystery about the Abbe Lorenzo Da Ponte. A scholarly poet, teacher and priest, with a devoted wife, he also had a reputation as a womaniser. Da Ponte charmed all he met, pioneering the place of Italian music in American life. But his self-assurance also excited mistrust. When the first Italian opera was performed in New York in 1825, he had the nerve to claim he had written it. He had, so he said, known Mozart. Not to mention Casanova. Like the memoirs he had recently written, to pay off more debts, the old man was so full of tall stories.... The many lives of Lorenzo da Ponte - librettist of Mozart's three great operas, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte - begin in Venice, linger in Vienna and London and wind up in New York, where today he lies buried in an unmarked grave in the world's largest cemetery. Anthony Holden's biography does justice at last to a great collaborator - the man who wrote Mozart.
Sheila Tofield
Aged 17, Sheila was left heartbroken when her fiance broke off their engagement. A year later, having fallen pregnant to an older man, she found herself in a Church of England home for unmarried mothers, expected to give up her child for adoption. But despite being ostracised by her family, neighbours and colleagues, Sheila chose to do the unthinkable - to bring up her baby on her own.